Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/301
BOOK J, CHAPTER XXXI 281
heed to the property of the vanquished; and they turn back to their own country, where they lack nothing that is neces- sary, nor do they lack that great gift of knowing how to en- joy their condition happily and to be content with it. When the turn of the others comes, they do the same; they ask no other ransom of their prisoners than the admission and ac- knowledgement that they are conquered; but there is not one found in a whole age who does not prefer death rather than to abate, either by manner or by word, a single jot of the grandeur of an invincible courage; not one is seen who does not prefer to be killed rather than merely to ask not to be. They give them every liberty, so that life may be all the dearer to them; and they entertain them usually with threats of their future death, of the torments they will have to suffer, of the preparations that are being made to that end, of the lopping off of their limbs, and of the feast there will be at their expense. All this is done for the sole purpose of extorting from their lips some faltering or downcast word, or of making them long for flight, in order to obtain this ad- vantage of having frightened them and of having shaken their firmness. For, if rightly understood, true victory con- sists in this single point: — (c) Victoria nulla est Quam que confessos animo quoque subjugat hostes.?
The Hungarians, very valorous fighters, did not formerly © carry their point beyond reducing their enemy to their mercy; for, having extorted this admission from him, they let him go without injury and without ransom, save, at the most, forcing him to promise not henceforth to take arms against them.?
(a) We obtain many advantages over our enemies, which are borrowed advantages, not our own. It is the quality of a porter, not of merit, to have stouter arms and legs; it is a lifeless and coporeal faculty to be always ready; it is a stroke of fortune to make our enemy stumble, and to dazzle his eyes by the glare of the sun; it is a trick of art and
1 That only is victory which forces the foe in his own mind to acknow-
ledge himself conquered. — Claudian, De Sexto Consulatu Honorii, 248. 1 See the History of Chalcondylas, V, 9.