War, Law and Humanity: The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853–1914 9781350041219, 9781350041240, 9781350041233
War, Law and Humanity tells the story of the transatlantic campaign to either mitigate the destructive forces of the bat
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English Pages [281] Year 2018
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Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Dramatis Personae
Timeline
Introduction: A Time for Angels
1 The Crimean Crucible
2 Citizen-Humanitarians
3 The Union Way
4 Visions from Geneva
5 How Best to Serve the Suffering?
6 When Angels Go to War
7 Humanity and Necessity
8 The Sound of Drums
9 Enter the Peace-Seekers
10 Regulating Apocalypse
Conclusion – 1914: The Campaign Ends?
Notes
Introduction: A Time for Angels
1 The Crimean Crucible
2 Citizen-Humanitarians
3 The Union Way
4 Visions from Geneva
5 How Best to Serve the Suffering?
6 When Angels Go to War
7 Humanity and Necessity
8 The Sound of Drums
9 Enter the Peace-Seekers
10 Regulating Apocalypse
Conclusion – 1914: The Campaign Ends?
Bibliography
Archives
Published Primary Sources
Official Reports and Conference Proceedings
Contemporary Accounts, Articles and Diaries
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
Monographs
Theses and Dissertations
Online Sources
Index
Citation preview
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War, Law and Humanity
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Also available from Bloomsbury Medicine in First World War Europe, by Fiona Reid Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire, by Jane Lydon
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War, Law and Humanity The Campaign to Control Warfare, 1853–1914 James Crossland
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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2018 Copyright © James Crossland, 2018 James Crossland has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p.ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © Embarkation of the sick at Balaklava, W. Simpson delt.; E. Morin lith. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-05686) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third- party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-4121-9 ePDF: 978-1-3500-4123-3 eBook: 978-1-3500-4122-6 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.
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For the Widows in Ypsilanti . . .
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Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Dramatis Personae Timeline Introduction: A Time for Angels
viii ix x xiv 1
1 The Crimean Crucible
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2 Citizen-Humanitarians
25
3 The Union Way
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4 Visions from Geneva
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5 How Best to Serve the Suffering?
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6 When Angels Go to War
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7 Humanity and Necessity
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8 The Sound of Drums
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9 Enter the Peace-Seekers
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10 Regulating Apocalypse
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Conclusion –1914: The Campaign Ends?
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Notes
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Bibliography
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Index
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Figures
1 Nightingale’s nurses at Scutari
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2 The USSC’s Field Relief Corps, 1864
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3 Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross
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4 The Committee of Five
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5 Demonstrating a Red Cross ambulance at the International Exposition in Paris, 1867
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6 The enemy of the ‘amateurs’, Jean-Charles Chenu 7 Napoleon III’s dentist and avid promoter of the USSC in Europe, Thomas Evans
8 The USSC’s propaganda man in Paris, Charles Bowles 9 The wounded and battle-weary trudge alongside an ambulance through the snow during the Franco-Prussian War, 1871
10 The Red Cross in action during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870 11 A Red Cross flag flies in the background as refugees and wounded 12 13 14 15 16
96 97 97 167 167
soldiers are helped by female volunteers in Serbia, 1876
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Russia’s architect of international law, Fedor Fedorovich Martens
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The peace-seeker, Bertha von Suttner
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Red Cross volunteers or soldiers? A scene from the Boer War
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The delegates gather for The Hague Conference, 1899
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A scene from the Geneva Conference, 1906
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Acknowledgements During the writing of this book, I have benefitted from various nuggets of wisdom, thoughtful suggestions and helpful ideas, both implicit and explicit, from: Neville Wylie, Davide Rodogno, Michael Durey, Rebecca Gill, Matthew Hill, Susan Grant, Andrew Webster, Rosemary Wall, Jon Arrizabalaga, Leo van Bergen and Peter Wilson. My thanks to all. A special thank you to Christopher Vaughan and Branden Little, both of whom made some important contributions to this book in regards to style and substance. The research and production of this book was also helped along immensely by the knowledge and assistance proffered by Fabrizio Bensi, Cynthia Germond and Fania Mohammed at the Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Susan Waide and Thomas Lisanti at the New York Public Library, and Catherine Nicols at the Staffordshire Records Office. My thanks also to Beatriz Lopez and Emily Drewe at Bloomsbury, who have guided me through the process of producing this book smoothly and efficiently. A final and important thank you must go to my love, Sarah, for her support, tolerance and endless understanding.
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Dramatis Personae Louis Appia (1818–1898) Franco-Swiss surgeon and co-founder of the International Committee of the Red Cross (the Committee). John Charles Ardagh (1840–1907) Head of British Military Intelligence in South Africa and delegate to the 1899 Hague Conference and the 1906 Geneva Conference. Clara Barton (1821–1912) Volunteer medic during the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian Wars. Founder of the American Red Cross. Johan Basting (1817–1870) Dutch army surgeon and founder of the Dutch Red Cross. Henry Whitney Bellows (1814–1882) New York clergyman and founder of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). Johann Kaspar Bluntschli (1808–1881) Swiss lawyer and co-founder of the Institute of International Law (IIL). Charles Bowles (1835–1915) USSC agent in Europe and unofficial Union representative at the 1864 Geneva Conference. George Halstead Boyland (1845–1880) American Civil War surgeon and volunteer medic in the Franco-Prussian War. Henry Brackenbury (1837–1914) British army officer and member of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Jean-Charles Chenu (1808–1879) French army surgeon, naturalist and coordinator of the Société de secours aux blessés militaires (SSBM) during the Franco-Prussian War. Edward A. Crane (1832–1906) Surgeon and member of both the USSC and the American Association for the Relief of Misery on the Battlefields. Volunteer medic during Franco-Prussian War. Randal Cremer (1828–1908) Member of British Parliament, peace activist and co-founder of the Interparliamentary Union (IPU).
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Dramatis Personae
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Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) Volunteer medic, human rights activist and Superintendent of Army Nurses for the Union during the American Civil War. David Dudley-Field (1804–1894) New York lawyer and co-founder of the IIL. Guillaume Dufour (1787–1875) Swiss general and co-founder of the Committee. Henry Dunant (1822–1910) Swiss philanthropist, author of A Memory of Solferino, co-founder of the Committee and, in later life, member of the peace movement. Thomas Evans (1823–1897) Dentist to Napoleon III, volunteer medic in the Franco-Prussian War and promoter of the USSC in Europe. Frédéric Ferrière (1848–1924) Nephew of Louis Appia, Red Cross volunteer and eventual Vice-President of the Committee. Clement Finley (1797–1879) Union Surgeon-General and opponent of the USSC. John Furley (1836–1919) Volunteer medic in numerous wars and founder of both the British Red Cross (BRC) and the St John Ambulance. John Hall (1795–1866) Inspector-General of Hospitals for the British Army during the Crimean War. William A. Hammond (1828–1900) Surgeon-General of the Union Army after the removal of Clement Finley. Elisha Harris (1824–1884) Sanitary theorist, medical inventor and co-founder of the USSC. Vincent Kennett-Barrington (1844–1903) Volunteer medic and head of the Stafford House Committee’s mission to Constantinople during the Russo-Turkish War. Nicasio Landa (1830–1891) Army surgeon and founder of the Spanish Red Cross. Leon LeFort (1829–1893) Surgeon and coordinator of the SSBM during the Franco-Prussian War. Jonathan Letterman (1824–1872) Union army surgeon and Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac.
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Dramatis Personae
Francis Lieber (1800–1872) German American lawyer, philosopher and author of the Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, General Orders 100. Thomas Longmore (1816–1895) British army surgeon, Surgeon-General, ally of Nightingale and advocate of BRC. Robert Loyd-Lindsay (1832–1901) Crimean War veteran, volunteer in the Franco-Prussian War and the Balkans conflicts, and co-founder of the BRC. William MacCormac (1836–1901) British army surgeon, head of the Anglo-American ambulance in the Franco- Prussian War and director of surgeon recruitment for the Stafford House Committee. William MacPherson (1858–1927) Major general in the Royal Army Medical Corps and architect of the reorganization of the BRC. Fedor Fedorovich Martens (1845–1909) Russian lawyer, diplomat and organizer of the Brussels and Hague Conferences. Théodore Maunoir (1806–1869) Swiss surgeon and co-founder of the Committee. Louisa McLaughlin (1836–1921) Volunteer medic during the Franco-Prussian War and the Balkans conflicts. Gustave Moynier (1826–1910) Swiss lawyer, co-founder of both the IIL and the Committee. President of the latter. Jaromir von Mundy (1822–1894) Austrian surgeon, medical inventor, founder of the Vienna Ambulance Service and Stafford House Committee surgeon during the Russo-Turkish War. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) Pioneering nurse and head of nurses for the British army at Scutari Barracks during the Crimean War. Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) Architect and co-founder of the USSC. Frédéric Passy (1822–1912) Member of the French Chamber of Deputies, economist, peace activist and founder of both the Société Française pour l’arbitrage entre Nations and the IPU. Emma Pearson (1828–1893) Volunteer medic in the Franco-Prussian War and the Balkans conflicts.
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Dramatis Personae
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Nicolai Pirogov (1810–1881) Russian surgeon and volunteer medic in the Crimean, Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish Wars. Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns (1835–1902) Belgian lawyer and co-founder of the IIL. William Howard Russell (1820–1907) War correspondent who made his name documenting soldier suffering during the Crimean War. Charles Ryan (1853–1926) Australian surgeon. Volunteer medic in the Franco-Prussian War and Stafford House Committee surgeon during the Russo-Turkish War. William T. Stead (1849–1912) Journalist and peace activist who covered the Hague conferences. Bertha von Suttner (1843–1914) Austrian peace activist and author of Lay Down your Arms. Sano Tsunetami (1822–1902) Politician and founder of the Japanese Red Cross. Charles van der Velde (1818–1898) Retired Dutch naval officer and Red Cross volunteer during the Schleswig-Holstein War.
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Timeline 1853 October
Russia Britain
Outbreak of Crimean War. The last of a series of international peace conferences held throughout the 1840s and 50s convenes in Edinburgh. 1854
March Russia September– Britain October November
Ottoman Empire
Britain and France join Crimean War. William Howard Russell’s reports on the poor condition of soldiers in Crimea are published in The Times. Florence Nightingale arrives at Scutari Barracks. 1855
January
Britain
February
Ottoman Empire
Lord Aberdeen’s government falls after intense public and parliamentary criticism over mishandling of the war. British Sanitary Commission arrives in the Crimea. 1856
March–A pril France August
Treaty of Paris ends Crimean War and Declaration of Paris lays down regulations on privateering and the use of blockades. Jean-Charles Chenu calls for increased financial investment and professionalization in military- medical services. 1859
June
Italy Britain
Henry Dunant and Louis Appia volunteer to tend to wounded in the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino. Nightingale’s reforms of Britain’s military-medical system begin.
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Timeline
xv 1861
April–July
United States
War between the Union and the Confederacy begins. Henry Bellows, Frederick Law Olmsted, Dorothea Dix, Elizabeth Blackwell and Elisha Harris conceive of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). Clara Barton nurses victims of a Confederate ambush. 1862
February
United States
May–August October November
Europe
Surgeon-General Finley ousted by USSC and replaced with William Hammond. Jonathan Letterman becomes Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac. Institutes reforms of Union military-medical system. Harris patents his stretch-bearing railcar. A Memory of Solferino is released to great acclaim. 1863
February
Switzerland
April
United States
October August– November
Switzerland Britain and France
Dunant, Appia, Gustave Moynier, Guillaume Henri Dufour and Théodore Maunoir form the International Committee for Relief to Wounded Soldiers (Committee). Francis Lieber’s General Orders no.100 (Lieber Code) is issued to Union commanders. First Geneva Conference is convened. USSC established branches in Paris and London. 1864
February
Denmark
Outbreak of Second Schleswig-Holstein War. Appia and Charles van der Velde sent as Red Cross volunteers. June France CSS Alabama sunk off Cherbourg. April–June United States Thomas Evans tours the Union as an agent of Napoleon III. August Switzerland Second Geneva Conference, at which the Geneva Convention is signed. November– Prussia/France Evans advises Napoleon III and King Wilhelm of the December need to replicate the USSC.
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Timeline
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1865 March
United States
April
Barton commences tracing of POWs and missing soldiers. Civil War ends. 1866
May
Prussia
June–A ugust Austria May– October
United States
Prussian army accepts Johan Kaspar Bluntschli’s translation of Lieber Code. Austro-Prussian War demonstrates the efficiency of the Prussian Red Cross. USSC and Christian Commission end their operations. American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields (American Association) is formed. 1867
March August September June
Switzerland
July
Prussia
April– November
France
Japan
La Guerre et la Charité is published. Dunant is kicked out of the Committee. International Peace Congress held in Geneva. Sano Tsunetami departs for Europe on a military fact-finding mission. North German Confederation is founded. Prussian Army buys up plans for Harris’ railcar. International Exposition in Paris displays USSC and Red Cross medical equipment. First International Red Cross Congress held in Paris. Frédéric Passy forms the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix. 1868
October
Switzerland
November
Russia
Conference in Geneva fails to agree on new maritime articles for the Geneva Convention. Moynier joins Passy’s Ligue Internationale. Declaration of St Petersburg speaks of the need to set ‘technical limits at which the necessities of war ought to yield to the requirements of humanity’. 1869
April September
Switzerland
Maunoir dies. Appia makes Barton aware of the Red Cross. 1870
July– December
France
Outbreak of Franco-Prussian War. Anglo-American ambulance formed in Paris. Barton works on behalf of refugees after being prohibited from frontline service.
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Timeline August
Britain
September
United States
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National Aid Society (NAS) founded by Robert Loyd-Lindsay and John Furley. American Association sends donations to France and Germany. 1871
January March
France
May
Wilhelm I proclaimed Emperor of the Kaiserreich. Communards seize Paris. Dunant negotiates with them for the release of prisoners. ‘Bloody Week’ and end of the Franco-Prussian War. 1872
April
Britain
April
Spain
June–A ugust France/Britain September October
Switzerland United States
Longmore calls for the formation of a permanent, military-supervised Red Cross. Outbreak of Third Carlist War. Furley and Nicasio Landa active despite no Red Cross mandate. Universal Alliance for Order and Civilisation founded by Dunant. Alabama Claims tribunal ends in Geneva. Lieber dies. 1873
June– September
Belgium
Institute of International Law (IIL) founded in Ghent. International peace conference held in Brussels ends in schism between Passy faction and the IIL. 1874
July
Belgium
Fedor Fedorovich Martens, with the support of Tsar Alexander II, convenes a conference on the laws of war in Brussels. It ends with no binding agreement. 1875
July
Switzerland
Dufour dies. 1876
February
Switzerland
February April
Spain Ottoman Empire
December
Britain
May
United States
Fréderic Ferrière is despatched to Montenegro to assist refugees and found a national Red Cross society. Third Carlist War ends. Bulgarian uprising against Ottoman rule leads to atrocities against civilians and outrage across Europe. Stafford House Committee formed with the aim to provide relief to Ottoman soldiers. Bellows dissolves the American Association.
