Transcriber's Note:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including inconsistent hyphenation. Some changes have been
made. They are listed at the end of the text.
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
MILITARY MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET
MILITARY MANNERS
AND CUSTOMS
BY
JAMES ANSON FARRER
AUTHOR OF
‘PRIMITIVE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS’ ‘CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS’ ETC.
[Illustration]
_‘Homo homini res sacra’_--Seneca
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1885
[_The right of translation is reserved._]
PREFACE.
In the present volume I have attempted within the limits of the
historical period and of our European civilisation, and without
recognising any hard and fast line between ancient and modern,
Christian and Pagan, to allude, in the places that seemed most
appropriate, to all points in the history of war that appeared to be
either of special interest or of essential importance. As examples
of such points I may refer to the treatment of prisoners of war, or
of surrendered garrisons; the rules about spies and surprises; the
introduction of, and feeling about, new weapons; the meaning of parts
of military dress; the origin of peculiar customs like the old one of
kissing the earth before a charge; the prevalent rules of honour, as
displayed in notions of justice in regard to reprisals, or of fairness
in stratagems and deception. The necessity of observing in so vast a
field the laws of proportion has enforced resort to such condensation,
that on subjects which deserve or possess their tomes upon tomes, I
have in many cases been unable to spend more than a page or a chapter.
It is easier, however, to err on the side of length than of brevity,
but on whichever side I have exceeded, I can only hope that others, who
may feel the same interest with myself in the subject without having
the same time to give to it, may derive a tithe of the pleasure from
reading the following nine chapters that I have found in putting them
together.
The study, of course, is no new one, but there can be no objection
to calling it by the new name of Bellology--a convenient term, quite
capable of holding its own with Sociology or its congeners. The only
novelty I have aimed at is one of treatment, and consists in never
losing sight of the fact that to all military customs there is a moral
and human side which has been only too generally ignored in this
connection. To read books like Grose’s ‘Military Antiquities,’ one
would think their writers were dealing with the manners, not of men but
of ninepins, so utterly do they divest themselves of all human interest
or moral feeling, in reference to the customs they describe with so
laudable but toneless an accuracy.
The starting-point of modern bellological studies will, undoubtedly,
always be the Parliamentary Blue Book, containing the reports (less
full than one might wish) of the Military International Conference
that met at Brussels in 1874, to discuss the existing laws and customs
of war, and to consider whether any modification of them were either
possible or desirable. Most of the representatives appointed to attend
by the several Powers were military men, so that we are carried by
their conversation into the actual realities of modern warfare, with
an authority and sense of truth that one is conscious of in no other
military book. It is to be regretted that such a work, instructive as
it is beyond any other on the subject, has never been printed in a
form more popular than its official dress. It was from it that I first
conceived the idea of the following pages, and in the sequel frequent
reference will be made to it, as the source of the most trustworthy
military information we possess, and as certain to be for some time
to come the standard work on all the actual laws and customs of
contemporary warfare.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAWS OF WAR.
PAGE
The prohibition of explosive bullets in war 2
The importance of the Declaration of St. Petersburg of 1868 3
The ultimate triumph of more destructive methods 4
Illustrated by history of the crossbow or the musket 5
Or of cannons, torpedoes, red-hot shot, or the bayonet 5
Numbers slain in modern and earlier warfare 8
The laws of war at the Brussels Conference of 1874 10
Do the laws of war tend to improve? 13
A negative answer suggested from reference 13
1. To the use of poison in war 14
2. To the bombardment of towns 15
3. To the destruction of public buildings 16
4. To the destruction of crops and fruit-trees 16
5. To the murder of prisoners or the wounded 17
6. To the murder of surrendered garrisons 18
7. To the destruction of fishing-boats 19
8. To the disuse of the declaration of war 19
9. To the torture and mutilation of combatants and
non-combatants 20
10. To the custom of contributions 20
The futile attempts of Grotius and Vattel to humanise warfare 21
The rights of war in the time of Grotius 24
The futility of international law with regard to laws of war 26
The employment of barbarian troops 26
The taking of towns by assault 27
The laws of war contrasted with the practice 28
War easier to abolish than to humanise 30
CHAPTER II.
WARFARE IN CHIVALROUS TIMES.
Delusion about character of war in days of chivalry 32
The common slaughter of women and children 33
The Earl of Derby’s sack of Poitiers 34
The massacres of Grammont and Gravelines 35
The old poem of the Vow of the Heron 36
The massacre of Limoges by Edward the Black Prince 37
The imprisonment of ladies for ransom 38
Prisoners of war starved to death 39
Or massacred, if no prospect of ransom 41
Or blinded or otherwise mutilated 42
The meaning of a surrender at discretion 44
As illustrated by Edward III. at Calais 44
And by several instances in the same and the next century 45
The practice of burning in aid of war 47
And of destroying sacred buildings 47
The practice of poisoning the air 49
The use of barbarous weapons 50
The influence of religion on war 51
The Church in vain on the side of peace 52
Curious vows of the knights 54
The slight personal danger incurred in war by them 54
The explanation of their magnificent costume 55
Field sports in war-time 56
The desire of gain the chief motive of war 57
The identity of soldiers and brigands 57
The career and character of the Black Prince 59
The place of money in the history of chivalry 61
Its influence as a war-motive between England and France 62
General low character of chivalrous warfare 64
CHAPTER III.
NAVAL WARFARE.
Robbery the first object of maritime warfare 66
The piratical origin of European navies 67
Merciless character of wars at sea 69
Fortunes made by privateering in England 71
Privateers commissioned by the State 72
Privateers defended by the publicists 73
Distinction between privateering and piracy 73
Failure of the State to regulate privateering 74
Privateering condemned by Lord Nelson 77
Privateering abolished by the declaration of Paris in 1856 78
Modern feeling against seizure of private property at sea 79
Naval warfare in days of wooden ships 80
Unlawful methods of maritime war 81
The Emperor Leo VI.’s ‘Treatise on Tactics’ 83
The use of fire-ships 84
Death the penalty for serving in fire-ships 85
Torpedoes originally regarded as ‘bad’ war 85
English and French doctrine of rights of neutrals 86
Enemy’s property under neutral flag secured by Treaty of Paris 87
Shortcomings of the Treaty of Paris with regard to--
1. A definition of what is contraband 88
2. The right of search of vessels under convoy 88
3. The practice of Embargoes 89
4. The _Jus Angariæ_ 90
The International Marine Code of the future 91
CHAPTER IV.
