MILITARY STRATAGEMS.
_Hé! qu’il y a de tromperie au monde! et en nostre mestier plus
qu’en autre qui soit._--MARSHAL MONTLUC.
Grotius’ theory of fair stratagems--The teaching of international
law--Ancient and modern naval stratagems--Early Roman dislike
of such stratagems as ambuscades, feigned retreats, or night
attacks--The degenerate standard of Frontinus and Polyænus--The
conference-stratagem of modern Europe--The distinction between
perfidy and stratagem--The perfidy of Francis I.--Vattel’s
theory about spies--Frederick the Great’s military instructions
about spies--Lord Wolseley on spies and truth in war--The
custom of hanging or shooting spies--Better to keep them as
prisoners of war--Balloonists regarded as spies--The practice of
military surprises--Death formerly the penalty for capture in
a surprise--Stratagems of uncertain character, such as forged
despatches or false intelligence--The use of the telegraph in
deceiving the enemy--May prisoners of war be compelled to propagate
lies?--General character of the military code of fraud.
One of the most interesting aspects of the state of war is that of its
connection with fraud, deceit, and guile. If we may seek to obtain our
ends by force, we may surely, it is argued, do so by fraud; for what is
the moral difference between overcoming by superiority of muscle and
the same result obtained by dint of brain? Lysander the Spartan went so
far as to say that boys were to be cheated with dice, but an enemy with
oaths; and if the world has professed horror at his sentiment, it has
not altogether despised his authority.
Among military stratagems the older writers used to include every kind
of deception practised by generals in war, not only against the enemy,
but against their own troops; as, for instance, devices for preventing
or suppressing a mutiny, for stopping the spread of a panic, or for
encouraging them with false news before or during an engagement.
But in modern use the term stratagem has almost exclusive reference
to artifices of deception practised against an enemy; and the greater
interest that attaches to the latter kind of guile justifies the
narrowed denotation of the word. No one, for instance, would now
regard as a stratagem the clever behaviour of that Thracian general
Cosingas, who, acting also as priest to his forces, brought them back
to obedience by the report he artfully propagated that certain long
ladders which he had caused to be made and fastened together were
intended to enable him to climb to heaven, there to complain to Juno of
their misconduct. The false pretence that is involved in a stratagem is
addressed to the leaders of a hostile force, in order that their fear
or confidence, unduly raised by it, may be played upon to the advantage
of their more artful opponents. In the consideration, therefore, of
military stratagems, or _ruses de guerre_, it is best to conform
entirely to the more restricted sense in which they are understood in
modern parlance.
The following stratagem is a good one to start with. During the
Franco-German War of 1870, twenty-five franc-tireurs clothed themselves
in Prussian uniform, and by the help of that disguise killed several
Prussians at Sennegy near Troyes; and the deed was made a subject of
open boast in a French journal.[164] Was the boast a justifiable or a
shameful one?
Distinctly justifiable, if at least Grotius, the father of our
international law, is of any authority. The reasoning of Grotius runs
in this wise. There is a distinction between conventional signs that
are established by the general consent of all the world and those
which are only established by particular societies or by individuals;
deception directed against the former involves the violation of a
mutual obligation, and is therefore unlawful, whereas that against the
latter is lawful, because it involves no such violation. Therefore,
whilst it is wrong to deceive an enemy by words or signs which by
general consent are universally understood in a given sense, it is not
wrong to overcome an enemy by conduct which involves no violation of
a generally recognised and universally binding custom. Under conduct
of the latter type fall such acts as a simulated flight, or the use of
an enemy’s arms, his standards, uniform, or sails. A flight is not an
instituted sign of fear, nor have the arms or colours of a particular
country any universally established meaning.[165]
And in spite of the sound of sophistry that accompanies this reasoning,
the teaching of international law has not substantially swerved on this
point from the direction given to it by Grotius. In Cicero’s opinion,
although both force and fraud were resources most unworthy of rational
humanity, the one pertaining rather to the nature of the lion and the
other to that of the fox, fraud was an expedient deserving of more
hatred than the other.[166] But the teaching of later times has tended
to overlook this distinction. Bynkershoek, that celebrated Dutch jurist
who advocated the use of poison as one of the fair modes of employing
force, declares it to be a matter of perfect indifference whether
stratagem or open force be employed against an enemy, provided perfidy
be absent from the former. And Bluntschli, who is the German publicist
of greatest authority in our own day, expressly includes among the
lawful stratagems of war the use of an enemy’s uniform or flag.[167]
If, then, we test the received military theory by some actual
experience, the following episodes of history must challenge rather our
admiration than our blame, and stand justified by the most advanced
theories of modern international law.
