Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban

Spanish military leader

• Born: May 15, 1633
• Birthplace: Saint-Léger-de-Foucherest, France
• Died: March 30, 1707
• Place of death: Paris, France

Vauban is chiefly remembered as Europe’s best and most prolific military engineer at a time when siege works and fortifications were crucial to the art of military affairs.

Early Life

Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (say-bahs-tyahn leh prehtr deh voh-bahn) was born to a family whose position in society lay between the lower nobility and the bourgeoisie. His education, completed at Semuren-Auxois, consisted of drawing, mathematics, and history. In 1651, while still seventeen, Vauban enlisted as a cadet in a regiment that elected to fight on the side of the Fronde rebels (during the Wars of the Fronde, 1648-1653) against the very young King Louis XIV . Because of his education, Vauban was put to work as a military engineer, fortifying the town of Clermont-en-Argonne. Later, he participated in the Siege of Sainte-Menehould. Both experiences were solid preparation for his life’s work.

Captured by the Royalists, Vauban was pardoned, converted to the cause of the king, and sent back to Sainte-Menehould, this time to lay siege to his former friends. At the end of the Fronde wars in 1653, Vauban was returned to Sainte-Menehould to repair much of what he had previously helped destroy. Vauban had been fortunate in 1653 to have entered the royal service under the chevalier de Clerville, by reputation, if perhaps not in practice, France’s best military engineer. The advent of gunpowder had ushered in the age of artillery and with it the decline of the castle in favor of less vulnerable, lower, bastioned fortifications. Transitional work had already begun, but the times were right for someone of meticulous genius such as Vauban. After conducting sieges on behalf of Louis XIV, Vauban was commissioned ingénieur ordinaire du roi within de Clerville’s department, a position from which he could gain the increasing affection of the king.

Life’s Work

Vauban traveled on the king’s behalf from 1659 to 1667, repairing old or developing new frontier fortifications. It was a long peace in Louis’s very long reign, a reign filled with wars of aggrandizement and expansion. In 1667, Louis attacked Spanish troops in Flanders, and the dedicated Vauban excelled in siege craft in the king’s royal service. Vauban fortified the key strategic towns of Lille and Tournai. Vauban’s work had by this time so surpassed de Clerville that Louis promoted him over de Clerville. Vauban became commissaire général, or virtual director of France’s fortifications and siege works.

Louis’s schedule of wars was formidable. From 1667 to 1668, France fought in the War of Devolution, from 1672 to 1678 in the Franco-Dutch Wars, from 1688 to 1697 in the Wars of the League of Augsburg , and from 1701 to 1714 in the War of the Spanish Succession . The average-looking, rugged Vauban worked diligently at his post, shunning the splendors of the Sun King’s fabulous court at Versailles. His world was the dusty trail and the supervision of field work while staying at modest frontier inns. Even after 1675, when Louis granted him an estate, Vauban spent little time there or with his wife. In his old age, Vauban carried out his work from the back of his sedan chair, borne by horses. In 1706, Vauban was elevated to marshal of France before dying a year later of pneumonia. Throughout, Vauban was one of Louis’s longest-serving and most-trusted servants, compiling to his credit the construction of at least thirty-three new fortresses, the restoration of more than one hundred older fortresses, and the execution of fifty-three successful sieges.

Vauban’s contributions were in his offensive siege craft and defensive fortifications. After the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), nations wanted to regulate the military art with certain established, recognized rules. Military operations were carried out along the lines of chessboard moves. The capture of fortifications became the chesslike pieces and the actions that determined the winner in the wider military and diplomatic context.

Good fortifications were situated to offer a high degree of enfilading fire and mutually supporting positions, and they were layered for defense in depth. Walls and bastions were thickened and lowered to cushion against the effect of artillery. Vauban was recognized as a master at overcoming defenses as well as of creating them. He was a legend in his own time; indeed, it was noted that “a town besieged by Vauban was a town taken.” Vauban’s method of siege was first to blockade a fortified town, then to determine the best single point in the defenses where he could effect a decisive breach. Earthworks would be built to provide protective cover for the artillery and engineers. Vauban would then build three trench systems progressively toward and parallel to the particular point to be breached. These trenches, which were connected by zig-zag communications trenches, were referred to as the first parallel, second parallel, and third parallel. Offensive artillery was divided into three functions: mortar batteries and ricocheting batteries, which would suppress defensive musketry and artillery, and the heavy or main breaching batteries. The entire system was geometrically calculated with Vauban’s mathematical precision. Often, days in advance, Vauban could predict the exact hour of a defense’s fall. Once a breach had been made and assuming no relieving force was in sight, the conventions of the day permitted a garrison to surrender honorably. In fact, a town that refused and had to be taken by storm could rightfully, by the same rules, be sacked.

