VAUCANSON, JACQUES. 



VAUCHER, JEAN PIERRE. 



SCO 



Brisach, under the orders of the young Duke of Burgundy, the pupil 

 of Fdndlon. This was one of the places which Vauban had constructed, 

 and it surrendered on the fourteenth day. 



In 1 706, after the battle of Ramilies, Marshal Vauban was sent to 

 command at Dunkirk and on the coast of Flanders, where his presence 

 served to support the energies of the people, who were much discou- 

 raged by the reverses which the armies of the country had sustained 

 during the war. Ho succeeded in dissuading them from executing 

 their project of inundating the district in order to prevent the enemy 

 from besieging that town ; and he immediately commenced an in- 

 trenched camp, extending from Dunkirk to Bergues, by which the town 

 was more effectually secured. 



This was hia last public work, for he died March 30, 1707, after an 

 illness of eight days, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. He had 

 married Jeanne d'Anuoi (of the family of the Barons d'Espiri, in Niver- 

 nois), who died before him ; aud he left two daughters, the Countess 

 of Villebertin and the Marquise d' Ussd. 



During the intervals of his services in toe field he employed his 

 leisure in composing his three principal works : these are entitled 

 ' Traitd de 1'Attaque des Places,' ' Traitd des Mines,' and ' Traitd de la 

 Defense des Places.' The last was finished only a short time before 

 his death. Several editions of these works have been published, and 

 the best is that of Foissac, Paris, 1796. During his life he also found 

 time to write a great number of memoirs on various subjects; aud 

 near the end of his days he collected them in twelve folio volumes 

 (manuscript). He entitled them his ' Oisivetds ; ' and among them is 

 a paper on the abuses practised in collecting the 'dixme royale;' one 

 on the limits of ecclesiastical power in temporal matters, one on the 

 cultivation of forest-lands, and several on finance, on geography, and 

 on different parts of the mathematics : there is also a memoir concern- 

 ing a project for joining the canals of maritime Flanders with the Lys, 

 the Deule, the Scarpe, and the Scheldt, and one concerning the defence 

 of Paris. In consequence of the disasters experienced during the 

 campaign of 1706, the king contemplated abandoning his capital and 

 retiring behind the Loire ; and on this occasion Vauban wrote the 

 memoir last mentioned, in which he pointed out the importance of 

 preserving Paris, and the possibility of defending it, adding a plan of 

 the fortifications which he proposed to construct for its defence. This 

 memoir was published in 1821. 



Foutenelle, iu summing up the military actions of Vauban, observes 

 that he superintended the repairs of 300 old fortresses and executed 

 33 new ones; that he conducted 53 sieges, many of them under the 

 eye of the king, and that he was present at 140 vigorous actions. He 

 was much beloved by his soldiers, who obeyed him willingly, both 

 from the confidence which they placed in him, and from the knowledge 

 that he avoided exposing them as much as the good of the service 

 would permit. At the siege of Cambray the king, by the advice of 

 the persons about him, was on the point of ordering that an assault 

 should take place, and that the garrison should be put to the sword : 

 Vauban alone opposed this advice, observing that it would be preferable 

 to save one hundred French troops than to destroy three thousand of 

 the allies ; and the king had the good sense to abandon the idea. 

 The humanity of Vauban's character is also manifest in the effort 

 which he made to induce the king to re-establish the Edict of Nantes; 

 unhappily, the bigotry of the king or the influence of the priesthood 

 rendered his representations on this point fruitless. He had no con- 

 stant system in fortifying places, and he appears to have followed in 

 some respects the method of the Italian engineers : what are called 

 his three systems have been formed since his death from a diligent 

 study of the works which he executed at different times. In 1693 the 

 order of St. Louis was founded, chiefly by the advice of Vauban, who 

 was immediately invested with the dignity of Grand Cross of the 

 (Jrder, he being one of the seven to whom that dignity was at first 

 confined. When the Academic des Sciences was renewed in 1699, 

 Vauban was appointed one of its honorary members ; and Fontenelle 

 observes that no one better deserved this distinction, since no one had 

 more completely rendered science subservient to the benefit of mankind. 



Besides the ' Eloge ' by Fontenelle, in his ' Histoire du Renouvelle- 

 ment de 1'Acaddmie,' we have an account of Vauban's life in an ' Eloge ' 

 by Carnot, and another by M. Noel in 1790; the former gained the 

 prize proposed by the Academic de Dijon in 1783, and the latter that 

 which was proposed by the Acaddrnie Frai^aise in 1785. 



It is remarkable that little is known of the collateral branches of 

 the family of Vauban : one of his grand-nephews was a lieutenant- 

 general and governor of Bethune ; and the son of this officer, after 

 having served in America under llochambeau, and subsequently in 

 La Vendde, died at Paris in 1816. 



VAUCANSON, JACQUES, DE, the mechanician, was born on the 

 24th of February 1709, at Grenoble, ia the present department of 

 Iscre, in France, of a noble family. His predilection for the mechanical 

 arts developed itself early. While yet a boy he was accustomed to 

 attend his mother, a woman of strict piety, to a Sunday conversation 

 with some other religious women, at which he amused himself by 

 observing through the chinks of a partition a part of the movements 

 of a clock in an adjoining chamber. He endeavoured earnestly to 

 understand the principles of the movement he saw, and at the end of 

 several months he discovered tho principle of the escapement. From 

 this moment his taste waa fixed. He constructed with rude tools a 



clock in wood, which marked the hours with great exactness ; and he 

 made for a miniature chapel the figures of some little angels which 

 waved their wings, and of some priests which performed several eccle- 

 siastical movements. Chance fixed his residence for a time at Lyon, 

 where a project was being discussed for bringing water to the town 

 by a hydraulic machine, and he invented one which his modesty pre- 

 vented him from offering, but when he arrived in Paris he waa 

 delighted to see that the same idea had there been carried into effect. 

