Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, (born May 15, 1633, Saint-Léger-de-Foucherest [now Saint-Léger-Vauban], France—died March 30, 1707, Paris), French military engineer who revolutionized the art of siege craft and defensive fortifications. He fought in all of France’s wars of Louix XIV’s reign (1643–1715).
Early Career
Vauban was from a household of very modest implies that belonged to the petty the Aristocracy. In 1651 he turned a cadet within the regiment of Louis II de Bourbon, prince de Condé, who was about to insurgent in opposition to the younger Louis XIV.
Vauban’s abilities have been quickly revealed. He distinguished himself by defending cities within the Argonne area and within the siege and seize of Sainte-Menehould for Condé. In 1653 he was taken prisoner by the federal government’s forces. Honourably handled, he was quickly induced to vary sides and to assist the royalists to recapture Sainte-Menehould. During a siege in 1654 he was twice wounded. In 1655 he was admitted, as a “king’s ordinary engineer,” into the corps of officers that was steadily being constructed up, outdoors the common navy hierarchy, for specialised work on fortification and siege craft. After collaborating in operations in opposition to varied fortresses and cities between 1655 and 1657, he was engineer in chief on the siege of Gravelines in 1658.
During the interval of peace, from 1659 to 1667, Vauban was employed in demolishing the fortifications of Nancy, in Ducal Lorraine, from 1661 to 1662 and in fortifying Alt-Breisach, a French outpost on the best financial institution of the Rhine, from 1664 to 1666. In 1663 he was given an organization within the King’s Picardy regiment. His companies within the seize of Tournai, Douai, and Lille within the French invasion of the Spanish Netherlands in 1667 have been rewarded with a pension, a lieutenancy within the Royal Guards, and the governorship of the Lille citadel.
Vauban’s rising duties included these as “commissary general of fortifications”—although that title remained with the nominal holder of the workplace till 1677; he travelled consistently and carried out an immense correspondence with the King and with the battle minister, the marquis de Louvois. Vauban’s technical memoranda made his programs of fortifications the main target of navy research in Europe for greater than a century. In the interval of peace from 1668 to 1672 he not solely inspected the defenses of Roussillon, the French Low Countries, Picardy, and Lorraine but in addition was despatched to Piedmont (1671) to advise the Duke of Savoy on the defenses of Verrue, Vercelli, and Turin—recommendation that France later had trigger to remorse.
Innovations In Siege Craft
Louis’s Dutch battle of 1672–79 introduced conspicuous glory to Vauban due to the King’s presence, in supreme command, at sieges that he was directing. At the siege of Maastricht (1673) he used an entire system of “parallels”—i.e., trenches dug parallel or concentric to the perimeter of the defenses and linked by radical zig-zag trenches that made the strategy comparatively secure from the defenders’ artillery fireplace. For his success at Maastricht he was promoted and given a grant of cash that enabled him to purchase the château of Bazoches (close to his household’s seat of Vauban), and additional successes gained him the rank of maréchal de camp (equal to brigadier common) in 1676. At the siege of Valenciennes, in 1677, he persuaded the King, in opposition to the recommendation of Louvois and 5 marshals, to authorize a daylight assault, partly as a result of the standard assault in darkness usually resulted within the attackers’ capturing at each other by mistake. For the seize of Valenciennes he acquired one other grant of cash.
In 1680–81 Vauban undertook one other nice tour of the French frontiers, inspecting or enhancing fortifications. For Strasbourg (1681) he designed a splendid fortress of essentially the most superior variety. Having directed the siege of Luxembourg in 1684, he subsequently additionally redesigned the defenses of that metropolis. His design for the fortification of Landau in Bavaria is typically reckoned as his best work (1687).
