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Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty 1st Edition
Gerard Wegemer Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Gerard Wegemer
ISBN(s): 9780521196536, 0521196531
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.57 MB
Year: 2011
Language: english
Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

What does it mean to be a free citizen in times of war and tyranny?

What kind of education is needed to be a “first” or leading citizen in a
strife-filled country? And what does it mean to be free when freedom
is forcibly opposed? These concerns pervade Thomas More’s earliest
writings, writings mostly unknown, including his 280 poems, declama-
tion on tyrannicide, coronation ode for Henry VIII, and life of Pico
della Mirandola, all written before Richard III and Utopia. This book
analyzes these writings, guided especially by the following questions:
Faced with generations of civil war, what did young More see as the
causes of that strife? What did he see as possible solutions? Why did
More spend fourteen years after law school learning Greek and immers-
ing himself in classical studies? Why do his early works use vocabulary
devised by Cicero at the end of the Roman Republic?

Gerard B. Wegemer is professor of literature at the University of Dallas,

and since 2000 he has been the founding director of the Center for
Thomas More Studies. Among his publications are A Thomas More
Source Book, Thomas More on Statesmanship, and Thomas More: A
Portrait of Courage. He has served as an editor for Moreana, the inter-
national journal on Thomas More and his times. He is editing a paper-
back series of Thomas More’s major works and has written articles
and reviews on Thomas More, Shakespeare, and Renaissance human-
ism in such journals as Renascence, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Review
of Politics, Ben Jonson Journal, and Moreana. Wegemer has master’s
degrees in political philosophy and in literature from Boston College
and Georgetown University, respectively, and earned his doctorate in
English literature from the University of Notre Dame.
Young Thomas More and the
Arts of Liberty

GERARD B. WEGEMER
University of Dallas
cambridge university press
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town,
Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Tokyo, Mexico City
Cambridge University Press
32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, ny 10013-2473, usa
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521196536


C Gerard B. Wegemer 2011

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2011

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data

Wegemer, Gerard, 1950–
Young Thomas More and the arts of liberty / Gerard B. Wegemer.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-19653-6 (hardback)
1. More, Thomas, Sir, Saint, 1478–1535 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. More,
Thomas, Sir, Saint, 1478–1535 – Political and social views. 3. Liberty in literature.
4. Great Britain – Politics and government – 1485–1509. 5. Great Britain – Politics and
government – 1509–1547. I. Title.
pr2322.w44 2011
828 .209 – dc22 2010039390

isbn 978-0-521-19653-6 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls
for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents

List of Illustrations page vii

Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi

1 Young Thomas More: Why Do Peace and Prosperity

Require Arts of Humanitas? 1
2 Fashioning Peace and Prosperity: What Are the Necessary
Arts? 23
3 Cicero’s and More’s First Citizens: How Do They Avoid
Faction and Civil War? 35
4 More’s Earliest Views of Humanitas, Libertas, and
Respublica, 1500–1506 53
5 More’s Life of Pico della Mirandola (c. 1504–1507): A
Model of Libertas and Humanitas? 70
6 More’s 1509 Coronation Ode: Artful Education of
Eighteen-Year-Old Henry VIII? 88
7 Political Poems of 1509–1516: Proposing Self-Government
by “Sound Deliberation” 104
8 Richard III: Diagnosing the Causes of England’s Plague of
Civil War 119
9 Utopia: A Model Respublica of Peace, Liberty, and
Self-Government? 139
10 The Un-Utopian Thomas More Family Portrait: An Icon of
Morean Humanitas? 160

v
vi Contents

11 The Arts of Liberty: Can Peace and Prosperity Be Fashioned

by “Sound Deliberation”? 176

Works Cited 191

Index 201
Illustrations

1 “Triumph of Humanitas,” frontispiece, Seneca,

Lucubrationes.  C The British Library Board. Shelfmark
524.i.7 page 4
2 Tomb of Thomas More, Chelsea Old Church, Chelsea,
London. Scala/Art Resource, NY 11
3 Serpent-and-dove book device of Froben from 1518 Utopia.
Bibliothèque du Patrimoine, Université Catholique de Lille
(http://bp.icl-lille.fr), photograph by Marie-Aurore Haingue 16
4 Study for the Thomas More Family Portrait, sketch by Hans
Holbein the Younger, 1526–27. Kunstmuseum, Basel 162
5 Sir Thomas More and His Family, attributed to Hans
Holbein and to Rowland Lockey, circa 1530 and 1593.
National Trust, at Nostell Priory Wakefield (The National
Trust Photographic Library) 163
6 Detail of Margaret and text of her book from Sir Thomas
More and His Family 169
7 Detail of Elizabeth and titles of her books from Sir Thomas
More and His Family 170

vii
Acknowledgments

Gratitude for assistance from numerous friends over the past decade is
a joy to express. Without the vision and support of Steven A. Bennett,
Joseph Coleman, Myles Harrington, Charles LiMandri, Thomas Spence,
Glen Thurow, and codirector Stephen W. Smith, the Center for Thomas
More Studies would never have been founded, and therefore the many
fruitful conferences and research projects that made this book possi-
ble would not have occurred. No scholar could have asked for better
conversationalists than these colleagues, as well as Clarence H. Miller,
Elizabeth McCutcheon, Seymour House, John Boyle, Travis Curtright,
Michael Foley, Louis Karlin, Joseph Koterski, Jeff Lehman, Tamara
Kuykendall, David Oakley, and the faculty and students at the Univer-
sity of Dallas, especially John Alvis and Scott Crider, and Josh Avery
and Matthew Mehan. Special thanks go to Mary Pawlowski for her
help with Greek texts and with compiling the indices of terms at
www.thomasmorestudies.org/IndicesofLatinTerms; to Paul Weinhold for
the index; to Lewis Bateman, senior editor of Cambridge University Press;
and to Brian MacDonald, production editor, for their patience and good
advice through the long process of this book.
Thanks to the following institutions for permission to use their materi-
als: the President and Fellows of Harvard College for permission to quote
from the Loeb Classical Library, Yale University Press for permission to
quote from The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, HarperCollins
Publishers for permission to quote from  C 2008 David Starkey’s Henry,

Virtuous Prince, the journal Moreana for an earlier version of Chapter 10

that appeared in volume 173 (June 2008), and those institutions identified
in the List of Illustrations.
ix
Abbreviations

Corr. Correspondence of Sir Thomas More

CSPS Calendar of State Papers, Spanish
CUP Utopia Cambridge University Press edition of Utopia
CW The Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St.
Thomas More
CWE The Collected Works of Erasmus
EE Erasmi Epistolae
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary
SL St. Thomas More: Selected Letters
TMSB A Thomas More Source Book

xi
1

Young Thomas More

Why Do Peace and Prosperity Require
Arts of Humanitas?

[Wisdom is] the skilled artisan of life . . . , her voice is for peace, and she
summons all mankind to concord.
Seneca, Epistulae 90.26–27
[Liberal] arts were devised for the purpose of fashioning [fingerentur]1 the
minds of the young according to humanitas and virtue.2
Cicero, De Oratore 3.58
Humanitas, or the idea of man, [is that] according to which man is fashioned
[effingitur] . . . as Plato says.3
Seneca, Epistulae 65.7
“Work out your own ideas and sift your thoughts so as to see what concep-
tion and idea of a good person they contain”; otherwise you can end up as
a “Caesar [who] overturned all the laws, human and divine, to achieve for
himself a principate fashioned [finxerat] according to his own erroneous
opinion.”4
Cicero, De Officiis 3.81, 1.26

1 See www.thomasmorestudies.org/IndicesofLatinTerms for the uses of this verb in More’s

Epigrams, Richard III, and Utopia. This verb also appears in the one passage that can be
read in the near life-size Sir Thomas More and His Family (see Illustration 7 in Chapter
10). Fingere is a term commonly used in sculpture, meaning “to make a likeness of or
to represent (from clay, wax, molten metal, etc.)” (OLD). For examples where Cicero
associates this term with Plato or Socrates or in the senses of Platonic representation,
see Tusculanae Disputationes 2.27, 3.31; De Oratore 1.224; De Officiis 3.69, 1.26; Pro
Sexto Roscio Amerino 47.
2 “Artibus quae repertae sunt ut puerorum mentes ad humanitatem fingerentur atque vir-
tutem. . . .”
3 “Ipsa autem humanitas, ad quam homo effingitur, permanet, et hominibus laborantibus
illa nihil patitur . . . ut Plato dicit. . . .”
4 Cicero, De Officiis 3.81: “Explica atque excute intellegentiam tuam, ut videas, quae sit
in ea [species] forma et notio viri boni”; 1.26: “Caesaris . . . omnia iura divina et humana
pervertit propter eum, quem sibi ipse opinionis errore finxerat, principatum.”

1
2 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

In 1515, as part of their plan for international peace, Thomas More and
Erasmus both called for a renaissance – a “rebirth” – of the “so-called
liberal studies.”5 That “so-called” referred to Seneca’s famous state-
ment: “Hence you see why ‘liberal studies’ are so called: because they are
studies worthy of the free. But there is only one really liberal study, that
which gives a person his liberty. It is the study of wisdom, and that is
lofty, brave, and great-souled.”6 In calling for this renaissance, they were
agreeing with their classical predecessors that education in the “liberal
arts,”7 or what Cicero often called the studia humanitatis, is the best
path “to lead the state in peace,”8 because “the fostering of a virtuous
and educated citizenry provides the key” to peace and liberty.9 But what
did they mean, and were they and their fellow humanists not woefully
misguided as critics such as Machiavelli would later claim?10
In 1515 More wrote book 2 of Utopia with its provocative promises
of liberty, peace, and humanitas;11 in the same year, Erasmus “dreamt
of an age truly golden,” only to discover “the severity of that worse than
iron age we live in.”12 The iron age of war rather than the golden age
of peace was also portrayed in The History of King Richard III, which
More had been writing since 1513 but never published in his lifetime.

5 CW 15, 18/13 (volume, page/line): “bonas renasci litteras”; EE 337/328: “renascantur

bonae litterae.” References are regularly to the Latin text because translations are often
adjusted. When quoting sixteenth-century English, spelling and punctuation are mod-
ernized.
6 Epistulae 88.1–2 (emphasis added). This collection of Seneca’s letters was of such impor-
tance to More that it is one of only three books definitely identified in the portrait Sir
Thomas More and His Family.
7 Like Cicero, More uses several expressions for liberal education. See Cicero’s De
Inventione 1.35 (“artium liberalium”), De Oratore 3.127 (“has artes quibus liberales
doctrinae atque ingenuae continerentur”), Tusculanae Disputationes 2.27 (“a Grae-
cia . . . eruditionem liberalem et doctrinam putamus”), and Pro Archia 3 (“studia human-
itatis”). See More’s uses of “humanis literis” (Corr. 255/37, 42–43; 121/14ff.; CW 3.2,
Epigram 143/103, 107–8; CW 15, 138/7, 11), “lyberall artes” (CW 6, 132/8), “liberales
artes” (CW 15, 134/12, 138/24, 220/13), “liberalibus disciplinis” (Corr. 255/37–38),
“ingenuis artibus” (CW 3.2, Epigram 19/117), and “bonis artibus” (CW 3.2, Epi-
grams 143/176–77, 264/43; CW 4, 158/8; CW 15, 26/10; Corr. 122/74). For Eras-
mus’s summary of More’s views on the value of liberal studies, see EE 1233 or TMSB
221–26.
8 Mitchell 1984 38, but see his fuller argument with references beginning on p. 35.
9 Skinner x.
10 In their introduction to The Prince, Quentin Skinner and Russell Price point out striking
instances in which Machiavelli directly counters Cicero’s and Seneca’s views on effective
rule and good government (xvi–xxii esp.).
11 See Chapter 9 for an assessment of the provocative uses of these terms.
12 CWE 3, Letter 333 (15 May 1515), lines 9, 51.
Young Thomas More 3

Did the shattering of this golden dream prove to More and Erasmus that
the fashionings of humanitas lacked the power they hoped?
In 1515 the playful “Triumph of Humanitas” (Illustration 1) deco-
rated Erasmus’s newly published edition of Seneca’s collected works, the
edition that Erasmus had worked on during his stay in England from
1509 through 1514, using manuscripts from English libraries. The figure
Humanitas in the top of the frame is pushed by the Latin authors Cicero
(Tully) and Virgil and pulled by the Greek authors Demosthenes and
Homer – all four of whom wrote on war in ways that deeply affected
their cultures. Lady Humanitas is peacefully reading, even while riding in
her triumphal chariot pushed and pulled by these laurel-crowned poets
and bareheaded statesmen, all under a triumphal canopy held by plump,
happy cherubs. On the left side of the engraving is the figure of a child,
and lest there be any doubt after one sees the sickle in his hand or the
wings at his feet, a sign in Greek identifies this figure as “Time.” On the
right, another label in Greek identifies “Nemesis,” who is holding her
traditional measure and spool of fate. Erasmus, in his Adages (II.vi.38),
describes Nemesis as “a goddess, the scourge of insolence and arrogance,
whose province is to forbid excessive hopes and punish them,” possessing
“a general power of supervising the fates, surveying above all human
affairs as queen and arbiter of all things.”13 In this frontispiece, however,
the triumphal march that takes place above Time and Nemesis seems
to present Humanitas as the greater queen and arbiter. This reading is
confirmed by the comparative-genitive constructions, which lead us to
read the text in this frame as “Humanitas greater than Time, greater
than Nemesis.”14
But how could humanitas ever have such power? Cicero was mur-
dered, and Seneca’s death was ordered by the Roman princeps he loyally
served.15 Cicero’s head and hands were nailed to the rostra in the Roman
forum where he had served as lawyer, senator, and consul of the Roman
Republic.16 He lived to see the Roman Republic become an empire,
ruled by one despotically powerful princeps instead of many principes

13 CWE 33, 310–11.

14 My gratitude goes to Joseph Koterski and Jeffrey Lehman for this revealing grammatical
point.
15 In the portrait Sir Thomas More and His Family, one of the three books identified is
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, another philosopher-statesman unjustly
imprisoned and executed by his prince. See Illustration 7.
16 Rawson 296; Plutarch 2.441.
4 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

illustration 1. “Triumph of Humanitas.” Title page of Seneca’s collected

works of 1515, the collection Erasmus edited from English manuscripts while
staying with Thomas More in London.
Young Thomas More 5

civitatis.17 As we will see in the following chapters, these principes – that

is, these leading or “first” citizens – were an integral part of the humanitas
Cicero sought to advance, exemplified by Cicero’s rendition of Rome’s
greatest principes as educated in studia humanitatis and trained in the
arts of governing.
After the fall of the republic, Seneca continued the appeal to the leading
citizens’ humanitas but not to the laws and libertas of self-governing
Romans. Instead, Seneca had to appeal to the clementia of a despotically
powerful emperor.18 As Chaim Wirszubski has shown, libertas requires
rule by law;19 as we will see, Thomas More agreed.
The importance of Seneca during the medieval and early modern peri-
ods is witnessed by the title page of the 1515 edition of his collected
works (Illustration 1), where Erasmus introduces him as “most holy” and
“philosophical.” In the prefatory letter20 to this large volume,21 Erasmus
reports that “Seneca was so highly valued by St. Jerome that alone among
Gentiles [Seneca] was recorded in the Catalogue of Illustrious Authors”;22
Jerome “thought him the one writer who, while not a Christian, deserved
to be read by Christians” and “by all who aspire to a virtuous life.”23
Years later, however, Erasmus would give even greater praise to Cicero:
“Never have I more wholly approved of Quintilian’s remark that a man
may know he has made progress when he begins to take great pleasure
in Cicero.24 When I was a boy Cicero attracted me less than Seneca.”
Erasmus then goes on to urge “the young to spend many long hours in
reading him and even in learning him by heart.”25

