I.

First, as to the essential character and root of war, or that part of our nature whence it proceeds. Listen to the voice from the ancient poet of Bœotian Ascra:—

"This is the law for mortals, ordained by the Ruler of Heaven:Fishes and beasts and birds of the air devour each other;Justicedwells not among them: only toMANhas he givenJusticethe Highest and Best."[14]

"This is the law for mortals, ordained by the Ruler of Heaven:

Fishes and beasts and birds of the air devour each other;

Justicedwells not among them: only toMANhas he given

Justicethe Highest and Best."[14]

These words of old Hesiod exhibit the distinction between man and beast; but this very distinction belongs to the present discussion. The idea rises to the mind at once, that war is a resort to brute force, where nations strive to overpower each other. Reason, and the divine part of our nature, where alone we differ from the beast, where alone we approach the Divinity, where alone are the elements of thatjusticewhich is the professed object of war, are rudely dethroned. For the time men adopt the nature of beasts, emulating their ferocity, like them rejoicing in blood, and with lion's paw clutching an asserted right. Though in more recent days this character is somewhat disguised by the skill and knowledge employed, war is still the same, only more destructive from the genius and intellect which have become its servants. The primitive poets, in the unconscious simplicity of the world's childhood, make this boldly apparent. The heroes of Homer are likened to animals in ungovernable fury, or to things devoid of reason or affection. Menelaus presses hisway through the crowd "like a wild beast." Sarpedon is aroused against the Argives, "as a lion against the crooked-horned oxen," and afterwards rushes forward "like a lion nurtured on the mountains, for a long time famished for want of flesh, but whose courage impels him to attack even the well-guarded sheep-fold." In one and the same passage, the great Telamonian Ajax is "wild beast," "tawny lion," and "dull ass"; and all the Greek chiefs, the flower of the camp, are ranged about Diomed, "like raw-eating lions, or wild-boars, whose strength is irresistible." Even Hector, the model hero, with all the virtues of war, is praised as "tamer of horses"; and one of his renowned feats in battle, indicating brute strength only, is where he takes up and hurls a stone which two of our strongest men could not easily lift into a wagon; and he drives over dead bodies and shields, while the axle is defiled by gore, and the guard about the seat is sprinkled from the horses' hoofs and the tires of the wheels;[15]and in that most admired passage of ancient literature, before returning his child, the young Astyanax, to the arms of the wife he is about to leave, this hero of war invokes the gods for a single blessing on the boy's head,—"that he may excel his father, and bring homebloody spoils, his enemy being slain, andso make glad the heart of his mother!"

From early fields of modern literature, as from those of antiquity, might be gathered similar illustrations, showing the unconscious degradation of the soldier, in vain pursuit ofjustice, renouncing the human character,to assume that of brute. Bayard, the exemplar of chivalry, with a name always on the lips of its votaries, was described by the qualities of beasts, being, according to his admirers,ram in attack, wild-boar in defence, and wolf in flight. Henry the Fifth, as represented by our own Shakespeare, in the spirit-stirring appeal to his troops exclaims,—

"When the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger."

"When the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger."

This is plain and frank, revealing the true character of war.

I need not dwell on the moral debasement that must ensue. Passions, like so many bloodhounds, are unleashed and suffered to rage. Crimes filling our prisons stalk abroad in the soldier's garb, unwhipped of justice. Murder, robbery, rape, arson, are the sports of this fiendish Saturnalia, when

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,In liberty of bloody hand shall rangeWith conscience wide as hell."

"The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,

And the fleshed soldier, rough and hard of heart,

In liberty of bloody hand shall range

With conscience wide as hell."

By a bold, but truthful touch, Shakespeare thus pictures the foul disfigurement which war produces in man, whose native capacities he describes in those beautiful words: "How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!" And yet this nobility of reason, this infinitude of faculties, this marvel of form and motion, this nature so angelic, so godlike, are all, under the transforming power of War, lost in the action of the beast, or the license of the fleshed soldier with bloody hand and conscience wide as hell.

