and the possessors of the soil were generally allowed to retain a part, from one to two thirds, of their lands. In the middle age the treatment which Christians received from Christians during invasions was somewhat of the middle better; although between them and Mohammedans age. the law of the sword prevailed. Still, although women, children, and ecclesiastical persons were mercifully used, every able-bodied peasant was accounted an enemy; armies were quartered on an invaded district; and pillage as well as devastation was the rule. In 1346, the English, under Edward III., marched through Normandy, burning and ravaging; but though they collected a vast booty, the army at Crecy was very soon afterwards in severe want. Nearly seventy years after this, when Henry V. invaded France, a truer policy prevailed: the army was accompanied by stores, only bread and wine were exacted from the peasants, even when offering resistance; and orders to the troops forbade injuries to property and insults to women. At the end of this century the invasions of Italy by the French under Charles VIII. and Louis XII. were characterised by a return to greater barbarity. The invaders lived on the resources of the country, and the spirit of plunder was insatiable. The same spirit was seen in that terrible scourge of Germany, the thirty years' war. Count Mansfeld's of the thirty maxim was that war should support itself, while years' war. Christian of Halberstadt, of the Protestant party, like Mansfeld, was no better than a robber and incendiary. On the side of the Imperialists, Wallenstein did not curb the rapacity of his troops, who plundered on every hand for food, and Tilly's armies were worse governed. Nor did the French under Guebriant behave much better. But how could armies be kept from plunder and brutality, which, being unpaid, lived by requisitions, made food and winter quarters the object of their campaigns, and were a colluvies of all nations, without good officers or a sense of professional honour. Gustavus Adolphus paid and disciplined his troops, but the generals of the Swedes after his death allowed greater licence to their forces: thus Baner, after the victory of Wistock, laid Saxony and Bohemia waste. In the earlier wars of Louis XIV. the treatment of non-combatants and their property was no better-in some of the time of respects was even worse. Turenne laid waste large ouis XIV. tracts of country to deprive the enemy of the means of subsistence. The crimes of the army under Catinat, Feuquières, and Malos, the terrible ravages of the Palatinate, were sanctioned by orders from Paris. But in the war of the succession Marlborough and Villars introduced something like humanity into the conduct of their armies. By an understanding between the commanders, M each belligerent levied contributions on the district occupied by his troops, which were not to exceed a certain amount, determined by commissioners of the two hostile parties. If the local authorities thought that too large a sum had been demanded, 'they sent in complaints to the head-quarters of the friendly army, which were attended to immediately.' Villars declares his satisfaction at having fed an army of two hundred battalions, and of more than three hundred squadrons of cavalry for three months on a space near the Rhine of a hundred square leagues without forcing a peasant to quit his dwelling. Great. And of the English in the American war. 'The Prussians and Austrians in the time of Frederick the Of Frederick the Great contented themselves with levying contribubutions where they moved; and, speaking generally, the habit of depending for subsistence on magazines and on the cumbrous provision trains which followed armies on their march, is noted by Jomini as a characteristic of the eighteenth century.' In the war of our revolution the British government declared it to be right in war (1) to demand provisions, and raise contributions, which may be enforced, if necessary, by the sword; (2.) to ravage a territory where you have no other way of bringing an enemy to an engagement or to terms; (3.) to treat rebels as enemies. The right to ravage has not been asserted or acted upon since, unless in a few cases, which were pretended to be extreme. In the last war between Great Britain and our country, nothing was taken from private persons without being paid for, and the same may be said, we believe, of our war with Mexico. The wars of Napoleon were marked by the enormous requisitions which were levied upon invaded countries, proOf Napoleon. ducing amounts nearly large enough to save the necessity of increased taxes upon France itself. The rule with Bonaparte was to make the war pay for the war. Thus, after the battle of Jena, in 1806, the requisition upon humbled Prussia was more than a hundred millions of francs; half that sum was imposed on the province of Valencia, after Suchet's conquest of it in 1812, and the conquering army was to have a donative of two hundred millions besides, to be collected chiefly from the same quarter of Spain. During his Peninsular wars, Wellington was among friendswhere all codes require private property to be respected-until he entered France in 1813, and their policy, if nothing else, demanded the observance of the same rule. But he seems to have regarded requisitions as iniquitous, and when the ministry at home proposed that he should adopt them, he opposed the system as needing terror and the bayonet to carry it out- -as one for which the British soldier was unfit, and as likely to injure those who re-, sorted to it. The right to levy contributions was again enforced by the Prussians in the war of 1848 with Denmark, but it slumbered, we believe, in the recent war of the allies against Russia. § 130. To sum up all that has been said on this topic, we may lay down the following rules of war : Summing up. 1. Private persons remaining quiet, and taking no part in the conflict, are to be unmolested, but if the people of an invaded district take an active part in a war, they forfeit their claim to protection. This marked line of separation between the soldier and the non-soldier is of extreme importance for the interests of humanity. 2. The property, movable, as well as immovable, of private persons in an invaded country, is to remain uninjured. But if the wants of the hostile army require, it may be taken by authorised persons at a fair value; but marauding must be checked by discipline and penalties. "2 3. Contributions or requisitions are still permissible, on the plea, first, that they are a compensation for pillage, or an equitable repartition of what would accrue from this source- —which, if pillage is wrong, is no plea at all; and, again, that they are needed for defraying the expenses of governing a conquered province, which is a valid plea when conquest has been effected, but not before; and thirdly, on the plea that in a just war it is right to make the enemy's country contribute to the support of the army, and towards defraying all the charges of the war. But if the true principle is that war is a public contest, waged between the powers or authorities of two countries, the passive individual ought not to suffer more than the necessities of war require. Vattel adds 'that a general who would not sully his reputation is to moderate his contributions. An excess in this point is not without the reproach of cruelty and inhumanity. But many generals will go to the extreme of what they think can be exacted1 without regard to their reputation; and cruelty and inhumanity are as unavoidable in such transactions as they would be if sheriffs and their men were to levy on goods by force of arms, and pay themselves out of the things seized. Moreover requisitions are demoralising, and defeat their own ends. They foster the lust of conquest, they arouse the avarice of officers, they leave a sting in the memories of oppressed nations; who, when iniquity is full, league together to destroy the great plunderers of mankind. The only true and humane principle is that already laid down, that war is waged by state against state, by soldier against soldier.3 The state resists 1 Napier, u. s. iv. 21. 