Sir Walter Raleigh: In Life & Legend (46 page)

Ralegh's heroes were generally men of arms and honour. In the biblical chapters, peaceable rulers like Samuel and prophets like Isaiah got some attention, but in the classical chapters such men were eclipsed by the captains of war. Socrates and Plato get one mention each: Socrates on his death, Plato on his advice to the tyrant Dionysus of Sicily. Solon and Pericles appear nowhere in the text. The heroes are all military leaders: Cyrus the Great of Persia, Epaminondas of Thebes, Alexander of Macedon, Scipio Africanus and Hannibal of Carthage. No doubt Julius Caesar would have been another, probably the greatest, had the History reached that point.

Cyrus the Great, King of the Persians, conqueror of Babylon and creator of the Persian Empire, rose to power as a general in the Persian army. He was a skilful tactician, who took Babylon by draining the Euphrates and thus enabling his troops to enter its walls through the dry river-bed. He not only delivered the Jews from captivity, but also rebuilt the temple of God in Jerusalem.
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In this he was 'an instrument of God's goodness, and a willing advancer of his kingdom upon earth'.

Following the Peloponnesian War, Thebes rose to dominance within Greece under the leadership of Epaminondas. He invaded the Peloponnesus, almost took Sparta and marched instead to Mantinea, where he faced the alliance of Spartans and Athenians. Using a wedge formation he forced open the enemy squadrons and gained the victory, although dying himself. Ralegh's praise is unstinting: he was 'the worthiest man that ever was bred in that nation of Greece, and hardly to be matched in any age or country'. He excelled in every virtue: justice, sincerity, temperance, wisdom and magnanimity. He was 'a perfect composition of an heroic general'. In private he was grave, yet affable and courteous, 'a lover of his people, bearing with men's infirmities, witty and pleasant in speech'. To these qualities were added 'great ability of body, much eloquence and very deep knowledge in all parts of philosophy and learning'. He did not restrict himself to contemplation, but gave Thebes, hitherto an underling, 'the highest command in Greece'. In his combination of civil and military virtues, Epaminondas might have been a role-model for Ralegh himself.
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Ralegh could hardly deny a place among his heroes to Alexander the Great; but he praised him in moderation. By contrast with Epaminondas, according to Ralegh,Alexander had only to contend with weak commanders. Darius is portrayed as a popinjay, more like a performer in a masque than a man of war, who hoped to beat Alexander. Where Quintus Curtius, Ralegh's principal source for the battle of the Issus, wrote of the Persians that 'the order of their marching was in this manner. The fire which they call holy and eternall, was carried before upon silver aulters', Ralegh interpolated a completely new and unwarranted section:

The manner of his coining on...was rather like a masker than a man of warre, and like one that took more care to set out his glorie and riches, than to provide for his own safetie, persuading himself, as it seemed, to beat Alexander with pompe and sumptuous pagents.

Concluding his account of the opening phase of the battle, Ralegh wrote:

In this sort came this May-game-King into the field, incombred with a most unnecessary strain of strumpets, attended with troupes of divers Nations, speaking divers languages...