Cimon, the Athenian admiral, having captured some Persian ships, made
his own men step into them and dress themselves in the clothes of the
Persians; and then, when the ships reached Cyprus, and the inhabitants
of that island came out joyfully to welcome their friends, they were of
course more easily defeated by their enemies.[168]
Aristomachus, having taken some Cardian ships, placed his own rowers
in them and towed his own ships behind them, as if they were being
conducted in triumph. When the Cardians came out to greet their
supposed victorious crews, Aristomachus and his men fell upon them and
succeeded in committing great carnage.[169]
Modern history supplies analogous cases. In September 1800 an English
crew attacked two ships that lay at anchor at Barcelona, by forcing
a Swedish vessel to take on board some English officers, soldiers,
and sailors, and so obtaining a means of approach that was otherwise
impossible.[170] And English naval historians tell with pride, rather
than with shame, how in 1798 two English ships, the ‘Sibylle’ and the
‘Fox,’ by sailing under false colours captured three Spanish gunboats
in Manilla Roads. When the Spanish guard-boat was sent to inquire what
the ships were, the pilot of the ‘Fox’ replied that they belonged to
the French squadron, and that they wished to put into Manilla, for the
recovery of the crews from sickness. The English Captain Cooke was
introduced under the French name of Latour; and a conversation ensued
in which the ceremony of wishing success to the united exertions of the
Spaniards and French against the English was not forgotten. Two Spanish
boats having then come to visit the vessels, their crews were quickly
handed below; and a party of British sailors having changed clothes
with them and got into their boat, advanced to the gunboats, which they
captured without pulling a trigger.[171]
On another occasion the same ‘Sibylle,’ which had been taken from the
French by Romney in 1794, captured a large French vessel that lay at
anchor, by standing in under French colours, and only hoisting her
real ones when within a cable’s length of her prize;[172] the only
limit to such a stratagem on the sea being the necessity for a ship to
hoist her real flag before proceeding to actual hostilities. A state of
war must surely play strange tricks with our minds to make it possible
for us to approve such infamous actions as those quoted. There can be
no greater proof of the utter demoralisation it causes than that such
devices should have ever come to be thought honourable; and that no
scruples should have ever intervened against the prostitution of a
country’s flag, the symbol of her independence, her nationality, and
her pride, to the shame of open falsehood. Antiquaries dispute the
correctness of the statement of Polyænus that Artemisia, the Queen of
Caria and ally of Xerxes against Greece, hoisted Persian colours when
in pursuit of Greek ships, but a Greek flag to prevent Greek ships from
pursuing herself, because they say that flags were not then in use; but
undoubtedly the custom is a very old one on the seas of having a number
of different flags on board a ship, for the purpose either of more
easily capturing a weaker or of more easily escaping from a stronger
vessel than herself. The French, for instance, in 1337 plundered and
burnt Portsmouth, after having been suffered to land under the cover of
English banners.[173] Not only the vessels of pirates and privateers,
but the war vessels of the State, learned to sail under colours that
belied their nationality.[174] The only limit to the stratagem of
the false flag (to which international custom gradually came to give
the force of law) came to be the necessity of hoisting the real flag
before proceeding to fire, a limitation that was not of much moment
after the successful deception had brought a defenceless merchant
vessel within the reach of easy capture. And with regard to ships of
war, the cannon-shot by which one vessel replied to the challenge of
its suspected nationality by the other came to be equivalent to the
captain’s word of honour that the flag which floated above the cannon
he fired represented the nationality of which it professed to be the
symbol. The flag itself might tell a lie, therefore the cannon-shot
oath must redeem it from suspicion. Such are the extraordinary ideas of
honour and morality that the system of universal fear, distrust, and
hostility, by many thought to be so surpassingly glorious, has caused
to become prevalent upon the ocean.
In spite, therefore, of Grotius, the above stratagems must be
considered as dishonourable; and that so they are beginning to be
considered is indicated by the fact that at the Brussels Conference of
1874 the use of an enemy’s flag or uniform was expressly rejected from
the category of fair military stratagems. But the improvement is in
spite of international law, not in consequence of it.
There is an obvious distinction indeed between the above method of
overcoming an enemy and such favourite devices as ambuscades, feigned
retreats, night attacks, or the diversion of a defence to the wrong
point. But perhaps nothing in the history of moral opinion is more
curious than that even these modes of deceit should have been, not by
one people or an unwarlike people, but by several people, and one among
them the most warlike nation known to history, deliberately rejected as
unfair and dishonourable modes of warfare. The historical evidence on
this point appears to be quite conclusive, and is worth recalling for
the interest that cannot but attach to one of the strangest but most
neglected chapters in the history of human ethics.
The Achæans, says Polybius, disdained even to subdue their enemies with
the help of deceit. In their opinion a victory was neither honourable
nor secure that was not obtained in open combat by superior courage.
