Sebastien Le Prestre, Marshal Vauban, was one of the greatest military engineers of all time. His complex, highly sophisticated fortress designs, his advanced theories for the defence and attack of fortified places, and his prolific work as a writer and radical thinker on military and social affairs, mark him out as one of the most influential military minds of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Yet no recent study of this extraordinary man has been published in English. James Falkner, in this perceptive and lively new account of Vauban’s life and work, follows his career as a soldier from a dashing and brave young cavalry officer to his emergence as a masterful military engineer. And he shows that Vauban was much more than simply a superlative builder of fortresses, for as a leading military commander serving Louis XIV, he perfected a method for attacking fortifications in the most effective way, which became standard practice until the present day. James Falkner’s new study will add significantly to the understanding of Vauban’s achievements and the impact his work has had on the history of warfare. AUTHOR: James Falkner is a leading writer on seventeenth and eighteenth-century warfare and he has made a special study of the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) and the military exploits of the Duke of Marlborough. His book, Great and Glorious Days: Marlborough’s Battles 1704-1709, is one of the outstanding studies of the subject. A former British army infantry officer, he has frequently led tours of the major eighteenth-century battlefields. His most recent books include battlefield guides to Blenheim 1704 and Ramillies 1706, Marlborough Goes to War: Eyewitness Accounts 1702-1713, Marlborough’s Sieges, Marlborough’s Battlefields, and Fire Over the Rock: The Great Siege of Gibraltar 1779-1783.
75 colour and b/w illustrations