The accounts given of Lionardo da Vinci by Vasari, Lomazzo, and the older writers, were repeated by Dufresne, De Piles, Felibien, and others. The more recent and accurate researches of Amoretti, prefixed to Lionardo’s Trattato della Pittura, in the thirty-third volume of the “Classici Italiani;” of Bossi, “Del Cenacolo di Lionardo da Vinci;” and of Venturi, “Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-Mathématiques de Léonard da Vinci, avec des fragmens tirés de ses manuscrits apportés de l’Italie;” may be consulted for further particulars respecting the life and works of this great man.

[Group from the Battle of the Standard.]

Engraved by W. T. Fry.
VAUBAN.
From an original Picture by Lebrun
in the War Office at Paris.
Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
London. Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street.

VAUBAN.

Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban, son of Albin le Prestre and Aimée Carmagnol, was born May 1, or, by other accounts, May 15, 1633, at St. Leger-de-Foucheret, a small village between Saulieu and Avallon, in the province of Burgundy. He became an orphan at an early age, his father having lost both his life and fortune in the public service. Under the protection and instruction of M. de Fontaines, prior of St. John at Semur, he acquired some knowledge of geometry, a science then but little cultivated among military men. At seventeen years of age he deserted his home, and entered as a volunteer in the regiment of Condé, then employed in the Spanish service, in which his zeal and abilities soon procured him a commission. Nor was it long before he showed his talent for the science of engineering. In 1652 he was employed in the erection of the fortifications of Clermont, in Lorraine; and the same year, serving at the first siege of Ste. Menehould, he made several lodgments, and during the assault swam the river under the enemy’s fire. Public notice was taken of this exploit; and by this means Vauban’s family heard, for the first time, that he had embraced the military profession. In 1653 he was taken prisoner by a French corps, and conducted to Cardinal Mazarin, who thought it worth while to purchase his services with a lieutenancy in the regiment of Bourgogne. In the same year he served as an engineer under the Chevalier de Clerville, at the second siege of Ste. Menehould; and the charge of repairing the fortifications of that town, when retaken by the troops of Louis XIV., was confided to him.

In May, 1655, Vauban received his commission as engineer, and in the following year he was rewarded for his services with the command of a company in the regiment of the Maréchal de la Ferté. Not to mention the numerous situations in which he bore an active but subordinate part, we proceed at once to the year 1658, in which he had the chief direction of the sieges of Gravelines, Ypres, and Oudenarde; where, being free to act on his own opinions, yet still doubting his strength, he showed, by judicious though slight innovations, what might be ultimately expected from his matured experience. He was also charged with the improvement of the port and fortifications of Dunkerque, on the surrender of that once important place to France by the treaty of October 17, 1662.

When the war with Spain was renewed in 1667, Vauban had the principal direction of the sieges at which Louis XIV. presided in person. At Douay he received a musket-wound in his cheek, the scar of which is preserved by Coisevox and Lebrun in his bust and portraits. The capture of Lille, after only nine days of open trenches, procured for him a lieutenancy in the Guards and a pension, accompanied with the far more gratifying commendations of his sovereign. Hostilities were ended by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1668, in which year he prepared designs for the citadel of Lille, for Ath, and several other places; and in 1669 the king appointed him governor of the citadel of Lille, the first reward of this description created in France.