Therefore they esteemed it a kind of law among them never to use any
concealed weapons, nor to throw darts from a distance, being persuaded
that an open and close conflict was the only fair method of combat.
For the same reason they not only made a declaration of war, but sent
notice each to the other of their resolution to try the fortune of a
battle, and of the place where they were determined to engage.[175]
And in Ternate, one of the Molucca Islands, which suffered such
untold miseries after the Europeans had discovered its spices and its
heathenism, not only was war never begun without being first declared,
but it was also customary to inform the enemy of the number of men and
the amount and kind of weapons with which it was intended to conduct
hostilities.[176]
But the case of the Romans is by far the most remarkable. Polybius,
Livy, and Ælian all agree in their testimony that for a long period
of their history the Romans refrained from all kinds of stratagem as
from a sort of military meanness; and their evidence is corroborated
by Valerius Maximus, who says that the Romans, having no word in their
language to express a military ruse, were forced to borrow the Greek
word, from which our own word stratagem is derived.[177] Polybius, who
lived and wrote as late as the second century before Christ, after
complaining that artifice was then so prevalent among the Romans that
their chief study was to deceive one another in war and in politics,
adds that, in spite of this degeneracy, they still declared war
solemnly beforehand, seldom formed ambuscades, and preferred to fight
man to man in close engagement. So late as the year 172 B.C. the elder
senators regretted the lost virtue of their ancestors, who refrained
from such stratagems as night attacks, counterfeit flights, and sudden
returns, and who sometimes even appointed the day of battle and fixed
the field of combat, looking for victory not from fraud, but only from
superiority in personal bravery.[178] Ælian, too, declares that the
Romans never resorted to stratagems till about the end of the Second
Punic War; and truly the great Roman general, Scipio, who took the
name of Africanus, displayed a thorough African skill in the use he
made of spies and surprises to bring that war to a successful issue.
With regard to night attacks the Macedonians appear to have cherished
similar feelings, since we find Alexander refusing to attack Darius
by night on the ground that he did not wish to gain a stolen victory.
And with regard to close combat, something of the old Roman and Achæan
feeling was displayed in Europe when first the crossbow, and in later
times the musket, rendered personal prowess of lesser importance.
Before the time of Richard I., when the crossbow became the chief
weapon in war, warriors, says the Abbé Velley, were so free and brave
that they would only owe victory to their lance and their sword, and
everybody detested those perfidious arms with which a coward under
shelter was enabled to slay the bravest.[179] So said Montluc of the
musket, which in 1523 had not yet, he says, superseded in France the
use of the crossbow: ‘Would to God this accursed instrument had never
been invented.... So many brave and valiant men would not have met
their deaths at the hands very often of the greatest cowards, who
would not so much as dare look at the man whom they knock down from
a distance with their accursed balls.’[180] And in the same spirit
Charles XII. of Sweden once bade his soldiers to come to close quarters
with the enemy without shooting, on the ground that it was only for
cowards to shoot.
Such ideas are, of course, dead beyond the hope of recovery; but
they are an odd commentary on our conceit in the improved tone of
our military code of honour. We have long since learned to despise
these old-world notions of honour and courage, and to make very few
exceptions indeed to the newer doctrine of Christendom, that in war
anything and everything is fair. But it is worth the pause of a moment
to reflect that such moral sentiments in restraint of the use of fraud
in war should have once had a real existence in the world; that they
should once have swayed the minds of the most successful military
nation that ever existed, and stood by them till they had attained that
high degree of power which was theirs at the time of the Second Punic
War (217-199 B.C.) In comparing the code of military honour prevalent
in pagan antiquity with that of more recent times, it is but fair to
remember that the pagan nations of old recognised some principles
of action which were never dreamt of in the best days of Christian
chivalry; and that the generals of the people who we are sometimes told
were a mere robber community would have had as strong a feeling against
the righteousness of a night attack, a feigned retreat, or a surprise,
as our modern generals would have of an open violation of a truce or
convention.
The downward path in this matter is easy, and the history of Rome after
Scipio Africanus is associated with a change of opinion concerning
stratagems that in no degree fell short of that subtlety of the
Greeks, Gauls, or Africans, which the Romans once regarded as perfidy.
Frontinus, who wrote a book on stratagems in the reign of Trajan,
and still more Polyænus, who wrote a large book on the same subject
for the Emperors Verus and Antoninus, appear to have thought that no
deceit was too bad to serve as a good precedent for the conduct of war.
Polyænus not merely made a collection of some nine hundred stratagems,
but collected them for the express purpose of their being of service to
the Roman Emperors in the war then undertaken against Parthia. To the
rulers of a people who had once regarded even an ambuscade as beneath
their chivalry he brought as worthy of their recollection and study
actions which are an eternal stain on the memory of those who committed
them. Let us take for example the devices he records for obtaining
possession of besieged places, remembering that from the moment the
chamade has been beaten, or any other sign been given for a conference
or parley between the contending forces, a truce by tacit agreement is
held to suspend their mutual hostilities.
