HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY 
 OF WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Br G. H. FERRIS 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAMS & NORGATE 
 
 HENRY HOLT & Co., NEW YORK 
 CANADA : WM. BRIGGS, TORONTO
 
 HOME 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Editor i : 
 HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A. 
 
 PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, D.LlTT., 
 LL.D., F.B.A. 
 
 PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A. 
 
 
 
 NEW 
 
 HENRY HOLT 
 
 YORK 
 
 AND COMPANY 
 

 
 Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF 
 
 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 BY 
 
 G. H. FERRIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF " RUSSIA IN REVOLUTION," 
 "THE EASTERN CRISIS AND BRITISH 
 
 roucv," "THE LIFE AND TEACHING 
 OF TOLSTOY," ETC. ME MURE DU 
 L'IXSTITUT INTERNATIONAL DE LA 
 
 Ma 
 
 
 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
 
 

 
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 SANTA BAKBAKA 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I THE HUMAN SWARM . ' . . . 7 
 
 Evolution of Interests in Organisation and 
 Expansion of Early Societies Chieftainship 
 and Property Conquest and Colonisation. 
 
 IE THE FIRST EMPIRES . . ^-t. * . 33 
 
 River Civilisations The Slave Economy 
 Rise and Fall of Babylon Egypt 
 Thoughts at Thebes. 
 
 HI GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN. ~. . 43 
 
 The Peopling of Europe Greece in Peace 
 and War Jesus The Fathers and Non- 
 Resistance Why it disappeared. 
 
 IV THE STRENGTH OF ROME .. .*-. . ?. . 64 
 
 Paternalism Citizenship Roman Law 
 Logic of Conquest Decay of the Legion 
 Sack of Rome. 
 
 V THE SWARM SETTLES , . . . 82 
 
 Barbarian Kingdoms and Western Church 
 Charlemagne Byzantine Empire and 
 Moslem Expansion Crusades Feudalism 
 Land Economy Chivalry.
 
 vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. " 
 
 VI THE BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM . .105 
 Commerce and Towns End of Serfdom 
 Money Economy Cruelties of Warfare 
 Persecution Discoveries The Reforma- 
 tion : ' ' Wars of Religion. " 
 
 VII THE SWARM OVERSEAS : EAST AND WEST 127 
 Tndor Despotism Buccaneers and Slave 
 Traders Conquest of India Colonisation 
 of North America. 
 
 VIII THE BALANOK OP POWER . <;;. . 162 
 European Settlement Coalitions, and Wars 
 of Succession " What Good came of It ? " 
 English, American, and French Revolu- 
 tions. 
 
 IX NAPOLEON . .' '..' . '.,." . 169 
 The New Armaments From Republic to 
 Empire Nelson How England was saved 
 Moscow Campaign Conscription and 
 Confiscation Waterloo. 
 
 X THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM t, . .197 
 Wars of Liberation Garibaldi Bismarck 
 and German Unity Turkey and Russia 
 Partition of Africa British Empire 
 Industrial Revolution. 
 
 XI THE ORGANISATION OF PEACE ... . 227 
 
 Deadlock of Armaments Credit Economy 
 International Law, Capital, and Labour 
 Arrest of Population Summing-up. 
 
 NOTE ON BOOKS . . . . . 253 
 INDEX. . * 255
 
 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 
 
 THE first step in science is to learn to make 
 distinctions, especially between appearance 
 and reality. We know that war has been a 
 vast preoccupation throughout history, and 
 that the most advanced nations of to-day 
 are engaged in preparations for war on a scale 
 undreamed of by the great conquerors of the 
 past. From this it might appear, and it has 
 often been concluded, that warfare is an inevit- 
 able feature of the growth of human societies, 
 and must continue because it is rooted in 
 instincts and passions which are modified 
 in only the slightest and slowest way from 
 age to age, without which, indeed, the race 
 would soon decay and die out. A moment's 
 reflection, however, shows the idea of an un- 
 changeable '* human nature " to be full of 
 difficulty. Modern thought points to nothing 
 so certainly as the universality of change. 
 We stand on a whirling ball, every atom and 
 molecule of which is in perpetual movement. 
 Individually, we are aware of being different 
 7
 
 8 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 men and women every day of our lives; the 
 life of the world has undergone such a trans- 
 formation even during our own generation 
 that an unmoved character-basis of society 
 is incomprehensible, a miracle in a realm of 
 law and what an evil miracle ! In a modi- 
 fied form, the pessimist theory is more plaus- 
 ible, and therefore more disturbing. It 
 presents not merely to the blind optimist, 
 but to every thinking man, a challenging 
 question : There may be change, but is there 
 " progress " ? Is not the blood struggle 
 necessary to " the survival of the fittest " ? 
 Granted that man is softer in some ways, 
 is he not harder in others, so that the average 
 is unaltered ? Looking back over the pro- 
 cession of the ages, the flux and re-flux of 
 populations, the building up and collapse of 
 States, are we not driven to the conclusion 
 that the simple man's faith in an " increasing 
 purpose " running through it all, a trend from 
 violence to reason, is a vain superstition ? 
 
 The following pages offer an introduction 
 to some of the historical material on which 
 an answer to such questions may be based, 
 and something like a scientific definition ob- 
 tained. They deal, not with the speculations 
 of great minds about war and peace, but with 
 these kinds of human effort as institutions 
 evolving in form, if not in spirit; with their 
 physiology, as it were; their economic bases,
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 9 
 
 and, more slightly, their political and moral 
 relationships. They assume that sentiment, 
 opinion, even genius, are factors in social 
 growth of small importance in comparison 
 with hunger, sex, greed of wealth and power, 
 and other primary and universal motives 
 which provide the body-stuff of history. 
 They attempt, therefore, to get beneath 
 more heroic but superficial explanations of 
 events to those roots of material interest 
 in which, as the writer believes, and not 
 in passion or instinct, the causes of war 
 and peace are to be found. They give 
 ground for thinking that these material 
 interests have a pedigree, develop in a certain 
 direction. Finally, they seek to throw into 
 proper relief some governing conditions of 
 the subject, the chief of these consisting in 
 two simple but momentous facts : The first 
 is that the earth is now nearly filled with 
 human societies. The second is that, in 
 the most advanced of these, the increase of 
 population is rapidly slackening, while in 
 some it has practically ceased. These are 
 conditions which Malthus, and even Darwin, 
 did not live to witness. 
 
 In terms of physiology, all life is a compro- 
 mise of mobility and stability, of variation 
 and unification, under pressure of environ- 
 ment. Though there is no evidence that 
 they lie under the same doom of mortality,
 
 10 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 societies grow, like individual organisms, by 
 a harmony of expansion and organisation, 
 the double process being conditioned by 
 difficulties of elbow-room and food-supply. 
 If a society expands beyond its power of 
 organisation, it suffers (as Napoleon said all 
 empires die) from indigestion. If, on the 
 other hand, it cannot expand, either laterally 
 or, as it were, upward and downward (I 
 mean by intensive cultivation, a limited 
 possibility except in advanced societies), it 
 must stagnate and starve. This process of 
 expansion will be our chief subject-matter. 
 Every function of society at every stage 
 of its growth is affected by density of popula- 
 tion and the margins of free land. And, 
 since we are limited to this planet, the whole 
 process of expansion is necessarily modified 
 as the filling-up of the earth nears completion. 
 History commences with a number of 
 scattered centres from which tribal swarms 
 arise like bees from so many hives. Unlike 
 the bees, they are not vegetarians, or engaged 
 in a highly systematic storage of wealth. 
 They are human, however, in the use of tools, 
 and, paradoxical as this may appear, in their 
 capacity for drunkenness and destructiveness. 
 Animals never intoxicate themselves, and sel- 
 dom destroy more than they want for food. 
 If it be asked how man can be characterised 
 as both a reflective and a drunken animal,
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 11 
 
 as one that is capable of associating ideas 
 and yet of falling lower than the beasts in his 
 fits of destructive violence, the reply would 
 seem to be that the former restraints of in- 
 stinct have become weakened, while the 
 guidance of reason is still slight. The first 
 erect animals soon tire of thinking, and must 
 let off their energy in sheer mischief and 
 cruelty. The hobbledehoy and hooligan are 
 survivals of these animal moods; and, even 
 in the most advanced societies of to-day, 
 the love of skilful destruction has not been 
 worked out. It is a relic of the time when it 
 was, or seemed to be, more profitable to kill 
 than to keep, when the light of reason was 
 only an intermittent glimmer, and there was 
 no social restraint except upon acts immedi- 
 ately hurtful to the tribe. 
 
 We no longer think, then, of the scattered 
 communities of primitive man as living in 
 an idyllic state to which the race will revert 
 by a revival of lost virtues. On the contrary, 
 we know, from a comparison of prehistoric 
 remains with contemporary accounts of exist- 
 ing races in the savage and patriarchal 
 stages of social development, that these differ 
 widely from the pictures of them presented 
 to our grandfathers by idealist writers. The 
 earliest human life is a state of extreme in- 
 security and constant strife. With little or 
 no knowledge of building or the use of fire,
 
 12 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 of clothing or any but the simplest weapons, 
 of agriculture or cattle-raising, the existence 
 of the " noble savage " of the hunting horde 
 is an alternation of torpor and excitement, 
 hunger and repletion, equally repulsive. 
 Passion is his master; in intelligence he is a 
 child. He lives to the day only; foresight, 
 providence, the accumulation of goods are 
 beyond him. Leadership in such groups 
 could only mean, as, indeed, it has often meant 
 in later ages, a surplus of violent energy, 
 showing itself in love of domination, destruc- 
 tive enterprise, and greed. Tyranny is always 
 the first, as self-government is the last, of 
 social achievements. 
 
 This chieftainship, however, worked to- 
 gether with the elementary control and breed- 
 ing of animals to convert the hunting group 
 into the patriarchal tribe, and to develop five 
 of the most important of human institutions 
 property, slavery, polygamy, soldiery, and 
 statecraft. The pastoral community, with 
 its flocks and herds united for easier protec- 
 tion, is larger and wealthier than the hunting 
 group. Arms and organisation are necessary 
 either to attack or to defend it. Slavery, as 
 soon as there is regular profitable labour to 
 be done, supplants the slaughter or devouring 
 of enemies. Polygamy marks the increasing 
 value of the labour of women and children 
 in the domestic industries. Cattle, slaves,
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 13 
 
 serfs, and wives: these are the chief forms 
 of early property. But, as food and shelter, 
 and with them vigour and intelligence, im- 
 prove, the arts rapidly advance. Gold and 
 other ornaments are treasured as signs of 
 superiority yet another temptation to war- 
 like attack. Luxury begins. Economic 
 inequality also begins, with the hiring of 
 labourers and the loaning of weapons or tools. 
 The administration of customary law pro- 
 duces hereditary chieftaincies and councils 
 of elders, and priesthoods are evolved to 
 watch over the religion of the tribe. It has 
 been said that " the origin of the State, or 
 political society, is to be found in the develop- 
 ment of the art of warfare." This seems to 
 be a partial or inexact statement of the facts. 
 The origin of the State lies in the need of pro- 
 tecting the lives and insuring the increase of 
 property necessary to a growing society; and 
 it is only in relatively modern times that 
 the maintenance of internal order has been 
 clearly distinguished from the art of military 
 defence and offence, or increase of property 
 by cultivation from increase of property by 
 conquest. 
 
 Immense periods of time must have been 
 occupied by the advance from the hunting 
 group to the pastoral tribe, and still longer 
 periods to the clearing and digging of land 
 for crops, the growth of village communities,
 
 14 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and the beginnings of trade. The next step, 
 metal working for farm implements and wea^ 
 pons, would come more rapidly, as the rela- 
 tively larger profits of agriculture easily allow 
 the maintenance of an industrial class. Often 
 there would be a throw-back a famine or 
 other disaster to the tribe would set it on the 
 war trail, and, under successful martial 
 leadership, would convert it into a barbarian 
 horde breaking like a storm over regions where 
 better-favoured races had settled down 
 to the accumulation of wealth. Differences 
 of land structure, also, would intensify and 
 perpetuate differences of social character 
 mountainous country, for instance, favouring 
 the survival of martial qualities proper to the 
 hunting stage; a broken coast favouring trade 
 and travel; a muddy delta favouring the 
 growth of a despotic State. To this day the 
 sites of the great river civilisations of anti- 
 quity are bordered by vast desert regions in 
 which wander tent-dwelling huntsmen and 
 herdsmen, to whom steady labour seems an 
 intolerable oppression. In the dawn of civilis- 
 ation these nomad fighters would be a much 
 more serious menace to the settled people 
 of the fertile river-sides. Outlaws, escaped 
 slaves, prodigal sons, would swell their ranks. 
 They could offer, as only crime and the more 
 daring kind of financial adventure do to-day, 
 the prize of quick-won wealth and abnormal
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 15 
 
 power. Martial talent in the servile or dis- 
 possessed classes of the settled States must 
 have been strongly attracted to them. So it 
 was, up to a comparatively recent date, on the 
 forest borders of northern Europe. Hence the 
 first separation of a soldier class, in the kins- 
 men of the chief, among the more advanced 
 pastoral communities, and its elaboration in 
 the courts of the early monarchies, where 
 pretorians or janissaries are the pivot of a 
 military system as necessary against internal 
 revolt as against external attack. 
 
 In an examination of the chaotic material 
 of early history, three distinctions of primary 
 importance come to light. In the first place, 
 the swarming movement by which the earth 
 has been filled which gave us the great 
 tribal migrations in the dawn of European 
 life, the transatlantic migration beginning in 
 the fifteenth century, and the later reaction 
 of Europe upon Africa and Asia reveals a 
 double character. Varying by infinite de- 
 grees of the scale of motive, it may yet be 
 said to possess predominantly a character 
 either of Conquest or Colonisation, of armed 
 authority or voluntary enterprise. In the 
 second place, as the human swarm settles, the 
 social organisation is seen to be marked by a 
 preponderant character either of Despotism 
 or of Democracy. And, thirdly, the eco- 
 nomic activities on which both organisation
 
 16 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and expansion depend, while infinitely varied 
 in kind and degree of development, yet 
 display a common quality either of Ex- 
 ploitation or of Cultivation. But when we 
 speak of these six, which are really soluble 
 into two, preponderant motives, we mean not 
 a spirit of pure good or pure evil possessing 
 peoples, classes or individuals, but a balance 
 of energy, due mainly to favouring conditions 
 and opportunities, and leading in the direc- 
 tion either of war or peace. There will be no 
 dispute as to where the bias lies in early 
 history. Colonisation in the strict sense 
 (colonia : a place occupied by and for cultiva- 
 tion) has proceeded from the beginning; and 
 the ancient world shows splendid examples, 
 such as the Greek settlements of the Medi- 
 terranean and Black Sea littorals. But in 
 the whole picture it is overshadowed by the 
 method of conquest. A colony is a settlement 
 of men, for the most part of like mind and 
 like race, associated for the pursuit of free 
 agriculture and industry, and seeking in 
 equality and self-government a happier lot 
 than the mother-country offered. The anti- 
 thesis of this is the characteristic fruit of 
 conquest, the Imperium, which may be de- 
 fined as a forcible union of peoples differing 
 not only in political rights, but commonly also 
 in race, religion, economic status, and language. 
 A tribe settles down on the Palatine by the
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 17 
 
 Tiber, or Tower Hill by the Thames. Thanks 
 to geographical position (at the mouth of a 
 river, on a good ford, or on a defensible bluff, 
 for instance), the chieftains wax strong, and 
 gradually extend their sway over less fortun- 
 ate tribes in the neighbourhood. They get the 
 pick of their flocks and lands ; slaves, captured 
 in foreign raids, work and fight for them 
 with no reward but bare subsistence. The 
 plebeians support them at first from the 
 natural respect for physical or intellectual 
 superiority, for the sake of employment, for 
 the benefits of law and order; and afterwards 
 because they share, if only in a small degree, 
 in the joy and gain of conquest. This may be 
 called a Slave economy. The paires become 
 a hereditary patrician class, differentiated 
 into monarchy and aristocracy (holding the 
 land), with professionally organised military, 
 financial, and ecclesiastical supporters. The 
 need of a class of skilled artisans or a better 
 soldiery loosens the shackles of the slave. 
 Trade arises. Agriculture improves. Let us 
 suppose that Nature has helped to make 
 the State in question fairly homogeneous 
 and stable. Land now comprises the mass 
 of wealth; land, therefore, dictates the char- 
 acter of government a hereditary monarchy, 
 based on feudalism or some other caste 
 system. The home-territory becomes a 
 settled nation-State. The forms of wealth
 
 18 
 
 change. With the aid of a sweeping pesti- 
 lence, or at the cost of a civil war, free 
 labour replaces serfdom ; tenants and traders 
 become strong and intelligent enough to 
 resist extreme oppression and extortion, and 
 to obtain a large share in domestic legisla- 
 tion and administration. There is a law of 
 diminishing returns in government, as in 
 agriculture; and this begins to affect the 
 ruling class, who are compelled to look 
 further afield for new opportunities of gain. 
 A gold mine, let us suppose, is found in a 
 heathen land by a company of adventurers. 
 If the capture is not contested, it remains 
 a private affair, subject to royal charter; but 
 the adventurers, holding on to the gold mine, 
 come home and buy up more means of political 
 power. Generally, however, the capture is 
 contested either by natives or by rivals; and 
 then it becomes necessary to call for the aid 
 of the home government, with its land and 
 sea forces, its wealth and prestige. 
 
 Meanwhile, the forms of wealth have con- 
 tinued to change. Factory organisation is 
 displacing free labour; credit largely replaces 
 money. These changes should reflect them- 
 selves in government. But the ancient ob- 
 session of territorial property prevails ; and 
 " much would always have more." The diffi- 
 culty and cost of territorial expansion, 
 however, constantly increase. The day of
 
 THE HUMAN SWARM 19 
 
 the great choice has come. On the one 
 hand, there lies the possibility of restraint 
 and intensive cultivation. Along the other 
 path, the original nation-State its energies 
 diverted from the development of native 
 resources by science and education becomes 
 an oligarchy engaged in the exploitation 
 of a system of alien dependencies. Its 
 original base of economic advantage has 
 been upset, its social integrity undermined, 
 by the poisonous influences which always 
 flow from tribute. However great the 
 original virility of its people, it is over- 
 weighted by the machinery of extensive rule 
 and the demands of international rivalry. 
 Sooner or later the structure grows top-heavy, 
 and falls before the attack of younger peoples, 
 for whom a fate no better may be in store. 
 
 Here is, as it were, a skeleton from the 
 museum of history. It has the limited value 
 of a genealogical tree, an artist's manequm, 
 or the " reconstitution of the crime " in a 
 French trial. We hasten to add that, as 
 Plato or Napoleon would be unrecognisable 
 in their skeletons, so it is what is added to 
 the " predominant motive " that makes the 
 humanity, the flesh-and-blood reality, of 
 the men and movements of the past. As 
 there is no individual who is wholly good or 
 wholly bad, there is no society that is pure 
 democracy or pure empire. Every organism
 
 20 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 is a ratio of contending forces ; that is 
 the method of development. A balance of 
 energy there must be on one side or the 
 other, and it will be on that where the resist- 
 ance is less and the profit more. But the life- 
 giving must have been greater than the death- 
 dealing force, else mankind had not multiplied. 
 Nay, it must be immensely greater, since 
 one can kill in a moment what it has taken 
 laborious years to rear. The great unknown 
 of the Stone Age who invented the flint- 
 headed arrow set going a wave of expansion 
 which was doomed to the failure of all merely 
 destructive effort. Man is a lazy animal; 
 and there would have been no progress but 
 for the penalty that falls on the individual 
 or society which does not produce more 
 than it destroys. The increasing difficulty of 
 hunting and fishing stimulates the cultivation 
 of crops and herds. Slave-raiding only 
 ceases as free labour proves its superior econo- 
 mic value. Only when a number of clans had 
 settled down into some semblance of a nation 
 could industry and commerce grow. Rob- 
 bery and piracy are checked when the majority 
 of men obtain an interest in law and order. 
 When foreign booty becomes scarce and the 
 royal resources at home inadequate, a system 
 of inland revenue, and consequently of popu- 
 lar government, is established. Force, an 
 extension of man's attack upon the animals
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 21 
 
 to those groups of his own kind whom he 
 regards as alien and inferior, is characteristic 
 of the early stages of society both in domestic 
 and external relations, but especially in the 
 latter, because the checks and balances that 
 are raised against arbitrary power within 
 any society are only slowly and with difficulty 
 carried into its outside affairs. When there are 
 no more good empty lands, and every nation's 
 borders march with those of others of nearly 
 equal strength, a new economy of effort has 
 become imperative. Warfare, always waste- 
 ful, has become ruinously so. To the expan- 
 sion of co-operative industry and commerce, 
 on the other hand, no bounds can be set. 
 The extent to which a State has transferred 
 its activity from the former field to the latter 
 is the measure of its civilisation. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 
 
 MUD and sand mean only waste in the 
 north temperate zone; but the ancient 
 empires of West Asia and North Africa 
 lived upon mud, and it is to mud and sand 
 that we owe the preservation of then* wonder- 
 ful libraries, picture-galleries, and monuments. 
 The British Museum alone has an immense
 
 22 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 number of Babylonian and Assyrian wedge- 
 script records on clay collections of books, 
 letters, laws, contracts, astrological reports, 
 grammars, liturgies, legends, inscriptions of 
 all kinds; twenty thousand tablets and frag- 
 ments have been found in the last half-century 
 on the site of Nineveh alone. We are, how- 
 ever, still far from having the full picture of 
 life under the West Asian Empires necessary 
 to determine fully the part which militarism 
 and war played, and that for two reasons. The 
 first is the vast period of time covered, the 
 frequent breaks in the records, and most of 
 them having been quite recently unearthed 
 the need of further study. Then there is 
 a bias characteristic of the earliest as of the 
 latest art galleries. Even the artist, if he 
 pleases to live, must live to please; and the 
 modern journalist and novelist are not the 
 first to be drawn disproportionately to the 
 heroism of the stricken field because it most 
 easily provides " good copy." The ancient 
 scribes of the clay tablets, cones, and cylin- 
 ders, the cutters of steles and monuments 
 whose masters were kings and satraps, give 
 us, in cuneiform writing and low-relief 
 pictures, abundant details of warfare, es- 
 pecially of royal prowess and the horrible 
 fate of the vanquished and the captives. 
 So impressive are these memorials that 
 whole millenniums seem to be filled with the
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 23 
 
 clamour of moving hosts, the ferocious en- 
 counters of bowmen and spearmen, horsemen 
 and charioteers, the siege and pillage of 
 cities. That there was perpetual slave-hunt- 
 ing in the ancient world we know; but it is 
 a simple deduction that for every year of 
 devastating warfare there must have been 
 many years of laborious peace. 
 
 At the time of the earliest monuments, the 
 art of wai- is so highly developed that rela- 
 tively little progress is manifest in succeeding 
 centuries, save in the size of the armies 
 employed and in their engineering supports. 
 Through ages men fought with practically 
 the same weapons till gunpowder came into 
 use. A carving attributed to the reign of 
 Eannatum, who first confederated the cities 
 of Babylonia (perhaps B.C. 4400), shows a 
 line of close-packed infantry, wearing helmets 
 with nose guard, and carrying very long 
 blade-headed spears and squarish shields 
 reaching from chin to toe. The shields 
 touch or overlap, and the formation appears 
 to anticipate the Macedonian phalanx of a 
 much later time. A splendid stele of Naramsin 
 (B.C. 8750), found at Susa, illustrates a freer 
 style of attack in mountain fighting. Bowmen 
 and spearmen are the chief forces; short 
 swords, daggers, maces, are also in evidence. 
 A thousand years later there is little change 
 in field equipment : chain armour has become
 
 24 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 common; the Assyrian helmet is somewhat 
 taller, often with a conical peak; there is a 
 conical as well as a square shield. Foreign 
 slave levies and mercenaries have brought in 
 the sling and axe; and, with the introduction 
 of the horse, the war-chariot, carrying a 
 driver and a combatant and drawn by two 
 or three horses abreast, becomes an important 
 and dreaded arm. Some of the archers 
 shoot from behind a huge square shield held 
 by an attendant. So far, copper and bronze 
 are relied upon for weapons, as for tools; but, 
 " probably from the tenth or twelfth century 
 B.C. earlier than in any other country " 
 (Flinders Petrie), iron comes into common 
 use; and the hardening of iron to steel soon 
 follows. This must have resulted in a great 
 enlargement of warlike material. Under 
 Ashurnasirpal (B.C. 883-858) companies of 
 mounted archers appear for the first time. 
 From the earliest records the towns had been 
 fortified; but now fortification and siege 
 operations are upon a vaster scale; sappers 
 and miners are employed, with spade, pick, 
 saw, and other tools. A bas-relief shows a 
 huge turreted battering-ram, running on 
 three pairs of wheels, being used against one 
 of the brick walls of Babylon, from the 
 towers of which archers are shooting at 
 their long-coated assailants. These siege 
 operations were not markedly improved upon
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 25 
 
 for two thousand years. Another relief gives 
 a remarkable picture of the navy which 
 Sennacherib (B.C. 705-681) sent down the 
 Euphrates to the Persian Gulf against the 
 Chaldeans; some of the galleys have rams 
 and a square sail, all have two banks of 
 rowers, and a line of shields to protect the 
 fighters on deck. Under Nebuchadnezzar 
 (King of Babylon, B.C. 604-562), a method 
 of defence anticipating modern Dutch ex- 
 pedients was put into successful operation. 
 The Tigris and Euphrates were connected 
 with huge dams above and below the city, 
 so that the upper and lower country could be 
 flooded against the invader. It was these 
 tremendous works which made it necessary 
 for Cyrus a generation later to divert the 
 course of the Euphrates in order to obtain 
 a passage into Babylon. 
 
 Details like these, with which a technical 
 history of the art of war may be filled, give 
 us, however, no impression whatever of the 
 cause of the rise and fall of Babylonian and 
 Assyrian military power. For that we must 
 look to the nature of the land, and the 
 position of the States to which it gave birth 
 in relation to their neighbours. 
 
 The natural fertility of the Babylonian 
 plain was unequalled in the ancient world. 
 Whereas the Nile inundation gave only a 
 narrow strip of black earth, there was here,
 
 26 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, and 
 between, a broad belt which may again in 
 the early future become one of the greatest 
 granaries of the world, and, thousands of 
 years before our era, maintained scores, 
 perhaps hundreds, of cities and a dense 
 agricultural population. Surrounded by war- 
 like and for the most part relatively barbarous 
 peoples Hittites in the highlands of the 
 north-east, and Medes in those of the north- 
 west, Egyptians in the south-east, Elamites 
 in the south-west, and nomad Semitic tribes 
 in the southern desert it was designed by 
 nature for a theatre of perpetual conflict. 
 The northern kingdoms did, indeed, act as 
 buffer States between Babylonia and those 
 tribes whose descent from the steppes of 
 Central Asia is the great mystery of the 
 morning of civilisation; but in their turn 
 they were pushed south by these hordes. 
 Assyria, having first to meet this pressure, 
 developed the more martial character. Early 
 immigrations had left, also, causes of internal 
 conflict. Throughout the plain, the invading 
 tribes settled in independent principalities, 
 and the rivalry of their chieftain-kings led 
 to incessant feuds, only to be resolved (as 
 in later mediaeval Europe) by the gradual 
 formation of extensive kir^doms or empires, 
 which, in their turn, became the stakes of 
 great adventurers in the game of war. But
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 27 
 
 civilisations like the Babylonian are only 
 slowly created, and they are not in reality, 
 though they seem to be, quickly destroyed. 
 It is most certain that they are only slowly 
 created, that the botanic and zoological 
 gardens of Nineveh, the splendid palaces of 
 Babylon, the regulation of the water- 
 courses, the very art that made Babylonian 
 the culture language of Egypt and carried 
 the clay tablet and seal cylinder into Crete 
 and far eastward into Asia, are witnesses of 
 steady labour and developing intelligence 
 and discipline. Over and over again, wild 
 mountaineers poured down into the Chaldean 
 plains, only to be absorbed into the settled 
 body of townsmen and feudal tenants. The 
 wealth of the land, especially after the es- 
 tablishment of systems of irrigation, is in- 
 dicated by the ruins of many cities that still 
 await exploration. It explains, on the one 
 hand, the development of despotic govern- 
 ments necessary as much for the construc- 
 tion and maintenance of the canal works 
 as for external defence and the enforcement 
 of peace upon feudatory States and, on the 
 other hand, the waves of invasion which 
 created successively the Babylonian, Assyrian, 
 and Persian Empires. 
 
 Even in the modern world, where a thou- 
 sand influences tend to equalise conditions, 
 we find something like a localisation of the
 
 28 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 characteristics of the three great stages of 
 social development the martial vigour char- 
 acteristic of the hunting stage in the mountains, 
 the laborious passivity of the pastoral stage 
 favouring centralised despotism in the great 
 plains, and mercantile adventurousness on 
 the navigable seaboards. (Compare Albania, 
 Russia, and England.) But in Europe the 
 spirit of the mountains has been tamed, and 
 now speaks rather for liberty than conquest. 
 When Babylonian civilisation was being 
 founded on the lower courses of the Tigris 
 and Euphrates six thousand years before 
 Christ, the three types of society were already 
 in competition, the prosperous cities of the 
 south offering a perpetual invitation to the 
 northern barbarian, recovering from the river 
 mud and the Gulf coast-trade the wealth thus 
 destroyed or removed, and imposing their 
 culture on the invader. At the beginning of 
 the third millennium B.C., the Sumerian and 
 Semitic strains were beaten together, and the 
 first Babylonian empire arose. From Persia 
 to the Syrian coast, a supreme authority 
 was recognised; roads were built and postal 
 services established; trade followed; libraries 
 in clay were collected; and sculpture gave 
 splendid expression to the pride of Court and 
 temple. The Code of Hammurabi (B.C. 2200) 
 shows an extensive organisation of slave 
 labour, and above this an elaborate pro-
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 29 
 
 tection of personal and trading rights, based 
 on secular ideas and superseding the old 
 law of the blood-feud. Most of its 280 
 provisions had been in use for centuries; 
 but Hammurabi codified and regularly en- 
 forced them 1400 years before the Spartan 
 Lycurgus (if, indeed, he was not a mythical 
 person) and 1200 years before the Athenian 
 Solon. We have hundreds of tablets of the 
 same period referring to legal and com- 
 mercial transactions only possible in an 
 advanced society. 
 
 This great civilisation, from the relics of 
 which, eighteen hundred years later, the 
 Greeks were to learn as we learn from theirs, 
 was undermined by a Hittite invasion, and 
 (about 1800 B.C.) a more permanent occupa- 
 tion by the Kassites, a warlike race on the 
 eastern border. A century later, the north- 
 ern part of the Empire asserted its independ- 
 ence ; and a succession of wars between it and 
 Babylon established the supremacy of Assyria 
 in Western Asia (from about B.C. 1250). 
 Under Tiglath-Pileser I (B.C. 1100), Ashur- 
 nasirpal II, and his successor Shalmaneser II, 
 its armies overran the Nearer East. A peasant 
 revolt at home interrupted these wars, but 
 they were soon resumed. These were no 
 longer mere raids, but organised campaigns of 
 conquest. At first the aim was to obtain 
 only tribute or alliance; but more and more
 
 30 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 frequently viceroys were left behind with 
 the double duty of raising troops to hold 
 the conquered territory and of sending 
 forced levies to the imperial army. The Old 
 Testament is full of evidence of early Baby- 
 lonian influences; and this period is interesting 
 as that of the first armed contact between 
 Assyrians and Israelites. The removal of 
 subject peoples from one end of the empire 
 to another became a regular expedient for 
 breaking the spirit of the little nations. 
 In B.C. 701 Sennacherib invaded Judaea, 
 enslaved 200,000 of the inhabitants, and only 
 raised the siege of Jerusalem when Hezekiah 
 had stripped the Temple to give him tribute. 
 Twice more, in B.C. 597 and 586, under 
 Nebuchadnezzar II, Jerusalem was captured, 
 and its people taken away into exile. In 
 such manner the Syrian, Armenian, and 
 Medean States were successively reduced and 
 ravaged. Slaves, loot, and tribute were the 
 great objects of the imperial system; and, 
 though commerce and legitimate taxation 
 followed in the path of war, a perpetual 
 supply of plunder was the only means of 
 maintaining the Assyrian host. The name of 
 Sennacherib has remained a byword for 
 wholesale destruction and cruelty. Lands 
 naturally the richest in the then known 
 world could not long bear this human plague; 
 and, undermined by a Scythian invasion, the
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 31 
 
 Assyrian empire fell in B.C. 606, never to 
 rise again. Babylon, rebuilt and fortified 
 by Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 604-562), enjoyed a 
 brief period of splendour and independence, 
 to be overwhelmed by the swift emergence of 
 the Persian empire, which in turn made by 
 the swords of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius 
 succumbed to the attack of Alexander of 
 Macedon (B.C. 380). 
 
 The astonishing thing is not that Babylon 
 which, when Herodotus visited the city 
 in the fifth century B.C., covered an area of 
 185 miles, or half as much again as the 
 " administrative county " of London to-day 
 should have fallen into decay, and be now 
 dust, but that the slave tillage of the Chaldean 
 plain and the plunder of neighbouring lands 
 should have maintained it the glorious centre 
 of the known world through thirty centuries, 
 with but a few intervals of eclipse. We have 
 seen that the northern empire was no better 
 than a system of spoliation carried on by 
 a hierarchy of soldiers and officers by means of 
 armies of slaves, serfs, or mercenaries, under 
 a feudal system which reduced a formerly 
 free agricultural population to actual or 
 virtual slavery. In Babylonia the same 
 development was checked by the power of 
 the large towns and the privileges of the 
 priesthood. But, while the people paid with 
 liberty and life the costs of perpetual war,
 
 32 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 its prizes were absorbed mainly in the ag- 
 grandisement of the palace and the great 
 temples. In a new colony with the resources 
 of a mother-country behind it, the effects of 
 continued warfare are concealed by fresh 
 immigration of the same race. It is quite 
 otherwise with an old civilisation. Every 
 forward step it has taken for instance, in 
 the enlargement of cities, the improvement 
 of agriculture, the increase of roads and 
 markets, the better rearing of horses, the 
 perfection of weapons and strategy, the 
 elaboration of trade credit means a wider 
 area of destruction when conflict breaks out. 
 Every fighting man represents years of 
 labour in rearing; his place can only be filled 
 by like years of fresh labour. Under the 
 strain of continuous warfare, in which scores 
 or even hundreds of thousands of the strongest 
 members of the community are slain, while 
 only the weaker are left to continue the 
 stock, the original race is progressively 
 debilitated, and may at last become extinct. 
 The slave basis of society is inert, unadaptable, 
 cannot provide reserves of governing power. 
 When, as is usual, continuous despotism 
 accompanies continuous warfare, the new 
 subject peoples, brought in, not by choice, 
 but by force, and kept in an inferior position, 
 cannot form a nation with the social integrity 
 of their predecessors. For there is, though
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 33 
 
 it is difficult to define, an integrity of a nation, 
 as of an individual; and, when it is sub- 
 verted, even a small shock may bring an 
 outwardly splendid fabric to the ground. 
 So fell Babylon, and the collapse was, perhaps, 
 the more complete because so long delayed. 
 
 The other great State of antiquity offers 
 this main point of similarity to Babylon, 
 that it is absolutely, as Herodotus put it, 
 " the gift of the river," and this main point 
 of difference, that through thousands of 
 years of oppression Egypt has never ceased 
 to maintain a large and laborious population. 
 Exhausted by native tyrants, and despoiled 
 by every militant race of the Levant, 
 while its ancient art treasures are the 
 wonder of the museums of the world, the 
 black soil of this river valley, only from 
 ten to thirty miles wide, gives life to-day 
 to ten million people and a sufficient 
 tribute to its latest masters. There is 
 a superstitious idea that races and States 
 must die of old age, of prosperity, of some 
 vague disease called degeneracy, which is 
 favoured by continued peace. A rapid glance 
 through the history of Egypt, especially its 
 military history, will correct this impression. 
 
 The Nile valley has three great advantages. 
 The river gives the whole country a highroad, 
 and does for its agriculture what we are 
 B
 
 34 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 beginning to do for ours by intensive cultiva- 
 tion. It is a self-sufficing country, producing 
 ample food, building materials, minerals, and 
 textile crops; so that its rulers are not driven 
 to foreign adventure, and its people need not 
 depend on foreign trade. Its position, pro- 
 tected by deserts and mountains except on 
 the north, though favouring social stagnation, 
 was in olden times, and even now is, one of 
 considerable political strength. These ad- 
 vantages seem to have borne fruit rapidly 
 even in the earliest period. The Stone Age 
 was ended by the introduction by the first 
 Asiatic invaders, probably Semites, whose 
 weapons explain their success of metal 
 arms and implements, perhaps also of wheat, 
 barley, sheep, bricks, and Babylonian methods 
 of irrigation. The use of copper and bronze 
 marks a great advance in the status of hunt- 
 ing and pastoral tribes; and, with even the 
 most elementary regulation of the Nile 
 overflow, crops would multiply tenfold. 
 Gradually the tribal communities of the valley 
 were gathered into two kingdoms of the 
 north and south; towns were founded; and, 
 with the legendary King Menes, a single 
 dynasty was established (about B.C. 4400, 
 by the British Museum chronology), with a 
 supporting hierarchy of nobles, officials, and 
 priests. By the Fourth Dynasty (B.C. 8780- 
 3560) government, the organisation of labour,
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 35 
 
 and the accumulation of wealth had so far 
 progressed as to make possible the erection 
 of the Pyramids. The regulation of the Nile 
 to convert destructive floods into permanent 
 irrigation led naturally, indeed, to the 
 growth of a powerful government. The Great 
 Pyramid of Cheops is said to have taken 
 twenty years to build, employing 300,000 
 men in gangs of 10,000. A few of these 
 were raided Soudanese herdsmen, but the 
 mass were natives; and, however foolish these 
 marvellous works may now appear, they 
 undoubtedly indicate a time of peace and 
 plenty, of intellectual advance and national 
 unification. This development took a course 
 in some ways similar to that with which we 
 are more familiar in modern times. Under 
 the Fifth Dynasty (B.C. 3560-3300) a theo- 
 cratic absolutism had become firmly estab- 
 lished, and religious art reached its highest 
 excellence. Under the Sixth, the courtiers 
 had grown into an independent landed aris- 
 tocracy, and the rivalries of princelings led 
 to the end of what is called the Old Empire 
 in a re-division of north and south. With 
 the Tenth and Eleventh Dynasties a United 
 Kingdom, the so-called Middle Empire, is 
 restored at Thebes; and under the Twelfth 
 (about B.C. 2460), with trade and handicraft 
 flourishing as well as art and literature, the 
 old landed nobility gradually becomes a 
 B a
 
 86 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 semi-feudal bureaucracy. Then Imperialism 
 appears. 
 
 The Nile and the humble fellah have done 
 their best; how are the ever-growing pride 
 and greed of kings and governors to be 
 sated ? " Conquest " the hunt for slaves 
 and loot is the everlasting answer to this 
 question. A spur and example were pro- 
 vided by the immigration and tyranny of 
 the Semites of Canaan and Arabia called 
 Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings (B.C. 1800), 
 whose superiority probably lay in another 
 novelty in military organisation, the war- 
 chariot. Their rule in the north seems to 
 have lasted for two centuries, and to have 
 been followed by a nationalist reaction, 
 including the Hebrew " Oppression " termin- 
 ated by the Exodus. By this time there could 
 have been no more of the instincts of the 
 hunting stage left in the blood of the Nile 
 peasants than there is of the Viking strain 
 in our English blood to-day. From the 
 beginning, the Egyptian appears the least 
 martial of men. The army, hitherto, had 
 consisted of a feeble militia, mainly of spear- 
 men, raised by the local officials, and the 
 royal guard, with Sudanese and negroes for 
 stiffening. The war-chariot now became the 
 centre of a new professional force, with 
 foreign auxiliaries in increasing numbers 
 Syrian and Nubian archers, and Shardana
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 37 
 
 mercenaries carrying long swords and shields, 
 dirk and javelin, and clad in mail and helmet. 
 With such troops Amenhotep I of the " New 
 Empire " (about B.C. 1560), having unified 
 the country, set out upon a career of conquest, 
 which Thotmes I, II, and III carried far 
 into Syria, Babylonia, and Nubia. The last, 
 who is accounted the greatest of Egyptian 
 monarchs, led no less than fifteen campaigns. 
 Immense spoils were brought home and went 
 to the building of splendid temples, palaces, 
 and monuments, and to the elaboration of 
 furniture and ornament. The Court was 
 steeped in oriental luxury, and the army 
 swollen with foreign captives. Under Thotmes 
 IV (B.C. 1430) there is evidence of a reaction 
 of the powerful priestly and clerical classes; 
 and in succeeding reigns we hear more of 
 bribery and negotiation than conquest. 
 