MILITARY REPRISALS.
International law on legitimate reprisals 93
The Brussels Conference on the subject 95
Illustrations of barbarous reprisals 97
Instances of non-retaliation 98
Savage reprisals in days of chivalry 100
Hanging the commonest reprisals for a brave defence 101
As illustrated by the warfare of the fifteenth century 102
Survival of the custom to our own times 104
The massacre of a conquered garrison still a law of war 105
The shelling of Strasburg by the Germans 106
Brutal warfare of Alexander the Great 107
The connection between bravery and cruelty 110
The abolition of slavery in its effects on war 112
The storming of Magdeburg, Brescia, and Rome 112
Cicero on Roman warfare 114
The reprisals of the Germans in France in 1870 115
Their revival of the custom of taking hostages 117
Their resort to robbery as a plea of reprisals 118
General Von Moltke on perpetual peace 119
The moral responsibility of the military profession 121
The Press as a potent cause of war 122
Plea for the abolition of demands for unconditional surrender 123
Such as led to the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 123
CHAPTER V.
MILITARY STRATAGEMS.
Grotius’ theory of fair stratagems 126
The teaching of international law 127
Ancient and modern naval stratagems 127
Early Roman dislike of such stratagems 132
As ambuscades, feigned retreats, or night attacks 132
The degenerate standard of Frontinus and Polyænus 135
The Conference stratagem of modern Europe 136
The distinction between perfidy and stratagem 139
The perfidy of Francis I. 140
Vattel’s theory about spies 141
Frederick the Great’s military instructions about spies 142
Lord Wolseley on spies and truth in war 144
The custom of hanging or shooting spies 145
Better to keep them as prisoners of war 146
Balloonists regarded as spies 147
The practice of military surprises 148
Death formerly the penalty for capture in a surprise 150
Stratagems of uncertain character 151
Such as forged despatches or false intelligence 151
The use of the telegraph in deceiving the enemy 151
May prisoners of war be compelled to propagate lies? 152
General character of the military code of fraud 153
CHAPTER VI.
BARBARIAN WARFARE.
Variable notions of honour 156
Primitive ideas of a military life 156
What is civilised warfare? 158
Advanced laws of war among several savage tribes 159
Symbols of peace among savages 161
The Samoan form of surrender 162
Treaties of peace among savages 162
Abeyance of laws of war in hostilities with savages 163
Zulus blown up in caves with gun-cotton 165
Women and men kidnapped for transport service on the Gold Coast 166
Humane intentions of the Spaniards in the New World 167
Contrasted with the inhumanity of their actions 167
Wars with natives of English and French in America 170
High rewards offered for scalps 171
The use of bloodhounds in war 171
The use of poison and infected clothes 172
Penn’s treaty with the Indians 173
How Missionaries come to be a cause of war 176
Explanation of the failure of modern missions 178
The mission stations as centres of hostile intrigues 179
Plea for the State-regulation of missions 181
Depopulation under Protestant influences 181
The prevention of false rumours--_Tendenzlügen_ 182
Civilised and barbarian warfare 183
No real distinction between them 184
CHAPTER VII.
WAR AND CHRISTIANITY.
The war question at the time of the Reformation 185
The remonstrances of Erasmus against the custom 186
Influence of Grotius on the side of war 187
The war question in the early Church 188
The Fathers against the lawfulness of war 190
Causes of the changed views of the Church 192
The clergy as active combatants for over a thousand years 193
Fighting bishops 193
Bravery in war and ecclesiastical preferment 196
Pope Julius II. at the siege of Mirandola 197
The last fighting bishop 197
Origin and meaning of the declaration of war 198
Superstition in the naming of weapons, ships, &c. 200
The custom of kissing the earth before a charge 201
Connection between religious and military ideas 202
The Church as a pacific agency 204
Her efforts to set limits to reprisals 207
The altered attitude of the modern Church 208
Early Reformers only sanctioned _just_ wars 208
Voltaire’s reproach against the Church 210
Canon Mozley’s sermon on war 212
The answer to his apology 214
CHAPTER VIII.
CURIOSITIES OF MILITARY DISCIPLINE.
Increased severity of discipline 218
Limitation of the right of matrimony 219
Compulsory Church parade and its origin 219
Atrocious military punishments 221
Reasons for the military love of red 223
The origin of bear-skin hats 223
Different qualities of bravery 225
Historical fears for the extinction of courage 225
The conquests of the cause of Peace 227
Causes of the unpopularity of military service 228
The dulness of life in the ranks 228
The prevalence of desertion 230
Articles of war against Malingering 231
Military artificial ophthalmia 233
The debasing influence of discipline 234
Illustrated from the old flogging system 235
The discipline of the Peninsular army 236
Attempts to make the service more popular 239
By raising the private’s wages 239
By shortening his term of service 240
The old recruiting system of France and Germany 241
The conscription imminent in England 242
The question of military service for women 242
The probable results of the conscription 243
Militarism answerable for Socialism 246
CHAPTER IX.
THE LIMITS OF MILITARY DUTIES.
The old feeling of the moral stain of bloodshed 250
Military purificatory customs 250
Modern change of feeling about warfare 252
Descartes on the profession of arms 254
The old-world sentiment in favour of piracy 255
The central question of military ethics 257
May a soldier be indifferent to the cause of war? 257
The right to serve made conditional on a good cause 258
By St. Augustine, Bullinger, Grotius, and Sir James Turner 258
Old Greek feeling about mercenary service 260
Origin of our mercenary as opposed to gratuitous service 260
Armies raised by military contractors 261
The value of the distinction between foreign and native
mercenaries 262
Original limitation of military duty 264
To the actual defence of the realm 264
Extension of the notion of allegiance 265
The connection of the military oath with the first Mutiny Act 265
Recognised limits to the claims on a soldier’s obedience 266
The falsity of the common doctrine of duty 266
Illustrated by the devastation of the Palatinate by the French 267
And by the bombardment of Copenhagen by the English 268
The example of Admiral Keppel 270
Justice between nations 271
Its observation in ancient India and Rome 271
St. Augustine and Bayard on justice in war 273
Grotius on good grounds of war 273
The military claim to exemption from moral responsibility 276
The soldier’s first duty to his conscience 279
The admission of this principle involves the end of war 280
MILITARY MANNERS AND CUSTOMS.
