The Grand Almoner of France Jacques Amiot, truly one of us, even though he was of foreign origin, once recited to me this story in honor of one of our princes: During our first troubles, at the siege of Rouen, this prince had been warned by the queen mother, of an attempt made on his life, informed specifically by his letters of the man who led the plot. He was a gentleman from Anjou or Manceau, who at the time usually frequented the house of this Prince for this purpose. He did not communicate the warning to anyone; but, walking the next day on Mont Sainte-Catherine, from where our battery at Rouen was firing (for it was at the time that we were laying siege to it) alongside Lord High Almoner and another Bishop, he saw the plotter, who had caught his eye, and called him over. When he came over, the prince saw him turn pale and shudder, then dictated to him. Sir of such-and-such a place, you well suspect what I want from you, and your face shows it. You have nothing to hide from me, for I have been informed of your plan so long ago that you would only make your situation worse by trying to cover it up. You know such and such a thing (which were the ins and outs of the most secret parts of this plot); do not fail in your life to confess to me the truth of this whole plan. When this poor man found himself caught and convicted (for the whole thing had been revealed to the Queen by one of the accomplices) he had only to join his hands and ask for the grace and mercy of this Prince, at whose feet he wanted to throw himself.
But he kept his distance, leading the prince to say: “Come now; have I ever displeased you? Have I offended any of you out of particular hatred? I have known you for less than three weeks; what possible reason could have moved you to undertake my death?” The gentleman replied to this with a trembling voice, that it was not any particular occasion that he had, but the interest of the general cause of his party; and that no one had persuaded him that it would be pious to execute such a powerful enemy of their religion. Now, the Prince replied, “I want to show you how much sweeter the religion I hold is than the one you profess. Yours advised you to kill me without hearing me, having received no offense from me; and mine commands me to forgive you, fully convinced that you wanted to kill me for no reason. Go away, retire, and never let me see you here again; and, if you are wise, take advice in your future endeavors from people of better character than these.”
The Emperor Augustus, being in Gaul, received certain warning of a conspiracy being hatched by Lucius Cinna; he decided to take revenge and summoned the Council of his friends for this purpose the following day. But he spent the night between the two with great anxiety, considering that he had to put to death a young man from a good family and nephew of the great Pompeius; and, complaining, he produced several different speeches: “So what,” he asked, “shall I be told I shall remain in fear and alarm, and shall I let my murderer walk about at his ease? Will he leave, having assaulted my head that I have saved from so many civil wars, from so many battles, by sea and by land? And, after having established universal peace in the world, will he be absolved, having deliberated, not only to kill me, but to sacrifice me? For the conspiracy was to kill him, as he would make some sacrifice. After that, having held his peace for some time, he began again in a stronger voice, and addressed himself to himself: Why do you live, if it matters so much to so many that you die? Will there be no end to your vengeance and your cruelty? Is your life worth so much damage to be done to preserve it?”
Livia, his wife, sensing his anguish, asked him: “And will the advice of women be heeded?” Do as doctors do when the usual prescriptions are of no use: they try the opposite. By severity you have profited nothing up to this hour: Lepidus followed Salvidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio, Murena; Egnatius, Caepio. Begin to experiment how gentleness and clemency will succeed you. Cinna is convinced: forgive him; from harm you from now on, and will benefit your glory. Augustus was very pleased to have found an advocate of his humor, and, having thanked his wife and countermanded his friends whom he had assigned to the Council, he ordered that Cinna alone be brought to him; and, having had everyone leave his room and given Cinna a seat, he spoke to him in this manner: First of all, Cinna, I ask you for a hearing. Let us not interrupt my speech; I will give you time and leisure to respond. You know, Cinna, that having taken you into the camp of my enemies, not only having made you my enemy, but having been born as such, I saved you, I put all your possessions in your hands, and I have finally made you so comfortable and so well off that the victors are envious of the condition of the defeated. I granted you the office of the priesthood that you asked of me, having refused it to others, whose fathers had always fought with me. Having obligated you so much, you set out to kill me. To which Cinna, exclaiming that he was far from having such an evil thought, replied: “You do not hold me to what you promised me, Cinna,” followed Augustus; “you assured me that I would not be interrupted: yes, you undertook to kill me,” in such a place, on such a day, in such company, and in such a way.”
