Rennequin Sualem was a Walloon

Walloons

Walloons are a French-speaking people who live in Belgium, principally in Wallonia. Walloons are a distinctive community within Belgium, important historical and anthropological criteria bind Walloons to the French people. More generally, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the Walloon...

 carpenter and engineer (Jemeppe-sur-Meuse

Jemeppe-sur-Meuse

Jemeppe-sur-Meuse is a section of the Belgian city of Seraing located in Wallonia, in the province of Liege. It was a separate municipality before the merging of municipalities in 1977. The inhabitants are about 10,000 and are called 'Jemeppians'.This town is best known for its steel industry, and...

 (Walloon Country) 1645 - Bougival

Bougival

Bougival is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the center....

 (France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 1708 ).

In 1667-1668 Lieutenant-Governor of the castle of Huy

Huy

Huy is a municipality of Belgium. It lies in the country's Walloon Region and Province of Liege. Huy lies along the river Meuse, at the mouth of the small river Hoyoux. It is in the sillon industriel, the former industrial backbone of Wallonia, home to about two-thirds of the Walloon population...

  ordered the building of an hydraulic machine in order to pump up the water of the Hoyoux

Hoyoux

The Hoyoux is a river of Belgium, a right tributary of the Meuse. It flows for 28 kilometres through the province of Liège in the northern-central part of the country. It flows into the Meuse in Huy....

  to his Castle in Modave

Modave

Modave is a municipality of Belgium. It lies in the country's Walloon Region and Province of Liege. On January 1, 2006, Modave had a total population of 3,722. The total area is 40.37 km² which gives a population density of 92 inhabitants per km². The magnificent "Château des Comtes de Marchin" or...

 50 m higher. Rennequin Sualem was commissionned to build the mechanism.

This mechanism is the model of the huge Machine de Marly

Machine de Marly

The Machine de Marly, also widely known as La Machine de Marly and The Machine of Marly, was a French engineering marvel completed in 1684. King Louis XIV needed a large water supply for his fountains at Versailles...

 which lifted the waters from the Seine to the palace of Louis XIV

Louis XIV of France

Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...

 in Versailles

Versailles

Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...

, in this case 150 m higher. Rennequin built also a pump for the coalmine of Decize

Decize

Decize is a commune in the Nièvre department in central France.-Site:The town is situated on a former island in the Loire at the confluent of the Aron river. The right channel of the Loire was dammed up to reclaim land and now remains as an arm stretching upstream to the centre of town...

. According Robert Halleux, the originality of the Rennequin's performance in Versailles was a transfer of a Walloon technology with a change of size which let reach it to its limits...
Rennequin was ennobled by Louis XIV and died in Bougival

Bougival

Bougival is a commune in the Yvelines department in the Île-de-France region in north-central France. It is located in the western suburbs of Paris from the center....

.