Part 51 (1/2)

If a democratic republic subdues a nation in order to govern them as subjects, it exposes its own liberty; because it intrusts too great a power to those who are appointed to the command of the conquered provinces.

How dangerous would have been the situation of the republic of Carthage had Hannibal made himself master of Rome? What would he not have done in his own country, had he been victorious, he who caused so many revolutions in it after his defeat?6 Hanno could never have dissuaded the Senate from sending succor to Hannibal, had he used no other argument than his own jealousy. The Carthaginian Senate, whose wisdom is so highly extolled by Aristotle (and which has been evidently proved by the prosperity of that republic), could never have been determined by other than solid reasons. They must have been stupid not to see that an army at the distance of three hundred leagues would necessarily be exposed to losses which required reparation.

Hanno's party insisted that Hannibal should be delivered up to the Romans.7 They could not at that time be afraid of the Romans; they were, therefore, apprehensive of Hannibal.

It was impossible, some will say, for them to imagine that Hannibal had been so successful. But how was it possible for them to doubt it? Could the Carthaginians, a people spread over all the earth, be ignorant of what was transacting in Italy? No: they were sufficiently acquainted with it, and for that reason they did not care to send supplies to Hannibal.

Hanno became more resolute after the battle of Trebia, after the battle of Thrasimenus, after that of Cannae; it was not his incredulity that increased, but his fear.

7.-The same Subject continued There is still another inconvenience in conquests made by democracies: their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical: but in reality it is much more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.

The conquered people are in a melancholy situation; they neither enjoy the advantages of a republic, nor those of a monarchy.

What has been here said of a popular state is applicable to aristocracy.

8.-The same Subject continued When a republic, therefore, keeps another nation in subjection, it should endeavor to repair the inconveniences arising from the nature of its situation by giving it good laws both for the political and civil government of the people.

We have an instance of an island in the Mediterranean, subject to an Italian republic, whose political and civil laws with regard to the inhabitants of that island were extremely defective. The act of indemnity,8 by which it ordained that no one should be condemned to bodily punishment in consequence of the private knowledge of the governor, ex informata conscientia, is still recent in everybody's memory. There have been frequent instances of the people's pet.i.tioning for privileges; here the sovereign grants only the common right of all nations.

9.-Of Conquests made by a Monarchy If a monarchy can long subsist before it is weakened by its increase, it will become formidable; and its strength will remain entire, while pent up by the neighboring monarchies.

It ought not, therefore, to aim at conquests beyond the natural limits of its government. So soon as it has pa.s.sed these limits, it is prudence to stop.

In this kind of conquest things must be left as they were found-the same courts of judicature, the same laws, the same customs, the same privileges: there ought to be no other alteration than that of the army and of the name of the sovereign. When a monarchy has extended its limits by the conquest of neighboring provinces, it should treat those provinces with great lenity.

If a monarchy has been long endeavoring at conquest, the provinces of its ancient demesne are generally ill used. They are obliged to submit both to the new and to the ancient abuses; and to be depopulated by a vast metropolis, that swallows up the whole. Now if, after having made conquests round this demesne, the conquered people were treated like the ancient subjects, the state would be undone; the taxes sent by the conquered provinces to the capital would never return; the inhabitants of the frontiers would be ruined, and consequently the frontiers would be weaker; the people would be disaffected; and the subsistence of the armies designed to act and remain there would become more precarious.

Such is the necessary state of a conquering monarchy: a shocking luxury in the capital; misery in the provinces somewhat distant; and plenty in the most remote. It is the same with such a monarchy as with our planet: fire at the centre, verdure on the surface, and between both a dry, cold, and barren earth.

10.-Of one Monarchy that subdues another Sometimes one monarchy subdues another. The smaller the latter, the better it is over-awed by fortresses; and the larger it is, the better will it be preserved by colonies.

11.-Of the Manners of a conquered People It is not sufficient in those conquests to let the conquered nation enjoy their own laws; it is, perhaps, more necessary to leave them also their manners, because people in general have a stronger attachment to these than to their laws.

The French have been driven nine times out of Italy, because, as historians say,9 of their insolent familiarities with the fair s.e.x. It is too much for a nation to be obliged to bear not only with the pride of conquerors, but with their incontinence and indiscretion; these are, without doubt, most grievous and intolerable, as they are the source of infinite outrages.

12.-Of a Law of Cyrus Far am I from thinking that a good law which Cyrus made to oblige the Lydians to practise none but mean or infamous professions. It is true he directed his attention to an object of the greatest importance: he thought of guarding against revolts, and not invasions; but invasions will soon come, when the Persians and Lydians unite and corrupt each other. I would, therefore, much rather support by laws the simplicity and rudeness of the conquering nation than the effeminacy of the conquered.

