The King then passed into the cabinet where all those who possessed any court office attended him. He then announced what he expected to do that day and was left alone with those among his favourites of the royal children born illegitimately (whom he had publicly recognised and legitimated [16]) and a few favourites, with the valets. These were less pressing moments to discuss projects with the King, who parcelled out his attention with strict regard for the current standing of those closest to him. Displacement by end dumping is also a possibility for low levees that are constructed across sloughs and stream channels whose bottoms consist of very soft fine-grained soils. The depths of these deposits may not be large, yet the cost of removing them may not be justified. In this case, fill can be end-dumped from one side of the slough or channel. The weight of the fill will eventually displace the foundation soils to the sides and front so that the levee can be brought to grade. In this process, the fill should be advanced with a V-shaped leading edge so that the center of the fill is most advanced, displacing the soft material to both sides. The displaced material will generally come visible along the sides of the fill, and should not be removed. One disadvantage of this method is that all of the soft material may not be displaced, which could result in slides. Levees protecting inhabited river valley areas against inundations during floods were among the earliest engineering works. In ancient Egypt a series of levees was built along the left bank of the Nile River for more than 600 miles (966 km), from Aswan to the Mediterranean. The cooperative and coordinated enterprise involved in building such long, massive embankments must have been a strong incentive for the development of an organized society and a unified government in ancient Egypt, as well as in ancient Mesopotamia and China, which engaged in similar hydraulic engineering projects. In situations where undisturbed samples are either not being obtained or are difficult to obtained, in situ vane shear tests can be used to determine undrained shear strength. If shells or fibrous organic material are present, it can lead to errors in the test.

Sometimes levees are said to fail when water overtops the crest of the levee. This will cause flooding on the floodplains, but because it does not damage the levee, it has fewer consequences for future flooding. Riskier design: New Orleans' levees were built to sustain the city's growth, unlike the levees in neighboring areas, which were built to provide safety. As a result, New Orleans' levees were shorter and weaker. In his poem "The Dry Salvages," T.S. Eliot described the river as "a strong brown god," a powerful force that, while often patient and nurturing, frequently proves itself untam­able and merciless. The greatest cities in human history have risen up on the banks of rivers and by the seaside, but in doing so, their builders chose to­ live in close confines with an unruly force. Rivers have surged to wash away whole communities or changed course to abandon prosperous kingdoms to the dust. Even today, ocean storms threaten to decimate centuries' worth of human endeavor. The practice of holding court levées was continued by the British monarchy until 1939. These took the form of a formal reception at St James's Palace at which officials, diplomats, and military officers of all three armed services, were presented individually to the sovereign. Full dress uniform or court dress was worn by all participants, who formed a queue in the Throne Room before stepping forward when their names and ranks were called. Each then bowed to the king who was seated on a dais with male members of his family, officials of the Royal Household and senior officers behind him. [9] Levees in the British Empire and Commonwealth [ edit ] As an initial matter, all available information should be examined, such as topographic, soil and geological maps, as well as aerial photographs. All information on existing construction in the area should be obtaining, including anything related to utilities, highways, railroads and hydraulic structures. If there are any boring logs, they should be secured. Federal, state and private organizations provide free access to the Geographic Information System (GIS), which is capable of compelling large multi-layer databases, interactively analyzing and manipulating those databases, and generating and displaying resultant thematic maps and statistics to aid in engineering management decisions. This data should be utilized in making engineering decisions.Prominent levee systems have been built along the Mississippi River and Sacramento River in the United States, and the Po, Rhine, Meuse River, Rhône, Loire, Vistula, the delta formed by the Rhine, Maas/Meuse and Scheldt in the Netherlands and the Danube in Europe. During the Chinese Warring States period, the Dujiangyan irrigation system was built by the Qin as a water conservation and flood control project. The system's infrastructure is located on the Minjiang ( Chinese: 岷江; pinyin: Mínjiāng), which is the longest tributary of the Chang Jiang, in Sichuan, China. Ancient civilizations in the Indus Valley, ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and China all built levees. Today, levees can be found around the world, and failures of levees due to erosion or other causes can be major disasters, [7] such as the catastrophic 2005 levee failures in Greater New Orleans that occurred as a result of Hurricane Katrina. The river is on its floodplain with a very low gradient close gradient Another word for steepness. On a graph, the gradient is defined as being the change in the 'y' value divided by the change in the 'x' value. It defines how steep a line is.. The Mississippi levee system represents one of the largest such systems found anywhere in the world. It comprises over 5,600km (3,500mi) of levees extending some 1,000km (620mi) along the Mississippi, stretching from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, to the Mississippi delta. They were begun by French settlers in Louisiana in the 18th century to protect the city of New Orleans. [14] The first Louisiana levees were about 90cm (3ft) high and covered a distance of about 80km (50mi) along the riverside. [14] The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in conjunction with the Mississippi River Commission, extended the levee system beginning in 1882 to cover the riverbanks from Cairo, Illinois to the mouth of the Mississippi delta in Louisiana. [14] By the mid-1980s, they had reached their present extent and averaged 7.3m (24ft) in height; some Mississippi levees are as high as 15m (50ft). The Mississippi levees also include some of the longest continuous individual levees in the world. One such levee extends southwards from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, for a distance of some 610km (380mi). The scope and scale of the Mississippi levees has often been compared to the Great Wall of China. [15] The purpose of a levee is to keep the course of rivers from changing and to protect against flooding of the area adjoining the river or coast. Levees can be naturally occurring ridge structures that form next to the bank of a river or be an artificially constructed fill [4] or wall [5] that regulates water levels. However, levees can be bad for the environment. [6]

This practice was raised to a ceremonial custom at the court of King Louis XIV. [5] In the court etiquette that Louis formalised, the set of extremely elaborate conventions was divided into the grand lever, attended by the full court in the gallery outside the king's bedchamber, and the petit lever that transpired in degrees in the king's chamber, where only a very select group might serve the king as he rose and dressed. [5] In fact, the king had often risen early and put in some hours hunting before returning to bed for the start of the lever. Louis's grandson, King Philip V of Spain, and his queen typically spent all morning in bed, as reported by Saint-Simon, to avoid the pestering by ministers and courtiers that began with the lever. Stage construction can also be used where foundation material is not adequate to support the entire weight of the embankment, if it were built continuously at a pace faster than the foundation material could drain. In stage construction, the embankment is built in stages or intervals of time. It is built to intermediate grades and allow to rest before placing more fill, permitting dissipation of pore water pressures. This allows the foundation to gain strength so that higher embankment loading may be supported. The stage construction process works well for clay deposits that are interspersed with highly pervious silt or sand seams, provided that these seams have exits for the escaping water. Estimates of the time required for the needed strength gain can be made from the results of consolidation tests and study of boring data, with piezometers installed to monitor the rate of pore water dissipation. The main disadvantages of this method include delays in the construction process and uncertainty in scheduling and efficiency.Henry Petroski (2006). "Levees and Other Raised Ground". American Scientist. 94 (1): 7–11. doi: 10.1511/2006.57.7. A Look at Preventing Levee Erosion". Federal Emergency Management Agency. 11 February 2021 . Retrieved 28 June 2023.