Part 4

These might seem pictures from the life of Alaric, who led the Goths to Rome, or of Attila, general of the Huns, called the Scourge of God, and who boasted that the grass did not grow where his horse had set his foot; but no! they belong to our own times. They are portions of the wonderful, but wicked, career of him who stands forth the foremost representative of worldly grandeur. The heart aches, as we follow him and his marshals from field to field of Satanic glory,[22] finding everywhere, from Spain to Russia, the same carnival of woe. The picture is various, yet the same. Suffering, wounds, and death, in every form, fill the terrible canvas. What scene more dismal than that of Albuera, with its horrid piles of corpses, while all night the rain pours down, and river, hill, and forest, on each side, resound with the cries and groans of the dying?[23] What scene more awfully monumental than Salamanca, where, long after the great battle, the ground, strewn with fragments of casques and cuirasses, was still white with the skeletons of those who fell?[24] What catalogue of horrors more complete than the Russian campaign? At every step is war, and this is enough: soldiers black with powder; bayonets bent with the violence of the encounter; the earth ploughed with cannon-shot; trees torn and mutilated; the dead and dying; wounds and agony; fields covered with broken carriages, outstretched horses, and mangled bodies; while disease, sad attendant on military suffering, sweeps thousands from the great hospitals, and the multitude of amputated limbs, which there is no time to destroy, accumulate in bloody heaps, filling the air with corruption. What tongue, what pen, can describe the bloody havoc at Borodino, where, between rise and set of a single sun, one hundred thousand of our fellow-men, equalling in number the whole population of this city, sank to earth, dead or wounded?[25] Fifty days after the battle, no less than thirty thousand are found stretched where their last convulsions ended, and the whole plain is strewn with half-buried carcasses of men and horses, intermingled with garments dyed in blood, and bones gnawed by dogs and vultures.[26] Who can follow the French army in dismal retreat, avoiding the spear of the pursuing Cossack only to sink beneath the sharper frost and ice, in a temperature below zero, on foot, without shelter for the body, famishing on horse-flesh and a miserable compound of rye and snow-water? With a fresh array, the war is upheld against new forces under the walls of Dresden; and as the Emperor rides over the field of battle--after indulging the night before in royal supper with the Saxon king--he sees ghastly new-made graves, with hands and arms projecting, stark and stiff, above the ground; and shortly afterwards, when shelter is needed for the troops, the order to occupy the Hospitals for the Insane is given, with the words, "Turn out the mad."[27]

[22] A living poet of Italy, who will be placed by his prose among the great names of his country's literature, in a remarkable ode which he has thrown on the urn of Napoleon invites posterity to judge whether his career of battle was True Glory.

"Fu vera gloria? Ai posteri L'ardua sentenza."--MANZONI, _Il Cinque Maggio_.

When men learn to appreciate moral grandeur, the easy sentence will be rendered.

[23] Napier, Book XII. ch. 7, Vol. III. p. 543.

[24] Alison, Ch. 64, Vol. VIII. p. 589.

[25] Ibid., Ch. 67, Vol. VIII. p. 871.

[26] Ibid., Ch. 68, Vol. VIII. p. 930. Ségur, Hist. de Napoléon, Liv. IX. ch. 7, Tom. II. p. 153. Labaume, Rel. de la Campagne de Russie, Liv. VII.

[27] Alison, Ch. 72, Vol. IX. pp. 469, 553.

* * * * *

Here I might close this scene of blood. But there is one other picture of the atrocious, though natural, consequences of war, occurring almost within our own day, that I would not omit. Let me bring to your mind Genoa, called the Superb, City of Palaces, dear to the memory of American childhood as the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, and one of the spots first enlightened by the morning beams of civilization, whose merchants were princes, and whose rich argosies, in those early days, introduced to Europe the choicest products of the East, the linen of Egypt, the spices of Arabia, and the silks of Samarcand. She still sits in queenly pride, as she sat then,--her mural crown studded with towers,--her churches rich with marble floors and rarest pictures,--her palaces of ancient doges and admirals yet spared by the hand of Time,--her close streets thronged by a hundred thousand inhabitants,--at the foot of the Apennines, as they approach the blue and tideless waters of the Mediterranean Sea,--leaning her back against their strong mountain-sides, overshadowed by the foliage of the fig-tree and the olive, while the orange and the lemon with pleasant perfume scent the air where reigns perpetual spring. Who can contemplate such a city without delight? Who can listen to the story of her sorrows without a pang?

