When Mercy Meets Politics — The Essays of Montaigne

Jacques Amiot, grand almoner of France, tells Montaigne how the Duke of Guise, warned by the queen-mother at the siege of Rouen, kept the letter to himself. The next day on Saint Catherine's Mount he sent for the gentleman named in it. The man came already pale and trembling. Guise named the most secret passages of the plot, asked what offence he had given in three weeks of acquaintance, and heard that it was no private grudge: men of his party had called it meritorious to kill so powerful an enemy of their religion. Guise answered that his own religion commanded him to forgive a man convict by his own confession, and sent him away to choose honester counsellors.

The Emperor Augustus, in Gaul, spent a night of unquietness over Cinna and meant to make an example. Livia told him to do as physicians do when ordinary recipes fail, and try the contrary. In the morning he countermanded his friends, sat Cinna down alone, and for two hours listed the life, goods, and priesthood he had already given. Then he gave the life again, this time as to a traitor, later made him consul, and was named sole heir. From his fortieth year Augustus met no more such plots. Guise's mercy did not so secure him. He afterwards fell into the like treason. Fortune, Montaigne says, will still be mistress of events, and not in physic only. Poets confess their raptures exceed their force, and captains invent a sign to justify a rash counsel they have already chosen.

When human wisdom cannot see the shortest path, Montaigne would pitch upon the greatest appearance of honesty and justice, and keep the straightest way. Guise is not to be blamed for the good intention, and no one knows whether another course would have avoided the end destiny appointed. A man who despises his own life is always master of another man's. Dion would rather die than live on guard against friends. Alexander, handed Parmenio's letter that Philip the physician was bought by Darius, gave Philip the letter and drank the potion. Those who preach to princes a vigilant jealousy, under colour of security, preach ruin and dishonour. Scipio crossed to Africa in two small ships on the grandeur of his own courage. Louis XI, the most mistrustful of kings, advanced his affairs by committing his life and liberty into his enemies' hands.

Montaigne, as a boy, saw a city governor leave a strong place and commit himself to a seditious rabble. The man was slain. The error, Montaigne thinks, was not going out but choosing a fawning, entreating face, then changing it to tears when his nose bled. The many-headed monster answers to reverence and fear, not to humanity. At a later muster Montaigne counselled the officers most in danger to ride through the ranks with cheerful countenances and ask for full volleys, and a mutual confidence followed. Caesar declared he already knew the detected plots, then waited without solicitude, and was killed in that state. A Roman fugitive, tired of squatting in a brake while horse passed by, stood up, called them back, and delivered himself, preferring one death to a continual feverish fear of an accident for which there was no cure. Whether the thing we fear will ever come to pass is still not certain.