In September 1688, early within the War of the Grand Alliance, wherein Louis was opposed by the mixed forces of the Netherlands, England, the Holy Roman Empire, and their lesser allies, Vauban was promoted to lieutenant common; and in October, below the command of the dauphin Louis, he took Philippsburg, on the best financial institution of the Rhine south of Speyer. At this siege he launched ricochet gunfire, whereby a cannonball was made to bounce ahead over parapets and to hit a number of goals earlier than its drive was spent. At the identical time he was advocating use of the socket bayonet, one other invention of his. This bayonet was slipped over the muzzle right into a socket and didn't should be eliminated earlier than firing of the musket. He took Mons in 1691 and Namur, quickly and with few casualties, in 1692. At the siege of Charleroi, in 1693, he was for the primary time accountable for an infantry division. Diverted to Brest in 1694 to protect in opposition to an English risk to Brittany, he returned to the Low Countries for the protection of Namur in 1695 however couldn't save the town. In 1697 he participated within the siege and seize of Ath and was wounded once more.
During the peace of 1698–1701 Vauban reconstructed the defenses of Neuf-Brisach in Alsace, the final of the 160 fortresses on which he labored. By this time his well being was failing him, however he nonetheless wished lively employment within the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). In a letter of 1702 to the King, he requested to be created a marshal of France in order to keep away from the embarrassment of getting to serve below marshals junior to himself. Louis XIV, realizing (as all Europe did) that lots of France’s victories have been due way more to his discerning patronage of the petty gentleman Vauban than to the performances of upper nobles whose delivery alone had hastened their appointment as marshals, created Vauban marshal of France in January 1703. Vauban had, nonetheless, by no means commanded a military within the discipline—as was customary for marshals of France—and was solely actually able to “engineering,” which was thought-about beneath a marshal’s dignity. After directing operations for the recapture of Alt-Breisach (1703), he was recalled from service. In 1705 and once more in 1706 he supplied to assist an incompetent common within the siege of Turin, whose fortification he had himself deliberate, however the supply was rejected. Vauban’s final efficient fee was to arrange an entrenched camp at Dunkerque (1706). In 2008 lots of the fortifications Vauban constructed in France—together with partitions, towers, and mountain forts—have been collectively designated a UNESCO World Heritage web site.
Writings
Vauban was indefatigable. He devoted his time between duties and in convalescence to writing assiduously on issues of public concern. Some of those writings involved his career, others have been exterior to it; many have been assembled by him in manuscript volumes below the collective title of Oisivetés (“Leisures”). His treatises De l’attaque et de la défense des locations (“On Siege and Fortification”), written in 1705–06, have been printed in 1737 and reprinted in 1829 (a number of interpretations of his programs of fortifications had been revealed in his lifetime). He wrote additionally on the expediency of recalling the banished Huguenots to France (1689); on routes for canals and inland navigation; on privateering at sea; on the geography of the Vézelay district; on forestry and pig breeding; on abroad colonies; and on worldwide affairs, with regard to the concessions that might be made, strategically and politically, for a passable peace (1706). His most necessary “leisure,” nonetheless, was his Projet d’une dixme royale (printed anonymously, 1707; Project for a Royal Tythe, or General Tax), suggesting the abolition of almost all France’s present taxes and the substitution of a tax of 10 p.c on all land and commerce from which nobody needs to be exempt. He substantiated his arguments with a mass of statistical documentation virtually unprecedented and, in so doing, pioneered the usage of statistics in economics. But the French authorities—too deeply dedicated to the system of tax farming (i.e., promoting the best to gather taxes to teams of financiers for a hard and fast sum), reluctant and even unable to revoke the exemptions of the privileged lessons due to dependence on them, and missing curiosity in basic reforms—suppressed the publication of his e book. Vauban was crushed by this rebuff, however the story that his e book made Louis XIV overlook his previous companies is unfaithful.
Personality
Vauban was of medium top, squarely and solidly constructed. Although he was unpretentious and easy, his martial look and unpolished manners disguised his kindness and his really thoughtful readiness to assist folks. On the battlefront, he was at all times involved to save lots of troopers’ lives, and he usually let different officers take the credit score for the fruit of his personal brave efforts. The Duc de Saint-Simon, the excellent memorialist of the reign of Louis XIV, who by no means squandered reward, described Vauban as “the most honourable and virtuous man of his age . . . incapable of lending himself to anything false or evil.”