THE LIMITS OF MILITARY DUTY.
_‘I confess when I went into arms at the beginning of this war,
I never troubled myself to examine sides; I was glad to hear the
drums beat for soldiers, as if I had been a mere Swiss, that had
not cared which side went up or down, so I had my pay.’_--MEMOIRS
OF A CAVALIER.
The old feeling of the moral stain of bloodshed--Military
purificatory customs--Modern change of feeling about
warfare--Descartes on the profession of arms--The old-world
sentiment in favour of piracy--The central question of military
ethics--May a soldier be indifferent to the cause of war?--The
right to serve made conditional on a good cause, by St. Augustine,
Bullinger, Grotius, and Sir James Turner--Old Greek feeling about
mercenary service--Origin of our mercenary as opposed to gratuitous
service--Armies raised by military contractors--The value of the
distinction between foreign and native mercenaries--Original
limitation of military duty to the actual defence of the
realm--Extension of the notion of allegiance--The connection of the
military oath with the first Mutiny Act--Recognised limits to the
claims on a soldier’s obedience--The falsity of the common doctrine
of duty illustrated by the devastation of the Palatinate by the
French and by the bombardment of Copenhagen by the English--The
example of Admiral Keppel--Justice between nations--Its observation
in ancient India and Rome--St. Augustine and Bayard on justice
in war--Grotius on good grounds of war--The military claim to
exemption from moral responsibility--The soldier’s first duty to
his conscience--The admission of this principle involves the end of
war.
It must needs be that new questions arise, or old perplexities in
a fresh form; and of these one that has risen again in our time is
this: Does any moral stain attach to bloodshed committed upon the
battle-field? Or is the difference between military and ordinary
homicide a real one, and does the plea of duty sanction any act,
however atrocious in the abstract, provided it be committed under the
uniform of the State?
The general opinion is, of course, that no soldier in his military
capacity can be guilty of crime; but opinion has not always been so
fixed, and it is worth noticing that in the forms of civilisation that
preceded our own, and in some existing modern races of lower type
than our own, traces clearly appear of a sense of wrong attaching to
any form of bloodshed whatever, whether of fair battle or of base
treachery, calling alike for the purifying influences of expiation and
cleansing. In South Africa, for instance, the Basuto returning from
war proceeds with all his arms to the nearest stream, to purify not
only his own person but his javelins and his battle-axe. The Zulu, too,
practises ablutions on the same occasion; and the Bechuana warrior
wears a rude kind of necklace, to remind him of the expiation due from
him to the slain, and to disperse the dreams that might otherwise
trouble him, and perhaps even drive him to die of remorse.[310]
The same feelings may be detected in the old world. The Macedonians
had a peculiar form of sacrificatory purification, which consisted
in cutting a dog in half and leading the whole army, arrayed in full
armour, between the two parts.[311] As the Bœotians had the same
custom, it was probably for the same reason. At Rome, for the same
purpose, a sheep, and a bull, and a pig or boar, were every year led
three times round the army and then sacrificed to Mars. In Jewish
history the prohibition to King David to build the temple was expressly
connected with the blood he had shed in battle. In old Greek mythology
Theseus held himself unfit, without expiation, to be admitted to the
mysteries of Ceres, though the blood that stained his hands was only
that of thieves and robbers. And in the same spirit Hector refused to
make a libation to the gods before he had purified his hands after
battle. ‘With unwashen hands,’ he said, ‘to pour out sparkling wine
to Zeus I dare not, nor is it ever the custom for one soiled with the
blood and dust of battle to offer prayers to the god whose seat is in
the clouds.’[312]
For the cause of this feeling we may perhaps choose between an almost
instinctive reluctance to take human life, and some such superstition
as explains the necessity for purification among the Basutos,--the
idea, namely, of escaping the revenge of the slain by the medium of
water.[313] The latter explanation would be in keeping with the not
uncommon notion in savage life of the inability of a spirit to cross
running water, and would help to account for the necessity there was
for a Hebrew to flee, or for a Greek to make some expiation, even
though only guilty of an act of unintentional homicide. And in this way
it is possible that the sanctity of human life, which is one of the
chief marks, and should be one of the chief objects, of civilisation,
originated in the very same fear of a post-mortem vengeance, which
leads some savage tribes to entreat pardon of the bear or elephant
they have slain after a successful chase.
But, account as we like for the origin of the feeling, its undoubted
existence is the point of interest, for it is easy to see that under
slightly more favourable conditions of history it might have ripened
into a state of thought which would have held the soldier and the
manslayer in equal abhorrence. Christianity in its primitive form
certainly aimed at and very nearly effected the transition. In the
Greek Church a Christian soldier was debarred from the Eucharist for
three years if he had slain an enemy in battle; and the Christian
Church of the first three centuries would have echoed the sentiment
expressed by St. Cyprian in his letter to Donatus: ‘Homicide when
committed by an individual is a crime, but a virtue when committed in
a public war; yet in the latter case it derives its impunity, not from
its abstract harmlessness, but solely from the scale of its enormity.’
The education of centuries has long since effaced the earlier scruple;
but there are tens of thousands of Englishmen to whom the military
profession is the last they would voluntarily adopt, and it would be
rash to predict the impossibility of the revival of the older feeling,
or the dimensions it may ultimately assume. The greatest poet of our
time, who more than any other living man has helped to lead European
opinion into new channels, may, perhaps, in the following lines have
anticipated the verdict of the coming time, and divined an undercurrent
of thought that is beginning to flow even now amongst us with no
inconsiderable force of feeling:--
La phrase, cette altière et vile courtisane,
Dore le meurtre en grand, fourbit la pertuisane,
Protège les soudards contre le sens commun,
Persuade les niais que tous sont faits pour un,
Prouve que la tuerie est glorieuse et bonne,
Déroute la logique et l’évidence, et donne
Un sauf-conduit au crime à travers la raison.[314]
The destruction of the romance of war by the greater publicity given to
its details through the medium of the press clearly tends to strengthen
this feeling, by tempering popular admiration for military success
with a cooling admixture of horror and disgust. Take, for instance,
the following description of the storming of the Egyptian trenches at
Tel-el-Kebir, by an eye-witness of it:--‘In the redoubts into which
our men were swarming the Egyptians, throwing away their arms, were
found cowering, terror-stricken, in the corners of the works, to hide
themselves from our men. Although they had made such a contemptible
exhibition, from a soldierly point of view, it was impossible to help
pitying the poor wretches as they huddled together; _it seemed so much
like rats in a pit when the terrier has set to work_.’ And some 2,500
of them were afterwards buried on the spot, most of them killed by
bayonet wounds in the back.
This is an instance of the _tuerie_ that Victor Hugo speaks of, which
we all call glorious when we meet in the streets, reserving, some of
us, another opinion for the secret chamber. Still, when it comes to
comparing the work of a victory to that of a terrier in a rat-pit, it
must be admitted that the realism of war threatens to become more
repellent than its romance was once attractive, and to deter men more
and more from the choice of a profession of which similar disgusting
scenes are the common and the probable episodes.
Descartes, the father of modern philosophy and of free thought, who,
from a youthful love for arms and camp-life, which he attributed to a
certain heat of liver, began life in the army, actually gave up his
military career for the reasons which he thus expressed in a letter
to a friend: ‘Although custom and example render the profession of
arms the noblest of all, I, for my own part, who only regard it like a
philosopher, value it at its proper worth, and, indeed, I find it very
difficult to give it a place among the honourable professions, seeing
that idleness and licentiousness are the two principal motives which
now attract most men to it.’[315]
Of course no one in modern times would come to the same conclusions
as Descartes for the same reasons, the discipline of our armies being
somewhat more serious than it was in the first half of the seventeenth
century. Nevertheless, it is impossible to read of the German campaign
in France without hoping, for the good of the world, that the
inevitable association of war with the most revolting forms of crime
therein displayed, may some day produce a general state of sentiment
similar to that anticipated by Descartes.
It may be, said that the example of Descartes proves and indicates
nothing; and we may feel pretty sure that his scruples seemed
extravagantly absurd to his contemporaries, if he suffered them to
know them. Nevertheless, he might have appealed to several well-known
historical facts as a reason against too hasty a condemnation of his
apparent super-sensitiveness. He might have argued that the profession
of a pirate once reflected no more moral discredit than that of a
soldier did in his days; that the pirate’s reply to Alexander, that he
infested the seas by the same right wherewith the conqueror devastated
the land, conveyed a moral sentiment once generally accepted, nor even
then quite extinct; that in the days of Homer it was as natural to ask
a seafarer whether he were a freebooter as whether he were a merchant;
that so late in Greek history as the time of Thucydides, several tribes
on the mainland of Greece still gloried in piracy, and accounted their
plunder honourably won; and that at Rome the Cilician pirates, whom
it devolved on Pompey to disperse, were joined by persons of wealth,
birth, and education, ‘as if,’ says Plutarch, ‘their employment were
worthy of the ambition of men of honour.’
Remembering, therefore, these things, and the fact that not so very
many centuries ago public opinion was so lenient to the practice of
bishops and ecclesiastics taking an active part in warfare that they
commonly did so in spite of canons and councils to the contrary, it is
a fair subject for speculation whether the moral opinion of the future
may not come to coincide with the feeling of Descartes, and it behoves
us to keep our minds alive to possibilities of change in this matter,
already it would seem in process of formation. Who will venture to
predict what may be the effect of the rise of the general level of
education, and of the higher moral life of our time, on the popular
judgment of even fifty years hence regarding a voluntarily adopted
military life?