It is a splendid piece of rhetoric, designed to reduce Alexander's standing as a general, but it goes well beyond Ralegh's principal source. Recent accounts of the battle give Darius credit for good tactical sense and attribute his defeat mainly to the superior training and morale of the Macedonian cavalry, as well as to Alexander's tactical brilliance.
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Gradually, as Alexander advanced into Persia, he fell into Persian ways: he wore Persian garments and ordered his nobility to do the same, imitating in all things 'the proud, voluptuous, and detested manners of the Persians, whom he had vanquished'. Alexander was as valiant as any man, but, Ralegh insisted, courage alone is not enough; he was generous, but his liberality was out of proportion.
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The hero with whom Ralegh most closely identified was probably Hannibal.
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Towards the end of the Second Punic War, Hannibal was defending Carthage against the advancing troops of Publius Cornelius Scipio. Before the Batttle of Zama, Hannibal expressed a desire to meet his rival. The two men rode out of their respective camps and met half-way between their companies, where they dismounted. 'They remained a while silent, viewing one the other with mutual admiration.' Hannibal then spoke, saying that it would have been better for both states to have kept their armies within the bounds of Africa and Italy. What they had each gained was no compensation for the ships that had been lost or the blood that had been shed. 'But since things pass'd could not be recalled...it was meet for them to consider, unto what extreme dangers their own cities had been exposed by the greedy desire of extending their empires abroad...and that it was even time for them...to make an end of their obstinate contention.' Hannibal, fearing that Scipio, much the younger man, might reject such overtures in the hope of victory, spoke of the mutability of fortune and urged the cause of peace; but his overtures were nevertheless rejected and battle joined. Both generals addressed their armies. Scipio rode up and down 'exhorting his men to do valiantly; using words not many, but very forcible'. He told them that 'their victory in this war, should make them lords of all the world...but that if they were beaten, he asked them whither they would fly...And therefore there was none other way, but death or victory'. Hannibal was in a more difficult situation. The lords of Carthage would not let him delay battle until expected reinforcements arrived, as they did a few days later. 'He encouraged therefore his men, with words agreeable to their several conditions': mercenaries were promised bountiful rewards; Carthaginians threatened with 'inevitable servitude' if they lost; his old Italian fellow-soldiers reminded of victories they had won against greater numbers and against better troops than those they faced that day.
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Ralegh was good at battles and Zama provided one of his great set-piece descriptions. Roman discipline held against 'the boisterous violence of these untrained Barbarians', while Hannibal's mercenaries got no help from those who should have supported them. The new Carthaginian levies fled when they saw the mercenaries begin to retire, and took the Ligurian and Gallic allies with them. 'Fear and indignation caused those that were at once chased by the Romans, and betrayed, as they thought, by their own fellows, to turn their arms with an heedless fury against both the one and the other. Thus were many of the Carthaginians beaten down and slain, through their indiscretion, by their own mercenaries.' As his men fled, Hannibal himself stood firm, ordering his men to turn their pikes against those of their own side who would have rushed him. The ground over which the Romans had to march in order to reach Hannibal 'was covered with such thick heaps of dead bodies and weapons, and so slippery with blood', that Scipio feared he might not be able to reach his rival. However, he did so, and the main confrontation of the battle began. Scipio 'advanced towards Hannibal, who entertained him after another manner than ever he had been received before'. The earlier part of the day seemed like a mere prelude 'in regard of the sharp conflict that was maintained between these notable soldiers'. It was ended when Italian and Numidian cavalry returned from pursuing the fleeing Carthaginian horse to charge Hannibal in the rear. He fled to Carthage, where he appeared before the Senate and recommended that they make peace. They did so reluctantly and with a great deal of moaning over the terms.
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Hannibal himself found refuge in the kingdom of Bithynia, and when Roman troops came to capture him, committed suicide. Scipio, now known as Scipio Africanus, died in voluntary exile, accused of bribery, in the same year. They were, wrote Ralegh, 'as great captains as ever the world had; but not more famous than unfortunate'. Had Hannibal been prince of the Carthaginians and able to command the necessary supplies, 'he had torn up the Roman empire by the roots. But he was so strongly cross'd by a cowardly and envious faction at home' that he failed.
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In this Hannibal was not alone among military men, and here Ralegh embarked on one of his principal complaints against monarchs and their courts.

There is no profession more unprosperous, than that of men of war, and great captains, being no kings. For, besides the envy and jealousy of men; the spoils, rapes, famine, slaughter of the innocent, vastation [sic], and burnings, with a world of miseries laid on the labouring man, are...hateful to God.

