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Engineer to the King for a monumental building site!
Tirs de flanquement - site VaubanCoupe d’un rempart © De Villefranche à Turin, Histoire de la fortification, Serre éditeur.
Jean Renaud de Saint-Rémy, engineer to the King
Jean de Renaud de Saint-Rémy was originally from Saint-Rémy de Provence. Initial accounts of his military career tell us that he fought alongside Francis 1st during the Italian Wars and that he stayed in Piedmont until the end of the 1530s. There, he rubbed shoulders with a number of Italian military engineers who helped him to perfect his understanding and mastery of « modern » fortifications.
Active during the reigns of Francis 1st and Henri II, he worked as an expert in fortifications in Picardy, Lyons, Provence and Languedoc. Jean de Renaud de Saint-Rémy died in 1557 after the siege of Saint-Quentin.
A monumental building site!
The construction of the new fortifications lead to major disruptions.
The chapels of Sainte-Trinité, Saint-Georges and Saint-Sébastien were demolished because they were actually located on or too close to the planned line of the future fortifications. Several dozen houses were also demolished and their dispossessed owners were made to settle beyond the new ramparts, in the lands around La Colle and Roquefort.
Large stones, hewn from the quarries of La Sine, were carried by horse-drawn carts to the building site. The works probably started in 1544 and ended in June 1547, only a few weeks after the death of Francis Ist. The bastioned fortifications were still unfinished as the molding and the parapet had not yet been built.