We may, perhaps, attribute it to the extreme position taken up with
regard to military service by the Quakers and Mennonites that the
example of Descartes had so slight a following. That thick phalanx of
our kind who fondly mistake their own mental timidity for moderation,
perpetually make use of the doctrines of extremists as an excuse for
tolerating or even defending what in the abstract they admit to be
evil; and it was unfortunately with this moderate party that Grotius
elected to throw in his lot. No one admitted more strongly the evils
of war. The reason he himself gave for writing his ‘De Jure Pacis et
Belli’ was the licence he saw prevailing throughout Christendom in
resorting to hostilities; recourse had to arms for slight motives
or for none; and when war was once begun an utter rejection of all
reverence for divine or human law, just as if the unrestrained
commission of every crime became thenceforth legitimate. Yet, instead
of throwing the weight of his judgment into the scale of opinion which
opposed the custom altogether (though he did advocate an international
tribunal that should decide differences and compel obedience to its
decisions), he only tried to shackle it with rules of decency that are
absolutely foreign to it, with the result, after all, that he did very
little to humanise wars, and nothing to make them less frequent.
Nevertheless, though Grotius admitted the abstract lawfulness of
military service, he made it conditional on a thorough conviction
of the righteousness of the cause at issue. This is the great and
permanent merit of his work, and it is here that we touch on the pivot
or central question of military ethics. The orthodox theory is, that
with the cause of war a soldier has no concern, and that since the
matter in contention is always too complicated for him to judge of
its merits, his only duty is to blindfold his reason and conscience,
and rush whithersoever his services are commanded. Perhaps the best
exposition of this simple military philosophy is that given by
Shakespeare in his scene of the eve of Agincourt, where Henry V., in
disguise, converses with some soldiers of the English army. ‘Methinks,’
says the king, ‘I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king’s
company, his cause being just and his quarrel honourable.’
_William._ ‘That’s more than we know.’
_Bates._ ‘Ay, or more than we should seek after, for we know enough
if we know we are the king’s subjects. If his cause be wrong, our
obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.’
Yet the whisper of our own day is, Does it? For a soldier, nowadays,
enjoys equally with the civilian, who by his vote contributes to
prevent or promote hostilities, the greater facilities afforded by
the spread of knowledge for the exercise of his judgment; and it is
to subject him to undeserved ignominy to debar him from the free use
of his intellect, as if he were a minor or an imbecile, incompetent
to think for himself. Putting even the difficulty of decision at its
worst, it can never be greater for the soldier than it is for the
voter; and if the former is incompetent to form an opinion, whence does
the peasant or mechanic derive his ability? Moreover, the existence
of a just and good cause has always been the condition insisted on as
alone capable of sanctioning military service by writers of every shade
of thought--by St. Augustine as representing the early Catholic Church,
by Bullinger or Becon as representatives of the early Reformed Church,
and by Grotius as representative of the modern school of publicists.
Grotius contends that no citizen or subject ought to take part in an
unjust war, even if he be commanded to do so. He openly maintains
that disobedience to orders is in such a case a lesser evil than the
guilt of homicide that would be incurred by fighting. He inclines to
the opinion that, where the cause of war seems doubtful, a man would
do better to refrain from service, and to leave the king to employ
those whose readiness to fight might be less hampered by questions of
right and wrong, and of whom there would always be a plentiful supply.
Without these reservations he regards the soldier’s task as so much the
more detestable than the executioner’s, as manslaughter without a cause
is more heinous than manslaughter with one,[316] and thinks no kind of
life more wicked than that of men who, without regard for the cause of
war, fight for hire, and to whom the question of right is equivalent to
the question of the highest wage.[317]
These are strong opinions and expressions, and as their general
acceptance would logically render war impossible, it is no small gain
to have in their favour so great an authority as Grotius. But it is
an even greater gain to be able to quote on the same side an actual
soldier. Sir James Turner at the end of his military treatise called
‘Pallas Armata,’ published in 1683, came to conclusions which, though
adverse to Grotius, contain some remarkable admissions and show the
difference that two centuries have made on military maxims with regard
to this subject. ‘It is no sin for a mere soldier,’ he says, ‘to serve
for wages, unless his conscience tells him he fights in an unjust
cause.’ Again, ‘That soldier who serves or fights for any prince or
State for wages in a cause he knows to be unjust, sins damnably.’ He
even argues that soldiers whose original service began for a just
cause, and who are constrained by their military oaths to continue
in service for a new and unjust cause of war, ought to ‘desert their
employment and suffer anything that could be done to them before they
draw their swords against their own conscience and judgments in an
unjust quarrel.’[318]
These moral sentiments of a military man of the seventeenth century
are absolutely alien to the military doctrines of the present day;
and his remarks on wages recall yet another important landmark of
ancient thought that has been removed by the progress of time. Early
Greek opinion justly made no distinction between the mercenary who
served a foreign country and the mercenary who served his own. All
hired military service was regarded as disgraceful, nor would anyone
of good birth have dreamt of serving his own country save at his own
expense. The Carians rendered their names infamous as the first of the
Greek race who served for pay; whilst at Athens Pericles introduced the
custom of supporting the poorer defenders of their country out of the
exchequer.[319] Afterwards, of course, no people ever committed itself
more eagerly to the pursuit of mercenary warfare.
In England also gratuitous military service was originally the
condition of the feudal tenure of land, nor was anyone bound to serve
the king for more than a certain number of days in the year, forty
being generally the longest term. For all service in excess of the
legal limit the king was obliged to pay; and in this way, and by
the scutage tax, by which many tenants bought themselves off from
their strict obligations, the principle of a paid military force was
recognised from the time of the Conquest. But the chief stipendiary
forces appear to have been foreign mercenaries, supported, not out
of the commutation tax, but out of the king’s privy purse, and still
more out of the loot won from their victims in war. These were those
soldiers of fortune, chiefly from Flanders, Brabançons, or Routers,
whose excesses as brigands led to their excommunication by the Third
Lateran Council (1179), and to their destruction by a crusade three
years later.[320]
But the germ of our modern recruiting system must rather be looked for
in those military contracts or indentures, by which from about the time
of Edward III. it became customary to raise our forces: some powerful
subject contracting with the king, in consideration of a certain sum,
to provide soldiers for a certain time and task. Thus in 1382 the
war-loving Bishop of Norwich contracted with Richard II. to provide
2,500 men-at-arms and 2,500 archers for a year’s service in France, in
consideration of the whole fifteenth that had been voted by Parliament
for the war.[321] In the same way several bishops indented to raise
soldiers for Henry V. And thus a foreign war became a mere matter
of business and hire, and armies to fight the French were raised by
speculative contractors, very much as men are raised nowadays to make
railways or take part in other works needful for the public at large.
The engagement was purely pecuniary and commercial, and was entirely
divested of any connection with conscience or patriotism. On the other
hand, the most obviously just cause of war, that of national defence in
case of invasion, continued to be altogether disconnected with pay, and
remained so much the duty of the militia or capable male population of
the country, that both Edward III. and Richard II. directed writs even
to archbishops and bishops to arm and array all abbots, priors, and
monks, between the ages of sixteen and sixty, for the defence of the
kingdom.[322]
Originally, therefore, the paid army of England, as opposed to the
militia, implied the introduction of a strictly mercenary force
consisting indifferently of natives or foreigners, into our military
system. But clearly there was no moral difference between the two
classes of mercenaries so engaged. The hire, and not the cause, being
the main consideration of both, the Englishman and the Brabançon were
equally mercenaries in the ordinary acceptation of the term. The
prejudice against mercenaries either goes too far or not far enough.
If a Swiss or an Italian hiring himself to fight for a cause about
which he was ignorant or indifferent was a mercenary soldier, so was
an Englishman who with equal ignorance and indifference accepted the
wages offered him by a military contractor of his own nation. Either
the conduct of the Swiss was blameless, or the Englishman’s moral
delinquency was the same as his.
The public opinion of former times regarded both, of course, as equally
blameless, or rather as equally meritorious. And it is worth noticing
that the word _mercenary_ was applied alike to the hired military
servant of his own as of another country. Shakespeare, for instance,
applies the term mercenary to the 1,600 Frenchmen of low degree slain
at Agincourt, whom Monstrelet distinguishes from the 10,000 Frenchmen
of position who lost their lives on that memorable day--
In this ten thousand they have lost,
There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries.
And even so late as 1756, the original signification of the word had so
little changed, that in the great debate in the House of Lords on the
Militia Bill of that year Lord Temple and several other orators spoke
of the national standing army as an army of _mercenaries_, without
making any distinction between the Englishmen and the Hessians who
served in it.[323]
The moral distinction that now prevails between the paid service of
natives and of foreigners is, therefore, of comparatively recent
origin. It was one of the features of the Reformation in Switzerland
that its leaders insisted for the first time on a moral difference
between Swiss soldiers who served their own country for pay, and those
who with equal bravery and credit sold their strength to the service of
the highest foreign bidder.