1. Thibron persuaded the governor of a fort in Asia to come out to
arrange terms, under an oath that he should return if they failed to
agree. During the relaxation of guard that naturally ensued, Thibron’s
men took the fort by assault: and Thibron, reconducting the governor
according to his word, forthwith put him to death.[181]
2. In the same way behaved Paches, the Athenian general at Notium.
Having got Hippias, the governor, into his power under the same promise
that Thibron made, he took the place by storm, massacred all he found
in it, reconducted Hippias according to his oath, and had him killed
upon the spot.[182]
3. Autophrodates proposed a parley with the chiefs of the Ephesian
army, having previously ordered his cavalry officers and other troops
to attack the Ephesians during the conference. The result was a
signal victory, and the capture or slaughter of a great number of
Ephesians.[183]
4. Philip of Macedon sent some envoys into a Thracian city, and whilst
the people all met in assembly to hear the proposals of the enemy the
King of Macedon attacked and took the city.[184]
5. The Thracians, having been defeated by the Bœotians, made a truce
with them, for a certain number of _days_, and attacked them one
_night_, whilst the enemy were engaged in making sacrifices. And so
dealt Cleomenes with the Argives; he made a truce with them for seven
days, and attacked them the second night.
All these things are told by Polyænus, not only without a word of
disapproval, but apparently as good examples for the conduct of a war
actually in progress. Such was the state of moral debasement in which
their long career of military success ultimately landed the great Roman
people.
Nevertheless, it is not for modern history to cast stones at Paches or
at Thibron. The Conference-stratagem attained its highest development
in the practice of warfare in Christendom; so that Montaigne declares
it to have become a fixed maxim among the military men of his time
(the sixteenth century) never in time of siege to go out to a parley.
That great French soldier Montluc, whose autobiography contained in
his Commentaries displays so curious a mixture of bravery and cruelty,
of loyalty and cunning, and is perhaps the best military book by a
military man that has been written since Cæsar, tells us how once,
whilst he was bargaining with the governor of Sarvenal about the terms
of a capitulation, his men entered the place by a window on the other
side and compelled the governor to surrender at discretion, and how on
another occasion he sent his soldiers to enter Mont de Marsan and put
all they met to the sword, whilst he himself was deluding the governor
with a parley. ‘The moments of a parley are dangerous,’ he justly
observes, ‘and then more than ever should the besieged be careful in
guarding their walls, for it is the time when the besiegers, fearful
of losing by a capitulation the booty that would be theirs if they
took the place by storm, study to avail themselves of the relaxation
of vigilance promoted by the truce to approach the walls with greater
facility and success.’ And the man who wrote this as the experience of
his time, and illustrated it by the above accounts of his own practice,
rose to be a Marshal of France!
Some other examples of the same stratagem prove how widely the custom
entered into the warfare of the European nations. The governor of
Terouanne, besieged by the forces of the Emperor Charles V., having
forgotten in a negotiation for a capitulation to stipulate for a
suspension of arms, the town was surprised during the conference,
pillaged, and utterly destroyed.[185] And Feuquières, a French general
of Louis XIV., and the writer of a book of military memoirs which ran
through several editions, tells us how he surprised a place called
Kreilsheim in 1688: ‘I could not have taken this place by force,
surrounded as it was with a wall and a strong enough castle; but the
colonel in command having been imbecile enough to come outside the
place to parley with me, without exacting a promise from me to let
him return, I retained him and compelled him to order his garrison to
surrender itself prisoner of war.’[186] And he actually quotes this
to show that when it is necessary to take a post, all sorts of means
should be employed, provided they do not dishonour the general who
resorts to them, as would the failure of his word to the colonel have
dishonoured himself had the colonel demanded it of him.
A sounder sense of military honour was displayed by the English
general, Lord Peterborough, at the siege of Barcelona in 1705. Don
Velasco had promised to capitulate within a certain number of days,
in the event of no succour arriving, and he surrendered one gate as a
proof of his sincerity. During the truce involved in this proceeding,
the German and Catalonian allies of the English entered the town and
began that career of plunder and outrage which is the constant reward
and crown of such military successes. Lord Peterborough undertook to
prevent disorder in the town, expel the allied soldiery, and return
to his position. He was taken at his word, acted up to his word, and
saved the honour of England. But what of that of his allies?
It is a fine line that divides a stratagem from an act of perfidy.
