Hugo Grotius

THE WARFARE OF HUMANITY

I

BY ANDREW D. WHITE

OF all tyrannies of unreason in the modern world, one holds a supremely evil preëminence. It covered the period from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century: throughout those hundred years was waged a war of hatreds, racial, religious, national, and personal; of ambitions, ecclesiastical and civil; of aspirations, patriotic and selfish; of efforts, noble and vile. During all those weary generations Europe became one broad battlefield, drenched in human blood and lighted from innumerable scaffolds.

In this confused struggle great men appeared: heroes and martyrs, ruffians and scoundrels; all was anarchic. The dominant international gospel was that of Machiavelli.

Into the very midst of all this welter of evil, at a point in time to all appearance hopeless, at a point in space apparently defenseless, in a nation of which every man, woman, and child was under sentence of death from its sovereign, was born a man who wrought as no other has ever done for a redemption of civilization from the main cause of all that misery; — who thought out for Europe the precepts of right reason; who made them heard; who gave a noble change to the course of human affairs; whose thoughts, reasonings, suggestions, and appeals produced an environment in which came an evolution of humanity which still continues.

Huig van Groot, afterward known to the world as Hugo Grotius, was born at Delft in Holland on Easter day of 1583. It was at the crisis of the struggle between Spain and the Netherlands, That struggle had already continued for twenty years, and just after the close of his first year, in the very town where he was lying in his cradle, came its most fearful event, that which maddened both sides, — the assassination of William of Orange, nominally by Balthazar Gerard, really by Phillip II of Spain.

It was, indeed, a fearful period. From Spain, fifteen years before his birth, the Holy Inquisition had sent forth, with the solemn sanction of Phillip II, the edict which condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. In France, twelve years before his birth, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew had stimulated religious wars interspersed with new massacres, the sacking of towns, the assassination of rulers and leaders. Less than seven years before his birth this French example had been followed in the great massacre at Antwerp, which filled his country with horror. In Italy a succession of pontiffs and princes, moved sometimes by fanaticism, but generally by greed, were carrying out their plans with fire and slaughter. In Great Britain Elizabeth was in her last days: great, gifted, and cruel. Throughout Germany were threatenings of a storm worse than any of those which had preceded it. For though the religious Peace of Passau in 1552 had established toleration, it was a toleration which, being based upon the whims of individual rulers, settled nothing; already Europe was darkened by the shadow of the great coming calamity, the Thirty Years’ War.

The child had from his birth the best of all heritages. For he came of a good, pure, sound ancestry. Among his great-grandfathers was De Cornets, — driven from France by religious persecution, — one of those Huguenots who proved of such immense value to every country which received them. Among his immediate ancestors was a line of state servants, brave, true, and thoughtful. His father was four times Burgomaster of Delft, one of the Curators of the University of Leyden, and a Councilor of State.

But barely had the child begun to lisp when a great danger beset him: his precocity. All his powers, moral and intellectual, seemed developed preternaturally. At nine years of age his Latin verses won the applause of scholars; in his eleventh year poets addressed him as a second Erasmus; at twelve years he was admitted to the University of Leyden. The chances seemed that he would bloom out as a mere prodigy, — an insufferable prig, — then fade, and never be heard of more. But his parents seem to have been more sensible than is usual in such cases: they sent him early from home and placed him among men to whom he was sure to look up with reverence. At the University he fell under the influence of Joseph Justus Scaliger. The genius of the youth bridged the chasm of years which separated him from the renowned scholar, and they became intimate friends.

Two years after entering the University he threw learned Europe into astonishment by a work which would have increased the reputation of any veteran in the republic of letters: a revision of the great encyclopædia of Martianus Capella, including “The Marriage of Mercury with Philology” and “The Seven Treatises on the Liberal Arts.” This labor was enormous. The subjects treated by Capella were many and difficult, and to each of these the young scholar gave most thorough study; the number of subjects ransacked by Grotius seems appalling, the number of authors even more so: rhetoric, logic, geography, arithmetic, astronomy, music, all must be investigated, after the manner of the time, by finding what every ancient author had thought upon them.

In rapid succession he also published a translation of Simon Stevin on Navigation, and an edition of Aratus on Astronomy, which gave him repute as a mathematician; and at the same time he continued writing Latin verses which increased his fame as a classical scholar and poet, — as scholarship and poetry were then understood.

