Some of the rights of war are next considered—that of sacking a town taken by assault, and of blockading a town defended, not by the inhabitants, but by a military garrison—are next examined;—in both these cases the penalty falls upon the innocent. The Homeric description of a town taken by assault, is still applicable to modern warfare:—
ανδρας μεν κτεινουσι, πολιν δε τε πυρ αμαθυνει
τεκνα δε τ' αλλοι αγουσι, βαθυζωνους τε γυναικας
The unhappy fate of Genoa is thus beautifully related—
"Some of you, I doubt not, remember Genoa; you have seen that queenly city with its streets of palaces, rising tier above tier from the water, girdling with the long lines of its bright white houses the vast sweep of its harbour, the mouth of which is marked by a huge natural mole of rock, crowned by its magnificent lighthouse tower. You remember how its white houses rose out of a mass of fig and olive and orange trees, the glory of its old patrician luxury. You may have observed the mountains, behind the town, spotted at intervals by small circular low towers; one of which is distinctly conspicuous where the ridge of the hills rises to its summit, and hides from view all the country behind it. Those towers are the forts of the famous lines, which, curiously resembling in shape the later Syracusan walls enclosing Epipalæ, converge inland from the eastern and western extremities of the city, looking down—the western line on the valley of the Polcevera, the eastern, on that of the Bisagno—till they meet, as I have said, on the summit of the mountains, where the hills cease to rise from the sea, and become more or less of a table land, running off towards the interior, at the distance, as well as I remember, of between two and three miles from the outside of the city. Thus a very large open space is enclosed within the lines, and Genoa is capable therefore of becoming a vast intrenched camp, holding not so much a garrison as an army. In the autumn of 1799, the Austrians had driven the French out of Lombardy and Piedmont; their last victory of Fossano or Genola had won the fortress of Coni or Cunco, close under the Alps, and at the very extremity of the plain of the Po; the French clung to Italy only by their hold of the Riviera of Genoa—the narrow strip of coast between the Apennines and the sea, which extends from the frontiers of France almost to the mouth of the Arno. Hither the remains of the French force were collected, commanded by General Massena; and the point of chief importance to his defence was the city of Genoa. Napoleon had just returned from Egypt, and was become First Consul; but he could not be expected to take the field till the following spring, and till then Massena was hopeless of relief from without—every thing was to depend on his own pertinacity. The strength of his army made it impossible to force it in such a position as Genoa; but its very numbers, added to the population of a great city, held out to the enemy a hope of reducing it by famine; and as Genoa derives most of its supplies by sea, Lord Keith, the British naval commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, lent the assistance of his naval force to the Austrians; and, by the vigilance of his cruizers, the whole coasting trade right and left along the Riviera, was effectually cut off. It is not at once that the inhabitants of a great city, accustomed to the daily sight of well-stored shops and an abundant market, begin to realize the idea of scarcity; or that the wealthy classes of society, who have never known any other state than one of abundance and luxury, begin seriously to conceive of famine. But the shops were emptied; and the storehouses began to be drawn upon; and no fresh supply, or hope of supply, appeared.
"Winter passed away and spring returned, so early and so beautiful on that garden-like coast, sheltered as it is from the north winds by its belts of mountains, and open to the full rays of the southern sun. Spring returned and clothed the hill-sides within the lines with its fresh verdure. But that verdure was no longer the mere delight of the careless eye of luxury, refreshing the citizens by its liveliness and softness, when they rode or walked up thither from the city to enjoy the surpassing beauty of the prospect. The green hill-sides were now visited for a very different object; ladies of the highest rank might be seen cutting up every plant which it was possible to turn to food, and bearing home the common weeds of our road-sides as a most precious treasure. The French general pitied the distresses of the people; but the lives and strength of his garrison seemed to him more important than the lives of the Genoese, and such provisions as remained were reserved, in the first place, for the French army. Scarcity became utter want, and want became famine. In the most gorgeous palaces of that gorgeous city, no less than in the humblest tenements of its humblest poor, death was busy; not the momentary death of battle or massacre, nor the speedy death of pestilence, but the lingering and most miserable death of famine. Infants died before their parents' eyes, husbands and wives lay down to expire together. A man whom I saw at Genoa in 1825, told me, that his father and two of his brothers had been starved to death in this fatal siege. So it went on, till in the month of June, when Napoleon had already descended from the Alps into the plain of Lombardy, the misery became unendurable, and Massena surrendered. But before he did so, twenty thousand innocent persons, old and young, women and children, had died by the most horrible of deaths which humanity can endure. Other horrors which occurred besides during this blockade, I pass over; the agonizing death of twenty thousand innocent and helpless persons requires nothing to be added to it.