Valerius Maximus denounces as an act of perfidy the conduct of Cnæus
Domitius, who, having received the King of the Arverni as a guest under
the pretence of a colloquy, sent him by sea a prisoner to Rome;[187]
but it is not easy to distinguish it from the actions of Montluc or
Feuquières. Vattel lays down the following doctrine on the subject: As
humanity compels us to prefer the gentlest means in the prosecution of
our rights, if we can master a strong place, surprise or overcome an
enemy by a stratagem or a feint void of perfidy, it is better to do so
than to have resort to a bloody siege or the carnage of a battle. He
expressly excludes perfidy; but might not Polyænus have defended it
on precisely the same humanitarian grounds as those by which Vattel
justifies the more ordinary stratagems? Might not an act of perfidy
equally prevent a siege or a battle? If we are justified in contending
for our rights by force, it is hard to say that we may not do so by
fraud; but it is still harder to distinguish the kinds and the limits
of such fraud, or to say where it ceases to be lawful.
And to this length did Polyænus apparently go, as we see in the cases
of downright perfidy which he includes in his collection of stratagems.
The Locrians swore to observe a treaty with the Sicilians so long as
they trod the earth they then walked on, or carried their heads on
their shoulders: the next day they threw away the heads of garlic which
they had carried under their cloaks on their shoulders, and the earth
they had strewn in their shoes, and began a general massacre of the
Sicilians.[188] The Campanians, having agreed to surrender half their
arms, cut them in half, and so virtually surrendered nothing.[189]
Paches, the Athenian, says Frontinus, having promised personal safety
to his enemies on condition of their laying down their arms, or as he
termed it, their _iron_, slew all those who, having laid down their
arms, still retained the _iron_ clasps in their cloaks.[190]
By these means it is undoubtedly possible to gain that advantage over
your enemy which, according to every theory of war, it is the paramount
object of hostilities to obtain; for it has been too often forgotten
that a nation’s honour and character, which an enlightened patriotism
should value higher than the mere earth on which it feeds and treads,
are sacrificed and impaired whenever a treaty is taken by one of the
parties to it to have been made in another sense from that which was
clearly understood by both parties to have constituted its spirit at
the time of making it. What a lasting stain rests, for instance, on the
memory of Francis I., who before signing the Treaty of Madrid, by which
he swore, in return for his liberty, to restore the Duchy of Burgundy,
and to return a prisoner to Spain if he failed to do so, made a formal
protest beforehand, in the presence of some friends, that the oath he
was about to take was involuntary and therefore void, and broke it the
moment he was free! And this was the man whose memory is associated
with the famous saying after the battle of Pavia: ‘All is lost save
honour.’ What he really said after that event, in a letter to his
mother, was this: ‘All is lost save my honour and my life, which is
safe,’ and the letter went on at length, much more in keeping with the
character of that monarch.[191] His life indeed he saved; his honour he
never recovered.
It was agreed at the Brussels Conference that resort to every possible
method of obtaining information about the forces or country of an
enemy should count as a fair military stratagem; and, indeed, with the
subject of the deceitful side of war the military theory and treatment
of Spies occupies no inconsiderable place.
Vattel is again as good an exponent as we can have of what international
law teaches on this subject. His argument is as follows: It is not
contrary to the law of nations to seduce one of the hostile side to
turn spy, nor to bribe a governor to deliver a town, because such
actions do not, like the use of poison or assassination, strike at
the common welfare and safety of mankind. Such actions are the common
episodes of every war. But that they are not in themselves honourable
or compatible with a good conscience is proved by the fact that
generals who resort to such means never boast of them; and, if they are
at all excusable, it is only in the case of a very just war, when there
is no other way of saving a country from ruin at the hands of lawless
conquerors. A sovereign has no right to require the services of a spy
from any of his subjects, but he may hold out the temptation of reward
to mercenary souls; and if a governor is willing to sell himself and
offer us a town for money, should we scruple to take advantage of his
crime, and to get without danger what we have a right to get by force?
