The Complete Essays (21 page)

17. The doings of certain ambassadors

[War and diplomacy, both noble subjects, dominate this chapter; topics are introduced, such as how to read history, which are later developed in ‘On books’ (II, 10) where the Du Bellays are further criticized. The folly of detailed laws and instructions is treated in ‘On experience’ (III, 13).]

[A] On my travels, in order to be ever learning something from my meetings with other people (which is one of the best of all schools), I observe the following practice: always to bring those with whom I am talking back to the subjects they know best.

[
A1
]
Basti al nocchiero ragionar de’ venti,
Al bifolco dei tori, e le sue piaghe
Conti’l guerrier, conti’l pastor gli armenti
.

[Let the sailor talk but of the winds, the farmer of oxen, the soldier of his own wounds and the herdsman of his cattle.]
¹

[A] For the reverse usually happens, everyone choosing to orate about another’s job rather than his own, reckoning to increase his reputation by so doing; witness the reproof Archidamus gave to Periander: that he was abandoning an excellent reputation as a good doctor to acquire the reputation of a bad poet.
²
[C] Just observe how Caesar spreads himself when he tells us about his ingenuity in building bridges and siege-machines: in comparison he is quite cramped when he talks of his professional soldiering, his valour or the way he conducts his wars. His exploits are sufficient proof that he was an outstanding general: he wants to be known as something rather different: a good engineer.

The other day a professional jurist was taken to see a library furnished with every sort of book including many kinds of legal ones. He had nothing to say about them. Yet he stopped to make blunt comments, like
an expert, on a defence-work fixed to the head of a spiral staircase in that library; yet hundreds of officers and soldiers came across it every day without comment or displeasure.

The elder Dionysius, as befitted his fortune, was a great leader in battle, but he strove to become mainly famed for his poetry – about which he knew nothing.

[A]
Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus
.
[The lumbering ox yearns for the saddle: the nag yearns for the plough.]
³

[C] Follow that way and nobody achieves anything worthwhile. [A] So we should always lead
⁴
architects, painters, cobblers and so on to talk of their own business.

While on this subject, when reading history (which is anybody’s business) I habitually turn my attention to the authors: if they are persons whose only profession is writing I chiefly learn points of style and language from them; if they are doctors I most readily believe them when they tell us about the climate, the health and humours of princes, of wounds and illnesses; when they are jurisconsults you should concentrate on legal controversies, laws, the bases of systems of government and the like; when Theologians, on Church affairs, ecclesiastical censures, dispensations and marriages; when courtiers, on manners and ceremonial; if warriors, on whatever concerns war and chiefly on detailed accounts of the exploits at which they were actually present; when ambassadors, on intrigues, understandings or negotiations, and how they were conducted – matters with which the Seigneur de Langey was fully conversant: that is why I noted and weighed in his
Mémoires
something I would have skipped over in another’s:
⁵
he first gave an account of the remarkable formal statement made by the Emperor Charles V before the Roman Consistory Court in the presence of our ambassadors the Bishop of Mâcon and the Seigneur Du Velly; included in it were several outrageous remarks addressed to us French: among other things he declared that, if his own officers and soldiers had been no more loyal or skilled in warfare than our King’s were, then he would have put a halter round his own neck and gone and begged
our King for mercy. (It seems he may have to some extent really meant this, for he uttered the same words two or three times in the course of his life.) He then challenged the King to single combat, with sword or poniard, in a boat, wearing only a doublet. Continuing his account the Seigneur de Langey added that when the two ambassadors sent their dispatch to the King, they reported the greater part of all this inaccurately and even hid the first two articles from him.

Now I found it very odd that an ambassador should have the power to choose what he should tell his sovereign, especially in a matter of such moment, coming from such a person and spoken before so large an assembly. It would seem to me that the duty of a servant is fully and faithfully to report events just as they occurred, so that his master can be free to arrange, judge and select for himself. To alter the truth and hide it from someone out of fear that he might take it otherwise than he should and be driven to make an unwise decision (meanwhile leaving him ignorant of his own affairs) would seem to belong to the monarch not the subject, to a responsible schoolmaster not to him who should consider himself not merely subordinate in authority but also in wisdom and counsel. Anyway, even in petty affairs such as mine I would not care to be served that way.

[C] Under some pretext or other we are always ready to withdraw our obedience and to usurp the mastery. Everyone so naturally aspires to freedom and authority that, to a superior, no quality should be dearer in those who serve him than simple, straightforward obedience.

The right to command is corrupted when we obey at our discretion not from subordination. Publius Crassus (the one the Romans considered to be ‘five-times blessed’) was Consul in Asia when he wrote to a Greek engineer ordering him to bring him the larger of two ship’s masts which he had seen in Athens in order to use it in a siege-engine he wanted to make. The engineer, on the strength of his scientific knowledge, permitted himself to decide to bring the smaller one which, by the rules of his art, was the more suitable. Crassus listened to his arguments patiently, then had him soundly flogged, judging that the interests of discipline outweighed those of his machine.
⁶

Nevertheless we should consider on the other hand that so strict an obedience is appropriate only to precise orders previously given. The charge of ambassadors leaves them with a freer hand, much depending
directly on their own judgement; they do not merely carry out their Master’s will, they form that will and dress it by their counsel. In my time I have seen persons in authority criticized for having obeyed the King’s dispatches to the letter rather than adapting them to changing local circumstances. Men of judgement still condemn the practice of the kings of Persia who used to break down their orders into such detail that their agents and representatives had to refer back for rulings on the most trivial matters; such delays, over so wide an empire, often proved strikingly prejudicial to their affairs.