And seeing him transfixed by this news, and in silence, no longer to keep his promise to remain silent, but because of the pressure of his conscience: “Why,” he added, “do you do it? Is it to be Emperor? Truly, things are going badly for the public good, if I am the only one preventing you from becoming Emperor. You cannot only defend your house, and recently lost a lawsuit through the favor of a simple libertine. What, have you no means or power in anything else but to undertake Caesar? Is it only me who prevents your hopes? Do you think Paulus, Fabius, the Cosseens and Serviliens will put up with you? And such a large troop of nobles, not only noble in name, but who honor their nobility through their virtue?” After several other remarks (for he spoke to him for more than two whole hours): “Well, go,” he said to him; ‘I give you, Cinna, your life, as a traitor and a parricide, which I once gave you as an enemy: let friendship begin between us from this day; let us see which of us has the better faith, I who have given you your life, or you who have received it.’ And he parted from him in this manner.
Some time later, he gave him the consulate, complaining that he had not dared to ask him for it. From then on he was a close friend to him, and was the only one appointed by him as heir to his property. Now, since this incident, which happened to Augustus when he was 44 years old, there was never any conspiracy or plot against him, and he received a just reward for his clemency. But the same did not happen to our emperor: for his gentleness did not save him, and he fell into another treachery.
So vain and frivolous is human prudence; and through all our plans, our advice and precautions, fortune always retains possession of events. We call doctors fortunate when they achieve a successful outcome, as if it were only their art that could not maintain itself and had foundations too weak to rely on its own strength, and as if it were the only thing that needed fortune to lend a hand in its operations. I believe the worst or the best of her, as one pleases. For we have, thank God, no dealings together: I am the reverse of the others, for I despise her well always; but when I am ill, instead of coming to terms, I begin again to hate and fear her; and I answer those who press me to take medicine, that they at least wait until I have regained my strength and my health, so that I am better able to withstand the effort and the harm of their dose.
I let nature take its course, and assume that it has provided itself with teeth and claws to defend itself against the attacks that come its way, and to maintain this structure, thanks to which it avoids dissolution. I fear that, instead of going to her aid, just as she is in a very close and tight grip of the disease, we may be rescuing her adversary instead of her, and burdening her with new affairs. Now I say that, not only in medicine, but in several more certain arts, fortune plays a large part.
The poetic outbursts, which carry away their author and transport him, why do we not attribute them to his good fortune? since he himself confesses that they surpass his sufficiency and his strengths, and recognizes that they come from elsewhere than himself, and that he has no power over them. Nor do orators claim to have in their power these extraordinary movements and agitations, which push them beyond their design. The same is true of painting, which sometimes escapes from the painter’s hand, surpassing his conception and his skill, which draw him himself into admiration and astonishment. But fortune shows even more clearly the part it plays in all these works, through the grace and beauty found in them, not only without the intention, but without the knowledge of the artist himself.
A sufficiently discerning reader often discovers in other people’s writings perfections other than those which the author has put there and perceived, and endows them with richer meanings and aspects. As for military undertakings, everyone can see how fortune plays a large part in them. In our councils and deliberations, there must certainly be fate and happiness mixed in: for all that our wisdom can do is not much; the sharper and keener it is, the more weakness it finds in itself, and the more it doubts itself.
I am of Sylla’s advice; and when I pay close attention to the most glorious exploits of war, I see, it seems to me, that those who lead them only use deliberation and advice for the sake of it, and that they abandon the best part of the undertaking to fortune, and, on the faith they have in its aid, always go beyond the bounds of all discourse. There are unexpected rejoicings and strange fits of anger in their deliberations, which most often push them to take the least apparently well-founded side, and which inflate their courage beyond reason. Hence it has happened to several great ancient captains, in order to give credence to this reckless advice, to allege to their people that they were invited to it by some inspiration, by some sign and omen.