At the age of fifteen, after the fashion of the period, he held public disputes in mathematics, philosophy, and jurisprudence. His fame spread far. He was widely recognized as the wonder of the University.

In 1598, the Netherlands sent an embassy to King Henry IV of France. It meant much, for it seemed to bear the fortunes of the Republic. Hitherto France had favored the Netherlands in their long war with Spain, but now there was talk throughout Europe of peace between France and Spain; and if this peace were not prevented, or if a treaty were not most skillfully made, the Netherlands might awake some morning to find themselves exposed to the whole might of Philip II; to his hatred for their heresy and to his vengeance for their rebellion. To meet this emergency the Dutch Republic sent to Paris the Admiral of Zealand, Justin of Nassau, and John van Barneveld, its greatest statesman: with these went Grotius as an attaché.

He now incurred a new risk. His reputation had reached France. Men of high position crowded about him, and Henry IV with his own hand hung his portrait upon the youth’s neck; but the moral powers of Grotius were as fully developed as his intellectual gifts: his sober judgment shielded him from flattery: all this distinction, instead of spoiling, stimulated him; he did not loiter among flatterers, but returned to Holland and again took up his work as a scholar.

And he avoided another danger as serious as his precocity and distinction had been. He steered clear of the quicksands of useless scholarship which had engulfed so many strong men of his time. The zeal of learned men of that period was largely given to knowing things not worth knowing, to discussing things not worth discussing, to proving things not worth proving; Grotius seemed plunging on, with all sails set, into these quicksands; but again his good sense and sober judgment saved him. He decided to bring himself into the current of active life flowing through his land and time, and with this purpose he gave himself to the broad and thorough study of jurisprudence.

He was only in his seventeenth year when he was called to plead his first case. It gained him much credit. Other successes rapidly followed and he was soon made Advocate General of the Treasury for the Provinces of Holland and Zealand. A new danger now beset him, — the danger of becoming simply a venal pleader, a creature who grinds out arguments on this or that side for this or that client, — a mere legal beast of prey. Fortunately for himself and for the world he took a higher view of his life-work: his determination clearly was to make himself a thoroughly equipped jurist, and then, as he rose more and more in his profession, to use his powers for the good of his country and of mankind.

But he made no effort to attract notice, and one striking evidence of his reserve and modesty was discovered only after more than two centuries, when, in 1868, there was found, in a bookshop at The Hague, an old manuscript never before published, but written by Grotius in 1604, its title being De jure predœ. In this manuscript, prepared during his twentysecond year, were found both the germs and, in large measure, the growth of many ideas and trains of thought which gave to his later works such vast value.

He had evidently felt that his thought on these great subjects was not sufficiently mature; but five years later, in 1609, when a conflict of interests between the Netherlands and Portugal seemed to demand it, he developed a chapter of this unpublished book into his first work of world-wide fame: the Mare Liberum. It was a calm, powerful argument against one of the most monstrously absurd claims ever put forth: a claim which at that time clouded the title of humanity to our planet. This was nothing else than the pretense of dominion over the high seas insisted upon by various nations, — a claim which had in days gone by been of some use against piracy, but had become fruitful in wrong. The government which he nominally had in view was Portugal, but the claim which was deepest in his thought was that of England. Her main contention was that the narrow seas — all the seas lying about Great Britain even up to the shores of Norway, of Holland, and of France — were her own; that she was alone entitled to fish in them or freely navigate them; that other nations could do so only by her permission; that her ships in those waters were entitled to lord it over all other ships; that as the mistress of those seas her flag was to be saluted by the vessels of all other powers; and beside all this was her vague claim of the Bay of Biscay and of the ocean north of Scotland.

There was strong warrant for pretensions of this sort. As far back as 1493, Pope Alexander VI had settled disputes between Spain and Portugal arising out of their discoveries upon the Atlantic and Pacific by drawing a line from pole to pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores, giving all west of it to the Spanish, all east of it to the Portuguese. Both these nations attempted more or less persistently to exercise the sway thus given over the oceans as well as over the continents. The Portuguese forbade under heavy penalties any person, whether native or alien, to pass through the waters off the African and Brazilian coasts without their permission; the Spanish were hardly less severe toward those who without leave approached their dependencies. But though the realization of the earth’s rotundity renewed the old difficulty, and Spain and Portugal discovered that the Papal decision was futile, since all their new dominions could be approached both from the east and the west, both nations continued to maintain, as best they could, their sovereignty over the oceans.