As for Crassus, when he wrote to a specialist and actually told him what the mast was to be used for, did he not seem to be entering into a discussion about his intentions, inviting him to use his own discretion?

18. On fear

[Montaigne discusses fear, partly in the light of his own experience in war, partly from
exempla.
He sees it as often leading to mad, ecstatic behaviour: it was indeed to be classed as a case of rapture or of madness, the frightened man being ‘beside himself’.]

[A]
Obstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit
.

[I stood dumb with fear; my hair stood on end and my voice stuck in my throat.]
¹

I am not much of a ‘natural philosopher’ – that is the term they use; I have hardly any idea of the mechanisms by which fear operates in us; but it is a very odd emotion all the same; doctors say that there is no emotion which more readily ravishes our judgement from its proper seat. I myself have seen many men truly driven out of their minds by fear, and it is certain that, while the fit lasts, fear engenders even in the most staid of men a terrifying confusion.

I leave aside simple folk, for whom fear sometimes conjures up visions of their great-grandsires rising out of their graves still wrapped in their shrouds, or else of chimeras, werewolves or goblins; but even among [C] soldiers,
²
[A] where fear ought to be able to find very little room, how many times have I seen it change a flock of sheep into a squadron of knights in armour; reeds or bulrushes into men-at-arms and lancers; our friends, into enemies; a white cross into a red one.

When Monsieur de Bourbon captured Rome, a standard-bearer who was on guard at the Burgo San Pietro was [C] seized by [A] such terror
³
at the first alarm that he leapt through a gap in the ruins and rushed out of the town straight for the enemy still holding his banner; he thought he was running into the town, but at the very last minute he just managed to see the troops of Monsieur de Bourbon drawing up their ranks ready to
resist him (it was thought that the townsfolk were making a sortie); he realized what he was doing and headed back through the very same gap out of which he had just made a three-hundred-yards’ dash into the battlefield.

But the standard-bearer of Captain Juille was not so lucky when Saint-Pol was taken from us by Count de Bures and the Seigneur de Reu; for fear had made him so distraught that he dashed out of the town, banner and all, through a gun-slit and was cut to pieces by the attacking soldiers. There was another memorable case during the same siege, when fear so strongly seized the heart of a certain nobleman, freezing it and strangling it, that he dropped down dead in the breach without even being wounded.
⁴

[C] Such fear can sometimes take hold of a great crowd. [B] In one of the engagements between Germanicus and the Allemani two large troops of soldiers took fright and fled opposite ways, one fleeing to the place which the other had just fled from.
⁵

[A] Sometimes fear as in the first two examples puts wings on our heels; at others it hobbles us and nails our feet to the ground, as happened to the Emperor Theophilus in the battle which he lost against the Agarenes; we read that he was so enraptured and so beside himself with fear, that he could not even make up his mind to run away: [B]
‘adeo pavor etiam auxilia formidat’
[so much does fear dread even help].
⁶
[A] Eventually Manuel, one of the foremost commanders of his army, shook him and pulled him roughly about as though rousing him from a profound sleep, saying, ‘If you will not follow me I will kill you; the loss of your life matters less than the loss of the Empire if you are taken prisoner.’

[C] Fear reveals her greatest power when she drives us to perform in her own service those very deeds of valour of which she robbed our duty and our honour. In the first pitched battle which the Romans lost to Hannibal during the consulship of Sempronius, an army of ten thousand foot-soldiers took fright, but seeing no other way to make their cowardly escape they fought their way through the thick of the enemy, driving right through them with incredible energy, slaughtering a large number of
Carthaginians but paying the same price for a shameful flight as they should have done for a glorious victory.
⁷

It is fear that I am most afraid of. In harshness it surpasses all other mischances. [’95] What emotion could ever be more powerful or more appropriate than that felt by the friends of Pompey who were aboard a ship with him and witnessed that horrible massacre of his forces? Yet even that emotion was stifled by their fear of the Egyptian sails as they began to draw nearer; it was noticed that his friends had no time for anything but urging the sailors to strive to save them by rowing harder; but after they touched land at Tyre their fear left them and they were free to turn their thoughts to the losses they had just suffered and to give rein to those tears and lamentations which that stronger emotion of fear had kept in abeyance.

Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihi ex animo expectorat
.

[Then fear banishes all wisdom from my heart.]
⁸

[C] Men who have suffered a good mauling in a military engagement, all wounded and bloody as they are, can be brought back to the attack the following day; but men who have tasted real fear cannot be brought even to look at the enemy again. People with a pressing fear of losing their property or of being driven into exile or enslaved also lose all desire to eat, drink or sleep, whereas those who are actually impoverished, banished or enslaved often enjoy life as much as anyone else. And many people, unable to withstand the stabbing pains of fear, have hanged themselves, drowned themselves or jumped to their deaths, showing us that fear is even more importunate and unbearable than death.

The Greeks acknowledged another species of fear over and above that fear caused when our reason is distraught; it comes, they say, from some celestial impulsion, without any apparent cause.
⁹
Whole peoples have been seized by it as well as whole armies. Just such a fear brought wondrous desolation to Carthage: nothing was heard but shouts and terrified voices; people were seen dashing out of their houses as if the alarm had been sounded; they began attacking, wounding and killing each other, as though they took each other for enemies come to occupy their city. All was
disorder and tumult until they had calmed the anger of their gods with prayer and sacrifice.

Such outbursts are called ‘Panic terrors’.
¹⁰