At the opening of the present century, the armies of the French Republic, after dominating over Italy, were driven from their conquests, and compelled, with shrunken forces, to find shelter under Massena, within the walls of Genoa. Various efforts were made by the Austrian general, aided by bombardment from the British fleet, to force the strong defences by assault. At length the city was invested by a strict blockade. All communication with the country was cut off, while the harbor was closed by the ever-wakeful British watch-dogs of war. Besides the French troops, within the beleaguered and unfortunate city are the peaceful, unoffending inhabitants. Provisions soon become scarce; scarcity sharpens into want, till fell Famine, bringing blindness and madness in her train, rages like an Erinnys. Picture to yourselves this large population, not pouring out their lives in the exulting rush of battle, but wasting at noonday, daughter by the side of mother, husband by the side of wife. When grain and rice fail, flaxseed, millet, cocoa, and almonds are ground by hand-mills into flour, and even bran, baked with honey, is eaten, less to satisfy than to deaden hunger. Before the last extremities, a pound of horse-flesh is sold for thirty-two cents, a pound of bran for thirty cents, a pound of flour for one dollar and seventy-five cents. A single bean is soon sold for two cents, and a biscuit of three ounces for two dollars and a quarter, till finally none can be had at any price. The wretched soldiers, after devouring the horses, are reduced to the degradation of feeding on dogs, cats, rats, and worms, which are eagerly hunted in cellars and sewers. "Happy were now," exclaims an Italian historian, "not those who lived, but those who died!" The day is dreary from hunger,--the night more dreary still, from hunger with delirious fancies. They now turn to herbs,--dock, sorrel, mallows, wild succory. People of every condition, with women of noble birth and beauty, seek upon the slope of the mountain within the defences those aliments which Nature designed solely for beasts. Scanty vegetables, with a scrap of cheese, are all that can be afforded to the sick and wounded, those sacred stipendiaries of human charity. In the last anguish of despair, men and women fill the air with groans and shrieks, some in spasms, convulsions, and contortions, yielding their expiring breath on the unpitying stones of the street,--alas! not more unpitying than man. Children, whom a dead mother's arms had ceased to protect, orphans of an hour, with piercing cries, supplicate in vain the compassion of the passing stranger: none pity or aid. The sweet fountains of sympathy are all closed by the selfishness of individual distress. In the general agony, some precipitate themselves into the sea, while the more impetuous rush from the gates, and impale their bodies on the Austrian bayonets. Others still are driven to devour their shoes and the leather of their pouches; and the horror of human flesh so far abates, that numbers feed like cannibals on the corpses about them.[28]

[28] This account is drawn from the animated sketches of Botta (Storia d' Italia dal 1789 al 1814, Tom. III. Lib. 19), Alison (History of Europe, Vol. IV. ch. 30), and Arnold (Modern History, Lect. IV.). The humanity of the last is particularly aroused to condemn this most atrocious murder of innocent people, and, as a sufficient remedy, he suggests a modification of the Laws of War, permitting non-combatants to withdraw from a blockaded town! In this way, indeed, they may be spared a languishing death by starvation; but they must desert firesides, pursuits, all that makes life dear, and become homeless exiles,--a fate little better than the former. It is strange that Arnold's pure soul and clear judgment did not recognize the truth, that the whole custom of war is unrighteous and unlawful, and that the horrors of this siege are its natural consequence. Laws of War! Laws in what is lawless! rules of wrong! There can be only _one Law of War_,--that is, the great law which pronounces it unwise, unjust, and unchristian.