Other nations followed these examples. France asserted proprietary rights in the seas off her coasts. Denmark claimed the ocean between Norway and Iceland, and, with Sweden, she insisted on the ownership of the Baltic. Venice, upon her mudbanks at the northwestern corner of the Adriatic, insisted upon a similar control over that open sea; the annual marriage of the Doge with the Adriatic was but the symbol of this dominion. Genoa and Pisa put in similar claims on the west side of Italy. Against all this Grotius published to the world a demonstration that no such right could exist.

His whole argument was mainly a development of two postulates. The first of these was that the right of nations to communicate with one another had been universally recognized; that it was based on a fundamental law of humanity; that, the liberty of the sea being necessary to enable nations to communicate with one another, it could not be taken away by any power whatever. The second was that the sea could not be made property on account of its immensity, its lack of stability, its want of fixed limits. This argument in places seemed thin. The book, after the custom of the time, was filled with an array — far more than sufficient — of learned citations, but its most significant feature — that which went to make it the herald of a new epoch — was that it took its stand upon the inalienable rights of mankind; that it mainly deduced these rights neither from revelation nor from national enactments, but from natural law as ascertained by the human mind.

This book was nominally leveled at the pretensions of Spain and Portugal, but the leading spirits in England saw well what it meant. Although Queen Elizabeth, when the Spanish claimed contributions of Sir Francis Drake in the ocean adjacent to their dominions, had made answer appealing to the natural rights of all men upon the high seas, all this was conveniently forgotten, and King James I, the crowned pedant of Great Britain, immediately gave orders to his ambassador in Holland to take measures against the young publicist.

These measures having proved futile, John Selden, a great legal authority in England, well fitted for the task, was led to write a reply to Grotius. For nine years he was employed in bringing his authorities together; and in 1618 the book was ready, but it was not then published. It was evidently feared that certain concessions in it might thwart the interests of England in sundry quarters, so that it did not see the light until 1635, and then on account of the direct necessities of England in her trouble with the Netherlands.

In his Mare Clausum Selden began, as was then usual, with the Bible. In order to refute Grotius’ idea that the ocean cannot be made the property of any one nation he cites the twenty-eighth verse of the first chapter of Genesis, which declares that God said to Adam, “Have dominion over the fish of the sea.” “Now,” continues Selden, “the fish are the living revenue, — the use of the sea. If these be given, the property itself may be considered as given. Again God said to Noah and his descendants, ‘Your fear shall be upon the fish of the sea’ (Genesis ix. 2).” Selden then went on to lay stress upon the declaration of the Almighty to the Israelites, “Thy borders are in the midst of the sea,” and he argued that of course dominion was given them within these borders, and therefore that this dominion extended over the ocean. He even pressed into his service the poetry of Isaiah, who, as he says, called Tyre “the might of the seas,” and Selden argues that “might,” in this case, can only mean possession. He declares that the Red Sea is called Edom, which means red, simply because it belonged to the descendants of Esau.

With the same pedantic fullness Selden ransacked the Talmud, the myriad writers of classical antiquity, the records of mythology, theology, and philology. Neptune, god of the seas, he insists is only a king who really existed and had the right to rule the sea; stress is laid upon Xerxes as binding the Hellespont; and following these examples are a multitude equally cogent from modern history.

Having thus gone through history, sacred and profane, to show that divine and human authority are on the side of British sovereignty over the seas, he turns to logic, and produces a series of arguments still more extraordinary. He argues that if nations can own land they can own water; that if they can own a little water they can own much; that it is as conformable to reason for a nation to control an ocean as a river. All this was enforced with whole regiments of categories and syllogisms.

Such was the work of a dictator of English learning, a man of great powers of thought, of real independence, of true nobility of character. His only defect was the pedantry which was the bane of his time and from which Grotius, though not wholly free, did so much to raise the world.