Zwingli, and after him his disciple Bullinger, effected a change in the
moral sentiment of Switzerland equivalent to that which a man would
effect nowadays who should persuade men to discountenance or abandon
military service of any kind for pay. One of the great obstacles to
Zwingli’s success was his decided protest against the right of any
Swiss to sell himself to foreign governments for the commission of
bloodshed, regardless of any injury in justification; and it was
mainly on that account that Bullinger succeeded in 1549 in preventing
a renewal of the alliance or military contract between the cantons
and Henry II. of France. ‘When a private individual,’ he said, ‘is
free to enrol himself or not, and engages himself to fight against the
friends and allies of his sovereign, I know not whether he does not
hire himself to commit homicide, and whether he does not act like the
gladiators, who, to amuse the Roman people, let themselves to the first
comer to kill one another.’
But it is evident that, except with a reservation limiting a man’s
service to a just national cause, Bullinger’s argument will also apply
to the case of a hired soldier of his own country. The duty of every
man to defend his country in case of invasion is intelligible enough;
and it is very important to notice that originally in no country did
the duty of military obedience mean more. In 1297 the High Constable
and Marshal of England refused to muster the forces to serve Edward I.
in Flanders, on the plea that neither they nor their ancestors were
obliged to serve the king outside his dominions;[324] and Sir E. Coke’s
ruling in Calvin’s case,[325] that Englishmen are bound to attend the
king in his wars as well without as within the realm, and that their
allegiance is not local but indefinite, was not accepted by writers
on the constitution of the country. The existing militia oath, which
strictly limits obedience to the defence of the realm, covered the
whole military duty of our ancestors; and it was only the innovation of
the military contract that prepared the way for our modern idea of the
soldier’s duty as unqualified and unlimited with regard to cause and
place and time. The very word _soldier_ meant originally stipendiary,
his pay or _solde_ (from the Latin _solidum_) coming to constitute
his chief characteristic. From a servant hired for a certain task
for a certain time the steps were easy to a servant whose hire bound
him to any task and for the whole of his life. The existing military
oath, which binds a recruit and practically compels him as much to a
war of aggression as of defence at the bidding of the executive, owes
its origin to the revolution of 1689, when the refusal of Dumbarton’s
famous Scotch regiment to serve their new master, William III., in the
defence of Holland against France, rendered it advisable to pass the
Mutiny Act, containing a more stringent definition of military duty by
an oath couched in extremely general terms. Such has been the effect
of time in confirming this newer doctrine of the contract implied by
the military status, that the defence of the monarch ‘in person, crown,
and dignity against all enemies,’ to which the modern recruit pledges
himself at his attestation, would be held to bind the soldier not to
withhold his services were he called upon to exercise them in the
planet Mars itself.
Hence it appears to be an indisputable fact of history that the
modern military theory of Europe, which demands complete spiritual
self-abandonment and unqualified obedience on the part of a soldier,
is a distinct trespass outside the bounds of the original and, so
to speak, constitutional idea of military duty; and that in our own
country it is as much an encroachment on the rights of Englishmen as it
is on the wider rights of man.
But what is the value of the theory itself, even if we take no account
of the history of its growth? If military service precludes a man from
discussing the justice of the end pursued in a war, it can hardly be
disputed that it equally precludes him from inquiries about the means,
and that if he is bound to consider himself as fighting in any case
for a lawful cause he has no right to bring his moral sense to bear
upon the details of the service required of him. But here occurs a
loophole, a flaw, in the argument; for no subject nor soldier can be
compelled to serve as a spy, however needful such service may be. That
proves that a limit does exist to the claims on a soldier’s obedience.
And Vattel mentions as a common occurrence the refusal of troops to
act when the cruelty of the deeds commanded of them exposed them to
the danger of savage reprisals. ‘Officers,’ he says, ‘who had the
highest sense of honour, though ready to shed their blood in a field
of battle for their prince’s service, have not thought it any part of
their duty to run the hazard of an ignominious death,’ such as was
involved in the execution of such behests. Yet why not, if their prince
or general commanded them? By what principle of morality or common
sense were they justified in declining a particular service as too
iniquitous for them and yet in holding themselves bound to the larger
iniquity of an aggressive war? What right has a machine to choose or
decide between good and bad any more than between just and unjust? Its
moral incompetence must be thoroughgoing, or else in no case afford an
extenuating plea. You must either grant it everything or nothing, or
else offer a rational explanation for your rule of distinction. For it
clearly needs explaining, why, if there are orders which a soldier is
not bound to obey, if there are cases where he is competent to discuss
the moral nature of the services required of him, it should not also
be open to him to discuss the justice of the war itself of which those
services are merely incidents.
Let us turn from the abstract to the concrete, and take two instances
as a test of the principle. In 1689, Marshal Duras, commander of the
French army of the Rhine, received orders to destroy the Palatinate,
and make a desert between France and Germany, though neither the
Elector nor his people had done the least injury to France. Did a
single soldier, did a single officer quail or hesitate? Voltaire tells
us that many officers felt shame in acting as the instrument of this
iniquity of Louis XIV., but they acted nevertheless in accordance with
their supposed honour, and with the still orthodox theory of military
duty. They stopped short at no atrocity. They cut down the fruit-trees,
they tore down the vines, they burnt the granaries; they set fire to
villages, to country-houses, to castles; they desecrated the tombs of
the ancient German emperors at Spiers; they plundered the churches;
they reduced well-nigh to ashes Oppenheim, Spiers, Worms, Mannheim,
Heidelberg, and other flourishing cities; they reduced 400,000 human
beings to homelessness and destruction--and all in the name of military
duty and military honour! Yet, of a truth, those were dastardly deeds
if ever dastardly deeds have been done beneath the sun; and it is the
sheerest sophistry to maintain that the men who so implicitly carried
out their orders would not have done more for their miserable honour,
would not have had a higher conception of duty, had they followed the
dictates of their reason and conscience rather than those of their
military superiors, and refused to sacrifice their humanity to an
overstrained theory of their military obligation, and their memory to
everlasting execration.
In the case of these destroyers military duty meant simply military
servility, and it was this reckless servility that led Voltaire in his
‘Candide’ to put into the mouth of his inimitable philosopher, Martin,
that definition of an army which tales like the foregoing suggested and
justified: ‘A million of assassins, in regiments, traversing Europe
from end to end, and committing murder and brigandage by rules of
discipline for the sake of bread, because incompetent to exercise any
more honest calling.’[326]
An English case of this century may be taken as a parallel one to the
French of the seventeenth, and as an additional test of the orthodox
military dogma that with the cause of war a soldier has no concern.
It is the Copenhagen expedition of 1807, than which no act of might
within this century was more strongly reprobated by the public opinion
of Europe, and by all but the Tory opinion of England. A fleet and
army having been sent to the Danish capital, and the Danish Government
having refused to surrender their fleet, which was demanded as the
alternative of bombardment, the English military officials proceeded
to bombard the city, with infinite destruction and slaughter, which
were only stayed at last by the surrender of the fleet as originally
demanded. There was no quarrel with Denmark at the time, there was no
complaint of injury; only the surrender of the fleet was demanded.
English public opinion was both excited and divided about the morality
of this act, which was only justified on the plea that the Government
was in possession of a secret article of the Treaty of Tilsit between
Napoleon and the Czar of Russia, by which the Danish fleet was to be
made use of in an attack upon England. But this secret article was
not divulged, according to Alison, till ten years afterwards,[327]
and many disbelieved in its existence altogether, even supposing that
its existence would have been a good case for war. Many military men
therefore shared in the feeling that condemned the act, yet they
scrupled not to contribute their aid to it. Were they right? Read Sir
C. Napier’s opinion of it at the time, and then say where, in the
case of a man so thinking, would have lain his duty: ‘This Copenhagen
expedition--is it an unjust action for the general good? Who can say
that such a precedent is pardonable? When once the line of justice has
been passed, there is no shame left. England has been unjust.... Was
not our high honour worth the danger we might perhaps have risked in
maintaining that honour inviolate?’[328]
These opinions, whether right or wrong, were shared by many men in
both services. Sir C. Napier himself says: ‘Were there not plenty of
soldiers who thought these things wrong? ... but would it have been
possible to allow the army and navy ... to decide upon the propriety of
such attacks?’[329] The answer is, that if they did, whether allowed or
not, such things would be impossible, or, at all events, less probable:
which is the best reason possible for the contention that they should.
Had they done so in this very instance, our historians would have been
spared the explanation of an episode that is a dark blot upon our
annals.
A more pleasing precedent, therefore, than that of the French officers
in the Palatinate, or of the English at Copenhagen, is the case of
Admiral Keppel, who, whilst numbers of naval officers flocked to the
Admiralty to offer their services or to request employment, steadily
declined to take part in the war of England against her American
colonies, because he deemed her cause a bad one.[330] He did no
violence to his reason or conscience nor tarnished his fame by acting a
part, of which in his individual capacity he disapproved. His example
is here held up as illustrating the only true doctrine, and the only
one that at all accords with the most rudimentary principles of either
religion or morality. The contrary doctrine bids a man to forswear the
use of both his reason and his conscience in consideration for his pay,
and deprives him of that liberty of thought and moral action compared
with which his civil and political liberty are nothing worth. For what
indeed is this contrary time-honoured doctrine when stripped of all
superfluities, and displayed in the outfit of common sense and common
words? What is it but that the duty of military obedience overrides
all duty of a man towards himself; that, though he may not voluntarily
destroy his body, he cannot do too much violence to his soul; that it
is his duty to annihilate his moral and intellectual being, to commit
spiritual suicide, to forego the use of the noblest faculties which
belong to him as a man; that to do all this is a just cause of pride
to him, and that he is in all respects the nobler and better for
assimilating himself to that brainless and heartless condition which is
that also of his charger or his rifle?