At the same time a spy may rightly be put to death, because it is the
only way we have of guarding against the mischief he may do us.[192]
Frederick the Great of Prussia was a contemporary of Vattel, and in
November 1760 he published some military instructions for the use
of his generals which, in the matter of spies, was based on a wider
practical knowledge of the matter than of course belonged to the more
pacific publicist. He classified spies into ordinary spies, double
spies, spies of distinction, and spies by compulsion. By double spies
he meant spies who also pretended to be in the service of the side
they betrayed. By spies of distinction he meant officers of hussars,
whose services he had found useful under the peculiar circumstances of
the Austrian campaign. When he could not procure himself spies among
the Austrians, owing to the careful guard which their light troops
kept round their camp, the idea occurred to him, and he acted on it
with success, of utilising the suspension of arms that was customary
after a skirmish between hussars to make those officers the means
of conducting an epistolary correspondence with the officers on the
other side. Spies by compulsion he explained in this way: ‘When you
wish to convey false information to an enemy, you take a trustworthy
soldier and compel him to pass to the enemy’s camp to report there
all that you wish the enemy to believe; you also send by him letters
to excite the troops to desertion.’ And in the event of its being
impossible to obtain information about the enemy, this distinguished
child of Mars prescribes the following: Choose some rich citizen,
who has land and wife and children, and another man disguised as his
servant or coachman, who understands the enemy’s language. Force the
former to take the latter with him to the enemy’s camp to complain of
injuries sustained, threatening him that if he fail to bring the man
back with him after having stayed long enough for the desired object,
his wife and children shall be hanged and his house burnt. ‘I was
myself constrained,’ adds this great warrior, ‘to have recourse to this
method, when we were encamped at ----, and it succeeded.’[193]
Such were the military ethics of the great philosopher and king, whose
character in the closer intimacy of biography proved so disagreeable a
revelation to Carlyle. Pagan antiquity might be searched in vain for
practice or sentiments more ignoble. Sertorius, the Roman captain,
was one of the greatest masters of stratagem in the world, yet how
different his language from that of the Great Frederick! ‘A man,’ he
said, ‘who has any dignity of feeling should conquer with honour, and
not use any base means even to save his life.’
From the sentiments of Frederick the Great regarding spies, let us pass
to those of our own time. From Lord Wolseley’s ‘Soldier’s Pocket-Book’
may be gained some insight as to the manner in which a spy in an
enemy’s camp may correspond with the hostile general. The best way,
he suggests, is to send a peasant with a letter written on very thin
paper, which may be rolled up so tightly as to be portable in a quill
an inch and a half long, and this precious quill may be hidden in the
hair or beard, or in a hollow made at the end of a walking-stick. It is
also a good plan to write secret correspondence in lemon-juice across
a newspaper or the leaves of a New Testament; it is then safe against
discovery, and will become legible when held before a fire or near a
red iron.
‘As a nation,’ says Lord Wolseley, ‘we are bred up to feel it a
disgrace even to succeed by falsehood; the word spy conveys something
as repulsive as slave; we will keep hammering along with the conviction
that honesty is the best policy, and that truth always wins in the long
run. These pretty little sentiments do well for a child’s copy-book,
but a man who acts upon them had better sheathe his sword for
ever.’[194] Was there ever such a confession of the incompatibility of
the soldier’s calling with the precepts of ordinary honour? For how not
so, if he must so far stoop from the ordinary level of moral rectitude
as to be ready to scorn honesty and to trifle with truth? And then the
question is, Had not a man better sheathe his sword for ever, or rather
not enter at all upon a trade where he will have to regard the eternal
principles of right and wrong as so much pretty sentiment only fit for
the copy-book?
Since, therefore, we have the authority of Vattel, of Frederick the
Great, and of Lord Wolseley that spies may or even must be employed in
war, and that, be the trickery or bribery never so mean that procures
their services, no discredit reflects itself upon those generals
who use them--it is impossible not to notice it as one of the chief
anomalies in existing military usages that, although a general has an
unlimited right to avail himself of the services of a spy or a traitor,
the penalty for acting in either of the latter capacities is death.
The capital penalty is not of itself any test of the moral character
of the action to which it is affixed, for the service of a fire-ship,
which demanded the most desperate bravery, used to be undertaken in the
face of capital punishment. Moreover, some of the most famous names
in military history have not hesitated to act as spies. Sertorius
was honoured by Marius with the usual rewards of signal valour for
having learnt the language of the Gauls and gone as a spy amongst them
disguised in their dress. The French general Custine entered Mayence in
the disguise of a butcher. Catinat spied out the strength of Luxembourg
in the costume of a coal-heaver. Montluc entered Perpignan as a cook,
and only resolved never again to act as a spy because the narrowness
of his escape convinced him, not that it was a service of too much
dishonour, but a service of too much danger.
The custom of killing spies is an old Roman one,[195] and, indeed,
seems to have prevailed all the world over. Nevertheless there have
been exceptions even to that. Scipio Africanus had some Carthaginian
spies who were brought before him led through the camp, and then
dismissed under escort, and with the polite inquiry whether they had
examined everything to their satisfaction.[196]
The consul Lævinus is said to have dealt in the same way with some
spies that were taken, and so did Xerxes by some Greek detectives. At
the famous siege of Antwerp in 1584-5, when a Brabant spy was brought
before the Prince of Parma, the latter gave orders that he should be
shown all the works connected with the wonderful bridge that he was
then constructing across the Scheldt, and then sent him back to the
besieged city with these words: ‘Go and tell those who sent you what
you have seen. Tell them that I firmly intend either to bury myself
beneath the ruin of this bridge or by means of it to pass into your
city.’