The immediate effect of war is to sever all relations of friendship and commerce between the belligerent nations, and every individual thereof, impressing upon each citizen or subject the character of enemy. Imagine this instant change between England and the United States. The innumerable ships of the two countries, the white doves of commerce, bearing the olive of peace, are driven from the sea, or turned from peaceful purposes to be ministers of destruction; the threads of social and business intercourse, so carefully woven into a thick web, are suddenly snapped asunder; friend can no longer communicate with friend; the twenty thousand letters speeded each fortnight from this port alone are arrested, and the human affections, of which they are the precious expression, seek in vain for utterance. Tell me, you with friends and kindred abroad, or you bound to other lands only by relations of commerce, are you ready for this rude separation?

This is little compared with what must follow. It is but the first portentous shadow of disastrous eclipse, twilight usher of thick darkness, covering the whole heavens with a pall, broken only by the lightnings of battle and siege.

Such horrors redden the historic page, while, to the scandal of humanity, they never want historians with feelings kindred to those by which they are inspired. The demon that draws the sword also guides the pen. The favorite chronicler of modern Europe, Froissart, discovers his sympathies in his Prologue, where, withsomething of apostleship, he announces his purpose, "that the honorable enterprises and noble adventures and feats of arms which happened in the wars of France and England be notably registered and put in perpetual memory," and then proceeds to bestow his equal admiration upon bravery and cunning, upon the courtesy which pardoned as upon the rage which caused the flow of blood in torrents, dwelling with especial delight on "beautiful incursions, beautiful rescues, beautiful feats of arms, and beautiful prowesses"; and wantoning in pictures of cities assaulted, "which, being soon gained by force, were robbed, and men and women and children put to the sword without mercy, while the churches were burnt and violated."[16]This was in a barbarous age. But popular writers in our own day, dazzled by false ideas of greatness, at which reason and humanity blush, do not hesitate to dwell on similar scenes even with rapture and eulogy. The humane soul of Wilberforce, which sighed that England's "bloody laws sent many unprepared into another world," could hail the slaughter of Waterloo, by which thousands were hurried into eternity on the Sabbath he held so holy, as a "splendid victory."[17]

My present purpose is less to judge the historian than to expose the horrors on horrors which he applauds. At Tarragona, above six thousand human beings, almost all defenceless, men and women, gray hairs and infant innocence, attractive youth and wrinkled age, were butchered by the infuriate troops in one night, and the morning sun rose upon a city whose streets and houseswere inundated with blood: and yet this is called a "glorious exploit."[18]Here was a conquest by the French. At a later day, Ciudad Rodrigo was stormed by the British, when, in the license of victory, there ensued a savage scene of plunder and violence, while shouts and screams on all sides mingled fearfully with the groans of the wounded. Churches were desecrated, cellars of wine and spirits were pillaged, fire was wantonly applied to the city, and brutal intoxication spread in every direction. Only when the drunken dropped from excess, or fell asleep, was any degree of order restored: and yet the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo is pronounced "one of the most brilliant exploits of the British army."[19]This "beautiful feat of arms" was followed by the storming of Badajoz, where the same scenes were enacted again, with accumulated atrocities. The story shall be told in the words of a partial historian, who himself saw what he eloquently describes. "Shameless rapacity, brutal intemperance, savage lust, cruelty, and murder, shrieks and piteous lamentations, groans, shouts, imprecations, the hissing of fires bursting from the houses, the crashing of doors and windows, and the reports of muskets used in violence, resounded for two days and nights in the streets of Badajoz. On the third, when the city was sacked, when the soldiers were exhausted by their own excesses, the tumult rather subsided than was quelled. The wounded men were then looked to, the dead disposed of."[20]All this is in the nature of confession, for the historian is a partisan of battle.

