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| Engineering the past |
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| Wednesday, 14 March 2007 | |
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Burgundy, along with the rest of
France, is celebrating the
tercentenary of the death of
Sébastien Le Prestre Marquis de
Vauban, born May 1633 at Saint-
Léger-de-Foucherets, near Vézelay in
the Yonne; in 1867 the village was
renamed Saint-Léger-Vauban in his
honour. He was described by Voltaire
as “the leading engineer and best of
citizens”. He was more than that: he
was France’s and probably Europe’s
greatest military engineer.
He started his military career as a
cadet in the army of Prince Condé, as
a rebel fighting France, but in 1653
he was captured by royal troops. He
was persuaded by Cardinal Mazarin
to join the King’s newly formed
engineer corps. After five years he
had risen to chief-engineer at the
siege of Gravelines. His first fortification works were at Besançon in Franche-Comté and Nancy in Lorraine. He rapidly established his reputation in this field and the King entrusted him with the building of the Citadel at Lille, which took four years to construct at a cost at the time of 1,500,000 florins; later to be called ‘the Queen of Citadels’. In the war with the Netherlands Vauban played an important part in the capture of Tournai, Douai and Lille. His reward was a pension, the position of Lieutenant in the Royal Guards and the governorship of the citadel at Lille. As Commissary General of Fortifications, he travelled France inspecting existing and identifying new fortification sites. Ironically, while in the Roussillon to work on fortifications, Vauban was asked to advise the Duc de Savoie, France’s ally, on fortifying his territory; later France and the duke were at war. In 1676 he was promoted to Maréchal-de-Camp during Louis’ war with the Dutch (1672 to 1679). His success grew, he captured Maastricht with a new tactic, parallel trenches, which was adopted throughout Europe and still used more than a century later. After this, he designed many fortresses, at Strasbourg, Luxembourg and Landau. He advised the King that the captured fortresses could be used as bargaining counters, making the frontier work to their advantage. Among the many projects he undertook was the resolution of the engineering problems of the Canal du Midi after it was first built. During the war of the Grand- Alliance, Vauban attained the rank of Lieutenant-General. In 1688, he directed the siege of Philipsburg where he used a new technique, known as ricochet fire. He also invented the bayonet, which could be slotted over the muzzle – a fitting still used today in some light bulbs. He designed his last fortification, Neuf-Brisach, a fortress town still visible today and built from scratch, where people came to live from Alt- Brisach on the German side of the Rhine; the fortifications of which had been destroyed under the terms of the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. In 1703, he was made a Maréchal de France, and, with his health failing, retired from service later that year although he returned to action in an emergency in 1706. His retirement was spent writing treatises on fortifications and siege warfare, reproduced in many European languages. He also published a controversial book ‘La Dime Royale’, proposing a reform of the King’s unfair and inefficient tax system, and its replacement with a better one that would have produced more revenue at less cost to the tax payer. It was bitterly contested by the rich tax-collecting interests and the King was forced to order the banning of the book. Vauban died shortly afterwards, at 10am, March 30, 1707 at his home in Paris. Vauban was buried at the church at Bazoches, close to Château Bazoches, which he acquired in 1675, but his remains were scattered by French revolutionaries. At Napoléon’s insistence his heart was retrieved and interred on May 28, 1808 in the Église du Dôme aux Invalides in Paris, among other great marshals of France. Vauban’s legacy was not only to revolutionise the way sieges were fought and fortresses defended. He also developed a whole national strategy for defence. De Gaulle was still quoting him as an authority in the 1930s. He built 37 new fortresses and improved the defences of another 300 throughout France. He was always concerned for the lives of his soldiers and led from the front. He was one of the few to have the courage to protest at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the renewed prosecution of the Protestants by Louis XIV. He was a statistician, a social reformist, a humanist, an engineer and author of a series of papers, ‘Les Oisivetés’ on a huge range of subjects, including privateering, canals, agriculture, geography and pig breeding. He successfully predicted that the population of Canada would be 30 million by the year 2000. Many French historians see him as the first figure of the enlightenment, well before the encyclopaedists. Because he spent most of his life moving from place to place, he probably knew more about the kingdom of France than any of his contemporaries. During his career he travelled an estimated 200,000km on appalling roads, in all weathers, from one end of the kingdom to another. A historian has calculated that during his 54 years of service he visited his home only 22 days a year on average. At his death, the Duc de Saint Simon, in his secret history of his times, described him as a patriot, claimed as the first use of the word in the French language and invented for Vauban. Not known for his flattering portraits of his contemporaries, the duke has left a vivid word picture of this hard-bitten but humane and erudite soldier: “He was, at best, from the lesser gentry of Burgundy, but perhaps the most honest and virtuous man of the century and the most simple, genuine and modest and with the highest technical reputation in the art of sieges and the defence of fortresses. He was a man of middle height, stocky, who looked like a warrior, boorish and crude, even fierce and brutal as well. Never was a man more the opposite of this, more gentle, understanding and obliging as well as being respectful but without any ‘politesse’.” Vauban underlined that modesty when he said of himself: “When I look at myself I find I am still only half an engineer even after 40 years of hard work and the greatest experience.” A calendar of celebrations, begun by President Chirac when the Vauban Prize was presented by the Hautes Études de Défense Nationale, have been organised throughout France. These involve the Association Vauban organising commemorative events in Burgundy centred on his birth village and Château Bazoches, the Écomusée du Morvan, Maison Vauban, UNESCO and conseils régionaux and généraux across France. Events will include exhibitions, symposiums, theatre and baroque concerts and, in July, 200 riders and their horses are taking the route from Besançon to Paris, stopping along the way at Saint-Léger-Vauban, Bazoches, Vézelay and Neuf-Brisach arriving at Versailles on July 26. |
