Sebastien Prestre de Vauban

Presentation: an actor of the Great century, a precursor of the Lights

Vauban is appreciated at its time and judged since like a lucid man, frankly and without turnings, refusing the representation and to appear it, such as they were practiced at the court of Louis XIV. He preferred on the contrary to speak the language about the truth:

I prefer the truth, no matter what badly polished, with a coward kindness who would be good only to mislead you, if you of it were able, and to dishonor me. I am on the spot; I see the things with appreciation, and it is my trade which to know them; I know my duty, with rules of which I attach inviolablement, but still more than I have honor to be your creature, than I you must all that I am, and that I do not hope for that by you Trouvez thus good, please, that with the respect that I owe you, I freely tell you my feelings in this matter. You know better than me that there are only people who use about it of the kind which is able to serve a Master as it is necessary|Letter with Louvois, on November 23rd, 1668

Its superiors, the Minister for the War like the king, encourage it besides, in an interest well included/understood on both sides. Vauban is a “sesame with the multiple doors” like writes it Michele Virol, a Lieu of memory of the Nation France with him all alone, a man with multiple faces: strategist (famous taker of cities, it led more than forty seat S), poliorcète (it built or repaired more than one hundred fortified towns), town planner, statistician, economist, agronomist, political thinker, but also infantryman, artillerist, Maçon, Engineer of the powder S and Salpêtre S, of the mines and the the Highways Departments, hydrographic, topographer, cartographer, reformer of the army (substitution of the Fusil to the Mousquet, replacement of the spade by the bayonet with casing). In a word, a kind of Léonard de Vinci French of the Great century… He even wrote in 1695, during his stay in Brest (it was a question of pushing back an English attack) a Mémoire concerning the caprery , in which it defends the war of race compared to the war of squadron (it was a great debate there since the Bataille of Hougue in 1692 which had seen many destroyed French ships).

All these trades have a common point: the marshal engineer of the Sun king was always based on the practice, and he always sought to solve and improve of the concrete situations to the service of the men: initially, its soldiers of which he wanted at all costs to protect the life in mud from distinct or in the bloody fury of the battles. But Vauban also did not cease being interested in the humblest subjects of the king, “overpowered of size, gabelle, and even more famine which completed to exhaust them” (1695).

It is for these men and these women, tortured by misery and the hunger, which he wrote this memory entitled Cochonnerie, or the estimated calculation to know until where the production of a sow can go during ten years of time . In this singular text, initially titrated Chronology of the pigs , treated economic and arithmetic, not dated, intended to soften the roughnesses of the daily life of the subjects of the king, too often victims of the food shortage, Vauban wanted to prove, statistical calculations with the support on seventeen pages, that a sow, two years old, can have a first range of six pigs. At the end of ten generations, taking into account the diseases, of the accidents and on behalf of the wolf, the total is of six million descendants (of which: 3217437 females)! And on twelve generations of pigs, there “would be as much as Europe can nourish some, and if one only continued to push it until sixteenth, it is certain that there would be what to populate all the ground of it abundantly”. The conclusion of this vertiginous and providential calculation was clear: if poor that it was, he was not a ground worker “which cannot raise a pig of its vintage per annum”, in order to eat with its hunger.

Thus, as soon as one approaches, that one approaches that which cruel the Saint-Simon described as “small gentleman of countryside, at most”, one can be only struck by the multitude of his competences, of his centers of interest, his thoughts, his actions:

It was one precursor of Encyclopédistes by its way of tackling the concrete problems, thus the budget of a country family, for example, or its geographical Description of the election of Vézelay of January 1696 in which he proposes to raise a Twentieth, without exemption, and which is different in a tax on the real estates and the cattle, on the incomes of arts and trades, on the houses of the cities and the boroughs
It is also in the great movement of precursory thinkers of the physiocrats (it reads Boisguilbert; at the same time, write Melon, Cantillon) by its interest for agronomy and the economy (he insists in particular on the circulation of the currency and the idea of the economic channel of which he is one of the precursors). He preaches the values which will be defended at the 18th century by Quesnay, and he encourages the noble ones to leave the court for the service of the weapons but also the development of their fields in a report entitled Idée of an excellent nobility and means of distinguishing it by the Generations.
It was still a precursor of Montesquieu by its design of a State charged above all to assume the protection of all and their wellbeing: he wants to fight against misery, corruption, the incompetence, the contempt of the Public service.

In all the cases, Vauban appears as a bold reformer whose ideas were at counter-current of what the majority of its contemporaries thought. Its contact with the king enabled him to subject its ideas directly to him, like the Projet of Dime royal , which was accepted. Louis XIV returned well this frankness, this freedom of speech to him and of judgment, by trusting him absolute as regards defense of the kingdom, as this letter testifies some in which he entrusts to him the defense of Brest, aimed by the English in 1694:

I rely on you, to place the troops where you will judge it by the way, either to prevent the descent, or that the enemies make the seat of the place. Employment that I give you is one of most considerable compared to the good of my service and my kingdom, this is why I do not doubt that you do not see with pleasure that I intend to you there and marks of your zeal and your capacity as you do not give to it me of made to me in all meetings

For Louis XIV and his contemporaries, Vauban is before a whole engineer of the armies, a man of action and, more exactly still, the man of the king of war which covered it honors.