3 We cannot forbear inserting, as bearing on this point, an opinion of Portalis, in his speech at the installation of the council of prizes, which we borrow from 2 Vattel, iii. 9, § 165. an effort to obtain justice; the soldier obstructs the way of the armed officer of justice, and must be resisted. 4. Extraordinary cases, as retaliation (§ 126), and perhaps, in fighting with barbarians or semi-barbarians, who acknowledge no rules of war, the necessity of reading them a severe lesson (Compare § 136), will justify a departure from these principles. But pillage and devastation are seldom politic, even when they are supposed to be just. 7. Public property. § 131. The older practice made little distinction between public and private property, little between public property of different kinds. That which had the least relation to military affairs, as libraries, works of art, public buildings for peaceful purposes, might be plundered or destroyed. For nearly two centuries the Palatine manuscripts, which were taken from Heidelberg in the thirty years' war, remained at Rome, and Napoleon transported pictures to the Louvre from every quarter where his arms penetrated. The treasures of the Palatine library, or rather a part of them, were restored after the peace in 1815. When the allies entered Paris after the battle of Waterloo, they recovered the works of art which the French emperor had robbed them of. At the same time a requisition was made on Paris of a hundred millions of francs, which was afterwards greatly reduced in amount. Great complaint has been made against these measures by Frenchmen of all political shades; against the latter as extortionate and oppressive, and the other, as a shameful abuse of victory. But the requisition was not beyond the means of the capital, nor unHeffter, § 119: The right of war is founded on this, that a people, in the interests of self-conservation, or for the sake of self-defence, will, can, or ought to use force against another people. It is the relation of things, and not of persons, which constitutes war; it is the relation of state to state, and not of individual to individual. Between two or more belligerent nations, the private persons of which these nations consist are enemies only by accident; they are not such as men, they are not even as citizens, they are such solely as soldiers.' To the same effect are Talleyrand's words in a despatch to Napoleon, of Nov. 20, 1806 Three centuries of civilisation have given to Europe a law of nations, for which, according to the expression of an illustrious writer, human nature cannot be sufficiently grateful. This law is founded on the principle that nations ought to do to one another in peace the most good, and in war the least evil possible. According to the maxim that war is not a relation between a man and another, but between state and state, in which private persons are only accidental enemies, not such as men, nor even as members or subjects of the state, but simply as its defenders, the law of nations does not allow that the rights of war, and of conquest thence derived, should be applied to peaceable, unarmed citizens, to private dwellings and properties, to the merchandise of commerce, to the magazines which contain it, to the vehicles which transport it, to unarmed ships which convey it on streams and seas; in one word, to the person and the goods of private individuals. This law of war, born of civilisation, has favoured its progress. It is to this that Europe must ascribe the maintenance and increase of her prosperity, even in the midst of the frequent wars which have divided her.' authorised by the practice of the French themselves, and the recovery of the works of art was an act of simple justice, not precluded by previous treaty. The rule is now pretty well established, that while all military stores and buildings are lawful plunder, and while every edifice in the way of military movements-whether, indeed, public or private-may be destroyed, whatever does not contribute to the uses of war ought to remain intact. It was a blot to the British character when they burned the capitol at Washington, and the excuse for it, on the ground of retaliation, although insufficient, showed the necessity for an excuse to the civilised world. Even military hospitals are spared, if not misused for a hostile purpose. (Note 11.) § 132. Among the ancients, the licence of war in successful sieges and storms was unlimited. The butchery of the Platæans, 8. Sieges and the intended but revoked cruelty of the Athenian storms of forts people towards Mitylene, their treatment of the Me- and towns. lians, the sack of Thebes by Alexander, and many similar events, show that, on such occasions, rapine, wholesale slaughter, and enslavement, whether of garrisoning troops or of citizens, were dependent on the conqueror's will. So, too, the sack of Syracuse, although captured without a storm, that of Carthage, that of Corinth, and of other towns by the Romans, repeated the same scenes. The sieges of Europe, down to modern times, were terminated in a manner not less disgraceful to the general and the soldier. Thus Rome suffered as much when taken by the generals of the Emperor Charles V. as in any siege it ever sustained. 'When Henry II. of France entered the Low Countries, every city which did not surrender before he opened fire, was given up to destruction, the garrison hung, the inhabitants put to the sword.' The fate of Magdeburg, in the thirty years' war (1631), is perhaps the most dreadful act in the gloomy drama, and naturally provoked the retaliation of the Protestants, when Wurtzburg was captured. If Cromwell put the garrisons of Tredah and Wexford to the sword, after the storming of those cities, it was a cruel policy but was less than the practice of war at that time permitted. More modern usage in sieges and storms, though in some respects very harsh, shows an advance in humanity. There is a distinction to be made between forts and fortified towns. Any means of assailing a fort may be used which are likely to be successful, but many generals abstain from bombarding a garrisoned town, and resort to storming in order to save the inhabitants; or if the nature of the place, or anything else, renders bombardment |