At this stage the French general capitulated, claiming and receiving what are called "the honors of war,"--but not before twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women and children, having no part or interest in the contest, had died the most horrible of deaths. The Austrian flag floated over captured Genoa but a brief span of time; for Bonaparte had already descended like an eagle from the Alps, and in nine days afterwards, on the plains of Marengo, shattered the Austrian empire in Italy.

* * * * *

But wasted lands, famished cities, and slaughtered armies are not all that is contained in "the purple testament of bleeding war." Every soldier is connected with others, as all of you, by dear ties of kindred, love, and friendship. He has been sternly summoned from the embrace of family. To him there is perhaps an aged mother, who fondly hoped to lean her bending years on his more youthful form; perhaps a wife, whose life is just entwined inseparably with his, now condemned to wasting despair; perhaps sisters, brothers. As he falls on the field of war, must not all these rush with his blood? But who can measure the distress that radiates as from a bloody sun, penetrating innumerable homes? Who can give the gauge and dimensions of this infinite sorrow? Tell me, ye who feel the bitterness of parting with dear friends and kindred, whom you watch tenderly till the last golden sands are run out and the great hour-glass is turned, what is the measure of your anguish? Your friend departs, soothed by kindness and in the arms of Love: the soldier gasps out his life with no friend near, while the scowl of Hate darkens all that he beholds, darkens his own departing soul. Who can forget the anguish that fills the bosom and crazes the brain of Lenore, in the matchless ballad of Bürger, when seeking in vain among returning squadrons for her lover left dead on Prague's ensanguined plain? But every field of blood has many Lenores. All war is full of desolate homes, as is vividly pictured by a master poet of antiquity, whose verse is an argument.

"But through the bounds of Grecia's land, Who sent her sons for Troy to part, See mourning, with much suffering heart, On each man's threshold stand, On each sad hearth in Grecia's land. Well may her soul with grief be rent; She well remembers whom she sent, She sees them not return: Instead of men, to each man's home Urns and ashes only come, And the armor which they wore,-- Sad relics to their native shore. For Mars, the barterer of the lifeless clay, Who sells for gold the slain, _And holds the scale, in battle's doubtful day, High balanced o'er the plain_, From Ilium's walls for men returns Ashes and sepulchral urns,-- Ashes wet with many a tear, Sad relics of the fiery bier. Round the full urns the general groan Goes, as each their kindred own: And one that 'mid the armed throng He sunk in glory's slaughtering tide, And for another's consort died.

* * * * *

Others they mourn whose monuments stand By Ilium's walls on foreign strand; Where they fell in beauty's bloom, There they lie in hated tomb, Sunk beneath the massy mound, In eternal chambers bound."[29]

[29] Agamemnon of Æschylus: _Chorus_. This is from the beautiful translation by John Symmons.

III.

But all these miseries are to no purpose. War is utterly ineffectual to secure or advance its professed object. The wretchedness it entails contributes to no end, helps to establish no right, and therefore in no respect determines _justice_ between the contending nations.

The fruitlessness and vanity of war appear in the great conflicts by which the world has been lacerated. After long struggle, where each nation inflicts and receives incalculable injury, peace is gladly obtained on the basis of the condition before the war, known as the _status ante bellum_. I cannot illustrate this futility better than by the familiar example--humiliating to both countries--of our last war with Great Britain, where the professed object was to obtain a renunciation of the British claim, so defiantly asserted, to impress our seamen. To overturn this injustice the Arbitrament of War was invoked, and for nearly three years the whole country was under its terrible ban. American commerce was driven from the seas; the resources of the land were drained by taxation; villages on the Canadian frontier were laid in ashes; the metropolis of the Republic was captured; while distress was everywhere within our borders. Weary at last with this rude trial, the National Government appointed commissioners to treat for peace, with these specific instructions: "Your first duty will be to conclude a peace with Great Britain; and you are authorized to do it, _in case_ you obtain a satisfactory stipulation against impressment, one which shall secure under our flag protection to the crew.... If this encroachment of Great Britain is not provided against, _the United States have appealed to arms in vain_."[30] Afterwards, finding small chance of extorting from Great Britain a relinquishment of the unrighteous claim, and foreseeing from the inveterate prosecution of the war only an accumulation of calamities, the National Government directed the negotiators, in concluding a treaty, to "_omit any stipulation on the subject of impressment_."[31] These instructions were obeyed, and the treaty that restored to us once more the blessings of peace, so rashly cast away, but now hailed with intoxication of joy, contained no allusion to impressment, nor did it provide for the surrender of a single American sailor detained in the British navy. Thus, by the confession of our own Government, "the United States _had appealed to arms_ IN VAIN."[32] These important words are not mine; they are words of the country.

