At War with War

by Seymour Chwast

  11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people’s substance to be drained away.

  12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.

  13, 14. With this loss of substance and exhaustion of strength, the homes of the people will be stripped bare, and three-tenths of their income will be dissipated; while government expenses for broken chariots, worn-out horses, breast-plates and helmets, bows and arrows, spears and shields, protective mantles, draught-oxen and heavy wagons, will amount to four-tenths of its total revenue.

  15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy’s provisions is equivalent to twenty of one’s own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one’s own store.

  16. Now in order to kill the enemy, our men must be roused to anger; that there may be advantage from defeating the enemy, they must have their rewards.

  17. Therefore in chariot fighting, when ten or more chariots have been taken, those should be rewarded who took the first. Our own flags should be substituted for those of the enemy, and the chariots mingled and used in conjunction with ours. The captured soldiers should be kindly treated and kept.

  18. This is called using the conquered foe to augment one’s own strength.

  19. In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.

  20. Thus it may be known that the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people’s fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.

  1076 Seljuk Turks capture Demascus and Jerusalem

  1084 Robert Guiscard, the Norman, sacks Rome

  1169 English conquest of Ireland begins

  1187 Muslims under Saladin capture Jerusalem

  1096 The First Crusade, an attempt to capture the Holy Lands by Pope Urban II

  1099 Crusaders capture Jerusalem

  1102 Boleslaw of Poland conquers Pomerania on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea

  1109 War between France and England

  1138 David I of Scotland invades England

  1156 War between two Japanese clans, the Taira and the Minamoto

  1189 Third Crusade

  1191 Richard the Lionheart seizes Cyprus

  1202 Fourth Crusaders take Constantinople

  1208 Genghis Khan conquers Turkestan

  1215 Mongol leader Genghis Khan, creator of the largest empire in the world, conquers Beijing

  1218 Genghis Khan conquers Persia

  1218 Fifth Crusade

  1228 Sixth Crusade

  1235 Bulgarians conquer Thrace and attack Constantinople

  1241 Mongols invade Poland and Hungary

  1241 Muslim victory at Liegnitz in Silesia

  1249 Sweden conquers Finland

  1250 Sultanate Mamluks from the Caucasus take Syria and Egypt

  1260 Tuscan Ghibellines defeat Florentine Guelfs at the Battle of Montaperti

  1261 Michael III, emperor of Nicaea, restores Byzantine Empire

  1270 Eighth Crusade

  1280 Mongols conquer Pagan in Burma

  1283 Teutonic knights conquer Prussia after fighting for more than 50 years. Unbaptized Prussians are killed or exiled

  1296 Edward I of England invades Scotland

  1297 Scottish rebellion defeats English at Stirling

  1320 Lithuanians capture Kiev from a Slavic army

  1337 Start of Hundred Years’ War; the House of Plantagenet, rulers of England, fight the House of Valois, rulers of France, for control of France

  1343 Majapahit empire conquers Bali

  1343 English war with Moors

  1373 John of Gaunt leads English invasion of France

  1381 Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England

  1387 Isfahan battles the Muslim leader, Timur, who kills 70,000, building towers with their skulls

  1389 Victory of Ottomans over Serbs and Bosnians

  1393 Timur captures Baghdad

  1393 Ottomans conquer Bulgaria

  1400 Timur invades Syria

  1415 British defeat French in Battle of Agincourt

  1415 Portuguese begin their empire, capturing Ceuta in Morocco

  1415 Jan Hus burned at the stake fighting a corrupt Church

  1423 Start of Thirty Year’s War between Milan and Florence

  1428 In Mexico, the Aztec Empire begins conquering Atzcapotzalco.

  1429 English siege of Orleans

  1453 Ottoman Turks under Muhammad II take Constantinople

  1455 Rival dynasties in England in a civil war, the War of the Roses

  1471 Annamites invade Hindu state of Champa (South Vietnam)

  1477 With the Battle of Nancy, Habsburgs acquire the Netherlands

  1496 Ottoman forces invade Montenegro

  1515 France invades Italy and occupies Milan

  1515 Turks occupy Syria

  1515 The Spanish forces occupy Cuba

  1519 Hernando Cortés conquers Mexico

  1525 Babur wins the First Battle of Panipat, founds Mongol Empire

  1526 Ottomans invade Hungary, win a victory at the Battle of Mohács

  1527 Muslims conquer Christian Nubia in southern Egypt after a seven-year war

  1532 Pizarro conquers Inca Empire and executes the last Inca emperor

  1542 Peasants’ War in Germany

  1542 English conquer Scots at the Battle of Solway Moss

  1549 Kett’s Rebellion in England

  1550 French take Boulogne from English who also leave Scotland

  1557 Queen Mary of England declares war on France

  1557 Spain defeats French at St. Quentin

  1558 Ivan the Terrible of Russia invades Lithuania

  1571 Austrian war with Turks

  1581 Swedes recapture Estonia

  1588 The Spanish Armada, a fleet of 130 ships, attempts to invade England. It is defeated by the English naval force and is a great victory for Queen Elizabeth I

