Manuscript parlor / puzzle / guessing game of famous moments in history

[Bordeaux, ca. first quarter of the 19th century?]. Oblong octavo album with 58 tipped-in pen & ink drawings, 55 of them using a combination of detailed landscapes, architecture, interiors, and stick figures to depict various scenes from classical times, the Bible, and European history, accompanied by 8 pages of a manuscript, titled "Explications des dessins-Énigmes," being a key to the illustrations and describing the moments depicted, in French. Contemporary cloth backed boards, sewing weak but holding, mounted paper with some occasional spotting but the illustrations largely fine, text gathering toned with some shallow chipping but no loss to text. From the library of Apollonie de la Rochelambert (1803-1893). From our colleague Nina Musinsky who was as baffled by this as we are: "The work of a single anonymous artist, the drawings show the stick figures in action within villages, cityscapes, well-defined landscapes, or interiors. Overall, our draftsman paid careful attention to architectural and geographical accuracy: in the scene of St. Helena identifying the true cross, for example, Jerusalem with its temple and walls is visible on its ridge in the background (22); Notre Dame towers in the distance in no. 3, depicting the assassination of Henri III, and no. 8, of Moses being saved from the waters, displays a landscape dotted with pyramids and palm trees." Attention is paid also to details such as the arms on flags to provide context to the guesser. The stick figures themselves are minimalistic to the extreme with only the occasional detailing of the heads. Given the quality of the rest of the work, this is clearly a deliberate abstraction, possibly to avoid depictions of gore when showing scenes of assassination, torture, beheadings, and suicides, to make the images palatable for children who might use the book for play and instruction. The images were produced on loose sheets, with many types of paper used, some with the shadow of an aborted image on the versos, and then were tipped in, possibly by a second individual. Each puzzle image appears to be produced by the same hand, as are two of the landscape drawings that do not coincide with the theme of the book, but one image is produced in pencil, in a much smaller format and on wove paper, depicting what appears to be the Château de la Brède from the Bordeaux region of France. This, plus the identification of the watermarks of F. Jardel and Lacoste, as determined by Ms. Musinsky, place the production of the album somewhere around Bordeaux. As for dating, the latest of the scenes depict the story of the Chevalier d'Assas, who in 1760 came across an enemy group of English, and defied the bayonets at his breast to utter a cry of alarm; "To me, Auvergne! Here is the enemy!" The use of wove paper in many illustrations likely means that at least some of the images could have been produced later than 1770. The lack of any reference to the French Revolution raises the question of whether the album was produced before that, but given the fact that it has until recently been in the library of a French noble who's family was driven into exile, there may also be a political reason for why the topic was omitted. In all, an enigmatic, slightly surreal album interesting for its style, artistic accuracy, and its pedagogical approach to history.