make sport for princes, without any just cause, " for vain titles, (saith Austin) precedency, some wench, or such like toy, or out of desire of domineering, vain-glory, malice, revenge, folly, madness," (goodly causes all, ob quas universus orbis bellis & cædibus misceatur) whilst Statesmen themselves in the mean time are secure at home, pampered with all delights and pleasures, take their ease, and follow their lusts, not considering what intolerable misery poor soldiers endure, their often wounds, hunger, thirst, &c. the lamentable cares, torments, calamities and oppressions that accompany such proceedings, they feel not, take no notice of it. "So wars are begun, by the perswasion of a few deboished, hair-brain, poor, dissolute, hungry captains, parasitical fawners, unquiet hotspurs, restless innovators, green heads, to satisfie one man's private spleen, lust, ambition, avarice," &c. tales rapiunt scelerata in prælia cause. Flos hominum, Proper men, well proportioned, carefully brought up, able both in body and minde, sound, led like so many beasts to the slaughter in the flower of their years, pride, and full strength, without all remorse and pity, sacrificed to Pluto, killed up as so many sheep, for devils food, 40000 at once. At once, said I, that were tolerable, but these wars last alwayes, and for many ages; nothing so familiar as this hacking and hewing, massacres, murders, desolations. P -ignoto cælum clangore remugit, they care not what mischief they procure, so that they may enrich themselves for the present; they will so long blow the coals of contention, till all the world be consumed with fire. The siege of Troy lasted ten years eight months, there died 870000 Grecians, 670000 Trojans, at the taking of the City, and after were slain 276000 men, women, and children of all sorts. Cæsar killed a million, Mahomet the second Turk 300000 persons: Sicinius Dentatus fought in an hundred battles, eight times in single combat he overcame, had forty wounds before, was rewarded with 140 crowns, triumphed nine times for his good service. M. Sergius had 32 wounds; Scæva the Centurion I know not how many; every nation had their Hectors, Scipios, Cæsars and Alexanders. Our Edward the fourth was in 26 battles afoot: and as they do all, he glories in it, tis related to his honor. At the siege of Hierusalem 1100000 died with sword and famine. At the battel of Cannas, 70000 men were с *Ob inanes ditionum titulos, ob prereptum locum, ob interceptam mulier. culam, vel quod è stultitia natum, vel è malitia, quod cupido dominandi, libido nocendi, &c. P Bellum rem plane belluinam vocat Morus. Utop. lib. 2. * Munster. Cosmog. 1. 5. c. 3. E Dict. Cretens. • Comineus. ejus. b Jovius vit. slain, as Polibius records, and as many at battle Albye with us; and tis no news to fight from sun to sun, as they did, as Constantine and Licinius, &c. At the siege of Ostend (the devil's Academie) a poor town in respect, a sinall fort, but a great grave, 120000 men lost their lives, besides whole towns, dorpes, and hospitals, full of maimed souldiers; there were engines, fire-works, and whatsoever the devil could invent to do mischief with 2500000 iron bullets shot of 40 pound weight, three or four millions of gold consumed. " Who (saith mine Author) can be sufficiently amazed at their flinty hearts, obstinacy, fury, blindness, who without any likelyhood of good successe, hazard poor souldiers, and lead them without pitty to the slaughter, which may justly be called the rage of furious beasts, that run without reason upon their own deaths :" * quis malus genius, quæ furia, quæ pestis, &c. what plague, what fury brought so devillish, so brutish a thing as war first into mens minds? Who made so soft and peaceable a creature, born to love, mercy, meeknesse, so to rave, rage like beasts, and run on to their own destruction? how may nature expostulate with mankinde, Ego te divinum animal finxi, &c. I made God may thee an harmless, quiet, a divine creature: how stulate, and all good men? yet, horum facta (as one condoles) tantum admirantur, & heroum numero habent: these are the brave spirits, the gallants of the world, these admired alone, triumph alone, have statues, crowns, piramids, obelisks to their eternal fame, that immortal Genius attends on them, hác itur ad astra. When Rhodes was besieged, fosse urbis cadaveribus replete sunt, the ditches were full of dead carcases and as when the said Solyman great Turk belegred Vienna, they lay level with the top of the wals. This they make a sport of, and will do it to their friends and