Force and Fraud in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

Force and Fraud

Although Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) inscribes the Essays within a tradition of private, meditative, and self-reflexive writing in his Au Lecteur and De l’oisiveté, they offer philosophical speculations and practical perspectives not only on ancient and early modern warfare, but also on the religious wars that the author witnessed during his lifetime. Indeed, their meditativeness allows the Essays to develop critical, engaged perspectives on war in general, and the uses of fraud and force in particular. Throughout the Western literary tradition, force and fraud have represented opposing alternatives to each other—the former representing a direct, honest approach to warfare, and the latter representing a cunning or strategic one.¹ In so discussing the relationship between private and public morality, the Essays intervene in a longstanding tradition of civic and humanist thought. This essay argues that Montaigne’s speculations on force and fraud in ancient and early modern warfare represent a response to the general problem of war and more specifically, though indirectly, to the French sixteenth-century religious wars.² It shall focus on the (Ciceronian and Machiavellian) themes of force and fraud in the Essays, showing that for Montaigne they function as a dialectical opposition that structures his various reflections on the topic of war.³

Montaigne’s reflections on military matters range across a wide array of topics. His thoughts on war span across ancient, medieval, and early modern society and politics as well as the New World. The early essays touch on matters of warfare, but they do not develop extended comparisons between the ancients, the New World, and the French civil wars to the same extent as the Apologie de Raymond Sebond and other later writings such as De la phisionomie. In these later Essays, Montaigne reflects on war and religion across different cultures and ages of history, and makes force and fraud a central opposition in his philosophical views on the sixteenth-century religious wars. Generally speaking, fraud falls under the broader topic of dissimulation and deceit that Montaigne deals with in discussing religious and civil war. He identifies fraud and force as parts of the problem contributing to, and resulting from, the struggles that his country confronted.

Can there be a good war in Montaigne’s view? He describes war as a science and as a matter of both honor and brutality, which he condemns but also excuses, to a degree, in the name of honor and valor. Montaigne does not mask the horrors of war, but rather subordinates war’s brutality to these values. Noble war consists of winning an opponent’s “ressentiment” rather than annihilating him entirely; it is a struggle of wills and for recognition of triumph. He cites examples of cultures that, rather than killing, seek to win their opponents’ “ressentiment.” For instance, according to Polybius’ accounts, the ancient Aichaians “detested” all fraudulence in war and refused to claim victory unless their enemy’s courage was defeated. Likewise, in the Kingdom of Ternate, Montaigne records how the apparently “barbarous” people only conducted war by announcing their attacks first, providing details about their forces to each other (I, v, 25). Citing these examples and others—such as the ancient Florentines, who gave one month’s notice before attacking because they despised using surprise—Montaigne compares different cultures and historical ages, considering their respective positions on war:

C’estoient les formes vrayment Romaines, non de la Grecque subtilité et astuce Punique, où le vaincre par force est moins glorieux que par fraude. Le tromper peut servir pour le coup; mais celuy seul se tient pour surmonté, qui sçait l’avoir esté ny par ruse ny de sort, mais par vaillance, de troupe à troupe, en une loyalle et juste guerre. Il appert bien par le langage de ces bonnes gens qu’ils n’avoient encore receu cette belle sentence dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat?

(I, v, 25)

Distinguishing Roman forcefulness, Greek subtlety, and Punic craftiness, Montaigne asserts that valor makes war honorable, noble and just. Valor represents a central virtue in the Essays in part...