But one should not cut out Vauban in sections. It is well, each time, the same man to of whom all work, to stone and paper, testifies to the same obsession: public utility, that it is by façonnement landscape and the defense of the territory with the construction of the “iron belt” locking up France in its “natural terminals, not beyond the Rhine, of the Alps, of the Pyrenees, of the two seas” (1706), the transformation of the social order by means of a reform of the tax, when well even, by facing all the interdicts, it would be necessary, to be made hear, to pass by the clandestine publication of Dixme royal , in 1707… “I fear neither the king, neither you, nor all mankind unit”, wrote it with Louvois in a letter dated from the September 15th 1671 (in connection with a charge launched against two of its engineers). And he added: “fortune gave birth to me the poorest gentleman from France; but rewards some, it honoured me with a sincere heart so free from all kinds of friponneries that it cannot about it even support imagination without horror”.

Contributions with the Poliorcétique

Progress of artillery revolutionizes the war of seat: since the Rebirth, the increase thickness of the walls is not enough any more to resist the effects of artillery. The Italian engineers thus invented the bastionnées and remparées fortifications: the walls become very low, oblique and preceded by a ditch. Shootings of grapeshot making extremely perilous the frontal attacks, attacking it approach fortifications by networks of trenches.

Its philosophy is to limit the losses by protecting its approaches by construction from trenches, even if that requires many work. He for that is often scoffed by the courtiers but he is supported by the king.

Building sites

Extremely of its experiment of the Poliorcétique, it designs or improves the fortifications of many cities and ports French, between 1667 and 1707, work gigantic license by the richness of the country. It revolutionizes as well the defense of the fortified towns as their capture. It equips France with a glacis of fortified towns which can support itself between them: for him, no place is impregnable but if one gives him the means of resisting sufficiently a long time of the helps will be able to take the enemy with reverse and to raise the seat). Vauban thus will push the king to revolutionize the defensive military doctrines of France by concentrating the fortified town 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 loses for example its fortifications, on the one hand, to release from the troops become useless and which are transferred to the borders and on the other hand, to avoid with the revolts finding asylum in one of them as that had been the case at the time of the Sling.

On the whole, Vauban created or widened more than 180 fortresses and gave its name to a type of military Architecture: the system Vauban which was largely taken again, even out of France, such as for example for the fortifications of the town of Cadiz.

Vauban would have between 1667 and 1707, be the person in charge of the improvement of the fortifications of approximately 300 cities and direct the creation of 37 new fortresses and ports strengthened.

the most extraordinary creation of Vauban: Mount-dolphin

Built on a strategic site, as from 1693, Mount-Dolphin is before station charged to protect the kingdom from the intrusions from Italy: the village-citadel constitutes the prototype of the fortified town and inserts the Alps in the great defense policy of the “France nation”

With the beginning of the year 1690, the Guerre of the league of Augsburg makes rage and in spite of a matrimonial alliance with France, Victor-Amédée II, duke of Savoy, joined Alliés (England, Austria, United Provinces) in June 1690. From July in September 1692, with the head of an army forty-five thousand men, it invades the Queyras and the valley of the Durance, to create a diversion and to divide the French forces, devastating all on its passage: bridges, villages, uncropped harvests… Gap is plundered, like an answer to the bag of the Palatinat perpetrated a few years earlier by the French Armies. Louis XIV, who especially devoted himself to strengthen the North-East, has just taken brutally conscience of the brittleness of the kingdom at his alpine border. Also, in September, on order of the king, Vauban must give up in catastrophe the repair of the fortification of Namur from which the sovereign comes to seize (it was its last seat), to be devoted to the defense of the mountain. It is true that it does not cease proclaiming that “all the ambitions of France must be contained between the top of the Alps and the Pyrenees, of Swiss and of the two seas; it is where it must propose to establish its terminals by the legitimate ways according to time and the occasions”.

After multiple recognitions of ground, the “terminal” that it chooses, in November 1692, is the imposing site of the plate of the Thousand Winds (known as also plate of Millaures), advised by Catinat: it is about a escarpée position, overhanging by vertiginous cliffs the confluence of the Guil and Durance. The engineer proposes to build there a place-strong news, intended to lock the road of the Alps and to accommodate a military garrison, but also a civil population. “I do not know a station in Dauphiné, explain it, not mesme in France, which can be to him compared for the utility. It is the place of mountains where there is the most sun and of cultivated ground, there are even vines in its territory, of wood, the stone of size, the excellent Tuf for the vaults, of the stone ardoisine, good plaster, fort good lime and all that in the distance of one mile and half, not more. And when God would have done it purposely, it could not estre better”. As with its practice, Vauban very envisaged, very calculated and, in particular, the cost of the company, in a “estimated Summary of all the expenditure of Mount-Dolphin” (this name was given in the honor of Monseigneur, the son of the king): it evaluates work with: 770000 pounds, a sum which he regards as reasonable in one year of crisis because the kingdom, between 1692 and 1694, exhausted by the expenditure of the war, must also face the more serious attack of subsistence of the XVIIe century. The project carries the conviction of the king, in particular because of the quality of the rock of Mount-Dolphin, “a cluster of gravels and stones coagulated and petrified together” (of the Poudingue, the geologists say), that Vauban advantageously compares with the fortified town Casale in Italy, where it was necessary “to add lime, bricks, and ways, whereas this one does not cost anything”.