CHAPTER I.
THE LAWS OF WAR.
_Ce sont des lois de la guerre. Il faut estre bien cruel bien
souvent pour venir au bout de son ennemi; Dieu doit estre
bien miséricordieux en nostre endroict, qui faisons tant de
maux._--MARSHAL MONTLUC.
The prohibition of explosive bullets in war--The importance of the
Declaration of St. Petersburg of 1868--The ultimate triumph of
more destructive methods--Illustrated by history of the cross-bow
or the musket; or of cannons, torpedoes, red-hot shot, or the
bayonet--Numbers slain in modern and earlier warfare--The laws of
war at the Brussels Conference of 1874--Do the laws of war tend to
improve?--A negative answer suggested from reference: (1) to the
use of poison in war; (2) to the bombardment of towns; (3) to the
destruction of public buildings; (4) to the destruction of crops
and fruit trees; (5) to the murder of prisoners or the wounded; (6)
to the murder of surrendered garrisons; (7) to the destruction of
fishing boats; (8) to the disuse of the declaration of war; (9) to
the torture and mutilation of combatants and non-combatants; (10)
to the custom of contributions--The futile attempts of Grotius
and Vattel to humanise warfare--The rights of war in the time of
Grotius--The futility of international law with regard to laws of
war--The employment of barbarian troops--The taking of towns by
assault--The laws of war contrasted with the practice--War easier
to abolish than to humanise.
It is impossible to head a chapter ‘The Laws of War’ without thinking
of that famous chapter on Iceland headed ‘The Snakes of Iceland,’
wherein the writer simply informed his readers that there were none in
the country. ‘The laws of war’ make one think of the snakes of Iceland.
Nevertheless, a summary denial of their existence would deprive the
history of the battle-field of one of its most interesting features;
for there is surely nothing more surprising to an impartial observer of
military manners and customs than to find that even in so just a cause
as the defence of your own country limitations should be set to the
right of injuring your aggressor in any manner you can.
What, for instance, can be more obvious in such a case than that no
suffering you can inflict is needless which is most likely permanently
to disable your adversary? Yet, by virtue of the International
Declaration of St. Petersburg, in 1868, you may not use explosive
bullets against him, because it is held that they would cause him
needless suffering. By the logic of war, what can be clearer than that,
if the explosive bullet deals worse wounds, and therefore inflicts
death more readily than other destructive agencies, it should be
used? or else that those too should be excluded from the rules of the
game--which might end in putting a stop to the game altogether?
The history of the explosive bullet is worth recalling, for its
prohibition is a straw to clutch at in these days of military revival.
Like the plague, and perhaps gunpowder, it had an Eastern origin. It
was used originally in India against elephants and tigers. In 1863 it
was introduced into the Russian army, and subsequently into other
European armies, for use against ammunition-waggons. But it was not
till 1867 that a slight modification in its construction rendered it
available for the destruction of mankind. The world owes it to the
humanity of the Russian Minister of War, General Milutine, that at this
point a pause was made; and as the Czar, Alexander II., was no less
humane than his minister, the result was the famous Declaration, signed
in 1868 by all the chief Powers (save the United States), mutually
foregoing in their future wars by land or sea the use of projectiles
weighing less than 400 grammes (to save their use for artillery),
either explosive or filled with inflammable substances. The Court of
Berlin wished at the time for some other destructive contrivances to be
equally excluded, but the English Government was afraid to go further;
as if requiring breathing time after so immense an effort to diminish
human suffering, before proceeding in so perilous a direction.
The Declaration of St. Petersburg, inasmuch as it is capable of
indefinite expansion, is a somewhat awkward precedent for those who
in their hearts love war and shield its continuance with apologetic
platitudes. How, they ask, can you enforce agreements between nations?
But this argument begins to totter when we remember that there is
absolutely no superior power or tribunal in existence which can enforce
the observance of the St. Petersburg Declaration beyond the conscience
of the signatory Powers. It follows, therefore, that if international
agreements are of value, there is no need to stop short at this or that
bullet: which makes the arbitration-tribunal loom in the distance
perceptibly nearer than it did before.
At first sight, this agreement excluding the use of explosive bullets
would seem to favour the theory of those who see in every increase in
the peril of war the best hope of its ultimate cessation. A famous
American statesman is reported to have said, and actually to have
appealed to the invention of gunpowder in support of his statement,
that every discovery in the art of war has, from this point of view,
a life-saving and peace-promoting influence.[1] But it is difficult
to conceive a greater delusion. The whole history of war is against
it; for what has that history been but the steady increase of the
pains and perils of war, as more effective weapons of destruction have
succeeded one another? The delusion cannot be better dispelled than by
consideration of the facts that follow.
It has often seemed as if humanity were about to get the better of
the logical tendency of the military art. The Lateran Council of 1139
(a sort of European congress in its day) not only condemned Arnold of
Brescia to be burnt for heresy, but anathematised the cross-bow for its
inhumanity. It forbade its use in Christian warfare as alike hateful to
God and destructive of mankind.[2] Several brave princes disdained to
employ cross-bow shooters, and Innocent III. confirmed the prohibition
on the ground that it was not fair to inflict on an enemy more than the
least possible injury.[3] The long-bow consequently came into greater
use. But Richard I., in spite of Popes or Councils or Chivalry, revived
the use of the cross-bow in Europe; nor, though his death by one
himself was regarded as a judgment from Heaven, did its use from that
time decline till the arquebus and then the musket took its place.
Cannons and bombs were at first called diabolical, because they
suggested the malice of the enemy of mankind, or serpentines, because
they seemed worse than the poison of serpents.[4] But even cannons were
at first only used against fortified walls, and there is a tradition
of the first occasion when they were directed against men.[5] And
torpedoes, now used without scruple, were called infamous and infernal
when, under the name of American Turtles, they were first tried by the
American Colonies against the ships of their mother country.
