§1
It has seemed good to join together the various methods by which princes have met seditions, and to stuff them, as it were, into a medley—not because they are all to be approved and employed, for some confound everything by malicious deceit, perjury, and cruelty, but because it is nevertheless permissible to fashion similar measures by imitation according to that manner, without crime, for the public safety.
Pompey, as Frontinus relates in Book II, chapter 11, when he regarded the people of Catina as suspect and feared that they would not receive a garrison, asked them to allow the sick among his men meanwhile to recover with them; thereafter, having sent the bravest men in the appearance of invalids, he occupied and held the city. It was indeed moderate in that he did not kill anyone; it was dissembling and fraudulent in that he sent strong men in place of sick men.
Dissembling and fraudulent also was Caesar, who discharged the seditious from service, and then, after the instigators had been killed, received those discharged men again. Hanno acted thoroughly wickedly and with Punic faith. Four thousand men had begun to riot because their pay had not been rendered; first he deceived them by promises, and then betrayed them to the Romans. For, having promised that he would compensate for the injury of the delay by liberality, he brought them back to quiet and obedience. Having done this, he sent them out for plunder and at the same time, through an agent under the guise of a deserter, informed Otacilius that the Gauls would go out to plunder. When ambushes had been placed by him, they were all slaughtered, and Hanno was freed both from the danger of sedition and from payment of their wages, but was bound by the greater crime of perfidy.
With equal perfidy Cassander entrapped Nicanor, who was estranged from him, when he was prefect of Munychia. Lysimachus was much more cruel, because he raged against innocent and pitiable men. Six hundred Autariatae had been stripped of their baggage. He suspected that, as men who had been exasperated, they would stir up a sedition; and so, after they had been led out by fraud, he slaughtered them all. Those of Enna who were killed by Pinarius can be judged to have been killed justly, since they were already contriving a revolt. For when they demanded the keys back, he ordered them to assemble in the theater and deliberate; when they persisted in their opinion there, he ordered them to be killed. Nor can the Spartans be accused of cruelty when, without fraud and falsehood, they sent a plotter into an ambush.
Cinadon had laid plots against the ephors. They sent him into a certain district of Laconia, ostensibly for the sake of a secret affair; there, after being tortured by cavalrymen sent ahead for this purpose, he disclosed his accomplices, whom the ephors immediately killed. Polyaenus, Book II. When three thousand men had revolted from Antigonus, he sent Leonidas to them under the pretense of desertion; Leonidas first persuaded them not to join one another, and thereafter betrayed them themselves.
§2
When the Macedonians frequently rioted against Alexander but the Persians loved him, he elevated the latter, gave them Persian commanders and Persian reinforcements. Diodorus Siculus, Book XVII. By that transfer to the Persians he restrained open violence, but not the monstrous hatreds by which he was afterwards overwhelmed and drank poison.
§3
Julius Caesar broke up a sedition by fortunate rashness, something which can be done only if the man against whom they rage possesses great authority. Pompey, Caesar’s son-in-law, did the same. He was a man of great spirit. When the soldiers threatened that they would seize the money which was to be carried in the triumph, and when his friends advised him that he should instead divide it among them himself, he answered that he would die rather than succumb to military license. After chastising the soldiers in a stern address, he threw the laurelled fasces before them so that they might begin their plundering with these. These men acted thus for their own safety, but Antigonus for another’s. For he skillfully quieted a sedition of the soldiers against Antipater. They were demanding their pay from a man who was destitute, and very little prevented them from stoning him. Antigonus advanced over a bridge like a man about to address an assembly; they yielded from his path and followed to hear what he wished to say. Meanwhile, while he defended Antipater in a long speech, the latter escaped. Polyaenus, Book IV.
§4
Hamilcar’s stratagem against deserters and those contriving sedition was remarkable, especially because it was free of Punic malice. When Gauls in great numbers were deserting from him to the Romans, he ordered his most trustworthy
men to feign desertion and to kill the Romans who came to receive them. Thus neither did others flee, nor did the Romans receive fugitives.
