The Complete Essays (14 page)

6. The hour of parleying is dangerous

[Montaigne wrote this when the Siege of Mussidan (April 1569) was fresh in his mind. Mussidan is less than twenty miles from Montaigne itself.]

[A] Nevertheless I recently saw during the siege of near-by Mussidan that those who had been forcibly dislodged by our army, as well as others of their faction, cried out as though it were treachery when, during the negotiations for an agreement, while the proceedings were still under way, they were taken unawares and hacked to pieces: an accusation which in another century might have seemed justified. But as I have just said, our ways are entirely removed from such rules: nowadays people must not trust each other before the very last binding seal has been affixed. And even that is not enough; [C] it is always a hazardous decision to trust that it will be the good pleasure of a victorious army to keep the promises made to a town which has just surrendered upon generous and favourable terms and to allow free entry to the heated soldiery. Lucius Aemilius Regillus, the Roman praetor, having made an assay of taking the town of Phocaea by force, but having wasted his time because of the outstanding prowess shown by the citizens in their defence, made a pact with them by which they would be accepted as Friends of the Roman People, while he would make an entry as into a confederate city; by which he removed all fear of a hostile action. Whereupon, in order to appear in greater pomp, he immediately brought his army in with him; but no matter what effort he employed it was not in his power to restrain his troops: before his very eyes they sacked a large section of the town, the rights of greed and vengeance overriding those due to his office and to army discipline.
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[A] Cleomenes maintained that, no matter what harm you inflicted on an enemy in war-time, that action was, before gods and men, always above the law and in no way subject to it. So having made a seven-day truce with the Argives, he fell upon them three nights later and killed them while they slept, maintaining that nothing had been said in his truce about nighttime. But the gods took revenge on such crafty perfidy.
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[C] During a parley, while the citizens of Casilinum were dithering over their sureties their town was taken by surprise – yet that was during the age of Rome’s justest commanders and of the perfection of the Roman art of war. For it is not said that we may not, at the right time and place, take advantage of the stupidity of our enemies just as we do of their cowardice. (War certainly has by its nature many privileges which are reasonable at reason’s own expense. Here that rule does not apply,
‘Neminem id agere ut ex alterius praedetur inscitia’
[No one should prey on another’s ignorance.]) But I am thunderstruck by the scope which Xenophon gives to those privileges in the plans and the deeds of his perfect general; Xenophon is a marvellously weighty authority on such matters, being a great commander and, as a philosopher, one of the foremost disciples of Socrates; but I do agree in all things everywhere with the measure he dispenses.
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[A] During the siege of Capua, after Monsieur d’Aubigny had given it a furious battering, Signor Fabrizio Colonna, the commander of the city, had begun to parley from the top of a bastion; as his men relaxed their guard, our men seized the town and tore it apart.
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And, more fresh in our memory, Signor Giuliano Romero at Yvoy made the schoolboy howler of coming out to parley with my Lord the Constable, only to find when he got back that his fortress was taken!
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But we were not allowed to get off without due retribution: the Marquis of Pescara was besieging Genoa where Duke Octaviano Fregoso was in command under our protection; negotiations were so far advanced that it was regarded as if all was already over, when, just as they were about to be concluded, the Spaniards slipped into the city and treated it as though they were fully victorious. And since then, at Ligny-en-Barrois, where the Comte de Brienne was in command and where the siege was conducted by the Emperor in person, Bertheville, Brienne’s lieutenant, came out to parley: it was during the bargaining that the town was taken.
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Fu il vincer sempre mai laudabil cosa,
Vincasi o per fortuna o per ingegno
.

[Victory has ever been worthy of praise, even when due to Fortune or to trickery.]
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They say that. Yet Chrysippus the philosopher would not have agreed: no more than I do. For, he said, those who contest a race must certainly make every effort to run fast, but it is in no ways allowable for them to lay their hand on a rival to stop him nor to thrust out a leg to trip him up.
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[B] And nobler still was the answer made by Alexander the Great to Polypercon, who was urging him one night to take advantage of the darkness to launch an attack against Darius: ‘Certainly not. I am not the man to thieve a victory and then follow it up!’ –
‘Malo me fortunae poeniteat, quam victoriae pudeat.’
[I would rather complain of Fortune than feel ashamed of victory.]
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Atque idem fugientem haud est dignatus Orodem
Stemere, nec jacta cæcum dare cuspide vulnus:
Obvius, adversoque occurrit, seque viro vir
Contulit, haud furto melior, sed fortibus armis
.

