Reynaud Des Marchais, Chevalier des Marchais was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 cartographer and navigator who travelled extensively in the west coast of Africa, the West Indies and the northwest coast of South America between 1704 and 1727, under service to the King of France. His maps and manuscripts were published posthumously by Père J. B. Labat in Amsterdam in 1730-31.

Des Marchais mapped the Kingdom of Whydah

Kingdom of Whydah

The Kingdom of Whydah , sometimes written Hueda, was a kingdom on the coast of West Africa in the boundaries of the modern nation of Benin. Between 1677 and 1681 it was conquered by the Akwamu a member of the Akan people. It was a major slave trading post...

 in 1725, two years before its capture by Dahomey

Dahomey

Dahomey was a country in west Africa in what is now the Republic of Benin. The Kingdom of Dahomey was a powerful west African state that was founded in the seventeenth century and survived until 1894. From 1894 until 1960 Dahomey was a part of French West Africa. The independent Republic of Dahomey...

; he also provided the most detailed description of the coronation of King Haffon

King Haffon

Haffon was the last ruler of the Kingdom of Whydah before it was captured by the forces of Dahomey in 1727.Born in 1695, Haffon became King of Whydah in 1708. He was not crowned in a formal ceremony at Savi until April 1725. His coronation party included 40 of his favorite wives...

which he dated from the same year.