Ives The Essays of Montaigne/Volume 1/Chapter 16

by Michel de Montaigne

CHAPTER XVI

OF THE PUNISHMENT OF COWARDICE

Another exhibition of Montaigne’s familiarity in thought with military matters. And it was not in thought merely that he was familiar with them. How much of a soldier he himself had been is a matter of discussion, but it is quite certain that he had lived in camps and borne the fatigue of marches.

The first sentence gives the text of the Essay. But the most important passage is that where Montaigne refers to the “view of those who condemn capital punishment for heretics and unbelievers.” It was hardly safe to do more than to hint at such an opinion — to drop it as Montaigne does here into the middle of a page; but we shall see later how earnestly he himself held it.

I ONCE heard it maintained by a prince and very great captain that a soldier could not be condemned to death for faint-heartedness; and at table he told the story of the Seigneur de Vervins, who was sentenced to death for surrendering Boulogne.^[1] In truth, it is reasonable to make a great distinction between the faults which come from our weakness and those which come from our evil intent; for in the one case we have knowingly set ourselves against the laws of reason which nature has imprinted in us; and in the other case it seems that we could call upon that same nature to answer for having left us in such imperfection and feebleness. So that many people have thought that we could not be blamed except for what we do against our consciences; and on this rule is based in part the view of those who condemn capital punishment for heretics and unbelievers, and that which maintains that an advocate and a judge can not be held to account for having fallen short in the discharge of their duties through ignorance. But as for cowardice, it is certain that the most usual way is to chastise it by shame and ignominy. And it is said that this rule was first employed by the legislator Charondas,^[2] and that before his time the laws of Greece punished with death those who had run away from a battle, whereas he decreed only that they should be for three days seated in the public square, dressed in women’s clothes, in the hope that they might still be made use of, their courage being restored by this disgrace. (c) Suffundere malis hominis sanguinem quam effundere^[3] (a) It seems, too, that the Roman laws in old times condemned to death those who had run away; for Ammianus Marcellinus relates^[4] that the Emperor Julian condemned ten of his soldiers, who had turned their backs during a charge against the Parthians, to be degraded and afterward to suffer death, according, as he says, to the ancient laws. But at another time, for a similar offence, he condemned others only to remain among the prisoners under the standard of the baggage.^[5] (c) The severe condemnation by the Roman people of the troops who escaped from Cannæ, and, in that same war, of those who were the companions of Cneius Fulvius in his defeat, did not go so far as death.^[6] Yet it is to be feared that disgrace drives them to despair, and makes them not lukewarm simply, but foes.

(a) In the time of our fathers, the Seigneur de Franget, formerly lieutenant of the maréchal de Chastillon’s company, having been made governor of Fontarabia by the maréchal de Chabannes, in place of Monsieur de Lude, and having surrendered it to the Spaniards, was condemned to be deprived of his titles, and to be declared — and his posterity as well as himself — base-born, taxable, and incapable of bearing arms; and this harsh sentence was carried into effect at Lyons.^[7] Later, a similar punishment was inflicted on all the gentlemen who were in Guise when the Comte de Nansau entered there,^[8] and others still later.

However, if there should be either ignorance or cowardice so gross and so manifest that it surpassed all ordinary examples, there would be good ground for taking it as sufficient proof of knavery and evil intent, and for chastising it as such.

1. See du Bellay, X. He surrendered Boulogne to Henry VIII in 1545.
2. See Diodorus Siculus, XII, 4.
3. Seek rather to bring a man’s blood to his cheek than to shed it. — Tertullian, Apalogeticum. The original has maluit; Montaigne took the quotation from the Adversus Dialogistam of Justus Lipsius, where malis is substituted for maluit.
4. See Ammianus Marcellinus, XXIV, 4. This fact concerns the Emperor Julian the Apostate, when fighting with the Persians in a.d. 363, just before his death.
5. Ibid., XXV, 1. This took place at nearly the same time as the preceding. A body of cavalry had failed to make a proper charge.
6. See Livy, XXV, 7, 22; XXXVI, 1.
7. See du Bellay, II.
8. Ibid., VII. The Comte de Nansau led an army into Picardy in 1537, and the citizens of Guise showed both cowardice and pusillanimity.