But the reality of the building site, with 1000 meters of altitude, real challenge to the mountain, was not in conformity with the plans envisaged: subsidences compromise the construction of the citadel, built on the naked rock, involving multiple delays and a going beyond of all the estimates. Also, to answer criticisms - Vauban for a long time acquired a reputation of unrepentant “budgétivore” - the originator of the citadel returns on the building site in 1700, benefitting from the Traité of Ryswick (1697), and it and writes a “Addition with the project of Mount-Dolphin”. But there remains persuaded that the problems come from defects and the incompetences of the clever buildings… So that the soldiers live a little best the long delays of the enemies, Vauban conceived a project of royal city “complete”, whose a village out of the commun run, populated testifies today of less than one hundred inhabitants: the houses are built on a preestablished level, with arched cellars being used as shelter, a ground floor reserved for the gravers, a stage for the dwelling and, finally, an attic. Right and broad streets follow a central Gargouille out of pink marble; fountains and laundrettes facilitate the exchanges and the sociability of the daily life. To the crossing of the streets, the stone with measurement and the standard of measuring apparatus recall the days of large fair. And an immense church, dedicated to Saint Louis, owner of monarchy, was started. Only the chorus was completed and preserved.

The mountain situation of the fortified town obliged its defenders to organize defense to face the enemy but to as answer the offensives of the “general winter”, more terrible undoubtedly as all the forces united against Louis XIV: also, the fortified town of Mount-Dolphin includes/understands it 32 hectares of green areas maintained by sheep, because before the rise of the thermal engine, traction was only animal (bovines and équidés). In large mountain, the mule, the best ally of the man, with the advantage over the other draft animals thanks to its force and with its great capacity to evolve/move in rough grounds. At the time of Vauban, the place depended entirely on the mules for its supply: they were thus between 100 and 300 to station with Mount-Dolphin lasting more than two hundred years. In the absence of roads, it is necessary to imagine long caravans of packsaddlled mules going up vivres and ammunition periodically…

Formidable instrument of dissuasion, the fortified town forever known of seat and for lack of inhabitants who agreed to live close to the garrison, the soldiers were condemned, as a contemporary explains it, “to find in their comrades only the trouble which became to them common”. And thus Mount-Dolphin beat records of desertion! In 1713, the Traité of Utrecht, which put an end to the War of succession of Spain (1701-1713) and gave Ubaye to France, moved away the Italian border from the village. The development of the garrison is then stopped, even if part of the constructions conceived by Vauban were continued, like the “glasses of Frame”, works advanced able to hold the remote attacker, added at the end of the XVIIIe century.

The site did not know that only one feat of arms: a bombardment by an Italian plane in 1940, which started a fire. In 1966, the fortified town was classified historic building and it is today one of the sites of the network Vauban candidate to the inscription with the Liste of the world heritage of UNESCO: Mount-dolphin is undoubtedly the brightest testimony of the inventiveness of Vauban, which knew to answer all criticisms, with all the distrusts, to overcome the mountain and the elements…

See:

List of the cities strengthened by Vauban
List of the citadels of Vauban
List of the cities created by Vauban
List of the forts of Vauban

He refused to create the Fort Boyard, according to him technically inconstructible, that Napoleon i will create at the time of his reign starting from its plans.

Civil activities: Critical and reforming Vauban

Vauban also built the Aqueduc of Maintenon (all while being opposed to the imposing aqueduct “with the Roman” wanted by Louis XIV and Louvois, which he judged of a price too much high: it militated for a “crawling” aqueduct). It was interested in the Démographie and the economic forecast. It designed forms of Recensement and published a work entitled Cochonnerie or estimated calculation to know until where the production of a sow can go during ten years of time .

Between the love of the king and the public property

Vauban took, starting from the end of the year 1680, an increasingly critical distance compared to the king of war, by fustigating a policy which seems to him to move away from its convictions of size and defense from its fatherland, the whole in the name of the Public property. This divorce is particularly apparent in its Mémoire on the huguenots , in which it draws the conclusions, very negative, of the revocation of the Édit of Nantes in 1685, by stressing that the general interest is preferable with the unit of the kingdom when both are not compatible. The more so as working on the Channel of the South in 1685-1686, he saw the effects of the Dragonnades on the population. In this memory, Vauban estimates the number of the Protestants left the kingdom at “: 80000 or: 100000 people of all conditions, causing the ruin of the trade and manufactures, and reinforcing as much enemy powers of France”.

The route of Vauban, a thought of constant mobility, with the image of its ceaseless displacements in the real kingdom, make of him a thinker criticizes completely representative of the great change of the values which marks the end of the reign of Louis XIV: the passage, to some extent, of “king State”, incarnated by Louis XIV, in the State king, independent of the person of that which incarnates it. Fontenelle, in the funeral praise that it wrote for Vauban, expressed it very well:

Though its employment only urged it to work with the safety of the borders, its love for the public property made him carry sights on the means of increasing the happiness of the inside of the kingdom. In all its voyages, it had a curiosity, of which those which are in place are commonly only too free. It was informed carefully of the value of the grounds, of what they reported, of their number, of what made their ordinary food, of what could be worth to them in one day the work of their hands, details méprisables and contemptible seemingly, and which however belongs to the great Art to control. It épargnoit no expenditure to pile up the infinite quantity of instructions and memories of which it avoit need, and it occupoit unceasingly a great number of secretaries, draftsmen, calculators and copyists

And, at the end of his life, one feels Vauban literally quartered between his fidelity with the king and his love of the fatherland in the name of the general good which cannot be confused any more with that of the king. This quartering, it expresses it as of on April 26th, 1697 in a letter with the marquis of Cavoye:

I am a little obstinate and obstinate when I believe to be right. I really like and in fact the person of the king, because the duty obliges me there, but incomparably more because it is my benefactor who always had kindness for me, also have of it I a perfect recognition which, does not like God, it will never miss anything. I like my Fatherland with the madness being persuaded that any citizen must like it and make very for it, these two reasons which return to same the