§5
Eumenes also acted in a civic manner, for by borrowing money from his rivals he defended his own safety; for lest they lose their money, they protected him with great fidelity. In that way certain cities in Germany were drawn into an alliance in war, lest they lose what they had already expended. Leucon preserved himself in the same manner, but added a falsehood. For, being assailed by plots, he received money on loan from merchants, alleging that his enemies had been surrendered to him through a betrayal. After receiving the money, he acknowledged the plots and took the merchants as bodyguards; he defeated the plotters.
§6
It seems more proper to impostors than to princes to meet seditions, both civil and military, by forged letters as though written by a counterfeiter’s hand; yet many have also employed this. For commanders themselves are accustomed to invent false plans, ambushes, betrayals, flights for refuge, and panic terrors, so that the soldier may be prepared for everything and may become thoroughly acquainted with the thoughts of all. When letters concerning Eumenes’ life had been scattered in his camp, he gave thanks because no one had sought the price of the crime, and added that he himself had scattered the letters for the sake of making a test. Besides, he said that Antigonus did not wish to conquer in such a way as to establish in his own person a most wicked example.
I marvel that Alexander the Great, who professed such strength of mind, cast himself down to such base things as to pry into the secrets of all his men who had written letters to Macedonia. For when, while stationed in Hyrcania, he had advised them to write letters to their people with the envoys whom he was sending into Macedonia, he arranged for the letters to be recalled from the journey and read them; and against those whom he found to have written anything against him he conducted himself as an enemy. It was an altogether dangerous business, and one which compelled the king to be cruel. Polyaenus, Book IV; Curtius and others.
§7
Ingeniously, Iphicrates equipped a fleet in hostile attire and, when he was received with unrestrained eagerness by those whom he suspected, plundered the city. By an alien dress Datanes deceived both his own men and his enemies; for, when he knew that plots were being laid against him, he fought in another’s dress in battle, and thus was able both to remain concealed and to mark the plotters.
§8
The things tyrants have done in this kind are abominable. Augustus was defiled by adulteries with matrons; yet his friends excused him more disgracefully by saying that, because he was assailed by many plots, he sought out the secrets of husbands by means of those shameful acts. Dionysius was more cruel in this kind. For he enlisted female musicians and prostitutes, and, after they had been tortured, inquired what their lovers had said concerning the tyranny; he afterwards killed those who had spoken dangerously.
§9
He also sometimes pretended that he was dead or ill, so that he might explore men’s inclinations. Dionysius certainly spread a report among the soldiers that he had been killed; he then slaughtered those who had shown joy at the event. He also did the same when he had published abroad that he was in extreme danger; for, when many men rejoiced, he came forth with his bodyguard and ordered them to be slaughtered. By a theatrical device as well, after hearing an itinerant performer, he avoided real dangers and terrified those who were contriving sedition. A certain man at Syracuse professed that he knew an art by which plotters could be recognized and guarded against. Having been admitted to Dionysius, he said, “If you say that you know plotters beforehand.” Dionysius, after giving great rewards to the teacher, boasted that he had learned a wonderful art of escaping plots, and was safer because of it. But this was the imposture of a madman; for that same man who taught Dionysius such a secret disclosed it to others also. Nor is it likely that it was betrayed by Dionysius, since by it he could be safer only so long as it was kept silent.
§10
To impede a sedition it has often been profitable to conceal it or to show oneself trustful toward the very men involved. Frederick, having understood that the men of San Miniato were looking toward rebellion, indicated that he wished to place treasures and captives among them. In place of treasure he sent concealed weapons, and for captives, brave soldiers in bonds, who occupied the town and brought it back under Frederick’s dominion. Thus Eumenes, when he was being neglected by Antigenes and Teutamus, commanders of the Argyraspids—for they did not come to his tent—lest this evil spread to others, said that he had been warned by a twofold dream to erect a tent for Alexander and to conduct all business in it. Thus he obtained the result that even his rivals were compelled to come. Polyaenus, Book IV.