In the sixteenth century, that knight ‘without fear or reproach,’ the
Chevalier Bayard, ordered all musketeers who fell into his hands to
be slain without mercy, because he held the introduction of fire-arms
to be an unfair innovation on the rules of lawful war. So red-hot
shot (or balls made red hot before insertion in the cannon) were at
first objected to, or only considered fair for purposes of defence,
not of attack. Yet, what do we find?--that Louis XIV. fired some
12,000 of them into Brussels in 1694; that the Austrians fired them
into Lille in 1792; and that the English batteries fired them at the
ships in Sebastopol harbour, which formed part of the Russian defences.
Chain-shot and bar-shot were also disapproved of at first, or excluded
from use by conventions applying only to particular wars; now there
exists no agreement precluding their use, for they soon became common
in battles at sea.
The invention of the bayonet supplies another illustration. The
accounts of its origin are little better than legends: that it was
invented so long ago as 1323 by a woman of Bayonne in defence of the
ramparts of that city against the English; or by Puséygur, of Bayonne,
about 1650; or borrowed by the Dutch from the natives of Madagascar;
or connected with a place called the Redoute de la Baïonnette in the
Eastern Pyrenees, where the Basques, having exhausted their ammunition
against the Spaniards, are said to have inserted their knives into
the muzzles of their guns. But it is certain that as soon as the idea
was perfected by fixing the blade by rings outside the muzzle (in
the latter quarter of the seventeenth century), battles became more
murderous than ever, though the destruction of infantry by cavalry
was diminished. The battle of Neerwinden in 1693, in which the French
general, Luxembourg, defeated the Prince of Orange, is said to have
been the first battle that was decided by a charge with a bayonet, and
the losses were enormous on both sides.[6]
History, in fact, is full of such cases, in which the victory has
uniformly lain ultimately with the legitimacy of the weapon or method
that was at first rejected as inhumane. For the moment, the law of
nations forbids the use of certain methods of destruction, such as
bullets filled with glass or nails, or chemical compounds like kakodyl,
which could convert in a moment the atmosphere round an army into one
of deadly poison;[7] yet we have nothing like certainty--we have not
even historical probability--that these forbidden means, or worse
means, will not be resorted to in the wars of the future, or that
reluctance to meet such forms of death will in the least degree affect
either their frequency or their duration.
It is easy to explain this law of history. The soldier’s courage, as he
faces the mitrailleuse with the same indifference with which he would
face snow-balls or bread-pellets, is a miracle of which discipline is
the simple explanation; for whether the soldier be hired or coerced to
face death, it is all one to him against what kind of bullet he rushes,
so long as discipline remains--as Helvetius the French philosopher
once defined it, the art of making soldiers more afraid of their own
officers than of their enemy.[8] To Clearchus, the Lacedæmonian, is
attributed the saying that a soldier should always fear his own general
more than the enemy: a mental state easily produced in every system of
military mechanism. Whatever form of death be in front of a man, it
is less certain than that in his rear. The Ashantees as they march
to battle sing a song which is the soldier’s philosophy all the world
over: ‘If I go on, I shall die; if I stay behind I shall be killed; it
is better to go on.’[9]
How often is it said, in extenuation of modern warfare, that it is
infinitely less destructive than that of ancient or even mediæval
times; and that the actual loss of life in battle has not kept pace
with the development of new and more effective life-taking implements!
Yet it is difficult to imagine a stranger paradox, or a proposition
that, if true, would reflect greater descredit on our mechanical
science. If our Gatling guns, or Nordenfeldt 5-barrels capable of
firing 600 rounds a minute, are less effective to destroy an enemy than
all the paraphernalia of a mediæval army, why not in that case return
to weapons that by the hypothesis better fulfilled the purposes of war?
This question is a _reductio ad absurdum_ of this soothing delusion;
but as a matter of fact, there is no comparison in destructiveness
between our modern warfare and that of our ancestors. The apparent
difference in our favour arises from a practice alluded to by Philip
de Commines, which throws a flood of light upon the subject: ‘There
were slain in this battle about 6,000 men, which, to people that are
unwilling to lie, may seem very much; but in my time I have been in
several actions, where for one man that was really slain they have
reported a hundred, thinking by such an account to please their
masters; and they sometimes deceive them with their lies.’ That is to
say, as a rule the number of the slain should be divided by a hundred.
This remark applies even to battles like Crecy or Agincourt, where the
numbers slain were unusually high, and where they are said to have been
accurately ascertained by counting after the victory. When Froissart on
such authority quotes 1,291 as the total number of warriors of knightly
or higher rank slain at Crecy, it is possible of course that he is not
the victim of deception; but what of the 30,000 common soldiers for
whose death he also vouches? A monk of St. Albans, also a contemporary,
speaks only of an unknown number (_et vulgus cujus numerus ignoratur_);
which in the account of the Abbot Hugo was put definitely at more than
100,000. It is evident from this that the greatest laxity prevailed
in reference to chronicling the numbers of the slain; so that if we
take 3,000 instead of 30,000 as the sum total of common soldiers slain
at Crecy, it is probable that we shall be nearer the truth than if we
implicitly accept Froissart’s statement.
The same scepticism will of course hold good of the battles of the
ancient world. Is it likely, for instance, that in a battle in which
the Romans are said only to have lost 100 men, the Macedonians should
have lost 20,000?[10] Or again, is it possible, considering the
difficulty of the commissariat of a large army, even in our own days
of trains and telegraphs and improved agriculture, that Marius in one
battle can have slain 200,000 Teutons, and taken 90,000 prisoners?
But whilst no conclusion is possible but that the figures of the older
histories are altogether too untrustworthy to afford any basis for
comparison, the calculation rests on something more like fair evidence,
that in the fortnight between August 4, 1870, the date of the battle
of Wissembourg, and August 18, that of Gravelotte, including the
battles of Woerth and Forbach on August 6, of Courcelles on the 14th,
and of Vionville on the 16th more than 100,000 French and Germans
met their death on the battle-field, to say nothing of those who
perished afterwards in agonies in the hospitals. Recent wars have been
undoubtedly shorter than they often were in olden times, but their
brevity is founded on no reason that can ensure its recurrence: nor, if
100,000 are to be miserably cast out of existence, is the gain so very
great, if the task, instead of being spread over a number of years,
requires only a fortnight for its accomplishment.
