Military Manners and Customs. Farrer James Anson

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СКАЧАТЬ as it may be the result of wholesale robbery on land, serves to some extent as a safeguard against it.66

      A simpler explanation may trace the difference to the maritime Piracy which for many centuries was the normal relation between the English and Continental coasts, and out of which the navies of Europe were gradually evolved. Sir H. Nicolas, describing the naval state of the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century, proves by abundant facts the following picture of it: ‘During a truce or peace ships were boarded, plundered, and captured by vessels of a friendly Power as if there had been actual war. Even English merchant ships were attacked and robbed as well in port as at sea by English vessels, and especially by those of the Cinque Ports, which seem to have been nests of robbers; and, judging from the numerous complaints, it would appear that a general system of piracy existed which no government was strong enough to restrain.’67

      The governments of those days were, however, not only not strong enough to restrain, but, as a rule, only too glad to make use of these pirates as auxiliaries in their wars with foreign Powers. Some English ships carrying troops to France having been dispersed by a storm, the sailors of the Cinque Ports were ordered by Henry III., in revenge, to commit every possible injury on the French; a commission undertaken with such zeal on their part that they slew and plundered not only all the foreigners they could catch, but their own countrymen returning from their pilgrimages (1242). During the whole reign of Henry IV. (1399-1413), though there existed a truce between France and England, the ordinary incidents of hostilities continued at sea just as if the countries had been at open war.68 The object on either side was plunder and wanton devastation; nor from their landing on each other’s coasts, burning each other’s towns and crops, and carrying off each other’s property, did the country of either derive the least benefit whatever. The monk of St. Denys shows that these pirates were really the mariners on whom the naval service of England chiefly depended in time of war, for he says, in speaking of this period: ‘The English pirates, discontented with the truce and unwilling to abandon their profitable pursuits, determined to infest the sea and attack merchant ships. Three thousand of the most skilful sailors of England and Bayonne had confederated for that purpose, and, as was supposed, with the approbation of their king.’ It was not till the year 1413 that Henry V. sought to put a stop to the piratical practices of the English marine, and he then did so without requiring a reciprocal endeavour on the part of the other countries of Europe.69

      Maritime warfare being thus simply an extension of maritime piracy, the usages of the one naturally became the usages of the other; the only difference being that in time of war it was with the licence and pay of the State, and with the help of knights and squires, that the pirates carried on their accustomed programme of incendiarism, massacres, and robberies.

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      1

      Halleck’s International Law, ii. 21. Yet within three weeks of the beginning of the war with France 60,000 Prussians were hors de combat.

      2

      ‘Artem illam mortiferam et Deo odibilem balistrariorum et sagittariorum adversus Christianos et Catholicos exerceri de cætero sub anathemate prohibemus.’

      3

      Fauchet’s Origines des Chevaliers, &c. &c., ii. 56; Grose’s Military Antiquities, i. 142; and Demmin’s Encyclopédie d’Armurerie, 57, 496.

      4

      Fauchet, ii. 57. ‘Lequel engin, pour le mal qu’il faisait (pire que le venin des serpens), fut nommé serpentine,’ &c.

1

Halleck’s International Law, ii. 21. Yet within three weeks of the beginning of the war with France 60,000 Prussians were hors de combat.

2

‘Artem illam mortiferam et Deo odibilem balistrariorum et sagittariorum adversus Christianos et Catholicos exerceri de cætero sub anathemate prohibemus.’

3

Fauchet’s Origines des Chevaliers, &c. &c., ii. 56; Grose’s Military Antiquities, i. 142; and Demmin’s Encyclopédie d’Armurerie, 57, 496.

4

Fauchet, ii. 57. ‘Lequel engin, pour le mal qu’il faisait (pire que le venin des serpens), fut nommé serpentine,’ &c.

5

Grose, ii. 331.

6

Dyer, Modern Europe, iii. 158.

7

Scoffern’s Projectile Weapons, &c., 66.

8

Sur l’Esprit, i. 562.

9

Reade, Ashantee Campaign, 52.

10

Livy, xliv. 42.

11

These Instructions are published in Halleck’s International Law, ii. 36-51; and at the end of Edwards’s Germans in France.

12

‘It would have been desirable,’ said the Russian Government, ‘that the voice of a great nation like England should have been heard at an inquiry of which the object would appear to have met with its sympathies.’

13

Jus Gentium, art. 887, 878.

14

Florus, ii. 20.

15

Edwards’s Germans in France, 164.

16

This remarkable fact is certified by Mr. Russell, in his Diary in the last Great War, 398, 399.

17

Cicero, In Verrem, iv. 54.

18

See even the Annual Register, lvi. 184, for a denunciation of this proceeding.

19

Sismondi’s Hist. des Français, xxv.

20

Edwards’s Germans in France, 171.

21

Lieut-Col. Charras, La Campagne de 1815, i. 211, ii. 88.

22

Woolsey’s International Law, p. 223.

23

Cf. lib. xii. 81, and xiii. 25, 26; quoted by Grotius, iii. xi. xiii.

24

iii. 41.

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