 The next great campaigns are the most 
 southerly reverberation of the oncoming of 
 the Central Asiatic hordes in which Babylon 
 was already involved. In B.C. 1297 the end 
 of a long struggle with the Hittite Empire of 
 Asia Minor leaves us the interesting text of 
 a regular treaty of peace and alliance for 
 defence and offence. Rameses III, of the 
 Twentieth Dynasty (about 1200 B.C.), revived 
 the power of Thebes and the arms of Egypt. 
 In the first naval battle of which we have 
 a record (B.C. 1192) his Levantine sailors
 
 38 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 routed a force of Cretans, Philistines, and 
 other Asiatics at the mouth of the Nile. The 
 veracity of the boast of Rameses that a woman 
 might go wherever she liked in his realm 
 without molestation is less evident than that 
 of his stony memorials of slaughter in battle. 
 But loot sets up a double reaction : it creates 
 vested interests in disorder at home, and the 
 cry of revenge abroad. While its rulers 
 were content to depend on domestic labour 
 and not on foreign pillage and tribute, 
 content to develop native resources and an 
 indigenous civilisation, Egypt remained, de- 
 spite internal tyranny, a stable and pro- 
 gressive State, with strength to spare for the 
 erection of the monuments which astonish 
 us, even in this day of mammoth engineering 
 enterprise, by their witness of skill and 
 organisation. The first outburst of Imperial 
 adventure in the Middle Empire had led to 
 a weakening of the native economy by the 
 introduction of slave labour, and to a barbarian 
 invasion. The Imperialism of the New Em- 
 pire, culminating in the campaigns of Rameses, 
 resulted in a further weakening of the native 
 economy by dependence on foreign tribute 
 and commodities, the diversion of large 
 bodies of men from productive to destructive 
 work, and to a series of reactions from neigh- 
 bouring countries, ending in military disaster, 
 political collapse, economic misery, and sub-
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 39 
 
 jection to Libyan, Ethiopian, and Assyrian 
 conquerors. 
 
 Henceforth there is no State that can be 
 properly called Egyptian. But the patient 
 cattle still draw the wooden plough, and the 
 creaking of the shaduf, the primitive water- 
 wheel, never ceases along the Nile. What 
 more of extortion there may have been by 
 Persian satraps, Greek and Roman governors, 
 Arab Kadis and Mamelukes, and Turkish 
 Pashas, must have been compensated by the 
 discovery of Roman and still more distant 
 markets. The Ptolemies were in their time 
 the wealthiest rulers in the world; and the 
 encouragement they gave to Greek traders 
 in the north may have been for the good of 
 their subjects. But, while the city of Alex- 
 andria, with its famous library and light- 
 house, grew to be the centre of intellectual 
 influence and commercial activity hi the 
 Levant, Greek Pharaohs and Roman prefects 
 ruthlessly exploited the upper country, and, 
 by destroying all native elements in the 
 administration, made easy the way for twelve 
 centuries of Mohammedan rule. 
 
 This rapid sketch of the military history 
 of the ancient empires of the Near East 
 indicates some broad conclusions as to its 
 character. In these rich and extensive 
 dominions we are already far from the crude 
 impulses of the savage tribe ; but tribal
 
 40 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 conditions on the outside vitally affect them. 
 The swarming movement, the great immigra- 
 tions from Central Asia into the warmer and 
 more fertile lands of the west and south, are 
 provocative of constant conflict. The older 
 and more important " predominant motive " 
 is internal despotism, with its law of diminish- 
 ing returns. The rationale of the union of 
 village communities into principalities, and 
 these into empires, has been a general interest 
 in law, order, and the organisation of the 
 river works. But the governing class be- 
 comes larger and larger, developing from 
 the simplest form of patriarchal monarchy, 
 through a feudal period, to a bureaucratic 
 despotism battening upon a vast body of 
 slave labour. The limit of extortion being 
 reached, Pharaoh begins to look abroad for 
 new fields of exploitation; and warfare be- 
 comes a regular function of government. 
 Agricultural serfs are not the stuff democracy 
 is made of; but neither are they militant 
 patriots. A class of foreign traders has not 
 yet arisen; and Nature is so kind that there 
 is no need of outflow in colonisation. War, 
 with its constant new supplies of captive 
 toilers, is always a depressing interference 
 with native life; and, though it reaches a vast 
 scale, its organisation strikes us as less re- 
 markable than the preceding monuments of 
 peaceful labour. At length, warfare also
 
 THE FIRST EMPIRES 41 
 
 presents increasing difficulties, and gives 
 diminishing returns to the now almost com- 
 pletely alien ruling class. The original racial 
 stock may have been ruined in learning the 
 lesson, as in Mesopotamia, or only degraded 
 and debilitated as in Egypt. Then the 
 centre of gravity in history passes to other 
 lands where ideas may count for more, and 
 arbitrary power for less. 
 
 In a little garden by the Nile noisy with 
 the evensong of many hidden birds, I sat 
 once watching the sun go down behind the 
 holy mountain of Kurna, and dreaming over 
 the fate of the Pharaohs buried there. From 
 the parched black fields the peasants had 
 gone to their mud-brick homes; the feluccas 
 were moored ashore, their lateen sails looped 
 up; the wise asses and gentle buffaloes and 
 camels were stalled. Peace lay over all the 
 plain where once stood royal Thebes of the 
 hundred gates. Life seemed suspended, save 
 that the vast river, a sheet of ruffled steel, 
 poured downward her vital stream, the same 
 to-day as ten thousand years ago. The kings 
 and priests, rulers of thirty splendid dynasties, 
 do their ghosts still attend their accustomed 
 shrines now that there are no prostrate 
 multitudes where once was Thebes ? Dead 
 . . . and they so sure of immortality; they 
 and their works and thoughts, all dead ! 
 These colossi, so piteously dumb; these deep-
 
 42 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 cut records of war that the jackal laughs at 
 by night and the tripper exclaims over by day ; 
 the solitary obelisks and pyramids can the 
 world show any such spectacle of pathetic 
 futility ? The fellah has no pride in them; 
 they are dead work of alien hands ; he is alive, 
 and, humble as he is, his hopes lie higher. 
 The sand and ruins of Thebes, laden with the 
 dust of kings and slaves, exhale continually 
 this nightmare thought of death. Athens 
 and Rome breed no such deep sadness. For 
 this must be the gloomiest tragedy of human 
 effort to have meant so much, and to mean 
 nothing; to have given to-day to win to- 
 morrow, and to have lost both. 
 
 Yet that is not the whole truth. There is 
 nothing lost. The Egyptian mind passed into 
 Greece and Judaea. The Dynasties held the 
 human spirit captive too long; they must be 
 broken that the wider world might learn what 
 they had to teach. History is the tale of 
 this ceaseless fermentation, re-incarnation, or 
 rather re-animation. Englishmen are but 
 the latest followers of Hittites, Assyrians, 
 Persians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Turks, 
 on the sacred soil of Thebes; and all the 
 Dynasties could but be a moment in the 
 secular history of the rise of man. If I 
 am master of myself, I am greater than 
 Ptolemy; and the freed fellah bending over 
 his sugar-cane is nearer the reality of things
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 43 
 
 than Queen Hatsephsu. For immortality lies 
 no more in royal splendour and strength 
 than in swathings of linen with myrrh and 
 salts and spices, but only in deeds of beauty, 
 justice, and love. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 
 
 THE Nile and Mesopotamian basins are the 
 two great fertile breaks in a belt of deserts 
 and steppes including the Sahara, Arabian, 
 Thian Shan, and Gobi deserts which run 
 N.E. by E. across the Old World from Nigeria 
 to Kamtchatka. To the south of this belt 
 lie tropical Africa and Asia, to the north the 
 earlier and later homes of the Indo-European 
 race. We yet know very little of the cause of 
 the ancient waves of Aryan expansion, but 
 their main results are evident. There is a 
 mysteriously steady westward trend, under 
 the impulsion, perhaps, of a pressure of 
 population behind, perhaps of some immense 
 natural change, such as the drying-up of the 
 central Asian tablelands, or some great social 
 disturbance a trend along the lower level of 
 the north temperate zone. It is significant that 
 half a dozen of the greatest historical cities 
 Pekin, Constantinople, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, 
 and New York lie very near to the 40 of
 
 44, WAR AND PEACE 
 
 northern latitude, and that if, instead of this 
 parallel, we follow the annual isotherm the 
 mean average temperature line of 50, we may 
 add Vienna, Paris, and London to the list. The 
 tribal stream sweeps into Europe, then, along 
 this belt of climatic advantage by way of the 
 Caspian region, one branch moving to the 
 north of the central European mountain 
 block, across the Russian plain to the South 
 Baltic and the western plain; the other into 
 the southern peninsulas and Asia Minor. As 
 might be expected, the branches which soonest 
 develop into rich and strong communities 
 are those which move southward into the 
 three Mediterranean peninsulas partly, per- 
 haps, because of the mere convenience of 
 getting up a side street when a procession is 
 at one's heels, partly because these peninsulas 
 were richer in natural advantages, and offered 
 better defensive positions, than the bogs, 
 forests, and prairies of the north; above all, 
 when commerce began, because the sea is 
 a perpetual challenge to the adventurous, and 
 the easiest path to everywhere the way alike 
 of liberty, trade, and empire. To the robust 
 children of this vast westward immigration 
 fell some of the richest lands of the earth. 
 One after another the three peninsulas of the 
 north Mediterranean seaboard held the 
 centre of gravity in history. Each people in 
 turn, the Greek, the Roman, the Spaniard,
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 45 
 
 rises to the most magnificent achievement 
 to the mastery of the world ; and each in turn 
 is humbled to the dust. In each case the suc- 
 cessful growth is due directly and indirectly to 
 geographical position and physical resources; 
 in each case the temptation of dominie m 
 over peoples less fortunately situated leads to 
 the weakening, and finally to the destruction, 
 of the economic advantages and the political 
 integrity which the conquering race had 
 originally enjoyed. 
 
 Neither within the limits of political, nor of 
 intellectual, nor of military history, can the 
 rise and fall of Greek power be adequately 
 explained. I shall offer here only some 
 general considerations which fall in the 
 straight line of our inquiry; but the student 
 can hardly too often recall the facts of ele- 
 mentary geography. There he will find the 
 contributory elements of Greek democracy, 
 colonisation, and empire. With a rapidity 
 like that of the transformation of modern 
 Japan, the city-states of the peninsula de- 
 veloped a type of political life not merely the 
 highest of the age, but one of perennial 
 interest, since there is hardly any political 
 expedient of subsequent times which is not 
 foreshadowed in Greek experience. Its rise 
 was so rapid a space of less than 500 years 
 lay between the Homeric epos and the period 
 of Socrates (B.C. 470-899), Plato (429-347),
 
 46 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and Aristotle (385-322) its growth, despite 
 enormous sacrifices, especially in warfare, 
 and despite the pressure of peoples to whom 
 its spirit was utterly alien, was so persistent, 
 that we seem to be in presence of a miraculous 
 break in the order of ancient history. The 
 marvel is somewhat modified when we consider 
 the circumstances which conditioned the first 
 considerable expansion of the Hellenic peoples 
 in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., and 
 gave the direction to then* subsequent develop- 
 ment. The narrowness of the Attic plains 
 and the difficulty of the mountain barriers 
 long preserved Greece from invasion en masse, 
 and directed the tribal settlement so as to 
 preserve old elements of social cohesion in 
 the new circumstances of city life. The land 
 is sufficiently hard to put a premium on energy 
 and skill; thus, while slaves did the roughest 
 work, there was always a large supply of free 
 labour. The abrupt isolation of the different 
 small communities was a source of military 
 and governmental weakness; but it encouraged 
 the spirit of liberty and independence, and 
 a fluidity of political forms favourable to 
 experiment and imitation. It is the antithesis 
 of those broad flat wheatlands of ancient 
 Babylonia and modern Russia which breed 
 the taskmaster and the serf. The Greek had 
 the sea as well as the mountains at his doors. 
 His home was easy of defence, fertile (there is
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 47 
 
 never famine on a seaboard), yet not rich 
 enough for idleness and luxury, and requiring 
 foreign supplies of corn, wood, and wool 
 a resting-place between a tent and a ship. 
 With the advantages of the most southerly 
 position in Europe, it had that of a mild and 
 bracing climate. Athens lay nearly equi- 
 distant between the mouth of the Nile, Tyre, 
 Odessa, Rome, and Carthage. Insular and 
 peninsular life produces an adventurous dis- 
 position ; and the sailors of the Piraeus must 
 have learned very early their advantage in 
 northern and western voyages over their 
 rivals of Tyre and Sidon. We find them 
 building triremes in B.C. 700, and trading 
 with Russia, Persia, and the Caspian by 
 way of the Black Sea, with the East by way 
 of the Nile Delta, and with the western 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 The proximity of the ^Egean islands and 
 that Asian shore whence " deep -browed 
 Homer " brought the legends of the race 
 would early lead to a leisurely outward move- 
 ment. Each city-state threw off colonies 
 reflecting its own democratic character. The 
 Greeks were not, like the Egyptians, reluctant 
 to fight; but they went abroad as freemen 
 to found homes such as they had left; their 
 business was settlement for cultivation and 
 commerce, rather than conquest. Here Sparta, 
 landlocked in the Laconian mountains, was
 
 48 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 at a disadvantage, a fact which must have 
 contributed to her development on military 
 and conservative lines. The first wave of 
 emigration in the eighth and seventh centuries 
 probably resulted as much from a temporary 
 rise of aristocratic power in the tribal organis- 
 ation, at the cost of the kings and the free- 
 men, as from the discovery of mercantile 
 and maritime opportunity. In B.C. 735 was 
 founded the first Sicilian colony; from the 
 sixth century the settlements in South Italy 
 came to be known as "Greater Greece"; 
 and about B.C. 600 the three angles of the 
 great triangle of Greek influence were estab- 
 lished at Marseilles, Odessa, and Naucratis 
 in the Nile Delta. The size and security 
 of their base of origin is a chief factor in 
 the stability of colonies. A glance at the 
 map will show that the base of the Phoe- 
 nician system was very small, and directly 
 the Eastern empires under whose shadow it 
 lay were stirred into activity very insecure, 
 as compared with that of Greece. Tyre 
 suffered by every disturbance in her Asiatic 
 hinterland or in Egypt, as Venice and Genoa 
 suffered in later times when the Eastern land- 
 routes were closed by the semi-circular advance 
 of the Saracen and Turkish power. Greece had 
 the kind of advantage over Tyre that England 
 had over Holland in the seventeenth century 
 she was nearer to the new lands, and safer
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 49 
 
 from the old. At the same time, with her 
 }uick and shrewdly acquisitive mind, she 
 drew upon the experience of the older lands, 
 learning weights and measures and something 
 of monumental art from Babylon, mathe- 
 matics and astronomy from Egypt, iron- 
 working and shipbuilding from the Phoeni- 
 cians, and the value of a regular coinage 
 perhaps the chief factor of all (about 700 
 B.C.) from her own Lydian colonists. The 
 combination of these acquirements accounts 
 for the rapid increase of wealth when Greece 
 entered definitely into the exploitation of 
 Mediterranean trade. Travellers of free birth 
 are the keenest of patriots; and it was a 
 mental activity capable of adding the know- 
 ledge of " barbarian " life to the heritage of 
 Mycenaean culture, and not merely the martial 
 valour of tribesmen fresh from the hunting 
 and pastoral stages, that fed the flame of 
 Greek patriotism. 
 
 There was a base of slave labour; but in the 
 great period much of the service was done 
 by freedmen or well-treated domestic slaves, 
 who were commonly emancipated (see A. E. 
 Zimmern in the Sociological Review, 1910. 
 Prisoners of war were enslaved, but might not 
 be killed in cold blood. Crops and buildings 
 were destroyed, but olive-trees rarely. Such 
 was the rule, though it was sometimes 
 broken. The seeds of international law are to
 
 50 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 be found in treaties made by the Greek city- 
 states and in the rules for the residence oi 
 aliens and the reception of embassies. A 
 vague " law of nature," or humanity, was 
 uncertainly recognised; and, within this, 
 distinctions were more commonly made be- 
 tween Greek and non-Greek, civilised and 
 barbarian enemies. " Xenophon depicts his 
 ideal king as making an agreement with his 
 foe that the labourers in the land should be 
 let alone on either side, and the operations 
 of war confined to those bearing arms." 
 " The Amphiktionic Council, which has been 
 by some erected into a board of international 
 arbitration after the model of the Kantian 
 scheme, was in truth a religious, not a political 
 assembly, but nevertheless did operate as a 
 symbol of international good-fellowship, and 
 to a certain extent as an active international 
 agent " (Walker : History of the Law of 
 Nations). The feuds of the States, though 
 wasteful and enfeebling, did not destroy the 
 sense of Hellenic fellowship. Nourished by 
 like tastes in physical and mental culture, 
 and organised in the great national sanctuaries 
 and festivals, in successive leagues for war 
 and -peace, and other federal experiments, it 
 held the colonies faithful even when far 
 removed from the mother-states, and sustained 
 the prestige of a homogeneous civilisation. 
 When the Persian storm burst over the
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 51 
 
 Orient, in the middle of the sixth century, 
 Greece had these sources of strength, but little 
 of military advantage to oppose to the invad- 
 ing host. Her arms and armour, so far as we 
 can judge by what remains, show a singular 
 lack of the variety and ingenuity of her 
 industrial and artistic invention. The decline 
 of monarchy and the rise of trade had produced 
 the same change from cavalry (in this case 
 war-chariots) to heavy-armed infantry (hop- 
 lites) which we shall see accompanying the 
 decline of mediaeval feudalism. The body 
 armour, consisting of metal helmet, cuirass, 
 and greaves, had long been known throughout 
 the Nearer East, and was to continue to the 
 end of Roman times, with only slight changes 
 in response to the effectiveness or feebleness 
 of weapons of attack (the helmet covering 
 the whole head when cavalry had to meet 
 skilled bowmen, for instance). The metal 
 breastplate and leg-guards are accounted for 
 by the smallness of the Greek shield. In 
 Mycenaean times (B.C. 3000-2000) the sword 
 had not been invented; the first swords, 
 developed from the bronze dagger and spear- 
 head, were used mainly for thrusting. The 
 long heavy spear then became the most 
 important weapon; the sword was added as 
 iron- working improved; bows and slings were 
 used by mercenaries; the axe was accounted 
 a purely barbarian weapon. The fighting
 
 52 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 power of Sparta lay in her system of 
 physical training, and her heavy infantry 
 which found a glorification in the Mace- 
 donian phalanx, a formation of pikemen, 
 sixteen deep and five hundred in frontage, 
 standing so close that the spears of five 
 ranks extended beyond the front line. 
 It was the union of the military spirit of 
 Sparta with the new naval force to which 
 Themistocles sacrificed the army of Athens 
 (aided by the discovery of a new bed in the 
 Laurion silver mines) that made the repulse 
 of Persia and the Greek reaction possible. 
 Marathon (B.C. 490), won by the rapid assault 
 of the heavily-armed Athenians ; Thermopylae, 
 lost after a heroic resistance; Salamis, where 
 six or seven hundred Persian ships were 
 thrown into confusion in the narrow straits 
 by half the number of Greek triremes (B.C. 
 480), and Platsea (B.C. 479), where the hoplites 
 again proved their superiority to the mob of 
 servile Asiatics, led to the final retirement of 
 the Persians and the liberation of the Asian 
 coast-lands. Athens had been twice captured 
 and partly destroyed; the city and its port 
 were now strongly fortified, and Pericles 
 set up new glories in stone on the Acropolis. 
 His design of a Pax Hellenica broke upon 
 the aggressive spirit of Sparta. Nearly a 
 century of civil war witnessed many peace 
 congresses and at least one reference to arbitra-
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 58 
 
 tion, but produced no lasting agreement. 
 Despite the " Philippics " of Demosthenes, 
 Macedon was in control of the Hellenic 
 Confederation and its Council in B.C. 338; 
 and in 334 Alexander took the warpath against 
 the Persian Empire, at the head of 30,000 
 infantry, light and heavy, and 5,000 cavalry. 
 After defeating the immensely stronger army 
 of Darius, and reducing successively Phoenicia, 
 Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and the Punjab, he 
 endeavoured to found a court and dynasty 
 of mixed Persian and Macedonian blood. 
 He died in B.C. 323, being only in his thirty- 
 third year. He had done much to spread 
 Greek ideas and to join East to West. But 
 he had almost completed the destruction of 
 the old Hellenic stock, begun by generations 
 of internecine strife. He created an outward 
 stream of Greek adventure, and an inward 
 stream of oriental luxury. The ideals and 
 organisation of the old city-states fell to- 
 gether into decay. Soldiering became a 
 profession instead of a patriotic duty. The 
 economic advantages, the political experience, 
 the religious spirit which made Hellas great 
 lost their value in a campaign of Asiatic 
 empire-building. The old Greeks were killed 
 out, aliens of a quite different sort taking 
 their place. The Empire, built in bloodshed, 
 lacked any natural bond of union, and broke 
 up into separate kingdoms ; while the
 
 54 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 peninsula fell an easy prey to the legions of 
 Rome. 
 
 In societies, as in individual organisms, there 
 is a ceaseless adjustment of internal to exter- 
 nal relations; and a self-governing State or 
 federation which suddenly gives itself up to 
 the business of conquest suffers a strain such 
 as a school-master would suffer in the prize- 
 ring. For a moment, the possession of an 
 intelligence unusual in that field may yield 
 brilliant results; but collapse must quickly 
 follow. Here is a case above all others in 
 which we may appeal confidently to the verdict 
 of posterity. The Greece we all worship is 
 not the far-spreading empire of Alexander, 
 but the group of related, autonomous city- 
 states, where intelligence and commercial 
 skill were qualities of citizenship, and citizen- 
 ship was the essence of civilisation. The great 
 Greeks reached, and helped succeeding peoples 
 to reach, a higher plane of political and moral 
 experience than had hitherto been deemed 
 possible, created a new world of science and 
 art, established an ideal of the sane mind in 
 the sane body and the perfect man in the 
 perfect society, cut out a new line of progress 
 between anarchy and despotism, and made 
 moral ends supreme over material in the 
 State. These are the things which make us 
 children of the barbarian West, thousands of 
 years afterwards, humble subjects of the
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 55 
 
 Greek genius. The empire of the spirit 
 survives the shocks of time; and Greek 
 universalism, the Greek ideal of Democracy 
 as a brotherhood of equals for progress in the 
 good life, the Greek tri-unity of Reason, 
 Righteousness, and Beauty, are the articles 
 of a spiritual empire before which all the 
 material achievements of Macedon and Rome 
 are as dust in the balance. The Greece that 
 fell before the Roman legions was a different, 
 a decadent Greece. Only around the middle 
 seas did the Greek city-colonies long continue; 
 some continue there to this day as vital 
 centres of the arts of peace. Renan said 
 of the great nations of history that " they 
 must die first that the world may live through 
 them." That was supremely true of the 
 peoples whose spirit was most cosmopolitan. 
 When Philip and Alexander were forgotten, 
 the greatest victories of Greece began. 
 
 While Aristotle was formulating the political 
 and ethical philosophy which has been called 
 the dying legacy of Greece to mankind, a 
 significant development was preparing among 
 the other people who, in their national decline, 
 were to become pre-eminently the teachers 
 of the Western world the Jews. No com- 
 parison of Greek, Jewish, and Christian con- 
 ceptions of State policy and international 
 relations is possible within the limits of this 
 volume; yet the influence of Greek and
 
 56 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Hebrew thought, cast like grains of mustard- 
 seed into the rough furrow of early Levantine 
 life, has been so profound in the subsequent 
 course of events that it cannot be passed over. 
 The Greek vindication of free, homogeneous 
 citizenship, the Hebrew vision of human 
 brotherhood derivative from a divine father- 
 hood these ideas have shown such inner force 
 that the very governing classes whose lives 
 most plainly denied their validity have 
 always insisted upon them as the necessary 
 bases of a sound education. 
 
 The Jews are the supreme instance of high 
 organising power and intellectual ability con- 
 tinuously dissociated from imperial tempta- 
 tions and burdens. The special gifts which 
 made them brokers and middlemen on one 
 of the chief of the ancient caravan routes, 
 qualities developed under pressure between 
 the hammer of Babylon and the anvil of 
 Egypt, have been nurtured through centuries 
 of oppression. That a kingdom of this world 
 was forbidden them is the ground of all their 
 greatness, if, also, of some evident limitations. 
 Whether it is better to have no fatherland or 
 too many possessions, to be hardened and 
 narrowed in the Ghetto or debauched by 
 opportunities of dominion too huge for mortal 
 compassing, who shall say ? Whatever a 
 freer future may have in store for the Jews, 
 it is certain that the highest manifestation
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 57 
 
 of their religion was not that which they 
 carried away with them on the dispersion, 
 but that which is to be found in the Prophetic 
 age. It was the nearest approach the world 
 had yet seen to a religion of humanity. The 
 earlier nomad and peasant religion had been 
 sacrificial, belligerent, nationalist. " Thou 
 shalt save alive nothing that breatheth " : 
 such was the Mosaic law of battle, only to be 
 modified in favour of related tribes, or by the 
 needs of foreign trade. The post-Prophetic 
 religion was ceremonial, priestly, legal, and 
 was accompanied by a somewhat milder 
 practice in warfare. Between these, in the 
 Prophets, we find at its highest the ethical 
 strain, the emphasis on justice, righteousness, 
 and inner self-possession, which were and are 
 of even more value for a better organisation 
 of the world than more explicitly cosmopolitan 
 pronouncements. The wide comprehensive- 
 ness of the Prophetic faith is very remarkable 
 when we remember that the Assyrian tyranny 
 was then looming threateningly upon the 
 Eastern horizon; it contrasts strongly with 
 Greek racial pride, and still more markedly 
 with Mohammed's later command of war upon 
 the infidel. The Law had at once a more 
 intimate and a more universal quality when 
 it had no political aim. " If Jahveh represents 
 the good, the ethical and spiritual principles, 
 then this has but to be grasped in its depth
 
 58 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 for all national restrictions to be set aside. 
 Good, properly understood, has from the very 
 first an international significance; it is a 
 conception which belongs to a higher sphere 
 than that of communities formed either 
 naturally or by chance. . . . Thus the unity 
 of the State and the national citizenship lose 
 their religious significance; the individual, 
 who was previously merely considered as a 
 member of the nation, now steps into the 
 foreground, and comes to be of importance 
 in himself for religion; and, as it no longer 
 matters what nation one belongs to, Jahveh 
 not being confined to the territory of any one 
 people, so the citizens of other states, i. e. 
 the whole world, enter into relationship with 
 Jahveh. In other words, individualism and 
 universalism have taken the place of national- 
 ism in religion" (Prof. Marti: Religion of 
 the Old Testament). 
 
 This broad spirit, as distinguished from the 
 later sacerdotalism, Jesus resumed and carried 
 to yet higher levels. For the first time, the 
 world witnessed propaganda for a moral idea 
 on a large scale. Love, not dogma or ritual; 
 universal brotherhood, not a Jewish Messiah- 
 ship; governance from within, not from with- 
 out; the power of gentleness such was the 
 new message. The heathen had understood 
 self-sacrifice for the family or at the command 
 of the State; Jesus taught self-sacrifice for the
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 59 
 
 ideal of a universal commonwealth. The 
 circumstances favoured a faint cosmopolitan- 
 ism. The conquests of Rome had destroyed 
 over wide areas the possibility of the ancient 
 tribal patriotism, and had accustomed men 
 of many races to acknowledge the bond of 
 one law. Roman jurists had to some extent 
 realised the Stoic ideal of a world citizenship. 
 The Empire broke down many of the old 
 barriers, and recruited its leaders indiscrim- 
 inately in East and West Marcus Aurelius 
 and Trajan, Seneca and Martial were Span- 
 iards, Severus was an African. But the 
 Imperial unity was an artificial product, with 
 little hold upon the hearts and consciences of 
 men. It rested on force and upon pride in 
 an exclusive right of dominance. At a cost 
 of centuries of anarchy, Europe was to learn 
 that the destruction of the principle of nation- 
 ality was an utterly false method of estab- 
 lishing a world-state. The organisation of 
 humanity, like the growth of the individual, 
 must proceed by regular, natural stages. 
 
 How much of this was foreseen by the son 
 of the Nazarene carpenter we do not know) 
 but he saw the essential fact. Not only were 
 Jew and Gentile, bond and free, to unite in 
 an all-embracing kingdom ; not only was 
 the right of warfare, and of the reduction 
 of prisoners of war and their children to slavery 
 the great buttress of the military empires
 
 60 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 of the ancient world denied; the love of 
 humanity not of a vague cosmopolitan ideal, 
 or of single individuals only, but of man as 
 man must become a passion so possessing 
 as to burn up selfishness, exclusive prejudices, 
 all the old (and still commanding) ideas of 
 the virtue of individual and national self- 
 defence, and even the love of life itself. " In 
 the society of selfish people," said Sir John 
 Seeley in his fine exposition of this teaching 
 in Ecce Homo, " selfishness is simply self- 
 defence; to renounce it is to evacuate one's 
 entrenched position, to surrender at discretion 
 to the enemy. If society is to disarm, it 
 should do so by common consent. Christ, 
 however, though He confidently expected 
 ultimately to gather all mankind into His 
 society, did not expect to do so soon. Accord- 
 ingly, He commands His followers not to wait 
 for this consummation, but, in spite of the 
 hazardous nature of the step, to disarm at 
 once. . . . The discipline of suffering will 
 wean them more and more from self, and make 
 the channels of humanity freer within them; 
 and sometimes their patience may shame the 
 spoiler." 
 
 A hard teaching, as to which I will only 
 say that this, and nothing else, is the heart 
 of Christianity, however otherwise ecclesias- 
 tical persons may persuade themselves. Had 
 it only come as an academic lesson, it could
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 61 
 
 have made no impression on Roman life. 
 But it was a message to the common folk 
 based on familiar facts and couched in 
 familiar terms, rich with assurance of a pro- 
 found knowledge of the human heart. " He 
 who is truly humane," I quote Seeley again, 
 " considers every human being, as such, 
 interesting and important, and, without wait- 
 ing to criticise each individual specimen, pays 
 in advance to all alike the tribute of good 
 wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable 
 assumption with regard to human beings is 
 not a causeless prepossession, it is no idle 
 superstition of the mind, nor is it a natural 
 instinct. It is a feeling founded on the actual 
 observation and discovery of interesting and 
 noble qualities in particular human beings; 
 and it is strong or weak in proportion as the 
 person who has the feeling has known many 
 or few noble and amiable human beings." 
 To his burning belief in the noble capacities 
 of man Jesus gave up his life, and it was this 
 belief and this sacrifice that constituted the 
 inspiration of the early Church. It has made 
 many conquests, especially in softening the 
 barbarian invaders and aiding the re-settle- 
 ment of Europe, and many failures, especially 
 its inability to withstand the force of ecclesi- 
 asticism within and Islam without. Lip- 
 service has marred its beauty as when 
 clerical persecutors invented burning at the
 
 62 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 stake in order to evade the guilt of bloodshed, 
 and, in a much later day, when a " Christian 
 Power " forced opium upon the Chinese at the 
 cannon's mouth. But even when, in the fourth 
 Christian century, Church and State began 
 to enter into formal union, the leaven went 
 on working. The persecutions had left their 
 mark. Christianity challenged, and not quite 
 vainly, four of the most characteristic results 
 of Roman imperialism : war, slavery, infanti- 
 cide, and the gladiatorial shows. Against 
 the ideal of patriotism, the last word of Graeco- 
 Roman public morals, the early Christians 
 placed that of universal beneficence. Courage, 
 a purely martial virtue for Aristotle, took a 
 new form in endurance of injustice and passive 
 resistance of violence. 
 
 The view of Tertullian, Clement, Origen, 
 and Basil that no Christian could properly 
 be a soldier, or keep a magisterial office 
 in which he would have to inflict the 
 death penalty, was gradually abandoned; 
 and few later bishops endorsed Ambrose in 
 forbidding bloodshed in self-defence. This 
 change was inevitable. The refusal to bear 
 arms may be an effective method of protest 
 against local oppression, but its organisation 
 on a large scale requires conditions which did 
 not exist in the early Christian world. The 
 Semitic races do not take kindly to soldiering; 
 passive revolt was natural to reforming Jews
 
 GREEK, JEW, AND CHRISTIAN 63 
 
 standing between the Sanhedrim and the 
 Roman Governor; and it was a feature of the 
 toleration of the race in the early Empire that 
 they were not subjected to military service. 
 As the Church extended into the cosmopolitan 
 West and became non-Judaic, the character 
 of protest gradually gave way to that of 
 missionary zeal. This was met by perse- 
 cution; and, again, it was natural that a 
 Tertullian (A.D. 160-220) should threaten cruel 
 proconsuls with the only method of resistance 
 then open to the poor Christian. Another line 
 of influence proved easier, however. The 
 Church became organised under a federation 
 of aristocratic bishops. Rich men joined it; 
 its property grew with the hierarchy. It had 
 to struggle against internal heresy; theologi- 
 cal speculation and ecclesiastical discipline 
 took the place of ethical and democratic 
 experiment. Most of the Fathers, grateful 
 to Rome for the opportunity it gave them, 
 trimmed their sails to the favouring breeze; 
 most of the congregations became content 
 to enjoy the advantages of Roman law and 
 citizenship. The ideals of common property 
 and non-resistance rose and fell together. 
 
 As years passed, and martyrdom ceased; 
 as ecclesiastics became the patrons and 
 partners of the secular power, and the hope 
 of a miraculous success in war offered to the 
 barbarians the chief motive for conversion,
 
 64 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Christian doctrine and practice underwent a 
 transformation which was completed by the 
 panic fear of the Moslem peril. " The spirit 
 of Mohammedanism slowly passed into 
 Christianity, and transformed it into its 
 image. For about two centuries every pulpit 
 in Christendom proclaimed the duty of war 
 with the unbeliever, and represented the 
 battlefield as the sure path to heaven " 
 (Lecky ; European Morals, where the subject 
 is fully treated). The Church had become 
 thoroughly imperialised. 
 
 But the " glad tidings " remained. With 
 the Greek idea of self-government and the 
 Christian idea of brotherhood before it, the 
 world could never again be quite the same. 
 Civilisation could no longer mean only road- 
 building and the reign of law henceforth it 
 could mean nothing less than the making of 
 civil persons and civil communities. The 
 divorce of progress from the trade in arms 
 was proclaimed. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 
 
 ROMANS and Hellenes were of kindred race; 
 if slavery was the base, citizenship was the 
 body of Roman, as of Hellenic, power. But 
 there were deep differences. Rome was the
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 65 
 
 meeting-point of three rival nations, the 
 Etruscans, Sabines, and Latins, among whom 
 there must have been a good deal of blood 
 mixture, which would be increased with the 
 expansion of the Latins over the Apennines. 
 The city had then no more fitness than now 
 to become a great industrial or commercial 
 centre. Situated further than Athens from 
 the line of Aryan invasion, further also from 
 the ancient empires, and joined by an almost 
 unnavigable stream to an inhospitable, har- 
 bourless coast looking out into the unknown 
 West, the patriarchal stage of development 
 was here more prolonged. Destiny pointed 
 to a landward, not a maritime, development. 
 The martial spirit was always modified by a 
 power of assimilation and an accommodating, 
 practical temper that would have appeared 
 mean to the proud Greek. Thus, paternalism 
 was as strong in Rome as personal independ- 
 ence in Athens; political experience was 
 prized more than a quick intellect, governance 
 more than trade, organising skill than the 
 love of adventure. Civilisation meant, for 
 her, opportunity, not inspiration, an outer 
 condition represented by law and order, 
 rather than an inner state fed by art and 
 philosophy. If it be true, however, that the 
 body must be satisfied ere the spirit can 
 expand, that social organisation is a con- 
 dition precedent of moral and intellectual
 
 66 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 progress, the Pax Romana was the necessary 
 precursor of Greek, Hebrew, and Christian 
 ideals in those northern and western lands 
 toward which Rome faced as naturally as 
 Athens did to the south and east. 
 
 Military skill was, then, but one of many 
 instruments of Roman expansion. Moreover, 
 the political instinct which gradually expressed 
 itself in public works, codes of law, an elastic 
 administration, and the successive grades of 
 franchise (Roman, Latin, Italic, Provincial) 
 was developed first at home. If a genius 
 for government and devotion to the Mother 
 City had not been built up through centuries 
 of moderate popular demands and aristo- 
 cratic concessions, before the strain of foreign 
 conquest began, Rome could never have 
 become mistress of the world. The Romanisa- 
 tion of Italy, which preceded foreign adven- 
 ture, and occupied ten times as long as it 
 took Alexander to conquer the East, was an 
 outgrowth of democratic experience and civic 
 pride, together with agricultural colonisation 
 and road-building, not pure conquest. It was 
 no mere hunt for tribute and slaves; and it 
 never became a trade policy, despite Greek and 
 Carthaginian examples. The long faithful- 
 ness of the Latin cities and the colonies is 
 significant of much. Thus broadly based on 
 the social organisation of a large part of the 
 peninsula, Rome was safe against Hannibal,
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 67 
 
 himself " greater than any of the Romans 
 themselves in the very qualities which made 
 Rome great " (Mommsen). Carthage, with 
 all her wealth of tribute and traffic, a strip 
 of coast with a hinterland of wild and rebel- 
 lious tribes, depending on armies of slaves 
 and mercenaries, jealously restricting her own 
 colonies in trade and her own citizens in 
 political influence, was no match for the 
 citizen soldiery and the statecraft of Rome, 
 already impregnated with Greek culture. 
 
 This is the turning-point. That conquest 
 degrades the conqueror seems to be a rule 
 admitting of no exception. The long struggle 
 of the two Punic wars (B.C. 264-241 and 218- 
 201), and the cruel campaigns of the following 
 century, produced both in the capital and 
 among the Italian allies a deep demoralisa- 
 tion, which, aggravated by economic revolu- 
 tion in the home provinces, ran its natural 
 course in the Csesarean era. While the stout- 
 est men were away fighting, the meanest were 
 left to breed, to govern, to sell the public 
 offices to any who would give most largess, 
 until at last the Pretorian Guard sold the 
 Imperial chair itself. The latifundia were 
 at first a copy of Carthaginian models of 
 large-scale scientific agriculture. Usury, the 
 resultant land-grabbing, and extortion by 
 provincial officials gradually brought about 
 the ruin of the small farmer and yeoman class 
 c 2
 
 68 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 that had been the backbone of the State. 
 This, in turn, led to slave tillage, the decay 
 of the old rural life, dependence on foreign 
 food supplies, and the gathering of a land- 
 less proletariat in the towns. Upon the old 
 slave economy, there was superimposed a 
 peculiarly oppressive money economy, repre- 
 sented by the " publicans," or great money- 
 lenders and contractors a relative monopoly 
 due to the scarcity of bullion. The republican 
 power was divided between a hooligan popu- 
 lace fed on a regimen of " bread and games," 
 and a governing class seeking new fields of 
 ambition even in civil war, and wider oppor- 
 tunities of indulgence in the plunder of the 
 East. Thus democracy gave place to olig- 
 archy, the Republic to the dictatorship (Sulla 
 B.C. 81, Julius Caesar B.C. 49) and the Empire 
 (Augustus B.C. 29); thus a decadent society 
 was initiated into a career of spoliation as a 
 substitute for the peaceful development of 
 native resources and true colonisation. 
 
 Why do we feel the sequel to be so much 
 more poignant a tragedy than the fall of 
 Babylon, the decay of Egypt, or even the 
 disintegration of Greece ? Because it saw a 
 united Europe, a political system not unworthy 
 of comparison with our own in richness and 
 extent, plunged into centuries of anarchy, 
 through a large part of which almost all 
 traces of civilisation were lost. No such con-
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 69 
 
 tinuous realm has ever been, or is now likely 
 to be, built upon the earth as that which 
 served the will of the Antonines. From the 
 Scottish wall to the Atlas mountains, from 
 the Lower Rhine to the Euphrates, by slow 
 and steady steps the rule of Roman law, the 
 sagacity of Roman administration, had been 
 extended. The magistracy was inspired by 
 a spirit of toleration altogether new in the 
 history of government. The humane spirit of 
 Greek philosophy softened the rougher though 
 broader western nature. Stoicism became 
 the religion of the educated Roman. Cicero 
 proclaimed a " universal society of the human 
 race "; Lucan foretold a time when " the race 
 will cast aside its weapons, and all nations will 
 learn to love" ; Seneca said, "My country is 
 the world " ; and Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius 
 declared themselves citizens of the world. 
 Conquest was robbed of much of its sting by 
 the extension of civic privileges, the reward 
 of barbarians for services, and the opening 
 of a door of escape from slavery. Wide- 
 distant provinces, which could never have 
 been held by force of arms alone, were 
 placated by the double expedient of establish- 
 ing colonies, civil as well as military, and 
 extending the franchise, above all by 
 opportunities of peace and exchange of goods, 
 which made the grandchildren of Julius 
 Caesar's Gallic enemies most loyal servants of
 
 70 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Rome. Latin became the universal language 
 in the West, and through it Roman and Greek 
 ideas flowed from the Mediterranean lands 
 far into the dark North. 
 
 So long as her heart beat sound, Rome had 
 certain advantages in the maintenance of this 
 vast organism which none of her Imperial 
 predecessors or successors have enjoyed. The 
 first was a relative monopoly of political and 
 military genius within vast areas whose 
 potential fertility invited Roman expansion. 
 Considerations of the " balance of power," 
 such as had been paramount in the policy 
 of the Greek States and long afterwards 
 vexed Europe, never troubled her. After 
 the subjection of Carthage and Macedon 
 no such rivals stood in the way of the Caesars 
 as face every civilised State to-day. West 
 of the Persian frontier, Rome was the only 
 great Power. This advantage in the externals 
 of civilisation made it possible, at a time 
 when we should expect to see society unformed 
 and full of turmoil, to maintain settled peace 
 over an area of some six million square miles 
 of territory, inhabited by, perhaps, a hundred 
 millions of people, with a force not numeri- 
 cally stronger than the British army of to-day. 
 Moreover, her conquests followed in a rela- 
 tively natural and organic order, beginning 
 with the civilised States of the Mediterranean; 
 and, though of many races, her subjects
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 71 
 
 showed a relative likeness of condition. The 
 East was but touched, and then only after 
 Alexander had paved the way ; when at length 
 it began to react on Europe, Rome was already 
 tottering to her fall. 
 
