EPISTLE

the blood of your ancestors so many times shed for the salvation of the Homeland. Can one be unaware of the memorable actions of the illustrious Men that your House has given to France, and their inviolable attachment to the Service of our Kings, in those stormy times when the spirit of rebellion corrupted even the most faithful Subjects? Now that Peace allows me to follow my primary inclination, and for YOU, MY LORD, to grant intervals of time to the enlightened taste for which you are known regarding the Sciences and the fine Arts, deign to receive the Work that I have the honor of offering to you, as a tribute that I return to its true source. I undertook it formerly with the intention of pleasing a famous Minister (a), whose beneficent character, so like your own, had earned him—as it has for YOU, MY LORD—those sentiments that are never denied to established merit. He applauded the desire I expressed to him to contribute through my research to the perfection of Hydraulic Architecture, having judged by his own experience that the State would derive utility from it (b). Those who succeeded him, filled with this sentiment, were kind enough to provide me with the materials upon which I have worked (c). How happy I consider myself to have found in YOU, MY LORD,

(a) Mr. le Blanc. Claude le Blanc (1669–1728) was a French statesman who served as Secretary of State for War under Louis XV.
(b) At that time Intendant A high-ranking administrative official acting as the king's representative in a province. of Flanders, he had presided with continual attention over the works of the Mardick Canal, in 1714 and 1715. The Mardick Canal was a major civil engineering project designed to maintain a harbor for Dunkirk after the Treaty of Utrecht forced the demolition of its previous fortifications.
(c) Messrs. d’Angervilliers and de Maurepas, in concert with the Count of Toulouse and Marshal d’Asfeld. These men were the leading administrative and military figures of the era: Nicolas Prosper Bauyn d'Angervilliers (Minister of War), Jean-Frédéric Phélypeaux, Count of Maurepas (Navy Minister), Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, Count of Toulouse (Grand Admiral), and Claude François Bidal, Marquis d'Asfeld (a celebrated military engineer and Marshal of France).