Page:Rebels and reformers (1919).djvu/155

 laws and into treaties, and eminent lawyers in European universities took the great work as a starting-point of the further development of principles of international law. There are two interesting instances of how the influence of the book was immediately felt. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who was the greatest general of the time, made a careful study of "De Jure Belli ac Pacis": he kept it by his bedside, and it was found in his tent after his death on the field of Lützen. Gustavus constantly stood for mercy, and began on a large scale the better conduct of modern war. He made speeches to his soldiers dissuading them from cruelty or rebuking them for it.

The other instance was in the case of the capture of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu, who governed France in the name of Louis XIII. La Rochelle was the stronghold of French Protestantism. All Europe expected that the inhabitants would be massacred, in accordance with the spirit of cruel intolerance which was usual at that time, and which would certainly be expected from the merciless Cardinal. But to the amazement of the world there were no massacre, no destruction, and no plunder, and the Huguenots were treated with mercy and even respect. At a later period, indeed, Cardinal Richelieu freed the writings of Grotius from the French censorship, and declared him one of the three great scholars of his time.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which closed the Thirty