 It has often been asked what made the once 
 so robustly democratic Romans meekly accept 
 the change to dictatorship and autocracy. 
 The usual answer is that the Senate and 
 people were unequal to the task of governing 
 the territories they had acquired. This 
 must mean that there is a logical develop- 
 ment in the business of conquest, and that 
 when the spirit of democracy had been aban- 
 doned, it was only a question of time for the 
 forms of democracy to go also. In fact, 
 structure responds to function in social as 
 in individual organisms or rather it tends 
 to do so, often breaking down in the process. 
 The Republic had been quite equal to the 
 defence of the peninsula; it slowly broke 
 down before schemes of universal conquest, 
 and with it expired what was left of the old 
 Roman nationality. The transformation from 
 a republic based on a municipality to an 
 empire based on a monarchical household 
 took place gradually, in accordance with the 
 Roman temperament. Cicero eulogised the 
 mixed constitution of his day, but already 
 alarming changes had taken place; and, as 
 the preponderance had passed from the
 
 72 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 popular assembly (abolished by Tiberius) to 
 the Senate, so this, in turn, came to be a mere 
 tool in the hands of the autocratic monarch, 
 restrained by no effective influence save that 
 of the soldiery. 
 
 The evils of this change, which set in 
 decisively a generation before the birth of 
 Christ and was fully developed in the reigns 
 of Trajan and Hadrian (A.D. 98-138), are 
 obvious ; its advantages may be fully admitted. 
 Autocracy is, indeed, the natural organ of 
 empire. For a time it operates rapidly and 
 effectively. It keeps internal peace, if at a 
 heavy cost. It can supplant irregular extor- 
 tion by systematic taxation. Neither cus- 
 tomary law nor a representative assembly 
 imposing any restraint, rules suggested by 
 experience and common-sense can be promptly 
 applied to the different circumstances of 
 widely-separate communities. But this very 
 promptitude easily develops into a dangerous 
 facility. As Mr. Bryce says in an interesting 
 discussion of Roman and English law : " Ease 
 begets confidence; confidence degenerates into 
 laxity and recklessness. ... In the field of 
 legislation the danger of doing too much is 
 a serious danger, not only because the chances 
 of error are manifold, but because the law 
 ought to undergo as few bold and sudden 
 changes as possible. The natural process 
 whereby the new circumstances, new condi-
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 73 
 
 tions, new commercial and social relations 
 that are always springing up become recog- 
 nised in custom, and are dealt with by judicial 
 science before direct legislation impresses a 
 definite form upon the rules that are to 
 fix them this process is the best, and, indeed, 
 the only safe way by which a nation can 
 create a refined and harmonious legal system " 
 (Studies in History and Jurisprudence). 
 
 In other words, law, to be strong and use- 
 ful, must grow of itself out of the experience of 
 the people, not come suddenly from the 
 imagination of some outer providence. The 
 highest claim of Imperial rule is to create 
 social peace, which is merely to prepare the 
 way for its own disappearance in favour of a 
 higher type of government. In the derange- 
 ment of local life that follows conquest, the 
 advantage of arbitrary rule, such as it is, is 
 at its maximum; and when, as in the case 
 of the Roman Emperors, the laws thus given 
 express a high political genius to which some 
 traces of its democratic origin still adhere, 
 extensive good may result, especially in 
 primitive communities among and between 
 which this external law is almost the only 
 security of peace and justice. Such limited 
 advantages as Imperial monarchy and bureau- 
 cracy can claim are seen to belong to an early 
 and passing phase of social readjustment, when 
 diverse alien territories are newly subjected,
 
 74 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and cessation of bloodshed and oppression, 
 and protection from outer foes, are the highest 
 benefits they can hope for. These are, in fact, 
 not civilisation, but the conditions in which 
 civilisation may spring up. 
 
 The costs of every benefit, even one so novel 
 and so important as the protection of person 
 and property which Rome gave her non-servile 
 subjects, must be weighed. What we now 
 call international law arose from the need 
 of providing for the ever-growing number 
 of aliens in the capital in the early Imperial 
 period, and the grading of rights from the 
 Eternal City itself down to the meanest and 
 most distant province. Other elements passed 
 down the centuries from the jus Jetiale, regulat- 
 ing the declaration of war, the making of 
 peace and treaties, and the jus belli, which 
 proclaimed the sanctity of truces, and military 
 faith generally, and put some poor bounds 
 to the ruthlessness of the Roman soldier. 
 Curiously enough, law and practice did not 
 develop together. The idea of a " law of 
 nature," a common law of mankind, and of 
 consequent restraints upon warfare, advanced 
 pretty steadily, with a clear distinction between 
 what was due to civilised and what to savage 
 foes. " But there were sure signs in the 
 later days of the conquering Republic of a 
 lowering of the Roman national tone. . . . 
 The wars of the decaying Republic were in
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 75 
 
 well-nigh every case wars of mere plunder, 
 the credit at Rome of the triumphing consul 
 being largely dependent upon the value of the 
 treasure brought to the public chest by the 
 pillage of conquered cities. The Roman was 
 also ruined by evil associations. Reprisals 
 exercised upon savage foes degrade the more 
 civilised belligerent, and the case becomes 
 worse when barbarians are employed as auxili- 
 aries, or even as regular troops " (Walker). 
 
 The jus gentium, with the extension of 
 civil rights, reacted upon that Roman code 
 which had been the safeguard of demo- 
 cratic citizenship so as gradually to break 
 down Roman privileges and to assimilate the 
 condition of all the peoples of the Empire as 
 subjects of an arbitrary ruler. Citizenship, 
 in the full sense, cannot be far extended; you 
 cannot be a citizen of a city you have never 
 seen. Thus, the more " citizens " there were, 
 the less were any of them citizens. The more 
 widely applicable became the boast Civis 
 Romanus sum, the less did it mean. So, too, 
 the recognition of Christianity as the State 
 religion was simultaneous with the establish- 
 ment of absolute monarchy; and Mr. Bryce 
 points out that the subsequent codification 
 of Roman law arose out of political and in- 
 tellectual conditions not of progress, but of 
 decline. The genius of rulers, poets, orators 
 might conceal, and even momentarily check.
 
 76 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 but could not remedy, the ravages of a deep- 
 seated political and social disease, the disease 
 whose active principle is the spirit of conquest. 
 I have emphasised the special civil strength 
 of the Roman character, rather than any 
 peculiarity of the military organisation of 
 the Republic and Empire, because, in fact, 
 it was this civil character more than any 
 strength of military organisation that made 
 Roman arms so long invincible. Until the 
 Carthaginian peril was past, to be a soldier 
 was first to be the brother of the man next 
 to you, free like him, confident in yourself 
 and him, proud of the legion, and devoted 
 to death to the Mother City. The barbarians 
 of Gaul, the slaves or mercenaries of Etruria 
 and Carthage, could have no such esprit 
 de corps. In the middle of the third cen- 
 tury B.C. the Republic could summon to 
 the standards about 280,000 citizens. This 
 Roman army was greatly enlarged by calls 
 upon the military garrisons posted in conquered 
 provinces, and by auxiliaries from the Italian 
 allies. Here appears the other great Roman 
 capacity, that of assimilation and leadership, 
 and with it the peculiar danger of all increase 
 of mere force. Especially after the victories 
 over Carthage, the allies pressed ardently 
 into the military service of Rome. Every 
 colony also became a recruiting post; and 
 the hope of plunder and civil advance-
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 77 
 
 ment fed the flame of martial daring. By 
 the time the three Mediterranean peninsulas 
 and Asia Minor had been subjected, the old 
 civic patriotism had become transformed into 
 a definite belief in Rome's " manifest destiny " 
 to become mistress of the world. Long after 
 the rapacity of proconsuls and the develop- 
 ment of a city mob had given omens of what 
 was to come, the citizen soldiers kept, under 
 the stimulus, indeed, of hard exercise, regular 
 pay, frequent booty, and condign punishment, 
 their spirit of discipline and valour. About 
 110 B.C., however, after a series of defeats by 
 the Northern tribes, Caius Marius revolu- 
 tionised the army by throwing it open to 
 the lowest grade of citizens, and thenceforth, 
 " in proportion as the public freedom was lost 
 in extent of conquest, war was gradually 
 improved into an art and degraded into 
 a trade " (Gibbon). Julius Caesar enlisted 
 Northern tribesmen wholesale, and com- 
 menced the system of honouring their leaders; 
 the armies with which he repeatedly reduced 
 Gaul, at a cost, if Plutarch is to be believed, 
 of a million lives, were mainly of Gaulish 
 blood. This was a second revolution, no 
 less disastrous because inevitable. 
 
 The legion was at once a firmer and a more 
 flexible body than the phalanx of Macedonian 
 pikemen. In its heyday, and for a period 
 of three centuries, it consisted of 6,800 heavy-
 
 78 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 armed infantry, divided into ten cohorts and 
 fifty-five companies, supported by 720 horse- 
 men. The infantry arms were a crested, 
 open helmet, breastplate or mail coat, leg- 
 guards, and an oblong shield, a light spear, 
 short sword, and above all the pilum, a very 
 heavy throwing spear, five or six feet long, 
 which was most effective against cavalry. 
 The usual formation was eight deep, with an 
 open order of rank and file that allowed of 
 free movement and rapid evolutions. The 
 extension of the Empire along the Danube 
 and Rhine and in Britain, and the reaction 
 upon it of the Northern tribal immigrations, 
 set up new conditions. Warfare on so wide 
 a border, with a force relatively so small, 
 demanded a new rapidity of movement 
 between the legionary stations. This and the 
 decay of Roman physique produced a lighter- 
 armed infantry and a constant enlargement 
 of the mounted force. The difficulty of re- 
 lieving one frontier post from another, when 
 the attack of the barbarian confederacies 
 developed all along the line, led to the creation 
 of a central Imperial army, whose tyranny 
 could at last only be broken by the division 
 of metropolitan power which marked the sub- 
 stantial end of the Empire. When, in A.D. 
 212, Caracalla extended Roman citizenship 
 to all the provinces, the old distinction 
 between the legions and the auxiliaries was
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 79 
 
 destroyed; and the enlistment of increasing 
 masses of Gothic and other mercenaries 
 sealed the doom of the legion. The Comi- 
 tatenses, or mobile guards, of Diocletian and 
 the Palatine Guard both consisted largely 
 of barbarians, these being for the most part 
 mailed horsemen carrying bow, lance, sword, 
 and shield. It was thus the Goth (the 
 Cossack of his day) became " the lineal 
 ancestor of all the knights of the Middle 
 Ages, the inaugurator of that ascendancy of 
 the horseman which was to endure for a 
 thousand years " (Oman : History of the Art 
 of War). The last straw came when the 
 wild Teutonic " fcederati " were turned to the 
 suppression of revolted legions which already, 
 during the civil wars of the third century, had 
 done their best to destroy each other. Pro- 
 vincials and mercenaries faded away before 
 Alaric's Goths and Attila's Huns; and on 
 August 24, 410, " eleven hundred and sixty- 
 three years after the foundation of Rome, the 
 Imperial City, which had subdued and civilised 
 so considerable a part of mankind, was de- 
 livered to the licentious fury of the tribes 
 of Germany and Scythia " (Gibbon). 
 
 This most ghastly tragedy has never failed 
 to impress the imagination of the student 
 of history ; but the lesson is not always 
 clearly drawn. No doubt there were many 
 contributory causes of the decline and fall
 
 80 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 of the Empire. There was a moral and a 
 material decay. The abandonment even of 
 the forms of republicanism and the concen- 
 tration of the whole supreme power in the 
 hands of the Augustan Caesar hastened the 
 decay of the old Roman religion, prostituted 
 to worship of the Imperator, and sapped 
 by Persian and Egyptian superstition and 
 by Greek and Christian influences. When, 
 to adapt the boast of Verres, the governor 
 of a province had during his year of office 
 to make three large fortunes out of his poor 
 subjects, one to pay his debts, one for him- 
 self to live upon, and one to bribe his judges 
 if he were brought to trial; when Cato asked 
 what would become of Rome if she had no 
 longer any rival State to fear, and Scipio 
 prayed " not that the gods would increase, 
 but that they would preserve, the State, " 
 the old patriotism was evidently dead. On 
 the material side, Roman roads, aqueducts, 
 palaces, fortifications, theatres, harbours, and 
 bridges did not come into being by magic. 
 It is reckoned that there may have been 
 sixty millions of slaves in the Empire; cer- 
 tainly their numbers had continually increased. 
 As the burden of labour fell with inconceiv- 
 able cruelty upon the servile masses, so the 
 burden of taxation fell with crushing force 
 upon the middle class. Tribute continued, 
 but did not increase. When expansion
 
 THE STRENGTH OF ROME 81 
 
 ceased, and the Empire was forced upon 
 the defensive, the supply of slave labour was 
 practically stopped. But, while slavery was 
 declining, and revolted serfs swelled the ranks 
 of the enemy which knocked more and more 
 insistently at the gates, the free worker was 
 losing his economic freedom. Finally, a series 
 of plagues and famines thinned the Latin 
 population. Rome had no defence when all 
 the old Roman blood had been shed. Long 
 before, indeed, the best had been destroyed; 
 and Macaulay, in his essay on The Romance 
 of History, after drawing a lurid picture of 
 the intellectual stagnation which resulted from 
 the rigid Imperial concentration in Rome 
 and Constantinople, goes so far as to say that 
 it was well the Empire should be saved by 
 death from " a calamity far more terrible 
 than any of the quick, destroying maladies 
 to which nations are liable a tottering, 
 drivelling, paralytic longevity." It has been 
 suggested that the introduction of malaria 
 may have been an important factor in the 
 degeneracy of the Romans. Perpetual war- 
 fare affords at once a simpler, more certain, 
 and more adequate explanation. When a 
 barbarian mercenary pricked the bubble of 
 Imperial omnipotence and omniscience, Rome 
 had long been dead, though her ghost was 
 yet long to haunt the blood-stained fields of 
 Europe.
 
 82 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 
 
 WE turn now to consider the interplay of 
 the forces of war and peace in the Middle 
 Ages. Eastward of the Adriatic, it is the 
 history of the Byzantine Empire (founded 
 A.D. 395, and destroyed by the Turks A.D. 
 1453), with its Greek-Christian civilisation, 
 which is still to East Europe what Rome has 
 been to the West. In the West, the period 
 includes two stages the first one of destruc- 
 tion, decomposition, and anarchy; the second 
 carrying us, by way of " Chivalry," to the 
 beginnings of modern national settlement. 
 Europe was, through these ten centuries, 
 bordered on the north, east, and south by 
 a semi -circle of barbarian pressure and tur- 
 moil. Moreover, it was, as it were, inter- 
 penetrated by this same barbarian pressure 
 in a modified form. Roman power, originat- 
 ing in a municipality, had been spread through 
 a network of towns, well governed and forti- 
 fied. The countryside was little touched, 
 was, indeed, little populated, and consisted 
 largely of forest and marsh. There the bar- 
 barian invaders first established themselves 
 Teuton Franks and Goths in Gaul and 
 Spain; Slavs, Huns, and Bulgars in the 
 Balkans; Goths and Lombards in Italy.
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 83 
 
 Thus the municipal system enjoyed a reprieve, 
 and its Roman character was never wholly 
 extinguished. But, while Byzantium main- 
 tained itself with difficulty, the chief heritage 
 of the Empire of the West passed to the 
 Christian Church, which, and not any artifi- 
 cial political combination, was its true suc- 
 cessor. To these four main elements standing 
 out above the general disorder and break-up 
 of old forms the Byzantine Empire, the 
 Western Church, the barbarian kingdoms, 
 and the continued invasions we must give 
 closer attention. They represent an immense 
 confusion, that is not yet completely re- 
 solved, but also an immense and rich variety 
 of blood, ideas, customs, and tendencies to 
 which, after long fermentation, the later 
 vigour of European life is due. 
 
 The West had great advantages in the 
 accomplished work of Roman administration, 
 the freer form here taken by Christian in- 
 fluence, and the greater distance from the 
 oriental peril ever impending over Byzance. 
 The Teuton tribes had come far from their 
 original homes, had learned something from 
 the Kelts on the way, and had absorbed more 
 of Mediterranean civilisation during several 
 centuries of contact with the Empire, though 
 still obstinately opposed to the Imperial 
 spirit, and imbued with strong instincts of 
 martial independence. So long as they were
 
 84 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 only urged on by a normal increase of popu- 
 lation and need of new arable lands, so long 
 even as they were content with occasional out- 
 breaks of the raiding instinct, there was a 
 possibility of a continuous development. But 
 when, in the fourth century, the Mongols 
 began to invade Europe and to drive the 
 settled confederations before them, there was 
 no power to stay the inundation. The 
 Vandals, pressed forward by the Goths, as 
 these were by the Huns, crossed Spain, deso- 
 lated Roman Africa, capturing Carthage in 
 439, and, after a career of piracy in the 
 Mediterranean, were only at length defeated 
 by the Byzantine general Belisarius, in 534. 
 The West Goths, following them, set up a 
 theocracy in Spain which lasted till the Arab 
 conquest in 718. The Italian-Gothic king- 
 dom of Theodoric, the most developed of 
 these shadowy realms, lived only from 
 493 to 533, giving place to the Lombard 
 dukedoms. The prime cause of this dis- 
 turbance, the Huns, an utterly alien race, 
 with the lust of destruction and cruelty 
 developed in an astounding degree, swept 
 like a plague over Central Europe till, stopped 
 at Chalons in 451, they disappeared from 
 the scene as rapidly as they had come. The 
 invaders, wherever they stayed, had gradually 
 to accommodate themselves to the legal 
 customs, the language, the religion, and
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 85 
 
 manners of the latinised mass. Such was the 
 darkness of the eclipse of civilisation following 
 their onset, however, that the population, 
 already reduced by millions, was long sta- 
 tionary under a chronic dearth of food; 
 while the only extensive dominion which could 
 be maintained for a lengthy period was that 
 of the lawless and treacherous Frankish kings. 
 In the effort to redeem and raise the Frankish 
 Empire, the Church itself slipped downward 
 to the utter degradation of the ninth century. 
 I have said that the Papacy was the chief 
 heir of the Roman Empire. At the beginning 
 of the fifth century, it was an elaborately 
 organised institution, with a pope at the head 
 making ultra-Augustan pretensions which 
 were only slowly to be recognised, with its 
 own revenues, its Senate in the form of 
 occasional, and its system of local government 
 in the form of provincial and national, coun- 
 cils, its hierarchy of bishops, priests, and 
 deacons. To the power of its gospel and 
 ritual, it added, in fact, that of a State 
 machinery; and, as the clergy became more 
 and more separated from and supreme over 
 the laymen, the business of ruling the bodies 
 of their subjects inevitably began to over- 
 shadow that of saving their souls. In the 
 surviving Roman municipalities, bishops 
 stepped into the magisterial chairs; outside, 
 abbots became great landowners. Political
 
 86 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 ambition grew; in men of culture and a wide 
 outlook in a time of anarchy, it was, indeed, 
 often welcome. Barbarian princes, eager to 
 legitimate what they had gained by the sword, 
 were very willing to pay for such august 
 patronage; and this degree of compunction 
 shows, doubtless, the influence of those larger 
 ideals of human union for which the name of 
 Rome still stood. Thus, under the Merving 
 Franks, the great Churchmen had sunk into 
 the position of a worldly aristocracy, rich in 
 lands whose tenants and serfs they led to the 
 battlefield like the secular counts and dukes, 
 luxurious, ready at intrigue, indifferent to 
 learning as to religion, greedy, alternately 
 servile and arrogant. It is true that the 
 Church often stayed the hands of a ruthless 
 king, and that the close of the sixth century 
 was marked by the beginnings of a great 
 outpouring of missionary zeal, the firstfruits 
 of which were reaped in England and 
 Germany. But the Roman See had defi- 
 nitely sacrificed an intensive for an exten- 
 sive influence. When the Frankish dynasty 
 was changed, and Charlemagne, fresh from 
 the overthrow of the Lombards, was crowned 
 Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III before the 
 altar of St. Peter's, on Christmas Day 800, 
 " Christianity seemed like a society of soldiers 
 and priests, governed by a soldier and a 
 priest " (Lavisse : Political History of Europe).
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 87 
 
 Charles effected a temporary reformation; 
 there was one secular and military ruler 
 capable of forbidding the princes of the 
 Church to ride to war or carry arms. His 
 new idea of a revived Holy Roman Empire 
 was, however, to prove a plentiful cause of 
 deadly strife through many succeeding cen- 
 turies. The rule of peace he had made soon 
 fell into disuse. It is said that, within thirty 
 years, at the close of the ninth century, two 
 archbishops and eight bishops died on the 
 field of battle. (Buckle suggests, nevertheless, 
 that these fighting ecclesiastics were the more 
 formidable opponents, because " in those 
 happy days it was sacrilege for a layman to lay 
 hands on a bishop.") Sees and abbeys became 
 the rich spoil of worldly adventurers ; licence, 
 unchecked in the priestly palace, invaded 
 the cloister. The Papacy had entered upon 
 the unchecked enjoyment of temporal power, 
 and had sunk into profligacy, when the cry 
 of the outer barbarian again rang across 
 Europe, and a new attack began which shook 
 the new political fabric, created Chivalry, 
 that strange union of cross and sword, and in 
 or on the way to the " Holy Land " drowned 
 the pure ideal of human fraternity in a sea 
 of blood. The Northman and the Saracen 
 appeared simultaneously : how were they to 
 be held back ? 
 
 Goths and Lombards had established them-
 
 88 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 selves by weight of numbers and horseman- 
 ship, the Franks by infantry strength, all 
 by vigour and daring. They were well armed 
 with lance, sword, mace, and axe, with ring 
 mail and scale armour, with big machines 
 (fonda and balista) for throwing stones and 
 darts, and battering rams. As compared 
 with the Goths of Spain, a nobility supported 
 by war-bands of personal retainers and 
 adventurers, the Franks, owing to the killing 
 off of their minor chieftains, were an undis- 
 ciplined horde. Generally, however, the be- 
 ginnings of feudalism were apparent in the 
 growth of bodies of " King's men " and a 
 nobility of service in place of the old tribal 
 aristocracies. The tribal swarm had itself 
 passed through a definite development from 
 the patriarchal stage in which it first appeared, 
 under pressure of the process of conquest. 
 The Teuton " kindreds," or unions of house- 
 holds, had become federated into the " folk," 
 with its popular assembly of men capable 
 of bearing arms, and its " kuninge," or noble 
 family. For long the popular assembly was 
 the dominant force; but gradually, as raids 
 grew into mass movements, and folks into 
 federations of folks, the need of leadership 
 created a specialised military class. Headed 
 by the chieftain whom the Romans patronised 
 and called " princeps," prince, or the war 
 leader (" dux," duke), the old group of royal
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 89 
 
 kinsmen was transformed into a little court 
 of " thanes " adventurers, giving the king 
 a rather independent support, and tending, 
 as warfare ceased to pay, to settle into a 
 territorial aristocracy. In Britain and Scan- 
 dinavia, protected by the sea from the over- 
 whelming masses of the continental horde, 
 the development took place more slowly and 
 regularly; the spirit of tribal democracy 
 lasted longer, and the military development 
 was delayed. So the Anglo-Saxons, in war, 
 were still, in the fifth and sixth centuries, 
 only scattered bands of unarmoured foot- 
 soldiers, with spear and axe, and until after 
 the Norman Conquest knew nothing of forti- 
 fication or of cavalry fighting. Two cen- 
 turies before this, Charlemagne, who may be 
 regarded as the first crusading monarch, had 
 compelled the adoption of armour throughout 
 his Empire, organised cavalry, commissariat, 
 and the raising of foot levies by landlords, 
 and established a system of fortified posts 
 connected by roads. But this was altogether 
 insufficient to meet the new emergency. 
 Perpetually in the field, from the Ebro to the 
 Elbe and Danube, endeavouring to establish 
 order and stem invasion, he lived to see a yet 
 wilder flood break over the North-West. 
 First, the Danish Vikings swooped suddenly 
 upon the Irish, English, and Frankish coasts, 
 everywhere pillaging monasteries, sacking
 
 90 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 towns (London and Canterbury among them), 
 devastating the countryside. The pioneer 
 raiders became adepts, veterans in plunder 
 and destruction; and still other hosts followed. 
 Rarely has vhe tribal swarm taken a more 
 terrible shape. 
 
 Three ways of meeting them were gradually 
 discovered. The first was the substitution 
 of a regular class of mounted soldiers for 
 the slow and ill-armed local foot-levies; the 
 second, the fortification of cities, river bridges, 
 and nobles' houses; the third, and much less 
 important, was King Alfred's establishment 
 of a fleet, the foundation of English sea-power. 
 The first two expedients became the basis 
 of feudalism : the feudal castle may be called 
 the nail which fixed the nobles, hitherto 
 roving fighters, to a given territory. Similar 
 measures were instituted on the east against 
 the Magyars, a race of mounted bowmen 
 much given to stratagems, cruelty, and rapine. 
 At the same time, defensive armour was 
 elaborated (hauberk, or neck and cheek 
 guard, long mail shirt, and kite-shaped shield); 
 and the two-handed axe and long sword came 
 into use. The final supremacy of the feudal 
 mounted lancers and archers, over levies of 
 infantry armed only with weapons for close 
 fighting, is marked by the battle of Senlac 
 Hill, near Hastings (1066), which decided 
 the destinies of Britain. It was a triumph
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 91 
 
 of organisation and greed over ignorant 
 courage and patriotism. The Northmen had 
 in the ninth century established a dynasty 
 in Russia, and in the tenth a nominally French 
 duchy in Normandy; in the eleventh, they 
 scored their greatest achievement, the subjec- 
 tion of Anglo-Danish Britain. " Duke William 
 had undertaken his expedition, not as a mere 
 feudal head of the barons of Normandy, but 
 rather as the managing director of a great joint- 
 stock company for the conquest of England, 
 in which not only his own subjects, but hun- 
 dreds of adventurers, poor and rich, from all 
 parts of Western Europe had taken shares " 
 (Oman). There may have been 696 vessels 
 in the fleet of invasion, carrying 10,000 
 mounted and 15,000 unmounted men. 
 
 The North submitted or settled down, and 
 in " The Truce of God " a series of rules for- 
 bidding fighting on holy days and otherwise 
 restricting warfare, first adopted by the clergy 
 of Roussillon in 1027, and extended in 1054 
 and 1119 a novel and remarkable effort 
 was made by the Church to check internal 
 disorder and Teutonic barbarity. It was to 
 be otherwise in the East that Greece and 
 Rome had so easily conquered. During the 
 centuries through which Constantinople, with 
 its undivided spiritual and temporal power, 
 and its strangely bureaucratic character, held 
 the Balkan lands against Slav and Turk, and
 
 92 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Asia Minor against the Saracen, there was a 
 still quicker development of professional 
 cavalry and a much higher skill in strategy 
 and tactics, an art of war in which shrewdness 
 and even trickery were permissible, though 
 treaties and armistices were respected and 
 cruelty to captives was forbidden. The shrewd 
 Byzantines laughed at the blind courage, and 
 sometimes played upon the ignorance, of the 
 Crusaders, who, however, more than once 
 took a treacherous revenge. Northmen and 
 Magyars had now settled down or been driven 
 back. The land road by the Danube to the 
 Orient was open; and the navies of Venice, 
 Genoa, and Pisa were making an easier route 
 by sea, which had the further merit of divert- 
 ing the stream of commerce from Byzance. 
 The Arab raiders of the tenth century were 
 comparatively easily checked; three later 
 waves of Moslem conquest showed a deepen- 
 ing strain of barbarism. The Saracens were 
 more civilised than Franks and Goths; and 
 the conquering force which, within a century 
 of Mohammed's death in 632, carried the Cres- 
 cent and Scimitar through Persia, Syria, 
 Egypt, Northern Africa, and Spain, enfeebled 
 by the division into the three caliphates of 
 Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova, was eclipsed by a 
 new irruption of invaders from Central Asia. 
 These, the Seljuk Turks, were repulsed with 
 more difficulty; and it was at the cost of
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 93 
 
 frightful losses from starvation, disease, and 
 slaughter that Jerusalem was held in Christian 
 hands for a hundred years. The horde of 
 Jenghiz Khan followed. " Babylonia was 
 till then still the chief seat of Mohammedan 
 culture; but since the Mongols set foot on 
 it, it has been a desolation" (Noldeke: 
 Sketches from Eastern History). The Moslem 
 empire of Saladin and the Mamelukes of 
 Egypt was a nearer and not less redoubtable 
 enemy; in 1291, nearly two centuries after 
 the first of the eight crusades, the last Christian 
 foothold on Syrian soil was abandoned. 
 
 The rise and arrest of the Ottoman Turks 
 completes the story of Modern expansion. 
 Checked for a tune by the Mongol horde which 
 had penetrated into Russia, this most per- 
 manent of the Turkish sovereignties took 
 Constantinople by storm in 1453, forty years 
 before the Arabs were driven from Spain. 
 Though stopped by Hungary, and later by 
 Russia, the Ottomans have kept their grip 
 upon the Balkans, and even appear at last 
 to be entering into the paths of European 
 development. Islam to this day sways the 
 peoples of the whole desert belt from Central 
 Asia to the Atlantic, with Asia Minor, Syria, 
 Mesopotamia, and large parts of Central 
 Africa; while she counts millions of followers 
 in India and other parts of the East. 
 
 The Crusades show a very mixed motiva-
 
 94 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 tion. In course of two centuries, during 
 which all Europe first common folk, then 
 nobles, then kings was set afoot, they 
 drained off from the barbarian West a great 
 deal of that spirit of adventure which is so 
 much more easily satisfied than the spirit of 
 greed and dominion. Feudalism would have 
 lasted longer but for this bloodletting. The 
 completeness of the stoppage of the movement 
 is the best proof of the immense modification 
 of ideas and interests it brought about. It 
 was exploited by clerics and contractors of 
 every grade throughout Europe. Every fresh 
 venture meant loans by wealthy townsmen 
 to kings and nohles; it was not without cause 
 that the practice of usury became a burning 
 question between the new commercial class 
 and the Church. The demands of hundreds 
 of thousands of men for supplies on their 
 eastward journey must have enormously 
 stimulated trade and shipping; and in the 
 wake of these armies the import of spices, 
 sugar, drugs, and precious stones from the 
 East, and the return flow of woollens, hides, 
 metals, and food stuffs, increased rapidly. 
 
 Representatives of the merchant princes of 
 the Italian cities accompanied the Crusaders, 
 always on the look-out for commercial privi- 
 leges. The Venetian money-lenders forced 
 the knights of the fourth crusade to help 
 them in capturing the rival port of Zara, and
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 95 
 
 then to plunder Constantinople itself; it was 
 thus the city of the lagoons won its empire, 
 and Shakespeare got a subject for his wit. 
 The by-products of the Crusades range from 
 shaving and bathing to a new geography, a 
 new vocabulary (bazaar, barracks, elixir, tariff, 
 talisman), and a new art of diplomacy, 
 copied from Byzantine practice in Near Asia. 
 While the rise of towns and a commercial 
 class was ultimately to lead to an era of 
 toleration and progress highly inimical to 
 Roman influence, the first and greatest 
 material gains of the feudal reaction on the 
 Orient came to the Church. Many pilgrims 
 gave their estates in return for masses and the 
 papal benediction; others sold them to the 
 monasteries at a trifle of their value. Some 
 of the returning Crusaders entered the cloister, 
 abandoning their worldly goods to the clerical 
 authorities. Again, estates of dead nobles 
 were forfeited to Crown or Church; and the 
 outbreak of religious zeal produced a crop of 
 great endowments. But a very mountain 
 of gold would be no fortification against such 
 a moral and intellectual shock as the rough 
 Westerners suffered when they saw Rome as 
 she was against the background of what she 
 had been, when they heard the wonderful lore 
 of Byzance, when they discovered that the 
 Saracens could teach them lessons in honour, 
 courtesy, and mercy, as well as in mathematics
 
 96 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and astronomy, medicine and engineering, 
 and that even Mongol emperors could treat 
 on an equality with Christian kings. 
 
 Our canvas is too small for a perfectly clear 
 picture of the warfare of the earlier Middle 
 Ages, but this crowded sketch will serve to 
 remind us of its main outlines, the chief 
 factors in the subsequent development. The 
 field of the inquiry falls into four zones. Of 
 these one, the south and east coasts of the 
 Mediterranean, has fallen definitely into the 
 hands of the Moslem Arabs and Turks, at 
 first the source of important elements ol 
 Semitic culture, then a conquering horde 
 recruited from the deserts and sustained by 
 polygamy, slavery, and a fanatical religion. 
 Europe, constantly trying to recover its lost 
 unity, begins to settle into three main divi- 
 sions the Eastern, the most conservative 
 and martially organised, because always on 
 guard against Asiatic savagery; Italy, Ger- 
 many, and the North, a host of little princi- 
 palities, obsessed by Roman traditions and 
 superstitions, the prey alternately of pope 
 and emperor and their parties (Guelphs and 
 Ghibellines) ; the West, in which Rome, by 
 its ecclesiastical jurisdiction and secular in- 
 fluence, is still a strong power, but one soon 
 to be threatened by the growth of monarchy 
 in France and England. 
 
 Throughout Central and Western Europe,
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 97 
 
 the system of military landlordism known as 
 Feudalism is the answer of the age to the 
 demand for external defence and internal 
 order. We have seen it beginning in the 
 Prankish court as a blend of barbarian client- 
 ship and clerical patronage. From this point 
 it extends to an all-embracing and elaborately 
 graded system of sovereignty, military organis- 
 ation, and land-holding. The words it has 
 left tell their own tale : " feudal " (connected 
 with the Teutonic vieh, cattle ; fehde, 
 hostility, vengeance of the kindred); "gen- 
 tleman," man of race; *' knight," from the 
 Teutonic, armed follower; " esquire " and 
 " equerry," from French tcuyer, the knight's 
 shield- bearer; " fealty " (old French feaultt, 
 from Latin fidelitas, faithfulness, loyalty); 
 " homage," which is making yourself so-and- 
 so's man (homo); and the modes of address 
 still current, " My lord," " My man." The 
 king in theory owed fidelity only to God, or, 
 as the Churchmen said, to God's Vicar in 
 Rome. Even so pious a theory being subject 
 to disturbance, he entrenched himself in new 
 possessions too large for direct exploitation 
 by parcelling them out, in return for armed 
 support, among his vassal lords, who, in turn, 
 divided their land on the same terms of pro- 
 tection and service. Monarchy became terri- 
 torial instead of racial, and, as it became more 
 able to defend religion and order, made itself
 
 98 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 more free of the two larger but vaguer authori- 
 ties Papacy and Empire. The system ex- 
 tended rapidly in the ninth and tenth cen- 
 turies, after the break-up of Charlemagne's 
 Empire, because small landowners were only 
 too glad to save themselves from noble robbers 
 and wandering swashbucklers by obtaining 
 the protection of neighbouring lords in return 
 for personal service. Churches, monasteries, 
 and towns thus granted their lands as fiefs, 
 engaging professional soldiers to defend them, 
 or putting themselves under a count or duke; 
 thus, in return, the towns got their charters 
 or bills of rights. Under the aristocracy so 
 created (kings, lords, knights, squires), and 
 its attendant priesthood wielding both worldly 
 and unworldly power, lay the mass of the 
 population freemen, mostly in the towns; 
 yeomen, and serfs tied to their lords' estates, 
 in the country. 
 
 The immediate result of this development 
 was to create a settled countryside, to stimu- 
 late agriculture and land values, and so to 
 produce a rapid increase of population. 
 Towns ceased to be the only centre of order. 
 " The social preponderance, the government 
 of society, passed suddenly from the towns 
 to the country; private property became of 
 more importance than public property; pri- 
 vate life than public life " (Guizot : History 
 of Civilisation in Europe). Within his own
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 99 
 
 domain the lord or squire was absolute master, 
 with but the faintest shadow of the old tribal 
 obligations toward the lower mass. The 
 hereditary spirit, evidently convenient both 
 to the family and the suzerain, grew rapidly, 
 its attendant art, heraldry, arising in the 
 twelfth century. Intermarriage strengthened 
 the sense of class superiority, and solidified 
 the aristocratic structure. In France, the 
 field of constant warfare, private as well as 
 public, the weakening of the baronage per- 
 mitted a development of royal supremacy 
 and a centralisation that have left marks on 
 the State to this day. In England, where 
 the right of private war between nobles was 
 never recognised, we owe the beginning of 
 our liberties to a better balance of power 
 which forced first the barons and then the 
 king to consider the interests of the com- 
 moners in town and country. 
 
 The paradox of feudalism, resembling in 
 this respect the " armed peace " of our own 
 time, is that, beginning as a higher organisa- 
 tion of military forces, it ended by producing 
 a deadlock of these forces, a condition in 
 which regular warfare was almost im possible. 
 This arose from the great development of 
 body armour and of fortification. Veterans 
 returned from the East brought from their 
 contact with Byzantines and Saracens some- 
 thing more than sacred bones and curious 
 D 2
 
 100 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 perfumes. Through the twelfth, thirteenth, 
 and fourteenth centuries the period of the 
 unquestioned supremacy of the new cavalry 
 knightly armour became more and more 
 elaborate, the helmet at last covering the 
 whole head, the mail coat falling to the 
 feet and being strengthened with thin iron 
 plates. Thus a caste which as yet possessed 
 no nationality protected itself from itself. 
 Seignobos (Mediceval Civilisation) quotes a 
 chronicler of the battle of Br6mule, 1119, 
 thus : " 140 knights remained prisoners in 
 the hands of the conqueror ; but of 900 
 engaged in battle I know of three only who 
 were killed. In fact, they were completely 
 clothed in iron; and as much through the 
 fraternity of arms as through the fear of God 
 did they spare each other, seeking less to kill 
 than to take prisoners." The stone age had 
 now followed the age of wood and mud in 
 fortification. The first feudal castles followed 
 the earlier model, consisting of a ring wall 
 round the nobleman's house, with a tower 
 for a last refuge. Then the tower became a 
 solid keep, usually at one end of the enclosure, 
 with the houses of the retainers in its shadow. 
 With knowledge of Byzantine castle-building 
 and Saracen sieges, the protecting walls were 
 doubled and tripled; the battlements were 
 set with projecting turrets so that besiegers 
 could be played upon, and these outworks
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 101 
 
 took a greater, and the donjon a less, import- 
 ance. Finally, the concentric type of forti- 
 fication was perfected, and at its best it was 
 impregnable, until gunpowder revolutionised 
 the conditions. In the towns, too, as the 
 proverb attests, the Englishman's house be- 
 came a castle, with turret and sometimes a 
 parapet, and with the family rooms " up- 
 stairs " (that is, up a removable ladder) for 
 better defence. The town walls and gates 
 were more and more elaborately fortified; 
 many a city and small State owed its con- 
 tinued freedom to this fact. 
 
 " By 1300, the defensive had obtained an 
 almost complete mastery over the offensive, 
 so that famine was the only certain weapon 
 in siegecraft" (Oman). In another century 
 the only warfare that was not too costly to 
 pay consisted of plundering raids by rela- 
 tively small mobile forces. The Hundred 
 Years' War, beginning in 1337, between the 
 now firmly founded French and English mon- 
 archies, partook mainly of this character, 
 and at the same time witnessed the introduc- 
 tion of a weapon, the longbow, and a type 
 of man, the " free lance," that were to pre- 
 pare the way for a new military era. The 
 foreign wars of the Plantagenets could not 
 have been carried on but for the wholesale 
 employment of foreign adventurers, together 
 with the younger sons and other impecunious
 
 102 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 members of the noble class who hired them- 
 selves for foreign service without much 
 consideration of its object. These scientific 
 plunderers were stiffened with picked levies 
 of archers wielding what had become, under 
 Edward I in his border wars, the national 
 weapon. Bannockburn proved the weakness of 
 feudal cavalry against skilled bowmen in a good 
 defensive position; and, at Crecy and Poictiers; 
 Edward III improved the lesson, to the aston- 
 ishment of the French chivalry. When Nor- 
 mandy had been devastated, the French 
 nobles shut themselves up in their castles, 
 and, no more booty being obtainable, the 
 war came to an end. But feudalism was 
 doomed as a military instrument. 
 
