Force and Fraud in Michel de Montaigne’s Essays

Abstract

Although Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) inscribes the Essays within a tradition of private, meditative, and self-reflexive writing in his Au Lecteur and De l’oisivete, they offer philosophical speculations and practical perspectives not only on ancient and early modern warfare, but also on the religious wars that the author witnessed during his lifetime. Indeed, their meditativeness allows the Essays to develop critical, engaged perspectives on war in general, and the uses of fraud and force in particular. Throughout the Western literary tradition, force and fraud have represented opposing alternatives to each other—the former representing a direct, honest approach to warfare, and the latter representing a cunning or strategic one.1 In so discussing the relationship between private and public morality, the Essays intervene in a longstanding tradition of civic and humanist thought. This essay argues that Montaigne’s speculations on force and fraud in ancient and early modern warfare represent a response to the general problem of war and more specifically, though indirectly, to the French sixteenth-century religious wars.2 It shall focus on the (Ciceronian and