The book of Selden was hailed in England as the great work of the age; its doctrines determined English theory and practice as long as England thought it wise to apply .them. The world was made to feel them far into the nineteenth century. The treaty attempted by Mr. King, the American Minister to London in 1803, failed because England would not give up the right to impress seamen from foreign ships upon the high seas; and about the same period she applied her doctrine regarding the control of the narrow seas to the control of the broad seas, up to the very shores of America. Even within the shallow waters of Long Island Sound she seized an American vessel, attempted to take therefrom the French Minister to the American Government, and, having failed to take him, seized his papers. Still later, an English man-of-war, in time of profound peace, attacked an American frigate almost within sight of the American coast, took from her four seamen, hanged one of them as a deserter, and forced the other three into the British service.

But the doctrines of Grotius made their way. Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, Venice, Genoa, Pisa, and, last of all, Great Britain, were forced to yield by the combined opinion of the whole world.¹

The Mare Liberum was followed by works from Grotius’ pen in many fields. Among the most important were those upon the history of his own country, and he received the title of Public Historiographer. About the same time he reached the first rank in his profession and was made Attorney General of the Province of Holland, Councilor and Pensionary of Rotterdam, with the right of sitting not only in the provincial legislature of Holland, but also in the States General of the United Provinces. He was also sent as one of a commission to England charged to watch over the maritime rights of his country. James I, who had formerly tried to crush him, now flattered him.

On his return in 1616 greater honors awaited him. He was made Grand Pensionary of West Friesland and Holland. This culmination of civic honors in his own country proved to be a beginning of calamity.

Nothing is more wretched in the whole history of Europe between the Reformation period and the close of the last century than the sectarian quarrels which cursed every country. No question seemed too slight a cause for bitter hatred and even for civil war. Germany, England, France, were convulsed with squabbles between various sects and factions, about questions really contemptible. In each of these countries Protestants were not only in a life and death struggle with Catholics, but were seeking to exterminate one another. The Netherlands were no exception to the rule. Two professors at the University of Leyden, Arminius and Gomarus, happened to take different sides on the eternal question of fate and free will. The dispute became vitriolic. The disciples of each caught the spirit of their masters, and soon the Reformed Church in Holland was split into two hostile sects, — each heaping syllogisms and epithets on the other, — Arminius preaching free will, Gomarus, predestination.

It was simply a struggle as to the two sides of the same shield. The question involved was as old as history, — and utterly insoluble. It had puzzled men in all ages. Among the Hebrews, among the Greeks and Romans, among the Mohammedans, and among the Christians, it had served to try the mental powers of a long succession of leading thinkers, — and the main results were vast harvests of hatred.

Unfortunately, in the Reformed Church the debate took a form especially hateful. The partisans of free will insisted that if a man does not act from free will, if his acts are foreordained by a Divine Power which he cannot resist, then there can be no human responsibility for them, and to say that for sins thus foreordained men are to be punished is to deny the goodness of God.

On the other hand, the partisans of predestination insisted that nothing can take place without the foreknowledge and ordinance of God; that to deny this is to deny His omniscience and omnipotence.

The debate went on from bad to worse; it could hardly be pretended that salvation was dependent upon holding the right metaphysical theory upon this question; yet both sides did the usual thing in such cases, — each contending that the doctrine of the other was “of dangerous tendency;" and soon each was able to show that the other’s doctrine was deadly. Gomarus declared that Arminius was a supporter of the Roman Catholic Church, and that his doctrine at the same time led to skepticism and infidelity. It was difficult for reasoning men to see how the same man could be a Roman Catholic and an infidel, but the vast majority did not reason, — they only believed. Heavy words were hurled : “supralapsarian,” “infralapsarian;” and these seemed to crush out the common sense of the crowd. Gomarus won the victory.

The majority of the pulpits reiterated the charges and flung back the epithets; until finally the controversy became a disease, a disease which speedily took an acute form, breaking out here and there into mob murders. It seemed to warrant the declaration of Bishop Butler as to a possible insanity of states.

In this condition of things, the Arminians, led by Uyten Bogaert, a theologian at The Hague, drew up in 1610 a protest stating their real principies. It was known as the “Remonstrance,” and from this the Arminians received their party name of Remonstrants. Upon this the followers of Gomarus, devoted to the doctrine of predestination, drew up a vigorous rejoinder, and so obtained their party name of Contra-Remonstrants. Mob violence spread rapidly. The States General, mainly a body of educated, thoughtful men, seeing the necessity of calming the country, now issued an Edict of Pacification enjoining tolerance and forbearance, and largely permeated by the just and kindly ideas of Grotius.