The same terrible war affords another instance of atrocities at a siege crying to Heaven. For weeks before the surrender of Saragossa, the deaths daily were from four to five hundred; and as the living could not bury the increasing mass, thousands of carcasses, scattered in streets and court-yards, or piled in heaps at the doors of churches, were left to dissolve in their own corruption, or be licked up by the flames of burning houses. The city was shaken to its foundations by sixteen thousand shells, and the explosion of forty-five thousand pounds of powder in the mines,—while the bones of forty thousand victims, of every age and both sexes, bore dreadful testimony to the unutterable cruelty of War.[21]

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]

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]

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 thatradiates 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 homeUrns 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 returnsAshes and sepulchral urns,—Ashes wet with many a tear,Sad relics of the fiery bier.Round the full urns the general groanGoes, as each their kindred own:And one that 'mid the armed throngHe sunk in glory's slaughtering tide,And for another's consort died.

"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 standBy 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]

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]

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 determinesjusticebetween 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 thestatus 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 caseyou 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 Stateshad appealed to armsIN VAIN."[32]These important words are not mine; they are words of the country.

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

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 deridethe 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 acknowledgedcustom, 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,fortunehas 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 wereshivered, 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, "Fortunealways asserts her supremacy in war; and often from a slight mistake such disastrous consequences flow, that, in every age and every nation, theuncertaintyof 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?

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 certainThan, in events of war, Dame Fortune."[37]

"that a turnstile is more certain

Than, in events of war, Dame Fortune."[37]

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 asThe 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.

From Private Wars, whose best lesson is the Truce of God, by which for a time they were hushed, I come to theJudicial 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 thevery 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]

No question was too sacred, grave, or recondite for this tribunal. In France, the title of an Abbey to a neighboring church was decided byit; and an Emperor of Germany, according to a faithful ecclesiastic, "desirous of dealinghonorablywith his people and nobles" (mark here the standard of honor!), waived the judgment of the court on a grave question of law concerning the descent of property, and referred it to champions. Human folly did not stop here. In Spain, a subtile point of theology was submitted to the same determination.[41]But Trial by Battle was not confined to particular countries or to rare occasions. It prevailed everywhere in Europe, superseding in many places all other ordeals, and evenTrials by Proofs, while it extended not only to criminal matters, but to questions of property. In Orléans it had an exceptional limitation, being denied in civil matters where the amount did not exceed five sous.[42]

Like War in our day, its justice and fitness as an arbitrament were early doubted or condemned. Liutprand, a king of the Lombards, during that middle period neither ancient nor modern, in a law bearing date A.D.724, declares his distrust of it as a mode of determining justice; but the monarch is compelled to add, that, considering thecustomof his Lombard people, he cannot forbid theimpious law. His words deserve emphatic mention: "Propter consuetudinem gentis nostræ LangobardorumLEGEM IMPIAMvetare non possumus..."[43]The appropriate epithet by which he branded Trial by Battle is the important bequest of the royal Lombard to a distant posterity. For this the lawgiver will be cherished with grateful regard in the annals of civilization.

This custom received another blow from Rome. In the latter part of the thirteenth century, Don Pedro of Aragon, after exchanging letters of defiance with Charles of Anjou, proposed a personal combat, which was accepted, on condition that Sicily should be the prize of success. Each called down upon himself all the vengeance of Heaven, and the last dishonor, if, at the appointed time, he failed to appear before the Seneschal of Aquitaine, or, in case of defeat, refused to consign Sicily undisturbed to the victor. While they were preparing for the lists, the Pope, Martin the Fourth, protested with all his might against this new Trial by Battle, which staked the sovereignty of a kingdom, a feudatory of the Holy See, on a wild stroke of chance. By a papal bull, dated at Civita Vecchia, April 5th, 1283, he threatened excommunication to either of the princes who should proceed to a combat which he pronouncedcriminalandabominable. By a letter of the same date, the Pope announced to Edward the First of England, Duke of Aquitaine, the agreement of the two princes, which he most earnestly declared tobe full of indecency and rashness, hostile to the concord of Christendom, and reckless of Christian blood; and he urged upon the English monarch all possible effort to prevent the combat,—menacing him with excommunication, and his territories with interdict, if it should take place. Edward refusing to guaranty the safety of the combatants in Aquitaine, the parties retired without consummating their duel.[44]The judgment of the Holy See, which thus accomplished its immediate object, though not in terms directed to the suppression of thecustom, remains, nevertheless, from its peculiar energy, a perpetual testimony against Trial by Battle.