If this doctrine is true and sound, then it may be asked whether there
has ever been or exists upon the earth any tyranny, ecclesiastical or
political, comparable to this military one; whether any but the baser
forms of priestcraft have ever sought to deprive a man so completely
of the enjoyment of his highest human attributes, or to absolve him so
utterly from all moral responsibility for his actions.
This position can scarcely be disputed, save by denying the reality
of any distinction between just and unjust in international conduct;
and against this denial may be set not only the evidence of every age,
but of every language above the stage of mere barbarism. Disregard of
the difference is one of the best measures of the civilisation of a
people or epoch. We at once, for instance, form a higher estimate of
the civilisation of ancient India, when we read in Arrian that her
kings were so apprehensive of committing an unjust aggression that
they would not lead their armies out of India for the conquest of
other nations.[331] One of the best features in the old pagan world
was the importance attached to the justice of the motives for breaking
the peace. The Romans appear never to have begun a war without a
previous consultation with the College of Fecials as to its justice;
and in the same way, and for the same purpose, the early Christian
emperors consulted the opinion of the bishops. If a Roman general made
an unjust attack upon a people his triumph was refused, or at least
resisted; nor are the instances infrequent in which the senate decreed
restitution where a consul, acting on his own responsibility, had
deprived a population of its arms, its lands, or its liberties.[332]
Hence the Romans, with all their apparent aggressiveness, won the
character of a strict regard to justice, which was no small part of the
secret of their power. ‘You boast,’ the Rhodians said to them, ‘that
your wars are successful because they are just, and plume yourselves
not so much on the victory which concludes them as on the fact that
you never begin them without good cause.’[333] Conquest corrupted the
Romans in these respects as it has done many another people; but even
to the end of the Republic the tradition of justice survived; nor is
there anything finer in the history of that people than the attempt
of the party headed by Ateius the tribune to prevent Crassus leaving
Rome when he was setting out to make war upon the Parthians, who not
only had committed no injury, but were the allies of the Republic; or
than the vote of Cato, that Cæsar, who, in time of peace, had slain or
routed 300,000 Germans, should be given up to the people he had injured
in atonement for the wrong he had done to them.
The idea of the importance of a just cause of war may be traced, of
course, in history, after the extinction of the grand pagan philosophy
in which it had its origin. It was insisted on even by Christian
writers who, like St. Augustine, did not regard all military service
as wicked. What, he asked, were kingdoms but robberies on a vast scale,
if their justice were put out of the reckoning.[334] A French writer
of the time of Charles V. concluded that while soldiers who fell in a
just cause were saved, those who died for an unjust cause perished in
a state of mortal sin.[335] Even the Chevalier Bayard, who accompanied
Charles VIII. without any scruple in his conquest of Naples, was fond
of saying that all empires, kingdoms, and provinces were, if without
the principle of justice, no better than forests full of brigands;[336]
and the fine saying is attributed to him, that the strength of arms
should only be employed for the establishment of right and equity. But
on the whole the justice of the cause of war became of less and less
importance as time went on; nor have our modern Christian societies
ever derived benefit in that respect from the instruction or guidance
of their churches at all equal to that which the society of pagan Rome
derived from the institution of its Fecials, as the guardians of the
national conscience.
It was among the humane endeavours of Grotius to try to remedy this
defect in modern States by establishing certain general principles by
which it might be possible to test the pretext of any given war from
the side of its justice. At first sight it appears obvious that a
definite injury is the only justification for a resort to hostilities,
or, in other words, that only a defensive war is just; but then the
question arises how far defence may be anticipatory, and an injury
feared or probable give the same rights as one actually sustained.
The majority of wars, that have not been merely wars of conquest and
robbery, may be traced to that principle in history, so well expressed
by Livy, that men’s anxiety not to be afraid of others causes them
to become objects of dread themselves.[337] For this reason Grotius
refused to admit as a good _casus belli_ the fact that another nation
was making warlike preparations, building garrisons and fortresses,
or that its power might, if unchecked, grow to be dangerous. He also
rejected the pretext of mere utility as a good ground for war, or such
pleas as the need of better territory, the right of first discovery, or
the improvement or punishment of barbarous nations.
A strict adherence to these principles, vague as they are, would
have prevented most of the bloodshed that has occurred in Europe
since Grotius wrote. The difficulty, however, is, that, as between
nations, the principle of utility easily overshadows that of justice;
and although the two are related as the temporary to the permanent
expediency, and therefore as the lesser to the greater expediency,
the relation between them is seldom obvious at the time of choice,
and it is easy beforehand to demonstrate the expediency of a war of
which time alone can show both the inexpediency and the injustice.
Any war, therefore, however unjust it may seem, when judged by the
canons of Grotius, is easily construed as just when measured by the
light of an imperious and magnified passing interest; and the absence
of any recognised definition or standard of just dealing between
nations affords a salve to many a conscience that in the matters of
private life would be sensitive and scrupulous enough. The story of
King Agesilaus is a mirror in which very few ages or countries may not
see their own history reflected. When Phœbidas, the Spartan general,
seized the Cadmeia of Thebes in the time of peace, the greater part
of Greece and many Spartans condemned it as a most iniquitous act of
war; but Agesilaus, who at other times was wont to talk of justice
as the greatest of all the virtues, and of valour without it as of
little worth, defended his officer’s action, on the plea that it was
necessary to regard the tendency of the action, and to account it even
as glorious if it resulted in an advantage to Sparta.
But when every allowance is made for wars of which the justice is not
clearly defined from the expediency, many wars have occurred of so
palpably unjust a character, that they could not have been possible
but for the existence of the loosest sentiments with regard to the
responsibility of those who took part in them. We read of wars or the
pretexts of wars in history of which we all, whether military men or
civilians, readily recognise the injustice; and by applying the same
principles of judgment to the wars of our own country and time we are
each and all of us furnished for the direction of our conscience
with a standard which, if not absolutely scientific or consistent, is
sufficient for all the practical purposes of life, and is completely
subversive of the excuse which is afforded by occasional instances of
difficult and doubtful decision. The same facilities which exist for
the civilian when he votes for or against taxation for a given war,
or in approval or disapproval of the government which undertakes it,
exist also for the soldier who lends his active aid to it; nor is it
unreasonable to claim for the action of the one the same responsibility
to his own conscience which by general admission attaches to the other.
It is surely something like a degradation to the soldier that he
should not enjoy in this respect the same rights as the civilian; that
his merit alone should be tested by no higher a theory of duty than
that which is applied to the merit of a horse; and that his capacity
for blind and unreasoning obedience should be accounted his highest
attainable virtue. The transition from the idea of military vassalage
to that of military allegiance has surely produced a strange conception
of honour, and one fitter for conscripts than for free men, when a
man is held as by a vice to take part in a course of action which he
believes to be wrong. Not only does no other profession enforce such an
obligation, but in every other walk of life a man’s assertion of his
own personal responsibility is a source rather of credit to him than of
infamy. That in the performance of any social function a man should be
called upon to make an unconditional surrender of his free will, and
yield an obedience as thoughtless as a dummy’s to superior orders,
would seem to be a principle of conduct pilfered from the Society of
Jesus, and utterly unworthy of the nobility of a soldier. As a matter
of history, the priestly organisation took the military one for its
model: which should lead us to suspect that the tyranny we find fault
with in the copy is equally present in the original, and that the
latter is marked by the same vices that it transmitted to the borrowed
organisation.
The principle here contended for, that the soldier should be fully
satisfied in his own mind of the justice of the cause he fights for, is
the condition that Christian writers, from Augustine to Grotius, have
placed on the lawfulness of military service. The objection to it, that
its adoption would mean the ruin of military discipline, will appear
the greatest argument of all in its favour when we reflect that its
universal adoption would make war itself, which is the only reason for
discipline, altogether impossible. Where would have been the wars of
the last two hundred years had it been in force? Or where the English
wars of the last six, with their thousands of lives and their millions
of money spent for no visible good nor glory in fighting with Afghans,
Zulus, Egyptians, and Arabs? Once restrict legitimate warfare to the
limits of national defence, and it is evident that the refusal of men
to take part in a war of aggression would equally put an end to the
necessity of defensive exertion. If no government could rely on its
subjects for the purposes of aggression and injustice, it goes without
saying that the just cause of war would perish simultaneously. It is
therefore altogether to be wished that that reliance should be weakened
and destroyed.
