Military Manners and Customs

CHAPTER IV.

Chapter 4190 wordsPublic domain

MILITARY REPRISALS.

International law on legitimate reprisals 93

The Brussels Conference on the subject 95

Illustrations of barbarous reprisals 97

Instances of non-retaliation 98

Savage reprisals in days of chivalry 100

Hanging the commonest reprisals for a brave defence 101

As illustrated by the warfare of the fifteenth century 102

Survival of the custom to our own times 104

The massacre of a conquered garrison still a law of war 105

The shelling of Strasburg by the Germans 106

Brutal warfare of Alexander the Great 107

The connection between bravery and cruelty 110

The abolition of slavery in its effects on war 112

The storming of Magdeburg, Brescia, and Rome 112

Cicero on Roman warfare 114

The reprisals of the Germans in France in 1870 115

Their revival of the custom of taking hostages 117

Their resort to robbery as a plea of reprisals 118

General Von Moltke on perpetual peace 119

The moral responsibility of the military profession 121

The Press as a potent cause of war 122

Plea for the abolition of demands for unconditional surrender 123

Such as led to the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882 123