Томас Де Квинси - Memorials and Other Papers — Complete

Fighting for truth in its last recesses of sanctity, for human dignity systematically outraged, or for human rights mercilessly trodden under foot—champions of such interests, men first of all descry, as from a summit suddenly revealed, the possible grandeur of bloodshed suffered or inflicted. Judas and Simon Maccabćus in days of old, Gustavus Adolphus [Footnote: The Thirty Years' War, from 1618 to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was notoriously the last and the decisive conflict between Popery and Protestantism; the result of that war it was which finally enlightened all the Popish princes of Christendom as to the impossibility of ever suppressing the antagonist party by mere force of arms. I am not meaning, however, to utter any opinion whatever on the religious position of the two great parties. It is sufficient for entire sympathy with the royal Swede, that he fought for the freedom of conscience. Many an enlightened Roman Catholic, supposing only that he were not a Papist, would have given his hopes and his confidence to the Protestant king.] in modern days, fighting for the violated rights of conscience against perfidious despots and murdering oppressors, exhibit to us the incarnations of Wordsworth's principle. Such wars are of rare occurrence. Fortunately they are so; since, under the possible contingencies of human strength and weakness, it might else happen that the grandeur of the principle should suffer dishonor through the incommensurate means for maintaining it. But such cases, though emerging rarely, are always to be reserved in men's minds as ultimate appeals to what is most divine in man. Happy it is for human welfare that the blind heart of man is a thousand times wiser than his understanding. An arričre pensée should lie hidden in all minds—a holy reserve as to cases which may arise similar to such as HAVE arisen, where a merciful bloodshed [Footnote: " Merciful bloodshed "—In reading either the later religious wars of the Jewish people under the Maccabees, or the earlier under Joshua, every philosophic reader will have felt the true and transcendent spirit of mercy which resides virtually in such wars, as maintaining the unity of God against Polytheism and, by trampling on cruel idolatries, as indirectly opening the channels for benign principles of morality through endless generations of men. Here especially he will have read one justification of Wordsworth's bold doctrine upon war. Thus far he will destroy a wisdom working from afar, but, as regards the immediate present, he will be apt to adopt the ordinary view, namely, that in the Old Testament severity prevails approaching to cruelty. Yet, on consideration, he will be disposed to qualify this opinion. He will have observed many indications of a relenting kindness and a tenderness of love in the Mosaical ordinances. And recently there has been suggested another argument tending to the same conclusion. In the last work of Mr. Layard ('Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, 1853') are published some atrocious monuments of the Assyrian cruelty in the treatment of military captives. In one of the plates of Chap xx., at page 456, is exhibited some unknown torture applied to the head, and in another, at page 458, is exhibited the abominable process, applied to two captives, of flaying them alive. One such case had been previously recorded in human literature, and illustrated by a plate. It occurs in a Dutch voyage to the islands of the East. The subject of the torment in that case as a woman who had been charged with some act of infidelity to her husband. And the local government, being indignantly summoned to interfere by some Christian strangers, had declined to do so, on the plea that the man was master within his own house. But the Assyrian case was worse. This torture was there applied, not upon a sudden vindictive impulse, but in cold blood, to a simple case apparently of civil disobedience or revolt. Now, when we consider how intimate, and how ancient, was the connection between Assyria and Palestine, how many things (in war especially) were transferred mediately through the intervening tribes (all habitually cruel), from the people on the Tigris to those on the Jordan, I feel convinced that Moses must have interfered most peremptorily and determinately, and not merely by verbal ordinances, but by establishing counter usages against this spirit of barbarity, otherwise it would have increased contagiously, whereas we meet with no such hellish atrocities amongst the children of Israel. In the case of one memorable outrage by a Hebrew tribe, the national vengeance which overtook it was complete and tearful beyond all that history has recorded] has been authorized by the express voice of God. Such a reserve cannot be dispensed with. It belongs to the principle of progress in man that he should forever keep open a secret commerce in the last resort with the spirit of martyrdom on behalf of man's most saintly interests. In proportion as the instruments for upholding or retrieving such saintly interests should come to be dishonored or less honored, would the inference be valid that those interests were shaking in their foundations. And any confederation or compact of nations for abolishing war would be the inauguration of a downward path for man.

A battle is by possibility the grandest, and also the meanest, of human exploits. It is the grandest when it is fought for godlike truth, for human dignity, or for human rights; it is the meanest when it is fought for petty advantages (as, by way of example, for accession of territory which adds nothing to the security of a frontier), and still more when it is fought simply as a gladiator's trial of national prowess. This is the principle upon which, very naturally, our British school-boys value a battle. Painful it is to add, that this is the principle upon which our adult neighbors the French seem to value a battle.

To any man who, like myself, admires the high-toned, martial gallantry of the French, and pays a cheerful tribute of respect to their many intellectual triumphs, it is painful to witness the childish state of feeling which the French people manifest on every possible question that connects itself at any point with martial pretensions. A battle is valued by them on the same principles, not better and not worse, as govern our own schoolboys. Every battle is viewed by the boys as a test applied to the personal prowess of each individual soldier; and, naturally amongst boys, it would be the merest hypocrisy to take any higher ground. But amongst adults, arrived at the power of reflecting and comparing, we look for something nobler. We English estimate Waterloo, not by its amount of killed and wounded, but as the battle which terminated a series of battles, having one common object, namely, the overthrow of a frightful tyranny. A great sepulchral shadow rolled away from the face of Christendom as that day's sun went down to his rest; for, had the success been less absolute, an opportunity would have offered for negotiation, and consequently for an infinity of intrigues through the feuds always gathering upon national jealousies amongst allied armies. The dragon would soon have healed his wounds; after which the prosperity of the despotism would have been greater than before. But, without reference to Waterloo in particular, we , on our part, find it impossible to contemplate any memorable battle otherwise than according to its tendency towards some commensurate object. To the French this must be impossible, seeing that no lofty (that is, no disinterested) purpose has ever been so much as counterfeited for a French war, nor therefore for a French battle. Aggression, cloaked at the very utmost in the garb of retaliation for counter aggressions on the part of the enemy, stands forward uniformly in the van of such motives as it is thought worth while to plead. But in French casuistry it is not held necessary to plead _any_thing; war justifies itself. To fight for the experimental purpose of trying the proportions of martial merit, but (to speak frankly) for the purpose of publishing and renewing to Europe the proclamation of French superiority— that is the object of French wars. Like the Spartan of old, the Frenchman would hold that a state of peace, and not a state of war, is the state which calls for apology; and that already from the first such an apology must wear a very suspicious aspect of paradox.

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