The Essays, vol 3 | Page 5

of this heroic virtue, unless a man be very perfect in its
limits, which upon the confines are very hard to discern, he may very
easily unawares run into temerity, obstinacy, and folly. From this
consideration it is that we have derived the custom, in times of war, to
punish, even with death, those who are obstinate to defend a place that
by the rules of war is not tenable; otherwise men would be so confident
upon the hope of impunity, that not a henroost but would resist and
seek to stop an army.
The Constable Monsieur de Montmorenci, having at the siege of Pavia
been ordered to pass the Ticino, and to take up his quarters in the
Faubourg St. Antonio, being hindered by a tower at the end of the
bridge, which was so obstinate as to endure a battery, hanged every
man he found within it for their labour. And again, accompanying the
Dauphin in his expedition beyond the Alps, and taking the Castle of
Villano by assault, and all within it being put to the sword by the fury
of the soldiers, the governor and his ensign only excepted, he caused
them both to be trussed up for the same reason; as also did the Captain
Martin du Bellay, then governor of Turin, with the governor of San
Buono, in the same country, all his people having been cut to pieces at
the taking of the place.
But forasmuch as the strength or weakness of a fortress is always
measured by the estimate and counterpoise of the forces that attack it--
for a man might reasonably enough despise two culverins, that would
be a madman to abide a battery of thirty pieces of cannon--where also
the greatness of the prince who is master of the field, his reputation,
and the respect that is due unto him, are also put into the balance, there
is danger that the balance be pressed too much in that direction. And it

may happen that a man is possessed with so great an opinion of himself
and his power, that thinking it unreasonable any place should dare to
shut its gates against him, he puts all to the sword where he meets with
any opposition, whilst his fortune continues; as is plain in the fierce and
arrogant forms of summoning towns and denouncing war, savouring so
much of barbarian pride and insolence, in use amongst the Oriental
princes, and which their successors to this day do yet retain and practise.
And in that part of the world where the Portuguese subdued the Indians,
they found some states where it was a universal and inviolable law
amongst them that every enemy overcome by the king in person, or by
his lieutenant, was out of composition.
So above all both of ransom and mercy a man should take heed, if he
can, of falling into the hands of a judge who is an enemy and
victorious.

CHAPTER XV
OF THE PUNISHMENT OF COWARDICE
I once heard of a prince, and a great captain, having a narration given
him as he sat at table of the proceeding against Monsieur de Vervins,
who was sentenced to death for having surrendered Boulogne to the
English, --[To Henry VIII. in 1544]--openly maintaining that a soldier
could not justly be put to death for want of courage. And, in truth, 'tis
reason that a man should make a great difference betwixt faults that
merely proceed from infirmity, and those that are visibly the effects of
treachery and malice: for, in the last, we act against the rules of reason
that nature has imprinted in us; whereas, in the former, it seems as if we
might produce the same nature, who left us in such a state of
imperfection and weakness of courage, for our justification. Insomuch
that many have thought we are not fairly questionable for anything but
what we commit against our conscience; and it is partly upon this rule
that those ground their opinion who disapprove of capital or sanguinary
punishments inflicted upon heretics and misbelievers; and theirs also
who advocate or a judge is not accountable for having from mere

ignorance failed in his administration.
But as to cowardice, it is certain that the most usual way of chastising it
is by ignominy and and it is supposed that this practice brought into use
by the legislator Charondas; and that, before his time, the laws of
Greece punished those with death who fled from a battle; whereas he
ordained only that they be for three days exposed in the public dressed
in woman's attire, hoping yet for some service from them, having
awakened their courage by this open shame:
"Suffundere malis homims sanguinem, quam effundere."
["Rather bring the blood into a man's cheek than let it