Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 02.djvu/832

BELLIARD. of Murat, he was able to accomplish little. After a varied career under the monarchy, he became the ambassador of Louis Philippe to Brussels, where he signed the treaty separating Belgium from Holland. He also contributed greatly to the reorganization of the Belgian Army. In 1836 a monument to him was unveiled in the city of Brussels. His autobiography was published in Paris, in 1842, under the title of Mémoires du général Belliard écrits par lui-même.

BELLIG'ERENT (Lat. belligerare, to wage war, from bellum, war + gerere, to carry). In international law, a government actually at war. It is not necessary that a political community shall be independent in order to have the status of a belligerent, but it must be maintaining itself by regular hostilities or otherwise under a de facto government. When a state of war exists between sovereign powers, the rights and duties of the several parties, both as between themselves and as to neutral powers, are in general clearly defined. Modern usage requires that the existence of a state of war shall be made known to neutral powers by public proclamation. (See .) As between the belligerent powers, the rules of modern warfare require that the lives and property of non-combatants shall be respected, forbid undue cruelty and the use of barbarous weapons and methods of warfare, and dictate that no more damage shall be inflicted than is necessary to obtain victory. Where an enemy's territory is occupied, the hostile authority may require the submission of the inhabitants, and may lawfully exercise over them the police and taxing powers of the government. As regards neutrals, the tendency of modern international law is to relieve them, their ships, their goods, and their trade, as far as possible, from the dangers and inconveniences of the war, and, on the other hand, to hold them strictly to a policy of complete abstention from the concerns of the warring States. See ; ; ; ; ; ;.

A more difficult question is presented when both parties to the struggle are not sovereign political communities, but one a colony in rebellion against the parent State, or a revolutionary section or party waging war against the general Government. Unless the conditions are such as to bring about the international recognition of the rebellious party as a belligerent, it has no standing in international law, and its acts of war are technically acts of piracy. It has no belligerent rights, and is not entitled to have its blockades respected or its vessels received in foreign ports. It is the recognition of an insurgent government as a belligerent by neutral powers which brings it within the protection of the laws of war. But this act. which involves no decision of the questions at issue between the contending parties, but only an official recognition of the fact that a state of war exists, must be carefully distinguished from recognition of the independence of the insurgent government. This amounts to a declaration that the parent State is unable to coerce the rebellious subject, and carries with it a recognition of the latter as a sovereign power.

For the neutral State, the question of the recognition of belligerency is one of expediency. Such recognition cannot be claimed by an insurgent as a matter of right. It may be conceded on purely selfish grounds, if the trade or other interests of the neutral call for such action; or it may be granted in response to the demands of humanity or of general international policy. But in order to be justifiable in international law, the recognition must rest upon certain accomplished facts — viz. the existence, in the rebellious community, of a stable, well-organized civil government, exercising de facto authority in a definite territory, and the existence of actual and serious hostilities, carried on by such constituted authority for a considerable period of time, though these need not be regular in character nor general in extent. If, in addition to all this, the insurrection is of a formidable character, if the hostilities are on a large scale, and, especially, if they arc of such a nature as to threaten the interests of neutral States, the case for recognition of belligerency may become so strong as to be conclusive. When an internecine struggle presents the aspect of a war between federated States — as in the American Civil War, and the conflict between Prussia and the majority of the German Confederation in 1866 — belligerent rights are usually accorded to both the contending parties impartially. The recognition of the Southern Confederacy by Great Britain and France in 1861, though strenuously opposed by the Government of the United States, was undoubtedly proper and necessary.

It remains to be noted that the grant of belligerent rights to an insurgent government is not an unmixed blessing, even to the recipient, and that it carries with it certain benefits to the other party to the contest. Its principal advantage to the former is the powerful moral support which it gains from international recognition. In addition to this, it acquires the substantial benefits, already alluded to, of protection by the laws of war: the recognition of its flag, the right to negotiate loans abroad, and, in general, a quasi-political status, though without diplomatic standing. On the other hand, the status of belligerency carries with it the obligation to observe the rules of civilized warfare, and it shifts the responsibility for damage caused to neutral commerce and to the citizens of neutral States from the sovereign party to the party in insurrection. Accordingly, in the American Civil War, Great Britain and France, having recognized the Southern Confederacy as a belligerent power, were unable to charge the Federal Government with liability for injuries to their subjects inflicted by the Confederate Government or by its citizens in the territory occupied by it; whereas the Government of Turkey, which did not recognize the Southern States, remained in a position to hold the United States responsible for the acts of its rebellious citizens.

Certain acts of war on the part of the sovereign or parent States in connection with rebellious subjects — as a proclamation or establishment of a blockade of the insurgent ports, an exchange of prisoners, the enforcement of the rules of war as to the carriage of contraband goods by neutrals — constitute in international law an implied recognition by the former of the belligerent status of the latter: but this affects only the character of the struggle between the parties, and does not in itself alter the relations of the insurgent Government to neutral