There is a clear middle course between both extremes. Instead of being
hung or shot or sent away scot free, a spy might fairly be made a
prisoner of war. Suggestions in this sense were made at the Brussels
Conference on the Laws of War. The Spanish delegate proposed that the
custom of hanging or shooting detected spies should be abolished, and
the custom be substituted of interning them as prisoners of war during
the continuance of hostilities. The Belgian delegate proposed that in
no case should they be put to death without trial; and it was even
sought to establish a distinction between the deserts of the really
patriotic and the merely mercenary spy. The feeling in fact made itself
clearly visible, that an act of which a general might fairly avail
himself could not in common justice be regarded as criminal in the
agent. Between a general and a spy the common-law rule of principal and
agent plainly holds good: ‘He who acts through another acts through
himself.’ In a case of espionage either both principal and agent are
guilty of a criminal act, or neither is. If the spy as such violates
the laws of war, so does the general who employs him; and either
deserves the same punishment. Were it not so, a general who should
hire a bravo to assassinate an enemy would incur no moral blame, nor
could be held to act outside the boundary of lawful and honourable
hostilities.
In some other respects the Brussels Conference displayed the vagueness
of sentiment that prevails about the use of spies in war. It was
agreed between all the Powers that no one should be considered as a
spy but one who secretly or under false pretences sought to obtain
information for the enemy in occupied districts; that military men
collecting such information within the zone of hostile operations
should not be regarded as spies if it were possible to recognise their
military character; and that military men, and even civilians, if
their proceedings were open, charged with despatches, should not, if
captured, be treated as spies; nor individuals who carried despatches
or kept up communications between different parts of an army through
the air in balloons. The German delegate proposed, with regard to
balloons, that those who sailed in them might be first of all summoned
to descend, then fired at if they refused, and if captured be treated
as prisoners, not as spies. The rejection of his proposal implies
that by the laws of modern war a balloonist is liable to be shot as a
spy; so that, from the point of view of personal danger, the service
of a balloon becomes doubly heroic. The Brussels Conference settled
nothing, owing to the withdrawal of England from that attempt to settle
by agreement between the nations the laws that should govern their
relations in war-time; but from what was on that occasion agreed to or
rejected may be gathered the prevalent practice of European warfare.
Is it not then a little remarkable that for the dangerous service of
espionage a different justice should be meted out to civilians and to
military men; and that a patriot who risks his life in a balloon should
also risk it in the same way as a spy, a deserter, or a traitor?
But whatever be the fate of a spy, and in spite of distinguished
precedents to the contrary, men of honour will always instinctively
shrink from a service which involves falsehood from beginning to
end. The sentiment is doubtless praiseworthy: but what is the moral
difference between entering a town as a spy and the military service
of winning it by surprise? What, for instance, shall we think of
the Spanish officers and soldiers who, dressed as peasants and with
baskets of nuts and apples on their arms, gained possession of Amiens
in 1597 by spilling the contents of their baskets and then slaying the
sentinels as they scrambled to pick them up?[197] What of the officers
who, in the disguise of peasants and women, and concealing daggers and
pistols, got possession of Ulm for the Elector of Bavaria? What of
the French who, in Dutch costume, and by supplications in Dutch to be
granted a refuge from a pursuing enemy, surprised a fort in Holland in
1672?[198] What of Prince Eugene, who took the fortress of Breysach by
sending in a large force concealed in hay-carts under the conduct of
two hundred officers disguised as peasants?[199] What of the Chevalier
Bayard, that favourite of legendary chivalry, who, having learnt from a
spy the whereabouts of a detachment of Venetian infantry, went by night
to the village where they slept, and with his men slew all but three
out of some three hundred men as they ran out of their houses?[200]
What of Callicratidas the Cyrenæan, who begged the commander of a fort
to receive four sick soldiers, and sent them in on their beds with
an escort of sixteen soldiers, so that they easily overpowered the
guards and won the place for their general?[201] What of Phalaris, who,
having petitioned for the hand of a commandant’s daughter, overcame
the garrison by sending in soldiers dressed as women servants, and
purporting to bear presents to his betrothed?[202] What of Feuquières,
who, whilst pretending to lead a German force and praying for shelter
from a snowstorm, affixed his pétards to the gates of Neuborg, and,
having taken the town, put the whole of the garrison of 650 men to the
sword?[203]
In what respect do such actions which are the everyday stratagems of a
campaign, and count as perfectly fair, differ from the false pretences
which constitute the iniquity of the spy? In this respect only--that
whilst he bears his danger alone, in the case of a surprise the danger
is distributed among numbers.
And, in point of fact, there was a time when the service of a surprise
and that of espionage were so far regarded as the same that by the laws
of war death was not only the allotted portion of the captured spy but
of all who were caught in an endeavour to take a place by surprise.