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Timeline
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1877 January April May
Japan Ottoman Empire Belgium
June
Russia Britain
Haskuaisha founded by Tsunetami. Outbreak of Russo-Turkish War. IIL’s appeal for Bashi-Bazouks to adhere to international law is ignored. Martens issues an instructional code for Russian troops. Furley founds the St John Ambulance Association. 1878
March
Ottoman Empire
Russo-Turkish War ends. 1879
July November
Britain France
Stafford House Committee dissolves. Chenu dies. 1880
September
Britain
Oxford Manual is published. 1881
October
Germany
Bluntschli dies. 1882
January March
United States
Bellows dies. Washington signs the Geneva Convention. American Red Cross founded. 1887
May
Japan
Japanese Red Cross founded. 1889
June
Austria France
Lay Down Your Arms is published to wide acclaim. Interparliamentary Union founded. 1892
France
Reforms of voluntary aid implemented, aligning Red Cross activities more closely with the work of the army medical service. 1895
September
Britain
Longmore dies. 1896
February
Ottoman Empire
Barton launches relief mission for victims of the Armenian massacres.
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Timeline
xix 1897
July
Switzerland
Dunant joins the peace movement at Suttner’s urging. 1898
April– August May August
Cuba and Philippines Switzerland Russia
December
Europe
American-Spanish War. ARC’s performance criticized. Appia dies. Tsar Nicholas II issues rescript calling for disarmament conference. William Stead’s ‘Peace Crusade’ begins. 1899
May–July
Netherlands
First Hague Conference.
October
South Africa
Outbreak of Boer War. Arbitration suggested. 1900
September
Netherlands
Convention for the Pacific Settlement of Disputes comes into force. 1901
June December
Britain Norway
Loyd-Lindsay dies. Dunant and Passy are jointly awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize. 1902
May December
South Africa Japan
Boer War ends. Tsunetami dies. 1904
February May
China United States
Outbreak of Russo-Japanese War. Barton steps down as ARC president. 1905
February
United States
September
China
July
Britain
New ARC charter aligns the organization closely with the War Department. Russo-Japanese War ends. Japanese Red Cross universally praised. BRC reformed and refounded. 1906
June
Switzerland
Second Geneva Conference ends in revised Geneva Convention, which classifies volunteers as military- medical auxiliaries.
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newgenprepdf
Timeline
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1907 February June– October
Britain Netherlands
Russell dies. Second Hague Conference. 1909
June
Britain Russia
Voluntary Aid Detachment scheme established. Martens dies. 1910
August October
Switzerland Britain Switzerland
Moynier dies. Nightingale dies. Dunant dies. 1912
April June
Atlantic Ocean Stead dies aboard the RMS Titanic. United States Barton dies. France Passy dies. 1914
June Austria July–August Europe
Suttner dies. First World War begins.
1
Introduction: A Time for Angels
In the summer of 1897, a white-bearded recluse residing in the Swiss town of Heiden penned an assessment of the evolution of war to which he had long borne witness: War is not yet dead! If it has changed its form it is only to become more terrible! Everything that makes up the pride of our civilisation will be at the services of war: your electric railroads, your airships, your submarines and flying bridges, your snap-shot photography, your telegraphs, telephones, and so many other wonderful inventions will perform splendid service for war side by side with the instruments of human murder. What does not man invent to make death quicker and surer!1
The author of this apocalyptic tirade was Henry Dunant, an impoverished sixty-eight- year-old convalescent who, a little over three decades before, had inspired the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross by voicing concerns for the suffering of soldiers in battle. The founding of this organization in Geneva in 1863 provided the catalyst for the Red Cross movement, which spread across much of the world in the decades that followed, manifesting as national aid societies comprised of volunteers offering medical and material assistance to sick and wounded soldiers. To Dunant’s regret, there were more than enough opportunities for the Red Cross faithful to answer his call to humanity –war, barbarism and bloodshed plagued the latter half of the nineteenth century. It was only a few months after the Red Cross was founded that an army of 38,000 Danes was crushed by a coalition of Prussians and Austrians double its size. Two years later, in 1866, the victors turned their guns on each other, engaging in a war that, despite lasting only seven weeks, sent over 80,000 soldiers to their graves. On the heels of Prussia’s victory over Austria came yet another triumph when, in 1871, the armies of the newly proclaimed Kaiser Wilhelm I inflicted a colossal and humiliating defeat on France, leaving a butcher’s bill in the region of 350,000 dead and wounded. The slaughter was not confined to Europe. As Prussia marched to its moment of glory in its war against Denmark, in distant China a fourteen-year-long conflict against the Qing Dynasty, led by a failed civil servant-turned warlord would- be messiah named Hong Xiuquan, ended in days of massacre on the streets of Nanjing, adding to an already catastrophic death toll of 20 million men, women and children. Three years before this bloody climax to what became known as the ‘Taiping Rebellion’, an ocean away in the United States, a civil war of a different kind broke out, dividing
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the country between north and south. By the time it ended in 1865, this four-year- long industrial-scale conflagration would claim the lives of at least 750,000 soldiers and civilians.2 A decade after the American Civil War, the Balkans was ravaged by its own outbreak of violent secessionism from which, in 1877, there erupted a war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire –the second clash between the two great powers to have occurred within a generation. The Balkans conflicts were characterized both by sectarian violence and the lurid reporting of war correspondents left aghast at the ‘barbarous horse trappings, hair tufted lances and wild gestures’ of the Ottoman irregular troops, ‘an unruly mob of undisciplined soldiers’ that gained notoriety for their manifold acts of brigandage. At the same time that these reports of barbarism were flowing out of Anatolia, machine guns built in the United States and operated by German-and French-trained soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army cut down katana- wielding samurai during the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Although it ended decades before Dunant’s pained proclamation, the nature of this conflict foreshadowed its substance, offering a picture of future wars in which industry, science and innovation would be bent to serve the irresistible forces of violence and destruction.3 In the midst of this carnage the Red Cross volunteers held, for the most part, to a necessary dictum –it was not the place of the Samaritans and surgeons who wore the Red Cross badge to condemn the practice of war, however horrifically it might manifest. There was an important reason for this stance, which struck at the heart of the Red Cross’s potential to be an effective mitigator of wartime suffering. No general would countenance civilians opposed to war subverting his soldiers, tending their wounds while speaking of the laying down of arms and the futility of violence. For most Red Cross volunteers, this need to exorcise pacifist sentiment from their mission came easy. The fact that the Red Cross movement grew in membership, purview and importance with each passing, war-scarred year did, after all, point to a conclusion that was incompatible with pacifism –wars will always take place and, moreover, volunteers will always be needed to tend the wounded without pause to question why. Peace was a laudable, yet forlorn dream. And yet, decades after conceiving of the movement that would hold to this assessment of war, Dunant emerged from his hermit-like existence in Heiden to both lament the years of blood needlessly spilt and denounce the symbiosis of technological progress and industrial-scale death that was poisoning the fin de siècle. ‘The Red Cross societies were the first landmark of brotherly solidarity in the noblest field of philanthropy’, he reflected, but for all their labours the volunteers could only achieve so much. What was needed now was for the forces of humanity to take the next logical step –to realize that only peace could defeat war.4 This book is a story of humanitarians, surgeons, lawyers, pacifists, progressives, politicians, utopians and adventurers. People like Dunant who, shocked by the wanton violence and lawlessness of the conflicts that were erupting around them, resolved to try and control war –its practice, its character and even its capacity to be waged. Unlike the Red Cross founder, most of these campaigners chose their means of combating Mars and stuck to it. For those who laboured in the medical services of their nation’s armies, penned laws of war in grand conference halls, or flocked to the banner of the Red Cross and other humanitarian groups, war was accepted as an inevitability. The best and only response was to control the scale and degree of wartime suffering by
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Introduction
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improving military medicine and the standards of soldier welfare, or by developing new rules and norms that would bring limitations to the level and form of violence that could be dealt. To the minds of those who sought peace as the ultimate means of control, these attempts to ‘civilize’ or ‘humanize’ war were as futile as they were dangerous. How could banning one specific type of weapon, or repairing the broken bodies of soldiers, only for them to be thrown back into the maw of battle, possibly remedy the ills of war? How could the act of regenerating armies by keeping soldiers fighting fit do anything but prolong the slaughter? As Baroness Bertha von Suttner, one of the more venerable peace-seekers of the age, put it when musing on the services provided to soldiers by the Red Cross, ‘today it seems there might be something still better than this good –not to send them out!’5 For Suttner and her ilk, limiting war would never be a substitute for its eradication. This schism in the campaign to control war was born of the differing perceptions held by the humanitarians and peace-seekers who were living through an era in which the nature of war was changing before their very eyes. From the period of the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1853 through until the fateful summer of 1914, the world’s militaries combined new weapons such as machine guns, rapid-reload rifles and fast- firing artillery to dread effect with ordnance that could expand, ignite or explode upon contact with human flesh. Iron-clad warships bristling with rifled cannons, hot air balloons that gave long-range sight to artillery and, in later years of the era, planes from which grenades and bombs –perhaps containing gas –could be lobbed, as well as trains capable of moving battalions of men at great speed across vast distances fired war-like imaginations. The development of these means of expanding the boundaries of war by enlarging the battle space and intensifying its lethality was inseparable from the growing rivalry between the world’s great powers, particularly following the realization of German unification in 1871, and the resulting disruption of the balance of power in Europe. Together, this geopolitical shift and the Anglo-German arms race of the decades that followed underpinned a creeping, fatalistic belief among military men and civilians alike that a future war of frightening magnitude lay on the horizon. With this fear of future war came increased consideration for the misery and suffering that such a conflict would engender, fed by the graphic reports of wounded and diseased soldiers, starving civilians and shell-flattened villages that were filed by war correspondents from the battlefields of Alma, Solferino, Shiloh, Königgrätz, Sedan and Mukden –each a blood-stained milestone on the march to 1914. Caught in the midst of this storm of fear and change, the humanitarians and peace-seekers rallied, as mindful as anyone of what was at stake if the practice of war continued to develop at so rapid a rate and in such an unfettered way.6 Base concerns for humanity and its future aside, the motivations of those who waged the campaign to control war were diverse. Charity, empathy, scientific investigation, divine guidance, nationalism, internationalism, self- promotion, professional advancement and future war planning all served as driving forces for both humanitarians and peace-seekers, whose backgrounds and competencies were just as varied. Some of the humanitarian volunteers were simply concerned citizens –people who had never seen a battlefield or received little, if any, medical training. Dunant fell into this category; so too did the founder of the American Red Cross, Clara Barton,
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War, Law and Humanity
and her legendary British precursor Florence Nightingale, whose determination to assist those otherwise left to the indifference of the British army medical staff during the Crimean War inspired a generation of humanitarians to take up bandages and force their way into war zones, whether welcomed by the military authorities or not. There were others possessed of more recognized competencies. Forward-thinking army surgeons like Thomas Longmore, Jonathan Letterman, Nicolai Pirogov and Jean-Charles Chenu channelled their frustrations at the lack of military-medical preparedness within their nation’s armies into campaigns to modernize hospitals, test new methods of amputation, improve the treatment of gunshot wounds, and develop the quickest and most stable means of evacuating the wounded to safety. And then there were those who brought something more than either medical knowledge or basic empathy to the campaign. These were the visionaries who saw the controlling of war as a means by which a new world could be built –a more humane and healthy world in which science, progress and order would reign supreme. These were the likes of the pioneering American Civil War surgeon William A. Hammond, who believed that the infusing of logistics and science into military medicine would not only ensure victory for the Union in its fight against the Confederacy, but would also provide foundations on which to build a stable, educated and prosperous United States in the years of peace to come. He shared this vision with the assortment of doctors and businessmen who founded the Union’s largest humanitarian organization, the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC). Conceived in the summer of 1861, the USSC channelled the regional philanthropic energies of the northern United States into the creation of a nation-spanning military-medical juggernaut. The USSC also championed the need for humanitarian volunteers to have a place on the battlefield, observing with a keen sense of prophecy how the battles of Chickamauga, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg were mere precursors to the colossal engagements that would define the wars of the future. The numbers of wounded created by such battles demanded not only the harnessing of volunteers by armies to supplement the work of their official medical departments, but also higher standards of discipline and professionalism within the ranks of the humanitarians. The USSC’s vision of ‘methodized’ humanitarianism was, however, only one conception of how the volunteers could bring order to the chaos of war. For Dunant –at least, before his turn to outright pacifism in the 1890s –Christian charity and a willingness to help were all that was needed for the angels of the world to deliver mercy to its battlefields. This view was not too dissimilar to that held by Quaker volunteers as well as humanitarian adventurers like the British Red Cross founder John Furley, who initially saw the Red Cross symbol as a licence to roam war zones at will in the name of humanity. A defining aspect of the humanitarians’ campaign was a prolonged argument over this issue –is spontaneous charity in the event of war enough, or do volunteers need to become one with the armies they serve, preparing, like soldiers, for the battles ahead? The labours of these battlefield angels –whether they were “amateurs” like Dunant or ‘professionals’ like the USSC –were only one part of the story to control wartime suffering. No less crucial than the actions of the volunteers were the words of those who tried to curb the excesses of wartime violence through ideas and paperwork, rather than bandages and bone-saws. These were the lawyers and statesmen whose efforts to
5
Introduction
5
craft laws that would govern the behaviour of troops, the treatment of civilians and the use of new weapons, manifested in ways that frequently intersected with the labours of both humanitarian volunteers and army surgeons. It was, after all, the drafting in 1864 of an international humanitarian law treaty –the First Geneva Convention –that officially gave birth to the Red Cross. The man who partnered with Dunant to conceive of this convention, Gustave Moynier, understood the nexus between international law and humanitarianism all too well. In addition to serving as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross from 1863 until his death in 1910, he was also a co-founder of the Institute of International Law (IIL), a group of lawyers who assumed the burden of drafting international codes for both the conduct of war and the preservation of peace. The IIL’s greatest struggles came in tandem with those of the battlefield humanitarians, who suffered both triumph and tragedy in pursuit of their cause during the wars of German unification and the Balkans conflicts of the 1870s. These wars were particularly decisive in setting both the IIL’s expectations of what it could achieve through the regulation of war and shaping the nature of the Red Cross’s humanitarian mission, forcing the battlefield angels to become more pragmatic, professionalized and militarized in their responses to conflicts. Neither the IIL nor the Red Cross were alone in having to alter their approach to controlling war, particularly in the wake of Prussia’s triumph over France in 1871. For the peace-seekers who had been near-dormant in their activism since the Crimean War, the 1870s marked a time of cautious rebirth for a movement that had come to be derided as naïve and utopian. Faith-based pacifism, belief in free-trade and the desires of both socialist and nationalist radicals to build a world of peace on the ruins of an old order crushed by revolution had characterized the peace movement for decades. In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, however, the peace-seekers joined the IIL in focusing on the promotion of arbitration –the system by which nations on the precipice of war could bring their quarrel to a neutral tribunal in an effort to negotiate a settlement rather than take up arms. The campaign for arbitration restored the peace movement, giving it a tantalizingly plausible means of achieving its ultimate aim, even as war clouds began to darken over Europe during the final years of the nineteenth century. By assessing the paths taken by peace-seekers like Bertha von Suttner and the French politician Frédéric Passy alongside those trodden by the likes of Dunant and Moynier, this study demonstrates that the two factions in the campaign to control war were more closely bound by extrinsic circumstances than first appears. Indeed, at the heart of this book lies the contention that it is only by looking at the intertwined stories of the humanitarians and the peace-seekers of this era that a true appreciation can be gained of how tangible the campaign to control war was to those who fought it. Justifiably or not, those party to the campaign often conceptualized their efforts as being part of a single initiative forged in response to the threat of war, despite the clear points of divergence that existed between those who sought to either mitigate the excesses of war or seek its end as a practice. The conceptions and motivations of the humanitarians and peace-seekers will dominate much of the discussion that follows. This book, however, is not an attempt to comprehensively document the numerous breakthroughs that occurred in military medicine, international law, disarmament and arbitration in the decades leading up to
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War, Law and Humanity
the First World War. A wealth of literature is available for the reader who is interested in these topics, and there is no need here to reiterate the findings of the historians and legal scholars who have engaged with them in great detail.7 The same can be said of the many conflicts that pock-marked the decades leading up to 1914. For the purposes of brevity, I have focused only on those wars in which events of significance in the campaign to control war unfolded. Again, the scholarship on the various wars that erupted across the Ottoman Empire between the 1880s and 1914, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, as well as the many colonial wars of the age is vast.8 There is no need here to delve into each bloody conflagration. This book’s approach to exploring the wars, humanitarian initiatives, peace-seeking efforts and international laws of this period is necessitated both by a desire to avoid well-covered ground, and the need to move discussion of the war-humanitarianism nexus into a space where it can be both stripped of romanticism, and treated as something other than the history of ‘isms’.9 By focusing here on the individuals who constructed the modern systems of military medicine and international law and, in ways both implicit and explicit, questioned the norms of what was humane or necessary on the battlefield, this book aims simply to tell an important story –the story of what happened during the six decades leading up to the First World War when an array of people, from a number of nations and for a variety of reasons, tried to create a world in which wars would either be fought humanely, or not be fought at all.