Successful captains have 'been rewarded in the end, either with disgrace, banishment, or death'. He instanced, among many others, Coriolanus, Scipio Africanus, Joab captain of David's forces and Parmenio and Philotas among Alexander's captains. The Turks advanced it as a general principle that every warlike prince should destroy his greatest men of war.
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For once he refers to the late Queen of England. Elizabeth, he claimed, was no different from other monarchs, for all her old captains by land died poor men. It is clear why the actors in prosperous actions generally die neglected. 'Those which are nearest the persons of princes (which martial men seldom are) can with no good grace commend, or at least magnify a profession far more noble than their own.' But, he said, King James had honoured more martial men than other kings had done in the last hundred years.'He has given a coronet to Lord Thomas Howard' and he had rewarded others with peerages.
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In fact James did not particularly favour military men: he was averse to the business of war and simply gave more titles of nobility generally.
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Ralegh was always ready to demonstrate his military experience and expertise with specific examples and advice. There is a well-known instance when, writing about Alexander's use of fire to drive his enemy from a defensible position, Ralegh remarked that he had observed similar tactics when he was serving in France during the third civil war: bundles of flaming straw had been lowered down to drive defenders from caves in which they had been hiding. Sir John Burgh had nearly been trapped on the island of Margharita 'by having the grass fired behind him', but had luckily discovered the danger in time. Ralegh warned captains invading 'those countries' always to burn the grass and sedge to the east of them, otherwise they might 'die the death of honey-bees, burnt out of the hive'.
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Digressing from the wars of the Romans in Sicily, he emphasized the importance of naval defences. A commander must study the capacity of different types of ship and plan accordingly. Had Lord Admiral Howard listened to some of the 'malignant fools' around him and engaged the Spanish navy directly in 1588, he would undoubtedly have endangered England. The Spaniards had one hundred men on board to twenty of ours, whereas a mere twenty men on board defending would have the advantage over one hundred attacking. But in the open sea twenty ships have the advantage over one hundred by using their artillery. In the Low Countries especially, ships and river boats had huge advantages over land forces. Maurice of Nassau set off in 1590 to besiege either Bois-le-Duc or Geertruidenberg; but when the wind changed he suddenly set sail down the Meuse and then up the Rhine for Zutphen, which he captured, for the Spanish army could not march eighty miles around Holland and over great rivers to prevent him.
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Could England 'without help of her fleet...debar an enemy from landing'? He answered firmly that she could not, because a fleet could always outdistance an army. If an invading fleet was seen off the Lizard at sunset it could be off Portland by morning, while it would take an army six days to march the distance. A strong army at sea could not be prevented from landing where it wanted 'unless it be hindered, encountered, and shuffled together, by a fleet of equal or answerable strength'. Ralegh's own difficulty in landing his troops at Fayal in the Azores in 1597 had sometimes, he said, been thought to contradict this. He replied that he could have chosen another landing place, but that he 'had more regard of reputation...than of safety. For I thought it to belong unto the honour of our prince and nation, that a few islanders should not think any advantage great enough, against a fleet set forth by queen Elizabeth.' In spite of fierce resistance from the islanders, Ralegh's company was able to capture the town. The relevance of this to Ralegh's general proposition about sea-power is not at all clear, for his success was due rather to his own indifference to danger than to the advantage of attacking from the sea. It is hard to resist the view that he was more concerned with defending his honour and his own conduct of affairs than with establishing principles of military conduct.
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Ralegh's final reflections on history are suffused with melancholy and pessimism. Few men, he claimed, have shown themselves able to learn the dangers of seeking absolute power or the transitory nature of success until too late. As great princes have been cast down by God or robbed of their posterity, so have kingdoms and empires. He had left Rome in the History almost at the height of her power, but soon 'it shall begin to lose the beauty it had; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off; her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field, and cut her down'. (One wonders whether the young Edward Gibbon, who admired the History, was influenced by this passage in his choice of subject matter?) Great kings have been stirred 'by the desire of fame, which ploweth up the air, and soweth in the wind, [rather] than by the affection of bearing rule'. 'They have purchased the report of their actions in the world, by rapine, oppression and cruelty, by giving in spoil the innocent and labouring soul to the idle and insolent, and by having emptied the cities of the world of their ancient inhabitants: They remember the glorious actions of their predecessors but not their final destinies. Yet fame is of no value to the dead. Princes neglect the teaching of God and listen only to the counsel of death. 'Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred: 'Death alone...can suddenly make man to know himself.' It is a message of profound gloom and pessimism: there is no indication of the coming Incarnation of Christ or the promise of redemption. Having claimed at the outset that history can teach us valuable lessons he contends in his concluding pages that all is determined by God and implies, contradictorily, that God's plan has been rejected by man.
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Some have attributed Ralegh's despair to the death of Prince Henry, his patron, in 1612, and Lefranc has claimed that his praise of death was a concealed thrust against James I, but these explanations seem reductionist. It may be nearer the mark to say that the pessimism and self-pity were earlier reflected in the lines of the 'The Ocean to Cynthia' and had now been sharpened by a decade of imprisonment.
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