[Orodes did not deign to strike him in the back as he fled, nor to wound him with an unseen dart. He ran and confronted him, face to face; he fought with him man to man, proving himself superior not by trickery but by mighty arms.]
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7. That our deeds are judged by the intention

[The end of this chapter, written just before Montaigne died, turns fairly routine thoughts about motive into a personal declaration: Montaigne intends his death to be morally at one with his life.]

[A] ‘Death,’ they say, ‘settles all obligations.’ I know some who have taken that in a perverse sense. King Henry VII of England made an agreement with Don Felipe, the son of the Emperor Maximilian or (to situate him more nobly) the father of the Emperor Charles V, by which Don Felipe would hand over to him his enemy the Duke of Suffolk (of the White Rose, who had fled into hiding in the Low Countries) provided that he promise to make no attempt on the Duke’s life. Yet as he lay a-dying Henry ordered his son in his testament to have the Duke killed as soon as his own death was over.
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More recently, in that tragedy put on for us by the Duke of Alba with the deaths of Count Horn and Count Egmont, there were many events worthy of note.
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Among others was the fact that Count Egmont, on whose faith and assurances Count Horn had put himself into the hands of the Duke of Alba, insistently begged that he be executed first, so that his death should free him from the obligation he had incurred towards Count Horn.

It would seem that death had not freed King Henry from his sworn undertaking, but that Count Egmont had discharged his even before he died: we cannot be held to promises beyond our power or our means. That is why – since actions and performances are not wholly in our power and since nothing is really in our power but our will – it is on the will that all the rules and duties of Man are based and established. And so, since Count Egmont held his soul and his will to be debtors to his promise, he would without a doubt have been acquitted of his obligation even had he survived Count Horn, given that it was not in his power to carry it out. But the
King of England, by breaking his word intentionally, cannot be absolved just because he put off the act of treachery until after his death – no more than that mason in Herodotus who loyally kept the secret of the treasures of the king of Egypt during his lifetime, only to reveal it to his children when he died.
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[C] I have seen many men in my time smitten in conscience for having withheld other men’s goods who arrange in their testaments to put things right after they are dead. But it is valueless to fix a date for so urgent a matter or to wish to right wrongs without feeling or cost. They must pay with something which is truly theirs: the more burdensome and onerous their payment the more just and meritorious their atonement. Repentance begs for burdens.

Worse still are they who reserve for their last will and testament some hate-ridden provision affecting a near one, having concealed it during their lifetime. By stirring up against their memory the one they have offended they show scant regard for their reputations; and they show even less for their consciences since they cannot, even out of respect for death, make their animosities die, prolonging the life of them beyond their own. They are iniquitous judges, postponing judgement until they can no longer take cognizance of the case.

If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life.

8. On idleness

[The
Essays
were started to tame melancholic delusions induced by Montaigne’s withdrawal to his estates, when his thoughts galloped away with him much as Milton later describes in
II Penseroso
as being typical of the melancholic in his lonely tower.]

[A] Just as fallow lands, when rich and fertile, are seen to abound in hundreds and thousands of different kinds of useless weeds so that, if we would make them do their duty, we must subdue them and keep them busy with seeds specifically sown for our service; and just as women left alone may sometimes be seen to produce shapeless lumps of flesh but need to be kept busy by a semen other than her own in order to produce good natural offspring: so too with our minds.
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If we do not keep them busy with some particular subject which can serve as a bridle to reign them in, they charge ungovernably about, ranging to and fro over the wastelands of our thoughts:

[B]
Sicut aquae tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lunae
Omnia pervolitat late loca jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti
.

[As when ruffled water in a bronze pot reflects the light of the sun and the shining face of the moon, sending shimmers flying high into the air and striking against the panelled ceilings.]
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[A] Then, there is no madness, no raving lunacy, which such agitations do not bring forth:

velut ægri somnia, vanæ
               Finguntur species
.

[they fashion vain apparitions as in the dreams of sick men.]
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When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.

[B]
Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat
.
[Whoever dwells everywhere, Maximus, dwells nowhere at all.]
⁴

Recently I retired to my estates, determined to devote myself as far as I could to spending what little life I have left quietly and privately; it seemed to me then that the greatest favour I could do for my mind was to leave it in total idleness, caring for itself, concerned only with itself, calmly thinking of itself. I hoped it could do that more easily from then on, since with the passage of time it had grown mature and put on weight.

But I find –

Variam semper dant otia mentis
[Idleness always produces fickle changes of mind]
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– that on the contrary it bolted off like a runaway horse, taking far more trouble over itself than it ever did over anyone else; it gives birth to so many chimeras and fantastic monstrosities, one after another, without order or fitness, that, so as to contemplate at my ease their oddness and their strangeness, I began to keep a record of them, hoping in time to make my mind ashamed of itself.
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