"A false report, if believed during three days, may be of great service
to a government." This political maxim has been ascribed to Catharine
de' Medici, an adept in _coups d'état_, the _arcana imperii_! Between
solid lying and disguised truth there is a difference known to writers
skilled in "the art of governing mankind by deceiving them;" as
politics, ill-understood, have been defined, and as, indeed, all
party-politics are. These forgers prefer to use the truth disguised to
the gross fiction. When the real truth can no longer be concealed, then
they can confidently refer to it; for they can still explain and
obscure, while they secure on their side the party whose cause they have
advocated. A curious reader of history may discover the temporary and
sometimes the lasting advantages of spreading rumours designed to
disguise, or to counteract the real state of things. Such reports, set a
going, serve to break down the sharp and fatal point of a panic, which
might instantly occur; in this way the public is saved from the horrors
of consternation, and the stupefaction of despair. These rumours give a
breathing time to prepare for the disaster, which is doled out
cautiously; and, as might be shown, in some cases these first reports
have left an event in so ambiguous a state, that a doubt may still arise
whether these reports were really destitute of truth! Such reports, once
printed, enter into history, and sadly perplex the honest historian. Of
a battle fought in a remote situation, both parties for a long time, at
home, may dispute the victory after the event, and the pen may prolong
what the sword had long decided. This has been no unusual circumstance;
of several of the most important battles on which the fate of Europe has
hung, were we to rely on some reports of the time, we might still doubt
of the manner of the transaction. A skirmish has been often raised into
an _arranged_ battle, and a defeat concealed in an account of the
killed and wounded, while victory has been claimed by both parties!
Villeroy, in all his encounters with Marlborough, always sent home
despatches by which no one could suspect that he was discomfited.
Pompey, after his fatal battle with Cæsar, sent letters to all the
provinces and cities of the Romans, describing with greater courage than
he had fought, so that a report generally prevailed that Caesar had lost
the battle: Plutarch informs us, that three hundred writers had
described the battle of Marathon. Many doubtless had copied their
predecessors; but it would perhaps have surprised us to have observed
how materially some differed in their narratives.
In looking over a collection of manuscript letters of the times of James
the First, I was struck by the contradictory reports of the result of
the famous battle of Lutzen, so glorious and so fatal to Gustavus
Adolphus; the victory was sometimes reported to have been obtained by
the Swedes; but a general uncertainty, a sort of mystery, agitated the
majority of the nation, who were staunch to the protestant cause. This
state of anxious suspense lasted a considerable time. The fatal truth
gradually came _out in reports changing in their progress_; if the
victory was allowed, the death of the Protestant Hero closed all hope!
The historian of Gustavus Adolphus observes on this occasion, that "Few
couriers were better received than those who conveyed the accounts of
the king's death to declared enemies or concealed ill-wishers; nor did
the report greatly displease the court of Whitehall, where the ministry,
as it usually happens in cases of timidity, had its degree of
apprehensions for fear the event should not be true; and, as I have
learnt from good authority, imposed silence on the news-writers, and
intimated the same to the pulpit in case any funeral encomium might
proceed from that quarter." Although the motive assigned by the writer,
that of the secret indisposition of the cabinet of James the First
towards the fortunes of Gustavus, is to me by no means certain,
unquestionably the knowledge of this disastrous event was long kept back
by "a timid ministry," and the fluctuating reports probably regulated by
their designs.
The same circumstance occurred on another important event in modern
history, where we may observe the artifice of party writers in
disguising or suppressing the real fact. This was the famous battle of
the Boyne. The French catholic party long reported that Count Lauzun had
won the battle, and that William the Third was killed. Bussy Rabutin in
some memoirs, in which he appears to have registered public events
without scrutinising their truth, says, "I chronicled this account
according as the first reports gave out; when at length the real fact
reached them, the party did not like to lose their pretended victory."
Père Londel, who published a register of the times, which is favourably
noticed in the "Nouvelles de la République des Lettres," for 1699, has
recorded the event in this deceptive manner: "The Battle of the Boyne in
Ireland; Schomberg is killed there at the head of the English." This is
"an equivocator!" The writer resolved to conceal the defeat of James's
party, and cautiously suppresses any mention of a victory, but very
carefully gives a real fact, by which his readers would hardly doubt of
the defeat of the English! We are so accustomed to this traffic of false
reports, that we are scarcely aware that many important events recorded
in history were in their day strangely disguised by such mystifying
accounts. This we can only discover by reading private letters written
at the moment. Bayle has collected several remarkable absurdities of
this kind, which were spread abroad to answer a temporary purpose, but
which had never been known to us had these contemporary letters not been
published. A report was prevalent in Holland in 1580, that the kings of
France and Spain and the Duke of Alva were dead; a felicity which for a
time sustained the exhausted spirits of the revolutionists. At the
invasion of the Spanish Armada, Burleigh spread reports of the
thumb-screws, and other instruments of torture, which the Spaniards had
brought with them, and thus inflamed the hatred of the nation. The
horrid story of the bloody Colonel Kirk is considered as one of those
political forgeries to serve the purpose of blackening a zealous
partisan.
False reports are sometimes stratagems of war. When the chiefs of the
League had lost the battle at Ivry, with an army broken and discomfited
they still kept possession of Paris merely by imposing on the
inhabitants all sorts of false reports, such as the death of the king of
Navarre at the fortunate moment when victory, undetermined on which side
to incline, turned for the Leaguers; and they gave out false reports of
a number of victories they had elsewhere obtained. Such tales,
distributed in pamphlets and ballads among a people agitated by doubts
and fears, are gladly believed; flattering their wishes or soothing
their alarms, they contribute to their ease, and are too agreeable to
allow time for reflection.