The reasoning, then, which contains the key that is alone capable of
closing permanently the portals of Janus is this: that there exists a
distinction between a just and an unjust war, between a good and a bad
cause, and that no man has a right either to take part knowingly and
wilfully in a cause he believes to be unjust, nor to commit himself
servilely to a theory of duty which deprives him, at the very outset,
of his inalienable human birthright of free thought and free will. This
is the principle of personal responsibility which has long since won
admission everywhere save in the service of Mars, and which requires
but to be extended there to free the world from the custom that has
longest and most ruinously afflicted it. For it attacks that custom
where it has never yet been seriously attacked before, at its real
source--namely, in the heart, the brain, and the conscience, that,
in spite of all warping and training, still belong to the individual
units who alone make it possible. It behoves all of us, therefore,
who are interested in abolishing military barbarism, not merely to
yield a passive assent to it ourselves, but to claim for it assent and
assertion from others. We must ask and reask the question: What is the
title by which a man, through the mere fact of his military cloth,
claims exemption from the moral law that is universally binding upon
his fellows?
For this principle of individual military responsibility is of such
power, that if carried to its consequences, it must ultimately prove
fatal to militarism; and if it has not yet the prescription of time
and common opinion in its favour, it is sealed nevertheless with the
authority of many of the best intellects that have helped to enlighten
the past, and is indissolubly contained in the teaching alike of our
religious as of our moral code. It can, in fact, only be gainsaid by a
denial of the fundamental maxims of those two guides of our conduct,
and for that reason stands absolutely proof against the assaults
of argument. Try to reconcile with the ordinary conceptions of the
duties of a man or a Christian the duty of doing what his conscience
condemns, and it may be safely predicted that you will try in vain.
The considerations that may occur of utility and expediency beat in
vain against the far greater expediency of a world at peace, freed from
the curse of the warrior’s destructiveness; nor can the whole armoury
of military logic supply a single counter-argument which does not
resolve itself into an argument of supposed expediency, and which may
not therefore be effectually parried, even on this narrower debating
ground, by the consideration of the overwhelming advantages which could
not but flow from the universal acceptance of the contrary and higher
principle--the principle that for a soldier, as for anyone else, his
first duty is to his conscience.
Or, to put the conclusion in the fewest words: The soldier claims to
be a non-moral agent. That is the corner-stone of the whole military
system. Challenge then the claimant to justify his first principle,
and the custom of war will shake to its foundation, and in time go the
way that other evil customs have gone before it, when once their moral
support has been undermined or shattered.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Halleck’s _International Law_, ii. 21. Yet within three weeks of
the beginning of the war with France 60,000 Prussians were _hors de
combat_.
[2] ‘Artem illam _mortiferam et Deo odibilem_ balistrariorum et
sagittariorum adversus Christianos et Catholicos exerceri de cætero sub
anathemate prohibemus.’
[3] Fauchet’s _Origines des Chevaliers_, &c. &c., ii. 56; Grose’s
_Military Antiquities_, i. 142; and Demmin’s _Encyclopédie d’Armurerie_,
57, 496.
[4] Fauchet, ii. 57. ‘Lequel engin, pour le mal qu’il faisait (pire que
le venin des serpens), fut nommé serpentine,’ &c.
[5] Grose, ii. 331.
[6] Dyer, _Modern Europe_, iii. 158.
[7] Scoffern’s _Projectile Weapons_, &c., 66.
[8] _Sur l’Esprit_, i. 562.
[9] Reade, _Ashantee Campaign_, 52.
[10] Livy, xliv. 42.
[11] These Instructions are published in Halleck’s _International Law_,
ii. 36-51; and at the end of Edwards’s _Germans in France_.
[12] ‘It would have been desirable,’ said the Russian Government,
‘that the voice of a great nation like England should have been heard
at an inquiry of which the object would appear to have met with its
sympathies.’
[13] _Jus Gentium_, art. 887, 878.
[14] Florus, ii. 20.
[15] Edwards’s _Germans in France_, 164.
[16] This remarkable fact is certified by Mr. Russell, in his _Diary in
the last Great War_, 398, 399.
[17] Cicero, _In Verrem_, iv. 54.
[18] See even the _Annual Register_, lvi. 184, for a denunciation of
this proceeding.
[19] Sismondi’s _Hist. des Français_, xxv.
[20] Edwards’s _Germans in France_, 171.
[21] Lieut-Col. Charras, _La Campagne de 1815_, i. 211, ii. 88.
[22] Woolsey’s _International Law_, p. 223.
[23] Cf. lib. xii. 81, and xiii. 25, 26; quoted by Grotius, iii. xi.
xiii.
[24] iii. 41.
[25] _Cambridge Essays_, 1855, ‘Limitations to Severity in War,’ by C.
Buxton.
[26] See Raumer’s _Geschichte Europa’s_, iii. 509-603, if any doubt is
felt about the fact.
[27] General Order of October 9, 1813. Compare those of May 29, 1809,
March 25, 1810, June 10, 1812, and July 9, 1813.
[28] Vattel, iii. ix. 165.
[29] Sir W. Napier (_Peninsular War_, ii. 322) says of the proceeding
that it was ‘politic indeed, yet scarcely to be admitted within the
pale of civilised warfare.’ It occurred in May 1810.
[30] Bluntschli’s _Modernes Völkerrecht_, art. 573.
[31] For the character of modern war see the account of the
Franco-German war in the _Quarterly Review_ for April 1871.
[32] Halleck, ii. 22.
[33] Vehse’s _Austria_, i. 369. Yet, as usual on such occasions, the
excesses were committed in the teeth of Tilly’s efforts to oppose them.
‘Imperavit Tillius a devictorum cædibus et corporum castimonia
abstinerent, quod imperium a quibusdam furentibus male servatum annales
aliqui fuere conquesti.’--Adlzreiter’s _Annales Boicæ Gentis_, Part
iii. l. 16, c. 38.
[34] _Battles in the Peninsular War_, 181, 182.
[35] _Ibid._ 396.
[36] Foxe’s _Actes and Monuments_, iii. 52.
[37] Saint-Palaye, _Mémoires sur la Chevalerie_, iii. 10, 133.
[38] Vinsauf’s _Itinerary of Richard I._, ii. 16.
[39] Matthew of Westminster, 460; Grose, ii. 348.
[40] Monstrelet, ii. 115.
[41] _Mémoires sur la Chevalerie_, i. 322.
[42] Petitot, v. 102; and Ménard, _Vie de B. du Guesclin_, 440.
[43] Petitot, v. 134.
[44] Meyrick, _Ancient Armour_, ii. 5.
[45] i. 123.
[46] Monstrelet, i. 259.
[47] ii. 5.
[48] ii. 11.
[49] ii. 22, compare ii. 56.
[50] Monstrelet, ii. 111.
[51] ii. 113.
[52] See for some, Livy, xxix. 8, xxxi. 26, 30, xxxvii. 21, xliii. 7,
xliv. 29.
[53] Livy, xliv. 29.
[54] Meyrick, i. 41.
[55] Demmin, _Encyclopédie d’Armurerie_, 490.
[56] Meyrick, ii. 204.
[57] Grose, ii. 114.
[58] Petitot, xvi. 134.
[59] Grose, ii. 343.
[60] iv. 27.
[61] iv. 36.
[62] iii. 109.
[63] _Mémoires_, vi. 1.
[64] Halleck, _International Law_, ii. 154.
[65] _Elements of Morality_, sec. 1068.
[66] _Des Droits et Devoirs des Nations neutres_, ii. 321-323.
[67] _History of the Royal Navy_, i. 357.
[68] Nicolas, ii. 341.
[69] Nicolas, ii. 405.
[70] Monstrelet, i. 12.
[71] Nicolas, ii. 108.
[72] _Ibid._ i. 333.
[73] Froissart, ii. 85.
[74] Entick, _New Naval History_ (1757), 823. ‘Some of the Spanish
prizes were immensely rich, a great many of the French were of
considerable value, and so were many of the English; but the balance
was about two millions in favour of the latter.’
[75] From Entick’s _New Naval History_ (1757), 801-817.
[76] Martens, _Essai sur les Corsaires_ (Horne’s translation), 86, 87.
[77] _Ibid._ 93.
[78] III. xv. 229.
[79] Emerigon, _On Insurances_ (translation), 442.
[80] Martens, 19.
[81] Hautfeuille, _Des Droits et Devoirs des Nations neutres_, ii. 349.
[82] _De Jure Maritimo_, i. 72.
[83] _Despatches_, vi. 145.
[84] _Despatches_, vi. 79.
[85] The last occasion was on April 13, 1875.
[86] Halleck, _International Law_, ii. 316.
[87] Bluntschli, _Modernes Völkerrecht_, art. 665.
[88] James, _Naval History_, i. 255.
[89] James, ii. 71.
[90] _Ibid._ ii. 77.
[91] Ortolan, _Diplomatie de la Mer_, ii. 32.
[92] Campbell’s _Admirals_, viii. 40.
[93] _Campbell_, vii. 21. _James_, i. 161. Stinkpots are jars or shells
charged with powder, grenades, &c.
[94] James, i. 283.
[95] Brenton, ii. 471.
[96] Caltrops, or crows’-feet, are bits of iron with four spikes so
arranged that however they fall one spike always remains upwards.
Darius planted the ground with caltrops before Arbela.
[97] Chapter xix. of the _Tactica_.
[98] Frontinus, _Strategematicon_, IV. vii. 9, 10. ‘Amphoras pice et
tæda plenas; ... vascula viperis plena.’
