War and Peace

War is perhaps the most constant subject of these books. The Preacher counts a time for war and a time for peace among the appointed seasons¹. Browne holds that wars and rumours of wars are a truth verified in every age², and Marcus Aurelius treats wars, treaties and armistices as things that arise naturally among rational animals³. The idea takes in what war is and why it arises, when it is just, what it costs, how it is fought, and how it ends. Epic, chronicle, scripture, political theory and the state papers of a republic all meet here. They also disagree here, more sharply than on almost any other subject.

The most radical account of war’s nature belongs to Hobbes. Men are roughly equal, and equality breeds rivalry and diffidence⁴. Without a common power they live in a war of every man against every man. For Hobbes, war consists not in actual battle but in a known disposition to fight⁵. He finds this condition illustrated in American savages and in the hostile postures of sovereigns⁶, and in it trust is unreasonable⁷. Rousseau gives the story a historical cast. The claims of the strongest clash with those of the first occupier and end in horrible warfare⁸. Because states remain in the state of nature among themselves, national slaughter comes to be counted a virtue and an honour⁹. Emerson says simply that man is born into a state of war and must go armed¹⁰. Darwin extends the vocabulary of battle to the combats of male animals and the raids of ants^11,12.

On the proximate causes of war the authors largely agree. They are the passions. Plato traces wars to bodily lusts and the love of money¹³. Hobbes traces them to competition for riches, honour and power¹⁴. Tennyson mocks the preacher against war, insisting that ambition and avarice make it¹⁵. Plutarch shows statesmen kindling war for private reasons. Pericles is said to have done so to deflect complaints against himself¹⁶, and Alcibiades acted from envy of Nicias’s peace¹⁷. In Beowulf, war comes from feud: an old heirloom is enough to break a marriage-sealed peace¹⁸, and a king’s death invites a neighbour’s vengeance¹⁹. Bacon ranges more widely, over martial northern peoples, collapsing empires and overpopulation²⁰. Washington, Smith and Manzoni introduce causes of a more modern kind. Washington warns that national antipathy draws a people into collisions²¹. Smith finds merchants’ jealousy as fatal to Europe’s repose as the ambition of kings²². Manzoni’s priest blames dukes and emperors for a succession war whose burdens fall on the innocent²³. Many of these causes are trivial. Aeschylus’s chorus blames a war on one woman²⁴, and in Virgil a hunting incident sets Latium alight²⁵.

Even the gods make war. Virgil’s Juno sends Alecto to confound a peace already sealed²⁶. Milton stages a full council of devils. Moloch urges open assault even without hope of victory²⁷. Belial judges war against omnipotence futile²⁸, and Mammon counsels peace and building²⁹. Beelzebub carries the day by arguing that no peace with the conqueror is possible³⁰. The episode becomes a reproach to mankind: devils keep concord while men wage cruel wars³¹. The religious traditions turn battle inward. Mara’s army hurls weapons that become harmless before the Buddha^32,33. Paul’s warfare is not of the flesh³⁴, and Bunyan’s pilgrims fight giants with sword and shield³⁵.

The question of justice divides the books most deeply. Machiavelli says plainly that a war is just when it is necessary³⁶. More’s Utopians, who think war beastly, still fight to defend themselves, to aid friends or to free the oppressed^37,38. Bacon goes further. Against the Schoolmen, he holds that a just fear of imminent danger is a lawful cause³⁹. Burke calls the Revolution of 1688 a just war of necessity⁴⁰, and defends the war against France against a dishonourable peace⁴¹. Holy war has its own texts. The Koran bids believers fight until religion is wholly God’s⁴² and fight for the oppressed⁴³. Yet it also tells them to incline to peace if the enemy does⁴⁴. Charlemagne’s ultimatum offers Marsil baptism or death⁴⁵, and Chaucer’s Knight has fought for the faith across three continents⁴⁶. Bacon objects that religion should not be propagated by the sword⁴⁷. Pascal contrasts Mahomet, who succeeded by slaying, with Christ, who succeeded by dying⁴⁸. In the modern authors the justification by civilization comes under suspicion. Mill rejects a proposed “civilizade” against the Mormons⁴⁹. Darwin, hearing a campaign against the Indians praised as the most just of wars because it is waged against barbarians, records atrocities that appal him^50,51.