17 For the changing use of this term from the late Republic to Augustan’s conception of
princeps, see Ogilvie 392.
18 See Seneca’s masterful appeal to Emperor Nero for humanitas in De Clementia, and
especially Seneca’s praise of Augustus Caesar as “mitis princeps” (9.1), echoing Cicero’s
similar praise of Julius Caesar at Epistulae ad Familiares 6.6.5.
19 For the central importance of leges-libertas, see Wirszubski 1954 and 1968.
20 “To Thomas Ruthall,” CWE 3, Letter 325, 7 March 1515. In this letter, Erasmus
expresses his gratitude for use of the manuscripts of Seneca provided by King’s College
at Cambridge and by Archbishop Warham of Canterbury.
21 This volume is 665 large folio pages and contains Seneca’s twelve moral essays, 124
moral letters, ten books of natural questions, ten books of declamations, six books of
suasoriae and controversiae, St. Jerome’s praise of Seneca, and the pseudocorrespon-
dence between Seneca and St. Paul. It concludes with a seven-page listing of “Senecae
Proverbia,” a twenty-one-page “Index Locorum,” and another snake-and-dove device
(more elaborate and elegant than the one on the frontispiece) with the Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin quotations that appear in the Utopia version of this device.
22 See St. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 26–27.
23 CWE 3, Letter 325/81–83, 109–10.
24 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 10.1.112.
25 CWE 10, Letter 100.
6 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

Thomas More agreed that Cicero and Seneca should be included

among the greatest of classical thinkers. In defending the study of Greek
at Oxford University, More wrote: “For in philosophy, apart from the
works left by Cicero and Seneca, the schools of the Latins have nothing
to offer that is not either Greek or translated from Greek.”26 What spe-
cific contributions did Cicero and Seneca make to philosophy that were
distinct from the Greek?
Cicero’s view of humanitas, that is, his philosophy of human nature
and society, formed the basis for his conceptions of civic and interna-
tional law and of the philosopher-rhetorician’s duty as “first citizen” to
be equipped with those arts needed to promote and protect justice, lib-
erty, and peace.27 This duty was based on the view that there is “no
difference in kind between man and man” and that the “whole universe
[is] one commonwealth”28 because all human beings have reason – the
view eventually written into Justinian’s Digests29 and into subsequent
codes of law that Thomas More knew and defended.
Although Seneca could not appeal to such a universal code of civil law,
he did consistently appeal to the principles of human nature and to the
natural consequences of just and unjust behavior – most dramatically in
his powerful tragedies.30 Seneca affirmed, however, Cicero’s arguments
for ius gentium, the law of all peoples,31 and an ideal society based on
friendship, justice, liberty, and peace.
For Seneca, humanitas is “the idea of man” (Epistulae 65.7) and there-
fore “the first thing which philosophy undertakes to give” to society
(5.4). Humanitas forbids arrogance and greed and teaches kindness to all
(88.30, 33, 35); it toils against the madness of war, crime, and cruelty
(95.31–32), teaching that “man [is] an object of reverence in the eyes of
man” (95.33), whether slave or master (Epistulae 47.10; De Vita Beata
24.3); it leads those in society to view themselves as “the parts of one

26 CW 15, 143.
27 Ius gentium is a fundamental theme in De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus and
throughout his speeches. As an introduction to the complexity of Cicero’s thought, see
Nicgorski 1993 and Frank.
28 De Legibus 1.30, 23.
29 See especially 1.1 on “Justice and Law,” 1.5 on “Human Status,” and the treatment of
ius gentium throughout.
30 Seneca’s Oedipus appears in the portrait Sir Thomas More and His Family, and selections
from the important choral ode of the fourth act can be read in this near life-size painting.
See also the quotations from Seneca’s tragedies in the sixteenth-century play Sir Thomas
More as noted in TMSB 134ff.
31 For example, De Otio 6.4 and its reference to “leges . . . toti humano generi.”
Young Thomas More 7

great body” bound by love (amore) and “prone to friendship” (Epistulae

95.52). This view of humanitas Seneca saw expressed in the following
lines that he wished to be in the heart and on the lips of all (9.53): “I am
a man; and nothing in man’s lot / Do I deem foreign to me.” These are
the famous lines of Terence that Cicero quoted and that More knew by
heart, quoting them from memory while in prison.32
Seneca repeats this praise of humanitas in De Ira, insisting upon it as
a “duty” and ending with a call to “cherish humanitas” (2.28.2, 3.43.5).
There he again develops the analogy of the body politic but extends it to
the “greater city,” the maior urbs, of the world:

To injure one’s country is a crime; consequently, also, to injure a fellow-citizen –

for he is a part of the country, and if we reverence the whole, the parts are
sacred – consequently to injure any man is a crime, for he is your fellow-citizen
in the greater commonwealth. (2.31.7)

As he develops this analogy, he points out again that the parts of the
human community need to be united by bonds of love:

What if the hands should desire to harm the feet, or the eyes the hands? As all
the members of the body are in harmony one with another because it is to the
advantage of the whole that the individual members be unharmed, so mankind
should spare the individual man, because all are born for a life of fellowship, and
society can be kept unharmed only by the mutual protection and love [amore] of
its parts. (2.31.7–8)

Although Seneca is the first to say explicitly that the body politic should
be bound by love, he is simply advancing the concepts already developed
by Aristotle and Cicero.33
One of Seneca’s longest explanations of humanitas occurs in Epistulae
88, “On Liberal Studies”:34

Humanitas forbids you to be over-bearing towards your associates, and it forbids

you to be grasping. In words and in deeds and in feelings it shows itself gentle and
courteous to all. It counts no evil as solely another’s. And the reason why it loves
its own good is chiefly because it will some day be the good of another. (88.30)

32 Terence, Heautontimoroumenos 77. See Cicero’s use of this quotation in De Officiis

1.30 and in De Legibus 1.33. For More’s knowing this quotation by heart, see CW 14,
349/2–3 with its commentary.
33 See Chapter 3.
34 In Erasmus’s edition of these 124 letters, only this letter has its own entry in the table of
contents, and it is a letter that More echoes in his own educational writings.
8 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

Seneca insists in this letter that liberal arts can only “prepare the soul
for virtue.”35 Because virtue is the “art to become good” (90.44), it
“does not enter a soul unless that soul has been trained and taught,
and by unremitting practice brought to perfection” (90.46) through free
choice.36 Seneca insists that our “primary art is virtue itself” (92.10) and
that virtue is “nothing else than a soul in a certain condition” (113.2).
What condition? The “perfected condition” of wisdom, which is “the
greatest of all the arts” (104.19). In the last letter, Seneca explains that
the highest human good is the free use of one’s godlike power of reason
to forge “a pure and corrected soul” (124.23).37 Such a soul, as we will
see, is most capable of leading the “sound deliberation” that prudent first
citizens foster to achieve peace, prosperity, and liberty.
Thomas More will paraphrase this same Senecan language in his own
letters on education. For example, in his 1518 Letter to Oxford, More
argues that liberal education “prepares the soul for virtue” and helps in
acquiring “prudence in human affairs,” which “can nowhere be drawn
so abundantly as from the poets, orators, and historians.”38 This view
of education accords with Cicero’s that the liberal “arts were devised for
the purpose of fashioning [fingerentur] the minds of the young according
to humanitas and virtue.”39 Thomas More consistently affirmed a view
of freely acquired virtue and well-trained reason based on “the inner
knowledge of what is right” or “right conscience” (recti conscientia) that
gives rise to “solid joy”40 – a view that would bring More in radical
conflict with Luther.
But why would poets, orators, and historians be superior sources of
“prudence in human affairs”? Eleven years later, More would repeat and

35 Seneca, Epistulae 88.20 (“quia animum ad accipiendam virtutem praeparant”); emphasis

added. St. Basil the Great makes a similar argument, drawing upon Plato, in section 2 of
his How to Profit from Pagan Literature (385), where he gives special place to oratory,
poetry, and history – as More will do – in this preparatory process of free and deliberate
choice.
36 See Chapter 2 for the treatment of this essential element of human flourishing.
37 Seneca’s Epistulae is another of the three books specifically identified in the portrait Sir
Thomas More and His Family.
38 CW 15, 139; note especially line 11: “animam ad virtutem praeparat” and compare with
Seneca’s Epis. 88.20. More makes an extended argument about wisdom in his Letter to
Gonell, TMSB 197–200 or SL 103–7 and Corr. 120–23. As seen in note 35, St. Basil the
Great gives the same list of three.
39 See the quotations opening this chapter. Although Crassus articulates this view in De
Oratore 3.81, Cicero in his prefaces to these dialogues affirms the view of education that
Crassus defends.
40 TMSB 198, 199.
Young Thomas More 9

expand this statement by adding “laws” to these superior sources and

also by indicating the special contributions of these four areas of study:

[R]eason is by study, labour, and exercise of logic, philosophy, and other liberal
arts corroborate [strengthened] and quickened, and the judgement both in them
and also in orators, laws, and [hi]stories41 much rip[en]ed. And albeit poets
[have] been with many men taken but for painted words, yet do they much help
the judgement and make a man among other things well furnished of one special
thing without which all learning is half lame . . . a good mother wit.42

Proper study of oratory, law, history, and poetry, More explains, will
“much ripen” and “help the judgment” by making one “among other
things well furnished of one special thing without which all learning is
half lame.” Lucian, as Chapter 4 will indicate, is a master at revealing
in most entertaining and effective ways what that “one special thing” is:
prudence, clear-sighted practical wisdom; or, put in Chaucerian language,
“a good mother wit.”
Why these particular arts or areas of study? Oratory is an art that
requires a thorough knowledge of human nature and a thorough, detailed
knowledge of a people and its culture. The same is true of law, poetry,
and history. All require an expertise in humanitas if they are to move and
affect their audience.43
This expertise in humanitas gave rise to Seneca’s and Cicero’s view
that all should be treated equal before the law and be subject, before that
law, to equal rights.44 Cicero forcefully argued that human flourishing
required “liberty in law,” and he used his rhetorical powers to attempt to
persuade his fellow citizens that “we are servants of the law that we might
be free.”45 Seneca, however, given the imperial despotism and ambitions
for world domination of his time, had to use persuasion of another kind,
but he artfully and powerfully reminded all of their common humanity
and of the importance of peace.46 Seneca’s most famous essays – “On

41 See the editor’s note at CW 6, 132/10–22.

42 CW 6, 131–32, emphasis added.
43 Cicero develops this point throughout De Oratore.
44 See, for example, Cicero, De Officiis 2.42 and De Legibus 3.44.
45 De Lege Agraria 2.102; Pro Cluentio 146.
46 That peace in the state is analogous to health in the body is a commonplace for Christian
authors. See Augustine’s City of God 19.12–13, 17, 24 or Aquinas’s commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics 1112b14 where Aquinas expands Aristotle’s remark about the
end of the statesman as “enact[ing] good laws and enforc[ing] them.” Aquinas adds that
“a statesman or a ruler of the state does not deliberate whether he ought to achieve
peace which is compared to the state of health to the human body (health consists in the
harmony of wills)” (no. 474).
10 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

Benevolence,” “On Mercy,” “On Providence,” “On Happiness” – are

rhetorical masterpieces devised to move his audiences, contemporary and
future, to a life ordered to peace, justice, wisdom, and care for all fellow
human beings.
But how important were these matters of international peace and jus-
tice to More himself?
At the age of fifty-five – within months of his resignation as lord
chancellor of England, a year and a half before his arrest, and three years
before his death – Thomas More wrote the epitaph for his tomb, had it
engraved in stone, and sent a written copy to Erasmus for publication.47
When Erasmus delayed publication, More wrote again, urging immediate
publication.48 What was so important that More wanted chiseled in stone
and then publicized to his contemporaries and to posterity?
The most obvious priority is set forth in the only line indented and
set apart from the rest of the main text: a call for lasting world peace.
(See Illustration 2.) This call is prefaced by a reference to the only specific
political achievement More describes on this tombstone,49 the August
1529 international peace treaty (foedera) of Cambrai.50 Significantly for
what we will see about factions and civil war, More then goes on to
point out that he also maintained peace and avoided ill will (inuidia) in
his relations with the three classes of English society 51 “all through” the
“series of high offices or honors” that he received. Even in his prison
letters, More would insist that he had never played the “part taker” or
partisan in factional feuds.52
Peace was of such importance to Thomas More that he did not join
the king’s service until mid-1518,53 once the king and Wolsey had agreed