 Chivalry the word reminds us that every 
 fighting organism must have a sort of religion 
 of its own. In the primitive tribe it was 
 the blood feud, the lex talionis. In ancient, 
 as in modern, settled States, it was patriotism. 
 In the expanding Empires, ancient and 
 modern, it was race pride. In the early 
 Mediaeval as in the later Moslem theocracy, 
 it was the spirit of proselytism, so nearly 
 allied to the spirit of persecution which 
 inspired the religious wars of a later day. 
 The religion of feudalism was chivalry, a 
 very curious and interesting mixture of 
 Christian and barbarian elements, both de- 
 based to the purpose of taming a class of
 
 THE SWARM SETTLES 103 
 
 lull-blooded princelings. It was at once a 
 discipline, physical and moral, a cult of 
 aristocratic pride (valour, pride, and loyalty 
 were pre-eminently the sentiments of chivalry) 
 and a playground of the romantic tempera- 
 ment. Feudalism was a secular organisation 
 of society; and the Church was not excepted 
 from its sovereignty. Chivalry, with its 
 professed object of protecting religion and 
 succouring the weak, and its elaborate ritual, 
 represents the best (if we except cathedral 
 building) the Church could obtain of its 
 Teuton masters in return for this submission. 
 It produced some softening of manners, and 
 favoured an enlarging influence of woman. 
 Alas, it did not help the despised villeins, or 
 prevent ferocious cruelty to prisoners of war; 
 and it created a new form of inflated vanity 
 which, though it soon became unpopular, 
 has left deep marks upon our public and 
 private life. The late mediaeval art of 
 hunting is distinctly a case of what biologists 
 call reversion to type. The tournaments 
 stand, in point of legitimacy, between the 
 Greek games and the Roman gladiatorial 
 shows. Courtesy the manners of the royal 
 or ducal court became dependent on ruin- 
 ously extravagant fashions. Knight-errantry 
 has deceived later generations by the great 
 literature it produced. In superstitious and 
 disorderly days, it may have given a certain 
 balance of good; but the spirit it set afloat
 
 104 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 in the governing classes of the West was 
 essentially false and hypocritical, since it 
 blinded them to the iniquity of a servile basis 
 of society, and of an art of war all of whose 
 privileges and restraints were for the well- 
 born. Another embodiment of the fighting 
 Churchman consisted in those Orders, the 
 Knights Templar, Knights of St. John, 
 Teutonic Knights, and others, which Buckle 
 (History of Civilisation, ch. ix) denounces 
 as " establishments that inflicted the greatest 
 evils on society, and whose members, com- 
 bining analogous vices, enlivened the super- 
 stition of monks with the debauchery of 
 soldiers." The fighting parson survives to- 
 day in " transpontine " melodrama, as the 
 proud rescuer of distressed maidens survives 
 in the penny novelette; but the solid business 
 of defence and conquest has passed to paid 
 laymen mostly of the common orders. 
 
 We have now seen how, after infinite losses, 
 Romanised Europe held back or assimilated 
 the barbarian invader, and, combining Teuton 
 custom with clerical teaching, found a new 
 method of settlement and protection. We 
 have glanced at the military features of this 
 system, at the mixed character of its expan- 
 sion in the Crusades, and at the nature of its 
 peculiar esprit de corps, called Chivalry. 
 The causes and effects of the decay of Feudal- 
 ism, and the transition to modern conditions, 
 will be the subject of our next chapter.
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 105 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 
 
 Two centuries and a half separate the re- 
 discovery in the West of how to make gun- 
 powder (usually attributed to a German monk 
 named Schwartz, about 1330; but it is said 
 by De Bloch to have been used by the Tartars 
 against the Poles in 1241) and the defeat of the 
 Spanish Armada a time fuller, perhaps, of 
 the elements of far-reaching change than any 
 like period in history. At the beginning, 
 Europe seems to be settled under the heavy 
 hand of Feudalism, and in lip-service to Rome; 
 at the end, its western lands have reconsti- 
 tuted themselves politically and economically, 
 and are started upon a new stage of the 
 swarming movement by which man has taken 
 possession of the earth. Our subject-matter 
 now becomes more and more complex, because 
 the whole globe comes under review, and every 
 kind of social growth has contributed to the 
 motivation of war, of which the military art 
 is one of the least important and least im- 
 pressive products, and because the connected 
 ideas of organised peace and national self- 
 government by representative institutions now 
 faintly emerge. 
 
 The collapse of Feudalism was due to a 
 series of changes economic, political and
 
 106 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 military, intellectual and religious having a 
 double character of destruction and construc- 
 tion. In the first place, the economic bases 
 of society were radically altered, especially in 
 England, by the growth of commerce and 
 manufacture, the rise of towns, the decay 
 of serfdom, and the emergence of a free 
 labourer and tenant farmer class. 
 
 Italy and Germany led the way in the 
 establishment of independent cities whose 
 memorials are to-day the bourne of our 
 holiday pilgrimages. But the evil traditions of 
 Rome and the Lombard dukedoms lay heavy 
 upon them; what they won in industrial skill 
 and financial power they squandered in 
 profligacy and strife; and when the main 
 stream of trade was diverted from the Levant, 
 the Rhine, and the Baltic, to the Atlantic, 
 they fell behind. There were, of course, many 
 other influences. Where militant Protestant- 
 ism established itself kings gained, if candle- 
 makers and fishermen suffered. Disturbed 
 eastern frontiers left feudalism an unfinished 
 task ; and among the new States it was those 
 which proved their strength in feudal warfare 
 against Slav and Turk that best held their 
 own those of Austria and Prussia. But 
 perpetual warfare wars, ostensibly, of re- 
 ligion and royal succession, wars of conquest 
 and the " balance of power " destroyed the 
 energy and wealth that might have won a
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 107 
 
 New World; while thousands of toll-bars 
 impeded trade even more than the hos- 
 tile tariffs of neighbouring States. As the 
 Teutonic knights represented the old spirit 
 of conquest, so the Hanseatic League repre- 
 sented the opposite principle of commercial 
 expansion. But if Luther's scoffing question, 
 " What is the good of Crusaders who do not 
 crusade ? " satisfies us as to the disappear- 
 ance of the one, the reason of the collapse 
 of the other is less obvious. It lies in the un- 
 natural, perhaps it would be better to say the 
 unsocial, character of the Hanseatic organisa- 
 tion. There were external causes the rise of 
 Danish and Swedish power, the civil broils of 
 the fifteenth century, the change in the 
 movements of our humble friend the herring; 
 but internal causes of decay are nearly always 
 the more important. International federation 
 cannot be worked on a purely capitalistic 
 basis. The commercial empire which the 
 league established across Northern Europe 
 in the middle of the fourteenth century was 
 moribund by the middle of the sixteenth. 
 It never lacked wealth or armed force ; but it 
 combined the weaknesses of the ancient Greek 
 federations and the commercial despotism 
 of Carthage. Niebuhr likens the Phoenician 
 States to plants which do not take deep root, 
 but spread over the surface of the ground. 
 The Ilunsa was not subject to the influence of
 
 108 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 a contiguous tropical desert; but it, also, had 
 to learn that trade is a function of society, and 
 cannot permanently subsist apart from the 
 other functions of a sanely organised group. 
 
 Failing the new economic impulse toward a 
 larger unity that came successively to Spain, 
 France, Holland, and Great Britain, feudal 
 separatism in central Europe continued longer; 
 and Germany and Italy, their little States 
 generation after generation the prey of foreign 
 adventurers and rival native princes, have 
 only in the last century formally effected their 
 national unification. The steady advance of 
 the cities of the West from a semi -feudal 
 condition, in which the great merchants stood 
 over the craft guilds as the nobles over their 
 retainers, to one of complete freedom and self- 
 government, is a happier spectacle. Parallel 
 with this development there occurred a rural 
 revolution, the conclusive factor of which was 
 the frightful visitation known as the Black 
 Death, in its milder modern form called 
 bubonic plague. Following in the track of 
 war, it is reckoned to have swept away a 
 quarter of the population of Europe and a 
 third, or more, of that of Great Britain. The 
 commutation of the serf's labour dues for 
 money payments had been slowly proceeding 
 since the Conquest. The plague, by producing 
 a great scarcity and consequent dearness of 
 labour, decisively stimulated the rise of a
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 109 
 
 wage-paid labourer class. But the landlords 
 fought hard to keep their privileges; and 
 though the rise of wages continued, and serf- 
 dom gradually died out, after the extinction 
 of the agrarian revolts under Tyler and 
 Ball (1377-81) the subsequent laws of 
 revenge and panic, the evictions, the growth 
 of large holdings and sheep farms, created a 
 new vagabond and pauper class which pro- 
 vided excellent material for the wild essays 
 toward empire-building that were to follow. 
 
 Every economic change tends to express 
 itself in a corresponding political change. 
 Every improvement in the industrial arts, 
 every new market or branch of trade, every 
 successful expedition, every new discovery 
 of natural resources, every extension of the 
 use of law instead of force, leads, through the 
 increase of available wealth, to the enlarge- 
 ment of the unit of government and the 
 elaboration of a governing class. The market 
 succeeds the family as the economic base of 
 society ; and national boundaries tend to re- 
 present the market. The old Slave economy 
 is passing away; the second great economic 
 stage, based on settled land-ownership, is 
 being undermined; a third stage, based on 
 money and credit, is opening. Government 
 changes accordingly. Custom is slowly modi- 
 fied in favour of ability and competition; 
 birthright yields place to State service, kinship
 
 110 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 to professionalism. Internal administration 
 is gradually divided between central, inter- 
 mediate, and local authorities. In England, 
 especially, the new central power of a national 
 monarchy was held in check by strong 
 survivals of the spirit of patriarchal society, 
 by a prior development of law, the rudiments 
 of representative government, and by the 
 overshadowing strength of the great nobles, 
 due largely to intermarriage and the union of 
 estates. When slavery is extinct and serfage 
 is only a local bond, kings must get money by 
 new expedients. Hence taxation; and this in 
 turn is the nest of representative institutions, 
 because it exhibits publicly the ratio of govern- 
 ment expenses and the contributions of 
 various classes of citizens. State revenue 
 soon brings in its train a universal use of 
 currency, in place of barter and service pay- 
 ment ; and this change to a Money economy 
 is an immense stimulus to trade. 
 
 After the Great Charter (1215) parliament- 
 ary power and individual right were firmly 
 enough based to stand the strain of a cen- 
 tury and a half of warfare and, thereafter, 
 another century and a half of Tudor and Stuart 
 despotism. They embodied, in fact, the only 
 method of national unity, without which 
 England might long have remained a French 
 fief, a stagnant and servile estate. Under this 
 restraint, where feudalism had been the
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 111 
 
 negation of nationality, monarchy offered a 
 rallying point, a voice and hand, to society, a 
 general authority based on an administration, 
 a system of taxation, a judicature, and a 
 permanent army. In the thirteenth century 
 there was reason why a common Englishman 
 should " dearly love a lord." But the suicidal 
 work of the Hundred Years' War against 
 France (1336-1431) was nearly completed in 
 the War of the Roses (1450-71) ; and the Tudor 
 sovereigns finished it by bringing women and 
 men indiscriminately to the stake and the 
 block, and by confiscations that transferred a 
 fifth of the land of the country to the Throne. 
 Henry II, by the imposition of a military tax 
 in lieu of service and the employment of 
 mercenaries with the product, Edward III, 
 by the dissolution of the liveries, or nobles' 
 bands of armed retainers, paved the way for 
 this change. Gunpowder used at Crecy 
 (1346) as bombs to frighten the French horses, 
 and with portable cannon against Joan of 
 Arc at Orleans (1429), was from the beginning 
 the king's weapon. And, as we saw that the 
 old Romans killed themselves out in conquest 
 and civil strife, so a main cause of the collapse 
 of feudalism consisted in the fact that the 
 chivalry of the West killed itself out in a 
 warfare which had not even the excuse of 
 being directed against the outer barbarian. 
 In this case, as in that of a thousand years 
 earlier, the collapse of the established order
 
 112 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 was marked by a serious, if less-prolonged, 
 anarchy. It is the most grievous chapter in 
 English history. I shall call attention here 
 only to two parts of the gloomy picture 
 the demoralisation of the conduct of war- 
 fare during the decadence of chivalry, and 
 especially during the French wars, and the 
 growth of the spirit of persecution and its 
 outcome in political terrorism and a series of 
 wars of religion. Edward III commenced 
 the vain struggle for the French Crown by 
 profuse subsidies to German and Flemish 
 princelings for military aid an interesting 
 precedent to Pitt's Continental policy; yet, 
 in the end, England had to do her own dirty 
 work and pay the Florentine bankers into the 
 bargain. It was not only a land struggle. 
 The narrow seas were overrun with marauding 
 fleets, English, French, and Spanish; and from 
 this time forward, piracy and privateering 
 were endemic in the Channel and the Atlantic. 
 But every county of England bled border 
 wars and highland forays brought no com- 
 mensurate misery on Scotland and North 
 and Central France were ruined. The Black 
 Prince, hero of Crecy and Poictiers, proved 
 himself a very king of freebooters, and an 
 adept at foul butchery. The new mercenaries 
 (soldier, from solde, simply means a paid 
 man, and " brigand " at first only meant 
 a light-armed soldier) easily proved their 
 superiority to the lumbering cavalry of the
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 113 
 
 old noblesse. In service, they tried to " play 
 the game," with only a little more greed and a 
 little less scruple than their employers. In 
 the intervals, they were simply highwaymen 
 on a large scale, hunting in companies, 
 pillaging villages, holding castles and even 
 towns to ransom, and using horrible cruel- 
 ties. Such an interval preceded the peace 
 of Bretigny (1360). Famine and desolation 
 drove the English out; but, nine years later, 
 the king was directing the cold-blooded 
 massacre of the three thousand inhabitants 
 of Limoges. Then it was the turn of John 
 of Gaunt to waste a British army in rapine. 
 These conquests were all lost, the south coast 
 was ravaged, British shipping was destroyed, 
 debt accumulated, and pestilence and .social 
 revolution reduced the possibilities of foreign 
 aggression. It was fitting that the revolt 
 against the poll-tax should be headed by a 
 returned soldier from the French wars, Wat 
 Tyler. The truce continued under Richard 
 II, much to the disgust of his nobles. Henry 
 V renewed the war; and it is strange that 
 one of the finest outbursts in English literature, 
 that which Shakespeare puts into the mouth 
 of the king on the eve of Agincourt 
 
 " This story shall the good man teach his son ; 
 And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er co by, 
 From this day to the ending of the world, 
 But we in it shall be remembered, 
 We few, we happy few, we band of brothers "
 
 114 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 should cover so wanton and barbarous an 
 adventure. 
 
 Much of British fighting pride goes back to 
 those three French battlefields on one of 
 which eleven thousand Frenchmen, including 
 a hundred princes and great nobles, were left 
 dead. But it is an ill story to read now as a 
 whole and in cold blood. The Church had 
 lost all hold upon Christian ideals in anxiety 
 for its threatened lands. " The greed of the 
 nobles had been diverted, whether, as later 
 legend said, by the deliberate device of the 
 great Churchmen, or no, to the fair field of 
 France. For the real source of the passion 
 with which the baronage pressed for war was 
 sheer lust of gold. So intense was the greed 
 of gain that only a threat of death could keep 
 the fighting men in their ranks ; and the results 
 of victory after victory were lost by the 
 anxiety of the conquerors to deposit their 
 plunder and captives safely at home before 
 reaping the more military fruits of their 
 success. The moment the firm hand of great 
 leaders such as Henry or Bedford was re- 
 moved, the war died down into mere massacre 
 and brigandage. Cruelty went hand-in-hand 
 with greed; and we find an English privateer 
 coolly proposing to drown the crews of a 
 hundred merchant vessels which he has taken, 
 unless the council to whom he writes should 
 think it better to spare their lives" (J. R. 
 Green : History of the English People). Such
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 115 
 
 ruffians helped to beat the French counties 
 into a nation. 
 
 Anarchy, however, cannot be restricted to 
 the foreign field; the curse of conquest always 
 comes home to roost. Rapine abroad was 
 inevitably reflected in lawlessness at home. 
 " British Parliaments, which had become 
 mere sittings of their retainers and partisans, 
 were like armed camps to which the great 
 lords came with small armies at their backs. 
 That of 1426 received its name of the ' Club 
 Parliament ' from the fact that, when arms 
 were prohibited, the retainers of the barons 
 appeared with clubs on their shoulders. 
 When clubs were forbidden, they hid stones 
 and balls of lead in their clothes. The disso- 
 luteness against which Lollardism had raised 
 its great moral protest reigned without a 
 check." The savagery of the French cam- 
 paigns was repeated in the slaughter and ruin, 
 the treasons and executions, of the Wars of 
 the Roses. The men who burned Joan of 
 Arc were soon ready for the exercise of the 
 rack, the wheel, and the block at home. This, 
 together with the call of the Church for new 
 means of authority, and the panic cry of the 
 propertied classes for order at any cost, is the 
 cause of Tudor tyranny and terrorism. 
 
 Our subject thus develops a new paradox. 
 As the breakdown of a military organisation 
 of societv led to new horrors of warfare, so
 
 116 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 the dawn of enlightenment which issued in 
 the Reformation led to an unprecedented 
 outbreak of superstitious fury, and the 
 New Learning, in aid of which Colet declared 
 from the pulpit of St. Paul's that " an unjust 
 peace is better than the justest war," con- 
 tributed to bloodshed from end to end of 
 Europe. A power become tyrannical and 
 degraded at length provokes a challenge, and, 
 equally surely, attempts persecution in reply. 
 The officers of Innocent III, the founder of 
 the Inquisition, had set an example as early 
 as 1216 of how to deal with budding sceptics 
 by the massacre of 27,000 people in the 
 capture of Beziers. For a time thereafter 
 the Papacy was rendered impotent by its 
 division. In the first years of the fifteenth 
 century, the Wycliffite pioneers were burnt 
 and John Huss died at the stake. It was 
 amid this opening of the struggle of rationalism 
 against persecution that Constantinople fell, 
 the Turks took Belgrade, in 1520, and nine 
 years later stood before Vienna a respite for 
 papal power, and a stimulus to reaction 
 throughout Eastern and Middle Europe. This 
 was the hey-day of trials for witchcraft. The 
 offence had been known throughout the Middle 
 Ages. In the demoralisation of early Tudor 
 times it became the pretext for wholesale 
 persecution. " The panic created by the 
 belief advanced at first slowly, but after a time
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 117 
 
 with a fearfully accelerated rapidity. Thou- 
 sands of victims were sometimes burnt alive 
 in a few years. Every country in Europe 
 was stricken with the wildest panic. Hun- 
 dreds of the ablest judges were selected for 
 the extirpation of the crime. It was not until 
 a considerable portion of the eighteenth 
 century had passed away that the executions 
 finally ceased; the last law on the subject, 
 the Irish Statute, was not repealed till 1821 " 
 (Lecky : Rationalism in Europe). 
 
 Such was the work the travelling inquisitors 
 of Romanism set afoot in the diseased imagin- 
 ations of the ignorant masses. It was 
 greatly stimulated by the outbreak of the 
 Black Death, for terror breeds cruelty as well 
 as invites oppression. The persecuting spirit 
 took an economic colour in massacres of Jews 
 and the repression of Lollards, in the practice 
 of confiscating the property of heretics, and in 
 the after-treatment of the " mere heathen " 
 beyond seas. It took a political colour as 
 the issue between Protestantism and Catholi- 
 cism involved royal successions, the struggles 
 of England and Holland against France and 
 Spain, the struggle of conquering Germans 
 against reforming Bohemians. It was only 
 decisively checked when the majority of 
 people could read and write, and when these 
 majorities made and unmade their national 
 governments. But for long it involved the
 
 118 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 most learned and the most ignorant in a 
 common savagery; Luther, Erasmus, the 
 Pilgrim Fathers, and Wesley were equally 
 victims of the belief in witchcraft. The 
 connected doctrines of hereditary sin and 
 exclusive salvation were also very ancient; 
 their new vigour in the mouth of the great 
 Reformers is evidently connected with the 
 dislocation of a religious and political system 
 that had come to rest on a doctrine of here- 
 ditary merit and indifference to purity or 
 justice. The violence of revolution responds 
 to the violence of a dying tyranny. 
 
 On the whole, the Romance nations, where 
 Papal influence and the old country life were 
 strongest, remained Catholic; the Teutonic 
 States, where harder conditions have always 
 favoured independence and individualism, 
 and where the commercial towns enjoyed 
 increasing power, became Protestant. In 
 France and Germany, where the two spheres 
 met and the two forces were nearly balanced, 
 the result was prolonged civil war, marked 
 in the former case by the massacre of Hugue- 
 nots in Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572. 
 One of the worst assertions of arbitrary power 
 at this time lay in the transfer of small States 
 by royal marriage from one ruler to another. 
 This led to popular revolt on the one hand, 
 and, on the other, persecution was brought in 
 to aid tyranny, as when the Low Countries,
 
 added to the crown of Castile, Aragon, and 
 Burgundy, revolted against the blood-orgies 
 of the Inquisition, and, after a struggle of 
 incomparable bravery, established the Dutch 
 Republic in 1609. Both Protestants and 
 Catholics persecuted Protestants less, per- 
 haps, because they less often exercised civil 
 power; Catholics certainly more because 
 they had the power as well as the tradition. 
 44 Llorente, who had free access to the archives 
 of the Spanish Inquisition, assures us that 
 by that tribunal alone more than 31,000 
 persons were burnt, and more than 290,000 
 condemned to punishments less severe than 
 death. The number of those put to death 
 for their religion in the Netherlands alone in 
 the reign of Charles V has been estimated by 
 a very high authority at 50,000 (Sarpi; 
 Grotius says 100,000); and at least half as 
 many perished under his son. These atroci- 
 ties were not perpetrated in the brief parox- 
 ysms of a reign of terror or by the hands of 
 obscure sectaries, but were inflicted by a 
 triumphant Church with every circumstance 
 of solemnity and deliberation. Nor did the 
 victims perish by a rapid and painless death, 
 but by one which was carefully selected as 
 among the most poignant that man can 
 suffer. They were usually burnt alive. They 
 were burnt alive not unfrequently by a slow 
 fire. They were burnt alive after their
 
 120 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 constancy had been tried by the most excru- 
 ciating agonies that minds fertile in torture 
 could devise" (Lecky). Yet this was not 
 all. Hundreds of thousands who did not 
 suffer death suffered loss and the terror of 
 death. " Where religious fanaticism rein- 
 forced political resentment, there was no limit 
 to the barbarity of the rough soldiery. In the 
 struggle with the Huguenots, nothing was 
 sacred from the plunderer, not even the 
 sepulchres of the dead. In the Low Countries, 
 too, the fight was to the death. Pillage and 
 devastation reigned in the open field; siege 
 after siege terminated in a scene of wild 
 licence and savage butchery. The story of 
 the Thirty Years' War will live for ever as 
 a tale of horror. Twelve hours after the 
 fall of Magdeburg, 20,000 men, women, and 
 children lay charred and blackened corpses 
 amid the ashes of the lifeless city " (Walker). 
 The wars of religion planted animosities in 
 Europe that are still not rooted out, and made 
 a virtue of military excess. They produced 
 a spirit of intolerance that poisoned the two 
 great liberationist movements of the following 
 centuries, the English and French Revolutions, 
 and added a new element of ferocity to the 
 movement of expansion oversea by which 
 a series of European Empires were to be 
 established in America, Asia, and Africa. 
 Is it enough to say, as Lecky does, that " it
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 121 
 
 was out of the Christian conception of the 
 guilt of error that persecution arose " ? I 
 think not. Persecution and tyranny are twin 
 expressions of the Imperial idea hi a time of 
 demoralisation when the property basis of 
 society is changing, and an old governing class 
 is giving place to a new. They have an almost 
 completely utilitarian origin. Popular super- 
 stition may be cultivated and provoked (as 
 we see in Russia to-day) in order to provide 
 the means and surroundings favourable to 
 persecution; but its effective cause is the 
 determination of a small number of men in 
 possession to retain by terror the property and 
 power whose regular sanctions are disappear- 
 ing. Thus, the rationalistic spirit of the 
 Reformation only destroyed persecution when, 
 passing from the field of private opinion into 
 alliance with democracy and trade, it became 
 a positive political force capable of restraining 
 all forms of arbitrary rule, secular or clerical. 
 This happened first in England, the Nether- 
 lands, and Scandinavia, then in France. At 
 the two ends of Europe, Spain and Russia are 
 economically most behindhand because there, 
 face to face with the Moors and the Mongols, 
 despotism was most strongly developed. The 
 era of religious wars is usually counted as 
 closing with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), 
 six years after Galileo's death as a prisoner 
 of the Inquisition. The Thirty Years' War,
 
 122 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 begun by Protestant revolts in Bohemia and 
 Hungary, soon degenerated, in fact, into a 
 secular struggle for territory in Central Europe, 
 during which France rose to greatness under 
 Louis XIV, and Germany was devastated 
 and divided by foreign adventurers and her 
 own rival princes. 
 
 I have given this much prominence to the 
 two great expressions of the anarchy following 
 the breakdown of feudalism the degradation 
 of warfare, and the mania of persecution 
 because there is a too common impression that 
 the era of invention and discovery meant a 
 sudden passage from darkness to light; and 
 this idea makes the barbarities of the following 
 centuries incomprehensible except on the 
 supposition that human nature is incapable 
 of progress hi one direction save at the cost 
 of backsliding in another. There was, in 
 fact, no such sudden transition. The mari- 
 ners' compass was in use in 1300; yet it was 
 1492 ere Columbus landed in the West Indies, 
 1497 ere Da Gama rounded the Cape, 1522 
 ere Magellan circumnavigated the world, and 
 1577 ere Drake sailed for the Pacific. The 
 Chinese used fireballs and like contrivances 
 five hundred years B.C., and to this fact seems 
 to be due the erroneous belief that they then 
 used gunpowder. The first traceable employ- 
 ment of artillery in China was at the defence 
 of Taiyuen in A.D. 757 (Herbert Spencer's
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 123 
 
 Descriptive Sociology, vol. " Chinese," 1910, 
 p. 285). We have seen that gunpowder 
 mysteriously reappears in the fourteenth 
 century, along with small portable cannon. 
 But, in 1427, of an army of 80,000 against 
 the Hussites, only 200 men carried arquebuses; 
 at the end of the century only a tenth of 
 the French infantry were so provided, and 
 leaden bullets were only just coming into 
 use. Cannon developed much more rapidly 
 than hand arms; but the pieces of bronze of 
 the end of the fifteenth century were lumbering 
 things, needing 50 horses for transport and 
 service. At Nordlingen, in 1645, the artillery 
 could only fire three rounds, and, about the 
 same time, a musketeer only fired seven times 
 in eight hours (Jean de Bloch : La Guerre). In 
 1596, the British crown was trying to revive 
 the use of bows and arrows; and archers 
 appeared in the British forces in 1627. Mus- 
 kets were used with rests till the reign of Charles 
 I, when gunpowder cost no less than 3 a 
 barrel, so that train-bands often could not 
 afford to practise. Its effective use may be 
 dated, not from 1880, but from the invention 
 of the cartridge, the flint-lock, and the 
 bayonet three centuries later. If the inven- 
 tion the most sure of all to appeal to the 
 wealthy and powerful was thus slowly de- 
 veloped, how much more tardy would be that 
 intellectual and moral change which Caxton
 
 124 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 started when he introduced the printing press 
 into England in 1476. In fact, it was to take 
 four centuries to give rag paper and movable 
 types their logical issue in universal primary 
 schooling. 
 
 Nevertheless, these landmarks represent the 
 beginnings of change deep, universal, and 
 abiding. If it was true that the world could 
 never again be quite the same after Chris- 
 tianity had thrown down its challenge to 
 Roman Imperialism, so it is true that, what- 
 ever the immediate turmoil, a world possessing 
 the printed sheet could never again be wholly 
 dominated by mere force and the superstition 
 that is the base inspiration of force. When 
 the " disruption of Christendom " occurred, 
 thousands of new centres of life were already 
 re-creating European society. While the age 
 of discovery brought fresh opportunities for 
 the outer man, there came, through the 
 recovery and spread of Greek and other 
 Eastern learning, and through the Reforma- 
 tion within the Christian Church, a great 
 stimulus to intellectual life, an introduction, 
 even for the common people, into new realms 
 of moral experience, and a new independence of 
 personality. Systems of tyranny and conquest 
 accepted without question in the ancient 
 servile world could not long exist in face of 
 this fundamental change : sooner or later a 
 political revolution must follow. In its appli-
 
 BREAKDOWN OF FEUDALISM 125 
 
 cation to a practical emergency, secular reason 
 no more than religion spoke at first with a 
 single voice. Dante, the greatest mind of 
 the Middle Ages, had not got beyond the ideal 
 of a universal monarchy as the way to personal 
 and social freedom. Kings now proved them- 
 selves only too ready to claim this benevolent 
 function, after Dante's example of ascribing 
 it to a particular prince. 
 
 Still, the idea of a European jurisdiction 
 was there, and it grew. The " Consolato del 
 Mare," a large collection of maritime rules, 
 ** made seemingly at Barcelona about the 
 middle of the fourteenth century," " set out a 
 veritable common law of the sea " (Walker) 
 for the coasts ,of Europe; marine insurance 
 was common, though not nearly as common as 
 wrecking and piracy, at the end of the fifteenth 
 century. In Central Europe, as the Imperial 
 ban failed of effect, leagues of cities and 
 principalities for mutual defence sprang up. 
 The end of the Thirty Years' War (1648) 
 marks the eclipse of the aim of world dominion, 
 and the definite appearance of territorial 
 nationality. Mixed or rival precepts drawn 
 from Roman civil law and mediaeval Church 
 (canon) law were gradually, with the clearer 
 definition of the boundaries of State control, 
 developed into a code of rules no longer 
 universal, but properly international, a code 
 of duties corresponding to the new rights. 
 Absolute right of ownership in the seas was
 
 126 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 permitted to continue long because of its use- 
 fulness against piracy. Elizabeth vigorously 
 denied it in defending Drake; yet as late as 
 1805 the British Admiralty claimed possession 
 as far as Cape Finisterre, and to this day 
 military claims upon sea are upheld that have 
 long been obsolete on land. Similarly, English 
 protests against the Spanish monopoly of 
 trade with the Indies gave birth to ideas which 
 were afterwards to undermine the fabric 
 of Britain's own trade monopoly. Though 
 diplomatists too often imitated their royal 
 masters in " going abroad to lie on behalf of 
 their country," for it was a faithless age, a 
 certain etiquette and regularity were now for 
 the first time elaborated in State relations. By 
 the end of the sixteenth century there was a 
 definite assertion of neutral rights. 
 
 In Italy, which had suffered most from the 
 corruption of the Papacy and the tyranny of 
 soldiers of fortune, where the Renaissance and 
 the ideal of free republicanism were already 
 declining, and hope of resisting the foreign 
 invader and the native oppressor seemed 
 dead, a new force politics as an independent 
 science and art was brought to birth by 
 Machiavelli (1469-1527). It was a sinister 
 apparition. Ancient Rome still haunted the 
 Italian imagination; and the author of the 
 new statecraft could think of no better 
 expedient, amid the troubles he so clearly 
 saw, than a revived Caesarism. The happier
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 127 
 
 circumstances of insular England are indicated 
 in the fact that the Utopia was being 
 written at the same time as The Prince. 
 Though there was a quick reaction against 
 More's early radicalism, the seeds of progress 
 had been sown, and the conditions favoured 
 their growth. Finally, there appeared, in 
 Vasquez, Ayala, and Gentilis, above all in 
 Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a clear definition 
 of the rights and the grosser wrongs of warfare; 
 a declaration of the freedom of the seas; a 
 code of rules for Ministers, Ambassadors, 
 Generals, and Admirals; a law of neutrality 
 and private immunity; a discussion of what 
 is permissible under the Law of Nature, under 
 the Law of Nations, under honour and moral 
 justice, and under specific agreement; last, 
 but not least, a revival of the idea of arbitration. 
 Thus far we have traced the Westward 
 swarm across European history. We must 
 now follow its passage across the Atlantic, 
 into the Pacific, and round the African coast 
 into the Indian seas. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS : EAST AND WEST 
 
 ENGLAND was by no means first in this 
 field. Companies of Portuguese, Spanish, 
 Dutch, and Russian adventurers had in augur-
 
 128 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 ated the new era of discovery and conquest 
 on the American, African, and Asian coasts, 
 and in Siberia. It was, in fact, a very little 
 and a very backward England that gave birth 
 to Shakespeare and humbled Imperial Spain. 
 In the two centuries after Edward III, the 
 population had increased from 2| millions 
 to perhaps double that number, at a high 
 estimate. Scotland was still independent. 
 The country was very imperfectly settled; 
 communications were difficult; industry was 
 but slightly developed; the small external 
 trade was carried on by foreigners ; the develop- 
 ment of the middle class had but lately begun. 
 Seamanship was in the first flush of its 
 success. Italians and Spaniards preceded Eng- 
 lish adventurers into the Western Hemisphere, 
 while Portuguese and Dutch showed them the 
 new Eastward passage. English seamen rarely 
 ventured beyond the Baltic, the Narrow Seas, 
 the Spanish coast as far as Seville, at the time 
 when Columbus was making his famous voyage, 
 and for a long time afterward they did not 
 venture into the Mediterranean. Until 1532 
 English traders with the East found their 
 chief opportunity in the yearly visits of the 
 Venetian fleet. America had been discovered, 
 and India reached by sea, nearly a century 
 before Gilbert took possession of Newfound- 
 land and Raleigh founded the colony of 
 Virginia. With these exceptions, not yet
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 129 
 
 established, (Calais, the last of the French 
 possessions, having been lost in 1558) Eng- 
 land had not an inch of territory beyond 
 these islands till she had asserted herself 
 against Spain by the defeat of the Armada 
 and by the Dutch alliance; till, through 
 immigration of Protestant refugees, London 
 had succeeded Antwerp (sacked by the 
 Spaniards in 1567 and 1585) as the greatest 
 commercial centre of North- West Europe; 
 till, from the Thames to the Bristol Channel, 
 a chain of busy seaports had arisen, and the 
 El Dorado legend had taken a firm hold upon 
 the English mind. These are the elements 
 to which is commonly traced the rough out- 
 burst of Elizabethan maritime enterprise. 
 But they are, in the main, conditions and 
 manifestations rather than causes of the 
 new spirit of foreign adventure and aggression 
 which marked the sudden opening of a new 
 chapter of British history. Some other 
 motive-force there must have been beside 
 greed of Spanish gold and hatred of the 
 Spanish Inquisition. What is the missing 
 factor ? 
 
 We have seen in the last chapter that, 
 among the first effects of the breakdown of 
 Feudalism and Papal authority, on the one 
 hand, and the growth of national monarchies 
 and the rural revolution on the other, were a 
 notable degradation of warfare and an un-
 
 130 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 precedented outbreak of persecution. Here 
 are the main elements of a fresh movement 
 of armed expansion landless, rightless, 
 demoralised masses of men, and governing 
 classes in need of fresh fields for easy exploit- 
 ation. Henry VIII and Elizabeth were not 
 the first arbitrary rulers to gain popularity 
 by pointing their victims to opportunities 
 of compensation. They had broken the 
 barons; that was matter for gratitude, for 
 in a sparse agricultural population local is 
 always felt more than central tyranny. It 
 was they, and not the people, who drove 
 out Popery. Under temptations of general 
 profit, as well as under threats of general 
 danger, military force is quickly concentrated 
 in a single national centre. Thus, the royal 
 house grew rich and strong and proud, so that, 
 under the later Tudors and the Stuarts, Eng- 
 land came near submission to a pure tyranny. 
 Evidently, the easiest field for the use of 
 this new force of monarchy lay outside the 
 national boundaries. The growth of restraints 
 within the State, and of a national spirit, 
 for a time stimulate licence without. As hi 
 ancient days, while the process of internal 
 consolidation was conditioned by growing 
 enlightenment and freedom, the process of 
 expansion was not subject to any such checks 
 and balances. The rivalries that arose in 
 the years of national settlement in Europe,
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 131 
 
 especially the rivalry of England with the 
 other two great Atlantic States, Spain and 
 France, were taken as sanctioning a resort to 
 extremes of savagery which would not have 
 been thought of in internal relations. From 
 being a Roman dispensation throughout a 
 great part of the known world, supported by 
 the most sacred sanctions, law had come to 
 be regarded almost as a mere emanation of 
 local sovereignty. Regard for a rudimentary 
 moral code had been extended from the 
 village community to the confines of the 
 nation; but here, in spite of Christian pro- 
 fessions, it reached its limit, or at least became 
 seriously weakened. Within each nation the 
 development of wealth and population con- 
 tinued steadily; but, in the relation of these 
 nation-states with each other and the out- 
 side world, humane considerations were at a 
 discount. For centuries after their discovery, 
 the new worlds of the West and the East were 
 regarded by statesmen, as well as swash- 
 bucklers, as lying outside civilisation. 
 
 The firm establishment of military monarchy 
 was quickly followed by the emergence of 
 capitalism. Enterprise and ambition grew 
 rapidly under the stimulus of possibilities of 
 wealth " beyond the dreams of avarice," that 
 is, beyond the scope of local usury. The 
 broadening of the market and the sources of 
 supply involved a broadening of economic 
 
 2
 
 132 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and political bases. This development was 
 hurried and accentuated by the inflow of 
 bullion from Central and South America. 
 The Spaniards went for gold; they found 
 only silver, but in such quantities as to upset 
 completely the existing European currencies. 
 The laziest countryside was aroused by this 
 mysterious appreciation of its crops and stock. 
 Thus the new Money Economy was confirmed 
 and extended a bridge toward the Credit 
 Economy of to-day. Trade increased rapidly, 
 but the chief aim of statecraft in the next 
 century and a half was to procure an ever 
 larger import of the precious metals. In 
 the general spread of capitalistic organisation 
 thus produced, and the national rivalries 
 excited by dazzling visions of treasure going 
 a-begging beyond the ocean, the island state 
 of England grew in national self -consciousness 
 and self-confidence, in commercial experience 
 and maritime skill, and in the reserves which 
 enabled her in the eighteenth century to 
 adopt the sweeping changes known as the 
 Industrial Revolution. To her insularity, 
 and its influence in the hardening of national 
 character and narrowing of national purposes, 
 much of England's phenomenal success must 
 be attributed. 
 
 The State, then, was ready ; the great mer- 
 chants were ready. A further reason for the 
 readiness of the common people to leave home
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 133 
 
 and risk death on strange seas lay in the 
 consequences of the oppression, extortion, 
 and profligacy of the Tudor Court. For a 
 tune, the rural population dispossessed by 
 evictions and the decline of arable farming 
 found recompense in the activity of the 
 new cloth manufactures. But, when Henry 
 VIII launched out upon his monstrous career 
 of robbery at home and bloodshed and waste- 
 ful entanglement abroad, wholesale ruin fell 
 upon the country-folk who composed the great 
 body of the nation. The mob of nobles and 
 courtiers to whom the monastic lands were 
 given raised rents, confiscated stock, laid hold 
 of the commons, and mercilessly evicted the 
 helpless tenants. Thus, while the old foun- 
 tains of relief were closed, a new mass of 
 pauperism was created. Not content with 
 such triumphs of rapacity, the King pro- 
 ceeded to the theft of the guild lands and 
 successive debasements of the currency. In- 
 surrections in the eastern and southern coun- 
 ties were repressed by foreign mercenaries; 
 the hanging of Ket at Norwich marks the 
 failure of the popular resistance. Elizabeth 
 reformed the currency (further debased by 
 the Ministers of Edward VI) in time to save 
 English credit; but, by the laws for the 
 regulation of labour and the relief of distress 
 which are the economic landmarks of her 
 reign, the revolution was deepened and fixed.
 
 184 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 The justices assessed wages at so low a level 
 that employers voluntarily raised the rate. 
 Starvation pay, supplemented from the poor 
 rate, became the rule. Combinations of 
 labourers were effectively broken up. Runa- 
 way journeymen and recalcitrant apprentices 
 were imprisoned. Servants could not quit 
 town or parish without licence; masters tak- 
 ing servants without a testimonial were fined; 
 absentees from work were fined; a servant 
 who forged a testimonial was flogged; one 
 who assaulted his master was imprisoned for 
 a year or more. 
 
 It is not difficult to connect this regime of 
 oppression and robbery with an outburst of 
 adventure which reproduced the chief features 
 of outlawry in earlier feudal times. Steady, 
 settled country life was becoming impossible at 
 the very moment when fables of the golden 
 East and true tales of loot in the Spanish 
 Main began to echo through the land. 
 
 This demoralisation shows itself, as might be 
 expected, in the character of the Elizabethan 
 maritime adventurers. These first expansion- 
 ists began with buccaneering, at the outset 
 in the English Channel. " Huguenots from 
 the French shores joined forces with Devon- 
 shire sea-dogs from Dartmouth or Bideford, 
 and plundered impartially all shipping that 
 passed up into what were called the Narrow 
 Seas. ... It was a fierce life, a state of war
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 135 
 
 without its rights for the victims or its duties 
 for the conquerors. We cannot doubt that 
 bitter passions, religious hate, greed, sheer 
 love of violence and bloodshed, were only too 
 easily fed in these buccaneering exploits. . . 
 English and Huguenot corsairs swept the 
 Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Tremaynes, 
 Stukeleys, and Cobhams, scions of famous 
 West-country houses, continued to spend their 
 money in fitting out craft of twenty or fifty 
 tons with cutlasses and guns and reckless 
 men only too glad to learn the art of using 
 them. Fishermen abandoned their favourite 
 grounds off Kinsale or in the Iceland seas, 
 and took to the more profitable trade of 
 piracy; and throughout the West, from 
 Bideford round to Exmouth, the sea-dog's 
 life was the envy of every young fellow of 
 spirit " (Woodward: Expansion of the British 
 Empire). At the same time, some more dar- 
 ing fellows were doing for the more distant 
 lands what the Northmen did for the England 
 of Alfred. Drake, twenty years before, had 
 set the example by plundering the coast towns 
 of Spanish South America, and, having 
 received the secret support of Queen Eliza- 
 beth all along, had been knighted for his pains. 
 Hispaniola and the Spanish Main offered 
 a happy hunting-ground to British hooli- 
 gans. " To England, the war (with Spain) 
 is throughout an industry. ... As we now
 
 136 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 put our money into railways or what not, 
 so then the keen men of business took 
 shares in the new ship which John Oxenham 
 or Francis Drake was fitting out at Plymouth, 
 and which was intended to lie in wait for 
 the treasure galleons, or make raids upon 
 the Spanish towns in the Gulf of Mexico. 
 The two countries were, formally, not even 
 at war with each other" (Seeley; The Ex- 
 pansion of England). For forty or fifty years 
 after their first settlement, the Bahamas 
 were a hot-bed of wreckers and pirates. 
 Captain Morgan had his headquarters in the 
 British colony of Jamaica ; Charles II 
 pocketed the royal share of the loot, and 
 knighted the master of the black flag. " Our 
 early maritime heroes were all pirates; and 
 even after the Government determined on 
 putting down the practice, and actually hanged 
 numbers of adventurers who became a scandal 
 to it, mainly because they had originally 
 been sent out by Government, and had 
 been old-fashioned enough to strain their 
 commission even after this, a preliminary 
 apprenticeship in this lucrative and invigora- 
 tive business was no bar to the subsequent 
 employment of a buccaneer, who had aban- 
 doned this special calling, in Church and 
 State. The first chairman of the East India 
 Co., Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, was ' an 
 ancient buccaneer.* Paterson, the reputed
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 137 
 
 founder of the Bank of England, is some- 
 times said to have been a missionary in the 
 Antilles, sometimes described as a pirate, and 
 it has been suggested that he was probably 
 both by turns" (Thorold Rogers: Economic 
 Interpretation of History). Buccaneering soon 
 lost even the semblance of political ex- 
 cuse; and for a century or more England 
 had good reason to repent (though Spain, 
 amid the ruins of her attempt to corner the 
 silver supply, had better) the royal policy 
 which was long represented as a fit way of 
 vindicating British independence and Chris- 
 tianity pure and undefiled a policy to which 
 we now trace back the careers of scoundrels 
 like Morgan and Kidd. 
 
