Sebastien Le Prestre by Vauban

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban
Birth 15 May 1633
Saint-Léger-de-Foucherets
Death 30 March 1707
Paris
Country France
Title Engineer and military architect

Military rank Marshal of France

Sébastien Le Prestre, seigneur de Vauban (1633 - 1707) was a French military engineer and architect to Louis XIV in the 17th century. An expert in poliorcetics, he gave the kingdom of France "an iron belt" and was named Marshal of France by Louis XIV.

Marshal's "iron belt":Vauban wanted to make France a "square meadow", according to his expression, protected by a belt of citadels. He designed or improved a hundred strongholds. The engineer did not have the ambition to make impregnable fortresses, because the strategy then consisted in gaining time by obliging the attacker to immobilize troops ten times greater than those of the besieged. He endowed France with a glacis that the progress of artillery would not go out of fashion before the end of the 18th century.

He was born in Saint-Léger-de-Fourcheret (today Saint-Léger-Vauban), near Avallon, in the Morvan, and was baptized on May 15, 1633. In 1653, Cardinal Mazarin noticed the young Vauban (who was then 20 years old) and convinced him to leave the Fronde to serve the King. At the age of 22, he became “military engineer responsible for fortifications”. From 1653 to 1659, he took part in 14 sieges and was wounded several times. He perfected the defense of towns and led many sieges himself. In 1667, Vauban besieged the towns of Tournai, Douai and Lille, taken in just nine days. The king entrusted him with the construction of the citadel of Lille, which he himself called the "Queen of citadels". It is from Lille that he supervises the construction of the many citadels and canals of the North, which have structured the border which still separates France from Belgium. He also directed the siege of Maastricht in 1673, then during the war of the league of Augsburg, the sieges of Philippsburg in 1688, of Mons in 1691 and of Namur in 1692. In 1694, he successfully organized the defense against a English landing on the coast of Brittany.

It was the victory of Maastricht that pushed the king to offer him a large endowment allowing him to buy the castle of Bazoches in 1675. Vauban was appointed "commissioner of fortifications" in 1678, lieutenant general in 1688, then marshal of France, in 1703. It became so famous that it is even said:"A city built by Vauban is a saved city, a city attacked by Vauban is a lost city".

The freedom of spirit of this marshal will however earn him the wrath of the king. Vauban died in Paris on March 30, 1707 from inflammation of the lungs. He is buried in the church of Bazoches and his heart has been kept at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris since 1808.

Contributions to poliorcetics

Codification of attacks on strongholds by Vauban. 3 parallel trenches linked together by zig zag communications trenches to avoid enfilade firing. The first parallel is a place of arms out of range of fire of the defenders allowing to resist a reverse attack, the second contains the artillery, the third the engineers and the assault troops, finally the trench riders located at the The blind spot at the tip of the enemy bastion is an elevation allowing the defenders to be overlooked and dislodged with grenades.
Codification of attacks on strongholds by Vauban. 3 parallel trenches linked together by zig zag communications trenches to avoid enfilade firing. The first parallel is a place of arms out of range of fire of the defenders allowing to resist a reverse attack, the second contains the artillery, the third the engineers and the assault troops, finally the trench riders located at the The blind spot at the tip of the enemy bastion is an elevation allowing the defenders to be overlooked and dislodged with grenades.

Advances in artillery revolutionized siege warfare:since the Renaissance, the increased thickness of the walls was no longer sufficient to resist the effects of artillery. Italian engineers therefore invented bastioned fortifications:the walls become very low, oblique and preceded by a ditch. Since grapeshot fire made frontal assaults extremely dangerous, the assailant approached the fortifications through networks of trenches.

Vauban brings three decisive major innovations to the techniques of attacking strongholds:

* He codifies the approach technique by having three heavily fortified parallel trenches dug, linked together by broken line communications trenches to avoid enfilading defensive fire.
o The first one dug out of cannon range and very fortified serves as a place d'armes and prevents a reverse attack by a relief army. 'one positions towards a point of weakness of the fortifications.
o The third, in the immediate vicinity of the fortifications allows the digging of a mine or the attack if the artillery has made it possible to open a breach in the wall. The entrenchment must be sufficient to prevent the defenders from leaving.

* the spur of the bastioned fortresses leading to an area where the artillery of the besieged cannot fire at point-blank range, it is possible to place levees in front of the trench immediately in contact with the besieged fortifications (very low to avoid fire from 'artillery). These elevations, which he calls "trench riders", allow the attackers to dominate the firing positions of the besieged and to drive them back with grenades towards the main body and to seize the covered way.
* In 1688, he invented the "ricochet shot":By arranging the guns so as to enfilade the opposing battery located on the attacked bastion and by using small charges of powder, a ball can have several impacts and by bouncing sweeping a whole line of defense at the top of a rampart, guns and gunners at the same time.