47 EE 2831[June 1533] or SL 178–83 or TMSB 305–10.

48 More’s first letter has not survived, but that Erasmus fulfilled More’s second request of
EE 2831 is clear from EE 2865/27 (31 August 1533).
49 In addition to the actual tombstone, which is in Chelsea Old Church, see the printed
versions of this epitaph in More’s Omnia Opera of 1565, 1566, and 1689 as well as EE
2831/90. The 1557 English edition of More’s Workes sets off this sentence in its own
paragraph (on p. 1420) but does not indent and italicize it as do all three Latin editions
of More’s Omnia Opera.
50 Consider the significance of the term foedera by comparing Epigram 32/4, Utopia, CW
4, 196/14, 16, 20, 31, 198/22, 24, 27, and Richard III, CW 15, 336/21 with its allusion
to Sallust, Jugurtha 11.1.
51 Monarch, nobles, the people (“princeps, nobiles, populus,” EE 2831/92–93).
52 For example, see SL 227 and 232.
53 For the dating of this event, see Guy 2000 50ff. For More’s repeated concern for “a
general peace for which Christendom has so long been miserably yearning,” see More’s
Young Thomas More 11

illustration 2. The 1532 Tombstone of Sir Thomas More, with epitaph by

More. In the summer of 1532, within weeks of his 16 May retirement from
Henry VIII’s service, Thomas More put in place this tombstone with the epitaph
he wrote for himself chiseled in stone. More sent the text of the epitaph to Erasmus
twice with instructions to publish it.
12 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

to international peace. This “Universal Peace” proved to be disingenuous

because the king and Wolsey would violate it in just a few years when it
would serve their political ambitions. Nonetheless, in 1518 their actions
and a new international climate gave reasonable hope that peace could
be achieved and could last.54
The sign of More’s commitment to peace and opposition to wars of
imperialism can be judged best by his opening speech as lord chancellor
before the Parliament and king eleven years later.55 Why was the best
sign a speech made in 1529? Because this new position as lord chancellor
gave More the strongest, and arguably the first, position in which he could
influence the country’s policy on war and peace. On that first public occa-
sion, he boldly declared that “Wolsey’s” wars were a mistake resulting
in damage to the English economy and distraction from the important
work of justice and reform at home.56 Of course, everyone knew that
these wars were initiated and fully supported by Henry VIII. No sooner
had the seventeen-year-old Henry become king than he started plans to
invade France – in imitation of his hero Henry V. With the invasion of
1513, Henry insisted on leading it himself despite the considerable risks
to England’s own security.57
In that first public speech as lord chancellor, More then announced the
purpose of the new parliament: the reformation of the laws of England.58
This purpose stood in striking contrast to the usual one that was all
too familiar to the English people: payment for war. Throughout his
address to the king in Parliament, More referred to Henry VIII as the
good shepherd,59 who recognizes the importance of “permanent peace”
for England and the importance of “ensuring the peace of Christendom”
while trying “by every means to increase and prosper the trade of the

letters to Francis Cranevelt [22 February 1526] and [8 November 1528] in Moreana
103:63 and 117:47 as well as More’s Letter to Wolsey 21 September [1521] in Corr.
263/41–44.
54 See Robert P. Adams’s classic study, The Better Part of Valor.
55 On 3 November 1929.
56 Tudor historian Edward Hall and Spanish ambassador Eustace Chapuys give the only
extended accounts of this speech, and they are in general agreement with the official
Parliament Roll’s summary (Hall 2.164–65; Great Britain, CSPS no. 211, 8 November
1529; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII 4, no. 6043, 3 November 1529).
57 See Chapter 7; on Henry’s leadership as a danger to England, see Scarisbrick 35, 37–38.
On Henry VIII’s crafted imitation of Henry V, see Chapter 6 and Herman 1995 220.
58 See the sources in note 56 and their many references to the need for “reform” and
“reformation.”
59 See the analysis of More epigrams on the good princeps as a shepherd in Chapter 6.
Young Thomas More 13

country.”60 Why is the good shepherd the dominant metaphor in this

speech? Hall summarizes More’s explanation:

[I]f a prince be compared to his riches, he is a rich man; if a prince is compared

to his honour, he is an honourable man; but compare him to the multitude of his
people and the number of his flock, then he is a ruler, a governor of might and
puissance, so that his people maketh him a prince, as of the multitude of sheep
cometh the name of a shepherd.61

Significantly, More states discreetly in this public forum what he indicated

in his early literature: that the “people . . . maketh” their own prince, that
is, that the people’s support is the condition for an individual’s becoming –
and remaining – the princeps.62 As More indicates here and again at
the end of his life,63 political authority belongs to the people, who can
then delegate part of that authority to a known, qualified, virtuous, and
trusted leader who has stood out as “first” in proven service in their
protection and care. Or, as Quentin Skinner recently summarized this
classic view, sovereignty is the “property of the people” [res publica], not
“the possession of the state.”64
But in using the metaphor of the shepherd, More the poet was doing
something different from, but related to, what More the politician was
doing: like Homer,65 he was introducing an image befitting the full reality
of rule, as Raphael would claim to do in Utopia. More the poet wanted
Henry VIII and his war-loving lords to think about being courageous
shepherds rather than war-hungry leaders like Henry V.
A second important motive for More’s publicizing his own epitaph
in 153266 was related to the first, and it dealt with More’s concern for

60 Great Britain, CSPS no. 211.

61 Hall 2.164. When More then goes on to criticize Wolsey as the “rotten and faulty”
“great wether” who “so craftily, so scabbedly, ye and so untruly juggled with the king”
(ibid.), More draws attention to how this spiritual pastor, this cardinal whom the king
“naturally supposed to be honest and virtuous,” had neglected care of his spiritual flock,
leaving the matter such that the “ecclesiastics needed most reform” (Great Britain, CSPS
no. 211).
62 In these lines, More artfully criticizes those princes set on riches and honor.
63 See Roper 85 or TMSB 56–57; CW 13, 21; CW 14, 373–75, 263–65; and especially
Harpsfield, appendix III, 274–75.
64 Skinner xi.
65 For example, see Homer’s frequent use of the shepherd metaphor at Iliad 2.105, 2.244,
2.255, 2.772, 4.413, 11.187, 15.262, 20.110, 22.278; Odyssey 4.24, 4.532, 14.497,
15.151, 17.109, 24.368, 24.456.
66 He publicized this as widely and permanently as was then possible, not only sending it
in writing to Erasmus for publication but etching it in stone as well.
14 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

“integrity.”67 As he wrote to Erasmus in the letter accompanying the

text of this epitaph: “I considered it my duty to protect the integrity of
my reputation.”68 More then went on to explain his epitaph as “a pub-
lic declaration of the actual facts” that openly invited rebuttal – just as
a seasoned and shrewd London lawyer or practitioner of the “arts of
peace” would know to do.69 The letter also set forth a brief summary
of what had occurred since his resignation: in thirteen months, he wrote,
“no one has advanced a complaint against my integrity.”70 Quite the con-
trary, “it is embarrassing for me to relate,” More went on, that the king
has pronounced “frequently in private, and twice in public that he had
unwillingly yielded to my request for resignation.” More also reported
that Henry VIII, in demonstration of his goodwill, had ordered both
the Duke of Norfolk and the next lord chancellor to express the king’s
gratitude to More “at a solemn session of the Lords and Commons”
and on “the formal occasion of [the lord chancellor’s] opening address”
to Parliament. What More did by publishing his own epitaph was lit-
erally to chisel in stone proof of his lifelong reputation for integrity.71
More acknowledged that some would accuse him of boasting, but he
argued that his duty to protect his reputation for integrity overrode that
concern.
This concern for integrity draws attention to another part of the title
page of Erasmus’s 1515 edition of Seneca: the two snakes and the dove
toward the middle of the page (Illustration 1). This was a favorite drawing
that Johann Froben came to use as his printer’s mark in many of his
humanist publications,72 including his 1518 editions of More’s Utopia.

67 On the epitaph of his tombstone, More includes integrity among the qualities he admired
in his father: “homo ciuilis, suauis, innocens, mitis, misericors, aequus et integer” (EE
2831/96). These qualities are quite close to those required by Cicero’s and Seneca’s
humanitas. A sampling of More’s other uses of “integrity” are CW 1, 64/14 (claimed to
be the first use in English as indicated at CW 1, L, note 1, but the Medieval Dictionary
points out one earlier use: in the 1425 translation of Paul’s Letter to Titus 2.7 – I
thank H. A. Kelly for this earlier reference); CW 4, 102/11; CW 15, 358/23, 392/2; EE
2831/42, 46. Erasmus uses the term to describe More at EE 999/209, 221 or TMSB
10. For More’s earliest recorded concern that word and deed should harmonize and
not be in “dispute,” see TMSB 177, SL 5, or Corr. 3/47, but also CW 3.1, 29/20–22,
172.
68 EE 2831/41–42: “arbitrabar oportere me integritatem nominis mei defendere.”
69 See CW 4, 56/24.
70 EE 2831/46–47: “nec adhuc quisquam prodiit qui de mea integritate quereretur”
71 One indication of this early concern is that More wrote of various characters’ “reputation
for integrity”; see, for example, in Richard III, the power of “integritatis opinionem”
(CW 15, 358/23; also 393/2).
72 See Muller, catalog entries 124 and 124a: “Druckermarke von Johannes Froben.”
Young Thomas More 15

In 1515 it appeared in a rather rough form,73 but by 1518 a much-refined

image by Hans Holbein appeared in Utopia, as seen in Illustration 3.
This illustration shows the two serpents as crowned, thus depicting
a central tenet of Seneca’s, Cicero’s, Erasmus’s, and More’s humanitas,
a tenet Luther would strongly attack: that for human beings, a well-
trained reason must be king.74 This illustration also shows the serpents
so artfully fashioned around the staff of Asclepius (god of healing) that
each forms the traditional symbol of health. Instead of the traditional
one snake, two work together to protect one vulnerable dove. Around
the illustration are Greek, Latin, and Hebraic poetic expressions of one
judgment shared by these different cultures about the nature of human
flourishing and of human happiness. The Latin is from Martial’s ode on
what constitutes a happy life: “shrewd simplicity and love of doing right”
(10.47). The Greek at top and bottom is from Matthew: “[S]o be prudent
as serpents, innocent as doves” (10:16). And the Hebrew at the right
is from Psalm 125: “Do good, O Lord, to those who are good and to
those who are upright in their hearts.” From his earliest to his last work,
Thomas More drew attention to the importance of this poetic summary
of humanitas: good persons of integrity are “prudent as serpents and
innocent as doves.”75

73 See the bottom of the framed space in the middle of Illustration 1.

74 For this commonplace in Plato and Cicero, see note 35 of Chapter 3; in Aristotle, notes
34 to 36 of Chapter 2.
75 A decade before the Utopia, in the letter prefaced to his translations of Lucian, More
pointed out that “the thoughtless credulity of the simple-minded (rather than the wise)
[simplicium potius, quam prudentium]” results in “foolish confidence and superstitious
dread” – thus “undermin[ing] trust” in what is actually true (CW 3.1, 11ff.).
In Richard III, the narrator comments that ruler Henry VI was more innocent than
prudent (CW 2, [Latin]6/12–13 or CW 15, 320/21). The narrator also draws attention
repeatedly to a sickness in the land marked by the lack of trustworthiness: “For the
state of things and the dispositions of men were then such that a man could not well
tell whom he might trust or whom he might fear” (CW 2, 43/26–8; Logan 50; CW 15,
398/18–20).
In the Utopia, Peter Giles is praised as a person of magna fides, simplicitas, and
prudens (CW 4, 48/9–10). Morus says of himself that he “would rather be good than
prudent,” and in the second letter to Giles, Morus points out the importance of fides
and prudens in reading Utopia properly (CW 4, 248–53).
A few years after Utopia, More warns the ignorant monk who slanders Erasmus
that Christ “meant [his followers] to be not only simple but prudent as well” (CW 15,
260/5–6). And in his Letter to Bugenhagen (CW 7, 44/29), More again draws explicit
attention to the need “to be cunning as a serpent.”
Later in life, More creates a salt-of-the-earth English persona who exhorts her fellow
Londoners to “be not only simple as doves, but also prudent and wise as serpents” (CW
8, 890/3–5). She warns that “if we be slothful” and not diligent, we “will be willingly
beguiled” and be made “mad fools” (890/5–6). In his last work, More also notes that
16 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

illustration 3. Serpent-and-dove book device of Froben. Froben used this

device of two serpents and a dove for his humanist publications. It refers to
Christ’s statement, “Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
This illustration is from the 1518 edition of Utopia.
Young Thomas More 17

Such integrity – such consistency in thought, word, and action – was

a necessary quality of the classical humanitas More admired. Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca would refer to this quality as “true
justice” in the individual. The classic formulation, known and quoted
by medieval thinkers, is Socrates’ statement in the Republic that “the
extreme of injustice is to seem to be just when one is not” (361a).76 In
the Gorgias, Socrates puts it this way: “Before all things, a man should
study not to seem but to be good” (527b). Xenophon reports the same
idea in the Memorabilia, where Socrates advises that “if you want to be
thought good at anything, you must try to be so; that is the quickest, the
surest, and the best way” (2.6.39).77 Cicero too stressed the need for a
“self-consistent life.”78 But such a life requires, as More would put it, a
“sure conscience” informed by “sure deliberation.”79
Cicero and Sallust present Cato as the classic figure of integritas but in
a way that shows why More would be reluctant to use that word often80

“those of us who follow Christ’s command [are to] become wise as serpents (CW 14,
617/1); Christ “wished His followers to be brave and prudent,” not “senseless and
foolish” (CW 14, 59/3).
76 For example, St. Basil the Great refers to Socrates’ quote in How to Profit from Pagan
Literature, sec. 6. Basil’s document was so important to the renaissance of Florence that
“it was the first Greek text translated by Leonardo Bruni,” who used it “as a defense
of humanism” (Basil 371–72). Bruni dedicated his translation to the city’s fourteenth-
century lord chancellor Coluccio Salutati.
77 Cicero refers to these passages in De Officiis 2.43.
78 De Officiis 1.72, 3.5 and see Chapter 3.
79 For “sure deliberation” (certum consilium), see More’s Epigram 198/13, especially in
light of Aristotle’s discussion of deliberation and “deliberate choice” at Nicomachean
Ethics 1112a19–1113a14 and Aquinas’s use of consilium as the term for deliberation
in his commentary. For the importance of a “sure” conscience, see SL 242, 242, 221,
TMSB 332, or Corr. 528/550, 552; see also the ironic use at CW 2, [English] 18/17
and the power of conscience at CW 2, [English] 68/31–34 and 87/11–12, 16–21 as
so dramatically portrayed in Shakespeare’s Richard III. In his first work published in
English, More adds to the text he translates: “Of virtue more joy the conscience hath
within / Than outward the body of all his filthy sin” (CW 1, 108/7–8; compare with
378). This idea is expressed again at the end of his life when he writes in prison that
“the clearness of my conscience hath made my heart hop for joy” (SL 235). For the
obligation of training the conscience “surely by learning and good counsel,” see SL
242, 229. More stated that “for the instruction of my conscience . . . , I have not slightly
looked, but by many years studied and advisedly considered” the matters at hand (Corr.
516 or TMSB 320). For the danger of “framing one’s conscience” according to one’s
own desire, see More’s comments at Corr. 521, 527, CW 13, 112, or TMSB 325, 331,
214. For achieving “surety,” consider also CW 1, 40/250 and More’s early argument
against Lady Fortune, as will be seen in Chapter 4. That More is deliberately provocative
in the use of “certum consilium,” see note 5 of Chapter 7.
80 Cicero, Pro Murena 3: “Catoni, gravissimo atque integerrimo viro”; Sallust, Catiline
54.2: “integritate vitae Cato” as well as 10.5 with its condemnation of hypocrisy whereby
18 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

and why Cicero claimed that Cato could improve by having greater edu-
cation in humanitas.81 Cato illustrates the dangers associated with one
who is rigidly concerned about an appearance of integrity; his unbending
and doctrinaire Stoicism presented a grave danger to the republic.82 While
More leaves no doubt that he is committed to consistency of word and
deed,83 he also leaves no doubt that he is well aware of the many ethical
complexities and the demands of “true virtue.” True virtue, consistency
between word and deed,84 is a necessary condition of Cicero’s princeps,
who must be well educated in the full range of studia humanitatis.85
Aristotle expressed this same thought in different ways, noting that
“the end appears to each man in a form answering to his character”86
and, for this reason, “it is impossible to be practically wise without being
good.”87 Popularly put, “As a person is, so does he judge.”88 Experience
shows that persons enslaved by uncontrolled anger or burning ambition