The Edict of Pacification was supported by one of the most eloquent appeals ever composed, — it came not only from Grotius’ head, but from his heart. But all this was outclamored by the Gomarist clergy. They cited from Scripture the words, “Ye must obey God rather than man,” by which they simply meant, “Ye are to accept our theory as God’s command.” This carried the great majority of the population.

With this religious question was complicated a political struggle. The Stadtholder and Captain-General of the United Provinces was Prince Maurice of Orange, — the second son of the murdered William the Silent. He had great qualities, military and administrative, but he had also an evident purpose to make himself virtually a monarch. We need not suppose him merely selfish in this matter; there was in him a mixture of motives. He doubtless knew that what was needed to enable the Netherlands to hold their own against Spain, their religious foe, France, their political foe, and England, their commercial foe, was a strong, concentrated government, and of this he was the natural head. He had encountered much opposition which was to him vexatious, and at the very time when the unity of all the provinces was the first thing needful.

On the other hand, a small body of enlightened but patriotic men of great influence loved and believed in republican institutions, feared the monarchical tendency, dreaded a dictatorship, and struggled against every effort of the prince which tended toward it. In this they had some success, and in 1609, fearing that the continuance of war and the increasing dependence of the Provinces upon Maurice would result in his dictatorship, they brought about with Spain the famous Truce of Twelve Years.

This led to bitter hatred between Maurice, the Stadtholder, on one side, and the leaders of republican tendency on the other. Foremost among these latter was John of Barneveld, a statesman renowned throughout Europe, his whole life full of high service to his country, his religious views tolerant, — and closely attached to him was Grotius.

In this wretched struggle between Calvinism and Arminianism Maurice saw his opportunity. Had he been a greater genius or of a nobler nature, he might have called Grotius to his aid and fused both these elements into one strong national force. Such a fusion was made most happily when in England the Church was united by combining “a Catholic ritual,Calvinistic articles, and an Arminian clergy,” and at a much later period a similar happy compromise was made when Frederick William III stood by the more tolerant thinkers of Prussia and brought together Calvinists and Lutherans into a single body on whose banner was inscribed the shibboleth “Evangelical.” But Maurice did not take so large a view. He saw that the Gomarists had the populace on their side. He cared nothing for their doctrines as such; there is evidence that he did not even understand them; but they were the predominant force, and he took pains to attend their churches, tied his cause to theirs, became the firm ally of fanatical peasants and their clerical managers against the Edict of Pacification. Thus was he able to wield an overwhelming power against Barneveld, Grotius, and their compeers.²

The course of Maurice was simple. By virtue of his authority as Stadtholder he had merely to forbid obedience to the orders of Barneveld, Grotius, and others in their respective provinces, and when these attempted to enforce their authority it was easy to raise the fanatical Calvinists in revolt.

The efforts of Grotius for peace now became heroic. At the head of a deputation of the States of Holland he publicly addressed the authorities of Amsterdam in favor of toleration. He showed that the highest authorities agreed that either of the two theological opinions might be held without danger of perdition; that the earlier reformers had tolerated both opinions. He besought his countrymen most earnestly and eloquently, in view of the political danger to the country and of the religious danger to Protestantism, to allow toleration and peace. All in vain. On the great mass of his countrymen the modern idea of toleration had not even dawned. He and his associates were dismissed with contempt, and his address was suppressed by force.

Weary nigh unto death, he was besought by his family and friends to give up the struggle. But he would not. He would make another exertion, and he drew up a new formula of peace to be signed by both parties. It contained nothing contrary to Calvinism; it proposed to leave matters at issue to a council, and in the meantime pledged all to peace. This, too, was in vain. The fanatics would have none of it, and Maurice stood by them.

Matters were soon beyond any peaceable solution. Maurice, with the Gomarists, took such measures that Barneveld, Grotius, and their associates were obliged to summon the Provinces to resist. But resistance was futile. Maurice was a successful soldier with a great name, and behind him w’ere a large current of patriotism and an overwhelming current of fanaticism. In August, 1618, he was able to send Barneveld and Grotius to prison. Everything favored him. The death of his elder brother during these events gave him the crowning honor, and he became the head of his family, — Prince of Orange.

