CHA P. XI.

Of the Manners of a conquered People.

IT is not fufficient in thofe conquefts to let the conquered nation enjoy their own laws; it is perhaps more neceffary to leave them also their manners, because people generally know, love and defend their manners better than their laws.

The French have been driven nine times out of Italy, because, as hiftorians fay,* of their infolent familiarities with the fair fex. It is too much for a nation to be oblig ed to bear not only with the pride of conquerors, but with their incontinence and indifcretion; thefe are, without doubt, moft grievous and intolerable, as they are the fource of infinite outrages.

CHAP. XII.

Of a Law of Cyrus.

FAR am I from thinking that a good law which Cyrus made, to oblige the Lydians to practife none but mean or infamous profeffions. It is true, he directed his attention to what was of the greatest importance; he thought of revolts, and not of invafions: But invafions will foon come; for the Perfians and Lydians unite and corrupt each other. I would therefore much rather fupport by laws the fimplicity and rudeness of the conquering nation, than the effeminacy of the conquered.

Ariftodemus tyrant of Cumæt used all his endeavors to banish courage, and to enervate the minds of youth. He ordered that boys fhould let their hair grow in the fame manner as girls, that they fhould deck it with flowers,

L

* See Puffendorf's universal history. Dionyf, Halicar, 1. 7.

and

and wear long robes of different colors down to their heels; that when they went to their masters of music and dancing, they should have women with them to carry their umbrellas, perfumes and fans, and to prefent them with combs and lookingglaffes whenever they bathed. This education lafted till the age of twenty: An education that could be agreeable to none but to a petty tyrant, who exposes his fovereignty to defend his life.

CHA P. XIII.

Alexander.

ALEXANDER made a furprising conqueft. Let us fee how it was conducted; and fince enough has been faid by other writers of his valor, let us mention fomething concerning his prudence.

The measures he took were juft. He did not fet out till he had completed the reduction of Greece; he availed himfelf of this reduction, for no other end than for the execu tion of his enterprife; and he left nothing, by which he could be annoyed, behind him. He began his attack against the maritime provinces; he made his land forces fleep close to the fea coaft, that he might not be feparated from his fleet; he made an admirable use of difcipline against numbers; he never wanted provifions; and if it be true that victory gave him every thing, he, in his turn, did every thing to obtain it.

In this manner he carried on his conquefts; let us now fee how he preserved them.

He opposed those who would have had him treat the Greeks as masters, and Perfians as flaves. He thought only of uniting the two nations, and of abolishing the diftinctions of a conquering and a conquered people. After he had completed his victories, he relinquished all those prejudices that had helped him to obtain them. He affumed the manners of the Perfians, that he might not afflict them too much, by obliging them to conform to thofe of

the

This was Aristotle's advice, Plutarch's morals, of the fortune and viṛtus of Alexander,

the Greeks. It was this humanity which made him fhow fo great a respect for the wife and mother of Darius; this that made him fo continent; this that caused his death to be fo much lamented by the Perfians. What a conqueror ! He is lamented by all the nations he has fubdued ! What an ufurper! At his death the very family he has caft from the throne, is all in tears. These were the most glorious paffages in his life, and fuch as hiftory cannot produce an inftance of in any other conqueror.

Nothing confolidates more a conqueft than the union formed between two nations by marriages. Alexander chose his wives from the nation he had fubdued; he infifted on his courtiers doing the fame; and the rest of the Macedonians followed the example. The Franks and Burgundians permitted those marriages,* the Vifigoths forbade them in Spain, and afterwards allowed them.t By the Lombards, they were not only allowed, but encouraged. When the Romans wanted to weaken Macedonia, they ordained, that there should be no intermarriages between the people of different provinces.

