There’s a tension in Montaigne that seems unusual to modern readers. He writes quite a bit about battles, but seems highly conflict averse. This essay, in particular, displays Montaigne taking what might appear to be a Machiavellian position—that it’s perfectly acceptable to deploy a military strategy that will probably lead to heavy casualties on your side as long as it advances the cause of victory:
The target in the sight of any soldier, let alone a commander, must be overall victory and no events, no matter what their importance to individuals, should divert him from that aim.
Montaigne is writing here about the first major battle in the wars of religion between the Catholics and Huguenots in France, the Battle of Dreux, a brutal, bloody battle that saw roughly a third of all combatants, about 10,000 total, killed on both sides. Montaigne defended the tactics of Duc de Guise by pointing out similar military strategies in the past, which he pulled from Plutarch’s Life of Philopoemen and Life of Agesilaus. In these two exempla, Montaigne makes the case for the art of war over the valor of war, even if that means putting some soldiers in highly vulnerable positions to trap the opponent into a strategically weak position.
Tying this into previous essays, Montaigne always supports the moderate approach to diplomacy. He wants to avoid conflicts, temper passions and keep nations out of war as much as possible. In several essays, he notes that the glory brought to leaders who seek military conquests is fleeting—and is often a sign of hubris. But once the battle begins, Montaigne advocates for rules of engagement that prioritize victory over political discomfort. Today, you have to wonder if the modern risks and consequences of war have changed this calculation.
Up through the post Cold War era, international stakeholders constantly encouraged superpowers to use their might to settle international disputes. It seems almost a miracle now that all of the conflicts of the late 20th century somehow did not lead to an exchange of nuclear weapons. But there was very careful consideration on both sides about the types of escalation that could lead to the worst outcomes.
In the spirit of Montaigne’s ataraxia, while I have ample opinions on military matters worldwide, I need to return to his “what do I know?” mantra. I don’t claim to be a global diplomatic or military expert. My concern, however, is the easy assumption we all hold that cooler heads will prevail if we reach a moment of catastrophe. If we’ve learned any lesson in the 21st Century, it’s that those cooler heads are in increasingly short supply and rarely seem to prevail.
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