The rule, according to Vattel, was not changed, nor the soldiers who
were captured in a surprise regarded or treated as prisoners of war,
till the year 1597, when, Prince Maurice having failed in an attempt to
take Venloo by surprise, and having lost some of his men, who were put
to death for that offence, the new rule that has since prevailed was
agreed upon by both sides for the sake of their future mutual immunity
from that peril.
The usual rule laid down to distinguish a bad from a good stratagem is
that in the latter there is no violation of an expressly or tacitly
pledged faith. The violation of a conference, a truce, or a treaty
has always therefore been reprobated, however commonly practised. But
certain occurrences of history suggest the feasibility of corresponding
stratagems which cannot be judged by so simple a formula and which
therefore are of still uncertain right.
The first stratagem of this kind that suggests itself is that of
forgery. Hannibal, having defeated and slain the Roman general
Marcellus, and thereby become possessed of his seal, the Romans found
it necessary to despatch messages to all their garrison towns that
no more attention should be paid to orders purporting to come from
Marcellus. The precedent suggests the use of forged despatches as a
weapon of war. To obtain in time of peace, for use in time of war, the
signatures of men likely to be hostile commanders, would obviously
be of immense military service for purposes either of defence or
aggression. The stratagem would be dishonourable in the highest degree;
but, unfortunately, the standard of measurement in such cases is rather
their effectiveness than their abstract morality.
The second stratagem of the sort is the stratagem of false intelligence.
To what extent is it lawful to deceive an enemy by downright falsehood?
The Chevalier Bayard, ‘without fear or reproach,’ when besieged by
the Imperialists in Mézières, contrived to make the enemy raise the
siege by sending a messenger with letters containing false information
destined to fall into the hands of the enemy. The invention of the
telegraph has increased the means of deceiving the enemy by false
intelligence, and was freely so used in the Civil War of the United
States. It is said to be better to secure the services of a few
telegraph operators in a hostile country than to have dozens of
ordinary spies; and for this reason, according to the eminent author of
the ‘Soldier’s Pocket-Book’: ‘Before or during an action an enemy may
be deceived to any extent by means of such men; messages can be sent
ordering him to concentrate upon wrong points, or, by giving him false
information, you may induce him to move as you wish.’
Another stratagem is suggested by the conduct of the Prince of Orange,
who, having detected in one of his own secretaries a spy in the
service of the Prince of Luxembourg, forced him to write a letter to
the latter containing such information as enabled himself to effect a
march he wished to conceal. Might not, then, prisoners of war be used
for the same compulsory service? For a spy just as much as a soldier
is a recognised and accredited military agent, and, if the former
may be made the channel of falsehood, why not the prisoner of war?
The Romans made use of the latter to acquire information about their
enemy’s plans, if in no other way, by torture or the threat of it;
the Germans forced some of their French prisoners to perform certain
military services connected with carrying on their campaign--would it
be therefore unfair to make use of them as the Prince of Orange made
use of his secretary?
To such questions there is no answer from the international law
writers. Still less is there any authoritative military doctrine
concerning them, and, if the stratagems in debate are excluded from
‘good’ war by the military honour of to-day, the above study of warlike
artifices has been made to little purpose if it has not taught us how
changeable and capricious that standard is, and of what marvellous
adjustment it is capable.
It were a treat at which the gods themselves might smile to see and
hear a moral philosopher and a military officer brought into conference
together concerning the stratagems permissible in war. Let the reader
imagine them trying to distribute in just and equal parts the due share
of blame attaching severally to the following agents--to the man who
betrays his country or his cause for gold, and the general who tempts
him to his crime or accepts it gladly; to the man who serves as a spy,
to the general who on the one side sends or employs him as a spy, and
to the general who on the other side hangs him as a spy; to the man
who discovers the strength of a town in the disguise of a butcher, and
to his fellow-soldiers who enter it disguised as peasants or under the
plea of shelter from sickness or a snowstorm; to the man who gains an
advantage by propagating false intelligence, and the man who does so
by the use of forged despatches; the man who, like Scipio, plays at
negotiations for peace in order the better to spy out and avail himself
of an enemy’s weakness, and the man who makes offers of treason to
an enemy in order the more easily to take him at a disadvantage--and
the conclusion will be not unlikely to occur to him, when he shudders
at the possible length and futility of that imaginary disputation,
that, whatever havoc is caused by a state of war to life, to property,
to wealth, to family affections, to domestic honour, it is a havoc
absolutely incomparable to that which it produces among the received
moral principles of mankind. The military code regarding the fair and
legitimate use of fraud and deception has nothing whatever in common
with the ordinary moral code of civil life, the principles openly
professed in it being so totally foreign to our simplest rules of
upright and worthy conduct that in any other than the fighting classes
of our civilised societies they would not be advocated for very shame,
nor listened to for a moment without resentment.