[99] Roger de Wendover, _Chronica_. ‘Calcem vivam, et in pulverem
subtilem redactam, in altum projicientes, vento illam ferente,
Francorum oculos excæcaverunt.’
[100] Brenton, i. 635.
[101] _De Jure Maritimo_, i. 265.
[102] Rees’s _Cyclopædia_, ‘Fire-ship.’
[103] Brenton, ii. 493, 494.
[104] Halleck, ii. 317.
[105] Woolsey, _International Law_, 187.
[106] James, i. 277.
[107] Phillimore, _International Law_, iii. 50-52.
[108] _International Law_, ii. 95.
[109] Villiaumé, _L’Esprit de la Guerre_, 56.
[110] De Commines, viii. 8.
[111] Watson’s _Philip II._, ii. 74.
[112] _Ibid._ i. 213.
[113] _Memoirs_, c. 19.
[114] Villiaumé (_L’Esprit de la Guerre_, 71) gives the following
version: ‘En 1793 et en 1794, le gouvernement anglais ayant violé le
droit des gens contre la République Française, la Convention, dans
un accès de brutale colère, décréta qu’il ne serait plus fait aucun
prisonnier anglais ou hanovrien, c’est-à-dire que les vaincus seraient
mis à mort, encore qu’ils se rendissent. Mais ce décret fut simplement
comminatoire; le Comité de Salut Public, sachant très-bien que de
misérables soldats n’étaient point coupables, donna l’ordre secret de
faire grâce à tous les vaincus.’
[115] Herodotus, vii. 136.
[116] Livy, xlv. 42.
[117] _Ibid._ xlv. 43.
[118] Ward, _Law of Nations_, i. 250.
[119] Petitot’s _Mémoires_, xvi. 177.
[120] Livy, xlii. 8, 9.
[121] Monstrelet, _Chronicles_, i. 200.
[122] _Ibid._ i. 224.
[123] _Ibid._ i. 249.
[124] _Ibid._ i. 259.
[125] Monstrelet, ii. 156.
[126] _Ibid._ 120.
[127] Philip de Commines, ii. 1.
[128] _Ibid._ ii. 2.
[129] _Ibid._ ii. 14.
[130] Philip de Commines, iii. 9.
[131] Motley’s _United Netherlands_, iii. 323.
[132] Vattel, iii. 8, 143.
[133] Borbstaedt, _Franco-German War_ (translation), 662.
[134] Ward, i. 223.
[135] Quintus Curtius, iv. 6, and Grote, viii. 368.
[136] Quintus Curtius, vii. 11.
[137] _Ibid._ iv. 15.
[138] Arrian, iii. 18.
[139] Quintus Curtius, vii. 5.
[140] ‘Tous deux furent très braves, très vaillants, fort bizarres et
cruels.’
[141] Lyttleton, _Henry II._, i. 183.
[142] Hoveden, 697.
[143] 2 Samuel xii. 31.
[144] _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, i. 47.
[145] _Memoirs of a Cavalier_, 49.
[146] ‘Life of Bayard’ in Petitot’s _Mémoires_, xvi. 9.
[147] Major-General Mitchell’s _Biographies of Eminent Soldiers_, 92.
[148] Livy, xxxi. 40. When Pelium was taken by storm, only the slaves
were taken as spoil; the freemen were even let off without ransom.
[149] _Ibid._ xxviii. 3.
[150] _Ibid._ xxviii. 20, xxvii. 16, xxxi. 27.
[151] _De Officiis_, i. 12. Yet on this passage is founded the common
assertion that among the Romans ‘the word which signified stranger was
the same with that which in its original denoted an enemy’ (Ward, ii.
174); implying that in their eyes a stranger and an enemy were one and
the same thing. Cicero says exactly the reverse.
[152] _Recueil de Documents sur les exactions, vols, et cruautés des
armées prussiennes en France._ The book is out of print, but may be
seen at the British Museum, under the title, ‘Prussia--Army of.’ It is
to be regretted that, whilst every book, however dull, relating to that
war has been translated into English, this record has hitherto escaped
the publicity it so well deserves.
[153] _Ibid._ 19.
[154] _Ibid._ 8.
[155] _Ibid._ 13.
[156] Chaudordy’s Circular of November 29, 1870, in the _Recueil_.
[157] _Recueil_, 12, 15, 67, 119.
[158] _Ibid._ 56.
[159] _Ibid._ 54.
[160] _Recueil_, 33-37, and Lady Bloomfield’s _Reminiscences_, ii. 235,
8, 9.
[161] The _Times_, March 7, 1881.
[162] _Recueil_, 29; compare 91.
[163] Morley’s _Cobden_, ii. 177.
[164] Professor Sheldon Amos quotes the fact, but refrains from naming
the paper, in his preface to Manning’s _Commentaries on the Law of
Nations_, xl. Was it not the _Journal de France_ for Nov. 21, 1871?
[165] iii. i. viii. 4.
[166] _De Officiis_, i. 13.
[167] _Modernes Völkerrecht_, Art. 565.
[168] Polyænus, _Strategematum libri octo_, i. 34.
[169] Polyænus, v. 41.
[170] Ortolan’s _Diplomatie de la mer_, ii. 31, 375-7.
[171] James’s _Naval History_, ii. 211; Campbell’s _Admirals_, vii. 132.
[172] James, _Naval History_, ii. 225.
[173] Nicolas, _Royal Navy_, ii. 27.
[174] Hautefeuille, _Droit Maritime_, iii. 433. ‘Les vaisseaux de
l’Etat eux-mêmes ne rougissent pas de ces grossiers mensonges qui
prennent le nom de ruses de guerre.’
[175] xiii. 1.
[176] Montaigne, ch. v.
[177] vii. 4. ‘Quia appellatione nostra vix apte exprimi possunt, Græca
pronuntiatione Stratagemata dicuntur.’
[178] Livy, xlii. 47.
[179] _Histoire de la France_, iii. 401.
[180] The word musket is from _muschetto_, a kind of hawk, implying
that its attack was equally destructive and unforeseen.
[181] Polyænus, ii. 19.
[182] Polyænus, iii. 2; from Thucydides, iii. 34.
[183] _Ibid._ vii. 27, 2.
[184] _Ibid._ iv. 2-4.
[185] Liskenne, _Bibliothèque Historique et Militaire_, iii. 845.
[186] _Memoirs_, ch. xix.
[187] ix. 6, 3.
[188] vi. 22.
[189] vi. 15.
[190] iv. 7, 17.
[191] E. Fournier, _L’Esprit dans l’Histoire_, 145-150.
[192] iii. 10.
[193] Liskenne, v. 233-4.
[194] _Soldier’s Pocket-Book_, 81.
[195] Polyænus, viii. 16, 8. ‘Lege Romanorum jubente hostium
exploratores interficere.’
[196] Livy, xxx. 29. According to Polyænus, he gave them a dinner and
sent them back with instructions to tell what they had seen; viii. 16,
8.
[197] Watson’s _Philip II._ iii. 311.
[198] Liskenne, iii. 840.
[199] Hoffman, _Kriegslist_, 15.
[200] Petitot’s _Mémoires de la France_, xv. 317.
[201] Polyænus, ii. 27.
[202] _Ibid._ v. 1, 4.
[203] _Memoirs_, ch. xix.
[204] Livy, xxxiv. 17.
[205] As at the Brussels Conference, 1874, when such a proposal was
made by the member for Sweden and Norway.
[206] In Pinkerton, xvi. 817.
[207] Turner’s _Nineteen Years in Samoa_, 304.
[208] Schoolcraft’s _Indian Tribes_, iv. 52.
[209] _The Basutos_, 223.
[210] Potter’s _Grecian Antiquities_, ii. 69.
[211] Turner’s _Samoa_, 298.
[212] Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, i. 275.
[213] Hutton’s _Voyage to Africa_, 1821, 337.
[214] Colenso and Durnford’s _Zulu War_, 364, 379.
[215] Petitot’s _Mémoires_, xv. 329.
[216] The evidence is collected in _Cetschwayo’s Dutchman_, 99-103.
[217] Henty’s _March to Coomassie_, 443. Compare Reade’s _Ashantee
Campaign_, 241-2.
[218] Florus, ii. 19; iii. 4; Velleius Paterculus, ii. 1.
[219] Florus, ii. 20.
[220] _Ibid._ iii. 7.
[221] Florus, iii. 4; Cæsar, _De Bello Gallico_, ix. 44.
[222] Morley’s _Cobden_, ii. 355.
[223] Sir A. Helps’ _Las Casas_, 29.
[224] T. Morton’s _New England Canaan_, 1637, iii.
[225] Belknap’s _New Hampshire_, i. 262.
[226] Penhallow’s _Indian Wars_, 1826, republished 1859, 31-3.
[227] _Ibid._ 105, 6.
[228] _Ibid._ 103. For further details of this debased military
practice, see Adair’s _History of American Indians_, 245; Kercheval’s
_History of the Valley of Virginia_, 263; Drake’s _Biography and
History of the Indians_, 210, 373; Sullivan’s _History of Maine_, 251.
[229] Kercheval’s _Virginia_, 113.
[230] Eschwege’s _Brazil_, i. 186; Tschudi’s _Reisen durch Südamerika_,
i. 262.
[231] Parkman’s _Expedition against Ohio Indians_, 1764, 117.