[30] Mr. Monroe to Commissioners, April 15, 1813: American State Papers, Vol. VIII. pp. 577, 578.

[31] Mr. Monroe to Commissioners, June 27, 1814: Ibid., Vol. VIII. p. 593.

[32] Mr. Jefferson, in more than one letter, declares the peace _an armistice only_, "because no security is provided against the impressment of our seamen."--Letter to Crawford, Feb. 11, 1815; to Lafayette, Feb. 14, 1815: Works, Vol. VI. pp. 420, 427.

All this is the natural result of an appeal to war for the determination of _justice_. Justice implies the exercise of the judgment. Now war not only supersedes the judgment, but delivers over the pending question to superiority of _force_, or to _chance_.

Superior force may end in conquest; this is the natural consequence; but it cannot adjudicate any right. We expose the absurdity of its arbitrament, when, by a familiar phrase of sarcasm, we deride _the right of the strongest_,--excluding, of course, all idea of right, except that of the lion as he springs upon a weaker beast, of the wolf as he tears in pieces the lamb, of the vulture as he devours the dove. The grossest spirits must admit that this is not justice.

But the battle is not always to the strong. Superiority of force is often checked by the proverbial contingencies of war. Especially are such contingencies revealed in rankest absurdity, where nations, as is the acknowledged _custom_, without regard to their respective forces, whether weaker or stronger, voluntarily appeal to this mad umpirage. Who beforehand can measure the currents of the heady fight? In common language, we confess the "chances" of battle; and soldiers devoted to this harsh vocation yet call it a "game." The Great Captain of our age, who seemed to drag victory at his chariot-wheels, in a formal address to his officers, on entering Russia, says, "In war, _fortune_ has an equal share with ability in success."[33] The famous victory of Marengo, accident of an accident, wrested unexpectedly at close of day from a foe at an earlier hour successful, taught him the uncertainty of war. Afterwards, in bitterness of spirit, when his immense forces were shivered, and his triumphant eagles driven back with broken wing, he exclaimed, in that remarkable conversation recorded by his secretary, Fain,--"Well, this is War! High in the morning,--low enough at night! From a triumph to a fall is often but a step."[34] The same sentiment is repeated by the military historian of the Peninsular campaigns, when he says, "_Fortune_ always asserts her supremacy in war; and often from a slight mistake such disastrous consequences flow, that, in every age and every nation, the _uncertainty_ of arms has been proverbial."[35] And again, in another place, considering the conduct of Wellington, the same military historian, who is an unquestionable authority, confesses, "A few hours' delay, an accident, a turn of fortune, and he would have been foiled. Ay! but this is War, _always dangerous and uncertain_, an ever-rolling wheel, and armed with scythes."[36] And will intelligent man look for justice to an ever-rolling wheel armed with scythes?

[33] Alison, Ch. 67, Vol. VIII. p. 815.

[34] Alison, Ch. 72, Vol. IX. p. 497.

[35] Napier, Book XXIV. ch. 6, Vol. VI. p. 687.

[36] Ibid., Book XVI. ch. 7, Vol. IV. p. 476.

Chance is written on every battle-field. Discerned less in the conflict of large masses than in that of individuals, it is equally present in both. How capriciously the wheel turned when the fortunes of Rome were staked on the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii!--and who, at one time, augured that the single Horatius, with two slain brothers on the field, would overpower the three living enemies? But this is not alone. In all the combats of history, involving the fate of individuals or nations, we learn to revolt at the frenzy which carries questions of property, freedom, or life to a judgment so uncertain and senseless. The humorous poet fitly exposes its hazards, when he says,--

"that a turnstile is more certain Than, in events of war, Dame Fortune."[37]

[37] Hudibras, Part I. Canto 3, vv. 23, 24.