Sites

With his experience in poliorcetics, he designed or improved the fortifications of many French cities and ports, between 1667 and 1707, gigantic works made possible by the wealth of the country[3]. It revolutionized both the defense of strongholds and their capture. He endows France with a glacis of strongholds that can support each other:for him no place is impregnable but if he is given the means to resist long enough, relief will be able to take the enemy from behind and lift the siege) . Vauban will thus push the king to revolutionize the defensive military doctrine of France by concentrating the strongholds on the borders of the Kingdom it is the "iron belt" which protects the country:the "pre-square" of the king. Inside the country, where the danger of invasion is less, the fortresses are dismantled. Paris, for example, lost its fortifications, on the one hand to free troops that had become useless and which were transferred to the borders and on the other hand to prevent revolts from finding asylum in one of them, as was the case during the the Fronde[5].

In total, Vauban created or expanded more than 180 fortresses and gave his name to a type of military architecture:the Vauban system which has been widely adopted, even outside France, as for example for the fortifications of the city of Cadiz.

According to the English Wikipedia, Vauban is said to have been responsible for improving the fortifications of around 300 cities between 1667 and 1707 and directing the creation of 37 new fortresses and fortified ports.

* Fort of the old Château de Briançon
* Fort des Salettes de Briançon
* Fort des Têtes de Briançon
* Fort Carré d'Antibes
* Citadel of Amiens
* Fortification of Toul
* 1667-1671 citadel of Lille, called the "Queen of the citadels"
* 1668, Fort Bellegarde from the Col du Perthus
* 1670, Fort-les-Bains above Amélie-les-Bains
* 1673, fortifications of the surrounding walls of the fortified castle of Sierck-les-Bains
* 1674-1687, citadel of Besançon
* 1679, citadel of Longwy
* 1679, citadel of Mont-Louis
* 1679, fort Miradoux de Collioure
* 1679, fort Balaguier, Toulon
* 1680, fort de Brescou, Agde
* 1680, fort Saint-El me de Collioure
* 1680, fort Mahon d'Ambleteuse
* 1681, fort Liberia de Villefranche-de-Conflent
* 1681-1685, fortification of the border town of Huningue
* 1681-1690, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Île de Ré, creation.
* 1683 , fort des Bains d'Amélie-les-Bains-Palalda)
* 1683 to 1697 citadel of Bitche
* 1686, fort Lagarde de Prats-de-Molló
* 1687, citadel of Belfort
* 1689, citadel of Blaye
* 1689-1705, Fort de la Conchée in bay of Saint-Malo
* 1693, citadel of Mont-Dauphin in the Hautes-Alpes
* 1693-1696, Vauban tower in Camaret-sur-Mer
* 1699-1702, fortification of Neuf-Brisach
* 1701, citadel of Quebec, creation.

Fortresses and fortified ports created:Dunkirk | Rochefort | Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Fort Socoa) | Toulon

He refused to create Fort Boyard, according to him technically unbuildable, that Napoleon I would create during his reign from his plans.

Civilian activities

Vauban also built the Maintenon aqueduct. He was interested in demography and economic forecasting. He designed census forms and published a book entitled La Cochonrie ou calcul estimatif to know how far the production of a sow can go for ten years of time.

In 1689, he wrote a Memoir on the Reminder of the Huguenots, urging Louis XIV to reconsider the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the name of freedom of conscience.

Vauban also took an interest in tax reform (a nagging issue throughout the 18th century until the French Revolution) by publishing a work entitled Projet d'une dîme royale (1707), in which he warned against high taxes that divert productive activities. Vauban proposes in this work to replace the existing taxes by a single tax of ten percent on all income, without exemption for the privileged orders (the king included). More precisely, Vauban proposes a segmentation into tax classes according to income, subject to a progressive tax of 5% to 10%[6]. Tax must serve a policy, tax classes must be more or less favored for the purpose of enriching society and therefore the State. This activity was the main cause of his disgrace (his Project for a Royal Tithe was banned in 1707), although on his death the Sun King himself would express his sadness at having lost a man of value "attached to his person and to the State".

Vauban was probably a generous man, with a certain taste for social justice, since he is reputed to have shared his bonuses and salaries with the less fortunate officers, and even sometimes took upon himself the punishments of the soldiers under his command when he found unfair. He was, however, a man of character, demanding in his work and very careful to respect his instructions. He was also the first to distribute pipes and tobacco to the soldiers[7].

He also had a life of simplicity and very human relationships with those around him, whether they were people from his native region, where he liked to return when he could, or relatives. He was educated at a very young age by his father, Urbain le Prestre, to respect others, regardless of their origins. His modest origins - a family of penniless provincial squires - will undoubtedly have contributed to his most human character traits.