Customer Reviews

Les travaux des ingenieurs du roi de henri IV a louis XIV

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This work is a valuable tool for anyone interested in early French engineers, particularly those that worked before the coronation of Henri IV.

Buisseret has created an admirable synthesis of previous work on the early engineers of France. He addresses the period that started at the beginning of the 16th century and ended with Vauban and Louis XIV. Buisseret's seems to be the first comprehensive review that attempts to provide biographical details about every practicing engineer of the period. The work draws from secondary sources for biography and provides additional guidance on relevant primary sources.

The book is informative, but not without faults. It could have used more copy editing. There are several sloppy errors such as mistaking "Besson" for "Bachot" and getting the title of Ramelli's book wrong. It is also suffers from omissions. Buisseret misses several very important secondary sources for the biography of engineers like Jacques Besson and Solomon de Caus while providing direction on heretofor unknown primary sources. Regardless, the comprehensiveness and convenience of the work outweighs these few problems.

Many readers may be intimidated by the language of the book. Buisseret--despite being a professor at the University of Texas--wrote the book in French. Perhaps an English translation is in the works. But those readers that can't wait to get their fix of Renaissance engineering goodness shouldn't be intimidated. Buisseret must be commended for writing a French book that is tremendously accessible to an English audience. My highschool French was sufficient to get me through with a fair degree of comprehension (I think).

n.b.- The title on the cover of the work is "Ingeniers et Fortifications avant Vauban: L'organisation d'un service royal aux XVI-XVII siecles".