Alexander, whofe aim was to unite the two nations, thought fit to establish in Perfia a great number of Greek colonies. He built therefore a vast multitude of towns; and fo ftrongly were all the parts of this new empire cemented, that after his decease, amidst the trouble and confufion of the moft frightful civil wars, when the Greeks had reduced themselves, as it were, to a state of annihila tion, not a single province of Perfia revolted.

To prevent Greece and Macedon from being too much. exhausted, he fent a colony of Jews to Alexandria; the manners of thofe people fignified nothing to him, provided he could be fure of their fidelity.

The kings of Syria, abandoning the plan laid down by the founder of the empire, refolved to oblige the Jews to conform to the manners of the Greeks; a refolution that gave the most terrible fhocks to their government.

CHAP.

* See the law of the Burgundians, tit. 12. art. 5. + See the law of the Vifigoths, book 2. tit. 1. §1. which abrogates the ancient law that had more regard, it fays, to the difference of nations, than to that of people's conditions.

See the law of the Lombards, book 2, tit. 7.

§ 1.

& 2.

CHA P. XIV.

Charles XII.

THIS prince, who depended entirely on his own

ftrength, haftened his ruin, by forming defigns that could never be executed but by a long war; a thing which his kingdom was unable to fupport.

It was not a declining ftate he undertook to fubvert, but a rifing empire. The Ruffians made ufe of the war he waged against them, as of a military school. Every defeat brought them nearer to victory; and lofing abroad, they learned to defend themselves at home.

Charles, in the deserts of Poland, imagined himself mafter of the universe; here he wandered, and with him in some measure wandered Sweden; while his capital enemy acquired new ftrength against him, locked him up, made fettlements along the Baltic, destroyed, or subdued Livonia.

Sweden was like a river, whose waters are cut off at the fountain head, in order to change its courfe.

It was not the affair of Pultowa that ruined Charles. Had he not been deftroyed at that place, he would in another. The cafualties of fortune are easily repaired; but who can be guarded against events that inceffantly arife from the nature of things.

But neither nature nor fortune were ever so much against him as he himself.

He was not directed by the actual fituation of things, but by a kind of model he had formed to himfelf; an even this he followed very ill. He was not an Alexander; but he would have been Alexander's best foldier.

Alexander's project fucceeded, because it was prudently concerted. The bad fuccefs of the Perfians, in their feveral invafions of Greece, the conquefts of Agefilaus, and the retreat of the ten thousand, had fhown to demonftration the fuperiority of the Greeks in their manner of fighting, and in the arms they made ufe of; and it was well known that the Perfians were too proud to be corrected.

It

:

It was no longer poffible for them to weaken Greece by divifions Greece was then united under one head, who could not pitch upon a better method of rendering her infenfible of her fervitude, than by flattering her vanity with the deftruction of her hereditary enemy, and with the hopes of the conquest of Afia.

An empire cultivated by the most industrious nation in the world, that tilled the lands through a principle of religion; an empire, abounding with every conveniency of life, furnished the enemy with all neceffary means of fubfifting.

It was eafy to judge by the pride of those kings, who in vain were mortified by their numerous defeats, that they would precipitate their ruin by being fo forward to venture battles; and that flattery would never permit them to doubt of their grandeur.

The project was not only wife, but wifely executed. Alexander, in the rapidity of his conquefts, even in the fire of his paffions, had, if I may prefume to use the expreffion, a flash of reafon by which he was directed, and which those who wanted to make a romance of his history, and whofe minds were more debauched than his, could not conceal from pofterity.

CHAP. XV.

New Methods of preferving a Conqueft.

WHEN a monarch has conquered a large country, he may make use of an admirable method, equally proper for moderating defpotic power, and for preferving the conqueft; it is a method practifed by the conquerors of China,

In order to prevent the conquered nation from falling into despair, the conquerors from growing infolent and proud, the government from becoming military, and to contain the two nations within duty; the Tartar family now on the throne of China, has ordained, that every military corps in the provinces fhould be compofed half of Chinese and half of Tartars, to the end that the jealousy

between