The Complete Essays (155 page)

When he afterwards made a courageous attempt to effect an armed escape from so long a captivity and slavery, they hanged him; he made an end worthy of a prince so great of soul.

On another occasion they set about burning, at one time and in the same pyre, four hundred and sixty men – every one of them alive – four hundred from the common people, sixty from the chief lords of the land, all straightforward prisoners of war.

These accounts we have from the Spaniards themselves.
³³
They do not merely confess to them, they [C] boast of them and proclaim them. [B] Could it be
³⁴
in order to witness to their justice or to their religious zeal? Such ways are certainly too contrary, too hostile, to so holy a purpose. If their intention had simply been to spread our faith, they would have thought upon the fact that it grows not by taking possession of lands but of men, and that they would have had killings enough through the necessities of war without introducing indiscriminate slaughter, as total as their swords and pyres could make it, as though they were butchering wild animals, merely preserving the lives of as many as they intended to make pitiful slaves to work and service their mines: so that several of the leaders of the Conquistadores were punished by death in the very lands they had conquered by order of the Kings of Castile, justly indignant at their dreadful conduct, while virtually all the others were loathed and hated.
³⁵
To punish them God allowed that their vast plunder should be either engulfed by the sea as they were shipping it or else in that internecine strife in which they all devoured each other, most being buried on the scene, in no wise profiting from their conquest.

The gold actually received, even into the hands of a wise and thrifty Prince, corresponds so little to the expectations aroused in his predecessors
and to the abundant riches discovered when men first came to these new lands (for while they draw great profit from them we can see that it is nothing compared with what they could have expected); that is because the Indians knew nothing about the use of coinage. Consequently all their gold was gathered in one place, used only for display and parade; their gold was moveable-goods handed on from father to son by several puissant kings who always worked their mines merely to make great quantities of vessels and statues to decorate their palaces and their temples. All our gold circulates in trade. We break it down, change it in a thousand ways, spread it about and so disperse it. Just imagine what it would be like if our kings, over several centuries, had likewise piled up all the gold they could find and kept it idle.

The peoples of the Kingdom of Mexico were somewhat more urban and more cultured than the other peoples over there.
³⁶
In addition, like us, they judged that the world was nearing its end, taking as a portent of this the desolation that we visited upon them. They believed that the world’s existence was divided into five periods, each as long as the life of five successive suns. Four suns had already done their time, the one shining on them now being the fifth. The first sun perished with all other creatures in a universal Flood; the second, by the sky falling on mankind and choking every living thing (to which age they ascribed giant men, showing the Spaniards bones of men of such proportion that they must have stood twenty spans high); the third, by a fire which engulfed and burnt everything; the fourth, by a rush of air and wind which flattened everything including several mountains; human beings were not killed by it but changed into baboons (what impressions cannot be stamped on the receptive credulity of men!). After the death of that fourth sun the world was in perpetual darkness for twenty-five years, during the fifteenth of which was created a man and a woman who remade the human race. Ten years later, on a particular day which they observe, the sun appeared, newly created; they count their years from that day. On the third day after it was created their old gods died; new gods were subsequently born from time to time. My authority
³⁷
could learn nothing about how they believed this fifth sun
will die. But their dating of that fourth change tallies with that great conjunction of the planets which (eight hundred years ago, according to the reckoning of our astrologers) produced many great changes and innovations in the world.
³⁸

As for that ostentatious magnificence which led me to embark on this subject, neither Greece nor Rome nor Egypt can compare any of their constructions, for difficulty or utility or nobility, with the highway to be seen in Peru, built by their kings from the city of Quito to the city of Cuzco – three hundred leagues, that is – dead-straight, level, twenty-five yards wide, paved, furnished on either side with a revetment of high, beautiful walls along which there flow on the inside two streams which never run dry, bordered by those beautiful trees which they call
molly
. Whenever they came across mountains and cliffs they cut through them and flattened them, filling in whole valleys with chalk and stone. At the end of each day’s march there are beauteous palaces furnished with victuals and clothing and weapons, both for troops and travellers who have to pass that way.

My judgement on this construction takes account of the difficulty, which in that place is particularly relevant since they build using blocks never less than ten-foot square; they have no means of transporting them except to drag them along by the force of their arms: they do not even have the art of scaffolding, knowing no other method than to pile up earth against a building as it rises and then to remove it afterwards.

But let us drop back to those coaches of ours.

Instead of using coaches or vehicles of any kind they have themselves carried on the shoulders of men. The day he was captured, that last King of Peru
³⁹
was in the midst of his army, borne seated on a golden chair suspended from shafts of gold. The Spaniards in their attempts to topple him (as they wanted to take him alive) killed many of his bearers, but
many more vied to take the places of the dead, so that, no matter how many they slaughtered, they could not bring him down until a mounted soldier dashed in, grabbed hold of him and yanked him to the ground.

