Tradition, Principally with Reference to Mythology and the Law of Nations

by Baron John Francis Arundell Arundell of Wardour

Carver (“Travels in North America,” p. 358) says, that when a deputation sets out together for their enemy’s country with propositions of peace, “They bear before them the pipe of peace, which, I need not inform my readers, is of the same nature as a flag of truce among the Europeans, and is treated with the greatest respect and veneration even by the most barbarous nations. I never heard of an instance wherein the bearers of this sacred badge of friendship were ever treated disrespectfully, or its rights violated. The Indians believe that the Great Spirit never suffers an infraction of this kind to go unpunished.”

Count Chandordy, in his reply to Count Bismarck, dated Bordeaux, Jan. 25, 1871, says:—“Count Bismarck reproaches the French armies with having fired on parlémentaires.” An accusation of this nature had already been brought to the knowledge of the Paris Government, and we may quote the following words of M. Jules Favre in his circular of 12th January—“I have the satisfaction to acquaint your excellency that the Governor of Paris has hastened to order an inquiry into the facts alleged by Count Bismarck, and in announcing this to him he has brought much more numerous facts of the same nature to his own cognizance which are imputed to Prussian sentinels, but which he never would have allowed to interrupt ordinary relations.”

I do not know whether this contrast between barbarism, such as it existed in the last century, and modern civilisation, will astonish those partisans of success whom in truth nothing in all the multiform atrocities of this dreadful war seems to have astonished or shocked, so that it was at times almost ludicrous to hear these introuvables declare such things as the bombardment of hospitals and churches, as at Strasburg and Paris, quite right, which even the German commanders, when the matter was brought to their attention, admitted to be wrong.

This perhaps is the worst symptom of corruption we have yet seen, and yet there was a time, and that quite recent, when a different sentiment prevailed. I have just referred[346] to the declaration in the Treaty of Paris, which thought to inaugurate a new era by bringing all causes of conflict in Europe to a settlement of arbitration. But let no one be discouraged or cease to believe in the possibility of such a consummation because of the result. There never was a stronger instance of the intellect of the world vainly striving to create an international code and system for itself which was to be distinct from the law of nations; for at the same moment that the diplomatists who were collected in Paris set to work upon their tower, which was to erect itself above the waters of any future inundation, they one and all agreed to demolish, and as a first step to pull down, the cornerstone from the temple of the past. How this was brought about will best be told in an extract from the Count de Montalembert’s “Pie IX. et la France en 1849 et 1859,” p. 10:—

“Let us go back to the origin of the evil, ... it dates back more especially from the Congress of Paris in 1856, from that diplomatic reunion which, after having solemnly declared that none of the contracting powers had the right to interfere either collectively or individually in the relations of a sovereign with his subjects (Protocol of 18th March), after having proclaimed the principle of the absolute independence of the sovereigns, for the benefit of the Turkish Sultan against his Christian subjects, thought it within its competency, in its protocol of the 8th of April, and in the absence of any representative of the august accused, to proclaim that the situation of the Pontifical States was ‘abnormal’ and ‘irregular.’ This accusation developed and exaggerated at the Tribune, and elsewhere by Lord Palmerston and Count Cavour, was equally formulated under the Presidency and upon the initiative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, and it is consequently France which must bear the principal responsibility before the Church and Europe. We can recall the grief and surprise which this strange proceeding created in the Catholic world.”

Thus was the game set rolling; and the policy thus indicated was pursued with the eager and unrelenting pertinacity of some, and with the tacit approval of the rest of the co-signatories.

The war declared by France against Austria, which was the precipitating cause of the storm which broke upon the Papal States, can, it is true, only be regarded as evidence of the conspiracy—inasmuch as it was declared by one of the conspirators at the instigation of another, whose ultimate aim was the seizure of the States of the Church and of the other independent Italian sovereignties to the profit of Piedmont. So soon as the victory of the French arms was decided, the Emperor’s proclamation from Milan appeared, inciting the populations to insurrection. All then followed in sequence—the revolt of the Romagnas four days after the Milan manifesto, their annexation along with the other independent states of Central Italy by Piedmont, this annexation being effected with the connivance, if not the consent, of France, and for which payment was eventually made in the cession of Nice and Savoy (all this being in contravention of the treaties of Villafranca and Zurich). But what mattered the contravention of treaties in comparison with the scenes which followed? The programme of the congress, or, if that is denied, the programme of two (if not three, for it is difficult to acquit Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell of participation by consent) of the powers who had entered into the conspiracy against European order, and these, at that time, the powers in the highest state of military efficiency, was to be carried out per fas et nefas. Naples and the patrimony of St Peter had to be secured, and as they morally presented no vulnerable side, they were seized by the hand of the marauder in defiance of “all law, human and divine.”[347] Garibaldi’s descent on Sicily, effected under the cover of the English navy, was simply a brusque and flagrant act of piracy, for which no plea of justification has ever been set up. The usurpation of the Papal States, though not less ruthlessly accomplished in the end, was carried through with more regard to form in its preliminary stages; yet at the last the diplomatic mask was torn off, and the invasion was made without any pretext or justification known to the law of nations, and without even a declaration of war.

Here, again, the Imperial diplomacy and Italian intrigue went hand in hand. Lamoriciere, in reliance upon the honour of France, had made all his dispositions against Garibaldi, and had received a letter from the French ambassador as late as the 7th September (bearing the same date as the so-called ultimatum of Cavour, although the Piedmontese troops had crossed the frontier before it was delivered), which I shall here reproduce, seeing that it is not on record in the Annuaire des Deux Mondes (1860)—“I inform you by the Emperor’s orders that the Piedmontese will not enter the Roman States, and that 20,000 French are about to occupy the different places of those states. Make, then, all your dispositions against Garibaldi.—Le Duc de Grammont.”[348] (This letter was dated September 7, 1860, the battle of Castelgidardo was fought on the 18th September 1860.) It is needless to add that no reinforcements from France appeared, and that the assurance served no other purpose than to mislead, and to throw Lamoriciere off his guard. Indeed, in spite of various protestations and the subsequent withdrawal of the French ambassador from Turin, the Catholic world settled down into the belief, not only that the Emperor of the French had never had the intention of sending troops to the rescue, but that the whole scheme of the invasion had been deliberately devised at the ominous interview which took place on the 28th of August previous, between the Emperor, Farini, and General Cialdini. It was even said that the words used by the Emperor on the occasion transpired, “frappez fort et frappez vite,”—a terse and striking phrase, which will fitly perpetuate in the human memory the most flagrant violation of the law of nations which history affords.[349]

All this was done with the undisguised satisfaction of several veteran English statesmen, who were, moreover, directly or indirectly represented at the same congress which sought to bind the European powers to call in the arbitration of a friendly power, in case of disagreement, before making an appeal to arms.

Now there is no reason why this rule, good in itself, and congruous to the spirit and maxims of the law of nations, should not have been embodied as a fundamental article in the code; for the law of nations is not a dead-letter, but, like everything that is of tradition, easily lending itself to adaptation and development according to the changing circumstances of the world.