To a certain extent, Dîme Royale , published in 1707, because it dissociates the king and the State, can be read like the very concrete result of the tension and contradiction between the love of the king and the love of the fatherland…

Years of misery: the lucid observer of the real kingdom

For a long time, indeed, Vauban was interested in the fate of the most stripped, attentive above all with the sorrow of the men. Its ceaseless displacements in the provinces (Anne Blanchard considers the distance covered at more: 180000 km for 57 years of service, are: 3168 km per annum!) are contemporary the blackest years of the reign of Louis XIV, in particular the terrible crisis of the years 1693-1694. And it could observe, like it writes it in 1693, “infinite vexations and pilleries which are done on the people”. Its obsession it is the evil which make “quantity of bad taxes (and in particular) the size which fell into such a corruption that the angels of the sky could not come to end to correct it nor to prevent that the poor are not always oppressed there, without a particular assistance of God”. Vauban travels in a Basterne, a post chaise of its invention, vaster than a chair ordinary and related to four stretchers by two mules, one in front of, the other behind. No wheels, not of contact with the ground: the bumps on the stone ways are thus avoided, it can take the mountain lanes, and Vauban is thus locked up with its papers and a secretary opposite him. On average, it spends 150 days per annum on the roads, that is to say an average of 2 with: 3000 km per annum (the maximum: : 8000 km of displacement in one year!). It is strongly marked by this crisis of subsistence of the years 1693-1694, which affected especially France of north, caused can be the death of two million people. It sharpened the reflection of the man of war confronted daily with misery, death, the excess of the royal taxation: “poverty, writes it, having often excited my compassion, gave me place to seek the cause of it”.

During these terrible years, 1680-1690, the man of war is made man of letters and he writes his Oisivetés or rowed several subjects with my way . It is undoubtedly starting from the death of Colbert (1683), that it writes this “rowed writings”, extraordinary and prolific document, often décousu, in which it consigns, in the form of twenty-nine memories manuscripts (either: 3850 manuscript pages in all) its observations, its reflections, its reform projects, testifying to an insatiable and universal curiosity. A short note of Vauban, included in a diary, dated May 4th, 1701, lights the collection in the course of constitution then:

To make the second volume consequently first and to insert there the report of the colonies with the chart and celuy of the navigation of the rivers with calculated figures of far and escluses; to add to it a thought on the reduction of the weights and measures in only one and single which was of use everywhere Royaume

It is Fontenelle, which revealed, in its praise of Vauban, the existence of this collection of “memories connected and collated in volumes twelve”…

And Vauban explains: The wandering life that I have carried out for forty years and more, writes it in the royal foreword of Dîme, having given opportunity to me to see and visit several times and in several ways most of the provinces of this kingdom, sometimes only with my servants, and sometimes in company of some engineers, I often on occasion to give career to my reflections, and to notice the good and the bad condition of the countries, to examine of it the state and the situation and that of the people whose poverty having often excited my compassion, gave me place to seek the causes of them

The produced whole of multiples reports, which are often as many examples of the descriptive statistics, of which more succeeded is the “geographical Description of the election of Vezelay containing its incomes, its quality, manners of its inhabitants, their poverty and richness, the fertility of the country and what one pourait to make there to correct sterility and to get in it the increase in the people and the increase in cattle” (1696). The Idlenesss , for the first time published this year (editions Field Small valley, are held by the Rosanbo family. The unit represents 68 paper microfilms and memories (in all 29 memories important, more: 2000 pages), for which it is necessary to add 47 microfilms of correspondence. And what dominates in this prolific writing, it is the concept of Public utility, with the service the most stripped of. And the whole leads soon Vauban to imagine a “reformation” total, able to answer the problem of misery and poverty, with which he is unceasingly confronted. Thus, since 1694, Vauban presented a Projet of capitation , fruit of multiple reflections and debates, in particular with Boisguilbert, lieutenant-general in Rouen (which published in 1695 its Détail of France that Vauban read and appreciated). And in parallel, Vauban benefitted from multiple discussions “with a great number of people and royal officers of all species which follow the king”. The Projet of capitation announced its future test: it proposed there a tax raised, without any exemption, on all the visible incomes (the land products, the revenues, salaries…) and he condemned the size, “fallen into such a corruption that the angels of the sky could not come to end to correct it”. In this Project, he denounced “the overwhelming pressure of the people, thorough at the point where see we it”. Consequently, “capitation, wrote it, must be imposed on all natures of goods which can produce income, and not on the various stages of qualities nor on the number of the people, because quality is not what makes abundance, either that the equality of the richnesses, and that humble folk is overpowered sizes, the gabelles ones, assistances and of thousand other taxes, and even more famine which they suffered last year, which completed to exhaust them”.

The following year, on January 18th, the royal capacity set up indeed a capitation, a tax to which, in theory, all the subjects, princes of blood to the ground workers, were fixed, of: 2000 to 1 book, according to their fortune. But contrary to the idea of Vauban, this tax was added to the others, and the majority of the privileged people, by subscription or repurchase, had early made be made some exempt.

