A treaty is an agreement between states concerning mutual friendship and partnership in some matter. No kingdom is without a rival; therefore neither ought it to be without an ally, just as a private person ought not to be without a friend. To strike a treaty belongs to supreme majesty and, by its concession, to princes; without its consent, it is a conspiracy. Public defense pertains to the prince alone. Thus Besold, book 2, chapter 5, §12, on the law of treaties.
Treaties which are entered into among those who possess different ends and seek one thing are brief. If two rivals easily exclude a third after entering into a treaty, when that man has been cast out they turn against one another.
§ 1. By treaties I understand covenants and agreements by which several parties bind themselves by mutual obligation, συμμαχίαν, and enter into partnership, so that they judge the same persons friends and enemies. Nothing is more effective than this for power. For more is accomplished by the treaties of allies than by wars, and the Romans performed no fewer deeds with the forces of allies than under their own auspices.
§ 2. Treaties with foreign princes establish security at home and confer authority. For everyone considers that prince great whom kings and magnates court and to whom splendid embassies frequently come.
§ 3. The covenant of treaties ought to be most sacred. For they are sanctioned publicly and by oath. Many forms of an oath accompanied by a curse are found everywhere among the historians. Next, because fidelity publicly pledged binds more than any private promise. Even if no one preserved fidelity, kings nevertheless ought to preserve it. Nothing, however, can harm a kingdom more than violation of treaties. Hence no one is a friend to the Turks, because they measure treaties by utility alone.
§ 4. When several parties enter into one treaty, it must be useful or necessary to both parties; otherwise it is not lasting. Indeed, the most grievous wars arise from the complaints of allies, as when the Rhodians complain that their military service and partnership with the Romans had been without honor. For almost everyone regards his own utility. This consideration so often prevails even over honor that allies oppose allies. When Xerxes had been routed and the victorious fleet of Greece stood at anchor, a wicked thought, worthy of exile, entered Themistocles’ mind: that he should burn the fleet of the allies so that, once stripped of maritime power, they would be in the power of the Athenians. When Aristides declared that this was useful but not honorable, the Athenian people forbade it—and rightly, for it would have burdened itself with so much hatred that no equal power could have been imagined by which it might escape.
A most useful treaty was negotiated between the Venetians and the Spaniard in 1571. Agreement was reached later than was fitting, for Nicosia had been captured. It was altogether in the interest of the Venetians that the treaty be hastened and the auxiliary forces be decreed swiftly; for the Venetian could be defended only by a treaty, and if he were conquered all Italy would have been in danger. But the treaty was afterward rendered void for private reasons, because the Venetians saw that their commerce was being cut off and that they were consequently being reduced to poverty. Therefore one must always be vigilant to make an agreement with a man whom sudden necessity does not compel to make an agreement with the enemy. For after the greatest expenditures had been made, the Venetians, afflicted by losses in commerce, made a disadvantageous peace with the Turk.
§ 5. Treaties between dissimilar parties are not very secure—for example, between states and princes. For their interests are different, and for a long time no king was admitted into the city of Rome. Although the Roman people possessed allied kings, it nevertheless oppressed them especially.
Hence neither do the Venetians possess a secure treaty with any king, nor do they appear greatly to desire one; and in the most recent war they were defended more by the Hollanders than by any other prince. Nor do the Hollanders trust treaties with princes. One who in these days flattered the Belgians perceived this truly, although otherwise he was a most mendacious historian:
Great hatreds will follow the alliances of kings, to which we owe a great part of our liberty, and aid from Gaul and Britain will cease when concord ceases. The allied cities toward the east, lest they submit to the factious commands of the Belgians, will soon restore themselves to liberty. Since through their own weakness they will be unable to retain it, they will submit themselves to the savage nation toward the north. The princes of Germany will feign a new endurance of Austrian commands. The Turks, Conscript Fathers, apart from mere commerce in the Mediterranean, and the nobles of Venice—who in these wars have squandered the flower of our blood—will open only their treasuries.
The cause of this matter seems to me to be that democratic or aristocratic states do not wish their magistrates to admire or desire royal splendor. For there is the greatest danger that those who seek annual commands with so much canvassing that they even pour out their entire patrimonies should strive with every effort for perpetual dictatorships and royal stability. I judge that there were scarcely three Romans who, if they had been able, would not have done what Caesar, Pompey, and Augustus did.
No less suspect to kings is the familiarity of their princes with the senators of a free state. For those senators obtain liberty while generally possessing less power, whereas princes are bound in many ways; therefore, from the senators’ laws and custom princes can adopt plans for their own liberty. But, all things considered, there is more danger in a state. For those who preside over a state, as at Venice, in Holland, among the Alpine Grisons, and in Switzerland, readily accept gifts from kings and are accustomed to sell them their services. For where would you now find men such as Fabricius? And now in Holland and the Alps proceedings περὶ δωροδοκίας—concerning bribery—are conducted openly. For among equal senators of a state ambition is kindled more greatly as they succeed one another, court the popular breezes, and rescind deeds and laws. Hence comes their concern for resources and power. These are furnished by kings when the senators direct their counsels toward the kings’ advantages or impede the counsels of others.
Nor can states so easily bind royal ministers to themselves with gold: private men do not do it because it exceeds their means, and the senate itself cannot conveniently do it because accounts must be rendered. Therefore such largesses cannot be secret and are consequently most dangerous.
§ 6. Honorable marriages with the powerful confer by far the greatest power and authority, which is the foundation of power. Therefore powerful fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, or men suitable for conducting affairs, must be sought for a prince. We see this happen: royal hatreds are ended by loves, and a bridesmaid has been the salvation of nations. Assuredly wars are ended more happily by no means than by marriages.