one’s public face does not reflect one’s true character. In English, More may use the word
only once in this sense (CW 1, 64/4). The Latin uses at CW 15, 358/23 and 392/2, CW
4, 102/11 show the ambiguities and dangers involved. When More describes his father
as “integer,” that adjective is the last of a list of seven qualities: “civilis, suavis, innocens,
mitis, misericors, aequus et integer” (EE 2831/96).
81 Pro Murena 65.
82 After strongly disagreeing with Cato’s overly rigid behavior and judgments, Cicero
praises “my master, the schools of Plato and Aristotle, men who do not hold violent
or extreme views” (Pro Murena 63). Cicero goes on to address Cato: “If some happy
chance, Cato, had carried a man of your character off to these masters, you . . . would
be a little more disposed to kindness” (64). However, much more than kindness was at
stake in Cicero’s long battle with the extremes of Roman Stoicism and Epicureanism.
See Nicgorski 1984 and 2002. The best study of Sallust’s exploration of these issues is
Batstone.
Reflection on these reasons provide a context for Morus’s criticism of Hythlodaeus’s
“uncivil” approach at CW 4, 98; in response to Morus, Hythlodaeus invokes a rigid
dichotomy between corruption and integrity (102/10–11).
83 From one of his earliest letters, More states his concern for the consistency of vita with
verba (TMSB 177, Corr. 7/47).
84 Cicero often uses the word constantia for this quality; see De Officiis 1.69, 72, 119.
85 On the necessity of an unwavering fides and love for truth and justice, see De Officiis
1.15, 61–65, 153. See also Cicero’s frequent insistence that the true statesman must have
the full range of learning, as in De Oratore 3.122 especially, but also 1.20, 1.53–54,
1.71–73, 2.5–6, 3.20–21, 3.54; Pro Archia 15–16; De Legibus 1.59–62; De Republica
1.28–28, 2.24–25.
86 Nicomachean Ethics 1114a33. Rhetoric is essential because, Aristotle observes, all are
“so much influenced by feelings of friendship or hatred or self-interest that they lose any
clear vision of the truth and have their judgment obscured by considerations of personal
pleasure or pain” (Rhetoric 1354b.). More makes a similar point at CW 6, 262.
87 Nicomachean Ethics 1144a36–37.
88 A free rendering of Nicomachean Ethics 1114a33. See also Rhetoric 1388b32–1391a19.
Young Thomas More 19

or blinding greed cannot judge clearly; they lack the integrity of self-
government that human beings need for consistent sharp-sightedness,
humanitas, and, consequently, prudent action. Hence, we can understand
why More would write with his typical wit, “I would rather be good than
practically wise.”89
These views about character, perception, and self-government are
expressed in two classic images: the ship’s captain at sea and the shep-
herd protecting his flock, images that More used throughout his life.90 As
these examples indicate, it is one thing to think or even to boast of facing
dangers; it is another to do so in fact, especially in the face of death.
The captain or the shepherd might perceive clearly what must be done in
times of danger, but each must also have a character so disciplined over
time that the leader can act courageously in obedience to that perception,
at the cost of one’s own life if necessary.
Sir Thomas used such examples not only in his earliest publications91
but also before the king in the 1529 Parliament and right up to the months
preceding his own death. In his last book, he warned that the weight and
difficulties of duties could “drown and oppress” the mind with sorrow
unless such sorrow is “ruled and governed by reason.” If reason does
not rule, then reason freely “gives over her hold and government,”92 like
“a cowardly ship’s captain who is so disheartened by the furious din of
a storm that he deserts the helm, hides away cowering in some cranny,
and abandons the ship to the waves.”93 More goes on to indicate in no
uncertain terms that such a captain could never be called good or just. As
More used this image, he showed that the captain’s character, his ethos,94
is at least as important as his intellect or his skill. He showed that a certain
kind of character is needed to free the intellect to utilize the very skills it
has acquired.

89 Thomas More’s prefatory letter to Utopia: “malim bonus esse quam prudens,” CW 4,
40/29.
90 For example, see the Republic 341c and 488d, 345c and 440d, and the references to
Homer in note 65.
91 CW 4, 98/27–28; guarding sheep: CW 3.2, no. 115; sarcastic play on protecting sheep:
CW 15, 358/25, the lamb entrusted to the wolf (agnus certe consulto in lupi fidem
creditus).
92 CW 14, 263, but I follow here Mary Basset’s translation given at CW 14, 1113. The
verb used is “infrenet,” alluding to Plato’s famous image of the charioteer governing his
two powerful horses at Phaedrus 246, 254.
93 CW 14, 265.
94 This Greek word for character is the root of our word “ethics.”
20 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

Despite his own fear, the effective captain must have the character
and clarity of perception to do as Morus says in Utopia, “You must not
abandon the ship in a storm because you cannot control the wind.”95
As More implies here and explains in his later writings, not only must
the captain know when to lower his sails and carefully supervise his
crew, especially during storms, but also the captain must have the tested
skills and virtues needed to do so.96 That is precisely why special care
must be taken beforehand to acquire all the arts of the captain’s trade:
good captains need sufficient knowledge of the ship, the sea, the winds,
and their own crews; they need sufficient skill in the many arts required
for piloting, for gubernans (the root of our word “govern”). Just as
important, however, they need proven strength of character to fulfill
their duty in the face of grave dangers.

Why did More join Erasmus in calling for “the renascence of good let-
ters”? How could a “rebirth” of old books be of any help in the face
of new and pressing contemporary problems? Those “good letters” –
that is, those classical, biblical, and patristic texts in Latin and especially
Greek97 – he considered to be not only the basis for but also the best-
fashioned exercises to achieve the prudence that is a prerequisite for all
the other arts needed by “the leading citizens” or principes. More and his
fellow humanists were convinced of this truth because liberal education
gives access to the time-tested truths and also to the intellectual train-
ing of the highest, most effective, and most profitable kind.98 One such
intellectual exercise is More’s famous Utopia, which raises the funda-
mental issues about humanitas, and hence about the soul and the nature
of happiness, justice, virtue, wisdom, and government. True, Raphael’s
report leaves the reader uncertain whether Utopia is really a tyranny or a
free republic and whether the common Utopians are enslaved and broken
subjects, or wise and virtuous citizens. But for More, “good letters” or
the “liberal arts” are not just entertaining pastimes; they are the very

95 CW 4, 98/27–28.
96 Some of the uses of this piloting metaphor can be found at CW 1, 45/7–8 and SL 233; CW
4, 98/27–28 and negatively at 52/18; CW 5, 270/28–29; CW 12, 6/13, 29/6, 57/30–31;
CW 14, 265/1–3; CW 15, 476/12, and the text from Seneca’s Oedipus shown in portrait
Sir Thomas More and His Family (Illustration 5). The image is used in abbreviated form
at CW 3.2, Epigram 19/184.
97 CW 15, 139ff.; SL 100ff.
98 In reflection upon the title and theme of St. Basil the Great’s How to Profit from Pagan
Literature, one can appreciate why Bruni’s translation from Greek to Latin was dedicated
to the chancellor of Florence, Coluccio Salutato (Basil 371).
Young Thomas More 21

means to achieve the strength of mind and character needed for free
self-government rather than enslavement to passion, false ideas, or other
persons. They are the means to become free and effective citizens.
In this context, one can appreciate why Thomas More disagreed fun-
damentally with Martin Luther’s denial of free choice of the will,99 belief
in a class of “pure elect,”100 and claim that human nature was so cor-
rupt that the reason and will were powerless either to find truth or to
live justice.101 These doctrines were, in More’s judgment and in the judg-
ment of Christian principes then in Europe, false and seditious opinions
sure to lead to war and social chaos.102 The greatest evidence for this
view – from their perspectives – was the Peasants’ Revolt of 1525, which
ended with the slaughter of sixty thousand to eighty thousand peasants
in one summer.103 Luther’s ideology – claiming that he and some few
were the “pure elect” unable to lose salvation by sin and saved by their
faith alone – went against the entire humanist project advanced by More,
Erasmus, and their fellow advocates of international unity, peace, and
reform based on the development of law, virtue, public deliberation, and
education.
When in conversation with one of Luther’s followers who claimed
that personal inspiration from reading the Bible was sufficient education,
More made this reply:

Now in the study of scripture, in devising the sentence, in considering what you
read, in pondering the purpose of diverse commentaries, in comparing together
diverse texts that seem contrary and are not, although I deny not but that grace
and God’s special help is the great thing therein, yet he uses for an instrument
man’s reason thereto. God helps us to eat also but yet not without our mouth.
Now as the hand is the more nimble by the use of some feats, and the legs and
feet more swift and sure by custom of going and running, and the whole body
the more wieldy and lusty by some kind of exercise, so is it no doubt but that
reason is by study, labour, and exercise of logic, philosophy, and other liberal
arts corroborate [strengthened] and quickened.104

99 CW 6, 373; CW 8, 498; CW 5, 269, 271, 207; CW 7, 49.

100 CW 6, 368–69; CW 8, 57; CW 5, 691–93, 279, 281.
101 See More’s extended discussion throughout CW 6, especially 122–32, 152–53, and his
comments about Luther’s confusion of license with liberty in CW 5, 270–78, 414/19–
29, 688/17–18.
102 CW 6, 369–72; CW 7, 149; CW 8, 28–33; CW 9, 162, 167.
103 More’s estimates ranged from 60,000 (CW 7, 149) to 70,000 (CW 6, 369 and CW 7,
102) to 80,000 (CW 8, 56).
104 CW 6, 131–32, but modernized.
22 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

Later in life, More put this view even more strongly, stating that no virtue
is possible without well-trained judgment – that “strength of heart and
courage in a reasonable creature can never be without prudence.”105
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Erasmus, and More’s fellow humanists
agreed on this view of reason, of a humanitas of free and self-governing
citizens. Luther did not, and in contrast, More emphasized throughout his
life the importance of a well-fashioned reason, a well-fashioned character,
and a substantial body of well-fashioned laws, resulting from many gen-
erations of prudent citizens and rulers guiding human affairs. Therefore,
More followed Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Seneca in affirming wisdom
and virtue to be the proper ends of education and of life because they
alone could equip the individual and the nation to fashion the integrity
of thought and action needed to be just, happy, and free. This is a quality
we would call “integrity” today, and it is significant that Thomas More is
one of the first to use that English word.106 And like Socrates and Cicero,
he died in a deliberate attempt to live it.
Along with these mentors, More agreed that such an education is the
most useful education precisely because it best equips human beings to
pilot their ships through uncharted waters and through those mighty
storms that always come. And in this prudent piloting, More emphasized
the absolute necessity of the legislator’s expertise in the art of law making.
More saw law as itself an ongoing work of prudence, yet despite
his respect for it, More had modest expectations because even the best
laws cannot protect every innocent person. This view More learned from
history and from his own experience: that often laws are, in words More
quoted from Plutarch, “just like spiders’ webs; they would hold the weak
and the delicate who might be caught in their meshes, but would be torn
in pieces by the rich and powerful.”107 More was acutely aware from
his earliest days that even the best laws could be manipulated unless
learned, prudent, and courageous principes exercised constant vigilance
and prudent care.
That such prudence is best fashioned with the help of good letters or
studia humanitatis or the “liberal arts” was a conviction that arose from
an understanding of art.

105 CW 12, 130, emphasis added.

106 See note 67.
107 CW 12, 225, quoting Plutarch, Solon 5.2–3.
2

Fashioning Peace and Prosperity

What Are the Necessary Arts?

[M]ost principes apply themselves to the arts of war . . . instead of the good
arts of peace.
Thomas More, Utopia 56/22–24
The princeps’ art of rule . . . is easily seen in our faces and is made conspic-
uous in the prosperity of the people.
Thomas More, Epigram 19/82–85

[A]rt produces nothing without reason. . . . When you see a statue or a paint-
ing, you recognize the exercise of art; when you observe from a distance
the course of a ship, you do not hesitate to assume that its motion is guided
by reason and by art.
Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.87

Art is necessary to perfect nature – this classical principle More learned

during his long and formative study of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and
Seneca. He also learned this by his experience in a prosperous and self-
governing London, home of many master artists. When young More,
therefore, wrote that the “princeps’ art of rule . . . is easily seen in [joy-
ous] faces and is made conspicuous in the prosperity of the people,” he
was drawing from firsthand London experience as well as from classical
and medieval history and political theory.
Plato’s Socrates showed how each art is a specific type of making that
requires habits and skills based on extensive practice, careful reasoning,
and long deliberation about best practices, or what one might call the laws
that arise from the “nature” of what is made.1 To achieve excellence

1 See Phaedrus 277b–c.

23
24 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

in that making, the best carpenters or musicians or warriors acquire

intricate habits, a detailed knowledge, and active deliberation fostered
since childhood, first through play,2 imitating the craft of their parents,
then through free competitions that encourage excellence in that practice
and knowledge. Play and then free and thoughtful and willing engagement
are essential because, as Socrates puts it, “no forced study abides in the
soul” and no one can force a human being to put in the labor of the
many years required to master the skills and knowledge needed for true
excellence.3 Human beings must freely decide to exert the effort and to
endure the pain that excellence in a specific art requires; in addition, they
must have the necessary aptitudes and opportunities.
Few, however, have both. Some, for example, are not gifted in music or
gymnastics or dance; others who have these capacities are not willing to
practice and study to achieve the highest levels of excellence.4 In addition,
external factors such as wealth can corrupt the potential artisan by taking
away the incentive to work as hard as artistic excellence requires.5
Excellence in an art comes at a high cost for the artisan, as seen in the
many hours of arduous study and practice required to become a great
musician or athlete or ruler. Good doctors do not seek pleasure or their
own good when working to heal another, and at times they endanger
their own lives in practicing that art. The same is true for the expert
captain faced with “the dangers of the sea”;6 he must master his fear
of storms to be able to “pay careful attention to year, seasons, heaven,
stars, winds, and everything that’s proper to the art, if he is really going
to be skilled at ruling a ship.”7 In a similar way, the art of politics is
ordered to knowing and bringing about the good of those ruled, even