[232] Argensola, _Les Isles Molucques_, i. 60.
[233] Drake’s _Biography and History of the Indians_, 489, 490.
[234] R. C. Burton’s _City of the Saints_, 576; Eyre’s _Central
Australia_, i. 175-9.
[235] Borwick’s _Last of the Tasmanians_, 58.
[236] Tschudi’s _Reisen_, ii. 262.
[237] Maccoy’s _Baptist Indian Missions_, 441; Froebel’s _Seven Years
in Central America_, 272; Wallace’s _Travels on the Amazon_, 326.
[238] Bancroft’s _United States_, ii. 383-5; and compare Clarkson’s
_Life of Penn_, chaps. 45 and 46.
[239] Brooke’s _Ten Years in Sarawak_, i. 74.
[240] Captain Hamilton’s _East Indies_, in Pinkerton, viii. 514.
[241] W. H. Russell’s _My Diary in India_, 150.
[242] _Annals of the Propagation of the Faith_, viii. 280-6.
[243] _Caffres and Caffre Missions_, 210.
[244] _Memorials of Henrietta Robertson_, 259, 308, 353.
[245] _Ibid._ 353.
[246] Colenso and Durnford’s _Zulu War_, 215.
[247] Holden’s _History of Natal_, 210, 211.
[248] Moister’s _Africa, Past and Present_, 310, 311.
[249] Tams’s _Visit to Portuguese Possessions_, i. 181, ii. 28, 179.
[250] Robertson’s _America_; Works, vi. 177, 205.
[251] Thomson’s _Great Missionaries_, 30; Halkett’s _Indians of North
America_, 247, 249, 256.
[252] Le Blant, _Inscriptions Chrétiennes_, i. 86.
[253] Bingham, _Christian Antiquities_, i. 486.
[254] Cæsar, _De Bello Gallico_, vi. 14. ‘Druides a bello abesse
consuerunt ... militiæ vacationem habent;’ and Origen, _In Celsum_,
viii. 73, for the Romans.
[255] Vaughan’s _Life of Wycliffe_, ii. 212-3.
[256] Turner’s _England_, iv. 458, from Duchesne, _Gesta Stephani_.
[257] ‘Non filius meus est vel ecclesiæ; ad regis autem voluntatem
redimetur, quia potius Martis quam Christi miles judicatur.’
[258] Turner’s _England_, v. 92.
[259] ‘Sanxit ut nullus in posterum sacerdos in hostem pergeret,
nisi duo vel tres episcopi electione cæterorum propter benedictionem
populique reconciliationem, et cum illis electi sacerdotes qui bene
scirent populis pœnitentias dare, missas celebrare, etc.’ (in _Du
Cange_, ‘Hostis’).
[260] Guicciardini. ‘Prometteva che se i soldati procedevano
virilmente, che non accetterebbe la Mirandola con alcuno patto: ma
lascierebbe in potestà loro il saccheggiarla.’
[261] Monstrelet, i. 9.
[262] Crichton’s _Scandinavia_, i. 170.
[263] _Mémoires du Fleurange._ Petitot, xvi. 253.
[264] See Palmer, _Origines Liturgicæ_, ii. 362-65, for the form of
service.
[265] _Petitot_, xvi. 229.
[266] _Ibid._ 135.
[267] Petitot, viii. 55. ‘Feciono venire per tutto il campo un prete
parato col corpo di Christo, e in luogo di communicarsi ciascuno prese
uno poco di terra, e la si mise in boca.’
[268] Livy, xxxvi. 2.
[269] Robertson, _Charles V._, note 21. Ryan, _History of Effects of
Religion on Mankind_, 124.
[270] M. J, Schmidt, _Histoire des Allemands traduite, etc._, iv. 232,
3.
[271] ‘Christianis licet ex mandato magistratus arma portare et _justa_
bella administrare.’
[272] _Policy of War a True Defence of Peace_, 1543.
[273] _Pallas Armata_, 369, 1683.
[274] In his treatise _Du droit de la guerre_.
[275] _L’Esprit_, i. 562.
[276] _Strafgesetzbuch_, Jan. 20, 1872, 15, 75, 150.
[277] Fleming’s _Volkommene Teutsche Soldat_, 96.
[278] Benet’s _United States Articles of War_, 391.
[279] Grose, ii. 199.
[280] See Turner’s _Pallas Armata_, 349, for these and similar military
tortures.
[281] Crichton’s _Scandinavia_, i. 168.
[282] Grose, ii. 6.
[283] Sir S. Scott’s _History of the British Army_, ii. 436.
[284] ii. 16. ‘Omnes autem signarii vel signiferi quamvis pedites
loricas minores accipiebant, et _galeas ad terrorem hostium ursinis
pellibus tectas_.’
[285] Scott, ii. 9.
[286] Scott, i. 311.
[287] Said to have been invented about 400 B.C. by Dionysius, tyrant of
Syracuse.
[288] Mitchell’s _Biographies of Eminent Soldiers_, 208, 287.
[289] Compare article 14 of the German _Strafgesetzbuch_ of January 20,
1872.
[290] _Nineteenth Century_, November 1882: ‘The Present State of the
Army.’
[291] _De Re Militari_, vi. 5.
[292] Bruce’s _Military Law_ (1717), 254.
[293] See Fleming’s _Teutsche Soldat_, ch. 29.
[294] See the War Articles for 1673, 1749, 1794.
[295] 82.
[296] Quintus Curtius, viii. 2.
[297] _Military Law_, 163.
[298] 286, 290.
[299] _Despatches_, iii. 302, June 17, 1809.
[300] Compare also _Despatches_, iv. 457; v. 583, 704, 5.
[301] _China War_, 225.
[302] Scott’s _British Army_, ii. 411.
[303] _Wellington’s Despatches_, v. 705.
[304] See Windham’s Speech in the House of Commons. April 3, 1806.
[305] _Ibid._
[306] P. 122.
[307] Fleming, 109.
[308] Preface to b. iii. ‘Ergo qui desiderat pacem, præparet bellum.’
[309] Lord Wolseley’s _Soldier’s Pocket Book_, 5.
[310] Arbousset’s _Exploratory Tour_, 397-9.
[311] Livy, xl. 6.
[312] _Iliad_, vi. 266-8; and comp. _Æneid_, ii. 717-20.
[313] Casalis’s _Basutos_, 258.
[314] Victor Hugo’s _L’Ane_, 124.
[315] Baillat’s _Vie de Descartes_, i. 41.
[316] ii. 25, 9, 1. ‘Tanto carnifice detestabiliores quanto pejus est
sine causâ quam ex causâ occidere.’
[317] _Ibid._ 2. ‘Nullum vitæ genus est improbius quam eorum qui sine
causæ respectu mercede conducti militant, et quibus ibi fas ubi plurima
merces.’ Both the sentiment and the expression are borrowed from
Lucan’s _Pharsalia_, x. 408: ‘Nulla fides pietasque viris qui castra
sequuntur Venalesque manus; ibi fas ubi plurima merces.’
[318] 364.
[319] Potter’s _Greek Antiquities_, ii. 9.
[320] Henry’s _Britain_, iii. 5, 1; Grose i. 56.
[321] Grose, i. 58.
[322] _Ibid._, i. 67.
[323] _Parliamentary Debates_, May 24, 1756.
[324] Sir S. Scott’s _British Army_, ii. 333.
[325] N. Bacon’s Notes to _Selden’s Laws_, ii. 60.
[326] _Candide_, c. xx.
[327] Alison’s _Europe_, vi. 491.
[328] _Life of Sir C. Napier_, i. 77.
[329] _Military Law_, 17.
[330] _Keppel’s Life_, by T. Keppel, ii. 1.
[331] _Indian Expedition_, ix.
[332] Livy, 39, 3; 42, 21; 43, 5.
[333] Livy, xlv. 22. ‘Certe quidem vos estis Romani, qui ideo felicia
bella vestra esse, quia justa sint, præ vobis fertis, nec tam exitu
eorum, quod vincatis, quam principiis quod non sine causâ suscipiatis,
gloriamini.’
[334] _De Civitate Dei_, iv. 4 and 6.
[335] _Arbre des Batailles_, quoted in Kennedy’s _Influence of
Christianity on International Law_.
[336] Petitot, xvi. 137.
[337] III. 65. ‘Cavendo ne metuant, homines metuendos ultro se
efficiunt, et injuriam ab nobis repulsam, tamquam aut facere aut pati
necesse sit, injungimus aliis.’
INDEX.