confederates, against oaths, vows, promises, by trechery or otherwise. * e expo -dolus an virtus? quis in hoste requirat?" leagues and laws of arms, ( silent leges inter arma) for their advantage, omnia jura, divina, humana, proculcata plerumque sunt; God's and men's laws are trampled under foot, the sword alone determines all; to satisfie their lust and spleen, they care not what they attempt, say, or do, "Rara fides, probitasque viris qui castra sequuntur." *Lib. 3. Hist. of the siege of Ostend. fol. 23. *Erasmus • Jode bello. Ut placidum illud animal benevolentiæ natum tam ferina vecordiâ * Rich. Dinoth. præfat. Belli civilis Gal. in mutuam rueret pernitiem. e 2 Dolus, asperitas, in justitia propria bellorum negotia. Tertul. Vius. Tully. • Lucan. Nothing Nothing so common as to have "father fight against the son, brother against brother, kinsman against kinsman, kingdom against kingdom, province against province, christians against christians:" a quibus nec unquam cogitatione fuerunt læsi, of whom they never had offence in thought, word or deed. Infinite treasures consumed, towns burned, flourishing cities sacked and ruinated, quodque animus meminisse horret, goodly countries depopulated and left desolate, old inhabitants expelled, trade and traffick decayed, maids defloured, Virgines nondum thalamis jugate, Et comis nondum positis ephebi; chast matrons cry out with Andromache, * Concubitum mox cogar pati ejus, qui interemit Hectorem, they shall be compelled peradventure to ly with them that erst kil'd their husbands: to see rich, poor, sick, sound, Lords, servants, eodem omnes incommodo macti, consumed all or maimed, &c. Et quicquid gaudens scelere animus audet, & perversa mens, saith Cyprian, and whatsoever torment, misery, mischief, hell itself, the devil, i fury and rage can invent to their own ruin and destruction; so abominable a thing is war, as Gerbelius concludes, adeo fæda & abominanda res est bellum, ex quo hominum cædes, vastationes, &c. the scourge of God, cause, effect, fruit and punishment of sin, and not tonsura humani generis, as Tertullian, cals it, but ruina. Had Democritus been present at the late civil wars in France, those abominable wars, -"bellaque matribus detestata," m " where in lesse then ten years, ten thousand men were consumed, saith Collignius, 20 thousand Churches overthrown; nay, the whole kingdom subverted (as Richard Dinoth adds.) So many myriades of the Commons were butchered up, with sword, famine, war, tanto odio utrinque ut barbari ad abhorrendam lanienam obstupescerent, with such ferall hatred, the world was amazed at it: or at our late Pharsalian fields in the time of Henry the sixt, betwixt the houses of Lancaster and York, an hundred thousand men slain,* one writes ;" another, ten thousand families were rooted out, "That no man can but marvel, saith Comineus, at that barbarous immanitie, Pater in filium, affinis in affinem, amicus in amicum, &c. Regio cum regione, regnum regno colliditur. Populus populo in mutuam perniciem, belluarum instar sanguinolente ruentium. *Libanii deciam. Ira enim & furor Bellonæ consultores, &c. dementes sacerdotes sunt. * Bellum quasi Gallorum decies centum millia Belli civilis gal. 1. 1. bellua & ad omnia scelera furor immissus. ceciderunt, Ecclesiaris 20 millia fundamentis excisa. hoc ferali bello & cædibus omnia repleverunt, & regnum ampliss mum à fundamentis pene everterunt, plebis tot myriades gladio, bello, fame miserabiliter perierunt. *Pont. Hu.erus. n Comineus. Ut nullus non execretur & admiretur crudelita em, & barbaram insaniam, quæ inter homines eodem sub cœlo natos, ejusdem linguæ, sanguinis, religionis exercebatur. ferall ferall madness, committed betwixt men of the same nation, language and religion." Quis furor O cives? "Why do the Gentiles so furiously rage," saith the Prophet David, Psal. 2. 1. But we may ask, why do the Christians so furiously rage? "* Arma volunt, quare poscunt, rapiuntque juventus?" Unfit for Gentiles, much lesse for us so to tyranize, as the Spaniard in the West Indies, that killed up in 42 years (if we may believe Bartholomæus à Casa their own bishop) 12 millions of men, with stupend and exquisite torments; neither should I ly (said he) if I said 50 millions. I omit those French Massacres, Sicilian Evensongs, the Duke of Alva's tyrannies, our gunpowder machinations, and that fourth fury, as one cals it, the Spanish inquisition, which quite obscures those ten persecutions, X -sævit toto Mars impius orbe." Is not this mudus furiosus, a mad world, as he terms it, insanum bellum? are not these mad men, as * Scaliger concludes, qui in prælio acerba morte, insaniæ suæ memorium pro perpetuo teste relinquunt posteritati; which leave so frequent battles, as perpetual memorials of their madnesse to all succeeding ages? Would this, think you, have enforced our Democritus to laughter, or rather made him turn his tune, alter his tone, and weep with "Heraclitus, or rather howl, roar, and tear his hair in commiseration, stand amazed; or as the Poets faign, that Niobe was for grief quite stupified, and turned to a stone? I have not yet said the worst, that which is more absurd and mad, in their tumults, seditions, civil and unjust wars, quod stultè suscipitur, impiè geritur, miserè finitur. Such wars I mean; for all are not to be condemned, as those phantastical Anabaptists vainly conceive. Our Christian Tacticks are all out as necessary as the Roman Acies, or Grecian Phalanx; to be a souldier is a most noble and honorable profession (as the world is) not to be spared, they are our best wals and bulwarks, and I do therefore acknowledge that of Tully to be most true, "All our civil affairs, all our studies, all our pleading, industrie and commendation lies under the protection of warlike vertues, and whensoever there is any suspition of tu ⚫ Lucan. *Virg. Bishop of Cuseo an eye witness. ran of his stupend cruelties. t Read Mete Virg. Georg. * Exercitat. * Curæ leves lo Jansenius Gallobelgicus 1596. Mundus furiosus, inscriptio libri. 250. serm. 4. "Fleat Heraclitus an rideat Democritus. quuntur, ingentes stupent. y Arma amens capio, nec sat rationis in armis. * Erasmus. * Pro Murena. Omnes urbanæ res, omnia studia, omnis forensis laus & industria latet in tutcba & præcidio bellicæ virtutis, & simul atque increpuit suspicio tumultus, artes illico nostræ conticescunt. mult, mult, all our arts cease;" wars are most behovefull, & bellatores agricolis civitati sunt utiliores, as *Tyrius defends: and valor is much to be commended in a wise man; but they mistake most part, auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus virtutem vocant, &c. (Twas Galgacus observation in Tacitus) they term theft, murder, and rapine, vertue, by a wrong name, rapes, slaughters, massacres, &c. jocus & ludus, are pretty pastimes, as Ludovicus Vives notes. "a They commonly call the most hair-brain blood-suckers, strongest theeves, the most desperate villains, treacherous rogues, inhumane murderers, rash, cruel and dissolute caitiffs, couragious and generous spirits, heroical and worthy Captains, brave men at arms, valiant and renowned souldiers, possessed with a brute perswasion of false honour," as Pontus Huter in his Burgundian historie complains. By means of which it comes to passe that daily so many voluntaries offer themselves, leaving their sweet wives, children, friends, for sixpence (if they can get it) a day, prostitute their lives and limbs, desire to enter upon breaches, ly sentinel, perdue, give the first onset, stand in the fore front of the battell, marching bravely on, with a cheerful noise of drums and trumpets, such vigor and alacrity, so many banners streaming in the ayr, glittering armours, motions of plumes, woods of pikes, and swords, variety of colours, cost and magnificence, as if they went in triumph, now victors to the Capitol, and with such pomp, as when Darius army marched to meet Alexander at Issus. Void of all fear they run into eminent dangers, Canons mouth, &c. ut vulneribus suis ferrum hostium hebetent, saith Barletius, to get a name of valour, honour and applause, which lasts not neither, for it is but a mere flash this fame, and like a rose, intra diem unum extinguitur, tis gone in an instant. Of 15000 proletaries slain in a battel, scarce fifteen are recorded in historie, or one alone, the General perhaps, and after a while his and their names are likewise blotted out, the whole battel it self is forgotten. Those Græcian Orators, summa vi ingenii & eloquentiæ, set out the renowned overthrows at Thermopyla, Salamina, Marathro, Micale, Mantinea, Cheronea, Platea: The Romans record their battel at Cannas, and Pharsalian fields, but they do but record, and we scarce hear of them. And yet this supposed honor, popular applause, desire of immortality by this means, pride and vain-glory spurs them on many times C Eo * Ser. 13. Crudelissimos sævissimosque latrones, fortissimos haberi propugnatores, fidissimos duces habent, bruta persuasione donati. banus Hessus. Quibus omnis in armis vita placet, non ulla juvat nisi morte, nec ullam esse putant vitam, quæ non assueverit armis. Lib. 10. vit. Scanperbeg. rashly. |