I therefore acknowledge the complete truth of Cicero’s words: All our civil affairs, all our studies, all our pleading, industry, and distinction lie under the protection of military courage; whenever there is any fear of unrest, all our arts fall silent. Wars are most useful, and “soldiers are more useful to the state than farmers,” as Maximus of Tyre argues. Courage in a wise man deserves great praise. But people usually get this wrong: “Stealing, slaughtering, plundering—they give these the false name of virtue,” and so on. This was Calgacus’s observation in Tacitus. They wrongly call theft, murder, and plunder virtue; rapes, slaughters, massacres, and so on become “fun and games,” pleasant pastimes, as Juan Luis Vives observes.

As Pontus Heuterus complains in his history of Burgundy, they commonly call the most reckless bloodsuckers, the strongest thieves, the most desperate villains, treacherous rogues, inhuman murderers, rash, cruel, and dissolute scoundrels “courageous and noble spirits,” “heroic and worthy commanders”—brave men-at-arms, valiant and renowned soldiers, possessed by a brutish belief in false honour.

That is why so many volunteers offer themselves every day, leaving their dear wives, children, and friends to sell their lives and limbs for sixpence a day, if they can get it. They long to storm breaches, stand sentry, lie at an exposed outpost, make the first assault, stand in the very front of battle. They march splendidly onward to the cheerful sound of drums and trumpets, with such vigour and eagerness, so many banners streaming in the air, glittering armour, waving plumes, forests of pikes and swords, such varied colours, expense, and magnificence, as though already victorious and marching in triumph to the Capitol, with all the pomp of Darius’s army marching to meet Alexander at Issus.

Without a trace of fear they rush into immediate dangers, into the cannon’s mouth, and so on, “to blunt the enemy’s swords with their wounds,” as Barleti says, seeking a reputation for courage, honour, and applause. That does not last either: this fame is only a flash, and, like a rose, “dies within a single day”; it is gone in an instant. Of fifteen thousand common soldiers killed in a battle, scarcely fifteen are recorded in history, or perhaps just one, the general. After a while his name and theirs are erased as well, and the whole battle itself is forgotten.

Those Greek orators, “with all the power of their genius and eloquence,” describe the famous defeats at Thermopylae, Salamis, Marathon, Mycale, Mantinea, Chaeronea, and Plataea. The Romans record their battles at Cannae and on the fields of Pharsalus. But they merely record them, and we scarcely hear of them. Yet this supposed honour, popular applause, hope of immortality through war, pride, and vainglory often spur men rashly and thoughtlessly to destroy themselves and multitudes of others.

Alexander grieved because there were no more worlds for him to conquer, and some admire him for it: “It seems a spirited and kingly utterance”; he spoke like a prince. But, as wise Seneca rebukes him, it was “a most unjust and foolish utterance”; he spoke like a mad fool. And I apply to them all the judgement that Seneca passes on Alexander and his father Philip: “They were no less a plague to humanity than a flood or a conflagration, by which,” and so on. They did as much harm to human beings as fire and water, those merciless elements when they rage.

More lamentable still, they persuade men that this hellish way of life is holy. They promise heaven to those who risk their lives “in a holy war”, and say that through these bloody wars—as the Persians, Greeks, and Romans told their people long ago, and the Turks tell theirs now, to encourage them to fight, “so that they may fall miserably”—if they die on the battlefield, they go straight to heaven and will be canonized as saints. What a diabolical invention! They will be entered in the chronicles “as a perpetual memorial of the event,” so that they are remembered for ever.

Yet in truth, as some hold, it would be much better to suppress such brutal histories, since wars are God’s scourge for sin, with which he punishes human perversity and folly. For “they contribute nothing to moral education”; they do nothing to improve conduct or teach a good life. Nevertheless, people insist on it, and so they place the mark of divinity on the cruellest and most destructive plague of humanity. They worship such men with grand titles, ranks, statues, and portraits; honour, applaud, and richly reward them for their good service. There is no greater glory, they say, than to die in battle.

Thus Ennius praises Scipio Africanus. Mars, Hercules, and I do not know how many others in ancient times were made gods and reached heaven by this route, though they were really bloody butchers, wicked destroyers and disturbers of the world, monstrous prodigies, hellhounds, deadly plagues, devourers, public executioners of humankind, as Lactantius truly demonstrates, and Cyprian in his address to Donatus. Such men were reckless in war and rushed headlong to their deaths, like the Celts described by Nicolaus of Damascus, whose courage was so absurd “that they thought it disgraceful to get out of the way of a falling wall”—a disgrace to run from a rotten wall about to fall on their heads. Anyone who will not rush onto a sword’s point, or who tries to avoid a cannon shot, is a base coward, they say, and no brave man.