  1592 Korea invaded by Japan

  1593 Start of the Hungarian Thirteen Years’ War with Turkey

  1611 The Kalmar War pits Sweden against Denmark over control of the Baltic states

  1618 Bohemian revolt against Habsburg control. Thirty Years’ War begins

  1619 Russia invades Beijing

  1622 In Virginia, Native American attack leaves 240 English colonists dead

  1630 Dutch conquer Brazil

  1637 500 Native Americans killed in a Puritan attack on Pequot village

  1648 The Fronde, a series of civil wars in France, occurs in the midst of the Franco-Spanish War.

  1650 Oliver Cromwell defeats Scottish uprising at the Battle of Dunbar

  1652 Anglo-Dutch War declared by the English

  1655 Sweden conquers Warsaw and Cracow

  1659 War between Dutch settlers and the Khoisan, southern African herders

  1664 Second Anglo-Dutch War. English capture New Amsterdam, rename it New York

  1667 War of Devolution. France conquers the Habsburg-controlled Spanish Netherlands

  1676 English settlers defeat New England Native Americans

  1683 Siege of Vienna by Ottomans fails

  1688 “Glorious” Revolution in England. Mary and William of Orange installed as monarchs

  1688 French provoke rebellion overthrowing King Narai of Siam

  1697 Start of Russia’s conquest of Siberia

  1700 Great Northern War, between Russia and Sweden. Russia wins

  1700 Sweden invades Denmark and occupies Copenhagen

  1710 War between Ottomans and Russia ending in Ottoman victory the following year

  1717 Britain, France and the Netherlands contain expansion of Spain

  1720 Warfare between French and Spanish forces in Florida and Texas

  1733 War of the Polish Succession

  1737 New Russian war with the Ottomans

  1738 Persian conquest of Afghanistan

  1
739 Persians defeat Mughals and occupy Delhi

  1740 Prussia annexes Austrian Silesia in the War of the Austrian Succession

  1741 Russo-Swedish War

  1754 French allied with Native Americans fight British in the French and Indian War

  1756 Seven Years’ War begins. England and Prussia defeat France, Austria, Russia, Sweden and Saxony

  1765 Manchu Chinese invade Burma

  1767 British fight Indians in the First Anglo-Mysore War

  1768 War between Russians and Ottomans

  1770 Five American colonists killed by British

  1771 Russia destroys Ottoman fleet and conquers Crimea

  1775 Start of the American War of Independence

  1788 War between Sweden and Russia

  1789 French Revolution begins

  Desiderius Erasmus

  The Complaint of Peace

  This excerpt from the 1521 treatise was translated by Thomas Paynell.

  Let [one] be persuaded that the best method of enriching and improving his realm is not by taking from the territory of others, but by meliorating the condition of his own. When the expediency of war is discussed, let him not listen to the counsels of young ministers, who are pleased with the false glory of war, without considering its calamities, of which, from their age, it is impossible that they should have had personal experience. Neither let him consult those who have an interest in disturbing the public tranquility and who are fed and fattened by the sufferings of the people. Let him take the advice of old men, whose integrity has been long tried, and who have shown that they have an unfeigned attachment to their country. Nor let him, to gratify the passions or sinister views of one or two violent or artful men, rashly enter on a war; for war, once engaged in, cannot be put an end to at discretion. A measure the most dangerous to the existence of a state as a war must be, should not be entered into by a king, by a minister, by a junta of ambitious, avaricious or revengeful men, but by the full and unanimous consent of the whole people.

  The causes of war are to be cut up root and branch, on their first and slightest appearance. Men must not be too zealous about a phantom called national glory; often inconsistent with individual happiness. Gentle behavior on one side will tend to secure it on the other; but the insolence of a haughty minister may give unpardonable offense, and be dearly paid for by the sufferings of the nation over which he domineers.

  There are occasions when, if peace can be had in no other way, it must be purchased. It can scarcely be purchased too dearly, if you take into the account how much treasure you must inevitably expend in war; and what is of infinitely greater consequence than treasure, how many of the people’s lives you save by peace. Though the cost be great, yet war would certainly cost you more; besides, (what is above all, price) the blood of men, the blood of your own fellow-citizens and subjects, whose lives you are bound, by every tie of duty, to preserve, instead of lavishing away in prosecuting schemes of false policy, and cruel, selfish, villainous ambition. Only form a fair estimate of the quantity of mischief and misery of every kind and degree which you escape, and the sum of happiness you preserve in all the walks of private life, among all the tender relations of parents, husbands, children, among those whose poverty alone makes them soldiers, the wretched instruments of involuntary bloodshed; form but this estimate, and you will never repent the highest price you can pay for peace.