"Now, is it right that such a tragedy as this should take place, and that the laws of war should be supposed to justify the authors of it? Conceive having been an officer in Lord Keith's squadron at that time, and being employed in stopping the food which was being brought for the relief of such misery. For the thing was done deliberately; the helplessness of the Genoese was known; their distress was known; it was known that they could not force Massena to surrender; it was known that they were dying daily by hundreds, yet week after week, and month after month, did the British ships of war keep their iron watch along all the coast; no vessel nor boat laden with any article of provision could escape their vigilance. One cannot but be thankful that Nelson was spared from commanding at this horrible blockade of Genoa.
"Now, on which side the law of nations should throw the guilt of most atrocious murder, is of little comparative consequence, or whether it should attach it to both sides equally; but that the deliberate starving to death of twenty thousand helpless persons should be regarded as a crime in one or both of the parties concerned in it, seems to me self-evident. The simplest course would seem to be, that all non-combatants should be allowed to go out of a blockaded town, and that the general who should refuse to let them pass, should be regarded in the same light as one who were to murder his prisoners, or who were to be in the habit of butchering women and children. For it is not true that war only looks to the speediest and most effectual way of attaining its object; so that, as the letting the inhabitants go out would enable the garrison to maintain the town longer, the laws of war authorize the keeping them in and starving them. Poisoning wells might be a still quicker method of reducing a place; but do the laws of war therefore sanction it? I shall not be supposed for a moment to be placing the guilt of the individuals concerned in the two cases which I am going to compare, on an equal footing; it would be most unjust to do so—for in the one case they acted, as they supposed, according to a law which made what they did their duty. But, take the cases themselves, and examine them in all their circumstances; the degree of suffering inflicted—the innocence and helplessness of the sufferers—the interests at stake—and the possibility of otherwise securing them; and if any man can defend the lawfulness in the abstract of the starvation of the inhabitants of Genoa, I will engage also to establish the lawfulness of the massacres of September."
We rejoice to find that the great authority of Colonel W. Napier—an authority of which posterity will know the value—is arrayed on the side of those who think that war, the best school, as after all it must often be, of some of our noblest virtues, need not be always the cause of such atrocities.
This enquiry shows us how the centre of external movement in Europe has varied; but it is not merely to the territorial struggle that our attention should be confined—mighty principles, Christian truth, civil freedom, were often partially at issue on one side, or on the other, in the different contests which the gold and steel of Europe were set in motion to determine; hence the necessity of considering not only the moral power, but the economical and military strength of the respective countries. It requires no mean share of political wisdom to mitigate an encounter with the financial difficulties by which every contest is beset. The evils of the political and social state of France were brought to a head by the dilapidation of its revenues, and occasioned, not the Revolution itself, but the disorders by which it was accompanied. And more than half of our national revenue is appropriated to the payment of our own debt; in other words, every acre of land, besides the support of its owner and the actual demands of the State, is encumbered with the support of two or three persons who represent the creditors of the nation; and every man who would have laboured twelve hours, had no national debt existed, is now obliged to toil sixteen for the same remuneration: such a state of things may be necessary, but it certainly requires investigation.
Other parts of the law of nations, the maritime law especially, require improvement. Superficial men are apt to overlook the transcendent importance of error on these subjects by which desolation may be spread from one quarter of the globe to the other. As no man can bear long the unanimous disapprobation of his fellows, no nation can long set at defiance the voice of a civilized world. But we return to history in military operations. A good map is essential to this study. For instance, to understand the wars of Frederick the Great, it is not enough to know that he was defeated at Kolin, Hochkirchen, and Cunersdorf—that he was victorious at Rosbach, Lowositz, Zorndorf, and Prague—that he was opposed by Daun, and Laudohn, and Soltikoff—we must also comprehend the situation of the Prussian dominions with regard to those of the allies—the importance of Saxony as covering Prussia on the side of Austria—the importance of Silesia as running into the Austrian frontier, and flanking a large part of Bohemia, should also be considered—this will alone enable us to account for Frederick's attack on Saxony, and his pertinacity in keeping possession of Silesia; nor should it be forgotten, that the military positions of one generation are not always those of the next, and that the military history of one period will be almost unintelligible, if judged according to the roads and fortresses of another. For instance, St Dizier in Champagne, which arrested Charles the Fifth's invading army, is now perfectly untenable—Turin, so celebrated for the sieges it has sustained, is an open town, while Alexandria is the great Piedmontese fortress. The addition of Paris to the list of French strongholds, is, if really intended, a greater change than any that has been enumerated. This discussion leads to an allusion to mountain warfare, which has been termed the poetry of the military art, and of which the struggle in Switzerland in 1799, when the eastern part of that country was turned into a vast citadel, defended by the French against Suwaroff, is a most remarkable instance, as well as the most recent. The history by General Mathieu Dumas of the campaign in 1799 and 1800, is referred to as containing a good account and explanation of this branch of military science.