Diario del assedio, y expugnacion de la ciudad de Buda, metropoli del reyno de Ungria

Extremely rare Barcelona reissue of this day-by-day account of the Siege of Buda, printed in 1686, the same year as the Seville first edition, but reset throughout in a completely different typographical setting. No copy of this edition has been located in the principal institutional collections consulted. Cf. Palau, 71807 (reference to be verified against the present copy).

Contemporary full ivory limp vellum with yapp edges, smooth spine with manuscript title written lengthwise, covers lightly soiled. The text block was probably re-cased in its original vellum binding. A few minor stains and printer's ink smudges to the title, otherwise a particularly appealing copy preserved in its original binding.

The work records, day by day, the siege and recapture of Buda by the armies of the Holy League between 18 June and 9 September 1686, the decisive victory that brought to an end one hundred and forty-five years of Ottoman rule over the former capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, occupied since 1541. Commanded by Charles V, Duke of Lorraine (1643–1690), the campaign ranks among the defining episodes of the Great Turkish War and marked a lasting turning point in the retreat of Ottoman power from Central Europe.

The text is presented as the translation of an authentic account written by an Italian eyewitness, now attributed to Count Paolo Amerighi. In the Sienese edition of 1686 he appears anonymously under the conventional designation Cavaliere Senese ("the Sienese Knight"), in keeping with a common publishing practice of the period. This Spanish version belongs to the wave of accounts issued in 1686 by several Spanish printers and publishers, foremost among them Sebastián de Armendáriz, regarded as one of the pioneers of Spanish journalism, who published the first Castilian edition at Seville through Thomas López de Haro.

The present copy belongs to the Barcelona reissue printed by Rafael Figueró (1642–1726), now recognised as the foremost Catalan printer of the Baroque period and one of the principal architects of early periodical printing in Catalonia. Closely attentive to news from the Great Turkish War, Figueró contributed to its dissemination through this edition, now of the utmost rarity.

An exceptionally rare witness to the immediate circulation in late seventeenth-century Spain of contemporary accounts celebrating the recapture of Buda, this Barcelona edition, preserved in its original vellum binding and unrecorded in the principal institutional collections consulted, represents a significant addition to the already rich bibliography of one of the Great Turkish War's defining events.