1703-1706: the time of the bitterness

In October 1706, Vauban is with Dunkirk, a strong city which he regarded as his more great success, that he had transformed into an impregnable city: a formidable whole of forts of defense, buildings, piers, ditches filled of water, and a basin which can contain more than forty vessels of high edge always with flood, even with low tide, thanks to a lock. Remainder, in connection with “its” Dunkirk, on December 16th, 1683, it wrote in Louvois, by making proof, once in a while does no harm, of little modesty: “As of the hour that it is, this port and its entry appear to me one of the more things of the most convenient world and, and if I remained six months in Dunkirk, I do not believe that my curiosity nor my admiration would be exhausted when I would see them once the every day”. Why is it in Dunkirk? Because the king entrusted to him the command of the maritime border of the Flandres then seriously threatened. He also obtained the authorization to build a fortified camp in Dunkirk, then a second between Dunkirk and Bergues. But the required funds do not arrive and he complains some with the marshal about Villeroy, which answers him on July 17th: “to be to you the only one with being able to obtain court money and means necessary to complete the work of the fortified camps who are quite useful”. Written Vauban with Chamillard, on August 10th: “if Mr. Furrier more is obstinated on what I him ask does not send the funds, I will be obliged to write some to the king and to request it to withdraw me from here”. It is what it does. It is there, in Dunkirk, in “its” Dunkirk, that Vauban requires to be raised of its command. It had soixante-treize years. “I asked for my leave yesterday, writes it of Dunkirk, on October 25th, 1706, because I do not do anything here, and the cold starts to attack me harshly”. A few days later, he insists at Chamillard to be raised of his command: “when one leaves a fifth or sixth access fever third which is consertie in double third, one is not any more in a position to support the challenge. Please find good that I ask you for Mr. d' Artagnan to come itself to raise here for the winter”. He suffered for a long time from a recurring cold, in fact a chronic form of bronchitis, and came indeed to undergo violent one access of fever (and its presence in Dunkirk, in the marshes of the plains of north is not made to cure it!).

But there are major reasons undoubtedly, more close friends, with this insistent request for withdrawal. In fact, Vauban is full with bitterness since the seat of Brisach, in 1703, the last seat of which it had the command: he taught on this occasion with the duke of Burgundy, the grandson of the king, the things of the war and he wrote to him, on order of Louis XIV, in order to perfect his military education, a Traité attack of the places , which constitutes the eighth volume of the Oisivetés .

“The grace that I dare to ask you, Monseigneur, is to agree to give you the sorrow of reading this Treaty with attention, and that you like it to keep it for you, and to inform of it anybody, of fear of somebody does not take of them copies who, being able to pass to our enemies, would be received perhaps better there than they do not deserve” (epistle dédicatoire).

What did not prevent the circulation of many manuscripts: more than 200, regrets in 1739 Charles de Mesgrigny, the grandson of Vauban…

But after this seat, plus nothing is not proposed to him. And it worries some at Chamillart: “everyone is stirred up; there is only me to which one does not say mot. I amn't specific any more to nothing? Though of age extremely advanced, I condemn not yet to rest, and when it acts to return service important to king, I will know well to put all kinds of regards aside, as well compared to me as with dignity with which it rained to him to honor me, persuaded as I am that all that tends to serve the king and the State is honourable, even until smallest, with stronger reason when one can there join essential services such as those which I then to return in the seat in question”. Chamillart answers him that it read its letter with Louis XIV, who solved to make the seat of Landau. But he adds in his letter of October 6th, 1703: “She orders to me to say to you at the same time as she solved to leave of it to whole control with Mr. marshal of Tallart…”

The bitterness for Vauban is then has its roof. And it bursts in another written letter with Chamillard, the minister for the war and finances, in 1705. This letter accompanied a report devoted to the seat by Turin, because Vauban continuous to follow very close military operations, and it is not satisfied with their unfolding. Also it multiplies the opinions and the councils. But after many technical details, Vauban added these lines, of the lines particularly moving, which have the appearance of a will:

After having spoken about the businesses of the king, I dare to suppose that it will be allowed to me to speak about me for the first time of my life. I am at present in the sixty-thirteenth year of my age, in charge of fifty-two years of service, and overloaded of fifty considerable seats and forty years of voyages and continual visits at the time of the places and of the border, which attracted me many sorrows and tirednesses of the spirit and the body, because it was not nor winter for me there. However, it is impossible that the life of a man who supported all that is not extremely worn, and it is that I feel only too, in particular since the bad cold which has tormented me for forty years increased and becomes of day in more annoying day by its continuity; moreover the sight lowers me and the ear becomes to me hard, although I have the head also good than ever. I feel to fall and extremely weakened compared to what I saw myself formerly. It is what that I do not dare to any more to propose me for difficult businesses and of duration which require the almost continual presence of those which lead them. I never ordered of army as a chief, neither as general, nor as general lieutenant, not even as brigadier, and out some particular command, like those of Ypres, Dunkirk and of low Brittany, from which I am, God thank you, well drawn, the others are not worth the sorrow to be named. All my services thus rolled on the seats and the fortification; what, thanks to the Lord, I left with many honors. That being, as I literally say it, it would be necessary that I was foolish if, as close to the decrepit state as I am it, I still should steal the butterfly and seek to order armies in difficult and very thorny companies, me which do not have of it experience and which me direction to weaken so much so that I could not support the horse four hours of continuation nor to make a place with foot without me to rest.

It is thus necessary to be satisfied with what one and at least not to undertake things in the execution of which and the knowledge to make I does have suddenly missed the forces could throw me in faults which would dishonor me, which with God does not like; rather death hundred times.

As for what can look at my ministry concerning the control of the attacks, I could still satisfy although badly tirednesses of a seat and a campaign if I were been useful of the things necessary and that one had troops like past. But when I think that they are filled only of young people without experiment and soldiers all of recruits almost forced and who do not have null discipline, I tremble, and I do not dare to wish to find me with a considerable seat. Moreover the dignity with which it rained with the king to honor me embarrasses me to know to only make some in such meetings. I fear it that one will say my fellow-members of them; so that I cannot too which party take, nor how to be determined.

