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LEFT VAUBAN 171 VAUBAN Christians. The first^ constitution was unanimously accepted in a session of 667 prelates, and confirmed by the Pope (Pius IX.) on April 20, 1870. The second constitution led to a long discus- sion; on May 13 the scheme, with the added clauses on Papal Infallibility, was laid before the Council, and on July 18 the bull Pastor Mternus, containing the constitution and the definition of Papal Infallibility, was read; 525 prelates voted in favor of it, two voted against it, while several absented themselves from the public session. The degree was then confirmed by the Pope. On the same day Napoleon III. declared war against Prussia; on Sept. 20 the Italian royalists took possession of Rome, and on Oct. 20 the Pope prorogued the Council, which has never reassembled. VAUBAN, SEBASTIEN LE PRES- TRE DE, a military engineer and Mar- shal of France; born in Saint Leger du Fougeret, Burgundy, May 15, 1633. Left a destitute orphan at 10 he was brought up by the village cur^, and at 17 enlisted in the regiment of Conde, then in league with Spain against the king. Taken prisoner in 1653, he was persuaded by Mazarin to take service under the king, and in 1655 he received his commission as one of the royal engineers. Already in 1658 he had the chief direction of the attacks made by Turenne's army, and the eight years of peace that followed this campaign he devoted to works at Dunkirk and elsewhere. In 1667 he helped to reduce Lille, and next was ap- pointed governor of its new citadel. Dur- ing the campaigns in Holland (1672- 1678) he took part in 17 sieges and one defense, rising to be brigadier and major-general and at the close commis- sary-general of fortifications. He first introduced the method of approach by parallels at the siege of Maestricht (1673), and with such effect that that strong fortress capitulated in 13 days. The rest of his more famous exploits in these campaigns were the triumphant de- fense of Oudenarde and the sieges of Valenciennes and Cambrai. During the 10 years of peace which followed 1678 Vauban rendered to France perhaps the greatest of his services, in surrounding the kingdom with a complete cordon of fortresses, and he planned and partly ex- ecuted the magnificent aqueduct of Main- tenon, by which the waters of the Eure are conveyed to Versailles. In 1703 he rose to be Marshal of France. War breaking out again in 1688, Vau- ban conducted with his usual success the sieges of Philipsburg — introducing here his invention of ricochet batteries — Mannheim, Mons (1691), and Namur (1692). The sieges of Charleroi (1693), Ath (1697), Breisach (1704), and the construction of the intrenched camp near Dunkirk (1706) ai-e the only professional works of importance during the last 14 years of his life. After the peace of Rys- wick in 1697 he had applied his active mind to the consideration of various faults in the internal government of France, and he had observed the fatal consequences of the Revocation of 1685. His ideas he submitted in a memoir to SEBASTIEN VAUBAN Louvois and Madame de Maintenon in 1686. But another work, the "Royal Tithe" (1707), in which he discussed the question of taxation, and anticipated in the most striking manner the doctrines which 80 years later overthrew the French monarchy, brought down a heavier storm on his head. Saint-Simon tells us the book was clear, simple, and exact, but the truths it told were un- palpably plain. In 1699 and again in 1704 he had sent it to the king, but no notice was taken till in 1706 he began privately to print 300 copies, whereupon the book was at once condemned. Vau- ban did not long survive the disgrace, dying in Paris, March 30, 1707. "I have lost a man very devoted to my person and to the State," said his self-com-