Family provenance and early years Joseph Abeille was born in
Vannes, a coastal town protected by its position at the head of the
Gulf of Morbihan on the southern side of
Brittany. For at least two thousand years the proximity of the
Atlantic Ocean had closely impacted economic and political developments in the town. Blaise Abeille (or Abeillé), his father was a businessman from
Marseille, where he entered into his first marriage which produced at least one child. Joseph Abeille was the second son from Blaise Abeille's second marriage which took place in
Paris in 1762. At the time of her marriage to Blaise Abeille, Joseph's mother, born Renée Jameron, was already a (young) widow, whose first husband, Jacques Pavin, had been a minor aristocrat and a
tax collector. The family's move to
Brittany may was probably in connection with Blaise Abeille having obtained a government job, since at the time of his sons' births he was employed as a "receveur général des impôts et Billots" (tax collector) in the
Bishopric of Vannes. Joseph's older brother was Olivier Abeille, born on 11 June 1672 and baptised less than a week later.
Military engineer Joseph Abeille came to the attention of the Paris-based scientific establishment in 1699 when he applied successfully to the
Académie royale des sciences to patent his radical design for flat vaulted roofing. He began his career as a
French king's engineer. The position was a military one, in which he was employed from 1703 During this period France was engaged in an
ambitious war which involved attempting to invade
the Netherlands, much of which lay at or below sea-level. When the situation became desperate the
Dutch military commander could - and on at least one occasion did - cut the dykes protecting a contested section of drained land, thereby displacing or drowning any French military personnel on it. An understanding of hydraulic engineering acquired a military importance unmatched before or since in French history. It was between 1703 and 1706 that Abeille acquired his reputation as an
hydraulic engineer. In 1706 appreciation dawned on
the French king that even the military might of France could not prevail on all fronts at once: attempts to invade
the Netherlands were abandoned. Around one hundred military engineers were "retired" from the army in 1706. One of them was Joseph Abeille. Another early commission was the
Maison de Saussure, a palatial town house constructed in
Geneva between 1707 and 1712 for a businessman called Jean-Antoine Lullin. Between 1708 and 1711 he also worked for the city authorities in
Geneva on the hydrological challenges presented by the city's location at the point on
the lake at which its waters
discharge (at variable rates according, approximately, to the time of year) into the
River Rhône. Between 1708 and 1711 he designed and supervised the construction of what contemporaries called a "lifting machine" (
"machine élévatoire"), which used the pressure from the flow of the water to force water up to the prosperous residences in the higher parts of the city, thereby creating piped water supplies at several different levels significantly more elevated than the lake-shore. The "Obelisk Fountain" in what is today known as the
Place du Molard is a surviving element of the scheme. In 1715 he produced a proposal for major redevelopments at the
Island Hospital ("Inselspital") in
Bern but his plans, at this stage, were not implemented.
Bazacle Milling Company By 1714 he was back in
France, implementing technical solutions to reactivate a water mill of the
Bazacle Company in
Toulouse. The dam which was a component of the water mill had been broken by winter ice during 1709, and despite several years of attempting to repair it and the expenditure of an hundred thousand pounds, five years later the mill was still out of action; and it had become impossible to find anyone in the Toulouse area prepared to invest further in it. Abeille arrived from
Geneva and agreed to finance the work in return for a 50% shareholding in the company along with the chairmanship of the company for as long as he should retain at least 30 of the company's 128 shares. These financial arrangements, unusual at the time, can be seen as a significant indication of the progression towards "modern" capitalism that was under way in France at the time. The broken dam defied even the ingenuity of Joseph Abeille, and in the end he built a larger completely new dam a short distance downstream. The work was not without difficulties, but in 1720 the mill was able to resume operation after slightly more than 12 years of inactivity. By that time Abeille had sold half his shares "to Geneva investors", and had found himself facing a legal challenge from co-investors who believed he had failed to honour all his early commitments. He nevertheless retained more than 30 shares at this point. However, during 1732 he disposed of all his remaining shares, over a three months period, to a number of different investors, ending his association with the
Bazacle Milling Company, which thereby returned to its former, more conventional, governance structure. Three hundred years after its completion the dam that Joseph Abeille constructed across the
Garonne continues to serve
Toulouse, but in 1888 the mill wheel was replaced by a small electricity generating facility: this was taken over by
EDF in 1946, and in 2020 remains in production. At around the same time, Abeille was approached by the
Estates of Burgundy who asked him to advise on the best route for a canal connecting the
Saône and the
Seine. In June 1724 he went to
Pouilly-en-Auxois which would be the starting point for the
Canal de Bourgogne (although it would be another half century before construction work would actually start, long after Abeille's death). In November 1724 the
Estates of Burgundy commissioned him to organise the levelling necessary for the construction of the canal and produce a cost estimate for the work. Although it remains uncertain how far the project progressed at this stage, the report which Abeille prepared jointly with
Jacques Gabriel, and which they presented to the Estates in 1727, was retained and has survived.
Bern In 1732 Abeille accepted an invitation which involved returning to
Switzerland. This time the invitation came from
Bern where he was contracted to produce plans for a new
Public Hospital ("Burgerspital" / Hôpital des bourgeois). This time his plans were implemented, the large hospital being constructed between 1734 and 1742: nearly three hundred years later in full splendour, notwithstanding a recent renovation and conversion exercise. On this occasion he spent a further three years in
Switzerland, undertaking commissions not just in Bern, but also in
Morges, where he implemented major improvements to the port, and
Solothurn, where his plans for a new bridge over the
Aare, failed to progress, but hospital and church buildings that he designed were constructed almost immediately, and had been largely completed by the time he went back to the west of
France in 1735. On 29 September of that year he submitted a project on the Fish Market Bridge (
"Pont de la Poissonnière") in Nantes. In 1740 he was engaged on a programme of extensive repairs to the still new
Nantes stock exchange building, which was evidently much too heavy for the soft ground on which it had been positioned. By the time Joseph Abeille died, in 1756, he had evidently moved back to
Rennes. == Personal ==