And now was set in motion a prodigious piece of machinery, — the Synod of Dort. It embraced the leading theologians of Holland with delegates from various parts of Protestant Europe. Their weary discussions dragged along through the entire following winter. The result was a foregone conclusion. As in nearly all the greater councils of the Church, Catholic or Protestant, its proceedings were determined by intimidation and intrigue rather than by discussion. Episcopius and the Arminians at the Synod of Dort had as little chance as the opponents of Athanasius at the Council of Nice; or as the Bishop of Braga at the Council of Trent; or as Archbishop Kenrick and Bishop Strausmaier at the Council of the Vatican. They were simply outclamored and voted down. The whole decision was in accordance with the direction of Maurice and the Gomarists. It was now declared that the Remonstrants must submit to the Synod; that to oppose it was to rebel against the Holy Spirit; that if they persisted in disobedience they would incur not only the censures of the Church, but punishment from the State. Against this the Arminians tried to make a stand, and solemnly appealed to their brethren; but at last, in April, 1619, the Synod declared them guilty of pestilent errors and corrupters of the true faith; their doctrines damnable, and Episcopius, with his associates, deprived of their positions. This being accomplished, Barneveld and Grotius were dealt with. The court had been assembled in February. It was composed largely of the enemies of the accused; the proceedings lingered until the Synod of Dort had made its main decision and denunciation. Barneveld was sentenced to death on the 12th of May, 1619, and was executed on the day following, bearing himself nobly on the scaffold, and neither asking nor allowing any of his family or friends to ask pardon from Maurice.

A few days later Grotius was sentenced to imprisonment for life, and transferred to the castle of Loevestein. Vigorous measures ensued against lesser offenders; such Arminian ministers as could be seized were torn from their pulpits, stripped of their property, banished, or imprisoned. From all parts of the Netherlands they were driven to neighboring countries, Catholic and Protestant. It was a story like that of the Puritans driven from England, the Huguenots from France, the Moriscoes from Spain, the Protestants from Salzburg, the Finlanders and Jews from Russia in our day; — the same old story, — unreason, bigotry, party passion, individual ambition — all masquerading as “saving faith.”

All this work having been set in motion, on the 29th of May, 1619, the Synod of Dort was closed.

The imprisonment of Grotius was not the worst that now befell him. His enemies sought to rob him, not only of his liberty, but of his honor. His request to present his defense to Prince Maurice, as he truly says, “was afterward misinterpreted as if I had had wonderful things to reveal.” The fact that he thought of offering his services as a councilor to Prince Maurice will not prejudice against him any American who remembers how statesmen like Daniel Webster and William Henry Seward sought most patriotically to redeem administrations in our own country in the interest of principles which they held dear. Not only was Grotius refused, during the weary months of trial, any opportunity to draw up a defense in writing, but when it was granted he was allowed only a single sheet of paper and four hours of time. After the manner of that period in treason trials, he was not permitted to summon counsel or to consult documents; worst of all, the utterances of Barneveld were evidently presented to him in a false light, so that, in repelling charges against himself, Grotius was made to appear as if attacking his friend. Thus were set in motion the calumnies which have been reëchoed from that day to this, and to which even our eminent American historian of the Dutch Republic has given an attention which they do not deserve. Looking over the whole matter dispassionately, the conclusion seems irresistible that Grotius, in prison, was deceived, and, as he himself insisted, his utterances misinterpreted. Nothing else in his life warrants the belief that he could have been for a moment disloyal to Barneveld. That Groen van Prinsterer should repeat these charges adds nothing to their strength. No one can read the attack made by this modern enemy of Arminianism and of Grotius without seeing at once that its charges are utterly vitiated by its sectarian bitterness. Grotius’ attitude in those most trying hours was not that of a determined, uncompromising ruler of men, like Barneveld, but that of a scholarly statesman, honest and straightforward, seeking to serve his country. He may have been for a moment deceived by the intriguers who sought to separate him from his friend, but his conduct, taken as a whole, was that of a patriot and a true man.³

Shut up in the Castle of Loevestein, during nearly two years Grotius found consolation in his studies. At the end of that time he was rescued by a stratagem. His wife, who had shown a most touching devotion to him from first to last, who had shared his captivity, and done all in her power to make it tolerable, made friends with the wife of the jailor and others who might be of use, smuggled her husband into a case supposed to contain borrowed books, and thus had him conveyed from the fortress. After several hairbreadth escapes the box was carried to the house of a friend, and Grotius, escaping from it, fled in the disguise of a brick-layer into France. One thing in this departure did him special honor. This was his letter to the authorities of the Netherlands declaring that no person had been bribed to aid him, that he himself was not guilty of any crime against his country, and that nothing that had taken place had diminished his love for it.

