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THE FRENCH ANTECEDENTS OF S. LE PRETRE DE VAUBAN: THE TRANSITION FROM THE “TRACE ITALIENNE” TO THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF BASTIONED FORTIFICATION

Y. Revzina

Abstract

Today the name of Sebastiene Le Prêtre de Vauban is considered to be some kind of equivalent to the bastioned fortification itself. Of course his impact to the European fortification of the late XVII – early XVIII centuries was great. Nevertheless his ideas and his famous “three systems of fortification” were the result of the evolution of ideas that took place in France during the second half of the XVI - the early XVII centuries. Among the most prominent antecedents of Vauban there were J. Errard De Bar-le-Duc, the author of the “La fortification demonstrée et reduicte en art” (Paris, 1600), J. Perret, the author of “Des fortifications, et artifices d’architecture, et perspective” (Paris, 1594) and B.-F. de Pagan, the author of the “Les fortifications du comte de Pagan” (Paris, 1645). J. Errard De Bar-le-Duc who was considered to be “the father of the French fortification” used and developed the ideas of the Italian Renaissance architects and engineers (Giuliano da Sangallo, Pietro Cataneo, Vincenzo Scamozzi) as well as the ideas of the German military engineer of the late XVI century D. Spekle. J. Perret also paid tribute to the Italian traditions of fortification not only at the point of engineering and town-planning principles but also at the point of ideal vision of a city. One of the projects published in his treatise represents a city with a radial plan and a great building in the central square. That strange, extraordinary building called “grand pavillon Royal” in fact coincided with the medieval idea of a donjon put in a centre of a domain as well as the neo-platonic idea of a central building that combined the ideas of divinity and wise power. The Italian legacy had also a great influence on the ideas of B.-F. de Pagan. But he also studied the so called “old Dutch” system of fortification and tried to improve both Italian and Dutch design. The shape of bastions invented by B.-F. de Pagan was somehow a compromise that combined both two systems. So Vauban gained from his antecedents some strong relations with all the actual schools of fortification of the late XVI-XVII centuries, compiled them, transformed and made use of all of them in accordance with actual problems caused by location of a fortress. Later on the success of Vauban as military engineer eclipsed the fame of military architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance, but it does not mean that he was free of the influence of the “trace italienne” (French term for the Italian mode of fortification). He used Italian, German and Dutch legacy due to his French antecedents that adopted and interpreted their main ideas to the French mode of thinking and actual requirements. The problem of transition from the Italian technical innovations and the image of ideal city towards the pragmatism of the French school of fortification is of the keen interest of the author of the paper.

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