Marc René, Marquis de Montalembert

French soldier, engineer, and statesman

• Born: July 16, 1714
• Birthplace: Angoulême, France
• Died: March 28, 1800
• Place of death: Paris, France

Montalembert was a military realist who recognized that proper fortifications and adequate supply were more important than personal daring in the winning of wars. Though unpopular with the flamboyant traditionalists of his time, his ideas about the potential of strong defensive works anticipated the transformations in warfare in the following century.

Early Life

Marc-René, the Marquis de Montalembert (mahr-kee duh moh-tah-lahn-behr), was the son of a noble father and common mother. His father, Jacob, was a captain in the French navy, following a military tradition in their family that extended back into the thirteenth century. Montalemberts had served as soldiers for François I, Louis XII, and Henri II, and Marc-René’s father participated in the wars of Louis XIV. It was, therefore, no surprise that Marc-René continued the family tradition, serving Louis XV and Louis XVI.

Very little is known of Montalembert’s childhood and education. He attended the Jesuit college of Saint Louis at Angoulěme, where it appears that he showed an interest and aptitude for the sciences and mathematics. In 1732, when he was eighteen, he entered the French army, enrolling in the Conty-cavalry regiment. His introduction to the profession of arms was immediate: His regiment was sent to Poland in 1733, serving in the War of the Polish Succession until its end in 1735.

Montalembert’s baptism into the life of a soldier was sufficiently impressive that he was promoted to the rank of captain in 1734. When the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in 1740, he was once again on the front line, serving in Bavaria, Egra, Duhendorff, and Italy. In 1745, he was elevated to the rank of maître-de-camp in the cavalry. However, his attention was drawn from the operations of the cavalry on the battlefield toward the intriguing mathematical and mechanical problems involved in designing and building successful fortifications. Foreign campaigns had given him the opportunity to study the fortifications of opposing armies, while service on French soil (fighting at Montalhan, Villefranche, Nice, Château-Dauphin, Demont, and Coni) gave him insights into the strengths and weaknesses of his own army’s efforts.

Life’s Work

When the war ended in 1748, Montalembert returned to France, where King Louis XV recognized his service by making him a knight of Saint Louis. Several of his essays on mathematics and the design of fortresses had previously been noticed by French scientists, who elected him to the Academy of Sciences, where he remained until its dissolution during the French Revolution in 1793. Honored by his king and recognized by the intellectual community, Montalembert tried to settle into a comfortable civilian life.

Much of the artillery used by the French was produced in Angoumois, the region surrounding Angoulěme, where Montalembert had been born. Certain that the French military would have a continuous need for iron cannon and cannonballs, he hoped to expand his presence in the business. Already the owner of the forges of Forgeneuve in the parish of Javerlhac, he endeavored to rent the forges of Montizon, Jomiliere, Bonrecueil, and La Chapelle. Discovering that a paper mill and a piece of land on the River Touvre, near Angoulěme, were for sale, Montalembert decided that he had found the perfect location for a new cannon factory.

Unfortunately, when Montalembert acquired the property in 1750, an unexpected problem arose: The township of Angoulěme refused to grant permission to build the new factory, arguing that it would decrease work in the vineyards, cause an increase in the local price of firewood, and pollute the river from which many took both water and fish. Montalembert responded systematically, purchasing the water and fishing rights on the river and obtaining permission to procure his wood from the Royal Forest of Braconne. Bypassing the township, he sought and received royal permission to build and operate his forge.

Optimistically, Montalembert inaugurated his enterprise with a mammoth contract to provide the navy with 1,400 cannon. Though he was paid an advance of 1,230,000 livres, he could manage to send the navy only 149 cannon. The problem was not one of casting; more than 1,000 barrels had been cast. The problem lay in the total insufficiency of his machinery for boring. Frustrated by Montalembert’s delinquency, in October, 1755, the minister of the navy sent M. Maritz, who had invented a new drilling machine, to requisition the forges and complete the cannon. The situation, already tense, became critical two months later, when an intentional fire was set in the forge’s supply of charcoal. Ultimately, Montalembert sued the king for the return of his property, a legal action that lasted sixteen years and ended unsatisfactorily for all. The government was required to return the property and pay damages, but it was allowed to force Montalembert to rent his forges to the king for a nominal sum.