For the nearest approach to a statement of what the laws of war in our
own time really are, we must turn to the Brussels Conference, which
met in 1874 at the summons of the same great Russian to whom the world
owes the St. Petersburg Declaration, and which constituted a genuine
attempt to mitigate the evils of war by an international agreement and
definition of their limits. The idea of such a plan was originally
suggested by the Instructions published in 1863 by President Lincoln
for the government of the armies of the United States in the civil
war.[11] The project for such an international agreement, originally
submitted by the Russian Government for discussion, was very much
modified before even a compromise of opinion could be arrived at on
the several points it contained. And the project so modified, as a
preliminary basis for future agreement, owing to the timid refusal
of the English Government to take further part in the matter, never,
unfortunately, reached its final stage of a definite code;[12] but it
remains nevertheless the most authoritative utterance extant of the
laws generally thought to be binding in modern warfare on the practices
and passions of the combatants. The following articles from the project
as finally modified are undoubtedly the most important:--
_Art. 12._ The laws of war do not allow to belligerents an unlimited
power as to the choice of means of injuring the enemy.
_Art. 13._ According to this principle are strictly forbidden--
_a._ The use of poison or poisoned weapons.
_b._ Murder by treachery of individuals belonging to the hostile
nation or army.
_c._ Murder of an antagonist who, having laid down his arms, or having
no longer the means of defending himself, has surrendered at
discretion.
_d._ The declaration that no quarter will be given.
_e._ The use of arms, projectiles, or substances which may cause
unnecessary suffering, as well as of those prohibited by the
Declaration of St. Petersburg in 1868.
_f._ Abuse of the flag of truce, the national flag, or the military
insignia or uniform of the enemy, as well as the distinctive badges
of the Geneva Convention.
_g._ All destruction or seizure of the enemy’s property which is not
imperatively required by the necessity of war.
_Art. 15._ Fortified places are alone liable to be besieged. Towns,
agglomerations of houses or villages which are open or undefended,
cannot be attacked or bombarded.
_Art. 17._ ... All necessary steps should be taken to spare as far as
possible buildings devoted to religion, arts, sciences, and charity,
hospitals and places where sick and wounded are collected, on condition
that they are not used at the same time for military purposes.
_Art. 18._ A town taken by storm shall not be given up to the
victorious troops for plunder.
_Art. 23._ Prisoners of war ... should be treated with humanity.... All
their personal effects except their arms are to be considered their own
property.
_Arts. 36, 37._ The population of an occupied territory cannot be
compelled to take part in military operations against their own
country, nor to swear allegiance to the enemy’s power.
_Art. 38._ The honour and rights of the family, the life and property
of individuals, as well as their religious convictions and the exercise
of their religion, should be respected.
Private property cannot be confiscated.
_Art. 39._ Pillage is expressly forbidden.
There is at first sight a pleasing ring of humanity in all this,
though, as yet, it only represents the better military spirit, which is
always far in advance of actual military practice. In the monotonous
history of war there are always commanders who wage it with less
ferocity than others, and writers who plead for the mitigation of
its cruelties. As in modern history a Marlborough, a Wellington, or
a Villars forms a pleasant contrast to a Feuquières, a Belleisle, or
a Blücher, so in ancient history a Marcellus or a Lucullus helps us
to forget a Marius or an Alexander; and the sentiments of a Cicero or
Tacitus were as far in advance of their time as those of a Grotius or
Vattel were of theirs. According to the accident of the existence of
such men, the laws of war fluctuate from age to age; but, the question
arises, Do they become perceptibly milder? do they ever permanently
improve?
It will be said that they do, because it will be said that they have;
and that the annals of modern wars present nothing to resemble the
atrocities that may be collected from ancient or mediæval history. Yet
such statements carry no conviction. Deterioration seems as likely as
improvement; and unless the custom is checked altogether, the wars of
the twentieth century may be expected to exceed in barbarity anything
of which we have any conception. A very brief inquiry will suffice to
dispel the common assurances of improvement and progress.
Poison is forbidden in war, says the Berlin Conference; but so it
always was, even in the Institutes of Menu, and with perhaps less
difference of opinion in ancient than in modern times. Grotius and
Vattel and most of their followers disallow it, but two publicists
of grave authority defend it, Bynkershoeck and Wolff. The latter
published his ‘Jus Gentium’ as late as 1749, and his argument is worth
translating, since it can only be met by arguments which equally apply
to other modes of military slaughter. ‘Naturally it is lawful to kill
an enemy by poison; for as long as he is our enemy, he resists the
reparation of our right, so that we may exercise against his person
whatever suffices to avert his power from ourselves or our possessions.
Therefore it is not unfair to get rid of him. But, since it comes to
the same thing whether you get rid of him by the sword or by poison
(which is self-evident, because in either case you get rid of him, and
he can no longer resist or injure you), it is naturally lawful to kill
an enemy by poison.’ And so, he argues with equal force, of poisoned
weapons.[13] That poison is not in use in our day we do not therefore
owe to our international lawyers, but to the accident of tradition. In
Roman history the theory appears to have been unanimous against it.
‘Such conduct,’ says the Roman writer Florus of a general who poisoned
some springs in order to bring some cities in Asia to a speedier
surrender, ‘although it hastened his victory, rendered it infamous,
since it was done not only against divine law, but against ancestral
customs.’[14] Our statesman Fox refused indignantly to avail himself
of an offer to poison Napoleon, but so did the Roman consuls refuse a
similar proposal with regard to Pyrrhus; and Tiberius and the Roman
senate replied to a plan for poisoning Arminius, that the Roman people
punished their enemies not by fraud or in secret, but openly and in
arms.
