George III's Military Map Collection

The Royal Collection Trust has imaged and put online the 3,000 maps and plans—almost all manuscript—from George III’s Military Collection. George IV gave two parts of his father’s map collection to the state in 1823, where they now form a core of the British Library’s map collections (K.Top, the topographical collection, and K.Mar, the marine collection), but he retained the military collection (K.Mil) as a working collection.

George III was renowned as a map collector. He inherited some, such as the maps of his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, which are a major portion of the K.Mil collection, and kept others that came across his desk. The military collection has materials from 1527 through 1815.

The site, with Yo Hodson’s introduction and catalog, is at https://militarymaps.rct.uk/. It comes with a neat-looking map of the locations of sites mapped in the collection:

However, the map is not fully connected to the catalog. I looked, for example, at South Asia, and found that the pin at Bangalore generated a link to a map, but not the pin at Seringapatam. [update 31 Jan 2020: the map has been fixed, displaying many more pins and the proper links to the search engine.] Searching for that toponym in the catalogue gave several hits, including a plan of the 1791 siege by Colin Mackenzie, who would be present at the 1799 siege when the British finally defeated Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and who would in 1815 be appointed the first Surveyor General of India. Here’s a detail (click to see the whole thing):

Colin Mackenzie, “Battle of the 15th of May, 1791 fought by the British Army Commanded by The Right Hon.ble Earl Cornwallis” (1791). Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper | Scale: 1:64,500 | RCIN 735003

I could go on, and on. This is a major resource, of plans, views, paintings, and diagrams. Come and join me in geeking out over these images!