That is why, in this uncertainty and perplexity brought on by the inability to see and choose what is most convenient, for the difficulties that the various accidents and circumstances of each thing bring, the safest thing, when no other consideration calls us to it, is, in my opinion, to choose the side where there is more honesty and justice; and then, when there is doubt as to the shortest path, always take the right one: as, in these two examples that I have just proposed, there is no doubt that it was more handsome and generous of the one who had received the offense to forgive it than if he had done otherwise. If it happened otherwise to the former, it is not for us to blame his good intention; and who knows, if he had taken the opposite course, if he would have escaped the end to which his destiny called him; and if he would have lost the glory of such remarkable goodness.
One sees in history many people in this fear, from which the majority have followed the path of running towards the conspiracies that were made against them, for vengeance and for torture; but I see very few to whom this remedy has been of use, as witnessed by so many Roman Emperors. He who finds himself in this danger should not place much hope in his strength or his vigilance. For how difficult is it to protect oneself from an enemy who is covered by the face of the most obliging friend we have? And to recognize the innermost thoughts and desires of those who assist us? He may employ foreign nations for his guard, and be always surrounded by a hedge of armed men: whoever scorns his life will always make himself master of that of others. And then this continual suspicion, which makes the Prince doubt everyone, must be a wonderful torment for him.
Yet Dion, being aware that Callipus was spying on the means of putting him to death, never had the heart to inform him, saying that he would rather die than live in such misery, having to guard not only against his enemies but also against his friends. Alexander represented this much more vividly and more quickly when, having learned from a letter from Parmenion that Philippus, his dearest doctor, had been corrupted by Darius’s money to poison him, he gave Philippus the letter to read and at the same time swallowed the potion he had been given. Was this not an expression of his resolve that, if his friends wanted to kill him, he would consent to their doing so? This prince is the sovereign patron of hazardous acts; but I do not know if there is any trait in his life that shows greater firmness than this one, or a beauty illustrious by so many faces. Those who preach such careful distrust to princes, under the guise of preaching their security, preach their ruin and their shame. Nothing noble is done without risk.
I know one, of very martial courage of complexion, and enterprising, whose good fortune is corrupted every day by such persuasions: that he should stay close to his own kind, that he should have no part in any reconciliation of his former enemies, that he should keep apart, and not commit himself into stronger hands, whatever promises may be held out to him, whatever advantage he may see in it. I know of another, who unexpectedly advanced his fortune, by taking the very opposite advice. Boldness, for which they so eagerly seek glory, is represented, when it is needed, as magnificently in a doublet as in armor, in a study as in a camp, with an arm hanging down as well as an arm raised. Prudence, so tender and circumspect, is the mortal enemy of great achievements. Scipio knew, in order to carry out the will of Syphax, leaving his army and abandoning Spain, still doubtful under his new conquest, to pass into Africa, in two simple vessels, to commit himself in enemy territory, to the power of a barbaric king, to an unknown faith, without obligation, without hostage, under the sole security of the greatness of his own courage, of his happiness, and of the promise of his high hopes:
Having faith, faith itself is often binding. (Livy)
On the contrary, an ambitious and famous life requires little effort, and suspicion must be kept at bay: fear and mistrust attract offense and invite it. The most distrustful of our kings established his affairs, mainly for having voluntarily abandoned and committed his life and his freedom into the hands of his enemies, showing complete trust them, so that they would take it from him. Caesar opposed his legions, mutinous and armed against him, only with the authority of his face and the pride of his words; and he trusted so much in himself and his fortune that he did not fear to abandon it and commit it to a seditious and rebellious army.
He stood on the mound supported by the turf, fearless in his countenance, and deserved to be feared, fearing nothing. (Lucan)
But it is quite true that this strong assurance can only be represented whole and naive by those whom the imagination of death and of the worst that can happen after all does not frighten: for to present it trembling, still doubtful and uncertain, for the service of an important reconciliation, is to do nothing worthwhile. It is an excellent way to win the heart and will of another, to submit to it proudly, provided that it is freely and without constraint of any necessity, and that it is on condition that one brings to it pure and clear trust, with one’s forehead at least unburdened by any scruple.