Vauban was equally skilled in defensive fortification. His methods were based not only on mathematics but also on common sense and his experience in analyzing the advantages of terrain. Vauban looked upon his talent as the art of being able to build to suit a given location rather than as a systematic adventure into applied science. Nevertheless, his emulators categorized his methods into three systems. His first system represented little more than adaptations from previous French and Italian engineers. His early development also borrowed from Blaise François Comte de Pagan, who had retired from active French service in 1642. Greatly simplified, Vauban’s fortifications were polygonal, with bastions at strategic points.

As a starting point for calculations, a standard length of fortifications front was set at 360 yards. This measure could be reduced or extended depending on the size of area to be protected and the intervening terrain. The other architectural components of the fortification, the ditches, lunettes, ravelins, bonettes, curtain walls, crown work, and horn work, were constructed as fractional expressions of the basic measure. The overall geometrical designs took the effects of contemporary musketry and artillery into consideration to provide for the best possible defense.

Vauban reintroduced the tenaille and orillon, or ear, onto the bastion. Vauban’s second system detached the bastions from the main works and created tower bastions, both feats intended to improve the realities of defense during a siege. His third system was used only once, at Neuf-Brisach. The defense was again extended in depth and the tower bastions were modified. Completed in 1706, one year before his death, it was arguably his finest work.

Significance

During his lifetime, Vauban was appreciated as Europe’s leading military engineer. He was, however, more than that, for he wrote on a wide and complex series of issues in his twelve volumes of unpublished memoirs. In 1699, he was elected to the Académie des Sciences for accomplishments in applied science and mathematics.

Throughout his travels in the four corners of France, Vauban amassed volumes of economic and social details, and he espoused a concern for humanitarian ideals. In the arena of military affairs, he invented, among others, the ricochet firing technique for artillery and the first good bayonet. Voltaire was inspired to pronounce Vauban to be “the finest of citizens.” Yet this well-rounded individual will be forever remembered primarily for his fortifications and siege craft, at which he enjoyed unparalleled success in the seventeenth century and unrivaled adulation in the eighteenth. Vauban’s reputation has come to the twenty-first century intact.

Controversy still shrouds the originality of his work, but that is hardly surprising, for he labored under financial constraints, diplomatic restraints, and the whims of his monarch, and quite often he simply had to work from preexisting structures. The original elements of his second and third system, however, seem beyond dispute, as is the sheer proliferation and essence of his construction. The fortified town of Neuf-Brisach is usually considered his masterpiece. As late as 1870, this 164-year-old fort stood against modern Prussian artillery and siege craft for thirty-six days, so long did Vauban’s skill outlive the man.

Bibliography

Britt, Albert Sidney, III, et al. The Dawn of Modern Warfare. Wayne, N.J.: Avery, 1984. Provides information about Vauban’s place within Louis XIV’s government and the wars occurring during Louis’s regime.

Chandler, David G. Atlas of Military Strategy, 1618-1878. London: Arms and Armour Press, 1980. Vauban is profiled in two oversize pages. Includes a timetable of sieges created by Vauban.

De La Croix, Horst. Military Considerations in City Planning: Fortifications. New York: George Braziller, 1972. The author traces his subject from the primitive world to the seventeenth century, concluding with Vauban. More attention is devoted to Vauban’s defensive rather than his offensive techniques.

Duffy, Christopher. Fire and Stone: The Science of Fortress Warfare, 1660-1860. Newton Abbot, England: David and Charles, 1975. Duffy uses a topical approach to describe Vauban’s methods of military engineering, explaining them methodically in simplified but comprehensive detail. Well-chosen illustrations illuminate the text.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Siege Warfare: The Fortress in the Early Modern World, 1494-1660. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979. An indispensable book for creating the overall setting in which Vauban began his early work. The milieu of siege and fortification work is excellently portrayed from the close of the medieval period through Blaise François Comte de Pagan and the Chevalier de Ville, both of whom influenced Vauban.

Hebbert, F. J., and G. A. Rothrock. Soldier of France: Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, 1633-1707. New York: P. Lang, 1990. A modern English-language biography.

Hogg, Ian V. Fortress: A History of Military Defence. London: Macdonald and Jane’s, 1975. Devotes two chapters to Vauban’s era. The text and accompanying illustrations are the best available for demonstrating the geometrical angles in Vauban’s work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. The History of Fortification. London: Orbis, 1981. A chapter on classical fortification sets the stage for the succeeding chapter, “The Age of Vauban.” Contains illustrations of Vauban’s military architecture, including Neuf-Brisach, considered his crowning structural achievement.

Lynn, John A. Giant of the Grand Siècle: The French Army, 1610-1715. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Vauban is prominently featured in this examination of the French army, with information about his life and contributions to siege craft.

Paret, Peter, ed., with Gordon A. Craig and Felix Gilbert. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Henry Geurlac’s article is probably the best single treatment of Vauban as a well-rounded individual. The article explores Vauban’s contributions in mathematics and applied science while recognizing his most significant contributions as siege craft and the science of fortifications. Vauban’s writings are examined, as are controversies over his originality.