I must still add that I am demolishes of all my crew of war there are four or five months, after having kept it since the beginning of this war up to that point.

After that, if it is a peremptory necessity which I walk, I do it with the damage of all that one will be able about it to say and of all that will be able about it to arrive, the king holding me place of all things after God. I will always carry out with joy what it will like to order to me, when I could have even there to lose the life, and it can count that the very sensitive recognition which I have of all its kindness will never become exhausted; the only grace that I have to ask him is to spare my honor a little. I am well annoyed, Sir, to tire you of a so long letter, but I could not make it shorter. I would have been it to you to carry myself if the cold which overpowers me did not force me to keep the room.

I am…

Soon, in the last days of the year 1706, it returns to Paris in its hotel of the street Saint-Vincent in the parish Saint Roch (rented with the nephews of Bossuet), where it had settled as from 1702 (in current the Rue of Rivoli, where a plate commemorates the presence of Vauban three centuries ago). It finds there, seems it, Charlotte de Mesgrigny, her daughter. He suffers, he coughs, more than ever (its chronic bronchitis made only worsen), his old body is undermined, but its spirit kept all its promptness. At this point in time it decides (perhaps incited by the abbot Ragot de Beaumont, which makes him function of secretary) to print its book, this Dîme royal , that, of all its writings, which it estimates more.

What Dîme royal ?

Indeed, the major contribution of Vauban to the reform of the taxes (question throbbing throughout the 18th century century until the French revolution) is the publication of this work, heading Projet of a royal dîme (1707), in which it warns against strong taxes which divert productive activities. Vauban proposes in this test to replace the existing taxes by a single tax of ten percent on all the incomes, without exemption for the privileged orders (the king included). More exactly, Vauban proposes a segmentation in tax classes according to the incomes, subjected to a graduated income from 5% to 10%. The tax must serve a policy, the tax classes must be more or less favoured at ends to enrich the company and consequently the State.

But, contrary to the legend, the project:

is not revolutionist: Boisguilbert had already made similar proposals, whose Vauban is inspired (as well as Ragot de Beaumont), and the Capitation, very similar tax, is established in 1695, and the tax of the tenth, in 1710;

was not ignored by the capacity. The Chamillart general inspector read Dîme royal undoubtedly with the end of the year 1699. In the same way, in August 1700, the first president at the Parliament of Paris, Achilles III of Harlay. And finally and especially, in 1700 always, Vauban presented to the king, in three successive audiences, which took place in the room of Madam de Maintenon, the first version of its Dîme royal in writing and orally. It is what he explains in his letter with Torcy:

I of it presented the system to the king with which I read it, in three two hours evenings and half each one, with all the possible attention. Its Majesty, after several requests and answers, it applauded. Mr. de Chamillart, to which I gave a copy of it, also read it, just as Mr. the first President (Achilles de Harlay) with whom I also showed it all length. I was not satisfied with that. I recommended it to the King of sharp voice and especially to make some make the experiment on some of the small elections of the kingdom, which I repeated several times and makes the same thing with Mr. de Chamillart.

In short, I ceased speaking about it to the king and with his minister for their writing of it with each one beautiful and long quite detailed letter before to leave to return to me here, where finding me far away from the noise and more in rest, I still worked there so that with me, poor animal, that at present too misérable. does not appear to me

And Nicolas-Joseph Foucault, intendant of Caen, notes at dated November 6th, 1699: “Mr. Chamillart sent a project to me of capitation and real size, drawn from the book of Mr. Vauban”. An experimentation was thus tried in Normandy. But it was a failure: “this project, adds it, prone to too many disadvantages, did not have a continuation”.

In fact, which strongly displeased, it is well the publication, the public disclosure in full military and financial crisis. Vauban had transgressed an interdict while making public the “mysteries of the State”. And Vauban had been interfered a matter which did not look at it…

It is well what Michel Chamillart explains, who cumulated the loads of general inspector of finances and Secretary of State to the war: “If Mr. marshal of Vauban had wanted to write on the fortification and to contain himself in the character in which he had excelled, he would have made more honor with his memory than the entitled book Dîme royal will not make in the continuation. Those which will have a deep knowledge of the financial statement of France and its government will not have a sorrow to persuade only that which has writing is speculative, which was pulled by its zeal to treat a matter which was unknown and too difficult for him by itself to be rectified by a work such as that of Mr. de Vauban. ”

And he acknowledged: “I have sorrow to believe, some care which one has to remove the specimens and since this book with passed to Luxembourg and that it comes from Holland, that it is possible to prevent that it does not have course” (letter at the count de Druy, governor of Luxembourg, August 27th, 1707). Indeed, in 1708, an editor of Brussels printed the book with a privilege of the court of the Netherlands and in 1708 still a translation appeared in England. And in France, a corn chandler of Chalon-sur-Saône praises in a 1708 “royal species of dîme”, and a priest of Périgord writes in 1709: “It would be wished extremely that King order to the execution of the project of Mr. marshal of Vauban concerning the royal dîme. One finds this project admirable. In this case, one would look at this century, any poor wretch who he is, like one century of gold” (quoted by Emile Coornaert in its foreword with the edition of Dixme royal, Paris, 1933, p. XXVIII).

its failure comes is rather to allot to its mode of covering in kind, expensive choice (it is necessary to build barns) and désavantageux in time of war (where one prefers a tax perceived out of money).

Where and how Dîme royal it was printed?