The history of a report creating a panic may be traced in the Irish
insurrection, in the curious memoirs of James the Second. A forged
proclamation of the Prince of Orange was set forth by one Speke, and a
rumour spread that the Irish troops were killing and burning in all
parts of the kingdom! A magic-like panic instantly ran through the
people, so that in one quarter of the town of Drogheda they imagined
that the other was filled with blood and ruin. During this panic
pregnant women miscarried, aged persons died with terror, while the
truth was, that the Irish themselves were disarmed and dispersed, in
utter want of a meal or a lodging!
In the unhappy times of our civil wars under Charles the First, the
newspapers and the private letters afford specimens of this political
contrivance of false reports of every species. No extravagance of
invention to spread a terror against a party was too gross, and the city
of London was one day alarmed that the royalists were occupied by a plan
of blowing up the river Thames, by an immense quantity of powder
warehoused at the river-side; and that there existed an organised though
invisible brotherhood of many thousands with _consecrated knives_; and
those who hesitated to give credit to such rumours were branded as
malignants, who took not the danger of the parliament to heart. Forged
conspiracies and reports of great but distant victories were inventions
to keep up the spirit of a party, but oftener prognosticated some
intended change in the government. When they were desirous of augmenting
the army, or introducing new garrisons, or using an extreme measure with
the city, or the royalists, there was always a new conspiracy set
afloat; or when any great affair was to be carried in parliament,
letters of great victories were published to dishearten the opposition,
and infuse additional boldness in their own party. If the report lasted
only a few days, it obtained its purpose, and verified the observation
of Catharine de' Medici. Those politicians who raise such false reports
obtain their end: like the architect who, in building an arch, supports
it with circular props and pieces of timber, or any temporary rubbish,
till he closes the arch; and when it can support itself, he throws away
the props! There is no class of political lying which can want for
illustration if we consult the records of our civil wars; there we may
trace the whole art in all the nice management of its shades, its
qualities, and its more complicated parts, from invective to puff, and
from inuendo to prevarication! we may admire the scrupulous correction
of a lie which they had told, by another which they are telling! and
triple lying to overreach their opponents. Royalists and
Parliamentarians were alike; for, to tell one great truth, "the father
of lies" is of no party![287]
As "nothing is new under the sun," so this art of deceiving the public
was unquestionably practised among the ancients. Syphax sent Scipio word
that he could not unite with the Romans, but, on the contrary, had
declared for the Carthaginians. The Roman army were then anxiously
waiting for his expected succours: Scipio was careful to show the utmost
civility to these ambassadors, and ostentatiously treated them with
presents, that his soldiers might believe they were only returning to
hasten the army of Syphax to join the Romans. Livy censures the Roman
consul, who, after the defeat at Cannæ, told the deputies of the allies
the whole loss they had sustained: "This consul," says Livy, "by giving
too faithful and open an account of his defeat, made both himself and
his army appear still more contemptible." The result of the simplicity
of the consul was, that the allies, despairing that the Romans would
ever recover their losses, deemed it prudent to make terms with
Hannibal. Plutarch tells an amusing story, in his way, of the natural
progress of a report which was contrary to the wishes of the government;
the unhappy reporter suffered punishment as long as the rumour
prevailed, though at last it proved true. A stranger landing from
Sicily, at a barber's shop, delivered all the particulars of the defeat
of the Athenians; of which, however, the people were yet uninformed. The
barber leaves untrimmed the reporter's beard, and flies away to vent the
news in the city, where he told the Archons what he had heard. The whole
city was thrown into a ferment. The Archons called an assembly of the
people, and produced the luckless barber, who in confusion could not
give any satisfactory account of the first reporter. He was condemned as
a spreader of false news, and a disturber of the public quiet; for the
Athenians could not imagine but that they were invincible! The barber
was dragged to the wheel and tortured, till the disaster was more than
confirmed. Bayle, referring to this story, observes, that had the barber
reported a victory, though it had proved to be false, he would not have
been punished; a shrewd observation, which occurred to him from his
recollection of the fate of Stratocles. This person persuaded the
Athenians to perform a public sacrifice and thanksgiving for a victory
obtained at sea, though he well knew at the time that the Athenian fleet
had been totally defeated. When the calamity could no longer be
concealed, the people charged him with being an impostor: but Stratocles
saved his life and mollified their anger by the pleasant turn he gave
the whole affair. "Have I done you any injury?" said he. "Is it not
owing to me that you have spent three days in the pleasures of victory?"
I think that this spreader of good, but fictitious news, should have
occupied the wheel of the luckless barber, who had spread bad but true
news; for the barber had no intention of deception, but Stratocles had;
and the question here to be tried, was not the truth or the falsity of
the reports, but whether the reporters intended to deceive their
fellow-citizens? The "Chronicle" and the "Post" must be challenged on
such a jury, and all the race of news-scribes, whom Patin characterises
as _hominum genus audacissimum mendacissimum avidissimum_. Latin
superlatives are too rich to suffer a translation. But what Patin says
in his Letter 356 may be applied: "These writers insert in their papers
things they do not know, and ought not to write. It is the same trick
that is playing which was formerly played; it is the very same farce,
only it is exhibited by new actors. The worst circumstance, I think, in
this is, that this trick will continue playing a long course of years,
and that the public suffer a great deal too much by it."