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Riquet

Name: Pierre-Paul Riquet, Baron Riquet de Bonrepos

Achievements: 17th-century French public official and amateur engineer who

planned and built the great Canal du Midi, linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean.

Born: 29 June 1604, at Béziers, Languedoc, France

Died: 1 October 1680, in Toulouse, France.  Aged 76

Field & Discipline: Engineering; Civil engineering

Language: French

Father: Guillaume Riquet (d. 1632)

Mother: Unknown

Siblings: At least one sister

Spouse: Catherine de Milhau (m. 1623)

Children: Jean Mathias (1638-1714); Pierre Paul II (1646-1730); Catherine; Marthe; Anne

Education: Jesuit College, Beziers

Major Work:

Canal du Midi (1667-81)

Life & Times:

From the mid-1640s tax-collector Riquet became a military contractor, supplying the armies of Louis XIV and becoming rich in the process.   During the late 1650s he began seriously to consider the long-discussed idea of a waterway shortcut from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean.  Riquet became convinced that the construction of a canal linking the Atlantic with the Mediterranean by way of the rivers Garonne and Aude would indeed be a practical proposition.

In January 1663 Louis XIV's new finance minister [commissioned by] Colbert* appointed a Royal Commission to study Riquet's proposals. Working with the commission, over the next 20 months Riquet traversed the proposed route of the canal, and in November 1664 he formally presented the results of the survey, and the Commission advised that a still-water canal be built from Toulouse to the Mediterranean, and that a new Mediterranean port, Cette (modern, Sete), be built as a terminus. In October 1666, Louis XIV issued an Edict announcing the construction of a canal 150 miles long.

The work began in January 1667 on the feeder system and the large St. Ferreol dam and

reservoir in the Montagne Noire, and in April on the section of the canal between Toulouse and Naurouze.

By this time, Riquet had 4,000 labourers under his control (this would rise to more than 12,000), and by the beginning of 1672 the section of canal from Toulouse to Naurouze had been completed and was already in use.

The next section built was between Naurouze and Trebes, and then from Trebes to the Etang de Thau on the Mediterranean coast, where the new port of Sete was also being constructed.

On the Beziers-Agde section, Riquet ran into particular trouble, as he insisted on an extremely expensive and difficult high-level route (to avoid the flood plains of the River Aude) on this last section, which involved the construction of a short tunnel near Beziers from north to south through the Enserune ridge:  the famous 180-yard Malpas Tunnel, the first to have been built for a navigable canal, for which Riquet became the first engineer to use an explosive (black powder) for blasting rock.

He then oversaw the construction of the dramatic eight-lock staircase of Fonserannes, and the Canal du Midi was at last within sight of completion.

In 1680, only the last section of the canal from the river Herault to the Etang de Thau at les Onglous remained to be dug, with a single lock at Bagnas, but Riquet did not live to see its completion. He died, worn out by his labors,  while engaged on the harbour of Sete. The Canal du Midi opened the following year (1681), administered by his two sons, then owned and managed by his direct descendants for more than 100 years.

The completed canal is 150 miles long, with 101 locks, and is carried for considerable distances on embankments, with many aqueducts, tunnels and cuttings. After Riquet's death, the canal's feeder system was extended by the military engineer [work extended by] Vauban*, and the canal would in the 18th century provide the direct inspiration for the inland canal system constructed in England by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of [inspired] Bridgewater*.

Assessment: The canal was the greatest feat of engineering in Europe between Roman times and the 19th century.

Oneliner: Pierre-Paul Riquet, builder of the Canal du Midi

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