2 Laws 643b, 764c ff., 812–813a; Republic 466e–468a, 537a.

3 Republic 536e.
4 Republic 349e; Laws 812d–813a, 764c–765d.
5 Republic 421d.
6 Republic 332e–333a, 341c–d.
7 Republic 488d is the longest of at least fifteen passages developing this metaphor. See
Thomas More’s metaphorical use of the pilot’s skill at CW 4, 98/27–28 and the opening
metaphor of book 2 of Utopia: navigating the secret rocks and channels in Utopia’s
harbor, CW 4, 110/21–34. More writes of the need for a “substanciall conying pylot”
who can navigate not only harbors with “secret rokkes vnder the water on both the
sides” but also through Scylla and Charybdis (CW 12, 120/11–18 and 148/2–8). As
mentioned earlier, he writes of the “cowardly ship’s captain” who through fear deserts
the helm in time of storm (CW 14, 265/1–3); he compares law to the rudder of the
country (CW 5, 270/28–29) and uses frequently the image of sailing on stormy seas (SL
233, 255).
Fashioning Peace and Prosperity 25

at the expense of the ruler. To act as a good shepherd, for example, the
guardian of the flock must be willing to endure pain and possible death.8
And in each case, the master artisan must reason a great deal about all
factors involved in that art.
Like Plato, Aristotle develops the Socratic analogies between well-
known arts and the less-known political art: just as each art has an
activity or function proper to it as seen in its perfection, such as the
well-made shoe or well-made chair,9 so the art of politics has an activity
proper to human beings, an activity that orders groups of people to their
particular excellence, which for Plato and Aristotle is synonymous with
“virtue.”10 As Aristotle puts it, “every virtue or excellence both brings
into good condition the thing of which it is the excellence and makes
the work of that thing be done well.” Two classic examples he gives
are these: “[T]he excellence of the eye makes both the eye and its work
good; . . . the excellence of the horse makes a horse both good in itself and
good at running and at carrying its rider and at awaiting the attack of the
enemy. Therefore, if this is true in every case, the virtue of man also will
be the state of character which makes a man good and which makes him
do his own work well.”11
Aristotle explains that art “exists to aid nature and to fill up its defi-
ciencies.” Just as flourishing harvests depend on the art of the farmer,
so flourishing lives of human beings require “many arts for preservation,
both at birth and in the matter of nutrition later.”12 Because this nutrition
is both physical and educational, Aristotle notes that “all art and educa-
tion wish to supply the element that is lacking in nature.”13 Ultimately,

8 This common truth about art Socrates used to counter Thrasymachus’s claim that the
artful ruler seeks his own good rather than the good of the ones ruled in book 1 of the
Republic. See Thrasymachus and Socrates’ exchange on the shepherd at 343a–345e, and
consider Thomas More’s Epigram 115. In his Apology, Socrates defends himself before
the city, saying: “I have neglected all my own affairs . . . , approaching each one of you as
a father or an elder brother to persuade you to care for virtue.” He explains that he has
endured poverty in exercising his distinctive art, rather than seeking his own advantage
by charging fees (31b–c). See also Chapter 1 for More’s comparison of Henry VIII to a
shepherd.
9 Nicomachean Ethics 1097b21 ff.
10 Nicomachean Ethics 1097b23, 1101a18, 1102a1–2, 1153b17.
11 Nicomachean Ethics 1106a15–17, 1106a18–24.
12 Protrepticus xi; Parts of Animals 639b15–19; Physics 2.2 and 13; Nicomachean Ethics
1140a10 ff.; Metaphysics 981a, 1034a8 ff. Compare these with Cicero’s De Natura
Deorum 2.57–28 and Seneca’s Epistulae 65.3 and 17.
13 Politics 1337a2.
26 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

the art of arts or the science of sciences is wisdom, that is, “knowledge
about principles and causes that are certain.”14 In the human sciences,
the master or architectonic art of that wisdom is political philosophy.15
In the field of politics, Aristotle’s master artisans have as their aim
the happiness of their people, which in turn requires obedience to good
laws.16 Such laws are in a special way “the ‘product’ of the political
art,”17 because they are those dictates of reason18 which look to the good
of the whole without reference to personal or special interests.19
Because these laws look to the true good of citizens, the legislator
must “have studied virtue above all things,” and he must know “the
facts about the soul” because “legislators make the citizens good by
forming habits in them.”20 To develop these habits of “excellence,” to
develop the “best state” of the human soul,21 Aristotle explains that “it
is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both
produced and destroyed, and similarly every art.”22 Just as builders or
harpists become good artisans by repeatedly doing their arts well, so
souls develop excellences or virtues by repeatedly doing human actions
well. The reverse is true regarding poor artistry and vice. In this way art
and virtue are analogous:23 both require habits guided by knowledge and
deliberation about the best and most appropriate means to the best and
most appropriate end.24
Therefore, any artisan, Aristotle explains, whether a physician or a
builder or a political ruler, “starts by forming for himself a definite pic-
ture . . . of his end – the physician of health, the builder of a house”25 –
or, in the case of the political ruler, a definite picture of happiness for his
people, that is, “the best way of life” for human beings, or what Cicero

14 Metaphysics 982a1.
15 Nicomachean Ethics 1094a14.
16 Nicomachean Ethics 1102a9–10.
17 Nicomachean Ethics 1181a24.
18 Nicomachean Ethics 1134a36 and Aquinas’s commentary no. 1009.
19 See Aristotle’s discussion of political justice and rule by law rather than rule by individ-
uals at Nicomachean Ethics 1134a24 ff.
20 Nicomachean Ethics 1102a17, 1103b3–4.
21 Nicomachean Ethics 1106a16, 1139a15.
22 Nicomachean Ethics 1103b7–8.
23 See, for example, Cicero, De Finibus 4.4.
24 Nicomachean Ethics 1103a16.
25 Aristotle, Parts of Animals 639b15–19. See also Metaphysics 981a: “[A]rt arises when,
from many notions gained by experience, one universal judgment about a class of objects
is produced.” Consider again the importance of “sure deliberation” in such judgments.
See also Nicomachean Ethics 1140a 9–14.
Fashioning Peace and Prosperity 27

called humanitas. Because all art “indeed consists in the conception of

the result to be produced before its realization in the material,”26 the art
of politics also requires “a definite picture” of the best way of life. Utopia
stands in this tradition, but not as one unskilled in the art of reading
Platonic or Ciceronian dialogues might conclude.
That “definite picture” or “idea” or “universal judgment” of the fully
flourishing human life – of Cicero’s and Seneca’s humanitas – is the central
and most important issue of ethics and of political philosophy. The great-
est disagreement among philosophers in the classical era27 was between
the “pleasure philosophers” and the “virtue philosophers” represented
by such thinkers as Epicurus and Socrates in the Greek tradition and by
Lucretius and Cicero in the Roman tradition.28
Pleasure is commonly confused with happiness because the very con-
cept of happiness implies an element of pleasure. Therefore, as Aristotle
points out with his usual clarity, “most men . . . identify the good, or
happiness, with pleasure.”29 So important in fact is this perception that
Aristotle concludes that “the whole concern of both virtue and politi-
cal science is with pleasures and pains.”30 Why? Because every human
“action is accompanied with pleasures and pains” and because virtue is
both “increased and . . . destroyed” by pleasure and pain.31 Because of
the extraordinary power of pleasure and pain, Aristotle joined Plato in
calling for good education from childhood so that youth could come “to
delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought.”32
The “ought” leads to another element that Aristotle emphasized in the
achievement of virtue and happiness: free choice. As seen in the previous
chapter, Seneca explained that our “primary art is virtue itself” – in
part because of the role that must be played by the free and deliberative

26 Aristotle, Parts of Animals 640a32–33.

27 And, arguably, in any age.
28 These opposing views are cleverly dramatized in More’s Utopia by the novel philosophy
of the Utopians, which claims that human beings can be perfected by seeking maximum
personal pleasure while simultaneously achieving genuine virtue and political justice
and peace. Epicurus or Socrates, Lucretius or Cicero and Seneca would find such a
formulation not only novel but untenable because such a claim goes against all previous
classical accounts of the human condition, including their own. As Chapter 9 indicates,
More cleverly engages each of these schools of thought, deepening the level of his readers’
dialectical engagement.
29 Nicomachean Ethics 1095b15–16.
30 Nicomachean Ethics 1105a11–12.
31 Nicomachean Ethics 1104b14–15, 1105a14–15.
32 Nicomachean Ethics 1104b12–13, referring to such passages in the Laws 653a ff. and
Republic 401e ff.
28 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

exercise of reason. Therefore, because human beings are by nature free,

the princeps must have a mastery of those arts needed to govern the free –
especially those arts identified by Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero: the arts of
education, law, and rhetoric. All involve choice.
Aristotle, in fact defines virtue in terms of choice, emphasizing that
“virtue is a state of character concerned with choice, and choice is delib-
erate desire.”33 This choice is based on “what we best know to be good”34
as “a result of deliberation,”35 a deliberation that has taken good counsel
into consideration because counsel is part of prudence and therefore pre-
cedes choice.36 Such “voluntary” actions will, by Thomas More’s time,
be called free actions of the will or just “free will”37 – a subject that erupts
with Luther as the crucial issue of More’s and Erasmus’s humanism and
its program of free government based on liberal education.
Education, law, and rhetoric are so necessary for free government that
faction and war cannot be avoided without them, and in fact the govern-
ment will not long remain free without them.38 Just as expertly trained
pilots are needed to navigate safely through violent storms and through
unknown seas, so principes expertly trained in human and political real-
ities are needed to guide their fellow citizens freely to achieve peace,
justice, liberty, and prosperity.
Rhetoric, for example, is one of those master arts needed for liberty
because artful speech unites a people upon accepted principles of jus-
tice in decisions that build a society in goodwill and mutual prosperity.
Cicero’s myth about the origin of society makes the provocatively exag-
gerated claim that artful speech alone had the power “to gather scattered
humanity into one place” and “to give shape to laws, tribunals, and civic
rights.”39 As Chapter 3 shows, Cicero portrays the greatest of Rome’s

33 Nicomachean Ethics 1106a14–15 and Aquinas’s commentary no. 308. See also Cicero’s
De Legibus 1.19 and 2.11 where he defines law in terms of choice.
34 Nicomachean Ethics 1112a7–8.
35 Nicomachean Ethics 1113a5, 1112a15–17, 1135b10–12, 1139a22–26.
36 See Aristotle’s perceptive analysis of counsel and deliberation at Nicomachean Ethics
1112a13–1113a14 and Aquinas’s commentary, especially no. 457.
37 See Sparshott 387n58 and his commentary for Nicomachean Ethics 1109b30 ff., where
he points out that Aristotle’s term for what is often called “voluntary” is hekousion, and
he supports the argument that the best translation is “intended.” Aquinas uses the term
will throughout his commentary on these sections; see his Summa Theologica I.83.1 ff.
for his defense of free will and his interpretation of Aristotle’s analysis of choice.
38 See the extended discussions of this point in Cicero’s De Oratore.
39 De Oratore 1.33, but at 1.35–40 Scaevola immediately refutes this exaggerated claim.
Even as a youth, Cicero’s claims for rhetoric were more moderate than in this mythic
account (De Inventione 1.1–3).
Fashioning Peace and Prosperity 29

leaders (especially Scipio, Laelius, and Crassus) as all well educated in

rhetoric as part of their studia humanitatis. As Crassus says, “In every
free nation, . . . this one art has always flourished above the rest and ever
reigned supreme.”40
Just as Plato and Aristotle did,41 Cicero emphasized that all human
and political excellence is cultivated in ways analogous to excellence in
the arts:

Well these philosophers observed that we are so constituted as to have a natural

aptitude for the recognized and standard virtues in general, I mean justice, tem-
perance and the others of that class (all of which resemble the rest of the arts,
and differ only by excelling them in the material with which they work and in
their treatment of it); they observed moreover that we pursue these virtues with
a more lofty enthusiasm than we do the arts; and that we possess an implanted
or rather an innate appetite for knowledge, and that we are naturally disposed
towards social life with our fellow men and towards fellowship and community
with the human race.42

The art of cultivating human excellence is based on recognizing and

fostering the “natural aptitude[s]” that Stoics liked to compare to seeds
inherent in every human soul.43 Precisely because all human beings have
souls that are similar in this essential way, Cicero and Seneca agreed
with Socrates’ claim that human beings were citizens of the world,44
not just citizens of their own country – a position that would come to
distinguish Cicero’s and Seneca’s “idea of humanitas” that recognizes a
human nature common to all.45
Human nature achieves its full flourishing when governed by those
guidelines or laws arising from the very structure of its being, just as with
the arts of farming, doctoring, and navigation.46 The “most fruitful of all
arts,” for Cicero and Seneca, is the “true and refined philosophy” that

40 De Oratore 1.30.
41 Cicero gives Plato and Aristotle high praise when he says they “had developed a teaching
that left nothing to be desired either in fullness or finish” (De Finibus 4.3).
42 De Finibus 4.4.
43 Notice that even here, in his “popularization” of the Stoic position (De Finibus 4.24),
Cicero indicates his own preference for “innate” rather than “implanted.”
44 Tusculanae Disputationes 5.108; De Legibus 1.23, 61; De Officiis 3.26, 28; De Finibus
3.64; De Natura Deorum 2.133, 154; Seneca, Otio 4.1, 6.4.
45 Seneca, in Epistulae 65.7, attributes his understanding of humanitas “or the idea of
man” to Plato; he maintains that humanitas is, along with congregationem, the “first
thing which philosophy undertakes to give” (5.4) because the alternative is demens or
madness (5.4 and 95.31–32). See Cicero, De Legibus 1.33 and 42.
46 De Finibus 4.16–17.
30 Young Thomas More and the Arts of Liberty

teaches the way of good living.”47 This same position Thomas More held
from his earliest published work.48
This “true and refined philosophy,” this “art of living” (vivendi ars),
helps human beings to “guard the gifts that nature has bestowed and
to obtain those that are lacking.”49 Because it is based on the careful
study of the “nature” of the body and of the soul, philosophy can be “the
guardian and protector of the whole person, as being the comrade and
helper of nature.”50
The emphasis on guarding and protecting is given special attention by
Cicero, who claims that the Romans both understood and cared for this
dimension of life more effectively than did the Greeks. The accomplished
statesman-orator-general-lawyer-philosopher Crassus, arguably Cicero’s
greatest princeps,51 makes this case in both subtle and confrontationally
forceful ways in Cicero’s De Oratore. Cicero gives, for example, a vivid
report of Crassus’s greatest and final speech in the Senate when he stands
against the tyrannical and illegal actions of “a consul whose duty it
was to be [the Senate’s] fostering parent and faithful guardian [but who
instead] was plundering like some unprincipled brigand” (3.3). With a
“superlative energy of spirit, intellect, and force,” Crassus fearlessly stood
against the consul Philippus, challenging him in the name of Roman
libertas if he insisted on continuing his injustice: “[Y]ou must cut out this
tongue of mine – although even when this has been torn from my throat,
my breath of itself will serve my liberty [libertas] for the refutation of
your licence [libido]” (3.4).
This same Crassus – successful general in foreign wars, consul and
honored leader in peace at home – is the one who insists on the position