In my childhood, I saw a gentleman, commanding in a large city, eager to give in to the emotion of an angry mob. To quell this incipient unrest, he took the risk of leaving a very secure place where he was and going to this mutinous mob; from which he did not come out well and was miserably killed. But it does not seem to me that his fault was so much in leaving, as he is usually reproached for in his memory, as it was in having taken a path of submission and weakness, and in having wanted to lull this rage, following rather than leading, and requesting rather than pointing out; and he considers that a gracious severity, with a military command full of security and confidence, appropriate to his rank and the dignity of his office, would have been more successful, at least with more honor and decorum.
Nothing less than humanity and gentleness can be expected of this monster, so agitated; he will be met with reverence and fear. I would also criticize him for having taken a resolution, rather brave in my opinion than reckless, to throw himself, weak and in a doublet, into this tempestuous sea of senseless men, he should have swallowed it whole, and not abandoned this character, where it happened to him, after having recognized the danger up close, to have a nosebleed and to alter again from that disheveled and flattering demeanor that he had undertaken, into a frightened demeanor: charging his voice and his eyes with astonishment and penitence. Seeking to recognize and to disguise himself, he inflamed them and called upon himself. It was decided to hold a general display of various armed troops (this is the place for secret revenge, and is not the place where they can be exercised with greater security).
It was publicly and notoriously apparent that things were not going well for some, who had the main and necessary task of recognizing them. Various councils were proposed as if it were a difficult matter, and one that carried a lot of weight and consequence. Mine was that we should avoid giving any testimony of this doubt and that we should find ourselves and stand among the ranks, heads held high and faces open, and that instead of removing anything (which was what the other opinions aimed for most) that on the contrary we should ask the captains to to tell the soldiers to fire their volleys beautifully and vigorously in honor of the audience, and not to spare their powder. This served as a reward for these suspicious troops, and from then on engendered a mutual and useful trust.
The path taken by Julius Caesar, I find to be the most beautiful one one can take. Firstly, he tried, through clemency and gentleness, to make himself loved by his enemies, contenting himself, to the conspiracies that were discovered to him, to simply declare that he was aware of them: once this was done, he made a very noble resolution to await, without fear and without worry, what could happen to him, abandoning himself and putting himself in the hands of the gods and fortune; for this was certainly the state he was in when he was killed.
A stranger, having said and published everywhere that he could instruct Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, of a way to sense and discover with complete certainty the plots that his subjects were hatching against him, if he wanted to give him a good piece of silver, Dionysius, having been warned, summoned him to his presence to enlighten him on an art so necessary for his preservation. This stranger told him that there was no other art, but he had him deliver a talent, and boasted of having learned a singular secret from him. Dionysius thought the invention was good and paid him six hundred escudos. It was not likely that he would have given such a large sum to a man he did not know, other than as compensation for a very useful piece of learning; and this reputation served to keep his enemies at bay.
However, princes wisely publish the advice they receive about plots against their lives, to make people believe that they are well informed and that nothing can be undertaken without their knowledge. The Duke of Athens committed several follies in establishing his fresh tyranny over Florence; but this one was the most notable, as having received the first warning of the plots that people were hatching against him, by Mattheo di Morozo, an accomplice to them, he had him killed, to suppress this warning and to make it clear that no one in the city could be annoyed by his just government.
I remember having read once the story of a certain Roman, a dignified character who, fleeing the tyranny of the Triumvirate, had escaped the hands of his pursuers a thousand times through the subtlety of his inventions. One day, a troop of horsemen, who had been tasked with capturing him, rode right past a thicket where he had hidden himself, and almost discovered him; but he, at that point, considering the trouble and difficulties he had already endured for so long and to escape the continuous and curious searches that were being carried out on him everywhere, he himself called them back and betrayed his seal. He decided that given the little pleasure he could expect from such a life on the run, it was better for him to take the plunge once than to remain in this trance forever. To call on the enemy is a somewhat bold course of action. I think it would still be better to take his medicine than to remain in the continual fever of an accident for which there is no remedy. But, since the provisions that one can bring to it are full of worry and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with great assurance for whatever may happen, and to draw some consolation from the fact that one is not sure of any outcome.