Or, to put the conclusion in the fewest words: The soldier claims to be a non-moral agent. That is the corner-stone of the whole military system. Challenge then the claimant to justify his first principle, and the custom of war will shake to its foundation, and in time go the way that other evil customs have gone before it, when once their moral support has been undermined or shattered. FOOTNOTES: [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. [25] _Cambridge Essays_, 1855, ‘Limitations to Severity in War,’ by C. Buxton. [26] See Raumer’s _Geschichte Europa’s_, iii. 509-603, if any doubt is felt about the fact. [27] General Order of October 9, 1813. Compare those of May 29, 1809, March 25, 1810, June 10, 1812, and July 9, 1813. [28] Vattel, iii. ix. 165. [29] Sir W. Napier (_Peninsular War_, ii. 322) says of the proceeding that it was ‘politic indeed, yet scarcely to be admitted within the pale of civilised warfare.’ It occurred in May 1810. [30] Bluntschli’s _Modernes Völkerrecht_, art. 573. [31] For the character of modern war see the account of the Franco-German war in the _Quarterly Review_ for April 1871. [32] Halleck, ii. 22. [33] Vehse’s _Austria_, i. 369. Yet, as usual on such occasions, the excesses were committed in the teeth of Tilly’s efforts to oppose them.