During the early modern centuries, and especially in the moral night of the Dark Ages, the practice prevailed extensively throughout Europe of invoking this adjudication for controversies, whether of individuals or communities. I do not dwell on the custom of Private War, though it aptly illustrates the subject, stopping merely to echo that joy which, in a time of ignorance, before this arbitrament yielded gradually to the ordinances of monarchs and an advancing civilization, hailed its temporary suspension as _The Truce of God_. But this beautiful term, most suggestive, and historically important, cannot pass without the attention which belongs to it. Such a truce is still an example, and also an argument; but it is for nations. Here is something to be imitated; and here also is an appeal to the reason. If individuals or communities once recognized the Truce of God, why not again? And why may not its benediction descend upon nations also? Its origin goes back to the darkest night. It was in 1032 that the Bishop of Aquitaine announced the appearance of an angel with a message from Heaven, engaging men to cease from war and be reconciled. The people, already softened by calamity and disposed to supernatural impressions, hearkened to the sublime message, and consented. From sunset Thursday to sunrise Monday each week, also during Advent and Lent, and at the great festivals, all effusion of blood was interdicted, and no man could molest his adversary. Women, children, travellers, merchants, laborers, were assured perpetual peace. Every church was made an asylum, and, by happy association, the plough also sheltered from peril all who came to it. This respite, justly regarded as marvellous, was hailed as the Truce of God. Beginning in one neighborhood, it was piously extended until it embraced the whole kingdom, and then, by the authority of the Pope, became coextensive with Christendom, while those who violated it were put under solemn ban. As these things passed, bishops lifted their crosses, and the people in their gladness cried, _Peace! Peace!_[38] Originally too limited in operation and too short in duration, the Truce of God must again be proclaimed for all places and all times,--proclaimed to all mankind and all nations, without distinction of person or calling, on all days of the week, without distinction of sacred days or festivals, and with one universal asylum, not merely the church and the plough, but every place and thing.

[38] Robertson, Hist. of Charles V., Vol. I. note 21. Semichon, La Paix et la Trève de Dieu, Tom. II. pp. 35, 53.

* * * * *

From Private Wars, whose best lesson is the Truce of God, by which for a time they were hushed, I come to the _Judicial Combat_, or Trial by Battle, where, as in a mirror, we behold the barbarism of War, without truce of any kind. Trial by Battle was a formal and legitimate mode of deciding controversies, principally between individuals. Like other ordeals, by walking barefoot and blindfold among burning ploughshares, by holding hot iron, by dipping the hand in hot water or hot oil, and like the great Ordeal of War, it was a presumptuous appeal to Providence, under the apprehension and hope that Heaven would give the victory to him who had the right. Its object was the very object of War,--_the determination of Justice_. It was sanctioned by Municipal Law as an arbitrament for individuals, as War, to the scandal of civilization is still sanctioned by International Law as an arbitrament for nations. "Men," says the brilliant Frenchman, Montesquieu, "subject even their prejudices to rules"; and Trial by Battle, which he does not hesitate to denounce as a "monstrous usage," was surrounded by artificial regulations of multifarious detail, constituting an extensive system, determining how and when it should be waged, as War is surrounded by a complex code, known as the Laws of War. "Nothing," says Montesquieu again, "could be more contrary to good sense, but, once established, it was executed with a certain prudence,"--which is equally true of War. No battle-field for an army is selected with more care than was the field for Trial by Battle. An open space in the neighborhood of a church was often reserved for this purpose. At the famous Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in Paris, there was a tribune for the judges, overlooking the adjoining meadow, which served for the field.[39] The combat was inaugurated by a solemn mass, according to a form still preserved, _Missa pro Duello_, so that, in ceremonial and sanction, as in the field, the Church was constantly present. Champions were hired, as soldiers now.[40]

[39] Sismondi, Hist. des Français, Part. V. ch. 9, Tom. X. p. 514.