7
1
The Crimean Crucible
Richard Cobden –member of the British parliament –rose from his chair and took the lectern. The audience he cast his gaze over was modest in size but impressive in appearance, the assembly enhanced by the Georgian splendour of the Edinburgh Music Hall into which it had crammed to hear Cobden speak. This gathering, held on 13 October 1853, was the most recent in a series of peace conferences that had taken place over the course of the previous five years in Brussels, Paris, London, Frankfurt and Manchester. For the most part these had been grand occasions, drawing pacifists, politicians, economists and activists from Europe and the United States, all desirous of building a peaceful world on the foundations of free trade and international cooperation. The success of each congress seemed to build on that of its predecessor. The reason for this, Cobden noted to those gathered in the Music Hall, was obvious. With the exception of the occasional revolutionary or sectarian flare up, mid-nineteenth century Europe was enjoying the fact ‘that since the year 1815 there has been no general or considerable war’. And yet, as Cobden had to admit to his listeners, a threat to that happy status quo was presently hanging over all humanity. Despite the peace-seeker’s efforts to push for the disarmament of Europe’s militaries, the arbitration of disputes between states, free trade and the development of international law, Cobden conceded that the willingness of states to wage war had not abated in the years after Napoleon’s final defeat, and that ‘all the nations of Europe are in a position so prepared for war, as if but yesterday the treaty of peace had been signed’.1 The crowd rumbled in discontent at this statement, proven as it had been barely days before the peace-seekers descended on Edinburgh when news came that Sultan Abdülmecid, ruler of the Ottoman Empire, had declared war on Russia. The grievances between Abdülmecid and Tsar Nicholas I had been simmering for years, but it was the latter’s ordering of his armies to occupy the Ottoman principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in June 1853 that marked the beginning of the end of the Pax Europa. Addressing this ominous turn of events, Cobden accepted that neither ruler could be persuaded to depart from the path of war they had chosen. At stake in the quarrel was the old issue of pilgrims’ rights to travel unmolested through the Holy Land, coupled with geo-strategic concerns over Russian access to the eastern Mediterranean. War between the forces of the Sultan and the Tsar would happen. What remained for the peace-seekers was to ensure that the fighting did not spread beyond the fringes of the Black Sea. To this end, Cobden pledged to his audience that he would
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War, Law and Humanity
oppose in parliament any notion that Britain should ‘exercise God’s vengeance upon Russia for doing an act of injustice to Turkey’.2 Such non-interventionist sentiments, however, were out of step with the thinking of many within the British government and its military steeped as most officials and officers were in a culture of Russophobia. Despite its hostility towards Russia, Britain nevertheless made diplomatic attempts to broker a peace in the months that followed the Edinburgh congress; however, British officials were fearful of Russia shattering the already fragile Ottoman Empire and gaining access to strategically important ports. And so, on 20 March 1854, Britain, along with France, officially took the side of Abdülmecid. What followed was a war that erupted in no less than five theatres across the northern hemisphere, belying the rather myopic name that historians have since bestowed upon it –the Crimean War.3 Cobden and his disappointed followers felt the impact of this war –the first fought by Britain against a great power for more than a generation –acutely. As the war progressed the peace-seekers continued to lament and record the loss of blood and treasure. They made appeals to the government, handed out pamphlets calling for a cessation to hostilities in halls and taverns, placed placards denouncing the war in the streets but still the war dragged on until March 1856. The peace-seekers’ failure to bring an end to the war was not, however, the primary defeat they suffered. The real hammer blow dealt by the Crimean War was the fact that, as ‘the voice of reason, the lessons of experience, the suggestions of religious humility were drowned in a passionate tumult of popular excitement’, the momentum that had been built up by the peace movement in decades prior swiftly crumbled. Both Cobden and his colleague in the London Peace Society, the Quaker MP John Bright, were shouted down for their views in parliament and, when Bright attempted to hold a peace rally in Manchester, he was burned in effigy by his own constituents. Set against such war-like passions all the peace-seekers could do was to wait out the storm and, as Bright put it, ‘hope sometimes for better times’. This sentiment was forlorn. Although the London Peace Society continued to meet and pacifistic statements were still occasionally expressed in parliament by Bright and Cobden, it was not until 1867, two years after the latter’s death and eleven years after the Crimean War had ended, that another international peace conference comparable to the Edinburgh meeting took place. Near to, though not quite mortally wounded, the peace movement that had flourished in Europe since the early nineteenth century was just one of the many casualties of the Crimean War.4 It was not just the cause of peace that was impacted by a war that proffered visions of a future in which weaponry would be more devastating, casualties more numerous and the scale of suffering higher than most would be willing to tolerate. These changes in the nature of warfare were not immediately apparent to most observers. Many soldiers of the Crimean War attacked their foes on horseback wielding sabres, while their peasant orderlies struggled to move aged cannon on donkey-drawn carts along muddy tracks that sufficed for roads. The British army despatched to the Crimea bore more than a passing resemblance to that which the Duke of Wellington had led against Napoleon over a generation earlier, while their Russian enemies marched with decades-old smooth-bore muskets in hand, obsolete artillery pieces at the rear and, particularly among the Cossack soldiers, the prospect of a suicidally heroic bayonet charge on their minds.5
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The Crimean Crucible
9
These echoes of the past in the Crimea, however, were drowned out over the course of the fighting by a more modern cacophony of steel-working, steam engines and electric pulses. From the moment they took the decision to support the Ottomans, the French began developing steam-powered, ironclad warships, the purpose of which was to counter the devastating power of Russia’s explosive-shell firing Paixhans gun, which had been invented in 1822, ironically, by a French artillery officer. The Ironclads were still only in the prototype stage by the time the Crimean War ended in 1856, but their development paved the way for the next, more famous, wave of Ironclads that were utilized to devastating effect during the American Civil War. A glimpse of wars to come was also present outside Sevastopol where, at the same time that the death or glory Charge of the Light Brigade was taking place at Balaclava, hundreds of kilometres of Somme-like trenches were being constructed around the city by the Anglo-French forces. The besiegers of Sevastopol, moreover, were supplied with heavy artillery and explosive shells via the Grand Crimean Central Railway, a train line purpose-built by the invaders to improve the Crimea’s otherwise medieval transport infrastructure. Hundreds of miles away in the Baltic theatre, British naval officers debated the merits of using sulphur-packed artillery shells as a means of dispersing the Russian garrison at Kronstadt, only to ultimately decide that such a measure was too barbarous and uncivilized to countenance. In addition to rail-delivered artillery, and the grisly option of using chemical weapons, the Anglo-French also deployed the latest rifle technology in the form of the Enfield, one of a new generation of weapons with rifled rather than smooth bores, which made it capable of firing the minié bullet. Like the Paixhans gun, the minié came from the mind of a Frenchman, Capitan Claude-Étienne Minié who, in 1848, developed a conical lead bullet that could expand into the grooves of a rifled barrel, providing greater velocity and accuracy than ordinary lead balls. Combined, the Enfield and the minié represented a significant advancement that enabled soldiers to kill their enemies more efficiently.6 Perhaps more notable than the new weaponry of the Crimean War were the changes in the field of communications, allowing Europe’s civilians to comprehend more completely than ever the brutal nature of a distant war from the comfort of their homes. Newspaper outlets across Europe –delivered information via railways, steamships and the telegraph – took readers on a graphic tour of the frontlines through the eyes of the world’s first war correspondents, whose reports were reflected on and responded to via letters to the editor. As a result of this, the Crimean War was the first major war in which the opinions of an increasingly informed public were both heard and noted by governments. Indeed, both the British and the French were driven in part by public pressure to declare war on Russia, which was widely depicted by the press over the summer of 1853 as a bully picking on the Ottoman ‘sick man’. Newspaper articles concerned with the Crimea championed a range of casus belli: national pride, anti-Slavism, the threat of Orthodox Christian dominance of the Holy Land, British values, French values, the need to defend the ‘plucky’ Ottomans from the despotic Tsar and much more besides.7 Once the war began proper, this deepening relationship between the press, the public and the government only intensified, particularly in Britain where, unlike in France, a free press was maintained for the duration of the war. It was, therefore, in Britain that a new epoch in the connection between the
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War, Law and Humanity
home front and the battlefront developed –one in which politicians, priests, lords, ladies, merchants, pub landlords and their families were able to discuss in the pages of newspapers matters that had hitherto been the sole concern of military authorities.8 Bright and Cobden tried in vain to steer this public discourse in the direction of criticizing the economic and human costs of the war in order to curtail the ‘generous, but mistaken enthusiasm of the people’ for the conflict. To this end, Bright made a spectacular politically miscalculation when, in October 1854, he wrote a letter intended for publication to the MP Absalom Watkin, in which he both depicted the government’s intervention ‘to be as criminal before God as it is destructive of the true interest of my country’, and refused in protest Watkin’s request that he attend a meeting of the Patriotic Fund, which had been setup to provide for the widows and orphans of British soldiers.9 The public outrage directed at Bright for his lack of consideration for the brave fighting men of the Crimea was so palpable as to bury his message of war’s futility beneath calls for his resignation. Other peace-seekers took a more subtle approach, premised on altering, rather than acting in blatant defiance of, the recalcitrant public mood. Both the London Peace Society and its counterpart, the American Peace Society, published accounts from army nurses and surgeons, one of the more graphic of which described how a surgeon had spent two full days after the Battle of Alma ‘literally in a sea of blood . . . no description I could give would realize the horrors of war –the dead, the dying, horses, guns, carriages, pell-mell –headless trunks, bodies minus arms or legs, mutilation of every sort and kind’.10 The purpose of printing such grisly reports was to wean the public off their sudden addiction to war, and yet still the peace-seekers gained little ground. This was not because such realities of war were unappreciated. Rather, it was because the comprehension of these tales of suffering was different within the general public than it was within the peace movement. What really concerned a public committed to the cause of fighting the Russians was not how best to bring the soldiers home from the blood, disease and carnage, but how to protect them from its excesses, by safeguarding their wellbeing in the camps, on the frontlines and in the hospitals to which they were evacuated when wounded. Before the war ended, the impassioned discourse between the state and its citizens over the welfare of British soldiers would popularize the new profession of war correspondency, contribute to the toppling of Lord Aberdeen’s government, and open up a new chapter in the campaign to control war that was defined, not by peace activism, but by the need to keep soldiers –in the Crimean War and in conflicts still to come –fighting fit and free from unnecessary suffering.11 One of the key figures who ushered in this era of public concern for soldiers was a thirty-three year-old Irishman named William Howard Russell, who spent close to two years serving as special correspondent for The Times in the Crimea. Russell had first reported from a warzone in 1850, when he documented the exploits of the Danish army during the First Schleswig-Holstein War. His reportage there was unremarkable and in the years after he bounced around Europe, covering everything from the launching of new steam-ships in France to high society parties in London. Russell’s big break came in 1853 when he was embedded with the Anglo-French expeditionary force that was heading to the Crimea. Determined to present an unvarnished account of men at war, Russell sent his first report back to The Times in April 1854 on conditions in
11
The Crimean Crucible
11
the Anglo-French camp at Varna in Bulgaria. Describing the ‘wretchedness of this place’ and the lack of preparedness on the part of the generals to feed and house their troops, Russell painted visions of a grave dug by the British for themselves. The ‘evil effects of strangling the services in times of peace by ill-judged parsimony’ had left a once great army reliant on under-supplied quartermasters, inexperienced officers and unhealthy soldiers.12 Russell’s initial observations of an army in wanting caused some murmurs back in London, however, it was not until October 1854, weeks after the Anglo-French had fought their first battle at Alma, that Russell truly grabbed the headlines. Building on his prior observations of an army ‘spoilt as much as possible by the genius of maladministration’, Russell gave a graphic account of the consequences of such negligence in the wake of battle, when he described the fate of wounded soldiers evacuated across the Black Sea from Alma to Scutari military hospital in Constantinople. ‘Everywhere,’ he wrote ‘the eye encounters pale faces, forms bending with weakness, fever-stricken spectres creeping along by the support of walls, or crouching in corners with listless countenances too weak to take notice of the scenes passing around them.’13 As Russell had alluded to in his prior reports, there was a certain inevitability to this reduction of Britain’s fighting men to pestilent wraiths. In the summer of 1854, the entire Black Sea region was hit with a cholera epidemic and, before the fighting had even begun, the Anglo-French force lost thousands of men to the disease while mustering at Varna. This was just the beginning. By the time the conflict ended cholera, dysentery, typhoid and other maladies born of poor sanitary practices and contaminated water supplies would cause 17,580 of the 22,182 deaths recorded within the British army. Close to 60,000 of the 95,000 Frenchmen who died in the Crimean War also succumbed to illness, rather than bullets or bayonets. The Russians, who even before the war had an average 65 per cent death rate from pestilence within their ranks, suffered similarly huge losses from infected wounds and water-borne diseases, which carried off 14,671 and 37,454 of the Tsar’s men respectively by conflict’s end.14 No less common than the scale of infection and disease in the Crimean War was the inability of the military-medical departments to either prevent or cure –a situation that afflicted all armies of the age to varying degrees. In the 1850s, germ theory was yet to be fully understood, the screening of soldiers for diseases at the point of enlistment was not widely practiced and the idea of having nutritional standards for rations was alien. In terms of dealing with the wounded, the French Army at least benefitted from the legacy of Napoleon’s famous battlefield surgeon, Dominique Jean Larrey, who had developed, among other things, the practice of triage to prioritize treatment. However, the quantity of army surgeons in France in the 1850s was woefully disproportionate to the size of the invasion force sent to the Crimea and, like all belligerents, their access to bandages, stretchers and anaesthetic was disrupted by faulty supply lines caused by an absence of sound logistical planning and consideration for the challenges of the terrain. The British army’s medical service had similar problems, albeit without foundations as solid as those provided to the French by Larrey. During the Napoleonic Wars, Wellington’s army had been under-serviced by its surgeons, many of whom had little, in any, medical training. The British ambulance service was a shadow of that developed by Larrey and, rather than adopting a system of triage to sort through the
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War, Law and Humanity
