Jeu de Drapeaux

Edizioni del Solleone
di Vito Arienti

One of a set of at least 17 period reproductions, the Jeu de Drapeaux shows military costume, and perhaps some subtle suggestions about military conduct, among the four major powers in Europe in the early 19th Century: France, England, Germany and Russia. The scheme of the deck is that each number card has that many soldiers on it, and each of the face cards has the right gender of character holding the flag. From Hargrave's A History of Playing Cards:

"...The rather famous 'Jeu des Drapeaux' ... was issued under the Restoration in honor of Napoleon's return. It is a piquet pack with a title card, bearing the name on a flag, carried by one of the Old Guard. On a pillar beside him are the names of all the great victories from Ulm to Moscow. The cards themselves picture Napoleon's soldiers, the suit signs being on the flags they carry. The heart suit shows the French soldiers, and the king carries the famous motto, 'La garde meurt et ne se rend pas.' They are spirited and delightful little prints, hand-colored."

I was at first quite puzzled about the fact that there are only 32 cards in the deck, but after I put up the page, Bob Lancaster set me straight about Piquet. In his own words:

The reason the decks contain only 32 cards is that they are "piquet" decks. Piquet is a card game which uses only the ace and six through king of each suit. "At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the sixes were also left out, so that today a piquet pack has only 32 cards" (from Hargrave's A History of Playing Cards).

The deck is well-made, hand-cut, and has no back design, which is what I understand period cards to have been like. It also contains no jokers, but presumably there were none in Piquet. And this is one of a limited printing of only a thousand decks. If I learn more, perhaps I'll revisit these decks in a future issue. They're certainly fascinating works, both as decks of cards and as reproductions. And if I learn more about Sr. Arienti, I'll certainly post it here.