Perhaps in Rouen (Boislisle assumption), perhaps in Lille, perhaps even in Holland (Morineau assumption)… Michele Virol leans rather for the assumption of Rouen. We are thus with the end of the year 1706 and the whole beginning of the year 1707. What we know, it is that a request for privilege of bookstore for one in fourthly entitled Projet of Dixme royal was deposited, without name of author, near the services of the chancellor, on February 3rd, 1707. This request remained unanswered. The author is not quoted but with the chancellery, it is known since we know that the chancellor himself, is in possession of the manuscript. Without answer of the chancellery, Vauban decides to continue the impression nevertheless. From this moment and of this decision, it knows well that he is outlaw: its love of the public property has just carried it on the respect of the law. The completed impression, in the form of sheets, is delivered in bundles. But how to make them enter to Paris, surrounded, it is known, of barrier, kept well? the introduction of suspect bundles would have immediately waked up the attention of the guards, and all the not covered printed papers form of the “privilege” are seized. Also, Vauban sends two right-hand men (Picardy, its coachman, and Mauric, one of its manservants), to recover the four wrapped of floorcloths and straw and twisted bundles, beyond the granting of the Saint-Denis door. Each bundle contains hundred volumes in sheets. The guards of the barrier let become, without visiting it, fits with body it with the weapons of Vauban, Marshal of France. In Paris, street Saint-Jacob, it is the widow of Jacques Fétil, main bookbinder street Saint-Jacob, who stitched the royal Dixme , until the end of the month of March 1707, under veined paper cover, and connected some specimens, the ones in red morocco for famous recipients, the others more simply out of calf, and even out of marbled paper (300 undoubtedly in all). They are books of 204 pages, in fourthly. Vauban distributed some to his/her friends and volumes passed with hand in hand (the Jesuits of Paris had of them at least two specimens in their library)… It should be noted that no specimen was sold: to the booksellers who ask some, Vauban answers “that he is not merchant”.

Here the testimony of Saint-Simon:

“the book of Vauban made great noise, tasted, rented, admired of the public, blamed and hated the financial ones, detested ministers of which it lit anger. The knight of Pontchartrain especially made a din without keeping of it any measurement and Chamillart forgot its softness and its moderation. The magistrates of finances tempêtèrent and the storm was carried until such an excess that, if they had been believed, the marshal would have been put at the Bastille and his book between the hands of the torturer”.

February 14th, 1707, the Council, known as “private council of the king” meets. He condemns the work, marked to contain “several contrary things with the order and the use of the kingdom”. And the king ordered to put the specimens of them at the rammer and defended with the booksellers to sell it. But no author is mentioned. This first prohibition does not have affected, seems it, Vauban, which, quite to the contrary, in a letter dated March 3rd (to his/her friend Jean de Mesgrigny, governor of the citadel of Turned), proclamation its pride vis-a-vis the success of its book:

“the book of Dixme royal makes so great noise in Paris and the Court which one made defend the reading by arrest the Council, which was used only to excite the curiosity of everyone, so that if I in worts a thousand, it me in resteroit not one in 4 days. It returns to me from there from very great praises of all shares. That fact quez I well pourray to make one second more correct and better seasoned edition of it than the first”.

And we learn at the same time as the abbot Ragot de Beaumont (this man of the shade which played a key role in the drafting of the royal Dixme ), installed in Paris close to Vauban, prepares this second edition:

“the abbot of Beaumont is here which goes to wonders, and I make it work since the morning until the evening. You know that it is a spirit for which one needs food, and me, by a principle of charity, I give some to him very as much as it can about it carry”.

A second stop is given on March 14th. Louis Phelypeaux, count de Ponchartrain (1674-1747), in person, the chancellor, had corrected itself the text of the stop, of which the execution was this time entrusted to the lieutenant-general of police force of Voyer de Paulmy, marquis d' Argenson. And Pontchartrain added in margin of the stop: “book says it is still output”, i.e., with the exact direction of the word, is sold easily and publicly.

At the same time, Vauban continues the distribution of its book: thus, Jerome de Pontchartrain, the son of the chancellor, and Secretary of State to the navy, shows reception, on March 20th, of a specimen which to him was addressed on March 16th.

Last days of Vauban

We know well the last days of Vauban, thanks to the depositions of its manservant, Jean Colas, of the Fétil widow, her daughter and their Coulon workman. Colas, the servant of Vauban, which was interned for one month in Châtelet, tells in a deposition preserved at the files the reaction of the old marshal, on March 24th, when it starts to worry: “All this after-dined, the Marshal appeared strong sorrow of the news that Mr. Chancellor made seek his book”. Its reaction was to order with its servant “to promptly go to the Fétil widow to withdraw the forty specimens remained at it”. All the day, there remains sitted in its room, “out of bonnet”, close to fire. Two ladies visited him this day (the countess of Tavannes and Madam de Fléot, woman of the major of the citadel of Lille) and it undoubtedly granted there, with each one of it a specimen of its Dixme. Over the evening, “the fever takes it”. It is put at the bed, and was “extremely badly Friday and next Saturday… ”. Sunday, the fever slightly fell: “this Sunday morning, explains Colas, it gives order to take in its cabinet two of its books and to carry them to the sior abbot of Camps, street of Grenelle, Saint-Germain suburb, and to request it to examine them, and of him to say its feeling of it”. And the evening even, it also makes some carry one to Small sea-green of the place of the Victories, and “another with its confessor, a brother Jacobin who preaches during the course of this year to the convent of the order, street Saint-Honore, and not giving says it book its servant says it sior marshal says to him that it requested brother to read it and to say to him if, by composing it, it had not done anything against his conscience”. “On Wednesday, March 30, known as Colas, over the nine hours three-quarter of the morning, the Marshal died…” As of the moment of its death, the specimens remaining are withdrawn, by Ragot de Beaumont, which placed in a hotel room Midsummer's Day, hotel joint and dependant on that of Vauban. And in this room, explains Colas, “one goes up there by a staircase which emerges in the cabinet of the Marshal”.