Happily for Montalembert, the trials of operating a heavy industry were soon replaced by a return to government service. Sent to Sweden in April, 1758, on a diplomatic and military mission, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier of the cavalry, then ordered east to aid Russia in its war with Prussia. In 1760, Montalembert was promoted to the rank of marechal de camp, the second lieutenant of the Royal Guards.

With his interest in fortifications reinvigorated by a new round of military service, Montalembert was intrigued by Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban’s De l’attaque et de la defense des places (1737; on attacking and defending places). Disagreeing with some of Vauban’s views on fortification, Montalembert produced a work that he expected would revolutionize military engineering, La Fortification perpendiculaire (1776-1784; perpendicular fortification). When he advertised imminent publication in 1761, Étienne François de Choiseul, minister of war, requested the manuscript for Louis XV. It took Montalembert fifteen years to get his manuscript back. Thus, it was not until 1776 that the first volume was published (four more followed through 1784). Though his ideas and his open criticism of the shortcomings of Vauban’s theories were uncongenial to the more conservative military leaders of his time, Montalembert gained a significant following, prompting many to conclude that while Vauban was useful in planning the attack of fortifications, Montalembert was equally valuable in planning their defense.

The French Revolution complicated Montalembert’s life, requiring him to demonstrate allegiance to a new government that was suspicious of those of even partially noble descent. His desire to study fortification under the direction of the English mathematician Charles Hutton required him to invent excuses for trips across the English Channel. Luckily, as an old man, he could claim infirmity and the need to take the waters at Bath. When, in 1792, his first wife chose to remain in England upon his return to France, the separation allowed him to end a marriage that had produced two children who died in infancy. Two years later, on December 24, 1794, at the age of eighty, he married his second wife, Rosalie-Louise Cadet, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of a pharmacist. Three years later, their only daughter, Rosalie-Gasparrine, was born.

Montalembert retained the respect of the revolutionary government, finally attaining the rank of general of division. His last years were spent writing; when Montalembert died in 1800, at the age of eighty-five, he had published eleven volumes under the title L’Art défensif supérieur à l’offensif (defensive arts superior to offensive ones), as well as several novels, songs, and comedies.

Significance

The Marquis de Montalembert was part of the generation in Europe that moved from the flamboyance and personality-driven heroics of seventeenth century warfare into the Enlightenment’s vision of rationality and science applied to all things. Though a cavalryman, he recognized that wars could be won or lost through the skill of military engineers who applied the art of mathematics to the construction of ideal fortifications, and by the manufacturers at home who could supply the numbers of weapons sufficient to support the growing scale of modern warfare. Living his life at the intersection of two worldviews, he saw no contradiction in being a man of letters, of war, of science, and of commerce; though his efforts were not evenly blessed with success, he continued through his life to engage in the enterprises by which his century introduced the seeds of change into the Western world, setting the stage for the industrial, political, social, and military transformations of the century to follow.

Bibliography

Brice, Martin. Forts and Fortresses: From the Hillforts of Prehistory to Modern Times—The Definitive Visual Account of the Science of Fortification. New York: Facts On File, 1990. A comprehensive description and study of fortification containing many illustrations.

Jones, Colin. The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Exhaustive account of the history of eighteenth century France.

Merriman, John. A History of Modern Europe from the French Revolution to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996. The essential reference book explaining in detail the evolution of France in the eighteenth century and the onslaught of the French Revolution.

Pierron, Yvon. Marc René, marquis de Montalembert, 1714-1800: Les Illusions perdues. Paris: Arléa, 2003. A biography of Montalembert describing his peregrinations in the late eighteenth century from metallurgist to military man. In French.