Marshal Vauban, Part II: Writer and Critic
Besides his work as a military engineer, Vauban published books on a variety of subjects, from religious tolerance to pig-breeding and royal taxation. By F.J. Hebbert and G.A. Rothrock.
Vauban spent the last months of his life in his Paris house in the rue St Vincent, near Palais Royal, putting in order his voluminous correspondence and his incredibly numerous and varied papers, and continuing his writing.
Besides short memoranda on specific military problems - the weaknesses of particular fortifications, the integration of regional defences, improvements in weaponry, problems of supply, etc. - he had written often and trenchantly about more general military subjects: coastal defence, the need for an independent corps of engineers, and the organization of the French frontiers along more defensible lines - his famous pré-carré.
His most important contributions to military literature, however, were his guides to siegecraft, a Memoir written about 1670 and a Treatise written shortly before his death.
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