The history of bombarding towns affords an instance of something
like actual deterioration in the usages of modern warfare. Regular
and simple bombardment, that is, of a town indiscriminately and not
merely its fortresses, has now become the established practice. Yet,
what did Vattel say in the middle of the last century? ‘At present we
generally content ourselves with battering the ramparts and defences of
a place. To destroy a town with bombs and red-hot balls is an extremity
to which we do not proceed without cogent reasons.’ What said Vauban
still earlier? ‘The fire must be directed simply at the defences and
batteries of a place ... and not against the houses.’ Then what of the
English bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, when the cathedral and some
300 houses were destroyed; what of the German bombardment of Strasburg
in 1870, where rifled mortars were used for the first time,[15] and the
famous library and picture gallery destroyed; and what lastly of the
German bombardment of Paris, about which, strangely enough, even the
military conscience of the Germans was struck, so that in the highest
circles doubts about the propriety of such a proceeding at one time
prevailed from a moral no less than from a military point of view?[16]
With respect again to sacred or public buildings, warfare tends to
become increasingly destructive. It was the rule in Greek warfare to
spare sacred buildings, and the Romans frequently spared sacred and
other buildings, as Marcellus, for instance, at Syracuse.[17] Yet when
the French ravaged the Palatinate in 1689 they not only set fire to the
cathedrals, but sacked the tombs of the ancient Emperors at Spiers.
Frederick II. destroyed some of the finest buildings at Dresden and
Prague. In 1814 the English forces destroyed the Capitol at Washington,
the President’s house, and other public buildings;[18] and in 1815 the
Prussian general, Blücher, was with difficulty restrained from blowing
up the Bridge of Jena at Paris and the Pillar of Austerlitz. Military
men have always the excuse of reprisals or accident for these acts of
Vandalism. Yet Vattel had said (in language which but repeated the
language of Polybius and Cicero): ‘We ought to spare those edifices
which do honour to human society, and do not contribute to the enemy’s
strength, such as temples, tombs, public buildings, and all works of
remarkable beauty.’
Of as little avail has been the same writer’s observation that those
who tear up vines and cut down fruit trees are to be looked upon
as savage. The Fijian islanders were barbarians enough, but even
they used as a rule to spare their enemies’ fruit trees; so did the
ancient Indians; and the Koran forbids the wanton destruction of fruit
trees, palm trees, corn and cattle. Then what shall we think of the
armies of Louis XIV. in the Palatinate not only burning castles,
country-houses, and villages, but ruthlessly destroying crops, vines,
and fruit trees?[19] or of the Prussian warrior, Blücher, destroying
the ornamental trees at Paris in 1815?
It is said that the Germans refused to let the women and children leave
Strasburg before they began to bombard it in 1870.[20] Yet Vattel
himself tells us how Titus, at the siege of Jerusalem, suffered the
women and children to depart, and how Henri IV., besieging Paris, had
the humanity to let them pass through his lines.
It was in a campaign of this century, 1815, that General Roquet
collected the French officers, and bade them tell the grenadiers that
the first man who should bring him in a Prussian prisoner should be
shot; and it was in reprisals for this that a few days later the
Prussians killed the French wounded at Genappe.[21]
Grotius, after quoting the fact that a decree of the Amphictyons
forbade the destruction of any Greek city in war, asserts the existence
of a stronger bond between the nations of Christendom than between
the states of ancient Greece. And then we remember how the Prussians
bombarded the Danish town of Sönderborg, and almost utterly destroyed
it, though it lay beyond the possibility of their possession; and we
think of Peronne in France reduced to ruins, with the greater part of
its fine cathedral, in 1870; and of the German shells directed against
the French fire-engines that endeavoured to save the Strasburg Library
from the flames that consumed it; and we wonder that so great a jurist
could have been capable of so grievous a delusion.
To murder a garrison that had made an obstinate defence, or in order
to terrorise others from doing the same, was a right of modern war
disputed by Grotius, but admitted by Vattel not to be totally exploded
a century later. Yet they both quote cases which prove that to murder
enemies who had made a gallant defence was regarded in ancient times as
a violation of the laws of war.
To murder enemies who had surrendered was as contrary to Greek or
Roman as it ever was to Christian warfare. The general Greek and
Roman practice was to allow quarter to an enemy who surrendered, and
to redeem or exchange their prisoners.[22] There was indeed, by the
laws of war, a right to slay or enslave them, and though both rights
were sometimes exercised with great barbarity, the extent to which the
former right was exercised has been very much exaggerated. Otherwise,
why should Diodorus Siculus, in the century preceding our era, have
spoken of mercy to prisoners as the common law (τὰ κοινὰ νόμιμα), and
of the violation of such law as an act of exceptional barbarity?[23]
It may be fairly doubted whether the French prisoners in the English
hulks during the war with Napoleon suffered less than the Athenian
prisoners in the mines of Syracuse; and as to quarter, what of the
French volunteers or Franc-tireurs who in 1870 fell into the hands of
the Germans, or of the French peasants, who, though levied and armed
by the local authorities under the proclamation of Napoleon, were, if
taken, put to death by the Allies in 1814?
Some other illustrations tend further to show that there is no real
progress in war, and that many of the fancied mitigations of it are
merely accidental and ephemeral features.
The French and English in olden time used to spare one another’s
fishing boats and their crews. ‘Fishermen,’ said Froissart, ‘though
there may be war between France and England, never injure one another;
they remain friends, and assist each other in case of need, and buy
and sell their fish whenever one has a larger quantity than the other,
for if they were to fight we should have no fresh fish.’[24] Yet in
the Crimean war, the English fleets in the Baltic seized or burnt the
fishing boats of the Finns, and destroyed the cargoes of fish on which,
having been salted in the summer months, they were dependent for their
subsistence during the winter.[25]
Polybius informs us that the Œtolians were regarded as the common
outlaws of Greece, because they did not scruple to make war without
declaring it. Invasions of that sort were regarded as robberies, not
as lawful wars. Yet declarations of war may now be dispensed with, the
first precedent for doing so having been set by Gustavus Adolphus.
Gustavus Adolphus, in 1627, issued some humane Articles of War, which
forbade, among other things, injuries to old men, women, and children.
