Mappa Geographica novissima Regni Hungariae
Müller Ignácz ( Müller Ignác): Mappa Geographica novissima Regni Hungariae divisi in suos Comitatus cum Districtibus Jazygum et Cumanorum, Banatus Temesiensis ejusque Districtuum nec non Regnorum Croatiae, Slavoniae, Dalmatiae, Magni Principatus Transsylvaniae, partis Bosniae, Serviae. - Vienna. 1769. Copper engraving. Contemporarily intersected and laid on canvas. Four sheets, if joined the total size is: 204x244 cm.
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The map, which was completed in 1769 and published in a small number of copies and covers the entire territory of our country at that time, is the work of the military engineer Ignác Müller. The map is significantly more accurate in terms of coordinates than any previous similar work, and its nomenclature is more detailed. The baroque beauty of its drawing, form, and graphic decorative elements also makes it stand out from similar works of the time.According to László Bendefy ( Geodézia és Kartográfia, 26.évf. 1974., p. 122-132. ):
After the Lázár map ( "Tabula Hungariae...", 1528 ) was made during the Dózsa Peasants' War ( 1514 ), there was no mapping of national importance in our country for almost two centuries. The map made by Johann Christoph Müller in 1709, the map of Hungary, due to its shortcomings, no longer met the needs of the Court War Council (Hofkriegsrat) from the mid-18th century. Therefore, a new map was ordered in 1764.
As a precedent, the results of the work of Sámuel Mikoviny: the series of maps made of more than 50 counties, overview maps of certain parts of the country, and the map material collected by order of the legendary Field Marshal András Hadik, the president of the Court War Council, awaited the organizing, systematizing, surveying, and cartographic activities of a suitably prepared cartographer who also knew the language of the country's population. The result of this was ultimately the creation that we know as the Müller map.
The editor of the map, Ignác Müller, was born in 1727 in Székesfehérvár. At the age of seventeen, he was already serving in the army, and his career quickly rose. In 1764, an independent mapping group was assigned to his command, and then he was assigned to the cartographic department under the direction of Field Marshal Franz Moritz Lacy. Here, he was tasked by the Court War Council on May 13, 1764, with preparing a new map of Hungary. Using the available material (primarily using Mikoviny's county maps and the collected country maps), his group of cartographers prepared the overview map of our country in four and a half years. We can judge the extent of the work done by noting that, at the time of Mikoviny's death in 1750, the series of county maps he had compiled was incomplete. The map of Zala, Heves, Hajdú, Szabolcs, Szatmár and Szilágy counties, as well as the 17 Transylvanian counties, was missing.The gaps had to be compiled from the country maps, but it can be assumed that significant fieldwork and site surveying were also necessary.
On June 26, 1769, Colonel Ignác Müller reported to Sergeant Major Lacy that - as can be verified by the frequently performed control measurements in the meantime - a map of Hungary had been created that surpassed all previous ones in terms of the number of data, the spatial accuracy of the indicated locations and the writing of place names. The Court War Council awarded Ignác Müller an unprecedented amount of reward for his cartographic engineering activities.
The map was engraved by J. Chr. Winkler, a renowned Viennese engraver. The printed copies were treated confidentially, and the number of copies published is unknown. In Hungary, the National Széchenyi Library and the map archive of the Military History Museum and Archives preserve complete copies. The 12 different-sized sections combine to form a map with an internal size of 241.0 x 203.5 cm. The largest section measures 98 x 68 cm, which is a great rarity, and its paper was made in Volkersthausen on the shores of Lake Constance for this purpose.
In addition, it shows the bordering regions of neighboring countries (then still under Turkish occupation), such as Bosnia, Bulgaria, Serbia and parts of Havaselve (Walachia).
The caption states that, at the time the map was made, these territories were governed by Empress Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary, and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, and that the work was supervised by Count Moritz Lacy, Chief of Staff and Marshal of the War Council.
