Montesquieu: Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to Offensive Force

The Spirit of Laws (1751)Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu

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Of Laws in the Relation They Bear to Offensive Force1. Of offensive Force.2. Of War.3. Of the Right of Conquest.4. Some Advantages of a conquered People.5. Gelon, King of Syracuse.6. Of Conquest made by a Republic.7. The same Subject continued.8. The same Subject continued.9. Of Conquests made by a Monarchy.10. Of one Monarchy that subdues another.11. Of the Manners of a conquered People.12. Of a Law of Cyrus.13. Charles XII.14. Alexander.15. New Methods of preserving a Conquest.16. Of Conquests made by a despotic Prince.17. The same Subject continued. FOOTNOTES
   1. See the Code of Barbarian Laws, and Book xxviii below.
   2. See the anonymous author of the Life of Louis le Debonnaire, in Duchesne's collection, ii, p. 296.
   3. See M. Barbeyrac's collection, art. 112.
   4. With regard to Tockenburg.
   5. He was at the head of a faction.
   6. Hanno wanted to deliver Hannibal up to the Romans, as Cato would fain have delivered up Cæsar to the Gauls.
   7. Of the 18th of October, 1738, printed at Genoa by Franchelli. See also the Amsterdam Gazette, Dec. 23, 1738.
   8. See Pufendorff's Universal History.
   9. Dionysius Halicarnassus, vii.
   10. See Arrian, De Expedit. Alex., i.
   11. Ibid.
   12. Ibid.
   13. Ibid., iii.
   14. This was Aristotle's advice. Plutarch, Of the Fortune and Virtue of Alexander.
   15. Arrian, De Expedit. Alex., vii.
   16. See the Law of the Burgundians, tit. 12, art. 5.
   17. See the Law of the Visigoths, iii, tit. 1, °1, which abrogates the ancient law that had more regard, it says, to the difference of nations than to that of people's conditions.
   18. See the Law of the Lombards, ii, tit. 7, °°1, 2.
   19. The kings of Syria, abandoning the plan laid down by the founder of the empire, resolved to oblige the Jews to conform to the manners of the Greeks -- a resolution that gave the most terrible shock to their government.
   20. See Arrian, De Expedit. Alex., iii, and others.
   21. Ibid.
   22. Ibid., vii.
   23. Tacitus, Life of Agricola, 14.