Yet within a few years the Swedish soldiery, like other troops of their
time, made the gratuitous torture and mutilation of combatants or
non-combatants a common episode of their military proceedings.[26]
When Henry V. of England invaded France, early in the fifteenth
century, he forbade in his General Orders the wanton injury of
property, insults to women, or gratuitous bloodshed. Yet four centuries
later the character of war had so little changed that we find the Duke
of Wellington, when invading the same country, lamenting in a General
Order that, ‘according to all the information which the Commander
of the Forces had received, outrages of all descriptions’ had been
committed by his troops, ‘in presence even of their officers, who took
no pains whatever to prevent them.’[27]
The French complain that their last war with Germany was not war,
but robbery; as if pillage and war had ever been distinct in fact
or were distinguishable in thought. There appears to have been very
little limit to the robbery that was committed under the name of
contributions; yet Vattel tells us that, though in his time the
practice had died out, the belligerent sovereigns, in the wars of Louis
XIV., used to regulate by treaty the extent of hostile territory in
which each might levy contributions, together with the amount which
might be levied, and the manner in which the levying parties were to
conduct themselves.[28]
Is it not proved then by the above facts, that the laws of war
rather fluctuate from age to age within somewhat narrow limits than
permanently improve, and that they are apt to lose in one direction
whatever they gain in another? Humanity in warfare now, as in
antiquity, remains the exception, not the rule; and may be found now,
as at all times, in books or in the finer imaginations of a few, far
more often than in the real life of the battle-field. The plea of
shortening the horrors of war is always the plea for carrying them to
an extreme; as by Louvois for devastating the Palatinate, or by Suchet,
the French general, for driving the helpless women and children into
the citadel of Lerida, and for then shelling them all night with the
humane object of bringing the governor to a speedier surrender.[29]
Writers on the Law of Nations have in fact led us into a Fool’s
Paradise about war (which has done more than anything else to keep
the custom in existence), by representing it as something quite mild
and almost refined in modern times. Vattel, the Swiss jurist, set the
example. He published his work on the rights of nations two years
after the Seven Years’ War had begun, and he speaks of the European
nations in his time as waging their wars ‘with great moderation and
generosity,’ the very year before Marshal Belleisle gave orders to
make Westphalia a desert. Vattel too it was who first appealed to the
amenities that occasionally interrupt hostilities in support of his
theory of the generosity of modern warfare.
But what after all does it come to, if rival generals address each
other in terms of civility or interchange acceptable gifts? At
Sebastopol, the English Sir Edmond Lyons sent the Russian Admiral
Machinoff the present of a fat buck, the latter acknowledging the
compliment with the return of a hard Dutch cheese. At Gibraltar, when
the men of Elliot’s garrison were suffering severely from scurvy,
Crillon sent them a cartload of carrots. These things have always
occurred even in the fiercest times of military barbarism. At the
siege of Orleans (1429) the Earl of Suffolk sent the French commander
Dunois a present of dessert, consisting of figs, dates, and raisins;
and Dunois in return sent Suffolk some fur for his cloak; yet there was
little limit in those days to the ferocity shown in war by the French
and English to one another. A ransom was extorted even for the bodies
of the slain. The occasional gleams of humanity in the history of war
count for nothing in the general picture of its savagery.
The jurists in this way have helped to give a totally false colour to
the real nature of war; and scarcely a day passes in a modern campaign
that does not give the lie to the rules laid down in the ponderous
tomes of the international-law writers. It is said that Gustavus
Adolphus always had with him in camp a copy of ‘Grotius,’ as Alexander
is said to have slept over Homer. The improbability of finding a copy
of ‘Grotius’ in a modern camp may be taken as an illustration of the
neglect that has long since fallen on the restraints with which our
publicists have sought to fetter our generals, and of the futility of
all such endeavours.
All honour to Grotius for having sought to make warfare a few degrees
less atrocious than he found it; but let us not therefore deceive
ourselves into an extravagant belief in the efficacy of his labours.
Kant, who lived later, and had the same problem to face, cherished no
such delusion as to the possibility of humanising warfare, but went
straight to the point of trying to stop it altogether; and Kant was in
every point the better reasoner. Either would doubtless have regarded
the other’s reasoning on the subject as Utopian; but which with the
better reason?
Grotius took the course of first stating what the extreme rights of
war were, as proved by precedent and usage, and of then pleading for
their mitigation on the ground of religion and humanity. In either case
he appealed to precedent, and only set the better against the worse;
leaving thereby the rights of war in utter confusion, and quite devoid
of any principle of measurement.
Let us take as an illustration of his method the question of the
slaughter of women and children. This he began with admitting to be
a strict right of war. Profane history supplied him with several
instances of such massacres, and so more especially did Biblical
history. He refrained, he expressly tells us, from adducing the slaying
of the women and children of Heshbon by the Hebrews, or the command
given to them to deal in the same way with the people of Canaan, for
these were the works of God, whose rights over mankind were far greater
than those of man over beasts. He preferred, as coming nearer to the
practice of his own time, the testimony of that verse in the Psalms
which says, ‘Blessed shall he be who shall dash thy children against a
stone.’ Subsequently he withdrew this right of war, by reference to the
better precedents of ancient times. It does not appear to have occurred
to him that the precedents of history, if we go to them for our rules
of war, will prove anything, according to the character of the actions
we select. Camillus (in Livy) speaks of childhood as inviolable even
in stormed cities; the Emperor Severus, on the other hand, ordered his
soldiers to put all persons in Britain to the sword indiscriminately,
and in his turn appealed to precedent, the order, namely, of Agamemnon,
that of the Trojans not even children in their mothers’ womb should
be spared from destruction. The children of Israel were forbidden in
their wars to cut down fruit trees; yet when they warred against the
Moabites, ‘they stopped all the wells of water and felled all the good
trees.’ It was only possible in this way to distinguish the better
custom from the worse, not the right from the wrong; either being
equally justifiable on a mere appeal to historical instances.
The rules of war which prevailed in the time of Grotius--the early
time of the Thirty Years’ War--may be briefly summarised from his work
as follows. The rights of war extended to _all_ persons within the
hostile boundaries, the declaration of war being essentially directed
against every individual of a belligerent nation. Any person of a
hostile nation, therefore, might be slain wherever found, provided it
were not on neutral territory. Women and children might be lawfully
slain (as it will be shown that they were also liable to be in the
best days of chivalry); and so might prisoners of war, suppliants for
their lives, or those who surrendered unconditionally. It was lawful
to assassinate an enemy, provided it involved no violation of a tacit
or express agreement; but it was unlawful to use poison in any form,
though fountains, if not poisoned, might be made undrinkable. Anything
belonging to an enemy might be destroyed: his crops, his houses, his
flocks, his trees, even his sacred edifices, or his places of burial.
