The rules for surrendering fortified towns
The connection between war and law
The following is an excerpt from Napoleon: On War by Bruno Colson, and examines the extent to which Napoleon followed the law of nations and jus in bello.
While they increased the involvement of nations, the wars of the Revolution and Empire did not completely call into question the principles of international law and the laws of war, tacitly established in the late seventeenth century. Contrary to the idealized image we are sometimes given, they were not that much better respected under the ancient régime. As is well known, on several occasions Napoleon ignored the law of nations, as when he had the Duke of Enghien abducted in the Grand Duchy of Baden, or when he transformed the Italian republic into a kingdom in defiance of the Treaty of Lunéville. Napoleon’s armies sometimes crossed through neutral territories: Piacenza’s manoeuvre in May 1796 was carried out via the Duchy of Parma and in 1805 Bernadotte’s corps passed through the Prussian territory of Anspach. Confronted with operational necessities, Napoleon had few scruples. It is true that territorial divisions were still so complex and principalities so numerous that the armies of the great powers often took no account of them. The allies themselves violated Swiss neutrality in late 1813 and early 1814 to invade France. Alongside this, Napoleon’s correspondence indicates that he attributed a certain importance to the law of nations and, even more so, to jus in bello — that is, to the legal framework governing certain situations in war.
For the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel, ‘wise and humane’ generals should persuade the commander of a fortified town not to pointlessly await the bitter end and offer him an honourable, advantageous surrender. ‘If he stubbornly resists, and is finally forced to place himself at the mercy of the conqueror’, he adds, ‘one may employ against him and his people the full severity of the laws of war. But that law never extends to taking the life of an enemy who lays down his arms, unless he has been guilty of some crime against the victor.’ If the commander decides to resist an attack, he knows that he is risking the lives of all its inhabitants, military and civilian, as well as their property. For Georges-Frédéric de Martens, if a place is taken by storm, ‘the garrison must place itself at the mercy of the victor; the only thing that can be requested is its life and it is not against the laws of war to give the place over to looting’. These are the laws to which General Bonaparte sometimes alluded. In connection with a post wrested with considerable force from the Austrians, he writes:
General Koebloes himself defended La Chiusa with 500 grenadiers. By the laws of war, those 500 men should have been put to the sword. But this barbaric law has always been ignored and never practised by the French army.
In Egypt, Bonaparte had it explained to the Arab commander of El-Arich fort that ‘the laws of war, among all peoples, are that the garrison of a town taken by storm is to be put to the sword’. He enjoined him to send two men to determine the details of a surrender ‘in conformity with what is practised in such circumstances among all the civilized peoples of the earth’.
At Jaffa, by way of response, the governor had General Bonaparte’s envoy beheaded. When the assault that was then ordered succeeded, Bonaparte wrote:
At 5 o’clock, we were masters of the town which, for twenty-four hours, was given over to pillaging and all the horrors of war, which have never seemed so hideous to me. 4,000 of the Djezzar’s troops were put to the sword; there were 800 gunners. Part of the civilian population was massacred.
War had become crueller. However, even if he denies it, we can ponder Bonaparte’s insensitivity to the horrors of war once he deemed it necessary to resort to them for political reasons. For Steven Englund, ‘Bonaparte… had Caesar’s capacity to make morally or spiritually perilous decisions without blinking.’ Among the campaigns conducted by him, those in Egypt and Syria were the cruellest. In Italy and Spain too, he prescribed severe measures while invoking the law of war. This applied to the Calabrian rebels in 1806:
Severe examples are necessary. I imagine that we have had this village pillaged by the soldiers. That is how we must treat villages that rebel. This is the law of war, but it is also a duty laid down by politics.
The town of Cuenca in Spain was taken by storm in 1808:
The town has been pillaged: it is the law of war, since it was taken arms in hand.
Bruno Colson is Professor at the Université de Namur, Belgium. He has published numerous books on strategy and military history and is currently writing a biography of Clausewitz, the great military theorist. He originally worked in the field of strategic studies before going back to his first interest in military history, specializing both in the history of military thought and the Napoleonic wars. He is the author of Napoleon: On War.
Image credit: Napoleon at the Battlefield of Eylau, 1807, by Antoine-Jean Gros. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