To a monarch of France belongs the honor of first interposing the royal authority for the entire suppression within his jurisdiction of thisimpious custom, so universally adopted, so dear to the nobility, and so profoundly rooted in the institutions of the Feudal Age. And here let me pause with reverence as I pronounce the name of St. Louis, a prince whose unenlightened errors may find easy condemnation in an age of larger toleration and wider knowledge, but whose firm and upright soul, exalted sense of justice, fatherly regard for the happiness of his people, respect for the rights of others, conscience void of offence toward God or man, make him foremost among Christian rulers, and the highest example for Christian prince or Christian people,—in one word, a model of True Greatness. He was of angelic conscience, subjecting whatever he did to the single and exclusive test of moral rectitude, disregarding every consideration of worldly advantage, all fear of worldly consequences.

His soul, thus tremblingly sensitive to right, was shocked at the judicial combat. It was a sin, in his sight, thus totempt God, by demanding of him a miracle, whenever judgment was pronounced. From these intimate convictions sprang a royal ordinance, promulgated first at a Parliament assembled in 1260: "We forbid to all persons throughout our dominions theTrial by Battle; ...and instead of battles, we establish proofs by witnesses....And these battles we abolish in our dominions forever."[45]

Such were the restraints on the royal authority, that this beneficent ordinance was confined in operation to the demesnes of the king, not embracing those of the barons and feudatories. But where the power of the sovereign did not reach, there he labored by example, influence, and express intercession,—treating with the great vassals, and inducing many to renounce this unnatural usage. Though for years later it continued to vex parts of France, its overthrow commenced with the Ordinance of St. Louis.

Honor and blessings attend this truly Christian king, who submitted all his actions to the Heaven-descended sentiment of Duty,—who began a long and illustrious reign by renouncing and restoring conquests of his predecessor, saying to those about him, whose souls did not ascend to his heights, "I know that the predecessors of the King of England lost altogether by right the conquest which I hold; and the land which I give him I do not give because I am bound to him or his heirs,but to put love between my children and his children, who are cousins-german; and it seems to me that what Ithus give I employ to good purpose."[46]Honor to him who never by force or cunning grasped what was not his own,—who sought no advantage from the turmoil and dissension of his neighbors,—who, first of Christian princes, rebuked the Spirit of War, saying to those who would have him profit by the strifes of others, "Blessed are the peacemakers,"[47]—who, by an immortal ordinance, abolished Trial by Battle throughout his dominions,—who extended equal justice to all, whether his own people or his neighbors, and in the extremity of his last illness, before the walls of Tunis, under a burning African sun, among the bequests of his spirit, enjoined on his son and successor, "in maintaining justice, to be inflexible and loyal, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left."[48]