 He perceived then that for the completing of his schemes he required 

 a better knowledge of anatomy, music, and mechanics, and he zealously 

 studied those arts for several years. The statue of the Flute-player 

 in the gardens of the Tuileries gave birth to the desire of making a 

 similar one that would play. The reproaches of an uncle, who con- 

 sidered the notion as extravagant, suspended its execution ; but after 

 an interval of some years, and during a long illness, he succeeded in 

 its construction. It was exhibited in Paris in 1738, where it was seen 

 by d'Alembert, who described it in the article ' Androide ' in the 

 'Encyclopedic Mdthodique.' It really played on the flute, that is, 

 projected the air with its lips against the embouchure, producing the 

 different octaves by expanding and contracting their opening, forcing 

 more or less air in the manner of living performers, aud regulating 

 the tones by its fingers. It commanded three octaves, the fullest 

 scale of the instrument, containing several notes of great difficulty to 

 most performers. It articulated the notes with its lips. Its height 

 was nearly six feet, with a pedestal, in which some of the machinery 

 was contained. In 1740 he declined accepting an invitation from 

 Frederic of Prussia, who was desirous of assembling all the moat dis- 

 tinguished men of Europe, to take up his residence at Berlin. In 

 1741 he produced a flageolet-player, who beat a tambourine with one 

 hand. The flageolet had only three holes, and some notes were made 

 by half stopping them : the force of wind required to produce the 

 lowest note was equal to one ounce ; for the highest it was fifty-six 

 pounds (French). The construction was altogether different from 

 that of the Flute-player. In the same year he produced a duck, 

 which has been considered as the most ingenious of his automata : it 

 dabbled in the water, swam, drank, and quacked like a real duck, and 

 the peculiar motions of the animal were very successfully imitated. 

 It raised and moved its wings, and dressed its feathers with its bill ; 

 it extended its neck, took barley from the hand, and swallowed it, 

 during which the natural motion of the muscles of the neck was 

 perfectly perceptible. It digested the food it had swallowed by means 

 of materials provided for its solution in the stomach. The inventor 

 made no secret of the machinery, which excited great admiration at 

 the time. Another of his inventions was an asp, which he prepared 

 for the tragedy of ' Cleopatre,' by Marmontel, that hissed and darted 

 at the bosom of the actress ; and he commenced a figure, at the sug- 

 gestion of Louis XV., that was to contain an imitation of the circu- 

 lation of the blood, but he abandoned it in disgust at the slowness 

 with which the workmen provided him executed the king's orders. 



But Vaucanson did not confine his mechanical inventions to these 

 ingenious but comparatively useless objects. About 1741 Cardinal de 

 Fleury had appointed him inspector of the silk manufactories, and he 

 was not long before 4 he introduced a great improvement in the mill 

 for throwu-silk, an improvement which excited the anger of the 

 workmen of Lyon against him, who, thinking it would reduce the 

 value of their labour, 011 one occasion pelted him with stones. His 

 only revenge was the inventing of a machine for weaving flowered 

 silks, in which, as a kind of sarcasm, the moving power was au ass. 

 He also invented a machine for giving a dressing to the silk, so as to 

 render the thread of each bobbin or skein of an equal thickness 

 throughout, with several other improvements in the manufacture. Iu 

 the journal of the Academic des Sciences, of which he was a member, 

 he gave a description of his silk-throwing mill, and of many other 

 useful mechanical inventions, in several papers, which display a 

 remarkable talent for description, being alike clear and precise. After 

 a long illness, by which he was confined to his bed for eighteen 

 months, he died on the 21st of November 1782. He had formed a 

 collection of machines and objects relating to arts and manufactures, 

 which he bequeathed by his will to the queen, who appears to have 

 set small value on the legacy. It was proposed to transfer it to the 

 Acaddmie des Sciences, but the intendants of commerce claiming 

 some of the manufacturing machines, disputes arose, and the result 

 was the dispersion of a most curious and valuable storehouse of 

 mechanical inventions. 



VAUCHER, JEAN PIERRE, professor of historical theology at 

 Geneva. Although a preacher and a teacher of theology, he is better 

 known for his works on botany. The first work on botany published 

 by Vaucher was on the family of ' Conferva),' the phenomena of whose 

 sporules excited his attention. This was published at Paris in 1800, 

 and entitled ' Memoire sur les Grains des Conferves," 4to. He con- 

 tinued his researches upon the family of plants, to which he had 

 already directed his attention, and in 1803, published his history of 

 fresh-water Confervse (' Histoire des Conferves d'Eau Douce,' &c.), a 

 work which has long been held in the highest estimation, and which 

 laid the foundation of all subsequent labours in this department of 

 botany. His remarks on the reproduction and growth of the various 

 species of Conferva} that fell under his observation were correct, nor 

 has much advance been made in this department of botany sinco 



