17

17. The doings of certain ambassadors

[War and diplomacy, both noble subjects, dominate this chapter; topics are introduced, such as how to read history, which are later developed in ‘On books’ (II, 10) where the Du Bellays are further criticized. The folly of detailed laws and instructions is treated in ‘On experience’ (III, 13).]

[A] On my travels, in order to be ever learning something from my meetings with other people (which is one of the best of all schools), I observe the following practice: always to bring those with whom I am talking back to the subjects they know best.

[A1] Basti al nocchiero ragionar de’ venti, Al bifolco dei tori, e le sue piaghe Conti’l guerrier, conti’l pastor gli armenti.

[Let the sailor talk but of the winds, the farmer of oxen, the soldier of his own wounds and the herdsman of his cattle.]1

[A] For the reverse usually happens, everyone choosing to orate about another’s job rather than his own, reckoning to increase his reputation by so doing; witness the reproof Archidamus gave to Periander: that he was abandoning an excellent reputation as a good doctor to acquire the reputation of a bad poet.2 [C] Just observe how Caesar spreads himself when he tells us about his ingenuity in building bridges and siege-machines: in comparison he is quite cramped when he talks of his professional soldiering, his valour or the way he conducts his wars. His exploits are sufficient proof that he was an outstanding general: he wants to be known as something rather different: a good engineer.

The other day a professional jurist was taken to see a library furnished with every sort of book including many kinds of legal ones. He had nothing to say about them. Yet he stopped to make blunt comments, like an expert, on a defence-work fixed to the head of a spiral staircase in that library; yet hundreds of officers and soldiers came across it every day without comment or displeasure.

The elder Dionysius, as befitted his fortune, was a great leader in battle, but he strove to become mainly famed for his poetry – about which he knew nothing.

[A] Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus. [The lumbering ox yearns for the saddle: the nag yearns for the plough.]3

[C] Follow that way and nobody achieves anything worthwhile. [A] So we should always lead4 architects, painters, cobblers and so on to talk of their own business.

While on this subject, when reading history (which is anybody’s business) I habitually turn my attention to the authors: if they are persons whose only profession is writing I chiefly learn points of style and language from them; if they are doctors I most readily believe them when they tell us about the climate, the health and humours of princes, of wounds and illnesses; when they are jurisconsults you should concentrate on legal controversies, laws, the bases of systems of government and the like; when Theologians, on Church affairs, ecclesiastical censures, dispensations and marriages; when courtiers, on manners and ceremonial; if warriors, on whatever concerns war and chiefly on detailed accounts of the exploits at which they were actually present; when ambassadors, on intrigues, understandings or negotiations, and how they were conducted – matters with which the Seigneur de Langey was fully conversant: that is why I noted and weighed in his Mémoires something I would have skipped over in another’s:5 he first gave an account of the remarkable formal statement made by the Emperor Charles V before the Roman Consistory Court in the presence of our ambassadors the Bishop of Mâcon and the Seigneur Du Velly; included in it were several outrageous remarks addressed to us French: among other things he declared that, if his own officers and soldiers had been no more loyal or skilled in warfare than our King’s were, then he would have put a halter round his own neck and gone and begged our King for mercy. (It seems he may have to some extent really meant this, for he uttered the same words two or three times in the course of his life.) He then challenged the King to single combat, with sword or poniard, in a boat, wearing only a doublet. Continuing his account the Seigneur de Langey added that when the two ambassadors sent their dispatch to the King, they reported the greater part of all this inaccurately and even hid the first two articles from him.

Now I found it very odd that an ambassador should have the power to choose what he should tell his sovereign, especially in a matter of such moment, coming from such a person and spoken before so large an assembly. It would seem to me that the duty of a servant is fully and faithfully to report events just as they occurred, so that his master can be free to arrange, judge and select for himself. To alter the truth and hide it from someone out of fear that he might take it otherwise than he should and be driven to make an unwise decision (meanwhile leaving him ignorant of his own affairs) would seem to belong to the monarch not the subject, to a responsible schoolmaster not to him who should consider himself not merely subordinate in authority but also in wisdom and counsel. Anyway, even in petty affairs such as mine I would not care to be served that way.

[C] Under some pretext or other we are always ready to withdraw our obedience and to usurp the mastery. Everyone so naturally aspires to freedom and authority that, to a superior, no quality should be dearer in those who serve him than simple, straightforward obedience.

The right to command is corrupted when we obey at our discretion not from subordination. Publius Crassus (the one the Romans considered to be ‘five-times blessed’) was Consul in Asia when he wrote to a Greek engineer ordering him to bring him the larger of two ship’s masts which he had seen in Athens in order to use it in a siege-engine he wanted to make. The engineer, on the strength of his scientific knowledge, permitted himself to decide to bring the smaller one which, by the rules of his art, was the more suitable. Crassus listened to his arguments patiently, then had him soundly flogged, judging that the interests of discipline outweighed those of his machine.6

Nevertheless we should consider on the other hand that so strict an obedience is appropriate only to precise orders previously given. The charge of ambassadors leaves them with a freer hand, much depending directly on their own judgement; they do not merely carry out their Master’s will, they form that will and dress it by their counsel. In my time I have seen persons in authority criticized for having obeyed the King’s dispatches to the letter rather than adapting them to changing local circumstances. Men of judgement still condemn the practice of the kings of Persia who used to break down their orders into such detail that their agents and representatives had to refer back for rulings on the most trivial matters; such delays, over so wide an empire, often proved strikingly prejudicial to their affairs.

As for Crassus, when he wrote to a specialist and actually told him what the mast was to be used for, did he not seem to be entering into a discussion about his intentions, inviting him to use his own discretion?