Pierre Ricaud De Tirregaille – military engineer, architect and numismatist. An attempt to reconstruct his biography and professional career

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the latest findings on the biography, family ties and professional career of the military engineer and architect Pierre Ricaud de Tirregauille. Ricaud’s reconstructed biography reveals a professional trajectory fairly typical of a French engineer of the first half of the 18th century. However, in this case, an innate drive for social advancement and scientific and academic aspirations propelled him from the role of a lieutenant engineer constructing field fortifications to the rank of a colonel of the Prussian army, collector, historian, lecturer and member of the intellectual and academic elite of Berlin during the time of Frederick II. His life’s journey – from his native Provence through Catalonia, Piedmont, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the Kingdom of Prussia also serves as a record of the engineer’s professional and social career. Despite his ambitions, he was almost completely forgotten for over two centuries, and historiography mentions only two of his works: the famous Plan de la Ville Varsovie dedie a S.M. Auguste III Roi de Pologne […] (1762) and the study Médailles sur les principaux événémens de L’Empire de Russie, depuis le règne de Pierre le Grand jusqu’à celui de Catherine II, avec des explications historiques (1772).