« Sur l’application des règles de Maximis et Minimis à quelques Problèmes de Statique relatifs à l’Architecture » is an historical essay written in 1776 by Charles Augustin Coulomb, a French royal engineer. This essay is considered as the funding technical book for modern soil mechanics. In this essay he considers several architectural problems from an engineering point of view, among them, soil and retaining wall stability. Therefore in this essay he sets the bases of friction law which will lead to the definition of Mohr-Coulomb criterion for soil mechanics.