That these extreme rights of war were literally enforced in the
seventeenth century admits of no doubt; nor if any of them have at all
been mitigated, can we attribute it so much to the humane attempt of
Grotius and his followers to set restrictions on the rightful exercise
of predominant force, as to the accidental influence of individual
commanders. It has been well remarked that the right of non-combatants
to be unmolested in war was recognised by generals before it was ever
proclaimed by the publicists.[30] And the same truth applies to many
other changes in warfare, which have been oftener the result of a
temporary military fashion, or of new ideas of military expediency,
than of obedience to Grotius or Vattel. They set themselves to as
futile a task as the proverbial impossibility of whitening the negro;
with this result--that the destructiveness of war, its crimes, and
its cruelties, are something new even to a world that cannot lose the
recollection of the sack of Magdeburg in 1631, or the devastation of
the Palatinate in 1689.[31]
The publicists have but recognised and reflected the floating
sentiments of their time, without giving us any definite principle by
which to separate the permissible from the non-permissible practice in
war. We have seen how much they are at issue on the use of poison. They
are equally at issue as to the right of employing assassination; as to
the extent of the legitimate use of fraud; as to the right of beginning
a war without declaration; as to the limits of the invader’s rights of
robbery; as to the right of the invaded to rise against his invader; or
as to whether individuals so rising are to be treated as prisoners of
war or hanged as assassins. Let us consider what they have done for us
with regard to the right of using savages for allies, or with regard to
the rights of the conqueror over the town he has taken by assault.
The right to use barbarian troops on the Christian battle-field is
unanimously denied by all the modern text-writers. Lord Chatham’s
indignation against England’s employment of them against her revolted
colonies in America availed as little. Towards the end of the Crimean
war Russia prepared to arm some savage races within her empire, and
brought Circassians into Hungary in 1848.[32] France employed African
Turcos both against Austria in 1859 and against Prussia in 1870; and it
is within the recollection of the youngest what came of the employment
by Turkey of Bashi-Bazouks. Are they likely not to be used in future
because Bluntschli, Heffter, or Wheaton prohibits them?
To take a town by assault is the worst danger a soldier can have to
face. The theory therefore had a show of reason, that without the
reward of unlimited licence he could never be brought to the breach.
Tilly is said to have replied, when he was entreated by some of his
officers to check the rapine and bloodshed that has immortalised
the sack of Magdeburg in 1631: ‘Three hours’ plundering is the
shortest rule of war. The soldier must have something for his toil
and trouble.’[33] It is on such occasions, therefore, that war shows
itself in its true character, and that M. Girardin’s remark, ‘_La
guerre c’est l’assassinat, la guerre c’est le vol,_’ reads like a
revelation. The scene never varies from age to age; and the storming of
Badajoz and San Sebastian by the English forces in the Peninsular War,
or of Constantine in Algeria by the French in 1837, teaches us what
we may expect to see in Europe when next a town is taken by assault,
as Strasburg might have been in 1870. ‘No age, no nation,’ says Sir
W. Napier, ‘ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who
stormed Badajoz’ (April 1812). Yet for two days and nights there
reigned in its streets, says the same writer, ‘shameless rapacity,
brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty, and murder.’[34] And what
says he of San Sebastian not a year and a half later? A thunderstorm
that broke out ‘seemed to be a signal from hell for the perpetration
of villany which would have shamed the most ferocious barbarians of
antiquity.’ ... ‘The direst, the most revolting cruelty was added to
the catalogue of crime: one atrocity ... staggers the mind by its
enormous, incredible, indescribable barbarity.’[35] If officers lost
their lives in trying to prevent such deeds--whose very atrocity, as
some one has said, preserves them from our full execration, because it
makes it impossible to describe them--is it likely that the gallant
soldiers who crowned their bravery with such devilry would have been
one whit restrained by the consideration that in refusing quarter, or
in murdering, torturing, or mutilating non-combatants, they were acting
contrary to the rules of modern warfare?
If, then, we temper theory with practice, and desert our books for the
facts of the battle-field (so far as they are ever told in full), we
may perhaps lay down the following as the most important laws of modern
warfare:
1. You may not use explosive bullets; but you may use conical-shaped
ones, which inflict far more mutilation than round ones, and even
explosive bullets if they do not fall below a certain magnitude.
2. You may not poison your enemy, because you thus take from him the
chance of self-defence: but you may blow him up with a fougass or
dynamite, from which he is equally incapable of defending himself.
3. You may not poison your enemy’s drinking-water; but you may infect
it with dead bodies or otherwise, because that is only equivalent to
turning the stream.
4. You may not kill helpless old men, women, or children with the sword
or bayonet; but as much as you please with your Congreve rockets,
howitzers, or mortars.
5. You may not make war on the peaceable occupants of a country; but
you may burn their houses if they resist your claims to rob them of
their uttermost farthing.
6. You may not refuse quarter to an enemy; but you may if he be not
equipped in a particular outfit.
7. You may not kill your prisoners of war; but you may order your
soldiers not to take any.
8. You may not ask a ransom for your prisoners; but you may more than
cover their cost in the lump sum you exact for the expenses of the war.
9. You may not purposely destroy churches, hospitals, museums, or
libraries; but ‘military exigencies’ will cover your doing so, as they
will almost anything else you choose to do in breach of any other
restrictions on your conduct.
And it is into these absurdities that the reasonings of Grotius and his
followers have led us. The real dreamers, it appears, have been, not
those who, like Henri IV., Sully, St. Pierre, or Kant, have dreamed of
a world without wars, but those who have dreamed of wars waged without
lawlessness, passion, or crime. On them be thrown back the taunts of
Utopianism which they have showered so long on the only view of the
matter which is really logical and consistent. On them, at least, rests
the shadow, and must rest the reproach, of an egregious failure, unless
recent wars are of no account and teach no lesson. And if their failure
be real and signal, what remains for those who wish for better things,
and for some check on deeds that threaten our civilisation, but to turn
their backs on the instructors they once trusted; to light their fires
rather than to load their shelves with Grotius, Vattel, and the rest;
and to throw in their lot for the future with the opinion, hitherto
despised, though it was Kant’s, and the endeavour hitherto discredited,
though it was Henry the Great’s, Sully’s, and Elizabeth’s--the opinion,
that is, that it were easier to abolish war than to humanise it, and
that only in the growth of a spirit of international confidence lies
any possible hope of its ultimate extinction?