wounded, rank and status usually determined whether a soldier received treatment or was left to die. The one significant asset the British military-medical services possessed during the Napoleonic Wars was the Royal Waggon Train, which carried both supplies and wounded in a manner that was relatively organized, safe and stable. Having vanquished its nemesis, however, the British disbanded the Royal Waggon Train in 1833 as part of the programme of reduced spending that Russell would lament twenty years later. This meant that the surgeons who went to war in the Crimea had to start from scratch when it came to planning the basest activity of evacuating wounded to safety.15 More serious problems existed in the knowledge base of the British army’s military- medical department. In 1844, the War Office had acknowledged the need to recruit surgeons possessed of the most up-to-date medical expertise. The reforms proposed to meet this need, however, were deemed too expensive to implement during an age of post-Napoleonic peace and so an overhaul of the stagnant post-1815 military-medical departments never took place. Consequently, on the eve of the Crimean War second- year medical students –provided they had a good letter of reference –could apply for, and receive posts as army surgeons, irrespective of the fact that they might never have even seen, let alone treated, a wound inflicted by rifle, sabre or cannon.16 In the Crimea, this unreformed system was presided over by the head of the Army Medical Department, Sir John Hall. A man of vast experience but narrow vision, Hall showed a consistent lack of appreciation throughout the war for how bad the army’s medical situation was. As one of the more capable surgeons in the Crimea put it, ‘Dr Hall appears to me to be a theorist. I have seen no evidence of him being a practical man’.17 In truth, the idea of Hall even being a theorist was generous, and he was far from up-to-date on the latest military-medical ideas. In contrast to his Russian and French equivalents, Hall gave standing orders to his surgeons that they should refrain from using chloroform as an anaesthetic when performing amputations, on the grounds that ‘the smart of the knife is a powerful stimulant’ and that pain would assist in the wounded man’s recovery. Hall also recommended that cholera be treated by having patients ingest charcoal, a remedy that baffled some of his subordinates.18 In defence of Hall, his planning on paper for the expedition appeared sound. Following the practices of Wellington’s age, he recommended that each regiment should have one surgeon and three assistant surgeons attached to it, as well as thirty- two stretcher bearers who would be drawn from the ranks of the musicians. Hall also recommended that each regiment would need sixteen stretchers, a hospital tent, portable beds with paillasses as well as surgical and cooking equipment. In terms of men, materiel and structure, these recommendations were little different than those adopted by any European army of the era and so reflected the military- medical zeitgeist –prepare as was the case in the last war and hope for the best. What undermined Hall’s plans was not the list of requirements, but an absence of flexibility and the kind of sound logistics and basic common sense that would be needed to supply each regiment. One man who suffered from in these issues was Andrew Smith, the Director General of Army Ordnance, who was given inaccurate information about the size of the force being sent to the Crimea. Consequently, many of the regiments sent to Varna were devoid of the crucial supplies recommended by Hall. Smith’s
13
The Crimean Crucible
13
warnings about the prevalence of water and insect-borne diseases in the region also went unheeded by military commanders, who took the Ottoman general Omar Pasha at his word when he told them that Varna –despite its high humidity levels, poor sewerage systems and a population that was suspicious of the Anglo-French –would be an excellent place for the expeditionary force to muster.19 In the wake of the Battle of Alma on 20 September, British military-medical procedures for the field were also shown to be ineffective. The 2,000 casualties sustained by the British were treated by surgeons with little experience of wartime conditions who, bereft of leadership or organization, scampered through the mud from one fallen man to the next, trying and failing to treat gunshot wounds that some had never encountered before. A few of the surgeons at Alma were even later court-martialled for dereliction of duty, with some driven by despair to choose drink over service. Those wounded who were lucky enough to receive treatment and be evacuated before they bled out found only the dubious refuge of a filthy tent or a hastily requisitioned barn. By the time all the wounded had been treated, the force at Alma had succumbed to a mortality rate of close to 50 per cent.20 As per the recommendations of the British commander in the Crimea, Lord Raglan –who was concerned, more than anything, with making sure that the treatment of wounded soldiers did not impede military operations –most of Alma’s wounded were loaded onto ships and transported across the Black Sea to permanent hospitals away from the front. During these journeys, there was usually only one surgeon onboard to attend the sometimes hundreds of wounded, who were tightly packed onto the overcrowded decks and exposed to all the elements of the sea. This inhuman practice led to more deaths. One ship, the Cadecus, arrived at Constantinople with a third of the wounded it embarked with dead on arrival.21 Those who made it to the main military hospital at Scutari fared little better. Originally built by Sultan Muhammad II as a barracks for his janissaries fifty years before the arrival of Anglo-French, Scutari was never designed to be a hospital and, to the minds of some of the war correspondents and soldiers who walked its narrow, dark corridors, it should have never been. Unbeknownst to the British government and Hall –who only visited Scutari once and reported to Raglan that it was ‘on a very credible footing, with nothing missing’ –the old barracks was sited on top of a blocked sewer which, combined with its poorly ventilated passageways, its tendency to get damp and a lack of staff to keep it clean, made it a breeding ground for infection.22 It was exposure to this unsanitary environment, coupled with patchy first-line treatment from an undermanned and poorly trained medical staff that transformed British soldiers into the ‘fever-stricken spectres’ that Russell spoke of in The Times. In wars gone by, these stories of disease, incompetency and unnecessary death would have usually been kept away from the ears of soldiers’ families until after the conflict had ended. At best, the occasional letter from home may have indicated a particular soldier’s disgruntlement at their living conditions, rations or state of health. In the burgeoning age of the war correspondent, however, these realities of war were now headline news, available for all to read. Russell’s report in the 9 October edition of The Times sounded the first true alarm about conditions in the Crimea, and at Scutari in particular. His observations were soon confirmed by other correspondents, one of
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War, Law and Humanity
whom sent an account of conditions at Scutari to the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, G. J. Guthrie: You cannot imagine anything so fearful. To think that there are 3,000 lying in the barracks, and there are not even doctors enough to take care of them, and no nurses, for the few Greeks they have tried were either not strong enough to bear the operations and the dressing of wounds (for it was only very old women who could be procured) or else they drank so dreadfully that there was no depending on them.23
In response The Times positioned itself as the champion of the soldiers, launching a Crimean Fund for the Relief of Sick and Wounded while using the letters sent by soldiers and observers at Scutari to continue to highlight the poor planning and ‘apparent inability of the government to send further surgical assistance’ for the ‘unhappy wounded’. As one Crimean veteran later reflected, it was only once The Times broke the story that ‘extraordinary efforts were made in Parliament and in the country, to retrieve as far as possible the disasters that had occurred, and to obviate their recurrence’.24 Another surgeon who served in the Crimea, Charles Shrimpton, reflected on this unprecedented ‘philanthropic’ role of war correspondents in broader terms by asserting that: Though the presence of correspondents of the Press in the army may appear somewhat at variance with military feeling, we are persuaded that the judgement and discretion of these gentlemen, far from compromising the success of campaigns, would serve only to strengthen the army by making the soldier feel that he is supported by all the resources and sympathy of his country.
The public outcry, mobilization of sympathy by the press and resulting political moves to correct the military-medical blunders in the Crimea was, for Shrimpton, decisive and, as he starkly concluded, ‘the army was, most probably, saved by these means’.25 In a war of firsts, the agent of the British army’s salvation came in a most unanticipated form. The outcome of both The Times’ campaign and the public hue and cry was the arrival of Florence Nightingale –with her team of thirty-eight hand- picked nurses and an official mandate to get to the bottom of what was happening at Scutari –at Constantinople on 4 November 1854. It had been a long journey for the woman who was soon to become not only a heroine of the Crimean War and founder of the British nursing profession, but also one of the key figures to shape the campaign to control wartime suffering in the late nineteenth century. Born in 1820 in the Italian city for which she was named, Nightingale was the daughter of a wealthy Unitarian couple, who raised Florence between their estates in Derbyshire and Hampshire. From a young age Nightingale was fascinated by disease and the means of treating it, to the extent that she would take notes on the various maladies that afflicted her and her family members. She often clashed with her parents, who urged her to seek a husband rather than a life devoted to humanitarianism and good works. As headstrong and she was compassionate, Nightingale defied her parents’ wishes and in her twenties decided
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The Crimean Crucible
15
that a career in nursing was her calling, despite the lowly status of the occupation. Reluctantly, her father agreed to pay her an allowance to fund this peculiar ambition and, in August 1853, Nightingale took on the role of Superintendent at the Hospital for Sick Gentlewomen in Harley Street, in London.26 It is likely that Nightingale would have lost her name to history on Harley Street were it not for her long-standing friendship with Sidney Herbert, the British Secretary at War at the time that the scandal of Scutari erupted.27 Herbert and Nightingale had met each other in 1847 during one of the latter’s trips to Europe, where they bonded over a shared concern for the plight of the poor and downtrodden. Their friendship developed in the years after, during which Herbert’s admiration for Nightingale’s humanitarian drive and strength of character only grew. These qualities were at the forefront of Herbert’s mind in the autumn of 1854 when the government faced its first wave of press criticism over the plight of the soldiers. Herbert had taken note of the fact that a team of volunteer nurses had travelled with the French army to the Crimea and, moreover, that the lack of a similar nursing contingent within the British camp had not passed without mention in The Times. In need of a response to the press criticism, Herbert contacted Nightingale and suggested that she form a similar task force. Nightingale, for her part, had also been entertaining the idea and, upon receiving Herbert’s request she quickly accepted and began preparations for an immediate departure to the Crimea.28 Realizing that The Times had become a battlefront in its own right, Herbert used its pages to unveil his secret weapon to the public. Writing on 24 October, he set a progressive tone for the official government response to the crisis by deriding the idea of the Scutari wounded being subjected to ‘the indiscriminate nursing of any persons whose benevolence or wish for employment might induce them to offer themselves’. Instead, Herbert offered Nightingale and her hand-picked team as a more professional and considered solution to the problem. In justifying her appointment to such an important position Herbert laid much of the foundations for Nightingale’s post-war reputation as a living, breathing watershed in the history of military medicine. He lauded her for possessing ‘greater practical experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in this country’, as well as the ‘energy, experience and discretion’ both the government and the public demanded to solve the Scutari problem. Herbert not only positioned Nightingale as the embodiment of the government getting serious about the welfare of its soldiers, but was also at pains to stress that unqualified pretenders would not be welcome in the Crimea. Having made clear the authority Nightingale had to pick and choose her team, he issued a warning to would- be battlefield angels that ‘it is important that those who wish to devote themselves to the work should fit themselves by previous training, and acquire by practice in a hospital a knowledge of the duties they undertake’.29 The message was clear: the ad hoc ways of British military medicine were at an end and a new era of professionalization, spearheaded by Nightingale, had dawned. Was this really the case? Depending on who you read, the ‘Lady with the Lamp’ was everything from an angel fallen from heaven to shine light on Scutari’s dim wards to a cantankerous, petty, power-hungry charlatan, riddled with insecurities and obsessed with promoting her own image.30 It is true that Nightingale had an ego and took both her
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work and herself very seriously. These were personality traits that predated her arrival at Scutari, though they were exacerbated during her time there by Nightingale’s need to defend herself and her nurses from accusations of ‘insubordination and discontent’ and the carrying out of ‘irregular conduct and scandal’. She also had to reckon with Hall, who resented both Nightingale’s presence in his domain and the British public’s embrace of the ‘fairy tales’ of ‘Miss Nightingale putting hospitals containing three of four thousand patients in order in a couple of days’. Hall also cared little for the public concern for soldiers that had delivered Nightingale to his door. As he wrote to Smith after official correspondence between the two men had leaked to the press, ‘you may well imagine I was as much surprised and annoyed as you could possibly be at the appearance of and comments on your letter to me in The Times’. He also lamented how the government had reacted to newspaper coverage of his failings by sending out ‘pathologists, sanitary commissioners and I don’t know what ‘issoners with high salaries and no occupation’ to tell him how to do a job that he felt he had firmly under control.31 Hall, in short, could not keep up with the changing nature of the relationship between the public and the military. Hall also had troubled adjusting to the idea that, owing to increasing public scrutiny, the army’s flawed military-medical system was no longer tolerable. He fully recognized the scale of the humanitarian disaster in the Crimea, albeit from the point of view of a button-downed army man, who accepted disease and poor nursing as inescapable realities of life on campaign. Shortly after arriving at Varna, he noted how bad the supplies of fresh water were in the camp outside the town, as well as the likely connection between the crowding together of dirty tents and the outbreak of disease among the men –problems which he was seldom motivated to solve. The spread of cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery he chronicled with dispassionate punctuality, noting numbers of infected alongside the odd blandly optimistic remark on how ‘there appears to be a general disposition to looseness of the bowels abroad, and almost everyone has had an attack of more or less severity, but it is very manageable when seen and treated in its early stage’.32 His accepting –some might say, uncaring –way of looking at these problems put Hall at odds with Nightingale, whose entire reason for being in the Crimea was based on the premise that such suffering did not have to be a fact of life for Britain’s soldiers. Exacerbating this divide was the fact that in gender, demeanour and training Nightingale was a complete outsider, who was determined to show Hall and those like him that their approach to military medicine was fast becoming redundant. Officially, Herbert had ordered Nightingale to work under the ‘order and direction’ of Hall and other senior medical officers in Crimea.33 In practice, Nightingale realized that she was Herbert’s secret weapon, promised to the public as the solution to Scutari’s problems and, therefore, beyond reproach. She understood, in a way that Hall could not, that events in the Crimean War were shifting the balance of power away from the army towards the burgeoning force that was public opinion. Secure in both this knowledge and the fact that her activities were funded to the tune of £30,000 by The Times relief fund, Nightingale overrode much of Hall and Smith’s practices at Scutari, which she openly derided as being built on a foundation of ‘ignorance, incapacity and useless rules’.34 Within her first weeks on the job, Nightingale ordered that the