The conqueror is condemned from ancient times onward. Confucius would win distant tribes by worth and learning, not spear and shield⁵². Marcus Aurelius likens conquerors to spiders and robbers⁵³. Milton’s Christ says they merely rob and enslave, and that glory is better won by deeds of peace⁵⁴. Even in praising Cromwell, Milton reminds him that peace has victories no less renowned⁵⁵. Locke worries that history’s heroes teach boys that slaughter is laudable⁵⁶, and Voltaire condemns Caesar and Alexander for enslaving their fellow creatures⁵⁷. The Quakers press the argument to its limit and refuse all fighting. Voltaire describes them mourning victories rather than celebrating them⁵⁸. Woolman scruples even at paying war taxes⁵⁹, and he acknowledges that refusing to fight when wrongly invaded demands self-denial⁶⁰. Whittier’s speaker declines his comrade’s sword⁶¹. Franklin records the compromise of the principle. Many Quakers favoured defensive war⁶². The Assembly voted money for “grain” that everyone knew meant gunpowder⁶³, and some members quit office rather than abandon a published principle⁶⁴.

On war’s miseries there is little disagreement, only accumulating detail. Froissart’s English waste Normandy, and people who had never seen war flee before them^65,66. Paré, a surgeon, sees towns razed and concludes “such is the evil that wars bring with them”⁶⁷. He describes a field of rotting dead covered with flies⁶⁸. Manzoni follows soldiers who plunder in waves for twenty days⁶⁹ and leave vineyards and houses ruined⁷⁰. Goethe calls war the universal destroyer, which drives even princes into exile⁷¹. Aeschylus gives the image that sums up the cost: Ares is a money-changer who returns ashes in urns⁷². Atrocity is recorded as plainly. Pyrrhus kills Priam at the altar⁷³, and Aeneas himself abandons the restraints of piety⁷⁴. Darwin describes the massacre of Indian women⁷⁵. At Gettysburg Haskell sees wounded men crying for water⁷⁶ and remarks bitterly that war brutalizes men⁷⁷. Whitman concludes that the dead are at rest while mothers, wives and comrades go on suffering⁷⁸. The Gita puts the dilemma most sharply. Arjuna sees slaughter of kinsmen that no kingdom could justify⁷⁹, yet he is bidden to fight as the Lord’s instrument⁸⁰.

Against all this stands the praise of arms. Don Quixote argues that arms excel letters because the soldier needs understanding as well as strength⁸¹. Arms defend commonwealths⁸², and they serve peace, which is the true end of war and the greatest earthly good⁸³. Bacon regrets that modern wars lack the Roman triumph that inflamed courage⁸⁴. Massinger’s father calls war a school of honour⁸⁵, and the sagas and Burns’s songs celebrate a heroic martial race^86,87. Skepticism answers them. Hamlet watches twenty thousand men go to their graves for a plot of ground too small to bury them⁸⁸. Pascal finds it absurd that a man may kill me because our rulers quarrel, or because I live across a river^89,90. Southey’s old Kaspar cannot say what Blenheim’s “famous victory” was for⁹¹, and Dryden’s song calls honour an empty bubble⁹². Poe notes that the modern view finds warfare absurd and impious⁹³. Yet Quixote’s own lament that artillery lets a coward kill the valorous⁹⁴ shows that the old ideal was already under strain from within.

What makes a people martial? Bacon answers that a nation must profess arms as its principal honour⁹⁵, and that it rests on a sturdy yeomanry rather than on peasants⁹⁶. Macaulay finds that hunters, shepherds and farmers make soldiers more readily than townsmen⁹⁷. Whether peace weakens a people is disputed. Tacitus says long peace enfeebled the Cheruscans⁹⁸, and Bacon calls just foreign war the true exercise of a state⁹⁹. Milton’s Adam learns that peace corrupts no less than war wastes¹⁰⁰. Tennyson welcomes war as a cure for a sordid peace of cheating^101,102.

