§ 20. Prisoners of War. This example has been followed by many other maritime states in more recent times.r We have already seen how the practice of maritime warfare was regulated during the period now in question. It was carried on both by public ships of war, and by privateers authorized by the commission of the belligerent sovereign, which they too often abused to plunder both friend and foe. In the mean time the establishment of permanent standing armies had contributed to systematise the operations of war by land, and in some degree to soften its horrors. With some exceptions, such as the excesses committed by the troops of Louis XIV on the invasion of Holland in 1672, the ravaging of the Palatinate by order of Louvois in 1673, and of Provence by Prince Eugene in 1707, the practices of war by land continued to improve in mildness from the age of Grotius by whom sentiments more worthy of civilized and christian nations had been carnestly inculcated. This improvement may be most distinctly and visibly traced in the treatment of prisoners of war. The custom of ransoming prisoners had succeeded. during the middle age to the older practice of killing, or carrying them into captivity. The practice of enslaving prisoners of war does not appear to have been entirely abolished in the time of Grotius, whilst that of ransoming still continued, and no regular system of a general exchange. during the war had yet been established. On looking into his work we find no mention of the term cartel, or any equivalent expression; although his translator Barbeyrac, speaking the language of the eighteenth century, introduces this term. The words of Grotius in the original text appear to be limited to the consideration of the prisoner's personal means of liberating himself so as to exclude the idea of an exchange at the public expense.s The firm esta Schlegel, Staats-Recht des Königsreichs Dänemark, p. 356–405. At quas apud gentes jus illud servitutis ex bello in usu non est, optimum blishment of a systematic and public exchange was long retarded by the pecuniary interest which the private captor had acquired in his prisoners, the profits of ransom constituting the most valuable booty of war. The exact time at which the practice of exchanging was substituted for that of ransoming is not easily ascertained. It appears from a proclamation of Charles I of England issued in 1628 that it had not then completely taken place, as the individual captors are enjoined to keep the prisoners taken by privateers at sea, "at the charge of those who should bring them. in, until they shall hence be delivered and sent back into their several countries, either by way of exchange for our subjects which shall happen to be prisoners there, or otherwise." It appears not improbable that this was a period of transition from the one system to the other. The expense of the captor continued, and we may infer from that his emolument also. It does not appear whether in the ambiguous practice of those times, the exchange, which sometimes took place, was effected by a regular cartel during the war, or only on the restoration of peace. In the year 1665 there is mention of a person coming to England, in a public capacity to negotiate an exchange of prisoner's flagrante bello between that country and Holland. It appears to have been practiced between the French and Imperial armies in Italy during the war of the Spanish succession." The old practice of ransoming is still referred to in a convention of cartel between France and Great Britain concluded so recently as the year 1780, in which as a sequel to an exchange of rank for rank, a money-price is establish erit permutari captivos,—proximum dimitti pretio non iniquo; hoc quale sit, præcise definiri non potest; sed humanitas docet non ultra intendi debere, quam deducto ne egeat captus rebus necessariis. From which it may be inferred, that the prisoner paid his own ransom. (Grotius, de J. B. ac. P. lib. iii. cap XIV. § ix. no. 1.) Lettres d'Estrades, tom. iii. p. 475. " Memoires de Lamberty, tom. i. p. 694. ed; as sixty pounds sterling for an admiral, commander in chief, and one pound for a common mariner, etc. with other intermediate prices: by which on a default of corresponding ranks, the compensation was made up by numbers of an inferior degree, or when these were all expended by a money-price. Such are the principal questions of international law occurring during the period we have just passed in review, and such was the progress made by that law in its practical application during the same period. We have reserved for the second part of our work the consideration of the topics relating to the rights of legation and the privileges of ambassadors, which could not well be considered in chronological order without breaking the continuity of the subject. If we appear to have bestowed an undue portion of attention upon those points which regard the law of nations in time of war, and especially those relating to maritime war, this circumstance is explained by the fact that the application of the law of nations to a state of peace furnishes fewer examples of the rules which have been generally approved in the variable practice of nations. International relations are more simple in time of peace, and naturally give rise to fewer controversies than those which concern the respective rights of belligerents and neutrals, questions respecting which have divided the opinions of public jurists during the two last centuries. These questions are of the greatest importance in a practical point of view, and many of them have not yet been resolved in a satisfactory manner so as to furnish an invariable rule to guide the conduct of all nations. ▾ Robinson's Admiralty Reports, Vol. iii. App, A. HISTORY OF THE MODERN LAW OF NATIONS. PART SECOND. HISTORY OF § 1. Question of the Austrian suc THE authors of the peace of Utrecht on the part of England were driven into exile, and would have been brought to the scaffold if the malice of their enemies could have cession, 1740. been fully gratified; but if the blessings of peace enjoyed, with little interruption, for nearly thirty years by the most civilized portion of Europe, may justly claim the gratitude of mankind, these statesmen must be considered as meriting, in the judgment of an impartial posterity, the meed of fame as the benefactors of their species. During this period the deadly feud which had so long prevailed between France and England was suspended. These two powers, from being "natural enemies," became intimate allies, and guarantees of the general tranquility of Europe, under the pacific councils of the regent Duke of Orleans and Cardinal Fleury in the one country, and of Sir Robert Walpole in the other. The last mentioned truly wise and patriotic. minister long resisted the senseless clamour, by which the English nation was at last plunged into a maritime war with Spain in 1739, which extended to France in 1744. In the interval the powers of central Europe became involved in a continental war growing out of the disputed question of the Austrian succession. The Emperor Charles VI, the last male descendant of the house of Hapsburg, died in 1740, after having, as he fondly believed, secured the undivided inheritance of the Austrian monarchy to his daughter Maria Theresa, by the famous pragmatic sanction, accepted by the provincial states, sanctioned by the diet of the Empire, and guarantied by nearly all the powers of Europe. The reigning houses of Bavaria, Saxony, Spain, Sardinia, and Prussia, all claimed, under various pretexts, the entire or considerable portions of the dominions which had so long been united under the Austrian sceptre. France had applied in the preceding century the balancing principle to check the undue aggrandizement of the House of Austria. The same principle was turned by Europe against France to resist the aggressions of Louis XIV. The peace of Utrecht had definitively settled the existing state of possession with a view to the balancing system, and one of the essential elements of that settlement was the integrity of the dominions of the house of Austria, to whom the possession of Belgium was guarantied as a perpetual barrier for the United Provinces against France. France had guarantied the pragmatic sanction of Charles VI, but the fulfilment of this guarantie was evaded upon the frivolous pretext that it reserved the rights of third parties. She a Cardinal Fleury at first hesitated and temporized, but at last was borne along by the court faction which clamoured for war with Austria. He even condescended to become the interpreter of their sentiments in a letter to Frederic II of Prussia. "Le cardinal s'ouvrit davantage dans sa réponse; il y dit sans détour: 'Que la garantie de la pragmatique sanction que Louis XV avoit donnée à feu l'Empereur ne l'engageoit à rien, par ce correctif sauf les droits d'un tiers: de plus que feu l'Empereur n'avoit pas accompli l'article principal de ce traité, par lequel il s'étoit chargé de pro |