Aristodemus, tyrant of c.u.mae,10 used all his endeavors to banish courage, and to enervate the minds of youth. He ordered that boys should let their hair grow in the same manner as girls, that they should deck it with flowers, and wear long robes of different colors down to their heels; that when they went to their masters of music and dancing, they should have women with them to carry their umbrellas, perfumes, and fans, and to present them with combs and looking-gla.s.ses whenever they bathed. This education lasted till the age of twenty-an education that could be agreeable to none but to a petty tyrant, who exposes his sovereignty to defend his life.

13.-Charles XII This prince, who depended entirely on his own strength, hastened his ruin by forming designs that could never be executed but by a long war-a thing which his kingdom was unable to support.

It was not a declining state he undertook to subvert, but a rising empire. The Russians made use of the war he waged against them as of a military school. Every defeat brought them nearer to victory; and, losing abroad, they learned to defend themselves at home.

Charles, in the deserts of Poland, imagined himself sovereign of the whold world: here he wandered, and with him in some measure wandered Sweden; while his capital enemy acquired new strength against him, locked him up, made settlements along the Baltic, destroyed or subdued Livonia.

Sweden was like a river whose waters are cut off at the fountain-head in order to change its course.

It was not the affair of Pultowa that ruined Charles. Had he not been destroyed at that place, he would have been in another. The casualties of fortune are easily repaired; but who can be guarded against events that incessantly arise from the nature of things?

But neither nature nor fortune were ever so much against him as he himself.

He was not directed by the present situation of things, but by a kind of plan of his forming; and even this he followed very ill. He was not an Alexander; but he would have made an excellent soldier under that monarch.

Alexander's project succeeded because it was prudently concerted.11 The bad success of the Persians in their several invasions of Greece, the conquests of Agesilaus, and the retreat of the ten thousand had shown to demonstration the superiority of the Greeks in their manner of fighting and in their arms; and it was well known that the Persians were too proud to be corrected.

It was no longer possible for them to weaken Greece by divisions: Greece was then united under one head, which could not pitch upon a better method of rendering her insensible to her servitude than by flattering her vanity with the destruction of her hereditary enemy, and with the hopes of the conquest of Asia.

An empire cultivated by the most industrious nation in the world, that followed agriculture from a principle of religion-an empire abounding with every convenience of life-furnished the enemy with all necessary means of subsisting.

It was easy to judge by the pride of those kings, who in vain were mortified by their numerous defeats, that they would precipitate their ruin by their forwardness in venturing battles; and that the flattery of their courtiers would never permit them to doubt of their grandeur.

The project was not only wise, but wisely executed. Alexander, in the rapidity of his conquests, even in the impetuosity of his pa.s.sion, had, if I may so express myself, a flash of reason by which he was directed, and which those who would fain have made a romance of his history, and whose minds were more corrupt than his, could not conceal from our view. Let us descend more minutely into his history.

14.-Alexander He did not set out upon his expedition till he had secured Macedonia against the neighboring barbarians, and completed the reduction of Greece; he availed himself of this conquest for no other end than for the execution of his grand enterprise; he rendered the jealousy of the Lacedaemonians of no effect; he attacked the maritime provinces; he caused his land forces to keep close to the sea-coast, that they might not be separated from his fleet; he made an admirable use of discipline against numbers; he never wanted provisions; and if it be true that victory gave him everything, he, in his turn, did everything to obtain it.

In the beginning of his enterprise-a time when the least check might have proved his destruction-he trusted very little to fortune; but when his reputation was established by a series of prosperous events, he sometimes had recourse to temerity. When before his departure for Asia he marched against the Triballians and Illyrians, you find he waged war12 against those people in the very same manner as Caesar afterwards conducted that against the Gauls. Upon his return to Greece,13 it was in some measure against his will that he took and destroyed Thebes. When he invested that city, he wanted the inhabitants to come into terms of peace; but they hastened their own ruin. When it was debated, whether he should attack the Persian fleet,14 it is Parmenio who shows his presumption, Alexander his wisdom. His aim was, to draw the Persians from the sea-coast, and to lay them under a necessity of abandoning their marine, in which they had a manifest superiority. Tyre being from principle attached to the Persians, who could not subsist without the commerce and navigation of that city, Alexander destroyed it. He subdued Egypt, which Darius had left bare of troops while he was a.s.sembling immense armies in another world.

To the pa.s.sage of the Granicus, Alexander owed the conquest of the Greek colonies; to the battle of Issus, the reduction of Tyre and Egypt; to the battle of Arbela, the empire of the world.

After the battle of Issus, he suffered Darius to escape, and employed his time in securing and regulating his conquests: after the battle of Arbela, he pursued him so close15 as to leave him no place of refuge in his empire. Darius enters his towns, his provinces, to quit them the next moment; and Alexander marches with such rapidity that the empire of the world seems to be rather the prize of an Olympian race than the fruit of a great victory.

In this manner he carried on his conquests: let us now see how he preserved them.