Rediscovery of the Fort Saint-Sébastien, a training camp for the troops of Louis XIV in the Seine Valley

 These excavations, curated by the State (Drac Ile-de-France) and realized by Inrap for the siaap (Syndicat Interdépartemental pour l’Assainissement de l’Agglomération Parisienne), are a preliminary phase in the modernization of the installations of the syndicate. The 28 hectares excavated cover the entire southern line of attack of the fort.

Louis XIV and Fort Saint-Sébastien: the art of war

Download the press release (June 13, 2012): Rediscovery of the Fort Saint-Sébastien, a training camp for the troops of Louis XIV in the Seine Valley (pdf, 40 KB)

Constructed in 1669, the Fort Saint-Sébastien is a 600 m by 380 m quadrilateral. It is an earthwork fortification with trenches, taluses and palisades, allowing simulations of stronghold sieges to be realized. The impressive trenches of the fort are 7 m wide and 3 m deep. They are equipped with angled bastions and redans on the sides of the entrances. The entire length of the internal talus (escarpe) is covered with remarkable mudbrick masonry whose main function was to absorb the shock of cannonballs. The training areas include complex networks of approach trenches, which are part of a system of attack developed by Vauban and used on a large scale during the siege of Maastricht in 1673.

The Fort Saint-Sebastien is currently the only one of its kind known. It is an exceptional example of a poliorketikos, the art of the siege, from the second half of the 17th century, which until now had never been addressed by archaeology in France.
This period is also important in the history of war. It marks a transition in French military history with the beginning of a career military; for the first time, soldiers were recruited rather than enlisted, equipped with uniforms, paid and trained.