cared for in the neighborhood; but no special provision appears to have been made for them till 1190, when at the great siege of Acre during the third Crusade the order of Teutonic Knights was founded to tend them. For a long time the task of caring for the sick and wounded was left to private benevolence; but in the seventeenth century a small number of surgeons and chaplains, and a few field hospitals, were provided by states for their armies. Since then there has been steady and continuous progress in this department of army organization. In modern wars state provision has been supplemented by private effort; and in some cases neutral societies and individuals have given aid from motives of humanity. But even now those who fall in struggles with barbarous or semi-barbarous tribes are sometimes exposed to terrible suffering. In 1799 Napoleon ordered his own sick and wounded to be poisoned at Jaffa during the retreat from Syria, rather than leave them behind to be tortured and massacred by the Turks. The last great step in advance was the negotiation at Geneva in 1864 of a Convention regulating the care of the sick and wounded by a great international agreement which has now been signed by nearly all civilized powers, the United States having acceded to it in 1882.2 It neutralizes hospitals, ambulances, surgeons, chaplains, nurses, and generally all persons and things connected with the care of the sick, provided that the badge of a red cross on a white ground is shown on a flag or on the arm as the case may be. Field hospitals captured by the enemy may be withdrawn by their staff when they are no longer needed; and in no case may the staff be detained as prisoners. Enemy wounded, when healed, are to be sent back to their country if they are incapable of further military service, and if able-bodied may be allowed to depart on condition of not serving again during the same The Convention needs revision on some points and war. 1 Alison, History of Europe, III., xxv. 2 Treaties of the United States, p. 1150. 8 For the work of the Hague Conference in this respect see Appendix, § V. additions on others. Voluntary assistance should be brought under stricter rules, and the contracting powers should make intentional violations of the Convention penal under their Articles of War, a step which they declined to take when it was proposed in 1868. In that year a number of additional articles were drawn up, relating chiefly, though not entirely, to warfare at sea; but they have not at present received ratification, and therefore cannot be regarded as binding in strict law upon the powers which have signed them,1 though some of their provisions, such for instance as those which relate to the neutralization of hospital ships, will probably be acted upon by humane belligerents in future wars. Brussels Conference in 1874 embodied in its proposed code the statement that the duties of belligerents with regard to the treatment of the sick and wounded are regulated by the Geneva Convention, which thus received the sanction of whatever authority may be held to attach to the approval of the military representatives of the European states. § 189. The Sieges and captures by assault at the close of sieges remained the opprobrium of International Law long after humanity had won recognition in other departments of the field of warfare. rule was to spare a town which surrendered The Roman The improved treatment of the garrisons of cap before the battering-ram touched its walls. resistance was made, every living thing in the place was slaughtered. In the Middle Ages it was deemed an offence for a garrison to prolong a resistance which the besiegers regarded as fruitless; and not only were they slain without mercy if the place was taken by assault, but if it was finally given up some or all of them were executed. The demand of Edward III. of England for the lives of 1 Treaties of the United States, p. 1153. 2 British State Papers, Miscellaneous, No. 1 (1875), pp. 322, 324. twelve burghers of Calais, when it surrendered to him in 1347 after a year's siege, was a measure of exceptional mildness rather than exceptional severity. The revolt of the United Netherlands against Spain, and the wars of religion which followed it, furnished example after example of horrible barbarity inflicted not only on the armed defenders of captured places but also on the unarmed inhabitants. After the Thirty Years' War the slaughter of non-combatants by the soldiery who had forced an entrance into a beleaguered city came to be regarded as an atrocity; but it has been held in comparatively recent times that the defenders of a fortress taken by storm have no right to quarter. This was the opinion of the Duke of Wellington,1 though his own practice was to make prisoners of any who surrendered themselves. In the Peninsular War the French repeatedly threatened Spanish garrisons with extermination if they stood an assault.2 But Napoleon exacted from his own generals a tenacity he deemed criminal in an enemy. The commanders of his fortresses were instructed never to surrender without standing at least one assault, and those of them who did not hold out to the last were treated with great severity. But though the old rule which devoted to slaughter the defenders of places taken by storm has been shamefully tenacious of life, it has at length disappeared from modern warfare, and we are able to declare that The ancient practice of refusing quarter to the defenders of places taken by assault is now obsolete. Some remnants of it lurk in the theory that it is an offence to defend an open and unfortified town, or to resist in a weak place the attack of a vastly superior force. These views were always difficult of application. It was impossible to define the exact extent of defensive works which made a 1 Despatches, 2d Series, I., 93, 94. 2 Bernard, Growth of the Laws of War in the Oxford Essays for 1856, p. 111, note. place into a fortress, or the exact measure of weakness which rendered a commander liable to extremities if he ventured upon resistance. And now the changed conditions of warfare have made them completely out of date. To-day earthworks are highly efficient fortifications, and they can be thrown up in a few hours and gradually strengthened till they are able to resist siege artillery. Plevna was a small open town when Osman Pasha determined to hold it as a defensive point in the summer of 1877; but by incessant spade labor and careful engineering, he turned it in a few weeks into a fortress, which the best troops of Russia assaulted three times in vain. The distinction between fortified and unfortified places may therefore be said to have vanished. Every place is potentially a fortress, if its natural situation is favorable for defence; and no general would now claim the right to subject to military severities an army which held improvised works against his attack. Recent wars between civilized powers have afforded no instance of the slaughter of a garrison; and we may lay down with confidence that the defenders of a captured place are as much entitled to quarter as defeated soldiers taken on the battle-field. $ 190. The last point to note with regard to combatants is that Certain means of destruction are forbidden. The prohibition of destruction. It is now held that the sole object of warlike operations is to destroy the enemy's power of resistance and induce him to make terms as soon as possible. Consequently any applications of force which inflict of certain means more pain and suffering than is necessary in order to attain this end are forbidden by modern International Law. A bullet, for instance, will shatter an arm and render its possessor useless as a fighting man, 1 Annual Register for 1877, pp. 193-198. just as well as a scrap of iron or glass which inflicts a jagged wound very difficult to heal. The use of such missiles is therefore prohibited; and the principle which condemns them is applied in other directions also. A feeling against treachery is the base of further prohibitions. All the forbidden methods of destruction will be discussed in the chapter on The Agents and Instruments of Warfare. § 191. We have now to sketch the usages of war with regard to the persons of non-combatants. We have already seen that The gradual amelioration of the condition of noncombatants. We till the distinction between combatants and non-combatants was clearly and definitely embodied in the laws of war in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the unarmed inhabitants of an invaded country were liable to be slaughtered at the will of an invader, and were almost always exposed to shameful indignities, even though in Christian Europe it was not considered right to reduce them to slavery. But it must be remembered that the change to more humane methods did not take place in a moment without previous hint or warning. It was a matter of gradual growth. find in ancient and medieval warfare instances of humanity towards non-combatants which increase in number as time goes on, though occasionally there is a period of distinct retrogression, like the terrible Thirty Years' War, which was, however, followed by seventy years of rapid progress. When Henry V. of England invaded France in 1415, he forbade violence to the peaceful population and insults to women, and severely punished the perpetrators of such outrages, whereas less than a century before the track of the armies of Edward III. was marked by a broad line of fire and slaughter. The famous Chevalier Bayard was remarkable for his humanity to the inhabitants of invaded districts; and when the Earl of Essex took Cadiz in 1596 he permitted |