7. On high rank as a disadvantage

[The kind of outspoken judgement on monarchs which seems to have brought Montaigne the respect of the future Henry IV.]

[B] Since we cannot attain it, let us get our own back by disparaging it! Not that you are disparaging anything in its entirety when you find defects in it: there are defects in all things, no matter how beautiful or desirable they may be.

In general high rank has one obvious advantage: it can lay itself aside whenever it wants to; it is virtually free to choose either condition. All forms of greatness are not brought low uniquely by a fall: some there are which allow you to stoop low without falling.

It does seem to me that we set too high a value on it, as we also do on the determination of those whom we have seen or heard refusing it or resigning it at their own volition. In its essence the advantage of it is not so self-evident that it takes a miracle to reject it.

What I find hard is striving to bear misfortune. There does not seem to be much involved in being content with a modest measure of wealth and avoiding greatness; that is a virtue which I think even I could reach without a great deal of exertion, and I am only a fledgling. So what must become possible for men who would put to their account as well the glory which accompanies such a rejection (in which there may be more ambition than in the actual possession of the desired greatness, since ambition is never acting more in accord with its nature than when it adopts some unusual road, somewhat off the beaten track).

I whet my mind to face endurance:
¹
I enfeeble it towards desire. I can wish as well as the next man and I allow great freedom and indiscretion to my wishes; yet I have never found myself wishing for imperial or royal rank nor for the prominence of those high destinies where men command.
My aims do not tend that way: I love myself too much for that. When I think of growing in constancy or wisdom or health or beauty, or even wealth, it is in a modest way, with a timid constricted growth appropriate to myself; but my imagination is oppressed by great renown or mighty authority. Contrary to what was said by that other chap,
²
I would rather be one whose lot was to be second or third in Périgueux than first in Paris – or at least, to tell no lie, third in Paris, rather than the one in charge. I want neither to be a wretched nobody arguing with doorkeepers nor one who causes crowds to part with awe as I pass through. By [C] lot [B] and also by taste
³
I am accustomed to a middling rank. [C] In the conduct of my life and of anything I have undertaken, I have shown that I have fled rather than sought means of stepping above the degree of fortune in which God has placed me at birth. Anything established by Nature is as just as it is pleasant.

[B] I have a soul so lazy that I do not measure my fortune by its height: I measure it by its pleasantness. [C] But though I do not have all that great a mind, I do have one which is correspondingly open, one which orders me to dare to publish its weaknesses. You might ask me to compare two lives. The first is that of Lucius Thorius Balbus, a gentleman who was handsome, learned, healthy, intelligent and abounding in all sorts of talents and pleasures, leading a quiet existence which was entirely his own, with a soul fully armed against death, superstition, pain and the other burdens of our human distress, who finally died in battle, weapon in hand, in the defence of his country. The second is the life of Marcus Regulus, so great and sublime that we all know of it, with his death so worthy of admiration. One of those men was without rank or reputation; the other, amazingly glorious and exemplary. I would say of them the same as Cicero (if I could talk as well as he could).
⁴
If I had to lay those lives against my own, I would say that the former is as much in harmony with my abilities (and with my desires, which I make to conform to my abilities) as the latter far outstrips them; I can only approach the latter with veneration; I could readily approach the other in actual practice.

Now let us get back to my starting point, temporal greatness.

[B] I dislike all domination, by me or over me. [C] Otanes, one of the Seven who had rightful claims to the throne of Persia, took a decision which I could well have taken myself. To his rivals he abandoned his rights to be elected or chosen by lot, on condition that he and his family could live in that empire free from all domination, and from all subordination except to those of the ancient laws, and should enjoy every freedom not prejudicial to those laws, since he found it intolerable both to give or to accept commands.
⁵

[B] The harshest and most difficult job in the world, in my judgement, is worthily to act the king. I can excuse more shortcomings in kings than men commonly do, out of consideration for the horrifying weight of their office, which stuns me. It is difficult for such disproportionate power to act with a sense of proportion. Yet even for men of less outstanding character it is a singular incitement to virtue for them to be placed where you can do no good deed which is not noted and chronicled; where the slightest good action affects so many people and where your talents (like those of preachers) are mainly addressed to the populace – not an exacting judge, one easily duped and easily contented.

There are few matters on which we can give an unbiased judgement because there are few in which we do not have a private interest some way or other. Superior or inferior rank, the role of ruler or subject, are bound to each other by natural rivalry and competition: they need to be always pillaging each other. I never believe either’s case against its yoke-mate: let reason judge of it (when we can prevail upon her): she cannot be swayed and is exempt from passion. Less than a month ago I was turning over the pages of a couple of Scottish books on this subject; the people’s man makes the king’s position worse than a carter’s: the monarchist places him in sovereignty and power a few yards higher than God.
⁶

Now the disadvantage of great rank (which I have taken as the subject of my remarks here since some event called it to my attention) is the following: nothing perhaps in the whole of our dealings with others is more pleasant than those assays which we make of each other as rivals for
honour in physical sports and for esteem in those of the mind – and in which a sovereign can take no real part. It has often seemed true to me that the force of respect leads to our actually treating princes disdainfully and insultingly.