But care must be taken lest wars arise through the occasion of marriages. This is accustomed to happen when the parties are not joined in good faith. Daniel 2:43 describes such a kingdom for us: “But whereas you saw the iron mixed with earthenware of clay, they shall indeed be mingled with human seed, but they shall not adhere to one another, just as iron cannot be mixed with earthenware.” The cause must be sought from the nature of the matter. Metals cannot be mixed with earthenware either by heat or by cold. Earthen vessels are hardened by heat and made firm into stony hardness; by cold they are softened. Metals grow solid by cold; by heat they are dissolved and liquefied. What benefits one, therefore, harms the other. Metals easily coalesce with one another because, when heated, they flow together and, when cooled, are hardened together. This condition of kings must be regarded, so that treaties of marriage may produce the peace of provinces.
Hence a reason must be sought why the minds of kings bound by affinity do not cohere. Daniel speaks thus in Chaldaic: that the kingdom will be מערב בחסף טינא,
“mixed with earthenware of clay.” ערב means to make a pledge, give security, conduct business, or mix. Marriages will therefore be mixed in that kingdom in the manner of merchandise, so that treaties are contracted not from conjugal love but for the advantage of ruling. They will also be mingled with human seed, but, as the Chaldaean says:
ולא להון דבקין דנא עם דנא
“But not so as to exist glued one to another.”
καὶ οὐκ ἔσονται προσκολλώμενοι οὗτος μετὰ τούτου,
as the Septuagint translates it. What, therefore, must be considered especially in these marriages?
§ 7. First, in these marriages it must be regarded that the end of marriage be true: marital union, the begetting and education of offspring, the spouses’ mutual assistance, and perpetual love. For those who perversely employ this holy covenant, which God instituted, for deceptions acquire greater evils for themselves from it.
In this manner Saul promised his daughter to David, 1 Samuel 18:15: “Saul therefore saw that he was exceedingly prudent and began to beware of him. But all Israel and Judah loved David, for he went in and out before them. And Saul said to David: ‘Behold my elder daughter Merab; I will give her to you as a wife. Only be a valiant man and fight the battles of the Lord.’ But Saul was considering, saying: ‘Let not my hand be upon him, but let the hand of the Philistines be upon him.’”
They did not adhere to one another; for Saul both persecuted his son-in-law and gave his daughter to another, while his other daughter was more faithful to her husband than to her impious father. Marriage therefore could not reconcile these men, since Saul sought nothing other than David’s death; hence a dowry of one hundred foreskins of the Philistines was imposed.
Antiochus employed a similar fraud; concerning him Daniel 11:17 says: “And he shall set his face to come and take possession of his entire kingdom, and he shall make equitable terms with him, and shall give him a daughter of women in order to overthrow it; but she shall not stand, nor shall she be for him.” When the guardians of the Egyptian king guarded against the plots of Antiochus, he betrothed Cleopatra to him, feigned peace, and gave her Coele-Syria, Judaea, Samaria, and Phoenicia in the name of a dowry. Yet he did not relinquish those territories altogether, for Josephus says that tribute was paid to each king. He had commanded his daughter to kill her husband by whatever means she could; but she supported the part of her husband more than that of her father. Polybius, to whom perhaps the king’s murderous disposition toward his own kin was unknown, supposes another reason for the marriage: namely, that he might bind Ptolemy to himself by affinity, lest Ptolemy oppose him when he was about to fight against the Romans. All these things were the beginnings of immense calamities, while that most criminal man against the whole human race violated a father’s right over his daughter, a father-in-law’s right, and finally the fellowship of the human race.
§ 8. Marriages cannot establish concord when each party possesses a different purpose, although they do not fight by design. At last matters will reach the point that those treaties are broken. The first sedition of the state concerned marriages; from the mingling of patrician and plebeian blood arose an opportunity for the plebs to seek the magistracies, until all things devolved upon the plebs and, as customarily follows from this, upon one man.
Afterward the same thing was attempted under the triumvirate. Antony married Octavia, the sister of Augustus; Augustus married Claudia, Antony’s stepdaughter. But the more powerful desire for ruling shattered all those bonds and set east and west against one another. Afterward Severus wished to stabilize the kingdom for his sons Caracalla and Geta through affinity with Plautianus, but the marriages were ruinous to both parties. The same thing was attempted in Stilicho and others, but with fruitless effort, because he employed marriages with imperial women to transfer the Empire. They could not be glued together because the exceedingly impious and faithless Stilicho sought anything rather than the safety of the Empire. Hence marriages under a dissimilar religious observance cannot long be enduring and useful.
§ 9. Treaties, whether of marriage or of any other kind, entered into with distant parties do not help greatly and offend neighbors. For if, while the state stood, some prince of the Romans had married a daughter of Antiochus or Ptolemy, allied kings, he could neither have been assisted by his father-in-law nor, being utterly hateful to the other citizens, would he have been admitted to any administration. Thus princes must now also beware lest through marriages with the powerful they appear to be contriving some revolution. Treaties with the Frenchman and agreements of betrothal were harmful to Wilhelm, duke of Jülich. The reason is openly known. For when neighboring princes are neglected and the splendor of foreign marriages is sought, hostility and suspicion arise, which always accompany power recently increased. At home, therefore, among his own people he has hatreds, alienation, and distrust ready at hand, but assistance far away.
The other things which contribute to power, since they are military, I shall discuss in their proper place.