Vauban at Beauséjour

Abstract

Resting upon a ridge overlooking the majestic Beaubassin Bay is Fort Beauséjour. Often called a work in the style of the famed French Architect Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, the star-shaped bastions were built by French forces, with the help of Acadian labor, from 1750 until 1755, when British forces sieged the fort and captured it. They held onto it until 1835. This work takes a closer look at the designation of Fort Beauséjour as a “Vauban style” fortification. We will explore the varied writings and works of Vauban himself and compare them with the defense works at Beauséjour. We will also explore first-hand accounts from the building of Fort Beauséjour thanks to the translation efforts of JC Webster, as well as numerous secondary sources. Building upon a paper by Lirette and Negulic (L&N, 2021), who demonstrated using ArcGIS Pro that the high ground was not secured by the French, we will use the Viewshed Analysis tool in ArcGIS Pro to demonstrate the visibility from the fort and from the ridge, to expand on their elevation thesis. Finally, we put these elements together to define what makes a Vauban fort so unique, and whether Fort Beauséjour encompasses these elements. We explore Vauban through our literature review and exploration of his defense works, and we then add to the literature with our own ArcGIS Pro viewshed analysis of Fort Beauséjour.