47 Tusculanae Disputationes 4.5–6. That Seneca follows in this same Socratic tradition can
be seen in Epistulae 92.10, 44, 46; 88.28; 90.1–2; 104.19; 117.12, 16.
48 SL 4–6, 103–7 or TMSB 175–77, 197–200, and More’s humanist letters (CW 15). See
also his introduction to Pico della Mirandola’s “Letter to Andrew Corneus,” where,
contrary to Pico’s own opinion, More states that one reason to study philosophy is “for
the instruction of [the] mind in moral virtue” (CW 1, 85/10–11).
49 De Finibus 3.4, 4.16, 19; Tusculanae Disputationes 4.15; Seneca, Epistulae 88.28, 33;
90.27, 95.7, 117.12; Augustine, City of God 9.4.
50 De Finibus 4.16–18, where Cicero explains that careful study of the soul reveals “in the
first place . . . seeds of justice [iustitiae semina],” which provide the “origin and growth
of all the virtues.” “Innate love of knowledge” is another seed that gives rise to “the
contemplation of the secrets of nature.”
51 As Mitchell explains, Crassus is, “for Cicero, the great exemplar of the arts of peace,
the civilian statesman par excellence.” Crassus’s “position as a princeps of the highest
auctoritas in a dominant Senate was Cicero’s own fondest ambition” (1991 47). For
Cicero’s own high praise of Crassus, see De Oratore 2.1–4, 6; 3.2–7, 74–77.
Fashioning Peace and Prosperity 31

that Cicero himself affirms:52 that the princeps needs a full and complete
education in studia humanitatis – that “wide domain of science” not
“split up into separate departments” (3.132). Otherwise, leaders come “to
office and to positions in the government quite naked and unarmed, not
equipped with any acquaintance with affairs or knowledge” (3.136). Only
such a well-educated leader can “win freedom for his native land,” having
been “equipped . . . with weapons for the task” (3.139). The dangers of
a partial education are seen by two extremes: those Cynics and Stoics
who “in the Socratic discourse had been captivated chiefly by the ideal of
endurance and hardness”; and those Epicureans “who had taken delight
rather in the Socratic discussions on the subject of pleasure” (3.62). This
second extreme “that has undertaken the championship of pleasure”53
is especially unfit, Crassus argues, “to be the author of public counsel
[consilii] . . . pre-eminent for wisdom and eloquence in the Senate, in the
assembly of the people, and in public causes” (3.63).
But the first extreme, pride in personal endurance and hardness, is
also an unfatherly, uncivil, and “inept” hindrance to social harmony, as
Crassus points to in the beginning of De Oratore, where the superiority of
Romans’ wearing shoes and holding chaste conversation in the safety of a
walled household is contrasted implicitly to the primitiveness of barefoot
Socrates’ conversations about illicit loves, conversations held in the midst
of nature under the noonday sun, outside home or city.54
Cicero also compares the educational work of the true and artful
princeps to the farmer’s task of proper cultivation, of bringing all “its
parts into the most thriving condition.”55 In an analogous sense, the wise
philosopher-statesman’s “office and duty” is “entirely centered in the
work of perfecting man.”56 When artfully cultivated, human beings come
to “full flower and perfection,” marked by honestas57 and humanitas.58
In determining the “nature” of this full flowering, Cicero says that he

52 In De Oratore, see Cicero’s own comments in the prefaces to each day of his Crassus
dialogues, especially 1.5 and 16, 2.5–6, and 3.15.
53 This same phrase occurs in Utopia, CW 4, 160/25, in direct opposition to this passage
and to De Officiis 2.27.
54 Consider the parallels and contrasts of the settings of De Oratore and Plato’s Phaedrus,
especially at De Oratore 1.28–29, in light of these later comments of 3.62 and 138–39,
as well as More’s use of Lucian’s dialogues as seen in Chapter 4. I am grateful to Scott
Crider for his illuminating reflections on these contrasts.
55 De Finibus 4.38.
56 De Finibus 4.36.
57 De Finibus 4.18 and throughout De Officiis.
58 See Chapter 1.
Discovering Diverse Content Through
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l'embargo, et arrestation de tous les navigateurs de
l'Union dans les ports de l'Empire. — Mesures de
Napoléon pour fermer à l'Angleterre les rivages du
continent. — Ses exigences à l'égard de la Hollande,
des villes anséatiques, du Danemark, de la Suède, de
la Russie. — Résistance de la Hollande. — Tout en se
livrant à ces divers travaux, Napoléon s'occupe de
mettre fin aux querelles religieuses. — Faute de
quelques cardinaux à l'occasion de son mariage, et
rigueurs qui en sont la suite. — Situation du clergé et
du Pape. — Efforts pour créer une administration
provisoire des églises, et résistance du clergé à cette
administration. — Caractère et conduite du cardinal
Fesch, du cardinal Maury, et de MM. Duvoisin et
Émery. — Établissement que Napoléon destine à la
papauté au sein du nouvel empire d'Occident. — Envoi
de deux cardinaux à Savone pour négocier avec Pie
VII, et, en cas de trop grandes difficultés, projet d'un
concile. — Suite des affaires avec la Hollande. —
Napoléon veut que la Hollande ferme tout accès au
commerce britannique, et qu'elle lui prête plus
efficacement le secours de ses forces navales. — Le roi
Louis se refuse à tous les moyens qui pourraient
assurer ce double résultat. — Ce prince songe un
moment à se mettre en révolte contre son frère, et à
se jeter dans les bras des Anglais. — Mieux conseillé, il
y renonce, et se rend à Paris pour négocier. — Vaines
tentatives d'accommodement. — Napoléon n'espérant
plus rien ni de la Hollande ni de son frère, est disposé
à la réunir à l'Empire, et s'en explique franchement. —
Cependant arrêté par le chagrin de son frère, il
imagine un plan de négociation secrète avec le cabinet
britannique, consistant à proposer à ce dernier de
respecter l'indépendance de la Hollande s'il consent à
traiter de la paix. — M. Fouché intervient dans ces
diverses affaires, et indique M. de Labouchère comme
l'intermédiaire le plus propre à remplir une mission à
Londres. — Voyage de M. de Labouchère en
Angleterre. — Le cabinet britannique ne veut point
agiter l'opinion publique par l'ouverture d'une
négociation qui ne serait pas sérieuse, et renvoie M. de
Labouchère avec la déclaration formelle que toute
proposition équivoque restera sans réponse. — La
négociation, à demi abandonnée, est reprise
secrètement par M. Fouché sans la participation de
Napoléon. — Le roi Louis se soumet aux volontés de
son frère, et signe un traité en vertu duquel la
Hollande cède à la France le Brabant septentrional
jusqu'au Wahal, consent à laisser occuper ses côtes
par nos troupes, abandonne le jugement des prises à
l'autorité française, et s'engage à réunir une flotte au
Texel pour le 1er juillet. — Retour du roi Louis en
Hollande. — Voyage de Napoléon avec l'Impératrice en
Flandre, en Picardie et en Normandie. — Grands
travaux d'Anvers. — Napoléon découvre en route que
la négociation avec l'Angleterre a été reprise en secret
et à son insu par M. Fouché. — Disgrâce et destitution
de ce ministre. — Conduite du roi Louis après son
retour en Hollande. — Au lieu de chercher à calmer les
Hollandais, il les excite par l'expression publique des
sentiments les plus exagérés. — Son opposition
patente à la livraison des cargaisons américaines, à
l'établissement des douanes françaises, à l'occupation
de la Nort-Hollande, et à la formation d'une flotte au
Texel. — Fâcheux incident d'une insulte faite à
l'ambassade française par le peuple d'Amsterdam. —
Napoléon, irrité, ordonne au maréchal Oudinot d'entrer
à Amsterdam enseignes déployées. — Le roi Louis,
après avoir fait de vains efforts pour empêcher l'entrée
des troupes françaises dans sa capitale, abdique la
couronne en faveur de son fils, et place ce jeune

À
prince sous la régence de la reine Hortense. — À cette
nouvelle Napoléon décrète la réunion de la Hollande à
l'Empire, et convertit ce royaume en sept
départements français. — Ses efforts pour rétablir les
finances et la marine de ce pays. — Vaste
développement du système continental à la suite de la
réunion de la Hollande. — Nouveau régime imaginé
pour la circulation des denrées coloniales, et
permission de les faire circuler accordée à tous les
détenteurs moyennant un droit de 50 pour 100. —
Perquisitions ordonnées pour les soumettre à ce droit.
— Invitation aux États du continent d'adhérer au
nouveau système. — Tous y adhèrent, excepté la
Russie. — Immenses saisies en Espagne, en Italie, en
Suisse, en Allemagne. — Terreur inspirée à tous les
correspondants de l'Angleterre. — Rétablissement des
relations avec l'Amérique à condition que celle-ci
interrompra ses relations avec l'Angleterre. — Situation
du commerce général à cette époque. — Efficacité et
péril des mesures conçues par Napoléon. 1 à 199

LIVRE TRENTE-NEUVIÈME.

TORRÈS-VÉDRAS.

Vicissitudes de la guerre d'Espagne pendant la fin de

l'année 1809. — Retraite des Anglais après la bataille
de Talavera et leur longue inaction en Estrémadure. —
Déconsidération de la junte centrale et réunion des
cortès espagnoles résolue pour le commencement de
1810. — Événements dans la Catalogne et l'Aragon. —
Habiles manœuvres du général Saint-Cyr en Catalogne
pour couvrir le siége de Girone. — Longue et héroïque
défense de cette place par les Espagnols. — Disgrâce
du général Saint-Cyr et son remplacement par le
maréchal Augereau. — Conduite du général Suchet en
Aragon depuis la prise de Saragosse. — Combats
d'Alcanitz, de Maria, de Belchite. — Occupation
définitive de l'Aragon et habile administration du
général Suchet dans cette province. — Développement
inquiétant des bandes de guérillas dans toute
l'Espagne, et particulièrement dans le nord. — Au lieu
de s'en tenir à ce genre de guerre, les Espagnols
veulent recommencer les grandes opérations, malgré
le conseil des Anglais, et s'avancent sur Madrid. —
Bataille d'Ocaña livrée le 19 novembre, et dispersion
de la dernière armée espagnole. — Épouvante et
désordre à Séville. — Projet de la junte de se retirer à
Cadix. — Commencements de l'année 1810. — Plans
des Français pour cette campagne. — Emploi des
nombreux renforts envoyés par Napoléon. — Situation
de Joseph à Madrid. — Sa cour. — Son système
politique et militaire opposé à celui de Napoléon. —
Joseph veut profiter de la victoire d'Ocaña pour
envahir l'Andalousie, dans l'espérance de trouver de
grandes ressources dans cette province. — Malgré sa
détermination de réunir toutes ses forces contre les
Anglais, Napoléon consent à l'expédition d'Andalousie,
dans la pensée de reporter ensuite ses troupes de
l'Andalousie vers le Portugal. — Marche de Joseph sur
la Sierra-Morena. — Entrée à Baylen, Cordoue, Séville,
Grenade et Malaga. — La faute de ne s'être pas porté
tout de suite sur Cadix permet à la junte et aux
troupes espagnoles de s'y retirer. — Commencement
du siége de Cadix. — Le 1er corps est destiné à ce
siége; le 5e corps est envoyé en Estrémadure, le 4e à
Grenade. — Fâcheuse dissémination des troupes
françaises. — Pendant l'expédition d'Andalousie,
Napoléon convertit les provinces de l'Èbre en
gouvernements militaires, avec l'arrière-pensée de les
réunir à l'Empire. — Désespoir de Joseph, et envoi à
Paris de deux de ses ministres pour réclamer contre la
réunion projetée. — Après de longs retards, on
commence enfin les opérations de la campagne de
1810. — Tandis que le général Suchet assiége les
places de l'Aragon, et que le maréchal Soult assiége
Cadix et Badajoz, le maréchal Masséna doit prendre
Ciudad-Rodrigo et Alméida, et marcher ensuite sur
Lisbonne à la tête de 80 mille hommes. — Siége de
Lerida. — Le maréchal Masséna, ayant accepté malgré
lui le commandement de l'armée de Portugal, arrive de
sa personne à Salamanque en mai 1810. — Triste état
dans lequel il trouve les troupes destinées à agir en
Portugal. — Mauvais esprit de ses lieutenants. —
L'armée, qui devait être de 80 mille hommes, se réduit
tout au plus à 50 mille au moment de l'entrée en
campagne. — Efforts du maréchal Masséna pour
suppléer à tout ce qui lui manque. — Siége et prise de
Ciudad-Rodrigo et d'Alméida en juillet 1810. — Après
la conquête de ces deux forteresses, le maréchal
Masséna se prépare à envahir le Portugal par la vallée
du Mondego. — Difficultés qu'il rencontre pour se
procurer des vivres, des munitions, des moyens de
transport. — Passage de la frontière le 15 septembre.
— Sir Arthur Wellesley devenu lord Wellington. — Ses
vues politiques et militaires sur la Péninsule. — Choix
d'une position inexpugnable en avant de Lisbonne,
pour résister à toutes les forces que Napoléon peut
envoyer en Espagne. — Lord Wellington se prépare à
s'y retirer en détruisant toutes les ressources du pays
sur les pas des Français. — Retraite de l'armée
anglaise sur Coimbre. — Le maréchal Masséna poursuit
les Anglais dans la vallée du Mondego. — Difficultés de
sa marche. — Les Anglais s'arrêtent sur la Sierra
d'Alcoba. — Bataille de Busaco livrée le 26 septembre.
— Les Français n'ayant pu forcer la position de Busaco
parviennent à la tourner. — Retraite précipitée des
Anglais sur Lisbonne. — Poursuite énergique de la part
des Français. — Les Anglais entrent dans les lignes de
Torrès-Védras les 9 et 10 octobre. — Description de
ces lignes fameuses. — Le maréchal Masséna après en
avoir fait une exacte reconnaissance désespère de les
forcer. — Il se décide à les bloquer jusqu'à l'arrivée de
nouveaux renforts. — En attendant il prend une solide
position sur le Tage, entre Santarem et Abrantès, et
s'applique à construire un équipage de pont afin de
manœuvrer sur les deux rives du fleuve, et de vivre
aux dépens de la riche province d'Alentejo. — Envoi du
général Foy à Paris pour faire connaître à Napoléon les
événements de la campagne, et pour solliciter à la fois
des instructions et des secours. — État de l'armée
anglaise dans les lignes de Torrès-Védras. — Démêlés
de lord Wellington avec le gouvernement portugais;
ses difficultés avec le cabinet britannique. — État des
esprits en Angleterre. — Inquiétudes conçues sur le
sort de l'armée anglaise, et tendance à la paix, surtout
depuis les souffrances du blocus continental. —
Avénement du prince de Galles à la régence. —
Disposition de ce prince à l'égard des partis qui
divisent le parlement. — Le plus léger incident peut
faire pencher la balance en faveur de l'opposition, et
amener la paix. — Voyage du général Foy à travers la
Péninsule. — Son arrivée à Paris, et sa présentation à
l'Empereur. 200 à 430

LIVRE QUARANTIÈME.

FUENTÈS D'OÑORO.

