Abstract
In 1808 Napoleon I had the embalmed heart of Marshal Vauban removed from its obscure provincial resting place to a far more elaborate tomb memorial in the Invalides, creating what we might call a lieu de memoire. More than a century later, in 1933, on the 300th anniversary of Vauban’s birth, Marshal Weygand explained, with understandable hyperbole, just why he thought the marshal was worthy of this honour. ‘The name of Vauban’, he wrote, ‘is, perhaps, the one most frequently mentioned in France during all of 300 years. It is irrevocably engraved on the soil of our country by the works that he built.’ Vauban is surely the most famous military engineer in history, above all for both the defensive works he built for Louis XIV and the successful sieges of foreign fortresses which he undertook for the Sun King. While studies do exist of Vauban in languages other than French, the vast majority are understandably in Vauban’s native tongue.
In the book under review James Falkner, a former infantry officer, who has published widely on the English contribution to the War of the Spanish Succession, seeks to give an account of Vauban and his achievement to a new generation of anglophone readers. The emphasis and focus of the book, understandably given the background of both author and publisher (and likely readership), is very clearly the wars and campaigns which were the background to Vauban’s activity, and the fortifications and sieges which made up the latter. We get a biography and career, but the non-military is largely overshadowed by the military: the Dîme royale and its reception, for example, are given just a couple of pages. This will limit the likely audience of the book, but even within its restricted sphere the book has some weaknesses. Thus, during the Nine Years War, Vauban was commissioned to report on the defences of the south-east following an allied invasion of Dauphine from the territories of the Duke of Savoy. While Falkner refers to the invasion it is arguable that he does not properly convey its importance – although ultimately unsuccessful, it was the only real allied incursion during the entire conflict.
More generally, Falkner is less alert to the war in Italy and its strategic significance than to that in Flanders and on the Rhine, which is reflected in his focus on those other two theatres of fighting and on a failure to acknowledge the importance of the separate peace concluded by Louis XIV with Victor Amadeus II, the Duke of Savoy in 1696. Similarly, while Louis may have been shocked (p. 15) by the duke’s desertion of him in 1703, he was arguably even more so by Victor Amadeus’s earlier volte-face in 1690, which Falkner omits to mention. It ought also to be pointed out that the peace of 1696 did not enable the Duke of Savoy to regain Casale, which had in fact been restored to its rightful owner, the Duke of Mantua, following an allied blockade which had resulted in the capitulation of its French garrison in 1695. Falkner’s grasp of the international situation is also sometimes weak. Thus, his account of the negotiations after 1697 to partition the vast Spanish Empire between the rival claimants to the inheritance of the last Spanish Habsburg, Carlos II, and thus prevent another war like the Nine Years War, omits to mention the second partition treaty, negotiated following the death of the compromise candidate, the young Bavarian prince Joseph Ferdinand, in 1699; this omission makes it difficult to fully comprehend the dilemma facing Louis XIV on the death of Carlos in 1700, whether to abide by the partition treaty (which had not been accepted by the Austrian Habsburg emperor and which only offered Louis’s grandson, Philip of Anjou, a share in the inheritance) or to accept the will (which offered Philip all or, if he refused to take all, nothing).
It might be argued that these issues are less central to a book which is not about the origins of wars so much as the fighting they encompassed and the military machine – in this case that of the Sun King. But perhaps the most striking omission, given the book’s focus, is of key works relating to Louis XIV’s army. While Falkner has clearly consulted John Lynn’s Giant of the Grand Siècle (1996), he has not looked at Guy Rowlands’s Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV (2002). While Falkner refers to Ostwald’s important recent contribution to Vauban studies, Vauban under Siege (2000), there is no real engagement with it, nor any radical questioning of what we might call the Vauban legend or myth. (Falkner’s account of the siege of Ath in 1697 might have benefited from Ostwald’s detailed account of that episode). It is difficult therefore to agree with the publisher’s claim that Falkner’s work ‘will add significantly to the understanding of Vauban’s achievement and the impact his work has had on the history of warfare’. These cavils apart, this is a very enjoyable read for those looking for a good, basic account of Vauban’s career and his role in the wars of Louis XIV and of fortification more generally. Its usefulness is enhanced by various maps and reproductions of portraits of key characters and of contemporary plans of fortresses. The book includes a useful listing of Vauban’s fortresses and an appendix of technical military engineering terms.