To condemn Trial by Battle no longer requires the sagacity above his age of the Lombard monarch, or the intrepid judgment of the Sovereign Pontiff, or the ecstatic soul of St. Louis. An incident of history, as curious as it is authentic, illustrates this point, and shows the certain progress of opinion; and this brings me to England, where this trial was an undoubted part of the early Common Law, with peculiar ceremonies sanctioned by the judges robed in scarlet. The learned Selden, not content with tracing its origin, and exhibiting its forms, with the oath of the duellist, "As God me help, and his saints of Paradise," shows also the copartnership of the Church through its liturgy appointing prayers for the occasion.[49]For some time it was theonly mode of trying a writ of right, by which the title to real property was determined, and the fines from the numerous cases formed no inconsiderable portion of the King's revenue.[50]It was partially restrained by Henry the Second, under the advice of his chief justiciary, the ancient law-writer, Glanville, substituting the Grand Assize as an alternative, on the trial of a writ of right; and the reason assigned for this substitution was the uncertainty of the Duel, so that after many and long delays justice was scarcely obtained, in contrast with the other trial, which was more convenient and swift.[51]At a later day, Trial by Battle was rebuked by Elizabeth, who interposed to compel the parties to a composition,—although, for the sake of theirhonor, as it was called, the lists were marked out and all the preliminary forms observed with much ceremony.[52]It was awarded under Charles the First, and the proceeding went so far that a day was proclaimed for the combatants to appear with spear, long sword, short sword, and dagger, when the duel was adjourned from time to time, and at last the king compelled an accommodation without bloodshed.[53]Though falleninto desuetude, quietly overruled by the enlightened sense of successive generations, yet, to the disgrace of English jurisprudence, it was not legislatively abolished till near our own day,—as late as 1819,—the right to it having been openly claimed in Westminster Hall only two years previous. An ignorant man, charged with murder,—whose name, Abraham Thornton, is necessarily connected with the history of this monstrous usage,—being proceeded against by the ancient process of appeal, pleaded, when brought into court, as follows: "Not guilty; and I am ready to defend the same by my body": and thereupon taking off his glove, he threw it upon the floor. The appellant, not choosing to accept this challenge, abandoned his proceedings. The bench, the bar, and the whole kingdom were startled by the infamy; and at the next session of Parliament Trial by Battle was abolished in England. In the debate on this subject, the Attorney-General remarked, in appropriate terms, that, "if the appellant had persevered in the Trial by Battle, he had no doubt the legislature would have felt it their imperious duty at once to interfere, and passan ex post facto law to prevent so degrading a spectacle from taking place."[54]

These words evince the disgust which Trial by Battle excites in our day. Its folly and wickedness are conspicuous to all. Reverting to that early period in which it prevailed, our minds are impressed by the general barbarism; we recoil with horror from the awful subjection of justice to brute force,—from the impious profanation of God in deeming him present at these outrages,—from the moral degradation out of which they sprang, and which they perpetuated; we enrobe ourselves in self-complacent virtue, and thank God that we are not as these men,—that ours is an age of light, while theirs was an age of darkness!

But remember, fellow-citizens, that this criminal and impious custom, which all condemn in the case of individuals, is openly avowed by our own country, and by other countries of the great Christian Federation, nay, that it is expresslyestablishedby International Law, as the proper mode of determiningjusticebetween nations,—while the feats of hardihood by which it is waged, and the triumphs of its fields, are exalted beyond all other labors, whether of learning, industry, or benevolence, as the well-spring of Glory. Alas! upon our own heads be the judgment of barbarism which we pronounce upon those that have gone before! At this moment, in this period of light, while to the contented souls of many the noonday sun of civilization seems to be standing still in the heavens, as upon Gideon, the dealings between nations are still governed by the odious rules of brute violence which once predominated between individuals. The Dark Ages have not passed away; Erebus and black Night, born of Chaos, still brood over the earth; nor can we hail the clear day, until the hearts of nations are touched, as the hearts of individual men, and all acknowledgeone and the same Law of Right.

What has taught you, O man! thus to find glory in an act, performed by a nation, which you condemn as a crime or a barbarism, when committed by an individual?In what vain conceit of wisdom and virtue do you find this incongruous morality? Where is it declared that God, who is no respecter of persons, is a respecter of multitudes? Whence do you draw these partial laws of an impartial God? Man is immortal; but Nations are mortal. Man has a higher destiny than Nations. Can Nations be less amenable to the supreme moral law? Each individual is an atom of the mass. Must not the mass, in its conscience, be like the individuals of which it is composed? Shall the mass, in relations with other masses, do what individuals in relations with each other may not do? As in the physical creation, so in the moral, there is but one rule for the individual and the mass. It was the lofty discovery of Newton, that the simple law which determines the fall of an apple prevails everywhere throughout the Universe,—ruling each particle in reference to every other particle, large or small,—reaching from earth to heaven, and controlling the infinite motions of the spheres. So, with equal scope, another simple law,the Law of Right, which binds the individual, binds also two or three when gathered together,—binds conventions and congregations of men,—binds villages, towns, and cities,—binds states, nations, and races,—clasps the whole human family in its sevenfold embrace; nay, more, beyond

Back to Index Next