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blighted barracks be scrubbed top to bottom, that new linen be ordered, additional orderlies and nurses –not ill-trained locals or ‘fat drunken old dames’ as she claimed had previously been the case –recruited, a new boiler installed and a more regimented system of monitoring the wards implemented. She reported these actions to Herbert on a regular basis, ensuring that Hall would remain in Whitehall’s eyes as an old guard penny-pincher, unable, as Nightingale clearly was, to see the important confluence between military medicine and public expectations.35 As sophisticated as Nightingale was in her understanding of the politics of military medicine, the actual tasks she was carrying out were far from groundbreaking. Contrary to what Herbert claimed in The Times, Nightingale possessed little to no specialist medical knowledge. Although she believed that wards needed to be clean, she was unconvinced by the emerging ideas of germ theory and contagion, preferring instead to hold to the centuries-old view that diseases were transmitted through miasma. Most of her ideas about treatment were, likewise, not completely unknown to the staff at Scutari, whose true fault lay not in an absence of medical knowledge, but in a lack of drive, supplies and capacity for innovation. It was in her determination to reverse this culture of malaise that Nightingale truly set herself apart from her contemporaries. The men in charge of Scutari generally came from the same old school as Hall, raised in the post-1815 culture of belt-tightening, and accepting of the idea that camp disease and wound infections were norms of a soldier’s life that could not be avoided.36 Nightingale’s rejection of these views, combined with a firm belief that, despite being both a civilian and a women, she had the right to overhaul the way that Hall was doing things at Scutari was what truly made her thoughts and practices revolutionary. The results of Nightingale’s efforts to get Scutari on track were mixed. The mortality rate at the hospital climbed from 8 per cent to 52 per cent in the months after her arrival and, even once the number of deaths fell by the end of 1855, Scutari’s wards remained a perilous place to receive treatment. This, however, was little do to with Nightingale’s reforms which, based as they were on common-sense principles such as keeping the hospital clean, changing dressings regularly and providing better food, undoubtedly increased the survival rate overall.37 What continued to blight Scutari was the fact that Nightingale could not lift it from its rotten foundations and transport it away from the sewers over which it was built. Notably, it was left to another civilian body tasked by the government with involving itself in what had previously been military matters to address this problem: the British Sanitary Commission. Comprised of surgeons, sanitary experts and members of the Board of Health, the commission arrived in Constantinople in March 1855 with a brief to review the state of Scutari. It was the British Sanitary Commission’s inspectors who ordered that the sewers by flushed out, that the rotting floorboards of the wards be torn up, quicklime wash be used to scrub the walls and floors, and new windows for ventilation installed. Like Nightingale, the members of the British Sanitary Commission knew little of germ theory, and instead concluded that sickness in Scutari had been caused by ‘damp, impure air’ and ‘(although in a minor degree) impure water’. Yet, by stripping some of the rot from Scutari they inadvertently created an environment less prone to contagion. Although the reduced number of admissions made their work seem more impactful than it was,
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the British Sanitary Commission contributed as much, if not more, than Nightingale did to bettering conditions at the hospital.38 Irrespective of their effectiveness or lack thereof as saviours of Scutari, both Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission’s work in the Crimea was significant for two reasons. Firstly, the very fact that they were allowed to scrutinize Hall demonstrated the growing power of public opinion –even in matters as sensitive to governments as war. Nightingale was contacted by Herbert in response the scathing coverage of Scutari in The Times. The British Sanitary Commission’s mission was engendered by the fall of Lord Aberdeen’s government in January 1855, which came as a result of the unrelenting criticism it received in the press over the conduct of the war. The despatch of both the British Sanitary Commission and Nightingale, therefore, was owed to the government’s need to silence the growing chorus of public criticism. The second reason why these humanitarian missions to the Crimea were significant was because they engendered a post-war campaign on the part of Nightingale and her supporters for a complete overhaul of Britain’s military-medical regime. This involved the publication of numerous reports on hospital, barracks and frontline conditions in the Crimea, as well as the opening of a Royal Commission into the state of hospitals and medical practices within the army. Nightingale stood proud, determined and, above all, popular, at the centre of this overhaul. The fact that Scutari remained a dangerous place even after her arrival did nothing to diminish Nightingale’s reputation with the public which, following Herbert’s lead in his glowing introduction of her in The Times, continued to laud the ‘Lady with Lamp’ as the only true friend the soldiers had in the Crimea. Indeed, one contemporary assessment of the military-medical chaos of the war went so far as to state that, owing to Nightingale’s ‘beautiful work in the East’, ‘gift of acute perception’ and ‘masculine intellect’, her opinions about what went wrong at Scutari and how to improve British military medicine were more valid than those presented in the British Sanitary Commission’s official report.39 Small wonder that Nightingale viewed herself as the most qualified person to spearhead a campaign that would encompass everything from introducing new standards of training for surgeons, stretcher-bearers and nurses, to dietary guidelines for rations, to the design of new hospitals. Even after the loss of her friend and main backer Herbert to kidney disease, Nightingale continued her reform campaign, her reputation so strong that she was able to persuade Prime Minister Lord Palmerston to have Herbert’s undersecretary, Earl Grey of Ripon, appointed the new Secretary for War. Ripon picked up where Herbert had left off, both by continuing the fight for reform in Britain’s military-medical regime and keeping Nightingale close at hand as a War Office advisor.40 In this capacity, Nightingale produced a colossal blueprint for the reorganization of Britain’s military-medical regime in 1858. Suitably dramatic in tone, Nightingale highlighted the magnitude of what she was doing in the introduction, where she stated that ‘the question of Army Hospitals and their defects have become part of wider questions, involving the health and efficiency of the Army and the means of preserving them’. Roughly translated, Nightingale was convinced that the British soldier of the modern era would be unable to operate with efficiency unless his welfare was placed at the front and centre of the army’s concerns.41
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Nightingale’s message was well received and, by 1859, her recommendations were starting to be implemented. This came first in the form of the production of the Army Regulations for the Duties of Inspectors-General and Deputy Inspectors General of Hospitals, a sprawling treatise that drew on both Nightingale’s and the British Sanitary Commission’s findings from Crimea.42 This was followed by the establishment of a new Army Medical School in Chatham, and the construction of a dedicated military hospital at Netley in Hampshire. Although Nightingale objected to the corridor- riddled design of Netley –too similar, she feared, to Scutari –her recommendations for a more open-plan facility were implemented in the later construction of the Herbert Military Hospital in Woolwich, named in honour of her friend who had done so much to support the reform campaign. In an effort to avoid a repeat of the staffing crises that beset military-medical departments during the Crimean War, new standards recommending 280 medical personnel for every 10,000 soldiers were also implemented as part of the creation of a permanent Medical Staff Corps which, in 1898, became the Royal Army Medical Corps.43 Aside from these tangible legacies of the Crimean War, the conflict had a profound philosophical impact on Nightingale who, having witnessed the soldiers’ plight up close, resolved to create a new consensus in military medicine that would mitigate against such unnecessary suffering in future. Nightingale’s efforts in pursuit of this goal both during and after the war cannot be understated. They can, however, be misunderstood if viewed in isolation. Within the British sphere of influence she was certainly important. Not only were her reforms implemented within Britain itself, but also in China, where the bloody Taiping Rebellion had been raging since 1850. The British forces engaging the rebels against the rule of the Qing Dynasty, as well as those of their ally General Zhou Shengchuan, took note of, and in some cases put into practice, the recommendations for treating the wounded and maintaining hygienic barracks made by Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission. The idea of setting up a regular sea-borne transport service for sick and wounded troops in China was even raised as a response to the appalling state of transport across the Black Sea during the Crimean War.44 These immediate impacts on British military medicine aside, Nightingale was only the most famous and admired of a number of Crimean veterans whose thoughts and deeds proved instructive and influential in the years after the war’s conclusion. It is difficult, for example, to mention Nightingale without also acknowledging Mary Seacole. A Jamaican-born Scot who had experience as a volunteer nurse in the Caribbean, Seacole was stirred to action after reading Russell’s despatches and, in defiance of Herbert’s directive for the amateurs to stay away, she applied to join the Scutari-bound nursing team. Rebuffed by Nightingale and ignored by the War Office, Seacole nevertheless set off for the Crimea on her own in the spring of 1855, in order to do what she could for the sick and wounded. Realizing shortly after her arrival at Constantinople that she was not needed –or indeed, welcome –at Scutari, Seacole instead set up a recuperative hotel for the wounded in Kadikoi, not far from Balaclava, where she built a reputation among the soldiers as a kindly, motherly source of succour.45 Seacole’s recognition of the need for treatment nearer the frontlines ostensibly indicated a keen medical mind, but in truth it was more likely the frosty reception she received from Nightingale at Scutari that convinced her to work nearer
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to the front. Moreover, innovative though her hotel seemed, Seacole was no nurse and her thoughts on medicine –based as they were, on her mother’s traditional ways –were even less progressive than, if not backward in comparison to, Nightingale’s. Seacole’s willingness to travel without official backing into a warzone in order to provide comfort and food for soldiers did, however, embody the kind of well-meaning pastoral work that would come to characterize the later activities of Red Cross volunteers, Quakers and other civilians moved to provide assistance to suffering troops. As a representative of the growing interest in the plight of soldiers and the consensus that they needed to be treated as victims of war, therefore, Seacole was every bit a symbol of the changing times as Nightingale.46 The same could be said of Humphrey Sandwith, a Yorkshire-born physician and Turkophile who found himself in Constantinople when the war broke out. Pledging himself to the care of the Sultan’s soldiers, Sandwith joined a British military detachment that had been sent to reinforce the garrison at the Anatolian city of Kars after it fell under siege in June 1855. During the siege Sandwith not only battled outbreaks of dysentery, cholera and typhus among civilians and soldiers but, despite being officially attached to the Anglo-Ottoman forces, he also offered treatment to the sick and wounded of his enemies, including one Russian officer who had ‘his face half-carried away by a grapeshot’. Sandwith even exerted himself on behalf of a Polish deserter from the Russian army who found his way into Kars. The all-too clear plight of the soldier, who came to Sandwith sickly and frightened ‘a pale, miserable man dressed in a ragged native costume’ moved the surgeon to agree to smuggle the deserter out of the city. Sandwith’s actions embodied not only the idea that soldiers needed trained and devoted hands to care for them but that –irrespective of which side they had fought on –the wounded had a right to impartial treatment.47 Together, these two notions formed the basis of the growing consensus that, as much as war was an arena for suffering, it was also a space for humanitarian action that could alleviate the unnecessary pain so often inflicted on soldiers. The idea of volunteer nurses working alongside army surgeons to this humanitarian end was also far from being a Nightingale-led innovation. Indeed, this was already being practiced by the French and the Russians before Nightingale and her team left for the Crimea in the autumn of 1854. A year earlier, fifty nurses from the Sisters of Mercy had volunteered to travel with the French expeditionary force, while in Russia Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna also raised a small army of nurses from the Order of the Exhalation of the Cross. As many as a thousand of these Russian nurses were recruited over the course of the war and, unlike Nightingale’s charges, they often saw frontline service, to the extent that a number of them were killed while tending to the fallen. Their patron was equally bold. Although less of a force of nature than Nightingale, Elena Pavlovna still possessed great vision and ability when it came to sourcing supplies, organizing her staff and acquiring the support of a powerful male patron –no less a figure than Tsar Nicholas –to back her humanitarian efforts. Her legacy, though less widely known than Nightingale’s, was also significant. After the guns had fallen silent in the Crimea, Elena Pavlovna’s nurses were awarded medals by their sovereign, and the Order of the Exhalation of the Cross continued its good work on behalf of the army until 1894, when it was folded into the Russian Red Cross.48
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In addition to laying the foundations of both army nursing and the future Red Cross movement in Russia, Elena Pavlovna also worked closely during the war with Nicolai Pirogov, one of the many army surgeons whose view of the relationship between medicine and new military technology was shaped by his experiences in the Crimea. As Professor of Surgery at the Academy of Military Medicine in St Petersburg, Pirogov was as comfortable in a civilian hospital as he was on the frontlines, where he served the army throughout the 1840s, performing over 800 operations, pioneering the use of ether to sterilize surgical instruments, and perfecting a new style of foot amputation. In recognition of his considerable abilities, the Tsar appointed Pirogov head of the Russian medical contingent in the Crimea, in which capacity he took charge of Elena Pavlovna’s nurses, organizing them into battlefield-ready teams, and offering them basic training in hospital hygiene and the administration of drugs. Like Nightingale, Pirogov was a visionary forced to labour within the confines of a stagnant medical establishment. He was as disgusted by the unhygienic state of Russian hospitals as Nightingale was of Scutari, and he routinely had to defend the record of the nurses against accusations of impropriety from army officers. Pirogov’s constant appeals for a more stable system for delivering medical supplies to disorganized –and often drunk –quartermasters also had echoes of Nightingale’s squabbles with the Army Medical Department. Small wonder that Pirogov came to the same conclusions as Nightingale about the future of military medicine. After the war, he became an advocate for greater investment by the army in a permanent medical corps, a reemphasis on professionalizing the quartermaster’s office and the medical department, and the need to replace the old cramped corridor design of army hospitals with an open, pavilion-style.49 Another figure who both served on the frontlines in the Crimea and joined the post-war movement to reform military medicine was Nightingale’s friend, Sir Thomas Longmore. Born in the year after the Battle of Waterloo, Longmore was the son of a surgeon in the Royal Navy and, from the youngest age seemed destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. By his mid-twenties he was studying at the Royal College of Surgeons and in 1843 he was gazetted to the 19th Foot Regiment, whose soldiers he treated for cholera, dysentery and gunshot wounds in the Caribbean, Ionian Islands and Canada. He travelled with the 19th Foot to Varna in 1854 and, within days of the regiment establishing itself there, found himself dealing with the cholera outbreak.50 As one of the few to have anticipated such an epidemic arising from the morass-like camp, Longmore sprang into action, refusing to take a single day off from his battle against the disease, even when he himself began to ail. In addition to possessing a flare for heroic humanitarianism, Longmore also had Nightingale’s deep understanding of the significance of public perceptions of the war. Frustrated by conditions at Varna, he joined the chorus of alarm raised by the war correspondents, writing first to superior officers, then relatives and, finally, directly to The Times about the lack of equipment issues to the troops, the poor rations and unsanitary conditions in which they were forced to sleep. As Longmore intended, these comments touched a nerve with the authorities, which led a furious Lord Raglan to describe the self-confessed ‘troublesome medical officer’ as the ‘screw loose’ within the 19th Foot.51 Longmore’s talents as a surgeon and the respect he commanded, however, eclipsed any criticism he received from Raglan and, after the war, he enjoyed a successful stint