Dispositions d'esprit de Napoléon au moment de

l'arrivée du général Foy à Paris. — Accueil qu'il fait à ce
général et longues explications avec lui. — Nécessité
d'un nouvel envoi de 60 ou 80 mille hommes en
Espagne, et impossibilité actuelle de disposer d'un
pareil secours. — Causes récentes de cette
impossibilité. — Derniers empiétements de Napoléon
sur le littoral de la mer du Nord. — Réunion à l'Empire
des villes anséatiques, d'une partie du Hanovre et du
grand-duché d'Oldenbourg. — Mécontentement de
l'empereur Alexandre en apprenant la dépossession de
son oncle le grand-duc d'Oldenbourg. — Au lieu de
ménager l'empereur Alexandre, Napoléon insiste d'une
manière menaçante pour lui faire adopter ses
nouveaux règlements en matière de commerce. —
Résistance du czar et ses explications avec M. de
Caulaincourt. — L'empereur Alexandre ne désire pas la
guerre, mais s'y attend, et ordonne quelques ouvrages
défensifs sur la Dwina et le Dniéper. — Napoléon
informé de ce qui se passe à Saint-Pétersbourg se hâte
d'armer lui-même, pendant que la Russie engagée en
Orient ne peut répondre à ses armements par des
hostilités immédiates. — Première idée d'une grande
guerre au nord. — Immenses préparatifs de Napoléon.
— Ne voulant distraire aucune partie de ses forces
pour les envoyer dans la Péninsule, il se borne à
ordonner aux généraux Dorsenne et Drouet, au
maréchal Soult de secourir Masséna. — Illusions de
Napoléon sur l'efficacité de ce secours. — Retour du
général Foy à l'armée de Portugal. — Long séjour de
cette armée sur le Tage. — Son industrie et sa
sobriété. — Excellent esprit des soldats,
découragement des chefs. — Ferme attitude de
Masséna. — Le général Gardanne parti de la frontière
de Castille avec un corps de troupes pour porter des
dépêches à l'armée de Portugal, arrive presque jusqu'à
ses avant-postes, et rebrousse chemin sans avoir
communiqué avec elle. — Le général Drouet, dont les
deux divisions composent le 9e corps, traverse la
province de Beira avec la division Conroux, et arrive à
Leyria. — Joie de l'armée à l'apparition du 9e corps. —
Son abattement quand elle apprend que le secours qui
lui est parvenu se réduit à sept mille hommes. —
Arrivée du général Foy, et communication des
instructions dont il est porteur. — Réunion des
généraux à Golgao pour conférer sur l'exécution des
ordres venus de Paris, et résolution de rester sur le
Tage en essayant de passer ce fleuve pour vivre des
ressources de l'Alentejo. — Divergence d'avis sur les
moyens de passer le Tage. — Admirables efforts du
général Éblé pour créer un équipage de pont. — On se
décide à attendre pour tenter le passage que l'armée
d'Andalousie vienne par la rive gauche donner la main
à l'armée de Portugal. — Événements survenus dans le
reste de l'Espagne pendant le séjour sur le Tage. —
Suite des siéges exécutés par le général Suchet en
Aragon et en Catalogne. — Investissement de Tortose
à la fin de 1810, et prise de cette place en janvier
1811. — Préparatifs du siége de Tarragone. —
Événements en Andalousie. — Éparpillement de
l'armée d'Andalousie entre les provinces de Grenade,
d'Andalousie et d'Estrémadure. — Embarras du 4e
corps obligé de se partager entre les insurgés de
Murcie et les insurgés des montagnes de Ronda. —
Efforts du 1er corps pour commencer le siége de Cadix.
— Difficultés et préparatifs de ce siége. — Opérations
du 5e corps en Estrémadure. — Le maréchal Soult ne
croyant pas pouvoir suffire à sa tâche avec les troupes
dont il dispose, demande un secours de 25 mille
hommes. — L'ordre de secourir Masséna lui étant
arrivé sur ces entrefaites, il s'y refuse absolument. —
Au lieu de marcher sur le Tage, il entreprend le siége
de Badajoz. — Bataille de la Gevora. — Destruction de
l'armée espagnole venue au secours de Badajoz. —
Reprise et lenteur des travaux du siége. — Détresse de
l'armée de Portugal pendant que l'armée d'Andalousie
assiége Badajoz. — Misère extrême du corps de
Reynier et indispensable nécessité de battre en
retraite. — Masséna, ne pouvant plus s'y refuser, se
décide à un mouvement rétrograde sur le Mondego,
afin de s'établir à Coimbre. — Retraite commencée le 4
mars 1811. — Belle marche de l'armée et poursuite
des Anglais. — Arrivé à Pombal, Masséna veut s'y
arrêter deux jours pour donner à ses malades, à ses
blessés, à ses bagages le temps de s'écouler. —
Fâcheux différend avec le général Drouet. — Craintes
du maréchal Ney pour son corps d'armée, et ses
contestations avec Masséna sur ce sujet. — Sa retraite
sur Redinha. — Beau combat de Redinha. — Le
maréchal Ney évacue précipitamment Condeixa, ce qui
oblige l'armée entière à se reporter sur la route de
Ponte-Murcelha, et de renoncer à l'établissement à
Coimbre. — Marches et contre-marches pendant la
journée de Casal-Novo. — Affaire de Foz d'Arunce. —
Retraite sur la Sierra de Murcelha. — Un faux
mouvement du général Reynier oblige l'armée à
rentrer définitivement en Vieille-Castille. — Spectacle
que présente l'armée au moment de sa rentrée en
Espagne. — Obstination de Masséna à recommencer
immédiatement les opérations offensives, et sa
résolution de revenir sur le Tage par Alcantara. —
Refus d'obéissance du maréchal Ney. — Acte d'autorité
du général en chef et renvoi du maréchal Ney sur les
derrières de l'armée. — Difficultés qui empêchent
Masséna d'exécuter son projet de marcher sur le Tage,
et qui l'obligent de disperser son armée en Vieille-
Castille pour lui procurer quelque repos. — Affreux
dénûment de cette armée. — Vaines promesses du
maréchal Bessières devenu commandant en chef des
provinces du nord. — Avantageuse situation de lord
Wellington depuis la retraite des Français, et triomphe
du parti de la guerre dans le parlement britannique. —
Lord Wellington laisse une partie de son armée devant
Alméida et envoie l'autre à Badajoz pour en faire lever
le siége. — Tardive arrivée de ce secours, et prise de
Badajoz par le maréchal Soult. — Celui-ci, après la
prise de Badajoz, se porte sur Cadix pour appuyer le
maréchal Victor. — Beau combat de Barossa livré aux
Anglais par le maréchal Victor. — Le maréchal Soult
trouve les lignes de Cadix débarrassées des ennemis
qui les menaçaient, mais il est bientôt ramené sur
Badajoz par l'apparition des Anglais. — À son tour il
demande du secours à l'armée de Portugal qu'il n'a pas
secourue. — Les Anglais investissent Badajoz. — Cette
malheureuse ville, assiégée et prise par les Français,
est de nouveau assiégée par les Anglais. — Projet
formé par Masséna dans cet intervalle de temps. —
Quoique fort mal secondé par l'armée d'Andalousie, il
médite de lui rendre un grand service en allant se jeter
sur les Anglais qui bloquent Alméida. — Ce projet,
retardé par les lenteurs du maréchal Bessières, ne
commence à s'exécuter que le 2 mai au lieu du 24
avril. — Par suite de ce retard, lord Wellington a le
temps de revenir de l'Estrémadure pour se mettre à la
tête de son armée. — Bataille de Fuentès d'Oñoro
livrée les 3 et 5 mai. — Grande énergie de Masséna
dans cette mémorable bataille. — Ne pouvant
débloquer Alméida, Masséna le fait sauter. — Héroïque
évasion de la garnison d'Alméida. — Masséna rentre en
Vieille-Castille. — En Estrémadure, le maréchal Soult
ayant voulu venir au secours de Badajoz, livre la
bataille d'Albuera, et ne peut réussir à éloigner l'armée
anglaise. — Grandes pertes de part et d'autre, et
continuation du siége de Badajoz. — Belle défense de
la garnison. — Situation difficile des Français en
Espagne. — Résumé de leurs opérations en 1810 et en
1811; causes qui ont fait échouer leurs efforts dans
ces deux campagnes qui devaient décider du sort de
l'Espagne et de l'Europe. — Fautes de Napoléon et de
ses lieutenants. — Injuste disgrâce de Masséna. 431 à
701

FIN DE LA TABLE DU DOUZIÈME VOLUME.

 GRAVURES
CONTENUES DANS LE TOME DOUZIÈME.

Pages
1. Le maréchal Suchet 214
2. Heureuse découverte du général Montbrun 375
3. Bataille de Fuentès d'Oñoro 670
 Notes

1: Celui qui est au palais Pitti à Florence.

2: Les rapports de la police furent pendant plus d'un mois remplis de

ces bruits.

3: Lettre de Napoléon au duc de Cadore, existant au dépôt de la

secrétairerie d'État.

4: Rapport du duc de Rovigo à l'Empereur.

5: Je ne fais ici qu'analyser une suite de lettres, dont le langage est

beaucoup plus énergique que celui que j'emploie pour les résumer.

6: Partie en contributions levées sur le pays, partie en une

contribution de guerre stipulée par le traité de paix.

7: C'est lui-même qui le raconte dans le tome III, p. 156 et 157 de

ses Documents historiques sur le gouvernement de la Hollande.

8: Ces lettres sont nombreuses, surtout celles du roi Louis et de

Napoléon. Elles ont été conservées, et c'est d'après leur infaillible
témoignage que je trace ce récit.

9: Ces plans existent, et j'en ai vu le manuscrit dans les archives

secrètes de la secrétairerie d'État.

10: Nous citons ici une dépêche de Napoléon qui prouve son état
d'exaspération, mais dont il ne faut pas prendre toutes les
expressions au pied de la lettre, car dans ses colères, sincères à un
certain degré et au delà calculées, il menaçait de plus de mal qu'il
n'en voulait faire.

«Au ministre de la police.

»Paris, le 3 mars 1810.

»Je vous prie de lire cette lettre (lettre de M. de Larochefoucauld

annonçant l'intention des habitants d'Amsterdam de se défendre
contre les Français) et de vous rendre chez le roi de Hollande,
auquel vous en donnerez connaissance. Ce prince est-il devenu tout
à fait fou? S'il n'y avait que la lettre de M. Larochefoucauld j'en rirais,
et je me contenterais de trouver la chose absurde; mais je n'en puis
dire autant après la réponse du ministre hollandais. Vous lui direz
qu'il a voulu perdre son royaume, et que je ne ferai jamais
d'arrangements qui feraient croire à ces gens-là qu'ils m'ont imposé.
Vous lui demanderez si c'est par son ordre que ses ministres ont agi,
ou si c'est de leur chef, et vous lui déclarerez que si c'est de leur
chef, je les ferai arrêter et leur ferai couper la tête à tous. S'ils ont
agi par ordre du roi, que dois-je penser de ce prince? et comment
après cela peut-il vouloir commander mes troupes, puisqu'il parjure
ses serments? Vous appellerez MM. Roell et Verhuel, afin qu'ils
soient présents à ce que vous direz au roi. Vous aurez soin de ne pas
vous dessaisir de ces pièces, et de vous rendre chez moi à l'issue de
cette conférence.»

11: Je raconte ces affaires si compliquées de la Hollande, de la

négociation avec l'Angleterre, de l'intervention de M. Fouché dans
cette négociation, d'après des documents authentiques, qui me
permettront, je l'espère, d'éclaircir des événements restés jusqu'ici
fort obscurs. Ces documents sont les lettres de Napoléon, du roi
Louis, du ministre Champagny, de M. de Labouchère, de M. Fouché,
et enfin les interrogatoires qu'on fit subir depuis à tous les
personnages compromis dans la négociation. J'ai lu et relu tous ces
originaux, et je n'avance pas un fait sans en avoir eu sous les yeux
la preuve matérielle.

12: Il est peu de sujets sur lesquels les auteurs de mémoires aient
débité plus de fables que sur celui-ci. On a prétendu notamment que
M. Fouché fut disgracié pour avoir refusé de rendre les lettres de
Napoléon, et des lettres fort compromettantes. Il n'y a rien de vrai
dans cette assertion. Les lettres de Napoléon à M. Fouché étaient
peu nombreuses, et pas plus compromettantes que celles qu'il
écrivait à tous ses agents, et dans lesquelles, se livrant à son
impétuosité naturelle, il disait souvent: Je ferai couper la tête à tel
ou tel, sans songer à le faire. Il se souciait d'ailleurs fort peu de ce
qu'il avait écrit, et ne songeait guère à en rougir, étant déjà si peu
embarrassé de ce qu'il avait fait, même de la mort du duc d'Enghien.
La vérité est qu'il s'était fort échauffé l'esprit sur l'envoi de M. Fagan
à Londres, et qu'il croyait avoir été plus compromis qu'il ne l'était
véritablement. Ses ordres et sa correspondance prouvent que la
seconde et la plus éclatante disgrâce de M. Fouché fut motivée par
le refus de livrer des pièces que celui-ci n'avait plus, relativement à
la mission de M. Fagan. Mais le public aimant les mystères, surtout
les mystères sinistres, crut, et beaucoup d'écrivains aussi puérils que
le public répétèrent qu'il y avait là d'affreuses lettres, dont Napoléon
voulait obtenir la restitution, et dont le refus provoqua un nouvel
éclat de sa part. Il n'en est rien, et il n'y a de vrai dans toutes ces
suppositions que ce que nous venons de rapporter.

13: Ce rapport existe aux archives des affaires étrangères, avec la

date du 6 juillet, jour même où M. de Caraman, porteur de la
nouvelle de l'abdication, arrivait à Paris. Il avait donc été ordonné, et
avait dû être rédigé avant que l'on connût l'abdication de Louis. Une
phrase de ce rapport, d'ailleurs, prouve qu'il est antérieur à la
connaissance de l'abdication; elle dit que S. M. I. est résolue à
rappeler auprès d'Elle le prince auguste qu'Elle avait pris dans sa
famille pour le donner à la Hollande. Il est donc certain que, décidé
par ce qui se passait, Napoléon allait réunir la Hollande à la France,
lorsque son frère prit la résolution d'abdiquer. Le fait n'a pas grande
importance, assurément; il faut cependant le constater dans l'intérêt
de la vérité, qu'on doit chercher avant tout en histoire,
indépendamment de toutes les conclusions qu'on peut en tirer.

14: Cette tolérance, dans laquelle consistait toute la combinaison,

fut formellement autorisée par la correspondance des douanes,
laquelle existe encore aujourd'hui dans les archives de cette
administration.

15: C'est après avoir lu toute la correspondance des douanes, du

ministre de l'intérieur, des ministres des finances et du trésor, enfin
de nos consuls à l'étranger, que je suis parvenu à tracer ce tableau
des combinaisons et des effets du blocus continental. Je crois donc
pouvoir affirmer la parfaite exactitude de tous les détails dans
lesquels je suis entré, et qui m'ont semblé utiles à la connaissance
des temps dont je raconte l'histoire.

16: Je parle ici d'après la correspondance authentique des généraux

et du ministre de la guerre, et je n'ajoute rien aux tristes couleurs de
ce tableau.

