When to Trust Your Enemy — The Essays of Montaigne

Old Rome counted a victory by fraud as less glorious than a victory by force. Quintus Marcius feigns a parley, reinforces his army, and ruins King Perseus. The elder senators condemn the trick: the man who is overcome by policy, they say, has not truly confessed himself beaten. Montaigne lives in another age. He says we must eke out the lion's skin with a bit from the fox.

A governor under siege, he writes, ought never go out to parley. The talk is the hour of greatest danger, not the hour of rest. Eumenes will not meet without a hostage, because while he has his sword he will not think any man greater than himself. Henry de Vaux surrenders only when the mine is already set to bring the wall down, and the enemy's warning is a fact, not a courtesy meant to flatter his honour.

The request to talk as equals is often a request to leave the wall. Honour that walks out first can be the trap. Keep the sword, or the witness, until the other side has put something down as well. A fair-sounding meeting is still a meeting on their ground if you left yours to attend it.