 In a less martial and more strictly com- 
 mercial type, the Elizabethan spirit embodied 
 itself in the trade in negro slaves, initiated by 
 John Hawkins (another of the good Queen's 
 knights) in 1562. Hawkins, who may be called 
 the father of our transatlantic trade, was, 
 indeed, in high favour with the Government, 
 and was accounted a highly estimable fellow. 
 His first expedition consisted of three small 
 ships carrying only a hundred men, with 
 whom he bought or caught three hundred 
 negroes, and sold them to the hated Spaniard 
 in San Domingo. His second venture, in 
 1564 (the year of Shakespeare's birth), con- 
 sisted of four ships and one hundred and
 
 *38 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 seventy men, and was attended, as he proudly 
 said, " with great profit to the venturers, as 
 also to the whole realm, in bringing home both 
 gold, silver, pearles, and other jewels great 
 store." The third voyage, in 1567, took five 
 ships one commanded by Francis Drake, 
 and two lent from the Royal Navy. So the 
 mcrease went on. We need not attempt here 
 to describe the horrors of slave-hunting and 
 the " middle passage " across the Atlantic. 
 There can be little doubt that the evil 
 f slave labour, which had already existed in 
 the Spanish colonial system for half a century, 
 and with which the Spanish Government 
 endeavoured to cope by regulative injunc- 
 tions, was immensely aggravated by the 
 application to it of British trading methods, 
 otherwise only applied to dead commodities. 
 For two centuries of Imperial development 
 there was practically no sign of compunction 
 in regard to this immense iniquity that was 
 to be a product of the brief cosmopolitan 
 period in the history of English political 
 thought. In 1662 the African Company 
 was formed in London, and occupied the 
 mouth of the Gambia. This direct attack 
 on the Dutch traffic in slaves for the British 
 American plantations led to the Anglo-Dutch 
 war of the following four years (1663-67), 
 in course of which the American coast from 
 Nova Scotia to Florida fell to England. In
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 139 
 
 1689 the Company's monopoly was removed, 
 and every Englishman was free to become 
 a slave-trader. In twenty years the sale of 
 negroes reached 25,000 annually; a century 
 later this number was quadrupled. Probably 
 not less than a million slaves were imported 
 into the colonies in the course of a century. 
 By the Treaties of 1713, which marked the 
 achievement by Britain of primacy among 
 the Western Powers, she obtained the formal 
 assent of Spain to the slave trade with Spanish 
 America, and it became " a central point 
 in English policy " (Lecky: History of England 
 in the Eighteenth Century). " From this date," 
 says Seeley, " we took the leading share and 
 stained ourselves beyond other nations in the 
 monstrous and enormous atrocities " of this 
 traffic. The direct atrocities of the negro 
 slave trade are, however, but a part of the 
 cost of a system by which the natural evolu- 
 tion of large tracts of sub-tropical countries, 
 both in Africa and America, has been injured 
 and a series of mischiefs produced the gravest 
 that are recorded in human history. 
 
 While Drake's piratical voyage round the 
 world, the supreme achievement of Eliza- 
 bethan adventure, had flung England into 
 open conflict with Spain for supremacy, it 
 had also attracted British cupidity towards 
 the hoary and jewelled East; and it was there 
 that British Imperialism first crystallised in
 
 140 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 the form which at length gave the title of 
 Empress to an English Queen. Gilbert, Hayes, 
 and Raleigh, in their premature attempts to 
 find vacant lands for settlement by emigra- 
 tion and cultivation, had shown how much 
 more difficult is colonisation than freeboot- 
 ing. Joint-stock capitalism, in the infant 
 shape of the East India Company (which, 
 however, might rather be described as a highly 
 capitalised merchant guild), was now to show 
 that, if England did not yet want, because 
 she did not need, colonies properly so-called, 
 she was quite ripe for the race after depend- 
 encies and dividends. 
 
 During the first half of the three centuries 
 in which British influence has been brought 
 to bear upon India, it was governed by a trad- 
 ing and non-political policy. The merchants 
 of London absolutely controlled the Company, 
 though royalty watched over its rights in the 
 background. Climatic and other conditions 
 in India forbade colonisation, even in the 
 modified sense of " plantation." Self-defence 
 on distant seas had to be provided for at a 
 time when the State had no naval force to 
 apply to such a task; but, beyond this, the 
 astute patricians did not wish to burden the 
 venture with military or political obligations. 
 They simply wanted to tap the wealth not 
 the gold treasures, but the spices and cloths 
 of the East, to obtain a series of " open
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 141 
 
 markets " without territorial responsibility. 
 At first they found the islands more accessible; 
 but Dutch antagonism, based on a military 
 and territorial policy, diverted them to the 
 Indian mainland. 
 
 A very different Hindostan, in some 
 respects, from that which afterwards came 
 under British sway. The earliest adven- 
 turers, navigators and merchants, coming 
 through perils of stormy seas, armed rivals, 
 and piracy, from a far, small country still 
 raw, unlearned, disunited and undeveloped, 
 had found upon the Mogul throne at Delhi, 
 Akbar, the chivalrous and learned con- 
 temporary of Queen Elizabeth and Henry IV 
 of France, whose reign is the highest point 
 of native Indian rule. This great monarch, 
 who was just dead at the time of the first 
 expedition of the East India Company, had 
 consolidated the petty Hindu and Moham- 
 medan States, as much by diplomacy as 
 by force; had established political equality 
 between the different races, respecting the 
 humane side of the Hindu traditions and in- 
 stitutions, and founded a land revenue system 
 and other details of government which survive 
 in essence to this day. The governors and 
 friends of the Company were as pacific as a 
 Cobden could have wished. Sir Thomas Roe, 
 an ambassador sent to the Mogul Court in 1615 
 to combat Portuguese influence and help the
 
 142 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 British factories, wrote : " War and traffic 
 are incompatible. At my first arrival I 
 understood a fort was very necessary; but 
 experience teaches me we are refused it to 
 our advantage. If the Emperor would offer 
 me ten, I would not accept one." 
 
 A series of unprofitable years, during which 
 the Mogul Empire was being undermined by 
 dissension and intrigue, brought about a change 
 of temper. The Civil War at home favoured 
 a certain demoralisation in these far-distant, 
 feeble, and scattered trading stations; and 
 afterwards, as the trade grew more valuable, 
 to keep up quasi-imperial appearances came 
 to be the most obvious way of justify- 
 ing the maintenance of the monopoly. In 
 1635 Charles I had granted a licence to a 
 rival company, on the ground, among 
 other things, that the East India Company 
 had not established fortified posts. Four 
 years later Fort St. George was established 
 at Madras; and shortly afterwards a new 
 charter was obtained, giving the Company 
 power to make peace or war with any non- 
 Christian people, to establish fortifications, 
 export arms duty free, arrest traders infring- 
 ing its monopoly, and exercise civil and 
 criminal jurisdiction in India. In 1640 a 
 Surgeon Boughton, by medical services to 
 a daughter of the Mogul, obtained facilities 
 for the Bengal trading stations; but the purely
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 143 
 
 pacific term of English influence was coming 
 to an end. In 1657, when the concern was 
 in low water, Cromwell remodelled the Com- 
 pany on somewhat broader lines. Sir 
 William Hunter calls this year the first of 
 " the three cyclic dates of Great Britain in 
 the East " the others being the battle of 
 Plassey in 1757, and the reconquest of India 
 after the Sepoy Revolt a century later. In 
 1661 Charles II, without concern for Parlia- 
 ment or public opinion, confirmed the monopoly 
 of the Company and its military and judicial 
 authority. 
 
 By this time the Company had become the 
 wonder and the envy of all the merchants of 
 England. Imports from the Ganges increased 
 from 8,000 to 300,000 a year in the twenty- 
 three years following the Restoration. " The 
 profits were such that, in 1676, every pro- 
 prietor received as a bonus a quantity of stock 
 equal to that which he held. On the capital 
 thus doubled were paid during five years 
 dividends amounting on an average to 20 % 
 annually " (Macaulay). The value of 100 
 of stock rose to 850 and even higher, a 
 marvellous thing in those days. No wonder 
 there was an irruption of private adven- 
 turers. Thomas Pitt, grandfather of Lord 
 Chatham, and owner of the " Pitt diamond," 
 was one of the more prominent of these 
 " interlopers " a sort of link between legiti-
 
 144 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 mate traders and buccaneers of the Kidd type. 
 But in Sir Josiah Child they found a hard, 
 persistent, and resourceful enemy. Child, 
 who had been an office-boy in the City, rose 
 by his abilities to be the head of the greatest 
 trading corporation of the time, one of the 
 most wealthy and powerful personages in 
 the land, and the founder of a new com- 
 mercial imperialism. 
 
 It was a favourable juncture. A king who 
 shamelessly begged for foreign money and 
 aid for the furtherance of his designs against 
 his people was just the man to foster schemes 
 of Imperial adventure and aggression; the 
 people who could not destroy the Jacobite 
 tyranny except by means of a foreign army 
 and a foreign prince were just the stuff to 
 be victimised by men like Child and his 
 colleague Cook. " The whole breed of our 
 statesmen," says Macaulay of this period, 
 "seems to have degenerated. . . . Vicissi- 
 tudes so extraordinary as those which mark 
 the reign of Charles II can only be explained 
 by supposing an utter want of principle in 
 the political world. . . . Profligacy became a 
 test of orthodoxy and loyalty, a qualification 
 for rank and office. The excesses of that age 
 remind us of the humours of a gang of foot- 
 pads revelling with their favourite beauties 
 at a flash-house." Sir Josiah Child knew 
 where his strength lay. The people might
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 145 
 
 shout, rival traders might scheme : it 
 mattered little so long as the authority of 
 Whitehall stood behind the India House. 
 When the interlopers became really trouble- 
 some, Charles's enthusiasm was stimulated 
 with a gift of 10,000. James was no less 
 royally treated, and every Court favourite 
 had his or her price. Child's brother John 
 was made a baronet and General of the 
 British forces in the East. The expenditure 
 of nearly 100,000 in bribes procured the 
 renewal of the old privileges in 1693. Two 
 years later the Company was indicted for 
 corruption; in 1708 it was obliged to amalga- 
 mate with the rival body which had maintained 
 the opposition to it, and thenceforward its 
 worst difficulties at home were ended. It was 
 now solidly connected with the State; and 
 the more romantic and speculative interest, 
 which led in 1720 to the episode of the South 
 Sea Bubble, was diverted to another field, 
 where the trade in negroes offered for a giddy 
 moment greater profits than the trade in tea. 
 In India the Company prospered for half a 
 century more by refraining from intervention 
 or aggression. A brief spasm of interference 
 with native rulers in 1684 had resulted so 
 disastrously as to be a warning. But French 
 and other European rivals whom bribery 
 could not reach nor threats restrain were now 
 exciting increasing jealousy, and turmoil
 
 146 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 among the native peoples offered new tempta- 
 tion. By 1740 the Mogul Empire had fallen 
 to ruin; the provinces had been devastated 
 by Persian and Afghan invaders, and the 
 Mahrattas had risen to power. Here was a 
 situation irresistibly tempting to the wilder 
 youth equally of the French and the English 
 Companies, bored to death with the mere 
 handling of goods amid the unnatural limita- 
 tions of an Indian trading station. Almost 
 at the same time the fever of adventure 
 and intrigue broke out in both corporations, 
 in the rival personalities of Clive and Dupleix. 
 Dupleix had the advantage of age and expe- 
 rience; he had already discovered the native 
 susceptibility to military prestige and the 
 military capacity of the sepoy under European 
 training. His ambition stuck at nothing, and, 
 as Governor of Pondicherry, he wielded the full 
 local power of France. He soon controlled 
 native authority in the Deccan and Carnatic, 
 and was planning further conquests, when he 
 was suddenly called home. Clive, on the 
 other hand, then but a boy clerk at Madras, 
 was soon to show how social disintegration 
 evokes military genius. 
 
 We have again reached low-water mark in 
 the public and private morality of England, 
 a time when organised religion was well-nigh 
 dead, and organised education hardly existed; 
 when high society was profligate, and ruthless
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 147 
 
 laws were answered by criminal terrorism; 
 when the early stages of the Industrial Revo- 
 lution were imperceptibly shifting the basis 
 of the national economy, and adventure 
 abroad was taken to compensate for political 
 stagnation under a disciplined and powerful 
 oligarchy at home. The successful develop- 
 ment which culminated with the Peace of 
 1718 had left Britain the first Power in the 
 world; but " it secularised and materialised 
 the English people as nothing had ever done 
 before. Never were sordid motives so 
 supreme, never was religion and every high 
 influence so much discredited, as in the 
 thirty years that followed " (Seeley). Scot- 
 land was still a distant and little-known land; 
 only in 1710 " men were leaving off armour 
 which had hitherto been worn by every one 
 who could afford it as a useful precaution 
 in a barbarous and therefore a warlike 
 society " (Buckle). When the struggle with 
 France was resumed, and Pitt was in the midst 
 of his efforts after a world empire, there was 
 an end of political lethargy, but there was no 
 moral revival. In the general programme 
 of war against France all round the world, 
 to beat her out of India became an important 
 aim. In 1746, two years before the Peace 
 of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Madras station was 
 destroyed by the French, and Clive, among 
 others, was made prisoner. Five years later
 
 148 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 he had his revenge in the siege of Arcot, fol- 
 lowed by a complete humiliation of Dupleix. 
 Thus the way was cleared for Pitt's plans 
 for direct Crown rule in India, which, says 
 Green, " when he proposed them, were regarded 
 as insane "; and these designs received a 
 decisive stimulus in 1756 by the coincidence 
 of the crime of the Black Hole of Calcutta, 
 committed by an ally of the French, with the 
 outbreak of the Seven Years' War in Europe. 
 Corrupt and treacherous in diplomacy, Clive 
 never lacked courage, and the victory of 
 Plassey made him dictator in Bengal. The 
 young adventurer who, as leader of a boyish 
 gang of window-breakers, had terrorised the 
 shopkeepers of Market Drayton, overturned 
 in a few years the peaceful, commercial, and 
 non-territorial policy of the past century and 
 a half. At the Peace of Paris, in 1763, France 
 gave up all right to military settlement, and 
 so removed European rivalry. The south of 
 the peninsula was now conquered, and a 
 specious plea for complete imperialisation was 
 based on the need of abolishing the corruption 
 of the Company's officers. That the Company 
 was pretty thoroughly demoralised, and that 
 Clive and the like of Clive were not the 
 men to put things right, may equally be seen 
 in the records of the time, which make a 
 shameful picture of extortion and robbery by 
 British traders, to the ruin and terror of the
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 149 
 
 unprotected natives. Beside Clive, the other 
 great instrument of the imperialisation of India 
 was Warren Hastings, also a clerk of the Com- 
 pany, who rose rapidly to be Governor-General 
 of Bengal, laid the basis of the present Civil 
 Service, and by routing Hyder Ali destroyed 
 the last possibility of a strong native govern- 
 ment. He was tried in Westminster Hall 
 on charges of gross cruelty, extortion, and 
 the wrongful suppression of free native tribes, 
 but was acquitted. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that, whether 
 good or bad, empire-building in this supreme 
 case was not inevitable, was not a necessary 
 result either of national defence or the ex- 
 pansion of the national economy. On the 
 contrary, what we find is a reflection of the 
 ills of English society, the opening of a new 
 battlefield for the working out of European 
 quarrels and for military and commercial 
 adventure. For the first time England was 
 committed on the large scale to absolute 
 dominion over a community alien in race, 
 history, religion, and interest a far-distant 
 peninsula having a population ten times 
 as large as that of the ruling State, and 
 impossible of white colonisation. 
 
 Meanwhile, the West was showing expansion 
 of a strongly contrasted type. In North 
 America settlement by and for agricultural 
 and industrial cultivation led to a steady 
 and soundly directed development. I say
 
 150 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 " cultivation " because the word sums up 
 the contrast between this regeneration of an 
 old stock in a new world and the establish- 
 ment of absolutism in Asia. But the cultiva- 
 tion of the land is only the basic activity of 
 colonial life. The best part of American 
 colonisation was founded by communities of 
 men and women distinguished by religious zeal 
 and independence of character. It was an 
 extension of some of the purest and hardiest 
 types of British manhood. It represented the 
 spirit of More's Utopia, as the European state- 
 craft against which it was a practical pro- 
 test represented the spirit of Machiavelli's 
 Principe. It was a great movement away 
 from Empire toward Democracy; if it had been 
 otherwise the British Islands might to-day 
 be a small dependency of a kingdom of North 
 America. The extinction of the North 
 American Indians, which Seeley likened to 
 the attack of a party of hunters upon a herd 
 of antelopes, is not to be forgotten. But it 
 is not possible to regard these nomads with 
 quite the same respect, not to say awe, which 
 any rational mind must feel before the ancient 
 civilisation of Hindostan. The early experi- 
 ments of Frobisher, Gilbert, and Raleigh 
 were not successful; but they set a high 
 example in their deliberate search for unoccu- 
 pied lands for pacific colonisation, in an age 
 when most Englishmen who crossed the seas 
 were freebooters. The first American terri-
 
 THE SWARM OVERSEAS 151 
 
 tory successfully developed, that of Virginia, 
 was a plantation, owned at the outset by a 
 chartered company, afterwards to be worked 
 by slave labour. The four New England 
 States were colonised (1622-83) pacifically 
 save for two Indian wars in Connecticut 
 by Puritan settlers. New York, New 
 Jersey, and Delaware were, it is true, taken 
 from the Dutch; but, self-government being 
 grafted upon existing institutions, no serious 
 sting was left behind. On the other hand, 
 Pennsylvania, bought by the Quaker William 
 Penn from his royal debtor Charles II, was 
 one of the noblest social experiments in his- 
 tory. If other American colonies had been 
 founded in the same spirit and of like 
 material, the difficulty with France might have 
 been more easily rectified, and at least America 
 would not have been made, like India, an arena 
 for the settlement of a European feud. 
 
 That there was as much of the temper of 
 independence in New England as in Pennsyl- 
 vania, if less of the gentler humanities, Great 
 Britain was to learn when, in 1788, she was 
 compelled to give her American colonies 
 complete independence. The policy of trade 
 ascendancy and monopoly which had been 
 supreme since Charles II mounted the throne, 
 and which was enshrined in the Navigation 
 Acts and other measures making English 
 ships the sole carriers and England the sole 
 depot or market for colonial trade was a crude
 
 152 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 expression of the idea later to be enshrined 
 in the phrase " Trade follows the Flag." 
 Monopoly was the essence of British trade in 
 India and elsewhere. That it could not be 
 imposed upon a few small communities 
 only l millions of people all told, in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century set the 
 world thinking. The struggle with France 
 cost France Canada, but it cost us the United 
 States. That England thought it more pro- 
 fitable (that is what it comes to) to hold India 
 conquered than North America free must 
 seem strange to any man who now studies 
 the facts with open eyes. To-day, when the 
 territorial expansion of the British Empire 
 has ceased, we may say that the lesson has 
 come home; for, while thought of India is a 
 reminder of great tasks, great duties, great 
 perils yet to be borne, the free, self-governing 
 Dominions and Commonwealths of Britons 
 across the seas give good ground for pride in 
 what has been accomplished and hope of the 
 future , 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE BALANCE OF POW^R 
 
 THRICE in our story of the Westward swarm 
 we have seen a great settlement and equili- 
 brium established, and at length broken by 
 internal decay and external attack; thrice
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 153 
 
 we have seen an economic basis of a settled 
 society established, only to be transformed 
 the slave economy into a land economy, and 
 this into an economy of trade currency. At 
 each stage the breadth of the picture expands, 
 and, however dark it may yet be, takes on 
 some more hopeful colour. Rome made an 
 empire wider than the old despotisms of 
 the Nile and Euphrates valleys; its collapse 
 wrought terrible havoc, yet the fate of Europe 
 has never been like that of the ancient Levant 
 and North Africa. Feudalism covered a 
 larger area than Roman Viceroys could effect- 
 ively govern ; its collapse, and the end of the 
 Mediaeval Empire, brought long anarchy, but 
 not such as that of eight centuries earlier. 
 Slavery and serfdom have passed; the era 
 of free labour and free thought has dawned. 
 We have now to trace the establishment of 
 a fourth, a much wider and more firmly-based, 
 equilibrium a settlement shared in some 
 measure by the whole world, a peace often 
 and gravely threatened, it is true, and subject 
 to many grave problems, but sustained by 
 a richer variety of living forces, of interest 
 and intelligence alike, than any that preceded 
 it. 
 
 We have seen that the new imperialism 
 offered a temptation of increasing returns 
 to the governing and moneyed classes of the 
 Atlantic seaboard States. But this opportun-
 
 154 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 ity was only slowly developed, and it did not 
 reach the greater part of Europe. There the 
 territorial greed of absolute monarchs, ex- 
 pressed in matrimonial and contra-matrimonial 
 intrigues, and subserved by growing wealth, 
 ever-larger mercenary forces, and a new type 
 of statesmanship joining cynical craft to 
 real constructive power, characterises the 
 process of national consolidation and rivalry, 
 from the time of the Emperor Charles V, 
 Francis I, and Henry VIII of England down 
 to the French Revolution. Wars of religion 
 merge into wars of royal succession, and these 
 into wars of trade and empire. Beneath 
 them all, there is the same spirit of rapacity, 
 cloaked in a cunning which must yet be 
 accounted better than mere force, and sup- 
 ported with an ability that left some admirable 
 by-products for the consolation of long- 
 suffering peoples. Thus, from the foundation 
 of British diplomacy by Henry VII, England 
 was engaged for centuries in a shrewd game 
 of beggar-my-neighbour with the three great 
 Powers of the Continent, France, Spain, and 
 the Empire, taking a partner now on one side, 
 then on the other, and always for a price. 
 
 France was traditionally and generally the 
 enemy, but every combination was unstable, 
 and an opportunism usually based 011 economic 
 considerations ruled supreme. Reformation 
 England remained formally the ally of perse-
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 155 
 
 cuting Spain. The Holy League of 1511, to 
 enable Venice and the Empire to drive France 
 out of Italy, saw the first definite entangle- 
 ment of England in European rivalries since 
 the loss of her continental possessions. Wol- 
 sey had irons of his own in the fire which he 
 fanned between Hapsburg and Valois; but 
 according to the ideas of the age he was well 
 defending English interests. Queen Mary's 
 marriage to Philip of Spain found Parliament 
 reluctant to quarrel again with France, and 
 few save the shippers of the Channel would 
 echo her famous apostrophe on the loss of 
 Calais. Elizabeth gave a fresh turn to the 
 policy of the Balance of Power by enlisting 
 the aid of the Scottish Reformers; and, having 
 found new friends among the Dutch and 
 French Protestants, she dared at length 
 openly to flout Spain by posing as defender 
 of the new faith and Queen of the Western 
 Seas. At the same time, the alien economic 
 influence represented by old Lombard Street 
 and the Hansa Steelyard was thrown off. 
 With a new pride, England turned her face 
 to the ocean, never again to think of conti- 
 nental possessions. 
 
 It was the treasure-hunt that determined 
 the development of English sea power. From 
 the time of Henry III, the Crown had 
 realised the value of a command of the 
 Channel, but a regular navy was a late idea
 
 156 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 By the death of Henry VIII there was a 
 fleet of seventy sail, and the Woolwich and 
 Deptford dockyards had been founded. His 
 two successors, however, let the ships decay; 
 and Elizabeth's effective navy only numbered 
 some thirty vessels, under captains badly 
 paid, though bold and skilful. Drake was able 
 to bring another forty, private ships mounted 
 with guns for buccaneering work, out of the 
 Channel ports; and these were sufficient to 
 dispose of the 130 vessels of the Spanish 
 Armada, ill-handled and suitable only for 
 Southern seas, even had not winds and waves 
 proved kindly cruel. The combination of 
 religiosity and money-hunting became flagrant 
 under the Stuarts. Cromwell's foreign policy 
 was more honest, but hardly less materialistic. 
 He first effectively put down piracy in the 
 near seas. With the Navigation Monopoly 
 Act of 1651, and the consequent war with 
 Holland, trade interests for the first time 
 explicitly directed British arms. Holland 
 had her revenge upon Charles, the pensioner 
 of Louis, in 1689, when she gave a Dutch 
 king to Eng'and and made her part of the 
 league against France. Under William III 
 there was at least a steady intent in English 
 policy that of preventing the union of 
 France and Spain, our powerful rivals, under 
 the Bourbon family; and, to British merchants 
 as well as to the lesser continental States,
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 157 
 
 what was called the preservation of the 
 balance of power seemed the beginning if 
 not also the end of political wisdom. The 
 merchants, indeed, had cause for reflection, as 
 the struggle was carried through the Low 
 Countries, Spain, Lombardy and to the 
 Danube, and it became evident that Marl- 
 borough was fighting less for any political 
 aim than from ambition and a passion of 
 strategy and tactics, seasoned with payments 
 from contractors and foreign States. 
 
 The Treaty of Utrecht, by which the War of 
 the Spanish Succession was terminated in 1713, 
 made no substantial alteration in the map of 
 Europe, though it did really establish the 
 monarchical equipoise. Its most material 
 result to England, the Asiento Contract for 
 the monopoly of the slave trade to the 
 Spanish colonies, was a degrading sequel to 
 a terribly costly quarrel. The war added 
 forty millions sterling to what had been a 
 nominal national debt, but it had the good 
 effect of strengthening the pacific reaction 
 which enabled Walpole to take the first steps 
 toward free trade, and favoured another 
 momentous development in the political 
 experience of the world the passage to 
 aristocratic and middle-class power in Parlia- 
 ment, and Cabinet responsibility under the 
 two-party system. James I had written a 
 book to prove that divine right of kings to
 
 158 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 dispose of their country as though it were 
 a private farm which was most fully pro- 
 claimed at the Court of Louis XIV. The 
 French peasants were not, the English yeomen 
 were, well enough off to rebel. Cromwell and 
 his Puritan cavalry said the decisive word 
 on this subject for England. It was finally 
 elaborated in the Bill of Rights after the 
 second Revolution and the banishment of 
 the Stuarts; and the first dull Hanoverians 
 did not dare or care to dispute it. The 
 Jacobite risings of 1689, 1715, and 1745 
 showed that the old sentiment lingered on 
 in the remoter parts of the country, but 
 offered as little evidence of divine rightful- 
 ness as did the transatlantic imbecilities of 
 George III and Lord North of the sagacity 
 that can alone commend kingly rule. An 
 era of rationalism in which the spirits of 
 Renaissance and Reformation were blended 
 had come, and in its dry light the only 
 choice for royalty was to modernise itself or 
 disappear. 
 
 As we look eastward, the Europe of this 
 period takes a gloomier aspect. Through 
 ages of warfare with the Spanish and German 
 branches of the Hapsburgs, the territory of 
 France extended into Flanders and Alsace, 
 under a monarchy unequalled lor splendour and 
 arrogance. But the glory of court and camp 
 costs dear. Hereditary absolutism, whatever
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 159 
 
 heights it may attain, is doomed because 
 it cannot perpetuate its abilities; and the de- 
 generacy of the Bourbons synchronised with 
 the flood of eighteenth century scepticism. 
 A prophet might have seen the guillotine at 
 the end of this road. The absentee landlords 
 for whom it was disgrace to be dismissed from 
 Versailles to their estates saw nothing. Enjoy- 
 ing the largest, richest, and most homogeneous 
 estate in the Western world, Louis XV and 
 his courtiers could never be content. Terri- 
 torial greed, extravagant display, and preda- 
 tory militarism ruined the work of great 
 Ministers like Colbert and Turgot. The loss 
 of Canada to England (1759) was ill compen- 
 sated by the gain of Lorraine, Alsace, and 
 Corsica (1766-68). Ideas brought home from 
 the free soil of the New World and sown 
 in the hot-bed of native grievance contributed 
 to the terrible harvest of the Revolution. 
 
 The United Provinces (Holland) enjoyed in 
 the seventeenth century, largely through the 
 vigour of their municipal life, a sudden but 
 brief efflorescence not unlike that of the 
 ancient city-states of Greece at their height, 
 or the North Italy of the Renaissance; and, 
 as in those cases, the strange association of 
 sublime art and profane plutocracy again 
 appeared. Spain, drunk with fanaticism, 
 having staked her trade and industry on 
 the issue of universal empire, could yet not
 
 160 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 keep out of European broils, and, with the loss 
 of her Italian and other outlying possessions, 
 sank into a miserable lethargy. Italy had 
 given freely of her best and worst, and was 
 reaping a bitter return. Soldiers of fortune 
 pillaged the cities that soldiers of fortune had 
 made. Milan, Parma, Naples, Sicily passed 
 from hand to hand, pawns in the royal 
 family game. Worst of all, Germany was a 
 field of perpetual warfare from the Baltic to 
 the Alps. Here Bourbon humbled Hapsburg 
 (it was cheaper to keep the army abroad than 
 at home); here Spain assailed the Northern 
 heretics, and Kings of Sweden, Denmark, 
 France, and England shared the federal 
 power. 
 
 The separatist spirit was the cost to Ger- 
 many of her pre-eminence in the work of the 
 Reformation. In the Thirty Years' War 
 (1619-48) millions of lives were destroyed, 
 and the country was covered with ruined 
 villages and towns. In an uncultivated 
 land without traditions and centres of 
 self-government, or in a flat agricultural 
 region, the answer to this anarchy would 
 have been autocracy. Germany was none 
 such; yet the growth of military States like 
 Prussia and Austria is very comprehensible. 
 The Hohenzollerns, heirs of the estate of the 
 old Teutonic knights, shrewd, frugal, indus- 
 trious, unblushingly self-confident, survived
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 161 
 
 the inroads of Poles, Swedes, and Russians, 
 took to themselves a crown in 1700, and 
 with it the representation of northern and 
 Protestant Germany against the Catholic and 
 Austrian south. The Wars of the Polish 
 Election (1733) and the Austrian Succession 
 (1740-48) greatly weakened Austria, and 
 brought Prussia, under Frederic II, " the 
 Great," author, philosopher, organiser, and 
 fighter, the Duchy of Silesia and a place in 
 the circle of the Great Powers. In the Seven 
 Years' War (1756-63) against Austria, Poland, 
 and Sweden, Frederic showed his military 
 skill and won a lukewarm aid from England 
 and Russia. This sounds enough; and yet 
 a century later, long after London and Paris 
 had composed their graver differences, Vienna 
 and Berlin had not finished their long feud. 
 Ocean-borne commerce was the chief factor 
 in the more rapid constitutional and social 
 progress of the Western nations. 
 
 Meanwhile, a new State, of very different 
 constitution, character, and destiny was arising 
 between Asia and Europe. Three circum- 
 stances explain the fact that Russia is to-day 
 the one absolute monarchy left in the Western 
 world, and the one country in which famine 
 and revolution are chronic. The first is the 
 structure of the land, a vast plain falling into 
 three zones ich wheat-fields and prairies in 
 the south, forests and clearings in the centre 
 F
 
 162 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and frozen tundras in the north. With only 
 a few fat-scattered cities, with no considerable 
 trading class till the nineteenth century, and 
 a poor nobility dependent on servile agricul- 
 ture, the Tsardom found no counterpoise in 
 national affairs, though, till lately, it has had 
 to make terms in local administration with the 
 peasant communes now in course of destruc- 
 tion. Secondly, the long and cruel sway of the 
 Mongols favoured the growth of absolutism, as 
 did the aggressions of Poland in the fifteenth 
 century. The third factor is the influence, 
 unbroken for a thousand years, of the Russo- 
 Greek Church, with its splendid ritual and 
 fixed dogma, its determined opposition to 
 intellectual freedom and progress. We talk 
 of the dead hand of feudalism in Western 
 Europe; the dead hand in Russia is that of 
 the Byzantine Emperors. Peter the Great 
 put a Western veneer upon the life of his 
 court, but could do no more. Blocked on 
 the Baltic by Sweden, Russia expanded 
 southward and eastward until the eighteenth 
 century, when she took Finland, Livonia, 
 Esthonia, and large parts of Lithuania and 
 Poland, while reaching through Georgia into 
 the heart of Asia, Centuries of warfare 
 with Sweden and Poland, with Napoleonic 
 France, with Turkey and her allies, and with 
 the mountaineers and tribesmen of the Asiatic 
 borderlands, have not availed to make the
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 163 
 
 Russians a warlike or, in the ordinary sense, 
 a patriotic people. They have given birth 
 to few great soldiers. Consciousness of nation- 
 ality is feebly developed; and the crisis of a 
 foreign war has more than once been seized 
 as an opportuntiy of revolt against a hated 
 Government. A certain dull obstinacy of 
 resistance, together with the hard natural 
 conditions of this strange land, served, never- 
 theless, to break the greatest conqueror the 
 world has ever seen. 
 
 Such, in the briefest outline, is the history 
 of the steps Europe had taken during the 
 sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen- 
 turies, toward the territorial settlement which 
 is essential to any stable civilisation, and the 
 balance of national powers which was the only 
 method, since all authority of European 
 extent disappeared, of guaranteeing peace 
 and progress. One must, no doubt, be very 
 far removed from these blind and reckless 
 times, so full of cynicism, licence, and slaugh- 
 ter, to see in them any progressive tendency. 
 Would, then, the conclusion that millions of 
 men sacrificed their lives for nothing, except 
 to satisfy the whims of greedy monarchs 
 and much- decorated generals, be any easier ? 
 For every effect, there must be an adequate 
 cause, in human affairs as in the physical 
 world. Ignorance, greed, hate, lust of fighting, 
 a bestial obedience these explain much, but 
 F 2
 
 164 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 by no means all. Old Kaspar of Blenheim 
 suits a lazy humour : 
 
 " They say it was a shocking sight 
 After the field was won; 
 For many thousand bodies here 
 Lay rotting in the sun! . . . 
 
 " ' But what good came of it at last ? ' 
 Quoth little Peterkin. 
 'Why, that I cannot tell,' said he, 
 ' But 'twas a famous victory.' " 
 
 Little Peterkin's question remains; and there 
 is no history till it is answered. 
 
 It is true that the treaties of the time show 
 little change for so much loss. The mistake 
 is to regard this as no result at all. At what- 
 ever insane and even suicidal cost obtained, it 
 is a very material result. Uncertain tenures 
 and claims were tested by the rule in which 
 they had risen, the rule of power. One after 
 another, a number of uncertain combinations 
 of these arbitrary tenures had been tried. 
 The greater national units had proved their 
 vitality and capacity for progress. Neither 
 Papist nor Calvinist could henceforth lord 
 it over Europe. The divine right of Hapsburg 
 and Bourbon was as unequal as the blood-fury 
 of a Charles XII or the calculation of a 
 Frederic to establish a European empire. 
 That is the negative result. There was 
 something positive, too. The ancient regime 
 could go no further. War Lad left it bankrupt.
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 165 
 
 But the common people were awaking to new 
 methods of life. Every one of these competing 
 nations represented the possibility of a differ- 
 ent contribution to a possible union of Europe. 
 Forces had arisen, especially in the West 
 Parliament, machine manufactures, Ministers 
 not of the king but of the Commons, news- 
 papers which were beginning to shape a 
 new governing power. The costs of aggression 
 were now plainly advertised in figures of 
 taxation and national debt. They were 
 steadily increasing at the time when taxpayers 
 and investors were beginning to scrutinise 
 them most jealously. The currency must 
 no longer be debased the bankers see to 
 that ; and the enemy cannot be held to 
 ransom or tribute. War has brought about 
 an equipoise of great monarchies. It is not 
 enough. There must be a balance of power, 
 a sound settlement, within the State, before 
 there can be a true balance and union of 
 States. So, echoed from Puritan England to 
 revolted America, and back, there rings out 
 in Paris the challenge to the next great for- 
 ward step national freedom and self-govern- 
 ment, in a word, Democracy. It is the 
 death-knell of arbitrary rulers, the notice-to- 
 quit to all absentee landlords, however noble. 
 There is yet one dominant element in the 
 period which we must attempt to place before 
 we pass on to examine the work of the
 
 1C6 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 nineteenth century. It is summed up in 
 one terrific word Napoleon. If democracy 
 makes for peace, how came this prince of the 
 powers of death to be its herald ? Was the 
 Bastille pulled down in order that the bones 
 of Frenchmen might be strewn from Cadiz to 
 Moscow ? In one of his early journals, Renan 
 seeks to explain obstructive institutions 
 and movements in history as securities for 
 proper digestion in the body politic, without 
 which " it would move too quickly, would 
 not sufficiently fathom each possibility." 
 The movement of humanity can, moreover, 
 only be even when some equality of condition 
 has been established throughout the world; 
 meanwhile, it proceeds by fits and starts, 
 now rushing forward, now falling back to 
 bring up the laggards, and again going forward 
 with mischievous jolt and jar. The inequali- 
 ties of a century ago in Europe were unimagin- 
 ably gross. Napoleon drove the ploughshare 
 of the Revolution across and across this 
 stony field, sowing in every bloody furrow old 
 seeds of hate with the new seeds of liberty, 
 equality, fraternity. 
 
 Before he came to power, France had 
 secured her frontiers, and vindicated her right 
 to a republic, against the enraged coalition 
 whose interference had provoked the worst 
 excesses of the Terror, and was to provoke a 
 yet more injurious reaction. From defence of
 
 THE BALANCE OF POWER 167 
 
 the republic to the expansion of its area, from 
 this to a campaign of revenge by the forcible 
 conversion of other States, and from this 
 to the dream of a modern Caesarism and the 
 final awakening at Waterloo so the fever 
 ran. The better inspiration was a new 
 thing in the annals of conquest; the worse 
 was only new in the fire-like speed with 
 which it spread. This feverish speed was 
 Napoleon. 
 
 Everything about him is of interest, but 
 there is only one thing essential for us to know 
 and understand his representative quality. 
 An alien and a parvenu, having no dogmatic 
 prepossession, revolutionary or other, pursuing 
 only one and that a selfish aim, he did yet 
 represent in certain ways the time and the 
 people; there, and not in any miraculous 
 quality we call genius, lies the secret of his 
 success, the rational explanation of his career. 
 It was the end of an age, a doomed age, 
 beginning with great monarchs and little 
 soldiers, and closing with great soldiers and 
 little monarchs. A people without political 
 experience was called to a work of political 
 reconstruction. But first there must be a 
 great clearance of debris; then, this people 
 must learn from the only teacher, experience, 
 in what democracy consists and does not 
 consist. The logic of conquest had to be 
 worked out in their blood. Like them and
 
 168 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 with them Napoleon stood between the past 
 and the future, with something of both in him. 
 The vigour and pride of the Revolution were 
 given into his hands, and he spent them 
 without any kind of scruple. To these he 
 added an inhuman energy, in which all the 
 blood feuds of his native Corsica seem to 
 blaze out afresh, and a power of sacrificing 
 all to one aim, which put to scorn the feeble- 
 ness and dissensions of the surrounding 
 monarchies. 
 
 He served an ancient, because essentially 
 predatory, art of war with new guns and a new 
 strategy. He was a modern man and a man 
 of the people in this limited sense : he incar- 
 nated the grosser side of the thwarted prole- 
 tarian, his daring, grasping vigour and self- 
 confidence, his mechanical skill, his common 
 sense, directness, and thoroughness, his con- 
 tempt of phrase-mongers and " hereditary 
 asses " (as he called the Bourbons). He 
 converted a nation into a military Trust; the 
 millionaire of warfare, we might call him. 
 But here is the distinction : the millionaire 
 belongs to the new time in proportion as he is 
 engaged in making things. Napoleon had 
 only to destroy the old regime and the spirit 
 of conquest with which the Revolution had 
 become infected. His methods were those 
 of the modern man of business, and there lay 
 his success. His aims were those of the old-
 
 NAPOLEON 169 
 
 time monarchies; and there he was fore- 
 doomed to failure. So far, and only so far, 
 was he right in calling himself the Child of 
 Destiny. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 WHEN the Swiss were holding their moun 
 tains against Austria and Burgundy; when 
 Italian or German citizens held their walled 
 towns, and the Dutch revived the ancient 
 Babylonian experiment of digging canals 
 against invasion, they were in the stage 
 which we may call the late mediaeval defensive. 
 The increasing use of gunpowder, with the 
 consequent disappearance of body armour 
 and the old fortification, initiated a period 
 of offensive militarism. After the inven- 
 tion of the bayonet by Vauban in 1641, 
 and of the flint-lock, adopted by France in 
 1648, the pikeman gave way to the mus- 
 keteer. Artillery was multiplied and lightened. 
 Cond6 and Turenne, in the battles of seven- 
 teenth-century France on the Rhine and Dutch 
 frontiers, anticipated the motto " L'audace, et 
 toujours Paudace," marching rapidly, break- 
 ing the old sanctity of " winter quarters," 
 practising novel and daring methods of
 
 1TO WAR AND PEACE 
 
 attack according to the character of the 
 ground. Frederick II, whom his father (proud 
 possessor of giant grenadiers) had caned 
 for lack of interest in the Potsdam drill- 
 ground, showed in the organisation a moving 
 commissariat and regular horse batteries, 
 as well as in the tactics of his startling 
 descent on Silesia, that some of these lessons 
 could be carried yet further. The French 
 flint-lock, lightened and otherwise improved 
 between 1777 and 1800, could fire three and 
 even six shots a minute. At the same time the 
 use of fulminate of mercury was discovered, 
 and cannon were designed for their different 
 purposes. Napoleon exhausted these possi- 
 bilities, alike of personality and armament, 
 and in this, as in his political aims, we recognise 
 that he belonged not to the beginning, but 
 the end of an age. 
 