17: On possède en Angleterre une partie de la correspondance

privée de Joseph, particulièrement avec la reine son épouse, qui
était restée à Paris, et lui racontait avec le plus grand détail tout ce
qui l'intéressait, en cherchant du reste à le calmer plutôt qu'à l'irriter.
Il existe aussi à nos archives la correspondance autographe de
Joseph avec Napoléon, celle de l'ambassadeur de France, M. de
Laforest, celle d'un chef de la police française en Espagne, homme
spirituel et modéré, M. de Lagarde, celle enfin du général Belliard,
gouverneur de Madrid, et c'est dans ces documents authentiques,
souvent contradictoires, mais faciles à mettre d'accord quand on sait
démêler la vérité à travers les passions contemporaines, que je puise
les détails rapportés ici, et dont je garantis la rigoureuse exactitude.
Suivant ma coutume, j'adoucis les couleurs pour être plus vrai, car
les couleurs du temps sont toujours exagérées, et je ne veux fonder
mes récits que sur la partie incontestable des documents que
j'emploie.

18: Je rapporte ici le récit du maréchal Jourdan dans ses mémoires

manuscrits. Le maréchal s'appuie sur le témoignage de plusieurs
généraux qui étaient présents, et sur une lettre fort précise du roi
Joseph, qui expose lui-même avec détail les circonstances du conseil
de guerre tenu à Carmona.

19: On est souvent exposé, lorsqu'on veut entrer dans de pareilles

particularités, à ne donner que des détails imaginaires.
Heureusement on peut ici rendre avec exactitude les scènes qui se
sont passées entre le général en chef et ses lieutenants, parce
qu'indépendamment de la correspondance de plusieurs officiers, il y
a celle de l'intendant général de la police de Portugal, dont j'ai déjà
parlé, lequel était un homme spirituel, bienveillant, étranger à tous
les partis qui divisaient l'armée, très-intéressé au succès de
l'expédition, n'en voulant qu'à ceux qui le compromettaient, et
mettant un prix infini à dire la vérité à Napoléon, sous les yeux
duquel sa correspondance était placée directement par le duc de
Rovigo. Cette correspondance très-détaillée peint toutes les phases
de la campagne avec une vérité frappante, et une sincérité qui saisit
à la première lecture. Grâce à cette correspondance, j'ai pu
reproduire certaines particularités précieuses, sans prêter à l'histoire
des couleurs de fantaisie, comme on est exposé à en employer
lorsqu'on veut faire agir ou parler avec trop de détail des
personnages qui ne sont plus, et qui ont emporté dans la tombe le
souvenir de ce qui s'est fait ou dit en leur présence.

20: La pensée du duc de Wellington à l'égard de la guerre de la

Péninsule est parfaitement connue depuis la publication de sa
correspondance. On la trouve consignée à toutes les pages de cette
correspondance, et elle fait le plus grand honneur à sa sagacité et à
la sûreté de son esprit.
21: Le duc de Wellington, dans sa correspondance si sensée et en
général si impartiale, blâme beaucoup le maréchal Masséna d'avoir
adopté la route de Viseu. Il prétend que c'est la plus mauvaise que
le maréchal pût choisir, et il n'en donne aucune raison valable.
Puisqu'on ne partait point de la Galice, ainsi qu'on l'avait fait sans
succès dans la campagne précédente, puisqu'on ne descendait pas
jusqu'en Estrémadure, ce qui eût entraîné un long détour pour
gagner l'Alentejo, il ne restait à suivre que la vallée du Mondego,
située au nord de l'Estrella; et, dans la vallée du Mondego, la rive
droite comme plus fertile était évidemment préférable, et n'offrait
pas plus que la gauche des positions favorables au génie défensif
des Anglais. Il est vrai qu'on aurait pu passer par le versant sud de
l'Estrella, au lieu de passer par le versant nord; mais on y aurait
trouvé la route de Castel-Branco, sur laquelle Junot avait failli périr
trois années auparavant. Masséna n'avait donc pas une autre route à
suivre que celle de Viseu, et on a droit de s'étonner d'une critique
qui est souvent répétée dans la correspondance imprimée du duc de
Wellington, sans l'appui d'aucune bonne raison. On peut dire qu'elle
n'est pas digne de la justesse et de la justice ordinaire de ses
jugements, et on regrette que l'illustre général britannique n'ait pas
été plus équitable envers un rival non moins illustre que lui. Il est
vrai que les dépêches du noble duc étaient destinées à son
gouvernement, dictées pour le moment présent, et que plus tard,
jugeant son rival avec l'élévation qui convenait à sa gloire, il rendait
une éclatante justice au maréchal Masséna, particulièrement pour
cette campagne.

22: J'ai reproduit ici avec une exactitude scrupuleuse les

conversations d'Alexandre contenues en cent dépêches, et je dois
dire qu'on est frappé, en les lisant, de la connaissance des affaires
que ce prince avait acquise à cette époque. Le plus habile des
conseillers d'État français ou russes n'aurait pas mieux exposé les
raisons que le czar tirait des traités et de la législation pour soutenir
la thèse qu'il avait adoptée, et qui était de son point de vue finement
et solidement raisonnée.
23: Cette célèbre campagne de Portugal a donné lieu naturellement
à de vives controverses. Les écrivains militaires se sont partagés en
sens divers. Récemment un habile défenseur du maréchal Masséna,
M. le général Koch, dans un ouvrage remarquable, a reproché au
général Drouet, d'ailleurs avec vérité, d'avoir fort accru les embarras
de tout genre qui vinrent assaillir le maréchal Masséna pendant cette
déplorable campagne. Si le général Koch avait connu la
correspondance de Napoléon, il aurait vu que le tort n'était pas au
général Drouet, mais bien à Napoléon lui-même, qui, tout rempli
d'illusions, se figurant que le soin des communications pouvait et
devait être en Portugal ce qu'il était en Allemagne, lui donnait l'ordre
étrange de secourir Masséna sur le Tage, et de conserver en même
temps ses communications vers Alméida. Nous citons les propres
lettres de Napoléon, lesquelles, sans détruire les allégations du
général Koch relativement aux embarras causés à Masséna par le
général Drouet, font voir cependant à qui doit remonter le reproche
adressé au général Drouet. Ce n'est pas du reste au génie de
Napoléon qu'il faut s'en prendre ici, car si quelqu'un au monde était
capable de donner des instructions, c'était lui, mais à sa politique,
qui le réduisait, pour suffire à toutes ses entreprises, à donner des
ordres indignes de lui, indignes de sa haute prévoyance. Voici, au
surplus, le texte même des lettres dont il s'agit.

«Au major général.

»Fontainebleau, 3 novembre 1810.

»Je reçois la lettre du général Drouet du 22 octobre, de Valladolid.

»Les dispositions qu'il fait pour rouvrir les communications avec le

Portugal ne me paraissent pas satisfaisantes. Réitérez-lui l'instruction
d'aller à Alméida, et de réunir des forces considérables, pour pouvoir
être utile au prince d'Essling et aider à ouvrir ses communications.

»Il faudrait qu'il donnât au général Gardanne ou à tout autre général

une force de 6 mille hommes avec 6 pièces de canon pour rouvrir la
communication, et qu'un autre corps de même force se trouvât à
Alméida pour correspondre avec lui. Enfin il est important que les
communications de l'armée de Portugal soient rétablies, afin que
pendant tout le temps que les Anglais ne se seront pas rembarqués,
il puisse assurer les derrières du prince d'Essling.

»Envoyez-lui le Moniteur d'aujourd'hui, où il y a des nouvelles de

Portugal venues de Londres.

»Aussitôt que les Anglais seront rembarqués, il portera son quartier

général à Ciudad-Rodrigo, mon intention n'étant pas que le 9e corps
s'engage dans le Portugal, à moins que les Anglais ne tiennent
encore, et même le 9e corps ne doit jamais se laisser couper
d'Alméida, mais il doit manœuvrer entre Alméida et Coimbre.

»Écrivez au général Drouet qu'il me tarde fort d'avoir des nouvelles

de Portugal; que cela est important sous tous les points de vue, et
qu'il faut que les communications soient rétablies de manière à avoir
des nouvelles, sinon tous les jours, au moins tous les huit jours.

»Demandez-lui l'état des troupes laissées sur les derrières, de la

division Seras, de ce qu'a laissé le prince d'Essling, cavalerie,
infanterie, artillerie, enfin de ce qui est dans le 6e gouvernement.»

«Au major général.

»Paris, le 20 novembre 1810.

»Vous trouverez ci-joint l'extrait des derniers journaux anglais. Vous

sentirez l'importance d'expédier un officier d'état-major au général
Drouet pour lui faire connaître qu'au 1er novembre il n'y avait pas
encore eu de bataille; que l'armée française avait sa gauche à Villa-
Franca et sa droite à Torrès-Védras, et que l'armée anglaise était à
quatre lieues de Lisbonne; que 10 mille hommes de milices occupent
Coimbre et interceptent la route, que la cavalerie n'est presque
d'aucun usage; qu'il est donc important qu'il ne fasse point de petits
paquets et qu'il rouvre les communications avec le prince d'Essling
avec un fort corps; que je compte du reste sur sa prudence pour ne
pas se laisser couper d'Alméida.

»Il paraîtrait par les journaux anglais que la garnison de Coimbre se

serait laissé surprendre du 10 au 15 octobre et aurait laissé prendre
1,500 malades qui se trouvaient dans cette place.

»Réitérez les ordres aux généraux Caffarelli, Dorsenne et Reille pour

l'exécution des mouvements que j'ai ordonnés précédemment, c'est-
à-dire que la garde se réunisse à Burgos; que tout ce qui appartient
au général Drouet lui soit envoyé. Recommandez au général
Kellermann de ne pas retenir la division Conroux et de la laisser filer
sur Salamanque.

»Quand les fusiliers de la garde arrivent-ils à Bayonne? Vous

donnerez l'ordre qu'ils se reposent deux jours à Bayonne. Les
détachements qui se trouvent au camp de Marac joindront leurs
compagnies.

»Écrivez au duc de Dalmatie pour lui faire connaître ce que disent

les Anglais de l'armée de Portugal, et lui faire comprendre
l'importance de faire une diversion en faveur de cette armée.»

Ces lettres, comme on le voit, sont toutes antérieures d'un mois ou

deux à la situation que nous décrivons; mais elles contiennent
expressément le principe de toutes les instructions données depuis
par le ministère de la guerre au général Drouet, et expliquent la
position ambiguë de ce général, qui, partagé entre le désir de
secourir Masséna et celui de ne pas perdre ses communications, fut
pour l'armée de Portugal plus embarrassant qu'utile.

24: Le même qui a publié un excellent ouvrage sur les siéges

soutenus par les Espagnols et les Français dans Badajoz.

25: Dans son ouvrage sur les divers siéges de Badajoz, le général
Lamare exprime l'opinion suivante:
«Parmi les beaux faits des assiégeants, nous ne laissons pas que de
trouver aussi des fautes, et la franchise avec laquelle nous allons les
exposer justifiera les éloges que nous venons de leur donner.

»Nous n'avons cependant pas le dessein d'entrer dans un examen

détaillé de toutes celles qui ont été commises, car, pour y parvenir, il
faudrait suivre les attaques jour par jour, et rédiger pour ainsi dire
une nouvelle relation; nous nous bornerons donc à signaler celles
qui nous paraissent les plus graves.

»Voici en peu de mots leur exposé: D'abord la cause principale qui a

autant prolongé la durée du siége vient de ce que le premier point
d'attaque des assiégeants, celui du centre, fut mal choisi. Le général
Léry aurait dû profiter de l'avantage que lui offrait la position
saillante du bastion dont le revêtement, vu en partie de la
campagne, n'était protégé alors que par un simple chemin couvert,
diriger rapidement sur ce bastion une vigoureuse attaque et
cheminer en capitale jusqu'aux glacis, de manière à couronner le
chemin couvert en moins de huit jours. Pendant cette opération, une
seconde attaque aurait été conduite également vers Pardaleras, pour
éteindre les feux de ce fort et l'enlever de vive force.

»Dans cette hypothèse, les règles du métier lui faisaient une loi
d'ouvrir la première parallèle à 5 ou 600 mètres des fronts (1, 2, 2,
3) et du fort Pardaleras, en appuyant fortement, par de bonnes
redoutes, la gauche de la parallèle à la Guadiana, et la droite au
Calamon.

»On conçoit que ce plan d'attaque eût été préférable à celui qui fut
adopté, et qu'on aurait vraisemblablement épargné beaucoup de
temps et de pertes en hommes et en munitions de guerre, si l'on eût
su profiter des avantages qu'il présentait.

»Bien que la défense des Espagnols ait été courageuse, que la

rigueur de la saison, les pluies continuelles, les inondations qui
submergeaient nos tranchées, le manque de vivres, les sorties
multipliées, l'arrivée de Mendizabal, la bataille de la Gevora, et le
petit nombre de travailleurs, aient contrarié et retardé les opérations
du siége, nous devons cependant dire qu'outre les fautes commises
dans la direction des attaques, soit de la part du génie, soit de la
part de l'artillerie, le siége de Badajoz a été mené avec lenteur, et
que l'armée a perdu au moins huit jours devant cette place; temps
précieux qui aurait peut-être permis au duc de Dalmatie d'approcher
des rives du Tage, et de changer la série des malheurs qui suivirent
la retraite de l'armée de Portugal.»

(Relation des siéges et défenses de Badajoz, d'Olivença et de

Campo-Mayor, en 1811 et 1812, par les troupes françaises de
l'armée du Midi en Espagne, sous les ordres de M. le maréchal duc
de Dalmatie, par le général Lamare. Paris, 1837. Pages 82 et 83.)

L'opinion de Napoléon est différente, quoique dans le même sens, et

il croyait qu'on aurait pu s'emparer de Badajoz dès le mois de
janvier. Il est vrai que c'était en prenant les opérations de plus haut,
et en supposant que le maréchal Soult serait parti beaucoup plus tôt
de Séville pour se porter en Estrémadure.

Voici la lettre qu'il écrivait à ce sujet:

«Au major général.

»Paris, 5 février 1811.

»..... Écrivez au duc d'Istrie pour lui annoncer, en lui envoyant le

Moniteur, qu'il trouvera là les dernières nouvelles que nous avons du
Portugal, qui paraissent être du 13; que tout paraît prendre une
couleur avantageuse: que si Badajoz a été pris dans le courant de
janvier, le duc de Dalmatie a pu se porter sur le Tage, et faciliter la
construction du pont au prince d'Essling.

»Il devient donc très-important de faire les dispositions que j'ai

ordonnées afin que le général Drouet, avec ses deux divisions,
puisse être tout entier à la disposition du prince d'Essling.
É
»Écrivez en même temps au duc de Dalmatie pour lui faire connaître
la situation du duc d'Istrie, et pour lui réitérer l'ordre de favoriser le
prince d'Essling dans son passage du Tage; que j'espère que Badajoz
aura été pris dans le courant de janvier, et que la jonction avec le
prince d'Essling sur le Tage aura eu lieu avant le 20 janvier; que si
cela est nécessaire, il peut retirer des troupes du 4e corps; qu'enfin
tout est sur le Tage.»

26: Caldiéro en 1805.

Notes au lecteur de ce fichier numérique:

Seules les erreurs clairement introduites par le typographe ont été

corrigées. L'orthographe de l'auteur a été conservée.

Autres corrections effectuées:

—Page 15: "l'Inviertel" remplacé par "l'Innviertel".

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