Arriving in France, he was welcomed on all sides as a great European scholar. Louis XIII settled upon him a pension which unfortunately was small and rarely paid; luckily friends were found to give him shelter, and he continued his devotion to his studies. Among other treatises which attracted general notice he wrote a defense of his course, straightforward, with no bitterness; various works calculated to diminish intolerance; and, in 1622, at the Château of Balagny, he began giving final shape to the great work of his life, the De jure belli ac pacis, and for three years it occupied his best thought.

Few more inspiring things have been seen in human history. He had every reason for yielding to pessimism, for hating his country, and for despising his race. He might have passed his time in satirizing his enemies and in scolding at human folly. He did nothing of the sort; but worked on, day and night, giving to mankind one of the greatest blessings it has ever received.

The great work of Grotius was published in 1625. Its reception must have disappointed him, for while thoughtful and earnest men in various parts of Europe showed at once their appreciation of it, the mass of men were indifferent, and their religious leaders, as a rule, hostile. The condemnation of it at Rome, the fact that it was placed upon the Index of works which Catholics were forbidden to read, and that this Index bore the sanction of a Papal bull, was at first a great barrier. So, too, the distrust felt by the leaders of the Protestant Church checked its progress. But more and more it made its way. In every nation were jurists and statesmen who, while they acquiesced nominally in the teachings of the church, in which they had happened to be born, did some thinking on their own account. In the minds of such, the germs of the better system planted by Grotius took root. Many, too, whose belief was in accordance with the dominant ecclesiastical ideas, had hearts better than their heads, and on those the eloquence of Grotius wrought with power. In various universities, his doctrines began to be commented upon and taught, and notably at Heidelberg, where Pufendorf became Grotius’ first great apostle. His ideas found their way into current discussion, into systems of law, into treaties, and, as generations rolled by, the world began to find itself, it hardly knew how, less and less cruel, until men looked back upon war as practiced in his time as upon a hideous dream, — doubtless much as men in future generations will look back upon the wars of our time.

Most notable among those who were immediately influenced by Grotius’ work were his two foremost contemporaries, one a Protestant and the other a Catholic.

First of these was Gustavus Adolphus. He was by far the greatest and bravest leader of his time. Grotius’ work became his favorite study; he kept it by his bedside; it was found in his tent after his death on the field of Lützen. Despite the atrocities of the opposing commanders, he constantly stood for mercy and began on a large scale the better conduct of modern war: his most impassioned speeches were made to his soldiers in dissuading them from cruelty or in rebuking them for it.

And there was another great example. Three years after the appearance of Grotius’ book, Cardinal Richelieu, who then governed France in the name of Louis XIII, took La Rochelle. It was the stronghold of French Protestantism; it had resisted as few fortified places have ever resisted; the Protestants gathered there had been guilty of high treason in its worst degrees — they had called in England to their aid; they had rebelled so madly that they were outside the pale of mercy; the greater part of the city population had been destroyed, and among those who were left there had been recourse to cannibalism.

The whole civilized world expected to see a frightful example made; and in view of the ferocious instructions which at the beginning of the war thus ended had been given by Pius V and other pontiffs, in view of the savage practice general throughout Europe, and above all that of Philip II and Alva in the Netherlands, and of Tilly in Germany, there was every reason to expect a massacre of the inhabitants with plunder and destruction of the city. All Europe held its breath in anticipation of cruelties befitting the long and bitter rebellion of the Huguenots against their sovereigns in Church and State.