It is Saint-Simon, one knows it, who gave birth to the idea that Vauban would have died of sorrow: “Vauban, tiny room to the tomb by the bitterness”. And especially, this passage:

“the king very badly accepted the marshal of Vauban when it presented his book to him, which was addressed to him in all the contents of the work. One can judge if the ministers to whom it presented it made him a better reception. From this moment, its services, its military, single capacity in its kind, its virtues, the affection which the king had put there until believing himself crowned bay-trees by raising it, all disappeared at the moment in its eyes; he saw nothing any more in him but one foolish for the love of the public property, and that a criminal who made an attempt on the authority of his ministers, consequently with his; it of espliqua of the kind without care:

the echo resounds about it more bitterly in all the offended nation which misused without care of its victory; and the unhappy marshal, carried in all the French hearts, could not survive the good graces of his Master, for whom it had done everything, and died little of month after, not seeing anybody any more, consumed pain and of an affliction that nothing could soften, and to which king was insensitive, until not making seeming to realize that it had lost a so useful and so famous servant. He less was celebrated by it by all Europe and the same enemies, nor less not regretted in France of all that was not financial or henchman of financier”.

But all that is a legend: Vauban neither was worried, nor disgraced and he died well of disease, of a pulmonary Embolie (pneumonia), consequences of this “cold” about which he does not cease complaining since tens of years in his correspondence. Remain that Dixme royal is indeed well a business, the ultimate recourse of a man which wanted, by all the means, to be made hear… And measurements of censure did not succeed in preventing the diffusion and the success of the book, as attests it this letter of Ponchartrain of June 14th, 1707 to the intendant of Rouen Lamoignon de Courson:

“Notwithstanding both arrests of the council of which I send copy to you which orders to the removal of the book of fire the marshal of Vauban, the royal Dixme , this same book did not cease being printed in Rouen in two volumes in 12. One suspects named Jaure to have made it print, this particulié having esté driven out of Paris to have printed several defended books”.

Indeed, we know that the booksellers of Rouen printed the Project of a royal dixme of Vauban into 1707,1708,1709… And starting from Rouen, the book is diffused in all Europe: September 9th, 1707, a Dutch editor asks Antoine Maurry (the printer of Rouen which manufactured the book) six Dixme royal of Vauban in fourthly… And in 1713, Jerome de Pontchartrain, Secretary of State of the Navy and the House of the king dispatched in Michel Bégon, intendant of Canada a specimen of Dixme royal while recommending to him to study with Vaudreuil, the governor, the possibilities of applying to Canada the principles developed by Vauban (Charles Frostin, Pontchartrain ministers of Louis XIV. Alliances and network of influence under the Old Mode, Rennes, University Presses of Rennes, 2006, p. 384). And it is Regency, with the experiment of the Polysynodie, which confirms the topicality, always present, and reforming of Vauban: in New gallant Mercury, semi-official body of the government, one can read, in October 1715 (p. 258) that “S.A.R (the Régent) works the every day during three hours to examine the Memories of fire Mr. the duke of Burgundy, just as those of Mr. de Vauban”…

“Good French” (Louis XIV)

Vauban was humanistic, impassioned for social justice: it is considered, for example, to have shared its premiums and its balances with the less fortunate officers, and even sometimes it took on him the punishments of the soldiers under his command when it found them unjust… It was at the same time a man of nature, demanding in its work and very concerned of the respect of its instructions.

It had also a life of simplicity and relationship very human with its entourage, which they are people of its native area, where it liked to return when it could it (seldom!), or of the close relations. It should be recalled that it educated very young person by his father, Urbain Prestre, with the respect of the others, whatever their origins. Its modest origins - family of desilvered provincial small landed proprietors - will undoubtedly have contributed to its most human character traits.

Louis XIV recognized in Vauban “good French”. And with its death, contrary to legend tough about disgrace (legend for which Saint-Simon is partly responsible), he spoke about him with much regard and friendship: “I lose an extremely affectionate man with my person and in the State”, he with the advertisement of his death declared. One could also say, as explains it Michele Virol, that Vauban was noble malcontent, but instead of taking the way of the armed revolt as the gentlemen of the first did it XVIIe century, it borrowed the feather and the printed paper form, in the name of a pressing good citizenship, fully asserted, with the service of the “nation France” and royal State which it wanted to serve more than the king himself. All its paper and stone work testifies some: its action aimed only one goal, the public utility, by modelling the landscape, by working the territory, by transforming the social order. Vauban, apostle of the truth, appear, with some other contemporaries (Pierre de Boisguilbert, for example, or the abbot of Saint-Pierre), like a Citoyen undoubtedly still a little solitary. But in the name of ideas that he believes right, even if they to the absolute king, it is opposed contributed to create a new space in the territory of the capacity, a competitor space of that monopolized by the men of the king, the Public space, and to give birth to a critical force destined for a great future: the opinion.

Models

The plan-reliefs carried out starting from the reign of Louis XIV are preserved at the Hôtel of the Invalids in Paris where 28 of them are presented. Part of the collection (16), after a long debate, is presented to the Palais of the Art schools of Lille. Vauban intervened on the majority of the places represented. The models give an excellent sight of work carried out.

Note

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