 He was twenty years old, and still in 
 Ajaccio, when the great explosion of 1789 
 occurred. Burke' s provocative Reflections and 
 the dispersion of the emigres were followed 
 in 1791 by the Austro-Prussian Declaration 
 of Pilnitz, a virtual notice of war on the 
 Republic. The actual declaration against 
 Austria came from Louis XVI in the follow- 
 ing spring; and in July, Prussia entered the 
 field. The old royal army of France suffered 
 a series of reverses; and this failure, while 
 it aggravated the anti -royalist passion, and,
 
 NAPOLEON 171 
 
 as the allies advanced, led to Danton's policy 
 of terrorism and the September massacres, 
 also actuated the establishment of a popular 
 army whose singular inspiration it was to 
 " make tyrants tremble," and punish any 
 people " so obstinately attached to its state 
 of brutishness " as not to be willing to throw 
 over its " prince and privileged castes " 
 (Decree of December 15, 1792). This was 
 something utterly new, different in every way 
 from the orthodox army of the time, hired 
 and impressed, with its gaudy uniforms, formal 
 drill, and " gentlemen " officers. That the 
 " armed doctrine," as Burke called it, proved 
 an extraordinary inspiration, the occupation 
 of Belgium, Savoy, and the Middle Rhine 
 before the end of the winter eloquently 
 testified. 
 
 But the mere enthusiast in war is a broken 
 reed. Dunkirk, Wattignies, Wissembourg, 
 Tourcoing, Fleurus were won by overwhelm- 
 ing numbers, and the relentless energy of 
 Carnot, " organiser of victory." The rebels 
 of Vendee and the south were crushed by the 
 same use of the power of conscription and 
 requisition. It must always be remembered 
 that the Revolution and the Republic were 
 threatened by three enemies at once 
 foreign invasion, insurrection, and treason 
 like that of Dumouriez. Even so, there can- 
 not be any just judgment upon this time of
 
 172 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 general upheaval and wild words and deeds 
 without something of the sympathy which 
 moved Wordsworth as he walked among the 
 villages of France, 
 
 " And found benevolence and blessedness 
 Spread like a fragrance everywhere " 
 
 which held him even through the Reign of 
 Terror, and only broke down when 
 
 " Frenchmen had changed a war of self-defence 
 For one of conquest, losing sight of all 
 Which they had struggled for." 
 
 Bonaparte first appears as an actor in the 
 quickly-changing drama in August 1793, a 
 young artillery officer commanding the guns 
 before Toulon. The king had been executed 
 seven months before; and England was in 
 arms with the Austrians and Prussians 
 against the Republic a Coalition doomed to 
 failure by the restriction of British effort to 
 the colonies and the high seas, and by the 
 more base preoccupations which consummated 
 the two partitions of Poland between the 
 Central and Eastern Powers, in 1793 and 
 1795. Prussia, thus consoled, abandoned the 
 German territories west of the Rhine, and for 
 ten years stood out of the conflict. General 
 of artillery with the successful army in 
 Italy, and defender of the Convention with 
 his " whiff of grapeshot " against the Paris 
 insurgents in October 1795, Napoleon re-
 
 NAPOLEON 173 
 
 turned to Italy in full command six months 
 later, and definitely opened his career of 
 conquest. Marked as much by rapacity, 
 terrorism, and deception, as by power of 
 organisation, manoeuvring skill, and quick 
 seizure of opportunity, the campaign fitly 
 terminated in the Peace of Campo Formio, 
 October 1797, by which France obtained the 
 Rhine frontier and shared with Austria the 
 spoil of Venice, destroying the most ancient 
 of existing republics. The pillage of Switzer- 
 land the event which did most to turn the 
 poets and thinkers of England and Germany 
 against France and the conquest of Egypt 
 occupied the summer of 1798. Nelson's 
 destruction of the French fleet off the Nile 
 scotched this adventure and Napoleon's 
 power of mischief on the sea; but, like our 
 colonial victories, it did not arrest his domin- 
 ance in Europe, or the unscrupulous ambition 
 which emerged triumphant in the plot of 
 November 1799, the establishment of the 
 Consulate, and the gradual destruction of 
 representative institutions in France. 
 
 After two years of manoeuvring, Pitt 
 succeeded in dragging Russia and Austria 
 into the Second Coalition. The Tsar rejected 
 the British proposal that the restoration of 
 the Bourbons should be demanded a blunder 
 of Pitt's which did much to consolidate 
 Napoleon's power. The general basis of the
 
 174 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 alliance, therefore, was that France should 
 be driven within her previous frontiers. 
 These shifty partners had yet much to 
 learn. For a time they were victorious 
 alike on the Rhine and in North Italy. But 
 while, under one master, France was rising 
 to its fullest military strength under the con- 
 scription law of September 6, 1798, its enemies 
 were enfeebled by childish jealousies. Russia 
 having sacrificed Suvoroff's victories to pique, 
 and retired from the campaign, Napoleon 
 broke the Austrian forces at Marengo (June 14, 
 1800), and posed more confidently than evei' 
 as the man of glorious destiny. While Moreau 
 routed the Archduke John's army in the 
 defile of Hohenlinden (Dec. 3), the brief 
 Franco-Russian alliance, masquerading as a 
 League of Neutrals, was abruptly ended by 
 the coincidence of the assassination of the 
 Emperor Paul with Nelson's victory at Copen- 
 hagen (April 2, 1801). Neutrals had only 
 too good ground of complaint against British 
 naval policy; but it was not to a half-insane 
 Tsar and a military adventurer who recog- 
 nised no restraint of law or honour that they 
 could look for protection. A pause now en- 
 sued. France had lost Egypt ; she might have 
 relinquished Holland and Spain and Italy 
 and yet remained, with the Scheldt, the 
 Rhine, and the Alps for frontiers, the strongest 
 State in Europe. But Napoleon was already
 
 NAPOLEON 175 
 
 entertaining vaster designs, which he hinted 
 at in threats of a " revival of the grandeur 
 of ancient Rome " a new Rome against a 
 new Carthage. 
 
 Dreaming of Augustan glory, he was 
 sufficiently awake to know that, now as 
 in old time, this involved not merely the 
 destruction of the last shadow of republican 
 forms, and an autocratic concentration of 
 national power, but economic changes no 
 less far-reaching. Under the Republic, France 
 had risen spontaneously in defence of its 
 territory and the Revolution. The reaction 
 upon neighbouring lands and the first develop- 
 ment of the spirit of conquest had found in 
 Bonaparte its financier as well as its engineer. 
 He made these wars pay their way by system- 
 atic extortion from the conquered peoples. 
 " It was not in vain that we had so long 
 sought temporary palliatives to our deficits 
 in the spoliation of nations, vanquished 
 enemies, or allies. These criminal expedients 
 of a Government reduced to the last extremity 
 were about to become the regular and normal 
 system. There was no longer the excuse of 
 the old distress; but the Government wished 
 at the expense of foreigners to spare the tax- 
 payers who had it in their power to give or 
 withdraw their support. It became, there- 
 fore, customary to consider as our natural 
 tributaries all nations who were incapable
 
 176 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 of self-defence. And this system of exaction, 
 at first only a consequence of war, began to 
 be regarded as its chief end. Bonaparte 
 henceforth indulged in the chimerical dream 
 of keeping the people content with war by 
 giving them Europe to devour " (Lanfrey : 
 History of Napoleon, where the predatory 
 side of his career is illustrated from the text 
 of his proclamations and other documents). 
 To humble Spain or Venice was one thing 
 however, to humble England quite another. 
 A widening programme of conquest meant 
 a widening revenue, a new navy, and a quick- 
 moving administration. Ultimately, perhaps, 
 foreign loot might redeem these luxuries; 
 immediately, France must pay for them. 
 Moreover, there must be no more mobs of 
 hungry desperadoes in Paris perhaps the 
 only thing the First Consul really feared. 
 Bonaparte set to work, therefore, with cool 
 impetuosity, to amend and centralise French 
 taxation, education, and local government; 
 to establish a national bank; to placate the 
 Pope, and make the clergy servants of the 
 State; to create a Court and a press by which 
 he could hypnotise the people into accepting 
 his schemes as their own. The Peace of 
 Amiens (March 25, 1802), by which France 
 momentarily gave up Rome and Naples, 
 while England restored her colonial con- 
 quests during the war, except Ceylon and
 
 NAPOLEON 177 
 
 Trinidad, gave time for these changes to 
 bear fruit. 
 
 It was a fleeting pact. In May, 1803, 
 England again declared war, and seized several 
 colonies; while Napoleon fastened armies 
 upon Hanover and Naples, and extorted 
 contributions of men and money also from 
 Holland, Switzerland, and Spain (72 million 
 francs in one year from Spain alone). His 
 foul murder of the Due d'Enghien upon a 
 sham charge of conspiracy, and his assump- 
 tion of the titles of Emperor (Dec., 1804) and 
 King of Italy (May, 1805) provoked the new 
 Tsar, Alexander I, to the initiation of a Third 
 Coalition, in which Austria and Sweden were 
 persuaded to join. Prussia, however, was 
 still resolutely irresolute. At last England's 
 sea power was to be seriously challenged. 
 While Pitt was defending to the Tsar the 
 annoying " right " of searching neutral ships, 
 which was and continued to be one of the 
 most arbitrary weapons of the British Ad- 
 miralty, Napoleon was organising his in- 
 genious plan for a junction of French fleets 
 in the West Indies, and a combined dash 
 back to Boulogne, where a force of invasion 
 was to be picked up. Whatever it may have 
 been worth Whitehall does not seem to 
 have been alarmed, and Napoleon afterwards 
 said that the Boulogne army was only in- 
 tended to deceive Austria Calder's victory
 
 178 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 off Finisterre put an end to the threat; and 
 Trafalgar (a victory for the gunners, in the 
 main-; its price, ten thousand lives and 
 Nelson's) finally determined England's supre- 
 macy at sea. These events led, however, 
 to another style of warfare, which, though 
 ultimately ruinous to France, brought England 
 also into dire straits the embargo upon 
 British goods under the " Continental system," 
 and the consequent Orders in Council estab- 
 lishing the Continental blockade. 
 
 Napoleon had from the outset understood 
 that his arch-enemy must be struck at 
 through her commerce. But his economic 
 knowledge does not seem to have bettered 
 the ignorant Protectionism which had accom- 
 panied the rise of the Republic, and had 
 produced several ineffectual decrees for the 
 seizure of British goods. Under the Berlin 
 decree of November, 1806, trade with the 
 British Isles was forbidden, and British 
 subjects, goods, and letters were declared 
 seizable. Three months later, a retaliatory 
 blockade was proclaimed by England a 
 foolish measure, which led to a rupture with 
 the United States, and greatly aggravated 
 domestic suffering and discontent. Whether 
 the Continent was starved into revolt against 
 Napoleon, or whether other causes chiefly 
 contributed to excite the rising of peoples 
 to effect what their rulers had so signally
 
 NAPOLEON 179 
 
 failed to accomplish, need not here be dis- 
 cussed. What is certain is that England 
 was saved from peril of starvation and 
 revolution not by Ministerial measures actu- 
 ated as much by a monopolistic as a defensive 
 spirit, but, in the first place, because, in his 
 ignorance of economic law, Napoleon actually 
 helped her to the one commodity she could 
 not do without corn. " At the time when 
 Napoleon was about to order British and 
 Colonial goods to be confiscated or burnt all 
 over his vast empire, he sought to stimulate 
 exports to our shores. Why ? Because such 
 exports would benefit his States, and enable 
 public works to be carried out. We may go 
 even further, and say that Napoleon believed 
 the effect of sending those exports to our 
 shores would be to weaken us. His economic 
 ideas were those of the crudest section of 
 the old Mercantile School. He believed 
 that a nation's commercial wealth consisted 
 essentially in its exports, while imports were 
 to be jealously restricted, because they drew 
 bullion away. Destroy Britain's exports, 
 and allow her to import whatever his own 
 lands could well spare, and she would bleed 
 to death " (Holland Rose : Napoleonic Studies, 
 chs. vii and viii). Four other factors helped 
 to carry England through her economic 
 crisis : the increase of wealth due to the 
 recent industrial inventions; improvements in
 
 180 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 agriculture encouraged by the rise of prices; 
 the opening of the South and Central American 
 markets in 1808, after the Spanish rising, and 
 of the Russian market in 1812; and the 
 development of smuggling, due to the rise 
 of prices on the Continent, and to the fact 
 that most British exports were not bulky 
 for their value. 
 
 Thwarted in his designs on India, North 
 America, and all that rests on naval power, 
 the great soldier, who from his birth on one 
 island to his death on another never under- 
 stood the sea, turned back to challenge what 
 remained of independence in Europe to 
 mortal combat. Six weeks carried his army 
 from Boulogne to the Danube; in two 
 months more Ulm had been captured with 
 60,000 men, Vienna entered, and the Russians 
 and Austrians cut in two at Austerlitz with 
 a loss of 27,000 men. As Napoleon stood, 
 a new Emperor of the West, with a ring of 
 subject States and appanages and a royal 
 family of his own around him, the news of 
 the death of Pitt (Jan., 1806) may well have 
 completed his satisfaction in the collapse of 
 the Third Coalition. Prussia remained, a 
 futile court amid a disorganised and hopeless 
 people. Playing adroitly on the rival in- 
 terests in Hanover, Bonaparte first removed 
 the danger of English co-operation, then 
 smashed the Prussian forces at Jena and
 
 NAPOLEON 181 
 
 Auerstadt (Oct., 1806), and a fortnight later, 
 after rifling the tomb of Frederic the Great, 
 triumphantly entered Berlin. Here was an- 
 other land to squeeze for men and money. 
 The army numbered 600,000 men; but it was 
 no longer wholly French France had been 
 exhausted by forestalled conscriptions and it 
 had lost all its republican character. France 
 was, indeed, no longer to Napoleon anything 
 more than his chief province and military 
 base. In the length and breadth of the 
 Continent, there was now left only one great 
 independent Power. Thus far, the conqueror 
 had always posed as the liberator of peoples; 
 and, as he advanced to the Vistula, the Poles 
 hailed him as their avenger, and helped to 
 destroy, at Friedland (June, 1807), the last 
 resisting force that could be brought against 
 him. But it is precisely from this moment 
 that the reaction against the Empire of the 
 peoples that had hoped all of the Republic 
 must be counted. 
 
 In the perspective of a century's unceasing 
 study, the victories leading to the Tilsit 
 treaty are seen to be the culminating point 
 in this marvellous career. The Star of 
 conquest stood at the zenith. Never in the 
 world's history had the force of one man so 
 dominated the imagination of millions. Never, 
 assuredly, had gun and bayonet, horse and 
 cannon been put to such use; " the art of
 
 182 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 war, one may say, had reached its last limit " 
 (Thiers : Histoire du Consulat et de V Empire). 
 The passionate revulsion that delivered the 
 ideals and powers of revolutionary France 
 into the hands of a young Corsican had 
 seemed a miracle, yet that was a small 
 beginning. A dozen years and a hundred 
 blood-soaked battlefields had made him 
 general of generals, king of kings, absolute 
 master of a wider realm than had ever ac- 
 knowledged one allegiance, angel or devil of 
 universal legend, the supreme incarnation of 
 the glory of war. The more the bloodshed, 
 the deeper the worship, the deeper the fear, 
 and the wilder the frenzy of self-immolation. 
 The splendour of the Star was yet unclouded; 
 but it moved downward. The rest of 
 Napoleon's story is one of occasional vic- 
 tories and recurring failure, of infatuation 
 deepening to madness, of growing physical 
 and mental exhaustion, broken by desperate 
 sallies, and a last rush to utter ruin. 
 
 The bargain with the Tsar, made on a raft 
 in the Niemen on June 17, 1807, had pro- 
 vided for the dismemberment of Prussia, and 
 the enlistment of the Scandinavian and 
 Iberian States against England, as prelimin- 
 aries to a partition of the world between 
 France and Russia. Canning's prompt seizure 
 of the Danish fleet checked the Baltic move; 
 and when Junot entered Lisbon he found
 
 NAPOLEON 183 
 
 that the Portuguese fleet had escaped. Then, 
 at last, the decisive factor which all the courts 
 of Europe had failed to discover made its 
 appearance. The people in arms had made 
 Napoleon ; the peoples in arms were to humble 
 him. The first national rising took place 
 in the mountains of Spain and Portugal in 
 the summer of 1808; and the victories of 
 Baylen, Vimiero, Coninna, and Talavera, 
 though long fruitless, sent a tremor of hope 
 through the ravaged continent, brought Brit- 
 ish arms effectively into the land struggle, 
 and, by locking up 300,000 of Napoleon's 
 troops in the peninsula, seriously weakened 
 his force in the north-east. The dead bones 
 were stirring too, in Prussia, where the last 
 relics of serfdom were only abolished in 1807. 
 Stein's land and local government reforms, 
 followed by Von Humboldt's educational 
 measures, and Scharnhorst's invention of 
 universal military service adding to a small 
 active army a reserve, a landwehr or militia, 
 and a landsturm or mass levy produced a 
 radical transformation. No less striking was 
 the change of mind which converted Schiller 
 and Fichte from academic exponents of anti- 
 patriotism into apostles of the new spirit of 
 nationality. 
 
 The Prussian revolt was momentarily 
 submerged by the humiliation of Austria 
 at Wagram, the annexation of Oldenburg,
 
 184 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Hamburg, and other German districts, and 
 the misery caused by a final effort to make the 
 embargo on British trade effective. Where, 
 however, a particularly feeble Hohenzollern 
 could not yet dare all, Russia could; and when, 
 in the Tsar's refusal to confiscate certain 
 neutral ships, the hands of East and West 
 met over his head, Napoleon decided to 
 stake his fate upon the Moscow campaign. 
 France, impoverished in blood and wealth, 
 was tired of war. The best counsellors 
 groaned; yet who could resist the brilliance 
 of this Imperial reception at Dresden, where 
 submissive kings and princes jogged elbows 
 with arrogant officers, and a mob was always 
 waiting to catch a glimpse of the superman 
 whose word was Europe's law ? A cosmo- 
 politan army of 617,000 men had been drawn 
 from every part of the continent; and, of 
 these, 448,000 men, with 1,872 pieces of 
 cannon, thousands of caissons of artillery and 
 ambulance, and many herds of cattle, com- 
 menced the fateful passage of the Niemen 
 on June 24, 1812. 
 
 Mystery stood upon the very threshold of 
 this silent realm. Where was the expected 
 enemy ? Through swamps and prairies, past 
 interminable forests, the Grand Army sought 
 it, to find a few flying peasants, or deserted 
 camp-fires, to catch a distant glimpse of 
 Cossack outposts. Why did the Tsar not
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 send proposals of peace ? Weeks passed, 
 and no word came from the Russian camp. 
 Where was the enemy ? Could he, the man 
 who had always attacked, the man whose 
 genius was speed, be expected to stand there 
 and wait on the defensive ? And, again, 
 where was the enemy ? The Sphinx of the 
 North made no reply to these questions; 
 a grim sky seemed to say eternally that 
 Russia neither expected, nor asked, nor offered 
 anything. At last, a town was found amid 
 the immensity of this implacable land : 
 Vitepsk deserted, save for one Russian 
 soldier asleep under a hedge. What next ? 
 Napoleon wavered. To-day he would stay 
 and "organise Poland"; hospitals were set 
 up, soon to be filled, and soon then to be 
 abandoned, without even food, and forgotten, 
 a horrible thing. Then he would go on, on to 
 Moscow. " Decided, he jumps up suddenly, 
 as though to leave no time for further 
 uncertainty, and, full of the plan which must 
 give him victory, strides to his maps. They 
 show him Smolensk and Moscow, the great 
 Moscow, the holy city ! names that he 
 repeats complacently, and that seem to 
 quicken his eagerness. With this, the very 
 spirit of war seems to possess him. His 
 voice hardens, his glance sparkles, his gestures 
 become wild. We keep away from him, for 
 fear as much as respect; but, at last, his plan
 
 186 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 is made, his determination taken ! " (Se"gur : 
 La Campagne de Russie). 
 
 His determination ! Is, then, the will of 
 one man for ever to triumph over all human 
 rights ? The Sphinx has two more of her 
 silent words to say. " At last, I have them ! " 
 cried Napoleon, as the Grand Army faced the 
 fortress of Smolensk; but at nightfall, when, 
 after a brief resistance, the Russians retired, 
 columns of smoke were seen rising, then 
 sparks, then an all-embracing sea of flame. 
 What do the soldiers think, or do they never 
 think ? Napoleon still has their measure, 
 rains decorations upon them, and speeches : 
 44 This fight was the finest in our military 
 history ; the soldiers who heard him were men 
 with whom one could conquer the world; 
 those killed had died an immortal death." 
 But, in the foul, crowded hospitals, hunger and 
 agony reum; in the stillness of his quarters 
 Napoleon cannot evade the questions : What 
 is this new terror, the fruit of accident, of 
 despair, or of design ? With Charles XII 
 in his mind, he hesitates again, and again 
 goes forward. On August 28 the advance 
 guard enters Viazma, only to find it in 
 flames. 
 
 At length, on September 5, the Russians 
 turn : it is Borodino. On the night before 
 the battle, Bonaparte is in a fever. " He 
 seems to be reflecting on the vanity of glory.
 
 NAPOLEON 187 
 
 ' What is war ? A business of barbarians, 
 in which the whole art consists in being the 
 strongest at a given point.' ' During the 
 terrible struggle he hesitates over his orders, 
 shows an astonishing lethargy, refuses re- 
 serves, retires to his tent. u Let him return 
 to the Tuileries," exclaims Ney, furious, 
 " and leave us to be generals for him ! " 
 It is a half-victory, and at what a cost 
 forty -three generals killed and wounded; 
 50,000 Russian and 30,000 French losses. 
 Segur recalls two old sayings of Bonaparte, 
 the first in Italy fifteen years before : " Health 
 is indispensable to war, and nothing can 
 replace it " the other at Austerlitz : " I 
 shall be good for war for six years more; 
 then I must stop." Now, dragging a tired 
 body over the stricken field, he could pity his 
 broken victims. Many years afterwards, the 
 distinguished Frenchman, De Vogue", wrote : 
 44 1 was talking one day with the Russian 
 priest of Borodino, and he spoke of the pros- 
 pects of the coming crops, adding care- 
 lessly : * In my childhood, the corn was 
 much richer here; our land had been so well 
 manured.' ' 
 
 Not far from Moscow, a German engineer, 
 on the Tsar's order, was experimenting with 
 a great balloon from which a rain of ex- 
 plosives was to be poured upon the ogre of 
 the West. Rostopchin knew a better weapon
 
 188 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 than any such novelties in the art of war. 
 Let " the Red Cock " crow : revolution and 
 invasion could be burnt up in the same 
 flames ! Forgetting all their sufferings, their 
 losses, their doubts and fears, in a spasm of 
 pride and relief, the invading host poured 
 into the city, only to be driven out by a blind- 
 ing smoke. The conqueror of the world had 
 been beaten by a gang of incendiaries. 
 
 Obstinate against all reasoning, hoping 
 against hope that Alexander would bow to 
 his majesty, distracting himself with the 
 rules of the Comedie Fran9aise and the latest 
 novel, Napoleon held his ground for two 
 months, king of the ashes of Muscovy. Then 
 the Sphinx spoke her final word. The first 
 snow fell, and with it the last illusion of 
 the Grand Army. On October 19, its remains, 
 100,000 men, with 550 cannon and many 
 carts-full of spoil, turned westward, with 
 Kutusoff' s Cossacks ever at its heels. The 
 battle of Malo-Jaroslavetz diverted it into 
 a route already ravaged, marked by dead 
 bodies, and now a frozen desert. As the 
 hospitals established in the summer were 
 passed, the wounded inmates came out and 
 stood by the road, begging not to be aban- 
 doned. Theirs was not the worst fate. At 
 Krasnoy, in the middle of November, the 
 retreat became a flight, heroic Ney always 
 holding the rear, a flight of spectres through
 
 NAPOLEON 189 
 
 fog and driving snow. In this shadow of an 
 army, this band of tattered fugitives, misery 
 conquered the last semblance of order, and 
 with it all humane scruples disappeared. At 
 every step men fell by the way : there was, 
 there could be, no help. Cold, hunger, deadly 
 weariness, wounds, and sickness broke all 
 semblance of manhood. Baggage carts were 
 driven pitilessly through the demoralised 
 mob of infantry and camp-followers. In 
 the passage of the Beresina (Nov. 26-28) 
 the rush for the frail bridges carried thou- 
 sands to their doom in the icy river; while, 
 overhead, the explosion of shells and a burst 
 of storm caught up oaths and cries of despair 
 into an infernal chorus. Of 80,000 men, 
 00,000 survived this debacle. 
 
 Napoleon left the army secretly, reaching 
 Paris on December 19. The remnant strug- 
 gled on to the frontier through the worst of 
 the winter, leaving circles of dead at every 
 bivouac, almost incapable of fighting, with 
 bloodshot eyes and bursts of hysterical 
 laughter, dragging itself through the snow, 
 reduced to unspeakable savagery. Before 
 Vilna was reached, 30,000 men more had 
 perished. At Ponari, the treasure-boxes were 
 pillaged; Se'gur says that ten million francs 
 in gold and silver disappeared. When the 
 Russian pursuit ceased, at Kalish, there 
 remained of the Grand Army two Kings,
 
 190 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 a Prince, eight Marshals, a few Generals on 
 foot without suite, a thousand infantry and 
 cavalry, including some hundreds of the Old 
 Guard, still armed, and 24,000 broken fugi- 
 tives, with streaming hair and bandaged 
 limbs, blind and dumb from weakness and 
 despair. Such has ever been the harvest of 
 war; but never, perhaps, has the tragedy 
 of Nature's vengeance upon human pride 
 been so swift and overwhelming. 
 
 When I say Nature, I do not only mean 
 that part of it which appears in frost and 
 fire and the vastness of the Russian plain. 
 The evil nature of war itself is against warfare 
 on the Napoleonic scale. Whether then or 
 now, it breaks down of its own weight. There 
 is an inner and fatal impossibility. De 
 Bloch illustrated it by showing that, as be- 
 tween two Great Powers of to-day, war 
 would develop into a ruinous deadlock, 
 through the very perfection of armaments, 
 and the immensity of the forces engaged. 
 We may illustrate it from the starvation of 
 the Grand Army. There is in every war 
 machine a feud, as it were, between its two 
 sides, the combatant and the commissariat. 
 The mercenary armies which sprang up on 
 the collapse of feudalism came nearest to 
 solving the problem, for all their fighting 
 was brigandage and rapine; " War must feed 
 war " was their motto. The transition to
 
 NAPOLEON 191 
 
 permanent armies, for which regular arrange- 
 ments had to be made in times of peace, 
 necessitated a special organisation of supplies. 
 Thus, Gustavus Adolphus introduced the 
 system of " magazines," or centres of pro- 
 visioning; while, in France, the furnishing 
 of food, clothing, and munitions was farmed 
 out to contractors, and vivandtires began 
 to be attached to the camp. Frederick the 
 Great remarked that " the basis of the 
 organisation of armies is victualling. With 
 the bayonets one may win battles, but it is 
 economic conditions that decide the result 
 of a war." 
 
 But Napoleon drew, first from France, 
 then from the conquered lands, armies 
 such as had never been seen on the soil of 
 Europe. He used the conscription like a 
 thumbscrew, anticipating and extending the 
 regular calls till the unhappy wretches had 
 to be brought up in handcuffs, while they 
 deserted in thousands. How were such hosts 
 to be fed ? The old " magazine " system 
 paralysed the movement of troops. The 
 French Revolution made a breach in it by 
 the decrees of 1792-1793 authorising the 
 levy of " contributions " and the seizure of 
 the enemy's goods, and declaring the private 
 property of all Frenchmen liable to seizure 
 for the needs of national defence. Bonaparte, 
 scorning the infant precepts of international
 
 192 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 law, carried this change to its logical issue, 
 and restored to warfare, in a thinly veiled 
 form, its ancient character of wholesale 
 brigandage. 
 
 The first beneficiaries were his soldiers; 
 he looked after them as generals had never 
 done before, and they repaid him with an 
 unprecedented attachment. " Soldiers ! " 
 so he appealed to them " you are half 
 starved and half naked. I am about to lead 
 you into the most fertile valleys of the world. 
 There you will find flourishing cities and a 
 land of abundance. There you will gather 
 honour, glory, and riches. Will you, then, 
 fail in courage ? " This spirit of predatory 
 adventure, and this only, made possible the 
 great victories on which his fame was built. 
 Taine (Les Origines de Ja France Contempo- 
 raine) gives details showing that, in the three 
 years ending December 1798, requisitions 
 and confiscations in Belgium, Holland, Ger- 
 many, and Italy, amounted to two milliards 
 (80,000,000). "In all the wars that made 
 Napoleon Emperor," says Be Bloch, " the 
 French armies fed themselves exclusively by 
 means of contributions and requisitions. So 
 the war of 1805 was made. In 1806 and 1807 
 the Prussians were not only subjected to 
 requisitions, but also to contributions amount- 
 ing in three years to 245,091,800 thalers 
 (about 37,000,000). The war indemnities
 
 NAPOLEON 193 
 
 paid to France independently of these direct 
 fines amounted to another 1,020 millions 
 of francs (40 millions). During the cam- 
 paigns of 1809, 1812, 1813, and 1814, Napoleon 
 practised the same system. But, as the 
 troops could no longer be fed exclusively with 
 supplies obtained from the inhabitants, in 
 all these campaigns money raised as * con- 
 tributions ' had to be spent in purchases. 
 During the wars of 1808 and 1814 in Portugal 
 and Spain, the French armies supplied them- 
 selves also by means of requisitions and contri- 
 butions ; but there, as in Russia, they suffered 
 horrible privations " (La Guerre, vol. iv). 
 
 The ambition of Caesar cannot be sus- 
 tained by the methods of the bandit. Napo- 
 leon fell between these two stools. At the 
 opposite ends of Europe, the man of victory 
 found obstacles against which he could make 
 :no adequate provision. In a poor, hard 
 land, occupied by a sparse, hardy people, war 
 cannot feed war. The rule which Moltke 
 (borrowed from Napoleon, to march separate 
 and fight united, was tried. Marauding 
 bands scoured the country far and wide of 
 (the main army. But this led to a fatal 
 relaxation of discipline, and at the same 
 time gave the guerilla fighters of Spain and 
 Russia their opportunity. We have seen how 
 (the Grand Army degenerated into a barbarian 
 Ihorde. The greatest war machine ever made 
 o
 
 194 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 had broken down under a demand lighter 
 than any considerable army might have to 
 meet in a European war to-day. 
 
 The stoutest manhood of France was de- 
 stroyed. '* In one year," says Taine, t4 1,300,000 
 men were called up, and most of them perished 
 in the campaign of 1814. . . . Between 1804 
 and 1815, Napoleon sent to their death more 
 than 1,700,000 Frenchmen born within the 
 limits of olden France, to whom must be 
 added probably 2,000,000 of men born outside 
 those limits and killed by him under the name 
 of allies or enemies." From first to last, 
 this modern Minotaur probably devoured five 
 million human beings. Neither base enough 
 to limit himself to campaigns of extortion 
 and brigandage possible only in Central 
 Europe, nor patient and sober enough to 
 learn the slow craft of empire-building ; 
 blind to the nobler sides of human nature; 
 understanding neither the minor economics 
 of a modern commissariat, which might have 
 saved him in Russia, nor the major economics 
 of international trade, which might have 
 shown him England's weak spot, the greatest 
 of conquering soldiers succeeded at last only 
 in proving that the conquest of Europe had 
 become impossible. 
 
 The final flickers of his genius need not 
 detain us. Before the survivors of the Mos- 
 cow expedition could reach home, he was
 
 NAPOLEON 195 
 
 getting a new army of 350,000 men into the 
 field. At Liitzen and Bautzen, the allied 
 Prussians and Russians were beaten back. 
 But the infatuation exhibited in repeated 
 refusals of generous terms of peace brought 
 Austria into the coalition, and in the su- 
 preme struggle of Leipzig (Oct. 16-19, 1813), 
 Napoleon's power was shattered. On March 
 80, 1814, the allies proclaimed his deposition, 
 foolishly restored the Bourbon Court, and 
 forthwith set to work upon the reconstruction 
 of the Balance of Power. The famous Con- 
 gress of Vienna, which included six reigning 
 monarchs and the most famous of European 
 statesmen, was, indeed, still in session when, 
 on March 1, 1815, Napoleon, having broken 
 from his exile in Elba, landed near Cannes 
 with a handful of men. He came, he said, 
 to save France from the Bourbons and the 
 returning Emigres, and not to undertake any 
 new warfare. Within the month he stood 
 victorious in Paris. The Allies were slow in 
 moving, and it was not till the middle of 
 June that the final conflict came. At Quatre 
 Bras, on June 16, Wellington repulsed Ney; 
 on the 18th, at Waterloo, Bllicher's Prussians 
 came up in time to make decisive the French 
 rout. A month later, Napoleon gave himself 
 up to the commander of the Bellerophon. He 
 died at St. Helena on May 5, 1821, talking 
 to the end of his battle-fields : " I am going 
 o a
 
 196 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 to rejoin Kle"ber, Desaix, Lannes, Masse" na, 
 Bessieres, Duroc, Ney. . . . They will feel 
 again the intoxication of human glory. . . . 
 We will talk of what we have done, we will 
 talk shop (de notre me'tier) with Frederic, 
 Turenne, Conde", Caesar, Hannibal. . . . Un- 
 less " (with an odd smile), " up there as down 
 here, they are afraid of seeing so many 
 soldiers together." 
 
 A Frenchman can best write his epitaph. 
 De Tocqueville put it most briefly " He was 
 as great as a man can be without virtue"; 
 and Thiers, no harsh judge, thus concluded 
 his long story : " Never was resort to one 
 man more justifiable than in 1800. Yet, 
 after a few years, this sane man became 
 mad, mad with another madness than that 
 of 1793, but not less disastrous; immolated 
 a million men on the field of battle; drew 
 Europe upon France, which it left conquered, 
 blood-soaked, despoiled of the fruit of twenty 
 years of victory, desolated, only having some 
 germs of modern civilisation to cherish. 
 Who, then, could have foreseen that the 
 sagacious of 1800 would be the insensate of 
 1812 and 1813 ? Yes, one might have fore- 
 seen it by recalling that omnipotence carries 
 in itself an incurable insanity. So, in the 
 great life where there is so much to learn 
 for soldiers, administrators, statesmen, let 
 citizens in their turn learn one thing that
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 197 
 
 it is never good to deliver the fatherland to 
 one man, no matter whom, no matter in what 
 circumstances." 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 
 
 WE left Metternich and Talleyrand, Harden- 
 berg, Nesselrode, and Wellington, in accord- 
 ance with the will of their royal masters and 
 the bargains made during the late stages of 
 the war, re-shaping the map of Europe with 
 a view to establishing " a system of durable 
 equilibrium." Though much of the work of 
 the " Holy Alliance " has had to be undone, 
 at incalculable cost, they were the unwitting 
 pioneers of a new era, a new statecraft, and 
 an international balance quite other than that 
 of their immediate design. 
 
 There were four chief weaknesses in the 
 post -Napoleonic settlement. (1) It was the 
 arbitrary work of a monarchical league against 
 the spirit of the Revolution. Lands were 
 bargained away and parcelled out without 
 any pretence of consulting the inhabitants. 
 It soon appeared, however, that two related 
 forces which had received a bloody baptism 
 on the recent battlefields had come to stay 
 Nationality and Democracy; and the political 
 history of the nineteenth century is very
 
 198 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 largely concerned with the triumph of these 
 principles, and consequent changes of territory 
 and government. (2) When the four allies 
 of 1815 concluded a compact, to which France 
 was afterwards admitted, for " the surety of 
 their States and the general tranquillity of 
 Europe," to be maintained by periodical 
 meetings of rulers and statesmen, they were 
 establishing a system of International Concert 
 which has vitally affected the politics of 
 Europe, and has been partially extended to 
 the relations of all the civilised States of the 
 world. (3) Turkey was not represented at 
 the Congress, and was not affected by it. 
 The United States, having in 1814 agreed 
 with England to abolish the slave trade, 
 asked only to be let alone. Asia was un- 
 affected; Africa beyond the coast was still 
 almost terra incognita. But it was soon 
 found that the Balkan Peninsula could not 
 be ignored, that the scramble of the European 
 States for territory in Africa and Asia con- 
 stantly threatened a conflict in which the 
 European balance would have been destroyed, 
 and that America could not permanently 
 refuse to join the family of nations. The 
 gradual settlement of the overseas swarm, 
 completing the effective occupation of the 
 earth, created, in its relations with the mother 
 countries on the one hand and the coloured 
 races on the other, a thousand grave problems.
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 199 
 
 As the great work of the nineteenth century 
 was the establishment of a European Concert, 
 so the twentieth century seems destined to 
 effect a world-wide settlement and equilibrium. 
 (4) It was impossible to anticipate the sweep- 
 ing transformation of the economic activities 
 of all the great nations, and their social and 
 political life, which the past century has 
 witnessed. The Industrial Revolution has, 
 in fact, changed the face of the globe, pro- 
 ducing at first an immense increase, then a 
 no less momentous arrest of population, a 
 new education and mobility, a vast augment- 
 ation of wealth and comfort along with much 
 misery and discontent; knitting the peoples 
 together by bonds of common interest and 
 experience, while creating fresh occasions of 
 jealous rivalry ; developing both property and 
 labour into international forces, dependent on 
 a Credit Economy ; setting up new ideals and 
 means of peace, and altering effectively the 
 whole machinery of war. A rapid glance at 
 the interplay of these factors in contemporary 
 civilisation will complete our task. 
 
 The political development of Europe con- 
 tinued to be most rapid in the West, where 
 first the Industrial Revolution confirmed the 
 earlier progressive trend ; slower in the Central 
 States, broken and ravaged in the conflicts 
 of centuries; and most tardy in the East, where 
 the Turk remained, and conquests in the South
 
 200 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and East confirmed the arbitrary character 
 of the Russian State. For forty years, there 
 was no great war on the Continent; but there 
 was an abundance of revolutionary outbreaks 
 of the spirit of national democracy. The old 
 Cosmopolitanism had proved woefully in- 
 sufficient. What was true in it could not be 
 destroyed, indeed; the ideal of brotherhood 
 had, in the eighteenth century, taken a place 
 from which it could never be dethroned in 
 the minds of thinking men. But, long before 
 Spencer and Darwin began to elucidate the 
 processes of evolution, Napoleon left Europe 
 face to face with this radical lesson that 
 a pious dream, an academic culture are no 
 basis for a federation of the world; that 
 societies grow by regular organic stages, and 
 only so; that if a world-unity is to be attained, 
 it must be through a political and economic 
 association of well-established groups, each 
 freely contributing to the life of the whole. 
 Cosmopolitanism was a mind without a body. 
 Its realities were as much beyond the common 
 mass of men as their realities were strange to 
 the cultured few. Goethe said he did not 
 know what patriotism meant, and was glad 
 to be without it. But the vulgarisation of a 
 sentiment must not blind us to its real bases. 
 The interests and influences that make a 
 nation are the same that, in variable pro- 
 portion, have made other social groups, both
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 201 
 
 smaller and larger. We judge these senti- 
 ments of social growth clannishness, paro- 
 chialism, provincialism, nationalism, patriot- 
 ism as useful when they are supporting a 
 true function in a developing society, without 
 obstructing larger forms of union. When a 
 stage is reached in which vital relationships 
 outreach the early limits, when, for instance, 
 labour and capital are equally governed by a 
 world market, and law, administration, and 
 culture overpass national boundaries, there is 
 an inevitable, if slow, widening of sympathies 
 and common interests. The vogue of Imperial- 
 ism in England and Germany represents, in 
 part, a perception that baronial towers and 
 city gates are not the only ancient barriers 
 which fail to define the real interests of to-day. 
 National growth embodies a partly instinctive, 
 partly conscious sense, at first that any union 
 was better than chaos, and afterwards that 
 the union must be popular, not monarchical 
 or oligarchical, must express a homogeneity, 
 a mobile equilibrium of interests. So regarded, 
 Internationalism is the fulfilment, not the 
 negation, of Nationalism, and therein differs 
 from the academic Cosmopolitanism of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 Instead of liberating Europe for an era of 
 humane democracy, under republican and 
 federal forms, the perverted Revolution had 
 delivered it over to a new tribe of military and
 
 202 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 autocratic " saviours." For reasons already 
 traced, it was certain that the revulsion toward 
 authority would be most extreme in Russia, 
 Prussia, and Austria; and from these States 
 the military and autocratic spirit radiated 
 throughout the century. It was in the 
 Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard States 
 that the liberationist movement made most 
 rapid progress. Here Western democratic aid 
 was an effective factor; thus, while protesting 
 against despotic intervention in Portugal, 
 Canning elicited from the United States the 
 famous Presidential warning against aggression 
 in the New World which has come to be known 
 as the Monroe Doctrine (1823), and afterwards, 
 in a brilliant interval of British foreign policy, 
 procured the recognition of Greek independ- 
 ence. The " July " revolution of 1830, which 
 established a quasi-constitutional system under 
 the Orleans family in France, followed by the 
 achievement of national independence in 
 Belgium, and the reform of parliament in 
 England, marked the gathering of progressive 
 forces in the West, and the failure of the 
 reactionary alliance. 
 