Something which infinitely annoyed me as a boy was when those who played sports against me dispensed themselves from making any serious attempt at beating me, finding me an opponent not worth the effort; princes see that happen every day, each partner finding himself unworthy of striving to beat him. Whenever anyone perceives that princes have the slightest desire to win, there is no partner who does not labour to see that they do so, preferring to betray his own glory rather than to attack theirs: we merely make just enough effort to enhance their reputation. What part can they play in a friendly skirmish if everyone in it is on their side? It recalls those paladins in days of yore who entered jousts and combats with enchanted bodies and weapons. When Brisson was racing against Alexander he merely pretended to run swiftly. Alexander did rebuke him for it, but he ought to have had him flogged.
⁷

That is why Carneades said that the only thing which the sons of princes really learned properly was horsemanship, since in all other sports men yield to them and allow them to win whereas a horse is neither a flatterer nor a courtier: it will throw a king’s son as soon as a porter’s.
⁸
Homer was compelled to allow Venus, so gentle and inviolable a deity, to be ever so lightly wounded at the siege of Troy so as to attribute boldness and courage to her, qualities which do not fall to the lot of those who are exempt from risk of harm.
⁹
Gods are made to get angry, feel fear and flee, [C] to be jealous, [B] to lament and to feel passion, in order to honour them with virtues which among us humans are constructed from our imperfections.

Anyone who has no part in the danger and difficulty can make no claim to a share in the honour and delight which ensue upon the dangerous deed. It is pitiful to have such power that it results in everything giving way to you. Then your destiny removes you too far from the fellowship and companionship of men; you are stuck there, too remote. The unchallenging and facile ease with which you can make everything bow down before you is the enemy of every sort of pleasure. That is not walking but gliding; not
living, but sleeping. (Just imagine Man to be endowed with omnipotence: you throw him into an abyss; his being and his well-being are in dire necessity: he has to beg you of your charity for obstacles and opposition.)

Even such men’s good qualities are dead and gone, for qualities are known only by comparison, and such men are beyond compare; they have little knowledge of true praise, being battered by continual and uniform acclaim. Even if they are up against the most stupid of their subjects they have no way of showing they are better than he is; he only has to say, ‘I did that because he is my King, you see,’ and he then believes he has said enough to imply that he contributed to his own defeat.

This kingly quality stifles and annihilates their other qualities, their real ones which are of their essence: they lie buried under their royal state. That leaves them with no means of showing their worth except actions which directly touch upon their royal state or which contribute to it, namely the duties of their rank. Which means that such a one is so entirely a king that he has no other existence. That radiance which surrounds him is not him, but it hides and conceals him from us: the rays from our eyes strike against it and are scattered, being overwhelmed and arrested by the strong light.
¹⁰
The Senate voted to award the prize for eloquence to Tiberius: he declined it, believing that, even if it were justified, he could take no pleasure in a verdict so unfreely reached.
¹¹

As we concede every advantage of honour to princes we confirm them in their defects and, not merely by our approval but by our imitation, we give warrant to their defects and their vices. All of Alexander’s courtiers used to twist their heads to one side as he did; those who flattered Dionysius used to bump into each other when he was present, stumbling against whatever was under their feet and knocking it over, to suggest that they were as short-sighted as he was. Even having a rupture has at times helped a man to advancement and favour! I have known men pretend to be deaf; and Plutarch knew courtiers who repudiated wives – wives whom they loved – because their lord hated his. Further still, lechery has been in fashion and every kind of licentiousness, as also have disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, as well as heresy and superstition, irreligion and decadence, and even worse things if worse there be, so providing thereby an example even more dangerous than that of Mithridates’ flatterers: their lord yearned to be
honoured as a good doctor so they offered him their limbs to be cut open and cauterized; but that other lot allowed a nobler and more tender part to be cauterized: their soul.
¹²

But to end where I began: when the Emperor Hadrian was discussing the meaning of a word with Favorinus the philosopher, Favorinus quickly let him win the argument. When his friends criticized him for it he replied, ‘You are joking! Would you want him to be less learned than I am? He is in command of thirty legions!’ After Augustus had written some verses against Asinius Pollio, Pollio said: ‘I am keeping my mouth shut. It is not wise to skirmish with him who can banish.’
¹³
And he was right. For, as Dionysius could not equal Philoxenus in poetry or Plato in prose, he condemned one to the quarries and sent the other to the island of Aegina to be sold as a slave.
¹⁴