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as Deputy Inspector of Hospitals in India, and became a recognized expert on the treatment of minié bullet wounds and battlefield amputation. He also highlighted the plight of wounded soldiers and the need for better nutrition, medicine and quality of barracks life by penning a visionary account of the French and British response to soldier welfare in the Crimea, in which he drew a clear link between the health of soldiers, the support of the public and the capacity of armies to fight and ensure quick victory.52 Owing to his expertise, and the favour of Nightingale, Longmore was also appointed by Herbert as Professor of Surgery at the new Army Medical School in Chatham. In this position, Longmore became both a promoter of Nightingale’s reforms, and a conduit through which new military-medical theories from Europe and the United States were passed.53 The French also possessed a surgeon who both wrote about his experiences in the Crimea and used them to inform the wider debate over military-medical reform. Physician, scientist and author of a voluminous encyclopaedia of natural history, Jean-Charles Chenu laboured in the Crimea as part of the small and underfunded French Army Medical Department. One of the few photos that exists of Chenu depicts a stocky and somewhat genial looking man, possessed of a spiked hallow of sandy brown hair and a genial smile. Beneath this welcoming mirage, however, Chenu was an irascible and highly opinionated workaholic, who devoted his professional life to science, medicine and the pursuit of that most desired goal of the nineteenth century intellectual: progress. Small wonder that he came away as disgusted as any of his contemporaries by the scale of life wasted for want of a something as basic as an efficient military-medical service and, as Nightingale and Herbert did in their own country, Chenu spearheaded a post-war inquiry into the parlous state of the French army’s medical arrangements.54 Nightingale, therefore, was far from being the one-woman humanitarian show of legend in the Crimean War. Rather, she was one party to a collective experience –shared by Seacole, Sandwith, Elena Pavlovna, Pirogov, Longmore and Chenu among others – of negligence in military medicine and indifference to soldier suffering that, in an age of increasing public oversight, could no longer be tolerated. The responses proffered by these Crimean veterans to this new reality were premised on the notion that it was the responsibility of states, should they chose to go to war, to look after their soldiers both on and off the battlefield. This meant planning adequately in advance for the worst case casualty scenario, maintaining high standards of hygiene in barracks, providing more nutritious rations, building well-designed and functional hospitals, training surgeons to operate in battlefield conditions, establishing permanent ambulance and nursing services, and ensuring that the latest techniques in surgery and disease prevention were adopted. In short, their argument was for the professionalization of military medicine, which would bring it up to speed with other developments in technology, transport and communications which, as the Crimean War demonstrated, were starting to alter the very nature of warfare. As part of this move towards professionalization Chenu followed Nightingale’s lead when, in 1856, he published a sprawling –and decidedly acerbic –review of the French military-medical situation in the Crimea, complete with detailed instructions for how to avoid similar catastrophes in future. The two major themes of Chenu’s argument were that the French government needed to loosen its purse strings, and that army
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surgeons needed to be more empowered to organize their hospital and transportation, in much the same way a general organizes his troops for battle. He was no doubt channelling some of his anger over the widespread defunding of the military-medical services in France after 1815, which had led both to a generation of qualified surgeons choosing private practice over army service and a drop in the quality of nurses. With greater financial incentives, Chenu argued, the quantity and quality of surgeons would be raised. Moreover, with the adoption of a more disciplined approach to organizing nurses, the hapless musician-stretcher-bearers and well-intentioned volunteers would be shut out of army matters and replaced by a uniformed corps of ‘sober, clever and compassionate’ battlefield angels.55 Nightingale, like Chenu, placed great stock in the idea that trained army men, rather than civilians, needed to take responsibility for the welfare of soldiers. Sidestepping the irony of her own civilian status, Nightingale was generally contemptuous of overly enthusiastic volunteers like Seacole, and she despaired of the damage that could be done by such ‘amateurs’ to the fighting efficiency of an army. This view manifested in her methods for running Scutari, where she was notoriously strict with nurses who, despite their status as civilians, were required to follow War Office-issued rules and regulations. These regulations reflected Nightingale’s own desire to run a tight ship in which decrees covering a nurse’s style of dress, tone of interaction with patients, method for washing hands as well as general presentation and demeanour had to be followed without question.56 Unsurprisingly, the rules were not always followed and Nightingale often scolded her charges for not keeping themselves clean, or getting too close to the women-deprived soldiers. Such lax discipline among Scutari’s other medical staff had, Nightingale believed, contributed too much of the chaos and inefficiency that had characterized Hall’s regime. Consequently, one of the recurring themes in her post-war musings was that only military discipline could keep the naïve and well-meaning humanitarians of the world in check, and ensure that the wounded were care for properly. In contrast to Elena Pavlovna and Seacole, Nightingale also believed that the frontlines were no place for female volunteers and should instead be the exclusive domain of male army surgeons like Longmore, who would not be phased by the sight of blood, the smell of gun smoke and the screams of dying men. Likewise, Nightingale was willing to accept that civilian doctors and nurses had a role to play in educating their army counterparts during the initial phase of her proposed reforms, however, she was adamant that once fully trained, army surgeons alone should be permitted to enter war-zones. In keeping with this dictum, Nightingale also insisted that the newly minted Medical Staff Corps had to be retained as an army body, its members both professional in their conduct and utterly obedient to the War Office.57 As she wrote to Longmore shortly after the first wave of reforms had been implemented, ‘voluntary effort is desirable, just insofar as it can be incorporated into a military system’. Longmore, for his part, could not have agreed more. Reflecting in 1864 on the work of the Medical Staff Corps, he wrote with satisfaction of how ‘the whole procedure is military and under the direction of the general commanding the forces’.58 The lesson of the Crimean War for many of these veterans was simple: the way forward in the campaign to control wartime suffering was for states and their armies –not
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civilians –to take the lead. To this end, governments had to both recognize the need to better care for their soldiers, and treat military medicine as if it were any other aspect of modern warfare, for which the state alone was responsible to organize, fund and control. There was no longer any room for musicians moonlighting as stretcher- bearers, village doctors pretending to be army surgeons or well-meaning women wanting to ‘do their bit’. Instead, comprehensive military-medical systems, overseen by generals and surgeons needed to be developed. This message was widely disseminated. Longmore’s papers and lectures were published on both sides of the Atlantic and Pirogov’s methods were studied by the burgeoning international community of army surgeons, which even before the Crimean War was engaged in a transnational debate over how best to remedy the wounds inflicted by the minié bullet. Russell’s expositions of the horrors of war were lauded, and the story of Nightingale’s labours at Scutari inspired and impressed all who heard it. Despite this flurry of post-war excitement and activity, the advice of the Crimean War’s medical veterans was still only being slowly comprehended by politicians, generals, humanitarians and army surgeons. This was particularly true in the United States where, five years after the end of the Crimean War, the citizens of that broken country began marching towards what would become of the bloodiest conflicts of the nineteenth century.
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Citizen-Humanitarians
It was 3 July 1861, and the air was thick with swelter. Russell –now an internationally recognized war correspondent –disembarked onto the crowded platform at Washington DC’s New Jersey Avenue train station, jostling his way through the maw of passengers and porters to emerge into the full, violent embrace of the midday sun. Even before his train had pulled in to the nation’s capital, Russell knew that he would be walking into a city that would be altogether different to the one he had left months earlier. Nervous chatter and bloody rumour had filled the train car during his journey, but even the fears expressed by his fellow passengers could not prepare Russell for the stomach-hollowing sight laid out before him as he exited the station –cannon bristled under the skeletal dome of the unfinished Capitol Building and in the hazy distance war horses grazed on the Mall. Turning down Pennsylvania Avenue, Russell’s ears were assaulted by the clatter of marching boots and the barking of officers trying to whip into shape scores of men in makeshift uniforms who, he soon learned, were the core of a volunteer army of 35,000 citizen-soldiers that had been amassing in the city for days in preparation for battle. Having navigated his way through the bedlam to Willard’s Hotel, Russell checked into his second floor room and went immediately to the window with diary in hand, keen to summarize all that he had seen in his short walk from the station. ‘Washington’, he recorded, ‘was no longer the scene of beneficent legislation and of peaceful government’ that he had known. Instead, the city on the hill, the capital of the once United States, was now ‘the representative of armed force engaged in war’.1 Russell was disappointed, but not surprised by the capital’s transformation into a bustling war camp. He had been despatched by The Times to Washington in March 1861, barely weeks after Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had joined with South Carolina in seceding from the United States to form the new Confederate States of America. Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election of 1860 was the catalyst for this dividing of the American house. His confirmation of victory on 6 November was met with fury in the Southern states, where he had received few votes from a population that saw slavery –the westward expansion of which Lincoln was opposed to –as crucial for their economic and cultural existence. In response to Lincoln’s victory, the legislature of South Carolina made the fateful decision to abandon the Union and its new president, engendering the domino effect of southern secession that would culminate in the creation of the Confederacy, and the
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election of the Mississippi senator Jefferson Davis as its president. This schism erupted into open conflict on 12 April 1861, when Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina, one of the last remaining Union holdouts in the South. In the wake of the garrison’s surrender, Lincoln sent a call out for 75,000 militiamen to be raised from the Northern states still loyal to the Union, in order to supplement its meagre army. In response to this the Confederacy quickly raised its own militias.2 As this crisis unfolded, Russell took a tour of the newly formed Confederacy, spending two months meeting its generals, soldiers and even its president Jefferson Davis. Russell was wined and dined everywhere he went. The leaders of the Confederacy knew full well the power his words had commanded during the Crimean War and were keen for the journalist to use his influence to sway British minds in favour of the South’s cause. To this end, the legal and ethical right of the Confederacy to secede was impressed upon Russell, so too the message that the cotton producers of the South would continue to extend a friendly hand of trade to the textile manufacturers of Northern England, war or no war.3 Russell enjoyed both the charm offensive and the fact that he was once again in the midst of dramatic, nation-shaping events in which he was to serve, as he had done in the Crimea, as the eyes and ears of the British people. For all his relish of this situation, however, Russell could not help but be troubled by the Americans’ eagerness for bloodshed. Throughout the otherwise pleasant tour of the South, Russell found himself overwhelmed by the chest-thumping pervasiveness of war fever, more so when he noticed that even small children were playing at soldiers in the streets, much to the delight of their parents. He observed similar scenes throughout his return journey to the North, and by the time Russell checked in to Willard’s Hotel he was convinced that, infected by a heady blend of bravado and overconfidence, the American people were now blind to the brutal realities of what would actually happen once Lincoln’s and Davis’s raw recruits began firing at each other.4 Russell was right to feel uneasy. Few predicted it in the spring of 1861, but the American Civil War was to be one of the deadliest conflicts of the nineteenth century, and the nature of the fighting as savage as anything that has come before or since. By the time it ended in April 1865 over 700,000 Americans would lie dead. This industrial- scale loss of life was not the only portent of future war in the clash between North and South. Technologies that had been deployed sporadically during the Crimean War such as the train, the telegraph, rifled weapons and Ironclad warships were prominent, so too the construction of trenches as a means of sheltering men from the increasingly devastating firepower that both sides brought to bear. The deployment of hot air balloons and aerial photography opened a new theatre of war in the skies above the battlefield, while the importance of each belligerent’s industrial capacity, the raising of large, uniformed citizen-armies and the involvement of guerrillas in terror campaigns behind the lines all offered glimpses of the ‘total’ wars of the century to come.5 As would be the case at the onset of these future wars, generals with the gift of prophecy were thin on the ground in 1861. Leaders on both sides were convinced that the war would be short, settled perhaps by one decisive engagement. This expectation of a ‘one battle war’ both contributed to the spread of war fever that Russell had observed, and led to a lack of long-term planning by both sides. Many of the first wave recruits into both Lincoln’s and Davis’s armies had only makeshift uniforms, and the supply
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of ammunition pouches, rations and even belts and boots was highly variable. So too was the distribution of arms. Although minié-firing Enfield and Springfield rifles were sprinkled throughout the ranks, there were still more than a few old muskets and smooth-bore flintlocks in the hands of the untrained volunteers. With dated weaponry came dated doctrines, based on the Napoleonic-era practice of amassing infantry into tightly packed columns, and a reliance on the offensive, close-ordered assaults that had worked so well in the United States’ recent war against Mexico in 1846. Sound as these tactics might have been in theory, when combined with new, faster firing rifles and more devastating ordnance, they could only result in mass casualties.6 Thoughts on how to treat these causalities were as obsolete as the tactics that created them, reflecting the lack of attention paid by the United States’ military-medical departments to the knowledge brought back from the Crimea. Confederate military- medical planning, at least, began early, starting in March 1861 with Davis laying down regulations that each state should supply at least one surgeon and one assistant surgeon to their volunteer regiments –neither of which had to pass any examination of their credentials. Each regiment also had to source its own medical supplies, ambulances and stretcher-bearers which, as history and custom dictated, would be the musicians. To their credit, by May the Confederate leaders had recognized the need to appoint a Surgeon-General, David DeLeon, to whom they gave $900,000 to fund the South’s military-medical arrangements. Once DeLeon realized that the leadership had failed to organize permanent hospitals behind the lines, however, most of the money had to be spent on outfitting private buildings for this purpose. This left precious little to spend on medical supplies for the field where, owing to the regiment-by-regiment basis upon which surgeons had been organized, DeLeon found himself unable to exercise overarching control over the medical standards and practices of even his small, poorly equipped cadre of surgeons.7 In the Union things were slightly better. Some measure of centralization and control was provided in the form of the Medical Bureau, which was in charge of all medical matters concerning the Union’s armed forces. This body, however, did little to increase its staff, stores or scope of duties in response to Lincoln’s demand for additional troops after the bombardment of Fort Sumter –even though the numbers who heeded the president’s call to arms far exceed the intended 75,000. As these volunteers streamed into Washington, the Medical Bureau continued to maintain a tiny staff of thirty surgeons and eighty-three assistant surgeons, supplemented here and there by the occasional village doctor that had tagged along with the regiments as they travelled from their home states. Like their equivalents in the South, many of these volunteer doctors were eager to serve the cause, yet possessed no formal medical training, and an even greater number had no experience of working in battlefield conditions. These assets, such as they were, were organized by the Medical Bureau into the same formula as that adopted by the Confederacy of one surgeon and one assistant per regiment. Also like the Confederacy, these surgeons had to get by without a dedicated ambulance corps, and so were reliant on drummers and buglers to put down instruments and pick up stretchers at the onset of battle. In a further echo of Britain’s regime in the Crimea, the Union’s military-medical system was presided over by an aged and closed- minded Surgeon-General, Thomas Lawson. Apparently unchanged in his views since