 For Central Europe there was to be no short 
 cut to unity and freedom. How, in 1848, Young 
 Italy arose, really united for the first time in 
 three thousand years, how, amid chaos of 
 defeat, Piedmont became the " pole-star of 
 Italian patriots," how Bourbon and Austrian
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 203 
 
 rule was gradually ended, the Roman and 
 Venetian difficulties overcome, and the king- 
 dom firmly established as we now have it, is 
 an oft-told tale. But there is here a new type 
 in the portrait-gallery of warfare, new, and 
 yet, so rapid is the contemporary movement, 
 a type already passing beyond the under- 
 standing of the early twentieth century; for, 
 as an Italian writer says, " the generations 
 pass, men's minds take new directions, and 
 the facts of experience become as lanterns 
 hung up in abandoned streets." The genera- 
 tion of Kossuth and Hertzen, Mazzini and 
 Garibaldi is past and half -forgotten; there 
 are still battles to be fought for freedom, but 
 they are fought in other ways. Sad, grey, 
 sophisticated, taught from school up to think 
 of ourselves as " Titans staggering " under 
 the weight of a predestined orb, we must go 
 back to the most ancient scenes of European 
 history to recover the secret of conquering 
 youth. 
 
 That was Garibaldi's secret and we may 
 take him for type of the soldier of liberty, as 
 we took Napoleon as the typical predatory 
 conqueror, and as we shall take Bismarck as 
 a type of modern statecraft lying between 
 these extremes. No Perfect Knight, he, in- 
 deed : he was melodramatic, loved too much 
 the red shirt and brigand hat; quarrelled 
 with Mazzini, the thinker of the movement, 
 quarrelled with Cavour, without whose state-
 
 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 craft the cause could not have been won; 
 sometimes even sulked in his tent; was only 
 a great master of irregulars, not a great general. 
 If you please. And, when all is said, Garibaldi 
 stands first in the heart of his people, before 
 Mazzini, and far before Cavour or Victor 
 Emmanuel rightly first, because there is no 
 human quality above perfect honesty and 
 perfect devotion to a high aim. Youth and 
 inspiration never faded in him; and so he 
 made youthful errors and achieved impossible 
 victories, passed through the fire of many 
 battlefields in two hemispheres, was ship- 
 wrecked, wounded, condemned to death, 
 imprisoned, exiled, betrayed, humiliated, but 
 never turned aside from his purpose of making 
 Italy one and free. It is natural to think of 
 him as a sailor, the son and grandson of 
 Mediterranean sailors, with the simplicity and 
 strong will that the sea breeds. One day he 
 sails in his father's felucca from the palmy, 
 flower-buried shore of Nice for Rome, carrying 
 with him already something of the bitterness 
 of the disinherited " like the Jews, we had 
 grown up without a country." The world 
 will never cease to wonder and to dream 
 over the ruins of the Imperial City the vast 
 relics of the Empire, its baths and temples, 
 the tremendous skeleton of the Colosseum, 
 the broken arches and columns and statues, 
 the remains of imperial villas and tombs, the 
 wonders of papal Rome, of St. Peter's and
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 205 
 
 the Lateran, the palaces and gardens, city 
 walls and gates, the monstrous fountains, the 
 churches, cloisters, and shrines. But one needs 
 to stand beside the muddy Tiber, to watch 
 the sunrise behind the Pincian Hill, the sunset 
 behind St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo, 
 to look over the desert of the Campagna to 
 the brooding heights of the Alban and Sabine 
 Hills, to look and watch with the eyes of an 
 Italian, and an Italian of seventy years ago, 
 to understand what Rome meant then to her 
 disinherited children. 
 
 In January, 1884, Garibaldi landed at Genoa, 
 and, disguised as a peasant, put his hand to 
 forty years of work and risk for " Young 
 Italy." His first conspiracy brought him 
 promptly a death sentence; but he got away 
 to the New World, and we have glimpses of 
 him buccaneering for Rio Grande and Monte 
 Video, escaping by a hair's breadth all manner 
 of death, commanding squadrons, driving 
 cattle, teaching mathematics, and at last 
 sailing home to the tocsins of '48, with the 
 first of his Italian Legions. The memories 
 of three centuries of slavery and division, of 
 foreign tyranny and priestly corruption, were 
 to be wiped out. Alas ! old Chaos is not so 
 easily disposed of. Within six months the 
 Lombard movement was drowned in blood. 
 Rome called its champion from the northern 
 mountains; and, on February 8, 1849, when 
 Garibaldi, as a deputy of the Constituent
 
 206 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Assembly, took part in the proclamation of 
 the Republic, the end again seemed near. 
 
 But " Jesuitry, allied as always with the 
 autocrats of Europe," recovered itself, and 
 the commander of the defence was soon in 
 full flight across the Apennines with a dwind- 
 ling army, and the dogs of Austria, France, 
 Spain, and Naples at his heels. Years of exile 
 followed this extraordinary escape; the soldier 
 took to the sea again ; we see him working as 
 a candle-maker in New York. On the out- 
 break of war against Austria in 1859, Cavour 
 summoned him to Turin, and, on the bloody 
 fields of Magenta and Solferino, Lombardy 
 was won, at the cost of Savoy and Nice, the 
 price of French patronage, paid with the 
 consent of their peoples, however. The States 
 of Central Italy were next in revolt; then, with 
 the march of " The Thousand " from Marsala, 
 Sicily was free, and Naples followed. Victor 
 Emmanuel was at length King of Italy; but the 
 heart of the kingdom was still to win. In 1866, 
 Austria, now sufficiently troubled with the 
 rising power of Prussia, ceded Venice; and it 
 was as a by-product of the Franco-German 
 war that the temporal power was finally 
 broken. Twice Garibaldi had marched upon 
 the capital, twice been captured and im- 
 prisoned. But Sedan is a great word that 
 changes many things; the chassepots of 
 Mentana no longer "worked wonders"; 
 France, for twenty-one years, with one short
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 207 
 
 interval, protector of the Papacy, must now 
 look nearer home. And so on September 20, 
 1870, Italian troops entered into their own. 
 
 Germany achieved a very different unity 
 that of a Federal Empire in a very different 
 way. An economic liberation made the 
 political conquest possible, yet it is often 
 forgotten or underestimated. Stein and 
 Hardenberg had laid down the principles of 
 a moderate Free Trade; Prussia's example 
 was copied by one State after another, and, 
 till the eve of the Franco-German War, 
 this tendency was supreme. The inclusion, 
 between 1819 and 1886, in the Zollverein, 
 or Customs Union, of practically all the other 
 German States, except Austria, contributed 
 greatly to the growth of common interest 
 and feeling; and the abolition of an almost 
 incredible network of tariff barriers gave the 
 stimulus to trade and population without 
 which Bismarck's scheming could have been 
 of no avail. The need of new revenue for 
 the Imperial Government, so as to relieve 
 the separate States from an increase of their 
 " matricular " contributions, in the economic 
 crisis following the war of 1870, was the 
 chief factor In the adoption of the Protec- 
 tionist system in Germany, as in the United 
 States the chief factor was the costs of the 
 Civil War. Political reform lagged, and yet 
 lags. The revolution of 1848 had compelled 
 most of the Germanic governments to con-
 
 208 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 cede parliamentary assemblies with a wide 
 suffrage. The Austrian throne was shaken 
 by revolts in Vienna, and in Italy, Hungary, 
 and Bohemia. Nothing saved the Hapsburgs 
 but the racial diversity of their subjects; 
 and though, with Russian aid, the Hungarian 
 insurgents were suppressed, lasting peace was 
 only obtained by the grant of autonomy under 
 a difficult federal system which has been con- 
 stantly threatened by race strife. The divi- 
 sions of North and Central Germany were of 
 a different character, but hardly less obstinate. 
 They are based upon facts of geography. 
 The only naturally united part of the Empire 
 is that to which the work of unification fell 
 the North German plain, with Berlin at its 
 centre, the whole German seacoast at its 
 back, and a preponderantly agricultural in- 
 terest. South of this, there is a relatively 
 homogeneous strip the Kingdoms of Saxony 
 and Bavaria, divided by the Thuringer Wald. 
 To the south of these into the Alpine passes, 
 and westward across the Rhine, lie border- 
 lands severed by nature, by early tribal 
 settlements and remains of Roman influence, 
 by the westward trend of the Rhine commerce 
 and the eastward course of the Danube, by 
 the division of these highways among feudal 
 princelings, by the contest between the Papacy 
 and the Reformation, by dynastic rivalries 
 of France and Austria, and finally by diverse 
 industrial development. Here are the causes
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 209 
 
 of the particularism against which Bismarck's 
 " mailed fist " and his tariff policy were suc- 
 cessively directed; here are a dozen of the 
 reasons why, in the third quarter of the last 
 century, the democratic idea sank into a 
 movement of federal union under Prussia, 
 and an unprecedented effort of military 
 organisation designed to cement this union 
 by confirming the expulsion of Austria and 
 establishing the new industrial forces in safe 
 possession of both sides of the great national 
 river. 
 
 Armaments had undergone great changes 
 since the Napoleonic wars. The percussion 
 rifle, patented in England in 1807, supplanted 
 the flint-lock during the 'twenties. In 1836 
 the German Dreyse produced his improved 
 needle-gun, which " behaved perfectly " in 
 the hands of the Prussian infantry against 
 the Saxon and Baden insurgents of 1850. 
 The conical bullet, invented by the French 
 Captain Mini in 1849, gave greatly improved 
 accuracy of fire in the Crimean campaign, 
 when Armstrong cannons were first used. 
 The American Civil War witnessed the in- 
 troduction of the breach-loader and the 
 magazine rifle. The sterner application of 
 universal service in 1859-62 had given Prussia 
 the strongest army on the Continent; and 
 her advantage in 1866 from the rapid fire of 
 her needle-guns startled all Europe. France 
 immediately adopted an improved Chassepot.
 
 210 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Shrapnell, the first explosive projectiles (the in- 
 vention of an English colonel, first used in the 
 Peninsular campaign), were improved; and the 
 rifling of the bore of cannon gave a further 
 range and accuracy. Prussia had learned 
 another lesson in the campaign against 
 Austria; and her superiority in artillery was 
 one of the chief factors in her success in 1870. 
 " There is no doubt " thus Busch, in his 
 Bismarck, reports his master as saying in a 
 gloomy moment, and the Chancellor does 
 not seem to have disavowed the words 
 " there is no doubt that I have caused un- 
 happiness to great numbers. But for me, 
 three great wars would not have taken place; 
 80,000 men would not have been killed, and 
 would not now be mourned by parents, 
 brothers, sisters, widows, and sweethearts. I 
 have settled that with God; but I have had 
 little if any pleasure from all I have done.*' 
 The three wars, whose death-toll is here so 
 inadequately stated, were those of 1864, 
 about the Danish Duchies of Schleswig and 
 Holstein, which then passed to Austria 
 and Prussia; that of 1866, after the expulsion 
 of the Austrians, when, in a seven weeks' 
 campaign, Hanover, Saxony, and Hesse were 
 occupied, and Austria suffered a crushing 
 defeat at Koniggratz (Sadowa); and the 
 Franco-German War of 1870. In establish- 
 ing the King of Prussia in the Presidency of 
 a German Confederation from which Austria
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 211 
 
 was finally excluded, Bismarck sought to 
 soften the blow, already foreseeing a graver 
 struggle. In 1867 the twenty-two North 
 German States adopted what was substan- 
 tially the present Imperial constitution a 
 legislature, consisting of a Federal Council of 
 State rulers, and a Reichstag based on uni- 
 versal suffrage; control of the Executive, of 
 foreign affairs, the army, and the power of 
 declaring war being in the hands of the 
 Prussian King and Chancellor. By a separate 
 Convention, the Southern States anticipated 
 their incorporation in the Empire by placing 
 their armies at Prussia's disposal. Over the 
 whole land the same system of conscription 
 and stern discipline prevailed. 
 
 So prepared, Bismarck hurried on the conflict 
 by which he designed to put a final limit 
 upon French influence and to establish the 
 hegemony of Prussia in Central Europe. The 
 trivial episode of a Hohenzollern candidature 
 for the Spanish throne was skilfully engineered 
 by the man who despised sentiment, and put 
 all his faith in " blood and iron," to lead to 
 an overt quarrel. Not content with the 
 regular press bureau of the Berlin Foreign 
 Office, Bismarck had an agency of his own 
 through which he tuned the German journals 
 with provocative communications. The in- 
 comparable " Buschlein " was one of his men; 
 in his revelations we see the Chancellor con- 
 stantly engaged in these journalistic intrigues,
 
 212 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 " working up the Spanish question," threaten- 
 ing reluctant papers with a withdrawal of 
 subsidies, issuing here inflammatory attacks 
 on the French, and there nasty sidethrusts 
 at his Imperial master, William I. The 
 publication in a carefully edited form of a 
 telegram from the King of Prussia declining 
 a further interview with the French Am- 
 bassador, Benedetti, was the last touch. 
 The French Government regarded this as a 
 deliberate insult, Germans regarded it as a 
 well-merited rebuff closing a series of insults. 
 A little later, Bismarck indulged in this 
 significant reminiscence : "I have not seen 
 Moltke looking so well for a long time past. 
 That is the result of the war. It is his trade. 
 I remember when the Spanish question 
 became acute he looked ten years younger; 
 afterwards, when I told him that the Hohen- 
 zollern had withdrawn, he suddenly looked 
 quite old and infirm; and when the French 
 showed their teeth again, Moltke was once 
 more fresh and young. The matter finally 
 ended in a diner d trois Moltke, Roon and I 
 which resulted " (here the Chancellor smiled 
 a cunning smile) " in the Ems telegram " 
 (Busch, I, 226). 
 
 Despite knowledge of the superior force of 
 Prussia, and, as has since been shown, against 
 the feeling of the great majority of the French 
 people, Gramont and the Empress had their 
 way : war was declared on July 19, 1870.
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 213 
 
 The British Government immediately offered 
 its mediation to both Powers; it was refused 
 by Napoleon, to the great chagrin of Glad- 
 stone, with whom Anglo-French friendship 
 was a point of principle. The French never 
 got beyond the frontier, though their sole 
 hope lay in a rapid dash into South Germany, 
 which might have brought Austria and Italy 
 into the field. " Week after week passed; 
 stories reached the German frontier stations 
 of French soldiers made prisoners while 
 digging in potato-fields to keep themselves 
 alive. Absence of whole regiments that 
 figured in the official order of battle, defect- 
 ive transport, stores missing or congested, 
 made it impossible even to attempt the in- 
 road. The Emperor, to whom alone the entire 
 data of the military and diplomatic services 
 of France were open, was incapable of exertion 
 or scrutiny, purposeless, distracted with pain, 
 half -imbecile " (Fyffe : Modern Europe). On 
 August 4, the German Southern Army drove 
 back the defenders of Weissenburg, and two 
 days later overwhelmed McMahon at Worth, 
 the Northern and Central armies crushing 
 Frossard at Spicheren on the same day. 
 The courage of the French soldiers was of 
 the highest; but nearly all the generalship, 
 as in the bold rapidity of movement shown at 
 Mars-la-Tour (Aug. 16), and the concentra- 
 tion of artillery at Gravelotte (Aug. 18), was 
 on the German side. After this double
 
 214 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 defeat, Bazaine shut up his army in Metz. 
 The Emperor retired upon Paris, but, urged 
 by the Empress to save the dynasty, turned 
 back with McMahon to attempt the relief 
 of the besieged army. Caught at Sedan by 
 a German force twice as strong, Napoleon 
 capitulated after a day's desperate fighting 
 (Sept. 2). On September 4, Gambetta and 
 Favre proclaimed the Third Republic, the 
 Empress flying to a long exile in England. 
 
 The siege of Paris lasted from September 20 
 to January 28. Meanwhile, Gambetta had 
 made heroic efforts, even after Bazaine's base 
 surrender of Metz, with 170,000 men and vast 
 stores (Oct. 28), to organise new popular 
 levies. These sacrifices were in vain. Bis- 
 marck wanted to hurry things by a summary 
 vengeance on the irregulars in the country 
 and on the obstinate Parisians; but his 
 counsel was not taken. On February 26, 
 1871, preliminaries of peace were signed, 
 which gave to the victors Alsace (except 
 Belfort), with Eastern Lorraine, Metz, and 
 Strasburg, and an indemnity of five milliards 
 of francs (200,000,000). The Germans had 
 suffered 28,600 killed in battle, 12,000 by 
 disease, and 100,000 wounded; the French 
 150,000 killed, 150,000 wounded, and 600,000 
 prisoners. 
 
 At such a cost, Europe, as a diplomatist 
 put it, lost a mistress and gained a master. 
 About Bismarck's mastery there was not
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 215 
 
 to be a shadow of doubt. King William 
 had already been crowned at Versailles as 
 first German Emperor (Jan. 17, 1871), by 
 the will of the federal armies and with 
 the assent of the princes. The third and 
 greatest of Bismarck's wars had completed 
 his life-work. He remained long in office, to 
 counteract the liberal influence of the Emperor 
 Frederic and his wife, to see a more typical 
 Hohenzollern into the saddle, to combat 
 Socialism, to bow to Clericalism, to establish 
 Protectionism, to found the alliance with 
 Austria (1879), in which four years later Italy 
 became a partner. 
 
 It was left to the Emperor William II, 
 in the year of Bismarck's death (1898), to 
 initiate the building of a great German navy, 
 which was to produce some such counterpoise 
 to British naval power as the German army 
 had set against France's power on the Con- 
 tinent. This double rivalry has not resulted 
 in war, though war has often been threatened ; 
 but it has stereotyped the system of universal 
 compulsory military service throughout the 
 Continent, and, aggravated by commercial 
 competition, has grievously injured Anglo- 
 German relations. For twenty years French 
 life was poisoned by a passionate desire for 
 "the revenge"; but with the springing- 
 up of a new generation, and an increasing 
 disparity between the French and German 
 populations, common sense prevailed. The
 
 216 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 turning-point may be dated from the fall 
 of General Boulanger (1891), and the libera- 
 tion of Captain Dreyfus (1899). Thenceforth, 
 the Republic has stood steadily for inter- 
 national peace and social progress. 
 
 In 1891 the Franco-Russian Alliance was 
 concluded as a balance to the Triple Alliance. 
 In 1904 England and France terminated a long 
 era of jealousy by a territorial give-and-take 
 and a popularly supported " Entente Cor- 
 diale." Shortly afterwards (1907), England 
 and Russia settled old quarrels in Asia, and 
 began to act in unison in European affairs. 
 These connections, together with England's 
 old alliance with Portugal, and the relation- 
 ships of her royal family with Spain, Norway, 
 and Denmark, were regarded in Germany as 
 the result of a " policy of encirclement " 
 deliberately conceived by King Edward. It 
 would be juster to consider them as the logical 
 fruit of the political policy of Bismarck, to 
 which, though with increasing hesitation, 
 the German Empire is still committed. The 
 Iron Chancellor was as great in political 
 as Napoleon in military strategy; he was 
 greater in honesty, patriotism, and construct- 
 ive achievement. He has been credited with 
 much that comes from quite other sources, 
 especially from the expansion of industry and 
 trade that accompanied, but were not created 
 by, political unity. And, after all, his work 
 is sunk in this general result that Europe
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 217 
 
 is partitioned between two vast systems of 
 armed alliance, beneath whose oppressive 
 weight the forces of education, trade, and 
 democracy are preparing a sounder and 
 more stable union. Scorning democracy and 
 humane ideals, Bismarck had, despite himself, 
 contributed in no small measure to the growth 
 of the United States of Europe. 
 
 Two centres of disturbance on the Con- 
 tinent remained. After many efforts to throw 
 off the worst tyranny now remaining in the 
 world, the subject peoples of the Russian 
 Tsardom have yet to win their personal and 
 national liberties; and the Balkan lands under 
 the Turkish Sultanate have been a running 
 sore throughout the past century. Russia 
 lost territory by the Crimean War, but suc- 
 ceeded in her second aim of preventing the 
 Ottoman Empire from being " broken up into 
 republics to afford a refuge to the Mazzinis 
 and Kossuths of Europe.*' This object con- 
 tinued to inspire her policy; and thus we 
 find Russia alternately attacking and patron- 
 ising the Sultanate. The treaty of 1856 at 
 last recognised Turkey as in the comity of 
 nations, established what was henceforth 
 to be known as the Concert of Europe, and, 
 under forms of *' non-intervention," introduced 
 the principle of collective pressure upon the 
 Turkish State. The Concert proved much 
 more effective in limiting Russian aggression 
 than in staying Ottoman cruelty. After the
 
 218 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the Berlin 
 Treaty gave complete independence to Servia, 
 Montenegro, and Roumania, and closed the 
 Dardanelles to Russian warships. It cut 
 Bulgaria into two parts, which were, however, 
 reunited in 1885, and have since become a 
 completely independent kingdom, and placed 
 Bosnia and Herzegovina under the occupation 
 of Austria, which finally absorbed them while 
 Turkey was engaged in the domestic crisis of 
 1908-9. Greece, between the jealous fears of 
 Austria, the hostility of Russia, the indifference 
 of England, obtained no satisfaction, and 
 drifted slowly toward a disastrous campaign 
 against Turkey in 1897, which placed Crete in 
 the custody of a lesser Concert of maritime 
 Powers. 
 
 A Kurdish proverb advises the farmer to 
 stay his shears till the fleece is ready. For 
 some time after the Russo-Turkish war, 
 Abdul Hamid contented himself with the 
 task of accumulating treasure at his Palace. 
 In 1891 he opened an overt campaign for the 
 destruction of the Christian peoples in his 
 realm. In the massacres of 1894, " the 
 Armenians were absolutely hunted like wild 
 beasts," as one of the British agents, Mr. 
 Shipley, said; the Italian Consul -General esti- 
 mated that 50,000 persons were slaughtered in 
 this first onslaught. The Concert had become 
 impotent because the Tsar, patron of " the 
 Assassin," was supported by his fellow Em-
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 219 
 
 perors in forbidding intervention ; while, with 
 France tied to Russia, and Italy to Germany 
 and Austria, England did not dare to act for 
 herself. In September 1895 a new massacre was 
 perpetrated under the eyes of the Ambassadors 
 in Constantinople, followed by butcheries in 
 Asia Minor which, according to the British 
 official reports, destroyed 80,000 lives, and 
 ruined the Armenian provinces. 
 
 Never have British policy and the morals 
 of Europe sunk so low as at this time, when 
 Prince Lobanoff was allowed to veto any 
 coercive action because *' Russia could not con- 
 sent to the formation of a new Bulgaria on 
 her (Transcaucasian) frontier." Nicholas II, 
 newly crowned, had not yet stood trembling 
 with fright among the baillies of Aberdeen 
 and the keepers at Balmoral; was still in 
 the eyes of an easily blinded world the 
 great White Tsar, mysterious, omnipotent. A 
 single Power, supposed to be Italy (it is one 
 of the secrets of recent history) suggested 
 that the Dardanelles should be forced, and the 
 Sultan seized in his Palace. " Any British 
 Minister," replied Lord Rosebery, " who en- 
 gages in a European war, except under the 
 pressure of the direst necessity, except for 
 interests directly and distinctly British, is a 
 criminal to his country and his position." 
 So the pro-Armenia agitation of Mr. Glad- 
 stone was extinguished; and the Sultan set 
 his forces to a campaign of revenge in Crete
 
 220 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 and Thessaly. The same union of Sultan, 
 Tsar, and Kaiser doomed Macedonia to fruit- 
 less insurrection, and a prolonged internecine 
 warfare (see H. N. Brailsford's Macedonia). 
 At length, in 1908, a new and decisive factor 
 appeared on the scene. Coached by civilian 
 exiles, and spurred on by fear of an effective 
 European intervention, a band of young 
 Turkish officers raised the banner of revolt 
 in Monastir, and frightened Abdul Hamid into 
 conceding a Constitution. A reactionary con- 
 spiracy followed, but it was quickly suppressed, 
 the Sultan deposed and imprisoned, and the 
 new Parliament assured an effective support. 
 It must be long ere the lands governed from 
 Constantinople can be brought near to the 
 general European level; but thenceforth 
 there was a hope and means of progress that 
 had never before existed. 
 
 The position of the Sultan of St. Petersburg 
 had, in the meantime, been shaken, though 
 less decisively. The Manchurian campaign 
 (February 1904 to October 1905) was the first 
 war fought by Great Powers under thoroughly 
 modern conditions. General Kuropatkin's 
 revelations have shown that certain timber 
 concessions on the Korean border, in which 
 the Russian Court was deeply interested, 
 played a prominent part in its causation; in 
 a larger view it represented the rivalry of 
 two old autocracies, one of which, however, 
 had rapidly modernised itself, for the heritage
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 221 
 
 of East Asiatic suzerainty. The frightful 
 effect of the new weapons was exhibited in 
 the destruction of the Russian fleet, the 
 disaster of Liao-Yang, the siege and fall of 
 Port Arthur, and the yet greater debacle 
 of Mukden. Altogether, two and a half 
 million men were placed hi the field, in nearly 
 equal proportion, by the two combatants. 
 
 The Japanese reports show 470,000 casual- 
 ties (80,000 killed or dead of disease, 170,000 
 wounded, 221,000 sick); the Russian reports 
 140,000 killed and wounded, 845,000 sick, 
 40,000 missing, and 31,000 prisoners. The 
 battle of Mukden, when 350,000 men were 
 engaged for three weeks on a frontage of 
 fifty miles, with losses aggregating 163,000, 
 was probably the largest and most destruct- 
 ive in modern history. The war shook the 
 Tsardom to its foundations, provoking mili- 
 tary and naval mutinies, and revolutionary 
 outbreaks, in fear of which Nicholas II con- 
 ceded to Russia the form of parliamentary 
 institutions. It showed the world the con- 
 nection between oppression at home and war 
 abroad, and taught neutral fishermen, ship- 
 owners, and investors that no quarrel can be 
 distant enough for them to escape injury. 
 Thus, considerations of business reinforced 
 the feeble promptings of humanity, offended 
 by the " bloody Sunday " massacre. And, 
 while Japan won the homage due to efficiency 
 and stoic courage, she, too, had to learn a
 
 222 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 hard lesson. Russia was left at the end of 
 the war with a national debt of a thousand 
 million pounds sterling. But, even if it 
 could have paid, there was no possibility 
 of extorting, an indemnity, since there was 
 no possibility of occupying the Russian 
 capital and seizing the treasury and adminis- 
 tration. The Treaty of Portsmouth was a 
 confession that, in the twentieth century, war 
 cannot pay, as well as a warning to European 
 States to abandon their baser designs upon 
 the now awakened East. 
 
 In the story of the extension of the European 
 equilibrium to the remainder of the world, the 
 most considerable chapters are those relating 
 the colonisation of North America, and the 
 growth of the British Empire, which now 
 embraces nearly a quarter of the population 
 of the earth. The three centuries of British 
 Imperial history may be roughly divided into 
 four unequal periods of development. The 
 first two we have already noted an experi- 
 mental stage which we may count as extending 
 from the East India Company Charter of 1600 
 to the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, 
 or to the Peace of Utrecht and the Anglo- 
 Spanish Slave Trade Compact of 1718; and a 
 period in which England was absorbed in the 
 struggle with France which gave her Canada 
 and India, and with the policy of high taxation, 
 trade restriction, and coercive sovereignty 
 which lost her the American colonies. A third
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 223 
 
 step carries us through the Napoleonic struggle 
 to the final repeal of the Corn Laws in 1849. 
 Commercialism was now ripening rapidly; 
 and England's success as a trading State led 
 to a temporary decline of political imperialism. 
 The solidest gain of this period consisted in 
 the settlement (1788-1840) of the Australian 
 colonies. 
 
 Finally, in the latter half of the nine- 
 teenth century, the trade supremacy due to 
 prior industrial development, and encouraged 
 by free trade and popular education, was 
 checked by the appearance of powerful 
 foreign rivals, the first result being, during the 
 'seventies, 'eighties, and 'nineties, a fever of 
 territorial expansion with the object of " stak- 
 ing out claims for posterity," and in the hope 
 that trade would " follow the flag." The chief 
 extensions of the Empire were in Africa, where 
 the Southern hinterlands, inclusive of the two 
 Boer Republics, were conquered, and huge 
 territories entirely populated by native races 
 were subjected in the west and in the east- 
 centre (Nigeria alone having an area of 450,000 
 square miles, and a population estimated at 
 80 millions); while Egypt was occupied under 
 a nominal Turkish suzerainty, and the Soudan, 
 after campaigns against successive Mahdis, 
 was held as the joint property of England 
 and Egypt. The territories of British India 
 were also greatly extended. In the last 
 fifteen years of the century, the population
 
 224 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 of the Empire was estimated to have increased 
 from 800 to 400 millions, and its area from 
 eight to twelve million square miles, while 
 British naval expenditure rose from 11, 000, 000 
 to 25,000,000 a year. So far from being, 
 as was said, a " record reign of peace," the 
 sixty-four years of Queen Victoria's reign 
 marked early by the Crimean campaign and 
 the Indian Mutiny (1857) witnessed some 
 forty Imperial wars or expeditions, in which 
 China was opened to the opium traffic, and 
 Sikhs, Burmese, Afghans, Chitralis, Egyptians, 
 Soudanese, Abyssinians, Kaffirs, Zulus, Basu- 
 tos, .Matabeles, Mashonas, Bechuanas, Ni- 
 gerians, and Maoris were taught the superior 
 merit of high explosives. The Queen died 
 amid painful echoes from the South African 
 battlefields, crying on her death-bed, " Oh, 
 that peace may come ! " 
 
 Something more than a reign and a century 
 ended with the passing of this venerated figure. 
 Many factors contributed to a reaction under 
 " Edward the Peacemaker." One, and not 
 the least, lay in the discovery that the conquest 
 of 50,000 Dutch farmers had required a cam- 
 paign of two and a half years, an army of 
 250,000 men, and an expenditure almost equal 
 to the cost to England of all the other wars 
 of the Victorian era (I estimate this at about 
 280,000,000, of which the Crimean War ac- 
 counts for 116,000,000). Reflection on these 
 facts speedily produced one of the most notable
 
 THE NEW EQUILIBRIUM 225 
 
 vindications of British statesmanship and 
 democracy, in the granting of self-government 
 to the Boer States, followed by the establish- 
 ment of a Union of South Africa under a 
 Boer Premier. 
 
 To the same years dates the great settle- 
 ment with France (August 8, 1904), a 
 compact between two democratic States made 
 after a prolonged period of peace without 
 immediate outside pressure, and, so, like 
 neither the arbitrary rearrangements of power 
 and territory occasionally made by councils of 
 autocratic rulers, nor the treaties closing the 
 wars of the past. For twenty years, the words 
 Egypt, Newfoundland, Morocco had stood for 
 problems supposed to be well-nigh insoluble; 
 and behold ! as with a magician's wand, a 
 wholesale diplomatic clearance of questions 
 of territory and trade, of " honour and vital 
 interests." The way had been prepared by a 
 series of arbitral treaties among the West 
 European Powers, led by France and England, 
 as the way for these had been prepared by the 
 first Hague Peace Conference in 1899. While 
 the spirit of pacific reconstruction was thus 
 " in the air," the costs of empire-building were 
 brought home in various forms to thinking 
 men. The trade return had been signally 
 disappointing; and the self-governing colonies 
 had made it clear that they could not be 
 counted on to share any further burdens of 
 Imperial adventure. The rise of Japan, with
 
 226 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 which England concluded in 1902 a military 
 and political alliance, and the appearance of 
 Young Turkey, put a new aspect upon the 
 problems of Asiatic rule; ravages of famine 
 and plague, and sporadic conspiracy against 
 holders of outposts in a far land impossible 
 of British colonisation, recalled Seeley's con- 
 clusion as to the necessary lack of common 
 interest, save in trade, between India and 
 England. What, then, remained ? Duty, the 
 hardest duty of world-rule to-day. Its first 
 implication was evidently that the problem 
 should not be aggravated by further increase 
 of the " child peoples " under Anglo-Saxon 
 tutelage. Accordingly, a decade has passed 
 without war in, or addition of territory to, 
 the British Empire. The basis of Imperial 
 peace is laid. 
 
 Meanwhile, the North American Republic 
 has grown from strength to strength. Only 
 once has this great experiment been threatened 
 with destruction. Freed from dynastic rival- 
 ries and feudal obstructions, from religious 
 strife and military ambition, the States had 
 kept one evil heritage from the Old World, 
 the morbid revival of patriarchal agriculture 
 in the sub-tropical region around the Gulf of 
 Florida. Nominally on a question of union or 
 disruption, the Civil War of 1861-65 really re- 
 presents the last effort to found a state openly 
 on slave labour. The slaves had, in fact, 
 increased from half-a-million at the time of the 

 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 227 
 
 Revolution to four millions on the outbreak of 
 the war. The South was beaten less by the 
 badness of its case than its lack of men. At 
 the end of the struggle, its armies were out- 
 numbered by nearly six to one. Yet it re- 
 quired four years' conflict, with the loss of a 
 million lives and two thousand million pounds 
 sterling, to attain the end which, a few years 
 before, might have been reached by an easy 
 monetary transaction. Such, in our time, is 
 the cost of the appeal to the sword. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE ORGANISATION OF PEACE 
 
 THE new political equilibrium is strength- 
 ened by four of the most notable developments 
 of the past half -century. These are (1) the 
 ceaseless advance in the quality and quantity 
 of armaments, by which the character of 
 warfare has been completely transformed; 
 (2) the full establishment of an international 
 Credit economy, by which the commercial 
 life of the civilised nations is being steadily 
 unified, while each is threatened with injury 
 from any breach of the peace; (8) the rein- 
 forcement of older elements of international 
 culture and law by the power of organised 
 Labour, now, like organised Capital, a force 
 of international character; and (4) the general 
 tendency among Western nations toward 
 H a
 
 228 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 an arrest of population, which removes the 
 impetus to warfare formerly supplied by a 
 surplus of " food for powder," marks the 
 proximate end of the swarming process, and 
 imposes a new sense of the value of the lives 
 on which the future of Western civilisation 
 must depend. 
 
 1. In death-dealing efficiency, the improve- 
 ment in arms since the Franco-German War 
 has thrown all the inventions of all previous 
 history into the shade. It began with the 
 production of the Martini-Henry, Berdan, 
 Gras, and Werder rifles. A double revolution 
 marked the year 1886, when smokeless powder 
 and the Lebel small-bore magazine gun were 
 adopted in France. The Mannlicher, Mauser, 
 Lee-Metford, and other models followed, each 
 giving greater range, rapidity, and accuracy 
 of fire. In artillery there have been similar 
 changes; the new steel processes have made 
 possible a continuous enlargement of cannon, 
 and the use of high-explosive projectiles, 
 while there are now many types of quick- 
 firing machine-guns. The development of 
 naval power, from the Merrimac and 
 Monitor of fifty years ago to the latest 
 " super-Dreadnoughts," is still more prodi- 
 gious. One fact will serve to illustrate the 
 effect of invention in this field. In the 
 twenty years following the " Navy scare " 
 of 1884, Great Britain spent 450,000,000 in
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 229 
 
 the effort to maintain a fleet stronger than 
 any two possible rivals. In 1905, the Ad- 
 miralty, in its scheme of concentration, 
 admitted that most of this expenditure was 
 then represented mainly by scrap-iron, 115 
 vessels of the classes of " unprotected " and 
 " protected " cruisers being condemned as 
 practically useless except for " police " pur- 
 poses. This clearance was, however, only 
 the beginning of a new and higher level of 
 competition, opened by the laying-down 
 of the " Dreadnought " in October 1905. 
 Since then another fleet has become obsolete. 
 The modern British Navy has never fought 
 a battle; but it has cost more in money 
 than the whole of the British campaigns 
 of the past century. 
 
 The most considerable attempt to show the 
 effect in actual hostilities of these changes 
 is that of the Polish banker and economist 
 Jean de Bloch (1886-1902), author of the 
 huge six-volume work on modern warfare 
 already cited, and founder of the Museum of 
 War and Peace at Lucerne. De Bloch's 
 conclusions were that, as between Powers of 
 nearly equal strength, warfare will in future 
 be a suicidal deadlock, a struggle without 
 possibility of decisive result, and ruinous to 
 both parties; that other means of settling in- 
 ternational disputes must therefore be found; 
 and that, as these vast armaments are need-
 
 230 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 less for defence and useless for aggression, 
 those who rely upon them are visionaries. 
 His evidence pointed most clearly to two 
 facts : the first, that the history of war 
 exhibits a gradual removal of combatants 
 to greater distances from each other, so that 
 neither in the better nor the worse qualities 
 it evokes is the struggle what it used to be; 
 the second, that science gives great compara- 
 tive advantages to the defence, in the power 
 of long-range, quick-firing rifles and guns 
 (from ten to forty times more effective than 
 those used in 1870 and 1877), and in the new 
 art of entrenchment. Throughout history 
 earthworks have been used; but earthworks 
 which an enemy could safely approach within 
 two or three hundred paces were a trifling 
 obstacle compared with those of to-day, 
 planned to permit of gradual retirement, and 
 fronted with a fire zone of a thousand yards 
 across which effective rifle fire can be main- 
 tained at the rate of twenty shots a minute. 
 The army of a great State would now be an 
 immensely larger force than ever took the 
 field in the past, consisting of the manhood 
 of a nation, not a mercenary surplus. It 
 would be a body of educated men, an army 
 of engineers. Its infantry lines and battery 
 positions would be invisible. The invader 
 must come into the open if he is to accom- 
 plish anything; he would find his cavalry
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 231 
 
 useless against entrenched infantry, and 
 would experience a difficulty which would not 
 be experienced by the defence in supplying 
 himself with the very heavy and powerful 
 shells now needed for artillery. Battle in 
 the open would mean annihilation; yet it is 
 only by assault that entrenched positions 
 can be carried. The attacker would be 
 forced to entrench himself; so the science 
 of the spade reduces battles to sieges, and 
 campaigns become a long deadlock between 
 stationary forces, and a game of hide-and- 
 seek between mobile forces. The spirit of 
 resistance will be encouraged by the fact that 
 a conqueror must make greater sacrifices 
 than the defenders. The volunteer of demo- 
 cracy has proved himself, man for man, a 
 match for the regular soldier, mercenary 
 or conscript. Guerilla fighting will no longer 
 be without order or method; it will be scienti- 
 fically equipped, and moved by a spirit of 
 nationality stronger than ever before known. 
 Railways will be easily destroyed and roads 
 blocked. 
 
 Warfare will drag on more slowly than ever. 
 The numbers of men and the field of opera- 
 tions will be so large that the genius of the 
 best generals will be incapable of controlling 
 them. Even with a railway base, an army of 
 200,000 men cannot move quickly, especially 
 since they cannot any longer live on the
 
 232 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 country; and the dispersion necessitated by 
 modern fire makes the direction of such a 
 mass difficult and hazardous. The hey-day of 
 warfare lay in the infancy of firearms, when, 
 with small, mobile armies, a bold and calcu- 
 lating commander could direct quick marches, 
 sudden changes of plan, feints, turning move- 
 ments, cavalry charges, strategical demon- 
 strations of all kinds. But this strategy 
 is as dead as Bonaparte. Even a Moltke 
 could not manipulate the European army 
 of to-day. 
 
 There is a notable inadequacy in Buckle's 
 treatment of the decline of military genius 
 (in his chapter on " The Comparison of Moral 
 and Intellectual Laws "). Of his two great 
 generalisations that in early societies pri- 
 mary economic factors (climate and food 
 supply, in particular) are absolutely dominant, 
 while in civilised societies intellectual acquisi- 
 tions are the supreme and only permanent 
 factors of progress the first is much the more 
 safely established; but both require more 
 examination than he gives them. In ancient 
 times, as Buckle shows, militarism com- 
 manded the best talent of the peoples; and 
 he adds : " in the modern world this iden- 
 tical profession, including many millions of 
 men, has never been able since the sixteenth 
 century to produce ten authors who have 
 reached the first class, either as writers or
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 233 
 
 thinkers." This method of glorifying intel- 
 lectual influences seems unjust and unsound, 
 for why should a soldier in any age be tested 
 by his power to write a book ? Economic 
 influences are as dominant as ever in history, 
 though their character has changed. Soldiers 
 of genius no longer appear because the 
 environment is unfavourable, the demand 
 has failed. Othello's occupation 's gone. The 
 mechanism of war has killed the art of war; 
 and this mechanism is itself doomed because, 
 while it can reap no recompense, its cost in 
 use is likely to bring its owners to the pit of 
 bankruptcy, famine, and revolution. 
 
