Anonymous.

The naval battle between the British and a joint Franco-Hispanic fleet off Toulon on 11th-13th February 1744 was an inglorious failure for the British. After the battle, the two principal British commanders, Admiral Thomas Mathews, the overall commander, and Vice Admiral Richard Lestock, commander of the British rear division (and their supporters) each sought to lay blame on the other, the arguments evolving into a pamphlet war that kept London printers busy for over a year.

In the ordinary course of events, defeats like this were overlooked by map publishers, and quickly forgotten by the general public; however, the pamphlet war kept the battle in the public eye. When Lestock presented his justification to the House of Commons in  March 1745, he presented seven detailed plans of the battle, and these were quickly published by John Millan, Bookseller to the Horse Guards, and semi-official publisher to the various branches of the British military.

As ephemeral items, this group of plans is very rare, this set owing its survival to having been bound at the period, with no example located in the British Library, on ESTC or COPAC. The set in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich appears to be unbound.