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his youth, the seventy-two year old Lawson was a penny-pincher who was oblivious to, among other things, the pioneering work done by Pirogov. He refused to countenance the idea that surgical equipment needed to be sterilized and saw no reason to spend money on new field-surgery kits or additional stretchers. Nor did he spend much time considering how to utilize his meagre resources. Lawson’s deputy, William S. King, was only assigned to the army barely seventy-two hours before it fought its first real battle. Despite this army numbering close to 35,000 men, King’s request for at least twenty ambulances for the battle ahead was denied by the money-conscious Lawson, who also decreed that only the bare minimum of bandages and surgical tools would be issued to King’s surgeons.8 It was with these ill-prepared surgeons in tow that the Union’s forces marched into the battle that many hoped would begin and end the war at Bull Run River on 21 July 1861. The men under the command of General Irvin McDowell –a staff officer who had never commanded troops in the field before –were as rich in spirits as they were poor in training, experience and equipment. In keeping with the shambolic nature of military-medical preparations, few of the troops who completed the thirty-five mile march from Washington to Bull Run were physically and mentally prepared to actually fight. The volunteers Russell had observed in the capital had arrived via uncleaned, open-topped livestock cars. Already baked by the oppressive sun during their journey, the recruits were then made to drill for hours under the open skies of the Mall, before being issued unwholesome rations of hard biscuit and black bread. No preparations had been made to accommodate this mass of men in the city, leaving them to either find private lodgings, share overcrowded tents or simply sleep on the grass, packed check to jowl in the suffocating humidity of a Washington summer. Diarrhoea and dysentery were already spreading through the ranks when McDowell’s forces arrived at Bull Run exhausted, nervous, undernourished and dehydrated, an adequate supply of water for the march being yet another of the many crucial things neglected by their commanders.9 The lack of preparedness before the battle exacerbated the chaos of its aftermath. Union forces were quickly driven from the field by the Confederates, retreating to Washington in a demoralized and calamitous state in which many were reduced to begging civilians they passed for food, medicine and shelter. Evacuation of the wounded was made near impossible in some areas of the battlefield by the lack of horse-drawn ambulances, some of which were even hijacked by commanders looking to flee the field.10 To crown this litany of failures, the heavens opened on the day after Bull Run, hammering grey, sodden misery down on the retreating forces. Having taken up a position amid other concerned onlookers on the canopied balcony of Willard’s Hotel, Russell recorded the arrival of the ‘jaded, dispirited, broken remnants of regiments’ of the Union army, a ‘steady stream of men covered in mud, soaked through with rain who were pouring irregularly, without any sense of order, up Pennsylvania Avenue towards to Capitol’.11 As had been the case when they first mustered, the official reception for these men was near to non-existent. The hospitals Washington possessed had only recently been put on a war footing and, like King’s surgeons, they were generally bereft of the modern tools and medicines required to keep men alive. Trained surgeons were as hard to find in the city as places to comfortably house the near 2,500 wounded who shuffled across the Potomac River in the days after the defeat.
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Before long, the city was pockmarked with huddles of wretched men, wrapped in filthy rain-sodden, threadbare blankets. Blame for this reduction of soldiers to beggars was aimed squarely by the press at the Medical Bureau which, the New York Times declared, had offered only ‘official imbecility’ at a time when the upmost care and consideration was needed to maintain the welfare of the Union’s troops. Bull Run, it seemed, was fast becoming the Union’s Scutari.12 The Medical Bureau may have failed the soldiers of Bull Run, however, amid the sea of human wreckage that flooded Washington’s streets a sharp eye would have noted the legacy of the Crimean humanitarians alive and well. Bereft of provisions or leadership from the army, the Union’s ‘wo-begone rabble’ were instead left to rely on a small army of volunteers –comprised in no small part of women –who, in anticipation of the worst, had spent the days after McDowell’s army departed the capital constructing makeshift operating tables from household furniture and stockpiling food, home-made medicines and lint for bandages. Although they were ultimately overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, these volunteers displayed through their actions a foresight that the Medical Bureau had lacked and, in the days after Bull Run, they worked themselves ragged dressing soldiers’ wounds, breaking their fevers, feeding their sick bellies and, in some cases, simply plying them with pain-numbing alcohol while they waited for surgeons who seldom came. Ad hoc and desperate though it was, the work of these volunteers sent a message to the Union’s leadership that in this war civilians were not prepared to stand idly by and let the welfare of soldiers –or indeed, any matter pertinent to the conduct and purpose of the war –go unconsidered.13 This was a message that the old guard within the Medical Bureau had ample opportunity to hear and act on prior to Bull Run. Stories of Scutari and the horrendous aftermath of the battles of Alma and Balaclava were well known in the United States and, among the east coast medical fraternity, Nightingale’s reforms of the British army’s medical services were well studied. Lincoln’s administration even had the benefit of the knowledge gained by the Delafield Commission, a three-man American military team that was sent to the Crimea in order to observe the Anglo-French performance, including that of its military-medical services. The report the Delafield Commission compiled barely a year before the Civil War broke out made special mention of Nightingale’s exemplary labours as compared to the ham-fisted official military-medical response which, the authors pointedly noted, had been a factor in the fall of Lord Aberdeen’s government. The report also stated that ‘Miss Nightingale, as the foundation of power from which all the new ways of military medicine emanated’ had been brought to great heights of prestige and reverence by the concerns of British people. To the minds of the Delafield Commission it was ‘public sentiment’ that ‘enforced attention and compliance with her representations and requests’.14 This connection between military- medical reforms, public scrutiny and political consequences was highlighted again in the first months of the Civil War, when the Union press began to draw attention to the fact that, for all the knowledge available of the good work done by Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission, no thought had been given by Washington to the possibility that similar humanitarians would be required to safeguard the wellbeing of the Union’s fighting men.15
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In addition to the Delafield Commission’s report and the newspaper scrutiny it endured, the Medical Bureau also had early warnings that the public would not tolerate indifference to the plight of soldiers. Within days of the fall of Fort Sumter scores of mothers, daughters and wives of those who answered Lincoln’s call to arms opened their homes up as supply depots and organized food and clothing parcels for the men about to march. Some would-be Nightingales in both the North and the South went a step further by volunteering as nurses for the newly formed regiments, irrespective of their lack of medical training. In the North especially, the untrained and enthusiastic came together with the qualified and concerned to alert the Medical Bureau that all was not well in the field of soldier welfare. The two organizations of note in this regard were the Women’s Central Association for Relief and the Association of Physicians and Surgeons of New York Hospitals, both of which peppered the Medical Bureau with inquiries and criticisms during the war’s first weeks. The questions they posed were as manifold as they were pressing: what measures had been taken by the Medical Bureau to screen the volunteers for typhoid, tuberculosis, syphilis and other diseases? Had a Medical Staff Corps –akin to that formed by the British in the Crimea –been organized to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield? Were there enough surgeons in the Union army? What about supplies of bandages, rations, surgical tools, chloroform and blankets? Is there any way possible that we can help?16 To these many inquiries acting Surgeon-General Robert Wood –Lawson had died in May –initially responded with only bland assurances that the Medical Bureau was prepared for what was to come, while doing precious little to either improve or expand the moribund service he now led. This response was not surprising. For all the foreknowledge the Medical Bureau and the Surgeon-General possessed, the regime Wood presided over was built on an ageing foundation of stretched budgets and limited imaginations. As susceptible to the allure of a ‘one battle war’ as anyone, Wood inherited the mantle of office from Lawson with every intention of running the Medical Bureau as it had always been run: on the cheap and with no appetite for innovation. Civilian surgeons who volunteered their services were knocked back, hospitals ran low on beds and blankets and, in the weeks leading up to Bull Run, Wood received demands for the release of supplies of ointments, bandages and even notepaper from his already overstretched surgeons. Unprepared for such demands, Wood was forced to adjust his thinking and respond to public concerns in a way that his predecessor – who had never had to deal with such a barrage of demands from both his surgeons and the general public –would never have approved of. This capitulation came in the form of Wood accepting the offer of a fifty-nine-year-old evangelical reformer by the name of Dorothea Dix, to organize nurses for the Union army.17 Dix seemed destined for such a position. Prior to the war, she had built a considerable reputation in Washington political circles as a tireless campaigner for the rights of prisoners and the improvement of conditions in asylums. She had also travelled to Scutari in 1856 in a failed quest to meet Nightingale, who Dix both worshiped and sought to emulate. It was not only Nightingale’s passion for caring for the wounded, thoughts on hospital reforms and nursing methods that interested Dix. Touring Britain in the midst of the Crimean War, Dix was astonished by the extent to which Nightingale –sometimes, it seemed, more than the actual fighting –was the
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talk of the country. The fact that Dix’s second attempt to meet her idol had to be called off at the last minute because the latter was being received by Queen Victoria only confirmed her view that Nightingale was not just a pioneering nurse, but a national figure worthy of veneration from the highest in the land, and an admirable symbol of how far a humanitarian-minded woman could go in a world where men seemed driven to destroy themselves. For Dix, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. No doubt she had Nightingale’s reputation for defiance of authority in her mind when, back in Washington in the early summer of 1861, she used her fame and reputation to go over Wood’s head and gain an audience with Secretary of War Simon Cameron, to whom she proposed the idea of establishing a nursing brigade not unlike that which Nightingale had led to Scutari.18 Dix needn’t have bothered trying to outflank Wood. Although in public the Surgeon-General came across as clueless to the severity of the problems besetting the Medical Bureau, in private he told Cameron that ‘the pressure upon the Medical Bureau has been very great and urgent; and though all means at its disposal have been industriously used, much remains to be accomplished’.19 Cameron, for his part, was aware of the means by which Nightingale had risen to prominence, and had kept one eye on the newspapers since the first rumblings of public discontent had emerged following the fall of Fort Sumter. As a consequence, Cameron realized that the ‘public sentiment and humanity of the age’ required something more than what the Union was offering its soldiers. He therefore authorized Wood to accept Dix’s offer of assistance, and issued her with the title of Superintendent of the Women’s Nursing Bureau on 10 June 1861.20 Beneath this veneer of the Medical Bureau opening itself up to voluntary assistance and, perchance, learning the lessons of the Crimea, there was little indication that Dix would receive anything similar to the level of official support that Nightingale had enjoyed. Dix herself was partly to blame for this case of affairs, for in temperament and personality she was far from being a team player. As even a contemporary admirer had to concede, Dix was ‘unpopular in the war with surgeons, nurses and any others who failed to do their whole duty’ which, to her determined mind, meant submitting oneself body and soul to the cause of succouring the wounded.21 This zealous attitude might have served Dix well had the Medical Bureau taken her as seriously as she did herself. In practice, however, Dix never commanded the kind of respect and authority from politicians and army men that Nightingale had, and her brief from Cameron clearly stated that the Women’s Nursing Bureau would not receive funds from the government. And yet, despite this lack of backing, Dix was expected to ‘give at all times necessary aid (aid only, no authority) in organizing military hospitals for the cure of sick and wounded soldiers, aiding the chief surgeon (aiding only) by supplying nurses and substantial means for the comfort and relief of the suffering’.22 Dix’s tasks, in short, were to source her own funding and supplies, recruit her own nurses and only meddle in Medical Bureau affairs when called upon to do so, that is, never. These restrictions did little, however, to stifle Dix’s ambition to become America’s ‘Lady with the Lamp’. Not content with simply putting well-meaning women to work, Dix published a notice in all Washington newspapers requesting that the amateurs stay home unless called upon. In a decision that further mimicked Nightingale’s own notoriously strict policy of people management, Dix also insisted on handpicking the Union’s nurses,
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demanding that they be over thirty-five, bland of looks and dull of demeanour, lest they attract the unwanted attentions of the soldiers.23 In her quest to emulate Nightingale, Dix soon became one of the key figures in the North’s burgeoning community of civilians concerned for the welfare of soldiers. It was this status that led, on 16 May 1861, to her being sought out by Henry Whitney Bellows, a reverend from the Unitarian Church in New York who was also chair of the Women’s Central Association for Relief. Bellows, together with New York’s premier sanitarian, Elisha Harris, and Elizabeth Blackwell –the first female doctor accredited in the United States and a friend of Nightingale’s –had established the Women’s Central Association shortly after the bombardment of Fort Sumter.24 Like Dix, their aim was both to continue Nightingale’s work and marshal the humanitarian spirit of the Union’s citizenry. To this end, Bellows and Harris travelled to Washington in early May in order to offer the food and medicine-sourcing services of the Women’s Central Association to the overstretched Medical Bureau, only to be rebuffed by Wood. In the aftermath of this rejection, Bellows made contact with Dix who, despite her fledgling nursing brigade, was still deeply dissatisfied with the state of the Union’s military-medical affairs. United in their despondency, Bellows, Harris, Blackwell and Dix discussed how they might make the Medical Bureau realize that humanitarian volunteers had their place in the war effort. The plan they devised was one that both adhered to Nightingale’s insistence on the professionalization of military medicine, while rejecting her negative view of volunteers. All four agreed that the Medical Bureau was necessary and that it was the responsibility of Lincoln’s administration to make sure that it was well organized and well funded. They did not, however, believe that this responsibility meant exclusion for the Union’s army of citizen-humanitarians. The plan they devised, therefore, was to create an organization that would both assist the Medical Bureau and coordinate the many and varied relief efforts of the volunteers. This organization, established on 13 June 1861, was the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC).25 There was nothing subtle in the USSC’s attempts to connect itself to what had happened years earlier in the Crimea. Leaving aside the founders’ deep admiration for Nightingale, the very name of the organization was deliberately taken from British Sanitary Commission. USSC member Charles Janeway Stillé justified this emulation in his post-war history of the Commission, in which he praised British military medical arrangements at the end of the Crimean War as ‘perhaps the grandest contribution ever made by science to the practical art of preserving health among men required to live together in large masses’. Replication of such greatness seemed as obvious as it was necessary for the USSC to serve the Union effectively. To this end, Bellows conceived of the USSC as an agency that would conduct inquiries into the conditions of the troops, and offer advice to both generals and surgeons for how to improve the sanitary arrangements of their barracks and hospitals –a bringing together of the tasks carried out by Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission.26 Replication, however, was only the starting point for the USSC’s founders, whose backgrounds, personalities and ambitions ensured that the Commission would aspire to more than simply picking up where the British humanitarians of the Crimea had left off. Bellows –who assumed the role of USSC president –was a career preacher who had devoted his life to all manner of good works aimed at improving public health,