 This argument might be illustrated in 
 detail from the American Civil War, the 
 Austro - German, Franco - German, Russo- 
 Turkish, and Boer campaigns. We have 
 little evidence of what the results of conflict 
 between the naval monsters of the twentieth 
 century may be, for the destruction of the 
 Spanish fleets off Santiago and Manila, and 
 of the Russian fleet in the strait of Tsushima, 
 would be better described as battues than 
 battles. But the principles established by 
 De Bloch apply here, with, possibly, greater 
 force, especially since the appearance of four 
 instruments which he did not live to see 
 wireless telegraphy, the aeroplane, the dirigi- 
 ble balloon, and the marine internal combus- 
 tion engine. There will be the same choice,
 
 231 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 for States of nearly equal strength, between 
 inaction in harbour and annihilation in the 
 open; while (failing an agreement to respect 
 private property) a swarm of privateersmen 
 will destroy the maritime commerce on which 
 the combatant nations depend. The old 
 conditions of dashing attack and personal 
 valour, all the strategy of Nelson, are gone 
 with the old wooden sailing ships. Half-a- 
 dozen battles would now destroy fleets that 
 have cost hundreds of millions to build and 
 could not be speedily replaced. One such 
 convulsion would shake European society to 
 its foundations. 
 
 The substantial truth of these views is no 
 longer disputed. It was stated tersely by 
 the Russian Emperor in his famous rescript 
 of 1898 summoning the first Hague Peace 
 Conference: "The financial charges conse- 
 quent on increasing armaments strike at 
 public prosperity in its very source. The 
 intellectual and physical strength of the 
 nations, labour and capital, are for the major 
 part diverted from their natural application 
 and unproductively expended. Hundreds of 
 millions are devoted to acquiring terrible 
 engines of destruction which, though to-day 
 regarded as the last word of sc.ence. are 
 destined to-morrow to lose all value, in con- 
 sequence of some fresh discovery in the same 
 field. National culture, economic progress,
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 235 
 
 and the production of wealth are either 
 paralysed or checked in their development. 
 Moreover, in proportion as the armaments 
 of each Power increase, so do they less and 
 less fulfil their object. The economic crises 
 due in great part to the system of excessive 
 armaments, and the continual danger which 
 lies in this massing of war material, are 
 transforming the armed peace of our days 
 into a crushing burden which the peoples 
 have more and more difficulty in bearing. 
 It appears evident, then, that, if this state 
 of things were prolonged, it would lead 
 inevitably to the very cataclysm which it 
 is desired to avert, the very horrors of 
 which make every thinking being shudder in 
 advance." 
 
 2. For forty years there has been no war 
 in Western, Central, and Northern Europe; 
 and, with the exception of the Cuban cam- 
 paign, North America has enjoyed unbroken 
 peace. During this period, the commercial 
 intercourse of the world has undergone a 
 revolution in character, as important as its 
 increase in extent, if less obvious. The in- 
 crease is, indeed, as much the result of the 
 development of an elaborate Credit system 
 as of the new manufacturing processes and 
 improved communications. But a Credit 
 economy is immensely more sensitive than 
 a cash economy. Commodities and bullion
 
 236 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 are more susceptible than ever. Fragments 
 of a penny on the price of grain may divert 
 millions of pounds' worth of trade from one 
 country to another; and these fractional 
 changes may arise from some local and 
 apparently trifling disturbance thousands of 
 miles away from the market which registers 
 them. The material conveniences of our 
 time division of labour, joint-stock trading, 
 improved transport, telegraphs and cables, 
 newspapers have all increased this sensi- 
 tiveness, and, by its very nature, credit feels 
 it more quickly than material wealth. So 
 long as peace continues, the advantages of 
 " paper " more than compensate for this 
 weakness. Even the speculation on stock 
 and share and produce exchanges, which so 
 easily degenerates into gambling, has served 
 the trading class by levelling out variations 
 in prices due to natural causes. Insurance, 
 being a substitute for a reserve of capital, not 
 only protects against loss, it increases borrow- 
 ing power. Banks draw from the unused 
 surplus of wealth in the community immense 
 funds which, being lent out or made the basis 
 of commercial credit, lead to the greater 
 development of trade. The smooth working of 
 the central administration and local authorities, 
 as well as of manufactures and trade, depends 
 to-day upon this power of easy borrowing. 
 The rapid development of the United
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 237 
 
 States, the British colonies, and countries 
 like Argentina is wholly due to it. Thus, 
 an extension to foreign countries of the 
 proprietary interests of the creditor nations 
 has taken place which must deeply affect 
 the policy of these nations. The amount of 
 British investments abroad probably exceeds 
 3,000 millions, a sum equal to one-third 
 of the estimated value of private property 
 in the United Kingdom (see F. W. Hirst, 
 The Stock Exchange, and Chiozza Money, 
 Riches and Poverty); and this sunk capital 
 yields an income of some 80 millions a year 
 to persons living there. The investment 
 of foreign capital in the United Kingdom 
 amounts to hundreds of millions sterling. 
 France holds about a half of the Russian debt 
 of 1,000 millions. In these and other cases, 
 the connection between investment and policy 
 resulting either in war or peace is clear. The 
 policy of Britain has been injuriously dis- 
 turbed by financial influences when it was 
 in contact with wealthy lands feebly held, 
 generally by native tribes. The complete 
 partition of Africa closed this period of 
 belligerent expansion. Foreign investment 
 in settled countries must favour the organisa- 
 tion of peace. It may produce incidental 
 evils: the French loans to Russia have 
 bolstered up a corrupt and cruel government, 
 while ensuring an interim balance of power
 
 238 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 in Europe. But it serves the growth of a 
 more rational world-order in two ways : 
 it reminds powerful sections of one community 
 of their material interest in the peace and 
 welfare of another, perhaps a " rival," State; 
 and it reminds any would-be belligerent 
 that, in a day when the value of national 
 capital has become so largely dependent 
 upon international credit, the old rewards 
 of successful warfare cannot be reaped. 
 
 An Anglo-German war, for instance, would 
 destroy not only the regular volume of exports 
 and imports, so vital to the prosperity of 
 both peoples; invasion would destroy English 
 property in Germany and German property 
 in England; above all, it would destroy the 
 sensitive mechanism of credit on which the 
 economic life of both countries depends. The 
 cash reserves, already so small for the struc- 
 ture of credit they have to uphold, would 
 be further diminished. There being no cer- 
 tainty as to the issue of such a conflict, and 
 only too much certainty as to its ruinous 
 cost, State securities in both countries would 
 fall rapidly. Foreign countries would call 
 in their balances from London and Berlin, 
 which, in turn, would be compelled to realise 
 their foreign loans. The withdrawal of credit 
 and loanable capital, the interruption of 
 supplies, and the withdrawal of labour 
 would starve trade and manufacture; and
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 239 
 
 the rise of taxation and prices, coupled with 
 falling wages and reduced employment of 
 those not actively engaged in the war and the 
 war industries, would produce distress, deepen- 
 ing to panic. If there were any victor in such 
 a conflict, and if he succeeded in occupying 
 the enemy's capital, he would find the wealth 
 due to credit flown, and the immediately 
 seizable capital scarcely sufficient to pay for 
 the investments lost by his own countrymen, 
 let alone the costs of the war. 
 
 But, long before this, the forces of organised 
 labour in both countries would have been 
 mobilised for revolt, and neighbouring Powers 
 would be ready for an effective intervention. 
 
 3. The political and economic union of 
 nations described above has been further 
 strengthened by the growth of an inter- 
 national legal, legislative, and administrative 
 system, which, although still in its infancy, 
 has already reached a considerable elaboration. 
 
 We have seen that conciliation and arbitra- 
 tion were occasionally used in very early 
 times to prevent or end disputes. As a 
 settled quasi -legal process, International Arbi- 
 tration may be dated (as may the unofficial 
 Peace Movement in which Victor Hugo, 
 Bastiat, Cobden, Bright, and Elihu Burritt 
 were the first great figures) from the period 
 following the Napoleonic wars. It has steadily 
 increased in definiteness and authority. The
 
 240 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 first stage consisted in the addition of an 
 arbitration clause to commercial and other 
 treaties, and the evolution of a regular pro- 
 cedure through occasional arbitrations. Then 
 arbitration treaties proper began to be nego- 
 tiated, in the 'eighties. A great leap forward 
 was made when the first Hague Conference 
 (1899) established a Permanent Arbitration 
 Court, with a detailed code, which was 
 amended and enlarged at the second Confer- 
 ence (1907). From 1822 to 1900 there were 
 enacted 125 Arbitration treaties; in the sub- 
 sequent decade, 180 agreements of very much 
 larger scope have been signed. The Anglo- 
 French Treaty of October 14, 1904, became 
 a model, which all the leading nations have 
 since followed. During the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, 212 arbitral awards were made, and 
 every one was executed, though several (the 
 Alabama, Samoa, Venezuela, and Alaska) 
 disputes were of a grave character. When, 
 in 1910, the Hague Court quietly settled the 
 long-standing Newfoundland fisheries dis- 
 pute, no doubt remained either of the utility 
 or the authority of this international judi- 
 cature. 
 
 Meanwhile, the parent body, with a Third 
 Conference in view, has assumed the position 
 of a permanent institution representative 
 of the whole civilised world. In 1899, dele- 
 gates of 26 independent States met in the
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 241 
 
 " House in the Wood " in the Dutch capital, 
 and astonished the sceptics by the spirit with 
 which they commenced the difficult business 
 of international legislation. In 1907 there 
 were 230 delegates from 43 States; among 
 other results of their labours were an agree- 
 ment to establish an International Naval 
 Prize Appeal Court (the first international 
 body having power to over-rule national 
 jurisdictions) for which a Conference of 
 naval Powers sitting in London has since 
 projected a Code; various further amendments 
 of the rules of warfare; and a resolution 
 against the forcible collection of debts till 
 arbitration has been resorted to or refused. 
 No Power being ready with a practical formula, 
 and Germany being hostile, the armaments 
 problem was dismissed in a pious resolution. 
 It must be long ere the Hague Conferences 
 can assume a parliamentary character; but 
 they mark a vast advance upon previous 
 " Concerts," and a distinct step toward 
 world federation. Probably the tasks hither- 
 to confided to special international congresses 
 will be more and more frequently referred 
 to the regular meetings for which Mr. Carnegie 
 has built a palatial home at the Hague. 
 
 Many institutions for a common supervision 
 of international commerce had been founded 
 before this development; and they are, there- 
 fore, still scattered about the world, in Berne,
 
 242 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 Brussels, Paris, London, Washington. These 
 bodies, including the International Postal 
 and Telegraph, and Railway Unions, Sani- 
 tary Commission, Copyright Union, and simi- 
 lar bodies, each having a permanent bureau 
 and head-quarters staff, will, no doubt, be 
 gradually concentrated in a business-like 
 manner. 
 
 This extensive official apparatus is sup- 
 ported by an ever-increasing number of non- 
 official institutions and movements, some 
 of which, indeed, receive governmental aid. 
 Only a few of the more important can here be 
 named. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, 
 founded in 1888, now includes several thou- 
 sand deputies of the leading nations; it has 
 its permanent bureau and annual conference, 
 and does important preparatory work for the 
 Hague Conferences. The Pan-American Bu- 
 reau, handsomely housed in Washington, was 
 established in 1890 to encourage commercial 
 and friendly relations between the twenty-one 
 American republics, which jointly maintain 
 it. The Peace Movement, with its hundreds 
 of local societies, has its permanent bureau 
 in Berne, and its annual national and inter- 
 national congresses. The Institut du Droit 
 International, and the International Law 
 Association, founded in 1873, have done 
 valuable pioneering work. The Anglo-Ger- 
 man Friendship Committee may be named as
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 243 
 
 a type of many bodies aiming to improve the 
 relations of particular countries. Civic and 
 educational visitations, professional con- 
 gresses, auxiliary languages, ' ; co-operative " 
 holidays, international newspapers, and the 
 international Trade Union and Socialist move- 
 ments, representing millions of humble toilers 
 who have hitherto been content to leave high 
 politics to the Foreign Offices these are 
 among the most characteristic phenomena 
 of the time; and they do not exhaust the 
 list of influences by which the social organis- 
 ation of the world is being remodelled on a 
 basis of reason and amity. It is difficult to 
 think that, against such a variety of forces, 
 the interests of the small numbers of men 
 who profit by war and preparations for war 
 can long prevail. 
 
 4. Finally, a physiological change is taking 
 place in the most advanced societies of the 
 world, the character and most momentous 
 consequences of which can here be only very 
 cursorily indicated. A generation ago, the 
 falling birth-rate of France used to be the 
 subject of ominous comment. The Republic 
 was doomed, it used to be said, by the greatly 
 superior increase of German population, and, 
 therefore, of German military power; nothing 
 could save it, for was not this the sum of all 
 the multifarious decadence that Paris flaunted 
 in the face of a nobly prolific world ? It now
 
 244 
 
 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 appears that, slowly, almost imperceptibly, 
 the world, prolific Germany included, has 
 begun to follow the perilous example of 
 republican France. " A decreasing birth- 
 rate," says the British Registrar General, 
 " is a feature common to nearly all European 
 countries, and also to the principal Colonial 
 States. The effect on the growth of popula- 
 tion has been to some extent modified by the 
 concurrent decline in the death-rate; but it 
 is obvious that the death-rate cannot decline 
 indefinitely " (75th Annual Report, Cd. 4961 
 of 1910). The following figures show that, in 
 the period and in the countries named, there 
 has been a fall in the rate of natality averag- 
 ing about 16 per cent. 
 
 BIRTH-RATES PER THOUSAND OF POPULATION 
 
 
 England 
 & Wales. 
 
 German 
 Empire. 
 
 France. 
 
 Italy. 
 
 Austria. 
 
 1881-85 
 
 33-6 
 
 37-0 
 
 247 
 
 38-0 
 
 38-2 
 
 1886-90 
 
 31-4 
 
 36-6 
 
 23-1 
 
 37-5 
 
 37'8 
 
 1891-95 
 
 30-5 
 
 36-3 
 
 22-3 
 
 36-0 
 
 37-4 
 
 1896-1900 
 
 29-3 
 
 36-0 
 
 21-9 
 
 34-0 
 
 37-3 
 
 1901-05 
 
 28-1 
 
 34-3 
 
 21-2 
 
 32-6 
 
 35-6 
 
 1907 . 
 
 26-3 
 
 32-3 
 
 197 
 
 31-5 
 
 33-8 
 
 Fall ... 
 
 7'2 
 
 47 
 
 5-0 
 
 6-5 
 
 4*4 
 
 Percentage of 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fall on 1881- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1886 figure . 
 
 21-5% 
 
 12-8% 
 
 20-2% 
 
 17-1% 
 
 11-5%
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 245 
 
 In some countries, the gain by the falling 
 death-rate is still superior to the loss by 
 fewer births; elsewhere, as in England and 
 some British Colonies, the rate of " natural " 
 increase of population (i.e. without counting 
 immigration) is declining so steadily that it 
 threatens soon to reach the vanishing point. 
 The following tables show the decline in the 
 rates of birth, death, and natural increase 
 per thousand of population since the year 
 (1876) when the birth-rate in England stood 
 at its maximum : 
 
 Births 
 
 England. 
 
 Prussia. 
 
 1876. 
 
 1909. 
 
 1876. 
 
 1909. 
 
 36-3 
 20-9 
 
 25-6 
 14-5 
 
 40-7 
 25-4 
 
 32-9 
 178 
 
 Deaths .... 
 Increase . . . 
 
 15-4 
 
 ll'l 
 
 15-3 
 
 15-1 
 
 Birthfl 
 Deaths .... 
 
 Increase . . . 
 
 Australian 
 Commonwealth. 
 
 New Zealand. 
 
 1871. 
 
 1908. 
 
 1871. 
 
 1908. 
 
 38 
 13 
 
 26 
 11 
 
 40 
 10 
 
 27 
 10 
 
 25 
 
 15 
 
 30 
 
 17
 
 246 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 As the Local Government Board laconically 
 observes, " the death-rate cannot decline 
 indefinitely." In the most advanced coun- 
 tries, indeed, it cannot now be expected 
 to decline very considerably, for the chief 
 gains have been achieved in the saving of 
 infant life, and the higher age-average of the 
 population (due to fewer births) implies a 
 higher mortality rate. When the minimum 
 mortality point has been reached, the natural 
 increase of population will probably have 
 ceased altogether. 
 
 In brief, we seem to be within calculable 
 distance of the day when, in all the most 
 civilised countries, there will be some such 
 balance of vital economy as already obtains 
 in France, a balance which neither legislation 
 nor exhortation is likely very greatly to dis- 
 turb. At the same time, the coloured peoples 
 of Africa, Asia, and America will continue to 
 multiply, in some cases as in India, with 
 the progress of measures of famine prevention 
 and sanitation at, perhaps, an accelerated 
 rate. One conclusion springs irresistibly, 
 imperatively, from this view of the near 
 future. The extension of military and naval 
 service is one of the most potent influences in 
 depressing the birth-rate; then* reduction 
 would be a corresponding stimulus. Whether 
 the great White States can continue in- 
 definitely to bear the burden of competitive
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 247 
 
 armaments, or no, they can only continue 
 to indulge in the exercise of these arma- 
 ments in actual warfare at the cost of their 
 estates and their civilising work in Africa 
 and Asia, at the risk of inviting a new swarm- 
 ing movement like that which, sixteen hun- 
 dred years ago, destroyed the hard-won 
 Roman Peace. To-day, the leadership of the 
 white races is nowhere challenged; but a new 
 era of bloodshed would undermine both the 
 moral authority and the military power of 
 Europe and America. Our royal rhetoricians 
 and facile journalists invent and discard such 
 phrases as " the Yellow Peril " too rapidly 
 to realise the modicum of truth they contain. 
 There is no immediate " peril," but there is a 
 " colour problem " as complex and pressing, 
 in its way, as the problem of poverty which 
 threatens within the gates. The carica- 
 turists were partly right : France, so long as 
 there was a question of " la revanche," was 
 overshadowed by Germany's more rapidly 
 increasing population. By the same logic, the 
 hegemony of the white races, as they approach 
 to a stable economy of population, must de- 
 pend upon their developing a greater unity of 
 action, a higher and more mobile equilibrium, 
 and in ensuing true civilisation, which is the 
 making of civil persons in civil societies. 
 
 To sum up : So far from being based upon
 
 248 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 unchangeable passions, the nature of man as 
 "a social animal" is based upon material 
 and moral interests which have undergone 
 deep changes, irregular, indeed, but in a 
 certain general order and direction. We can 
 trace these changes both in the structure 
 and the function of successive societies 
 established in course of the swarming process 
 by which the earth has been filled. These 
 stages of settlement have been modified by 
 the environment provided by the natural 
 conditions of the place and the social condi- 
 tions of the time. Thus, in early times, in 
 certain places (rich river valleys surrounded 
 by arid or mountainous regions), the condi- 
 tions favoured the rise of a Slave economy, 
 reflected for structure always responds 
 to function in despotic and predatory 
 governments. In a later time, and a more 
 developed environment, the claims of rival 
 communities now counting equally with 
 physical conditions, a Land economy arises 
 that is, the prevalent types of capital and 
 labour consist of land and serfs with a 
 political structure dominated by feudal nobles. 
 Yet later, on a favourable seaboard, a trade, 
 or Money, economy arises. Slavery and serf- 
 dom are dead of inefficiency; agricultural 
 land gradually gives place to commerce as 
 the chief form of wealth and source of power. 
 The government is an oligarchy, and the
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 249 
 
 main aim of its policy is to obtain national 
 stocks of bullion. This economic condition 
 has, however, no sooner become general 
 among a group of neighbouring and fairly 
 equal societies than it begins to develop 
 an elaborate system of credit. The Credit 
 economy stimulates the organisation of labour, 
 which again is reflected in a series of quasi - 
 democratic governments impelled toward an 
 organisation of settled peace, by way of 
 armed alliances, arbitration treaties, common 
 administrations, and quasi -legislative con- 
 gresses; while the most startling result of the 
 conjoint influences of this era of industrial 
 democracy is an arrest of the growth of 
 population. 
 
 The outward and the inner growth of any 
 organism progress together, and ceaselessly 
 modify each other. Thus, through these 
 types of society, an evolution of warfare is 
 discernible. In a Slave economy, the pro- 
 perty power, threatened with diminishing 
 returns, seeks to maintain itself by slave 
 raids and extortion of tribute. In a Land 
 economy, such as that of feudal Germany, 
 where authority gathers in small local units, 
 there is constant petty conflict, wliile the 
 motive of larger warfare is to obtain new 
 domains for regular rent and revenue. The 
 field of war is, however, already restricted 
 by the concurrent growth of similar communi-
 
 250 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 ties. This proximate check leads to a wider 
 search for new lands unoccupied or feebly 
 held. This is the last stage of the swarm. 
 Barter, impossible over great distances, passes 
 away. The hunt for " precious metals," 
 needed for a standard of exchange, becomes 
 the cause of predatory expeditions, and col- 
 lisions between monarchies claiming divine 
 right to lay up gold by the sale of black men. 
 But legitimate commerce presently becomes 
 supreme; and, after many painful readjust- 
 ments of political power, creates at last a 
 civilisation dependent upon domestic and 
 international peace. 
 
 In speaking of these as chronological stages 
 of evolution we are, of course, using a con- 
 venient fiction. There was a Trade economy, 
 with democracy on a small scale, in ancient 
 Greece; there were elements of the Land and 
 Credit economics in ancient Rome; while 
 the highest ideal of human unity was spoken 
 into deaf ears eighteen hundred years ago. 
 The irregularity of the progress of societies 
 differently situated and constituted has, in- 
 deed, been one of the fertile causes of warfare. 
 This was especially the case in early times, 
 when a small martial people was tempted to 
 assail a splendid but rotten empire (Greece 
 and Persia), or the rulers of a powerful empire 
 to enslave small neighbouring peoples (Baby- 
 lonia and Judaea). Even in very recent
 
 ORGANISATION OF PEACE 251 
 
 times, the clash of acutely different property 
 systems has resulted in war (slave labour v. 
 free labour in the United States; mining 
 interests v. patriarchal agriculture in the 
 Transvaal); but such cases are becoming rarer 
 through the equalisation of conditions and 
 interests due to the rapidity of modern com- 
 munications. A kindred motive to warfare 
 has been found in the demoralisation pro- 
 duced by the collapse of an established 
 politico-economic system. Centuries of an- 
 archy followed the break-up of the ancient 
 empires. The collapse of feudal authority 
 in Europe led to an outbreak of rapacity and 
 persecution, which merged into the so-called 
 wars of religion and a series of dynastic 
 struggles. In its turn, absolute monarchy 
 proved itself utterly inadequate to the task 
 of securing a steady increase and just division 
 of property in expanding societies, and its 
 dying struggles led to a series of revolutions 
 and wars of national liberation. 
 
 Each of these crises of transition has been 
 favourable to the appearance of great soldiers; 
 but, generally speaking, military ambition 
 and genius have been very minor factors in 
 the causation of war. Napoleon, for a short 
 time, dominated the course of events, because 
 he was able to turn the weapons of the new 
 industrialism to predatory use in regions 
 still divided and oppressed by a dying Land
 
 252 WAR AND PEACE 
 
 economy. The further development of arma- 
 ments by industrial science has for ever 
 forbidden any such reversion to type. On 
 the other hand, certain conjunctions of cir- 
 cumstances in early times help to explain 
 the appearance of great pioneers of the peace 
 idea ; but, while it is impossible to imagine the 
 cause of social progress without its prophets 
 and martyrs, its thinkers and artists, it was 
 only when the long fermentation of a thousand 
 elements had produced a favourable environ- 
 ment that the previsions of these rare minds 
 could be assimilated by the mass of men, and 
 so become expressed in stable institutions. 
 The great task of the twentieth century, 
 whether we regard domestic or external, 
 moral or economic, needs, is seen to be the 
 removal of the fear of war, and the burdens 
 of preparation it entails, by the organisation 
 of a settled peace. 
 
 Such then, in all too brief outline, is the 
 history of the human swarm and its settle- 
 ment. By many other paths, man's progress 
 from a state of war toward a state of peace 
 may be traced; it is the writer's hope, by limit- 
 ing this essay to a consideration of certain 
 fundamental principles of organic growth, 
 to have provided a serviceable introduction 
 to such further studies.
 
 NOTE ON BOOKS 
 
 No history of the economics of warfare exists, so far as the 
 writer knows. Tha student must be content for the present 
 to gather his information from a thousand sources general 
 histories (The Cambridge Modern History, The World's History 
 in eight volumes, edited by Dr. H. F. Helmolt, and Seignobos' 
 three- volume sketch may be recommended as containing much 
 of the best English, German, and French scholarship), histories 
 of particular periods or countries, biographies of great com- 
 manders, and histories of particular campaigns, like Oman's 
 Peninsular War and Kinglake's Crimean Campaign. Other 
 general works have been named in the text of this volume. 
 Herbert Spencer's Descriptive Sociology, the publication of which 
 is being continued by his trustees, contains much detail of 
 military history. Prof. 0. W. 0. Oman's History of the Art of 
 
 War is an invaluable fragment ; designed to cover ancient and 
 modern times also, only one volume has actually appeared (1898) 
 dealing with the period A.D. 400-1400. Grose's Military 
 Antiquities is an important source. De Bloch's La Guerre 
 presents a mass of evidence, some historical : vol. L deals with 
 the mechanism of war, vol. ii. with Continental conditions, 
 vol. iii. with naval warfare ; and the remaining three volumes 
 with various economic and social aspects of the subject. A 
 summary of thesis and evidence has been published in English : 
 
 The Future of War (Ginn). Among modern military works may 
 be mentioned Col. J. F. Maurice's War (with a commented 
 list of books), Hamley's Operations of War, Clausewitz's 
 
 War, Moltke's Tactical Problems, 1S58-S9, Von der Goltz' 
 
 The Nation in Arms, Creasy's Decisive Battles, Adams' Great 
 Campaigns, Colomb's Naval Warfare, Mahon's Sea Power in 
 History, Dilke and Wilkinson's Imperial Defence, and General 
 Sir Ian Hamilton's Compulsory Service. Jablonski's Histoire de 
 L' Art Militaire, a half of which deals with Roman times, is 
 useful for its quotations from Xenophon, Polybius, Ctesar, 
 Napoleon. Prod Guglielmo Ferreros Militarism contains 
 several chapters of historical value. 
 
 On the growth of International Law, see the works of Hall, 
 Wheaton, and Walker. The Two Hague Conferences, by Win. 
 253
 
 254 NOTE ON BOOKS 
 
 I. Hull, places the results of these assemblies in the briei'ett 
 possible compass. International Tribunals, by Evans Darby, 
 is a complete record ; Gaston Moch's Histovre Sommaire de 
 Arbitrage Permanent is the best brief review (Monaco : Iiistitut 
 de la Paix). The International Library (Ginn), edited by 
 Edwin D. Mead, contains, amon<j other valuable volumes, The 
 Great Design of Henry IV, Bridgman's World Organisation, 
 Ohanning's Discourses on War, and Sumner's Addresses on War. 
 The Great Illusion, by Norman Angell, deals trenchantly with 
 the iconomio difficulties of aggressive warfare in our time. 
 Among other works may be mentioned Kant's Zum Ewigen 
 Frieden, the last chapters of A. R. Wallace's Darwinism, 
 Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, J. A. Hobson's Imperialism, The 
 Burden of Armaments (Cobden Olub), War and Its Alleged 
 Benefits, and La Fecttration de I' Europe, by J. Novicow ( Alcan) ; 
 The Arbiter in Council, edited by F. "W". Hirst ; The Human 
 Harvest, by Prof. David Starr Jordan ; and among refer- 
 ence books L'Annuaire de la Vie Internationale, by A. H. 
 Fried ; The Peace Year-book (National Peace Council, St. 
 Stephen's House, London, 8.W.), which gives a fuller bibli- 
 ography; The Navy Annual, and Th Statesman's Yrar -book. 
 Among a host of novels of warfare, Erokmann-Chatrian'e The 
 Conscript, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Sevastopol, Zola's La 
 D&ade, and the Baroness Von Suttncr's Lay Down 
 have enjoyed an immense vogue.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ai.tiAN'crs, Modern, 216-7, 
 226 
 
 Arbitration, International, 50, 
 52, 127, 225, 239-243 
 
 Armenian Massacres, 218-9 
 
 Arms, Armies, and Art of 
 War : (Babylonian) 23-5, 30 ; 
 (Egyptian) 36-8 ; (Greek) 
 51-2 ; (Roman) 65-6, 70, 74- 
 5, 76-9 ; (Carthaginian) 67 ; 
 (Carolingian) 87-9; (Feu- 
 dal) 90, 97-104; (Modern) 
 105, 111-113, 120, 122-8, 
 166, 168-170, 175-6, 183, 
 184, 190-4, 209-210, 215, 
 221, 224, 228-235, 238, 243 
 
 Bartholomew, Massacre of St., 
 118 
 
 Battles, Some Great: Marathon, 
 Salamia, 52 ; Byzantium 
 (1453), 82, 93 ; Chalons, 84 ; 
 Hastings, 90 ; Bannockburn, 
 102 ; Crecy, 102, 111, 112 ; 
 I'oio tiers, 102, 112 ; defeat of 
 Spanish Armada, 105, 156 ; 
 Orleans, 111 ; Belgrade, 
 116 ; Agincourt, 113-4 ; 
 Magdeburg, 120 ; Nord- 
 lingen, 123 ; Antwerp, 129 ; 
 Haaeey, 148 ; Dunkirk, 171 ; 
 the Nile, 178; Marengo, 
 Hohenlinden, Copenhagen, 
 174; Trafalgar, 178; Win, 
 Ansterlitz, 180 ; Jena, Fried- 
 
 land, 181 ; Corunnn, 1S3 ; 
 Wagram, 184 ; Borodino, 
 186-7 ; Malo-Jaroslaveti, 
 188 ; Beresina, 189 ; Leipzig, 
 Waterloo, 195 ; Solferino, 
 20ti ; Koniggratz, 210 ; Gra- 
 velotte, 213 ; Sedan, 206, 
 214 ; Metz, Paris, 214 ; 
 Mukden, 221 ; Santiago, 
 Manila, Tsushima, 233 
 
 Black Death, 108, 117 
 
 Buccaneers, 136-7 
 
 Christianity and War, 58-64, 
 
 85-7, 102-4, 118, 121, 124 
 Conscription, 171, 174, 181, 
 
 183, 191 
 Cosmopolitanism (Jewish), 67- 
 
 8 ; (Stoic), 59, 69 ; (18th 
 
 century), 183, 200-1 
 
 Diplomacy, 37, 49-50, 74, 95, 
 126-7, 154 
 
 Federation : (Greek) 46-60 ; 
 (Hanseatic) 107 ; (American) 
 150-162, 226-7 ; (German) 
 207-215 ; (of the world) 200- 
 201, 240-3, 247 
 
 Gunpowder, Early use of, 105, 
 111, 122-3, 169 
 
 Hague Court and Conferences, 
 226, 234, 240-2
 
 256 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hanseatic League, 107-8, 155 
 "Human Nature " and War, 
 1-8, 248 
 
 International Law, 49-50, 66, 
 69, 73-5, 125-7, 198, 240-2 
 
 Islam aud War, 57, 64, 91-3, 
 96, 102 
 
 Judaism and War, 55-8 
 Monroe Doctrine, 202 
 
 Naval warfare, 25, 37, 47, 52 ( 
 90, 112, 125-6, 155-6, 173, 
 174, 177-8, 183, 215, 221, 
 228-9, 233-4 
 
 " Non-Resistance," 60-64 
 
 Patriotism, 49, 59, 62, 76, 163, 
 
 183, 201, 204 
 Peace Movement, 239-243 
 Predatory Wars, Napoleon's, 
 
 167, 175-6, 191-4 
 
 "Truce of God, "91 
 Tsardom, Russian, 161-3, 217- 
 222, 237 
 
 Wars, particular : Hittite- 
 Babylonian, 25, 29 ; As- 
 syrian-Judaic, 30 ; Hyksos- 
 Egyptian, 36 ; Ramesean, 
 37-8 ; Greek Persian, 31, 
 50-55 ; Rome and Carthage, 
 66-7, 76 ; Rome and barba- 
 rians, 69, 74, 77-9, 82-5 ; 
 Campaigns of Charlemagne, 
 86-9 ; Vikings, 89-91 ; Nor- 
 man Conquest, 89, 90; By- 
 
 zantine, 91-2 ; Crusades, 92- 
 
 6 ; Mohammedan, 92-3, 96 ; 
 Hundred Years' War, 101, 
 102, 110-115 ; Anglo-Scot- 
 tish, 102, 112, 115 ; Ware of 
 Roses, 111 ; "Wars of Reli- 
 gion," 116-122, 154-5, 160; 
 Spain and Netherlands, 119- 
 120; Thirty Years' War, 
 120-2, 125, 160 ; England 
 aud Spain, 126, 128-9, 131, 
 135-6, 156; Anglo-Dutch, 
 138, 156; Mogul, 141-2; 
 Mahratta, 146 ; English Civil 
 War, 142,158; Anglo-French, 
 in India, 143, 146-8 ; in 
 Canada, 152, 159 ; Seven 
 Years' War, 148, 161; Ameri- 
 can Colonial Wars, 150, 151 ; 
 War of Independence, 152 ; 
 of Spanish Succession, 156- 
 
 7 ; Jacobite risings, 158 ; 
 Franco-Spanish, 158-160 ; 
 Wars of Polish Election and 
 Austrian Succession, 161 ; 
 Russo- Polish, 162 ; of French 
 Revolution, 166-7, 171-2; 
 Napoleonic, 173-196 ; Mos- 
 cow Campaign, 184-190 ; 
 Greek Independence, 202 ; 
 Italian liberation, 202-7 ; 
 Hungarian revolt, 208 ; Ger- 
 man Unity : war with Aus- 
 tria, 210 ; with France, 211- 
 215 : Crimean, 217 ; Ameri- 
 can Civil, 207, 226-7 ; Russo- 
 Turkish, 218 ; Greek-Turk- 
 ish, 218 ; Macedonian, 220 ; 
 Manchurian, 220-2 ; South 
 African and other British 
 Imperial wars, 223-5 
 
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 and a marvel of comprehensiveness." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
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 of what it did for the world." The Spectator. 
 
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 (With Maps.) " A stirring study." The Guardian. 
 
 51. WARFARE IN BRITAIN 
 
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 55. MASTER MARINERS 
 
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 61. NAPOLEON 
 
 By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D., F.B.A., Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University. 
 (With Maps.) The story of the great Bonaparte's youth, his career, and his 
 downfall, with some sayings of Napoleon, a genealogy, and a bibliography. 
 
 66. THE NAVY AND SEA POWER 
 
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 Daily ffews. 
 
 82. PREHISTORIC BRITAIN 
 
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 2
 
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 2. SHAKESPEARE 
 
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 27. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MODERN 
 
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 35. LANDMARKS IN FRENCH LITERATURE 
 
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 French Literature could be given in 150 small pages." The Times. 
 
 39. ARCHITECTURE 
 
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 to architecture are, as a rule, not worth much. This volume is a welcome excep- 
 tion." Building News. " Delightfully bright reading." Christian World. 
 
 43. ENGLISH LITERATURE: MEDIEVAL 
 
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 we have, is the very man to put an outline of English Mediaeval Literature 
 before the un instructed public. His knowledge and taste are unimpeachable, 
 and his style is effective, simple, yet never dry." The Athcnauni. 
 
 45. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 By L. PEARS ALL SMITH, M.A. "A wholly fascinating study of the different 
 streams that went to the making of the great river of the English speech." 
 Daily Nevus. 
 
 52. GREAT WRITERS OF AMERICA 
 
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 Franklin to Mark Twain, enlivened by a dry humour." Athena-urn. 
 
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 Primitives to the Impressionists. 
 
 64. PR JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE 
 
 By JOHN BAILEY, M.A. "A most delightful essay." Christian World. 
 
 65. THE LITERATURE OF GERMANY 
 
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 70. THE VICTORIAN AGE IN LITERATURE 
 
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 one will put it down without a sense of having taken a tonic or received a series 
 of electric shocks." The Times. 
 
 73. THE WRITING OF ENGLISH. 
 
 By W. T. BRUVSTKR, A.M., Professor of English in Columbia University. 
 " Sensible in its teaching, and not over-rigidly conventional in its manner." 
 Manchester Guardian. 
 
 75. ANCIENT ART AND RITUAL. 
 
 By JANE E. HARRISON, LL.D., D.Litt. " Charming in style and learned in 
 manner." Daily ffewi.
 
 76. EURIPIDES AND HIS AGE 
 
 By GILBERT MURRAY, D.Litt., LL.D., F.B.A., Regius Professor of Greek at 
 Oxford. " A beautiful piece of work. . . . Just in the fulness of time, and 
 exactly in the right place. . . . Euripides has come into his own." Tht Nation. 
 
 Science 
 
 7. MODERN GEOGRAPHY 
 
 dry bones with the flesh and blood of romantic interest." Daily Telegraph. 
 
 9. THE EVOLUTION OF PLANTS 
 
 ByDrD. H. SCOTT, M.A., F.R.S., late Hon. Keeper of the Jodrell Laboratory. 
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 17. HEALTH AND DISEASE 
 
 By W. LESLIE MACKENZIE, M.D., Local Government Board, Edinburgh. 
 "Dr Mackenzie adds to a thorough grasp of the problems an illuminating style, 
 and an arresting manner of treating a subject often dull and sometimes 
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 18. INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICS 
 
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 32. INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE 
 
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 6
 
 Social Science 
 
 i. PARLIAMENT 
 
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 59. ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 By S. J. CHAPMAN, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in Manchester 
 University. " Its importance is not to be measured by its price. Probably 
 the best recent critical exposition of the analytical method in economic 
 cienc* " Gltugow Her aid.
 
 60. THE NEWSPAPER By G. BINNEV DIBBLEE, M.A. (lllus- 
 
 ; : trated.) The best account extant of the 
 
 organisation of the newspaper press, at home and abroad. 
 
 77- SHELLEY, GODWIN, AND THEIR CIRCLE 
 
 By H. N. BRAILSFORD, M.A. "Mr Brailsford sketches vividly the influence of 
 the French Revolution on Shelley 'sand Godwin's England; and the charm and 
 strength of his style make his book an authentic contribution to literature." 
 The Bookman. 
 
 80. CO-PARTNERSHIP AND PROFIT-SHARING 
 
 By ANEURIN WILLIAMS, M.A. "A judiciousbutenthusiastic history, with much 
 interesting speculation on the future of Co-partnership." Christian World. 
 
 81. PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 
 
 By E. N. BENNETT, M.A. Discusses the leading aspects of the British land 
 problem, including housing, small holdings, rural credit, and the minimum wage. 
 
 83. COMMON-SENSE IN LA W y Prof. P. VINOGRADOFF, 
 
 ' " ' n I.- I- -i i IXC. L. 
 
 85. UNEMPLOYMENT By Prof. A. c Picou, M.A. 
 IN PREPARATION 
 
 ANCIENT EGYPT. By F. LL. GRIFFITH, M.A. 
 
 THE ANCIENT EAST. By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A., F.B.A. 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF EUROPE. By HERBERT FISHER, LL.D. 
 
 THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE. By NORMAN H. BAYNES. 
 
 THE REFORM A TION. By President LINDSAY, LL.D. 
 
 A SHOR T HISTORY OF R USSIA. By Prof. MILYOUKOV. 
 
 MODERN TURKEY. By D. G. HOGARTH, M.A. 
 
 FRANCE OF TO-DAY. By ALBERT THOMAS. 
 
 HIS TOR Y OF SCO TLAND. By Prof. R. S. RAIT, M.A. 
 
 LA TIN AMERICA. By Prof. W. R. SHEPHERD. 
 
 HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SPAIN. By J. FITZMAURICE- 
 
 KELLY, F.B.A., Litt.D. 
 
 LA TIN LITER A TURE. By Prof. J. S. PHILLIMORE. 
 THE RENAISSANCE. By Miss EDITH SICHEL. 
 ITALIAN ART OF THE RENAISSANCE. By ROGER E. FRY. 
 LITERARY TASTE. By THOMAS SECCOMBE. 
 Off A UCER AND HIS TIME. By Miss G. E. HADOW. 
 WILLIAM MORRIS AND HIS CIRCLE. By A. GLUTTON BROCK. 
 SCANDINA VIAN HISTORY &> LITER A TURE. By T. C. SNOW. 
 THE MINERAL WORLD. By Sir T. H. HOLLAND, K.C.I. E., D.Sc. 
 SEX. By Prof. J. A. THOMSON and Prof. PATRICK GEDDES. 
 THE GROWTH OF EUROPE. By Prof. GRENVILLK COLE. 
 BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By Canon 
 
 R. H. CHARLES, D.D. 
 
 A HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. By CLEMENT WEBB, M.A. 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bacon to Locke. 
 
 By G. P. GOOCH, M.A. 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Bentham to J. S. 
 
 Mill. By Prof. W. L. DAVIDSON. 
 POLITICAL THOUGHT IN ENGLAND: From Herbert Spencer 
 
 to To-day. By ERNEST BARKER, M.A. 
 
 THE CRIMINAL A ND THE COMMUNITY. By Viscount ST. CYRES. 
 THE CIVIL SERVICE. By GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A. 
 THE SOCIAL SETTLEMENT. By JANE AnDAMS.and R. A. WOODS. 
 GREA T INVENTIONS. By Prof. J. L. MYRES, M.A., F.S. A. 
 TO WN PL A NMNG. By RAYMOND UNWIN. 
 
 London: WILLIAMS AND NORGATE 
 
 And of all Bookshops and Bookstalls.

 
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