The organization of armies was a central question for the moderns. Machiavelli declares mercenaries useless and dangerous¹⁰³. Auxiliaries are worse still, since if they win you are their prisoner¹⁰⁴. Without national arms no princedom is safe¹⁰⁵, and a prince should think of nothing but war¹⁰⁶. Macaulay explains how commerce made service insupportable to sedentary citizens¹⁰⁷, and how mercenaries made Italian war bloodless and indecisive¹⁰⁸. More condemns standing armies, which must seek war to stay in practice¹⁰⁹. The Declaration of Independence denounces such armies kept in peacetime¹¹⁰. Smith, by contrast, judges a standing army superior to a militia¹¹¹ and credits it with civilizing barbarous countries¹¹². Burke shows what happens when discipline collapses: an army must be a mere instrument of government, or it becomes anarchy¹¹³. The soldier in peacetime is a problem of his own. Harrison’s veterans disdain labour¹¹⁴, Burns’s old soldier is reduced to beggary¹¹⁵, and Lessing’s Werner is restless for any war at all¹¹⁶.

The art of war is treated both as craft and as moral question. More’s Utopians prize victory by wit and use feigned retreats¹¹⁷. Milton’s Satan, having failed by force, resolves on fraud, observing that he who overcomes by force overcomes only half his foe¹¹⁸. Themistocles wins Salamis by choosing the place and time of battle¹¹⁹. Harrison holds that keeping the sea is the safeguard of the land¹²⁰. Machiavelli reckons that a besieging army can hardly stay a year¹²¹. On weapons, Bacon notes that battle has moved from numbers and valour toward cunning and arrangement¹²². Smith observes that firearms favour opulent nations over barbarous ones¹²³, and Milton tellingly makes the cannon Satan’s invention¹²⁴. Haskell insists that generalship and good fighting, not numbers, decide the issue¹²⁵.

The economic critique belongs chiefly to the moderns. Smith observes that easy borrowing hides war’s cost from people who enjoy the war news and dream of glory¹²⁶. Wars paid from current taxes would be shorter and less wantonly undertaken¹²⁷. Ruskin blames capitalists’ loans for sustaining unjust wars¹²⁸, and he would have France and England stop buying panic of each other and spend the money on knowledge¹²⁹.

Peace, finally, is everyone’s professed end, and it is understood in very different ways. For Hobbes it is the first law of nature, to be sought while self-defence is kept in reserve¹³⁰. Cicero preferred an inequitable peace to the most righteous civil war¹³¹. Pascal holds that peace, the sovereign good, needs the just and the strong united¹³². Burke, by contrast, refuses peace with regicides¹³³. Dante remembers the peace of Augustus, when the doors of Janus were shut¹³⁴. Tennyson imagines war-drums silenced in a federation of the world¹³⁵, and Lincoln asks for a just and lasting peace that binds the nation’s wounds¹³⁶. Treaties are fragile from the beginning. Athene’s covenant ends the Odyssey¹³⁷, but Virgil’s sworn truce is broken by a single lance¹³⁸. More’s Utopians make no leagues at all, because princes break them by cavil¹³⁹. The American treaties attempt something new. They write rules protecting civilians and prisoners into peace itself^140,141, declare that war does not dissolve the covenant¹⁴², and agree to disarm the Great Lakes¹⁴³.

Mediation has its heroes. Froissart’s cardinal tries to avert Poitiers¹⁴⁴. More’s priests interpose between armies¹⁴⁵. Volumnia persuades Coriolanus to be benefactor of both sides¹⁴⁶. Hobbes and Pascal both see the need for a disinterested judge, since a party to the quarrel cannot be trusted to decide it^147,148. The constitutional question of who may open the gates of war runs from Latinus, who refuses and is overridden by Juno¹⁴⁹, to Burke’s defence of the royal prerogative¹⁵⁰, to a Constitution that gives the power to Congress¹⁵¹. Neutrality divides Machiavelli, for whom the neutral becomes the victor’s prey¹⁵², from Washington, who counsels a distant nation to avoid Europe’s quarrels¹⁵³. Monroe joins that neutrality to a warning against European intervention in the Americas¹⁵⁴.

Several questions remain open at the end of these books. One is whether war is a permanent condition of nature or a curable disorder of the passions. Another is whether any war is just, or only the defensive one, or none at all. A third is whether peace is the end that ennobles arms or a corruption that arms must cure.