Among men who have been stirred up and are powerful, too, it is advantageous to conceal what one knows. Antipater acted cautiously with the earlier army of the Naxians, who, when Alexander’s death was heard, had assembled to assail his dominion. Pretending that he did not know with what intention they had come, he thanked them because they had assembled to bring aid to Alexander against the Lacedaemonians, and added that he would write this to the king. But because their service was not necessary to him at present, he urged them to depart for their homes; and by this assertion he dispelled the danger that threatened from the revolution. Frontinus, Book II, chapter 11. This has place especially when others are in danger of rioting after the example of those who desert. Agesilaus arranged for the shields of fugitives to be removed by night, lest it become known to the soldiers that there was so much perfidy and so great a multitude of deserters.
§11
Although there is much importance in the discord of enemies, nevertheless they are not easily to be provoked, for they readily unite against a common danger. Therefore one must rather act so that they are separated, as Dionysius did when he wished to deprive the veterans of their pay. A sedition was stirred up, but he professed that he would employ the older men in guarding fortifications and composed the tumult for the present. Afterwards, when he had divided them among the garrisons, he took their pay away from them while they were separated.
§12
It is also a wicked method of preventing seditions to break peoples by luxury, something which many kings have done. When Xerxes ordered the Babylonians to devote themselves to pleasures and lay down their arms, Croesus the Lydians, and Phalaris the Leontines, thought that they should be restrained by the same bond of pleasures. But it is not safe; for when morals have been corrupted by that manner of life, many squander their own property and are therefore compelled to undertake revolutions. In addition, they become unwarlike and poor, so that they are able to assist the prince neither by labor nor money.
§13
A sedition has often been composed by the intervention of holy and religious men. When the inhabitants of Walcheren had obtained, with the aid of Saint Willibrord, a noble and miraculous victory against Robert the Younger, son of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and then afterwards, in a civil and intestine war—the cause is not stated—had been divided into the parties of factions, they raged mutually against one another, so that they killed the more noble chief men of the island. No one had free opportunity of entering or leaving; no one had the ability to approach sacred buildings or sacrifices, even on the very day of Parasceve, without an array of arms, an assembly of fellow tribesmen, and a band of attendants. Nor was there an end or measure to such fury and discord until, after many funerals of their own people, by common counsel and embassy, the abbot Thiofrid, the lover of Christ—these are Victor’s words—was summoned from Echternach and composed the minds of the citizens by miracles, prayers, and authority, and with great labor restored peace.
Thus writes the Reverend Lord Abbot of Echternach, whose Flowers of the Epitaph of the Saints our Father John Roberti, after almost 550 years, first published at Luxembourg in the year 1619 and illustrated with his most learned notes; and they append the aforesaid history, described most copiously, to the life of Thiofrid. It is worthy to be read by the heretical and Catholic inhabitants of Walcheren, for the confusion of perfidy or the confirmation of faith. What religion could do among Christians, superstition could sometimes do among the gentiles. When the Egyptians had revolted through hatred of Persian cruelty, Darius came at the time when they were mourning the dead Apis and proclaimed that he would give one hundred talents of gold to the man who found a new Apis. Marveling at the king’s piety, they returned to obedience. Polyaenus, Book VII.
§14
Betrayals must be met by enticing suspected men with a price and a greater hope. Thus Marcellus drew over to himself Bantius of Nola, who inclined toward the Carthaginians and was agitating the minds of his fellow citizens. It is a matter of the greatest skill to turn betrayal to one’s own advantage. Thus Arsames, himself a seditious man, met both betrayal and sedition. A prefect of cavalry had promised that in the engagement he would go over to the other side. Arsames, after holding an inquiry about him by night, discovered the crime; and so he clothed another man in the prefect’s garments and equipped his most faithful soldiers with cavalry arms. When the signal was given by the enemy, he ordered them to cross over and cut down their rear; by this stratagem he obtained a distinguished victory. Polyaenus, Book VII.
It is especially important to impress hatred of a betrayer upon men’s minds. Antigonus and Caesar loved betrayal but hated betrayers. Philip loved men who were going to betray, but when they had already betrayed, he hated them exceedingly. Indeed, he also hated those who were going to betray, but pretended to love them. Lysimachus rewarded Andragathus, the betrayer of Amphipolis, magnificently, but afterwards killed him by torture. For these words especially agree with such men:
May no land, no seas be able To receive them.
Men for whom there is nowhere a place among the Danaans, and the Dardanians themselves, moreover, are hostile and demand punishments with blood.