Richelieu was a devoted believer in the dogmas and authority of the Church — he had begun his literary life by polemics against Protestantism, and his first act after his great victory, as a general, was to celebrate a high mass of thanksgiving, as a bishop. He had received his education in an atmosphere of cruel intolerance of which we can now hardly dream. It was the period when the teachings of the sainted Pope Pius V were in all their vigor; the time when that pontiff wrote letters to Catherine de Medici, to Charles IX, to the Duke of Anjou, and to other leaders in France, commanding them not merely to persecute, but to massacre, forbidding them to spare a single Huguenot prisoner, citing to King Charles the example of King Saul, and holding up to the most Christian king, as the punishment he would merit and receive from the Almighty if he showed mercy to the Huguenots, the punishment received by that Jewish king for showing mercy to the enemies of Israel. Still dominant were the teachings of Gregory XIII, who celebrated the Massacre of St. Bartholomew with thanksgivings at Rome, commemorated it in magnificent pictures at the Vatican, and struck a medal in its honor for circulation throughout Europe. Not only did the early education and environment of Richelieu seem to presage a fearful treatment of La Rochelle, but his own conduct in other matters seemed to insure it. As a rule, toward those guilty of treason he was ever merciless, and for crimes against public order he sent members of the highest families in France to the scaffold.⁴

But, to the amazement of the world and to the intense disgust of the fanatics who thirsted for vengeance, Richelieu now did none of the terrible things expected of him. He indeed swept away a mass of dangerous party privileges which the sect had enjoyed, but even to the most bitter of the Huguenots he was merciful. He allowed no massacre, no destruction, no plunder. After he had summoned into his presence Guiton, the Huguenot mayor of the city, who had stood out against him so long and so desperately, he treated him with respect and inflicted upon him merely a short banishment. The Huguenots, though broken as a party, were not even excluded from civil office or debarred from the exercise of their religion; everywhere was lenity. The fanatics of his own church bestowed on him such names as “Cardinal of Satan,” “Pope of the Atheists.”

How was it that in this case Richelieu showed a toleration and mercy so at variance with everything in his previous career? All the circumstances of the case enforce the conviction that, during the three years between the publication of Grotius’ book and the taking of La Rochelle, the cardinal had been influenced by it. It had arrested the attention of thinking men in all parts of Europe, and must have been known to the foremost statesman of France, living in the very city where it was published. Throughout his whole career, Richelieu showed an especial respect for scholars and scholarly work, as the Sorbonne bears witness to this day. At a later period, even when there was much diplomatic friction between the two men, Richelieu freed Grotius’ writings from the French censorship, and declared him one of the three great scholars of his time. Even if the cardinal knew the book merely as Nicholas II of Russia knew the epoch-making work of Jean de Bloch against war, — the book which led that czar to call the Peace Conference of The Hague, — that is, merely by report, by quotations, by discussions, he could not fail to have grasped its main purport. There seems, indeed, no other way to account for the fact that from one of the most devoted of ecclesiastics and most merciless of statesmen there came, during this vast temptation to cruelty, so benign a treatment of subjugated heretics and rebels.

But a striking proof that Grotius had brought in a new epoch was shown three years after his death. In 1648 plenipotentiaries from the great states of Europe signed at Münster the great Treaty of Westphalia, which closed the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, the Eighty Years’ War in the Netherlands, and a long era of savagery in all parts of the globe. This instrument embodied principles which Grotius had really been the first to bring into the thought of the world. At its base was his conception of the essential independence and equality of all sovereign states, — all its parts were riveted together by his conceptions of eternal justice, — the whole structure was permeated by his hatred of cruelty and love of mercy. To the signing of this treaty the Papal authorities at Rome had constantly shown themselves bitterly opposed; all that intrigue, bribes, and threats could do, they had done; and as the congress at Münster went on more evidently toward a merciful issue, this violence at Rome became more and more marked. As the climax of the whole, Pope Innocent X issued his bull, Zelo Domus Dei, absolving the signatories of the treaty from the oaths they had taken when affixing their signatures to it; and not only this, but virtually commanded them to break their oaths. But a new time had come. The signers, having foreseen this exercise of the Papal power “to bind and loose,” made a solemn pledge and vow not to avail themselves of any such absolution. The book had indeed begun its work. In the next chapter we will examine the teaching of Grotius, note the proofs of its influence on the two centuries following, and mark the latest exhibition of its power in the International Peace Conference of The Hague in 1899.⁵