PAGAN, BLAISE FRANÇOIS COMTE DE, an eminent French mathematician, was born at Avignon, in Provence, on the 3d of March 1604, and embraced the profession of arms at fourteen, having been bred to it with the great-
Paganalia est care. In 1620 he was engaged at the siege of Caen, in the battle of Pont de Cé, and the reduction of the Navarrese, and the rest of Béarn, where he signalized himself, and acquired a reputation far surpassing his years. He was present in 1621 at the siege of St John d'Angeli; as also at that of Clarac and Montauban, where he lost his left eye by a musket-shot. After this time there happened neither siege nor battle in which he did not signalize himself by some effort of courage and conduct. At the passage of the Alps and the barricade of Suza, he put himself at the head of the forlorn hope, and immediately began a furious assault, and, the army coming to his assistance, forced the barricades. When the king laid siege to Nancy in 1633, Count Pagan had the honour to attend his sovereign, in drawing the lines and forts of circumvallation. In 1642 his majesty sent him to serve in Portugal in the capacity of field-marshal; and in the same year he unfortunately lost his eye-sight. But though he was thus disabled from serving his country in the field, he resumed, with greater vigour than ever, the study of the mathematics and fortification, and, in 1645, gave the public a treatise on this latter subject. In 1651 he published his Geometrical Theorems, which show a perfect knowledge of all parts of the mathematics. In 1657 he published his Theory of the Planets, a work which distinguished him amongst astronomers as much as that on fortification did amongst engineers; and, in 1658, his Astronomical Tables. Count Pagan died at Paris on the 18th of November 1665.