Achæan, curious mode of warfare, 131
Alexander II. of Russia, 3, 10
Armed neutrality, the, 86
Armour, 55, 224
Ashantee battle song, 86
Balloonists in war, 148
Battles, allusions to:
Agincourt, 201, 262
Bouvines, 194
Camperdown, 80
Crecy, 9, 54
Dover, 84
Musselborough, 56
Navarette, 59
Neerwinden, 6
Nicopoli, 56
Nile, 81
Otterbourne, 196
Pavia, 141
Poitiers, 207
Tel-el-Kebir, 253
Bearskin hats, 223, 224
Becon, Thomas, on military service in the sixteenth century, 208
Bishops in war, 35, 52-3, 193-8, 261
Blinding of prisoners, 42-3
Blockade, effective, 92
Bloodhounds used in war, 171-2
Bombardment, theory and practice of, 12, 15, 17, 106, 116
Bounties for scalps, 156
Brigand, meaning of, 57
Britons, love for military life, 156
Brussels Conference on laws of war, 10, 94, 95, 105, 123, 130,
141-6-7-8, 158
Bullinger, limits to right of military service, 208, 263
Cannons, 5
Cannon-shot oath, 130
Capitulations, 100-1
Chain-shot, 6
Chivalry, age of, 32
Church, influence of, on war, 52, 185-193, 204-16, 252
Churches, destruction of, 48
Church parade, 219
Cities, fate of, in war:
Amiens, surprise of, 148
Badajoz, storming of, 27
Barcelona, siege of, 138
Brescia, storming of, 103
Calais, siege of, 44
Constantine, storming of, 27
Copenhagen, bombardment of, 15, 268
Dinant, storming of, 102
Gaza, storming of, 107
Grammont, massacre at, 35
Gravelines, massacre at, 36
Haarlem, siege of, 97
Liège, storming of, 102
Limoges, massacre at, 37
Londonderry, siege of, 197-8
Magdeburg, massacre at, 27, 112
Malta, siege of, 97
Meaux, surrender of, 45, 101
Mirandola, siege of, 197
Oudenarde, siege of, 47
Pekin, English at, 237
Persepolis, burning of, 108
Poitiers, massacre at, 34
Rome, sack of, 103
Rouen, surrender of, 47, 101
San Sebastian, storming of, 28
Strasburg, bombardment of 15, 17, 106
Terouanne, destruction of, 137
Thebes, sack of, 103
Toledo, siege of, 42
Tyre, siege of, 108
Ulm, surprise of, 149
Washington, English in, 16
Conference stratagem, 136
Conscription, the, 242-8
Consecration of banners, 201
Contraband, 88
Contributions, military, 20, 118
Costume, military, 222-3
Crossbow, 4, 133
Cruelty and courage, 110
Custom of war, character of, 186, 210
Decimation, story of, 222
Declaration of Paris, 73, 78, 86-9
Declaration of St. Petersburg, 2, 3, 81
Declaration of war, 19, 198
Desertion, 230-1
Discipline, 7, 218, 234, 236
Dress, philosophy of military, 229
Duty, 74, 121, 264
Embargoes, 89
Explosive bullets, 1-2, 81
False flag, stratagem of the, 128-130
False information in war, 152
Fecials, Roman, 271
Firearms, feeling against, 5, 226
Fireships, 84-5
Flogging, 234-5
Forged despatches, 151
Free Companies, 60, 260
Free ships, free goods, 87
Fruit-trees, 16, 17, 47, 161
Germans, the, in war, 40, 106, 115-9
Greek fire, 83-4
Grenadiers, 223
Hanging in war, 44-7
Honour, variable notions of, 155-6, 267
Hostages, taking of, revived, 117
Innocent III., 206
Invention of the bayonet, 6
Jomini, Baron, President of Brussels Conference, 95
Julius II., story of, 196
Jus Angariæ, 90
Justice in war, 208, 258-9, 271, 273-80
Khonds, theory of war, 203
Kidnapping soldiers in Germany, 241
Kissing the earth, custom of, 201
Lateran Council, Third, 4
Laws of war among savages, 159
Lent, observation of, in war, 51, 205
Leo the Great, 204
Letters of marque, 74, 78
Letters, military contempt for, 156
Limoges, Council of, 203
Loha Pennu, an Indian war-god, 203
Macedonian warfare, 133
Magic, use of, in war, 199
Malingering, 231-4
Marriage, restrictions on, 218-9
Mercenary service, 260-3
Military cant, 21, 105-6, 118, 163
-- vandalism, 16, 48, 163, 237
Missionaries, 176-182
-- failure of, 177
-- legal control of, 181
Missionaries, Norwegian, in Zululand, 179
Mission stations destroyed, 180
Mozley, Canon, on war, 212
Musket, 5, 133
Mutiny Act, first, 265
Names of weapons, 200
Neutral ships and property, 86
Night attacks, 133
Numbers slain in war, 8-10
Oath, military, 264-5
Oath by cannon-shot, 130
Ophthalmia, artificial, 233
Palatinate, devastation of the, 17, 267
Pay, soldiers’, 239, 261
Perfidy, cases of, 135
Perjury, cases of, 139
Perpetual peace, Von Moltke on, 119
Piracy, 67-70, 255
Plunder of property at sea, 67-70
Plunder of property on land, 61-3, 66, 118
Poison, use of, in war, 13, 14, 172-3
Poisoning the air, 49
Poisoning water, 14, 29
Press, influence of, in war, 112, 177, 182, 253
Prisoners, treatment of, 17, 18, 40, 85, 99, 113
Prisoners, beheaded, 97, 106
-- blinded, 43
-- burnt, 103, 111
-- drowned, 101-2-6
-- hung, 46, 101-3
-- maimed, 43, 103
-- massacred, 41, 111
-- tortured, 194
Privateering, 70-9
-- Lord Nelson on, 77
Prizes and prize-money, 70
Prize Court, 76
Punishments, military, 221-6
Purificatory battle rites, 250
Pursers on privateers, 76
Recruiting, difficulty of, 240
-- former system of, in France and Germany, 241
Red, the military colour, 223
Red-hot shot, 5, 83
Reprisals, 93-118
-- savage German, 117-8
Right of search, 88
Right of wreck, 89
Roman warfare, 114, 132, 271-2
Sacred buildings in war, 16, 48-9
Sea battles, 80, 83
Scalping enemies, 170
Sentry-go, 229
Slavery, influence of its cessation on war, 112
Socialism, chief cause of, 245-8
Soldiers of mark:
Alaric, 204
Alexander the Great, 107-10, 133
Barbarossa, 100
Bayard, 6, 57, 149, 151, 165, 201, 226, 273
Bertrand du Guesclin, 40-1, 44
Black Prince, the, 37, 59
Blücher, 16, 17
Cæsar, 98, 156, 169, 272
Catinat, 145
Chandos, Sir John, 55
Charles of Anjou, 100
Charles the Bold, 111
Charles XII. of Sweden, 133, 226
Crillon, 22, 73, 243
Custine, 145
David, king of the Jews, 111, 251
David I. of Scotland, 111
Des Adretz, 111
Edward I., 106
Edward III., 44
Eugene, Prince, 149
Feuquières, 97, 138, 149
Francis I., 140
Francis de Vere, 104
Frederick the Great, 16, 142
Genseric, 205
Godfrey de Bouillon, 100
Gustavus Adolphus, 19-20, 22, 221
Henri Quatre, 30
Henry V., 101
Keppel, Admiral, 270
Manny, Sir Walter, 44, 57
Maurice, Prince, 150
Montluc, 107, 121, 133, 137, 145, 156
Moltke, 119
Orange, Prince of, 152
Parma, Prince of, 146
Pélissier, 165
Peterborough, Lord, 138
Pyrrhus, 157
Richard I., 111, 195
Saxe, Marshal, 226
Scipio, 146
Sertorius, 143, 145
Sully, 30
Suwarrow, 238
Wellington, Duke of, 20, 236
Wolseley, Lord, 143-4, 151, 244
Xerxes, 47, 99, 146
Spaniards in war, 40, 42, 97, 167-9, 200
Spies, 141-8
Vattel on, 141
Frederick the Great on, 142
Lord Wolseley on, 143-4
Storming cities, 27, 238
Surprises, 148-9
Surrender at discretion, 45, 100, 123
Ternate, island of, 131
Torpedoes, first use of, 5
-- introduced into European warfare, 85
Treatise on Tactics by Leo VI., 83
Truce of God, 205
War, real character of, 27, 186, 210
Wars, abolition of private, 205, 227
Weapons, 50
Women, imprisoned in war, 38
Women and children, slaughter of, 23, 33-8, 117
Women as soldiers, 242
Writers, &c.:
Arrian, 109
Bluntschli, 127
Bynkershoeck, 14, 127
Cicero, 114, 126
Descartes, 254
Dobritzhoffer, 160
Emerigon, 73
Erasmus, 186, 244
Froissart, 23
Frontinus, 134
Grotius, 14, 17, 23, 126, 187, 256, 258, 273
Hallam, 32, 50
Hautefeuille, 67
Kant, 23, 30
Las Casas, 167
Molloy, 77
Origen, 190
Palmerston, Lord, 227
Penn, 173
Polyænus, 135
Quintus Curtius, 109
St. Pierre, Abbé, 30
Sepulveda, 167
Tertullian, 189
Turner, Sir James, 259
Valin, 73
Vattel, 14, 18, 21, 73, 104-5, 139, 141, 266
Vauban, 15
Victor Hugo, 252
Voltaire, 210, 267-8
Whewell, 67
Wycliffe, 193
Zwingli, 263
_Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London._
Transcriber's notes:
The following is a list of changes made to the original.
The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
Page 11, footnote:
like England should have been heard an inquiry of which
like England should have been heard at an inquiry of which
Page 78:
which abolished privateering beween the signatory Powers,
which abolished privateering between the signatory Powers,
Page 244:
such an expositon as the following of the relation between
such an exposition as the following of the relation between
End of Project Gutenberg's Military Manners and Customs, by James Anson Farrer