L’EXPERIENCE DE L’ARCHITECTURE MILITAIRE
The entire title of this book is about half a page long. It describes what this book is about. It is about
experiences of military architecture. In particular, it is about learning thoroughly how to work on the
squares: Knowledge of materials, masonry, plots… to finding water sources. I think this book was
intended as a textbook. Since it is in pocketbook format, I can imagine that one could also need it
spontaneously on the road. Sort of as an aid for military architects without experience.
It says that the book is accompanied by illustrations. Instead of the name of the illustrator, there is
only Sr.***.
This is followed by a letter of several pages to a certain Monsieur de S. Pomenges. He signed the
letter with: your very humble and obedient servant, Des Martins l’aisné. So the author was a servant.
Possibly he got his experiences from this Monsieur S. Pomenges, about which he writes.
Even before the table of contents, there is a short preface.
The table of contents lists 15 chapters. It begins with the absolute basics of military architecture in
Chapter I. With each chapter it becomes more and more detailed.
The drawings already mentioned are about three times the size of a page of text and are not
numbered. There are over ten very detailed drawings, some even mathematical. These are labelled
with numbers and figures to create a reference to the text.
In addition, there are always equations between two paragraphs