(1600 - 1667)
Nicholas Sanson, French cartographer, was born at Abbeville, Picardy, and educated at Amiens. At the age of 18 he drew a map of Gaul. Sanson taught geography to Louis XIII and Louis XIV and Louis XIII, who he is said to have stayed with in Abbeville. In ‘Pharus Galliae Antiquae’ Sanson accused the French Jesuit writer Philippe Labbe of plagiarising his work. Sanson died in Paris in 1667. His eldest son was killed during the Fronde (the French civil war of 1648-53) but two other sons, Adrien (died 1708) and Guillaume (died 1703), succeeded their father as geographers to the king.