  While the king does his duty as the guardian and preserver, instead of the destroyer, of the people committed to his charge, let the right reverend the bishops do their duty likewise. Let the priests be priests indeed; preachers of peace and goodwill, and not the instigators of war, for the sake of pleasing a corrupt minister, in whose hands are livings, stalls and mitres; let the whole body of the clergy remember the truly evangelical duties of their profession, and let the grave professors of theology in our universities, or wherever else they teach divinity, remember to teach nothing as men-pleasers unworthy of Christ. Let all the clergy, however they may differ in rank, order, sect or persuasion, unite to cry down war, and discountenance it through the nation, by zealously and faithfully arraigning it from the pulpit. In the public functions of their several churches, in their private conversation and intercourse with the laity, let them be constantly employed in the Christian, benevolent, humane work of preaching, recommending and inculcating, peace. If, after all their efforts, the clergy cannot prevent the breaking out of war, let them never give it the slightest approbation, directly or indirectly, let them never give countenance to it by their presence at its silly parade or bloody proceedings, let them never pay the smallest respect to any great patron or prime minister, or courtier, who is the author or adviser of a state of affairs so contrary to their holy profession, and to every duty and principle of the Christian religion, as is a state of war.

  Let the clergy agree to refuse burial in consecrated ground to all who are slain in battle. If there be any good men among the slain, and certainly there are very few, they will not lose the reward of Christians in heaven, because they had not what is called Christian burial. But the worthless, of whom the majority of warriors consists, will have one cause of that silly vanity and self-liking which attends and recommends their profession more than anything else entirely removed, when sepulchral honors are denied, after all the glory of being knocked on the head in battle, in the noble endeavor to kill a fellow-creature.

  I am speaking all along of those wars which Christians wage with Christians, on trifling and unjustifiable occasions. I think very differently of wars, bona fide, just and necessary, such as are, in a strict sense of those words, purely defensive, such as with an honest and affectionate zeal for the country, repel the violence of invaders, and, at the hazard of life, preserve the public tranquility.

  But in the present state of things, the clergy (for of their conduct I proceed to speak) so far from acting as servants of Christ, in the manner I have recommended, do not hesitate to hang up flags, standards, banners and other trophies of war, brought from the field of carnage, as ornaments of churches and great cathedrals. These trophies shall be all stained and smeared with the blood of men, for whom Christ shed his most precious blood, and shall be hung in the aisles of the churches, among the tombs and images of apostles and martyrs, as if in future it were to be reckoned a mark of sanctity not to suffer martyrdom, but to inflict it; not to lay down one’s life for the truth, but to take away the life of others for worldly purposes of vanity and avarice. It would be quite sufficient if the bloody rags were hung up in some corner of the Exchange or kept, as curiosities in a chest or closet, out of sight; disgraceful monuments they are of human depravity. The church, which ought to be kept perfectly pure, and emblematic of the purest of religions, should not be defiled with anything stained with the blood of man, shed by the hand of man alienated, as is clear by the very act, both from Christ and from nature.

  But you argue in defense of this indecent practice of hanging up flags or colors, as they are called, in churches, that the ancients used to deposit the monuments of their victories in the temples of their gods. It is true, but what were their gods but demons, delighting in blood and impurity? Not the God, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. Never let priests have anything to do with war, unless it is to put an end to it, and promote love and reconciliation. If the clergy were but unanimous in such sentiments, if they would inculcate them everywhere, there is no doubt, notwithstanding the great power of the secular arm, that their authority, personal and professional, would have a preponderance, against the influence of courts and ministers of state, and thus prevent war, the calamity of human nature.

  But if there is a fatal propensity in the human heart to war, if the dreadful disease is interwoven with the constitution of man, so that it cannot abstain from war, why is not vent given to the virulence in exertions against the common enemy of Christianity, the unbelieving Turk? Yet—even here let me pause—is not the Turk a man—a brother? Then it were far better to allure him by gentle, kind,
and friendly treatment, by exhibiting the beauty of our Christian religion in the innocence of our lives, than by attacking him with the drawn sword, as if he were a savage brute, without a heart to feel, or a reasoning faculty to be persuaded. Nevertheless, if we must of necessity go to war, as I said before, it is certainly a less evil to contend with an infidel, than that Christians should mutually harass and destroy their own fraternity. If charity will not cement their hearts, certainly one common enemy may unite their hands, and though this may not be a cordial unity, yet it will be better than a real rupture.

  Upon the whole it must be said, that the first and most important step toward peace, is sincerely to desire it. They who once love peace in their hearts, will eagerly seize every opportunity of establishing or recovering it. All obstacles to it they will despise or remove, all hardships and difficulties they will bear with patience, so long as they keep this one great blessing (including as it does so many others) whole and entire. On the contrary, men, in our times, go out of their way to seek occasions of war; and whatever makes for peace, they run down in their sophistical speeches, or even basely conceal from the public; but whatever tends to promote their favorite war system, they industriously exaggerate and inflame, not scrupling to propagate lies of the most mischievous kind, false or garbled intelligence and the grossest misrepresentation of the enemy.

  1791 Toussaint L’Ouverture commands the first successful slave revolt leading to an independent Haiti

  1792 War of the First Coalition. France at war with Austria, Prussia and Piedmont

  1798 British, under Horatio Nelson, defeat French in Egypt

  1801 War between Tripoli and U.S.

  1801 The Battle of Copenhagen

  1805 Napoleonic Wars. With the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon defeats Russians and Austrians

  1807 Napoleon defeats Russia in the Battle of Eylau