Vauban
2 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Vauban. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
SÉBASTIEN LE PRES- TRE DE, a military engineer and Marshal of France; born in Saint Léger du Fougeret, Burgundy, May 15, 1633. Left a destitute orphan at 10 he was brought up by the village curé, and at 17 enlisted in the regiment of Condé, 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 appointed governor of its new citadel. During 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 commissary-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 defense 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 executed the magnificent aqueduct of Maintenon, 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, Vauban 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) are the only professional works of importance during the last 14 years of his life. After the peace of Ryswick 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 00 0000000 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 unpalpably 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. Vauban 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-complacent master. His body was buried at Bazoches; in 1806 Napoleon deposited his heart in the Invalides.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
vo-baN', Sebastien (1633-1707), a celebrated military engineer of France. He rose to prominence under the great French military leaders, Conde' and Turenne, by whom he was regarded as the most promising engineer of his time. He acquired reputation both in the taking of fortresses and in the construction of them. He surrounded France with a cordon of fortifications. He is credited with having constructed thirty-three new fortresses and with having conducted fifty-three sieges. In conducting sieges he borrowed a system of parallel trenches from the Turks. He declared that with time, powder, and patience any fortress could be taken.