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and enriching of the souls of his New York-based congregation. Although he had no medical training, Bellows was as compassionate as he was optimistic and ambitious, believing that the USSC had the potential to do so much more than simply protect the Union’s soldiers from unnecessary wartime suffering. He envisioned leading an organization that would not only coordinate the efforts of the North’s many relief societies, but come to embody the admirable, Christian character of the Union and all it stood for. The USSC volunteers would support Lincoln’s men by organizing medical stores and keeping checks on their health and, through such demonstrative actions, forge a new, more humane national community that would continue to thrive long after the guns had stopped firing. Elisha Harris had similarly lofty ambitions for what the USSC could accomplish in times of both war and peace, albeit without the whiff of divine moralizing that permeated Bellows’ view. A trained surgeon, expert in sanitation and medical inventor who, among other things, had designed a floating quarantine hospital for immigrants at Staten Island in 1859, Harris was a proponent of mandatory vaccination, sewerage treatment and the idea that the state had a responsibility to its citizens to maintain cities to a certain standard of cleanliness. Harris saw the USSC as a medium through which these ideas could be communicated, first to the army and then to civic society, the end purpose of which being to produce a cleaner, healthier and more progressive United States.27 Both Bellows and Harris believed, in short, that the USSC could nurture and, ultimately, revive their broken country in both body and soul. Such high-minded goals ensured that the USSC would draw to its membership not only doctors and Samaritans, but a variety of intellectuals, professionals and, it must be said, dreamers and drifters.28 The lawyers, Charles Janeway Stillé and George Templeton Strong had not an iota of medical expertise between them and, in terms of their personalities, there was little to indicate a humanitarian mindset. Indeed, Stillé had an intense dislike of the word ‘humanitarian’, which he regarded as too pedestrian an adjective to use when discussing the enormity of what the USSC was trying to achieve. Templeton-Strong, for his part, was a hard-nosed and outspoken conservative elite who derided what he saw as defeatism in the Union on the part of the ‘swinish multitude that rule us under our accursed system of universal suffrage’. Despite their personality quirks, both Templeton-Strong and Stillé became key figures in the United States’ premier wartime humanitarian organization, with the former serving as the USSC’s treasurer and the latter as a producer of medical pamphlets and, later, author of the Commission’s official history –a crucial position in an organization that saw itself as an instructor of sanitary and humanitarian wisdom to future generations. Beneath this impressive if somewhat idiosyncratic leadership level, the USSC boasted an array of misfits. Alfred Bloor, a New York architect, joined the Commission as its assistant secretary, with the expressed purpose of getting himself noticed as a humanitarian figure by the press. The astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Apthorp Gould was another oddity, who became involved in the production of hospitals statistics for the USSC while simultaneously compiling star charts and editing and publishing the pioneering Astronomical Journal. Even the eccentric British journalist Frederick Milne Edge was drawn to work for the USSC as a propagandist tasked with spreading news of the Commission’s successes in Britain.29
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Perhaps the most significant of the non-medical contributors to the USSC was the organization’s Secretary General and chief bureaucrat –the famous architect and designer of New York’s Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted. A highly educated, no-nonsense professional Olmsted, like Templeton-Strong and Stillé, had no prior experience of carrying out humanitarian work before joining Bellows in leading the Women’s Central Association. Until he joined the USCC, the nearest Olmsted had come to demonstrating humanitarian concerns was through his study of the South’s slave-based economy which, notably, was focused more on ‘the proper management of negroes in a state of limbo between slavery and freedom’ rather than on addressing the moral question of slavery itself. Unconventional humanitarian he may have been, Olmsted possessed a clear, ambitious sense of purpose, talent for administration and the trait of suffering fools as gladly as he tolerated disorganization. These skills, Olmsted realized, would be required to efficiently run the USSC, which he joined shortly after witnessing its volunteers tend to the sorry remnants of McDowell’s army after Bull Run. As with his considerations of slavery, Olmsted’s act of joining the USSC was underpinned by other, less overtly humanitarian, concerns. Specifically, he wanted to ensure that the Union –whose cause he backed with near-religious conviction – would produce soldiers a ‘thousandfold better disciplined than the most of those now here or than those who were spoiled for soldiers at Bull Run’. Soldiers, in short, whose fighting capabilities would be enhanced by a detailed regime of hygiene, the provision of good rations and systemized medical care –services that the USSC would take the lead in providing.30 In an effort to create this new, better Union soldier, Olmsted’s first order of business was to conduct weeks of research into the preparations made by the army prior to Bull Run, and the actions of the Medical Bureau during the disastrous aftermath of the retreat to Washington. This led, in autumn 1861, to Olmsted producing a lengthy and detailed report for the benefit of Lincoln’s administration, in which he outlined the parlous state of the Union’s troops, and critiqued the Medical Bureau for its manifold failures. Olmsted’s report was as clear an indication as there could be to the government that the USSC wanted to not simply react to humanitarian disasters on the battlefield, but to prevent them from happening by altering official military-medical policies. The report both ripped apart the Union’s entire process of recruitment for the army and laid down a list of recommendations on everything from rations, to housing, to surgeon training and the organization of ambulance services, all of which, Olmsted argued with the conviction of a man of great military-medical experience, needed to be acted on immediately in order to avert a second Bull Run-like catastrophe. These directives, which were composed with the intention to be read and acted upon immediately by no less a figure than Lincoln himself, came from the mind of a civilian who, only weeks prior, had been primarily concerned with the economic rationalities of slavery and the challenges of landscape design and urban planning.31 Olmsted’s meddling in the army’s medical affairs was indicative of the USSC’s conception of itself as a body that needed to be intimately involved in the war effort – an ambition that required a presence in the Union’s corridors of power. The realization of this objective, however, was always going to be an uphill battle. Like Dix, the USSC initially had few backers in Washington, where consensus held that the Commission
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was a necessary inconvenience that had been forced upon the Union solely by public pressure and press hysteria. The commander- in- chief himself was indifferent to Bellows and his cohorts. When Cameron presented to Lincoln the order to authorize the USSC’s creation, the president let it sit on his desk for four days. This delay was the product of apathy more than measured consideration. When Lincoln did finally sign the USSC into creation, the duties he laid down for it were to: Direct its inquiries to the principles and practices connected with the inspection of recruits and enlisted men; the sanitary condition of the volunteers; to the means of preserving and restoring the health, and of securing in general comfort and efficiency of troops; to the proper provision of cooks, nurses and hospitals; and to other subjects of like nature.32
These hazy directives spoke to Lincoln’s belief that the USSC was a tool to harness the humanitarian energies of civilians who wanted to do their bit for the soldiers –that and nothing more. He certainly didn’t share Bellows and Harris’s vision of the USSC as an engine that could power the United States into a new golden age of progress. As he famously remarked to Cameron shortly after authorizing its creation, Lincoln believed that, for all its founders’ pretences, the USSC would be nothing more than a ‘fifth wheel’ on the Union’s war coach.33 The president’s indifference was one thing, but the resentment Secretary of War Edwin Stanton held for the USSC’s meddling in affairs of war was quite another. Suspicious from the outset of ‘do gooders’ meddling in army business, Stanton sought to stifle the ambitions of Bellows and his associates by forbidding government printers from producing Stillé‘s sanitary instruction manuals for the army and, later in the war, denied the USSC access to hospital statistical data, which was crucial for planning the distribution of food and medical supplies.34 Wood’s replacement as Surgeon-General at the Medical Bureau, Clement A. Finley, was similarly hostile towards the USSC, and with good reason. Templeton-Strong conveyed the collective feelings of the USSC’s leadership when he concluded that Finley was an ‘utterly ossified and useless’ barrier to the realization of the Commission’s goals. Repulsed by the idea that a ‘self-satisfied, supercilious, bigoted block-head’ could seized control of the Medical Bureau on the grounds that he was simply ‘the oldest of old mess-room doctors’ in the Union, Olmsted had decided within months of the commencement of Finley’s tenure that ‘men are dying daily for the want of a tolerable Surgeon Gen’.35 To an organization that saw itself as ushering in a new, progressive military-medical era in the United States, a man like Finley could only ever be an enemy. He was sixty- four years old at the time he took over from Wood just prior to Bull Run and, unlike Lawson, he had seen little of the battlefield as a younger man on account of persistent ill-health. Unfit for the field, in the years prior to the Civil War Finley had mostly concerned himself with evaluating the qualifications of new army surgeons, an area of the Medical Bureau’s procedures that Olmsted had identified in his report as being particularly woeful. Finley’s only other major contribution to the Medical Bureau was the introduction of a plan for evacuating wounded using two-wheeled ambulances. Specifically, he called for the use of an ambulance whose design Finley himself had
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patented for profit, much to the disgust of many of his surgeons. Given his lack of qualifications for the role of Surgeon-General it was inevitable that a rumour soon spread that Lincoln had only given Finley the job because Wood was Jefferson Davis’s brother-in-law and so could not be trusted as Lawson’s permanent successor.36 The means by which Finley came to the Medical Bureau did not concern the USSC nearly as much as the way he ran it. Like Lawson before him, Finley was mostly concerned with saving money. To this end, he refused to acknowledge that army surgeons required both up-to-date equipment and an organized ambulance service and, initially, offered little if any procedural instructions to his inexperienced surgeons, who struggled with the most basic questions of what to do with wounded men once treatment had been administered. Unable to manage his small corps of surgeons and their demands, it was no surprise that Finley also rejected the idea that civilian volunteers –the numbers of which operating in Washington alone he feared were too great for anyone to keep control of –could offer anything useful to the Union’s war effort. Rather than heed the contrary advice offered by medical journals, the press, Wood and the USSC itself, Finley chose instead to dig in his heels. The only acknowledgement he made of the Medical Bureau’s inadequacies and the USSC’s possible benefits came in the form of a grudging agreement to Cameron’s recommendation that the Commission be permitted to appoint inspectors to monitor cleanliness in army barracks and hospitals. Beyond that concession, Finley remained convinced that his policies were sound, the Medical Bureau alone had the authority to care for the Union’s soldiers and that the meddlesome USSC was best ignored.37 Ignoring the Commission, however, soon ceased to be an option for Finley. Still shocked by the aftermath of Bull Run, the public rallied behind the USSC which, to the delight of Bellows and Olmsted, was presented by the New York Times as not only the logical and necessary complement to the Medical Bureau, but the heir to the humanitarian mantle once occupied by the saviours of Scutari.38 Depicted in such a glowing light, the USSC enjoyed a flood of initial donations, which by the end of June had filled its coffers to the tune of $12,000 (approximately $340,000 today). These funds were spent on fresh medical supplies and the requisitioning of new facilities across the Union in which to store them. Using the power reluctantly ceded to him by Finley, in the late summer Bellows also led a team of USSC inspectors through camps in the newly opened theatre of fighting west of the Appalachian Mountains. These inspectors carried checklists drawn from Olmsted’s report, which they used to assess the condition of the soldiers and the cleanliness of their barracks and hospitals across Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri. As he travelled through the war’s Western theatre, sometimes alongside the soldiers themselves on army trains, Bellows also set up new partnerships with other, smaller charitable organizations, extending the USSC’s reach and influence across much of the Union’s humanitarian community. The outcome of this expansion was, so Stillé later claimed, the professionalization and nationalization of the Union’s humanitarian groups which, hitherto, had been disjointed, poorly organized and narrow-mindedly fixated on preserving the welfare of only those soldiers from their home city or region. Each ‘village aid society or sewing circle’, as Stillé called them, was visited by Bellows’s teams as they moved further west. With these visits came not only absorption but also education, specifically in the ways
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of both relief distribution and the cause of the Union. This process, Stillé claimed, led to the dissipation of inefficient parochialism within the Union’s philanthropic communities, leading ‘the aid societies of the Sanitary Commission’, as they had now become, to the realization that they now worked ‘for the National cause because they worked for the National soldier only’. Through this campaign the USSC set itself up as an agent, not simply of mercy and medicine, but of national unification –a body that was as political as it was humanitarian.39 Not content with controlling local philanthropic groups, the USSC also sought to extend its remit further by imposing its will on the Medical Bureau. Empowered by the growing public support it was receiving, the USSC’s leaders began to lobby Congress for the passing of a new bill which, in defiance of Finley’s miserly policies, would authorize the recruitment of ten new surgeons and twenty assistant surgeons for the army. So insistent was Bellows of the need to pass ‘this urgent bill, so much in the interests of humanity’, that he even took the liberty of drafting it for the New York senator Preston King to present to Congress. Having taken note of the support the USSC had already received from the newspapers, Olmsted also decided that the press should be used to attack Finley’s mismanagement of the Medical Bureau, and so pave the way for the USSC’s bill. As he wrote to Bellows in August 1861, ‘the hospital system is simply disgraceful and I think we must, if necessary, tell the country so’.40 The editor of the New York World –a friend of the USSC’s leadership –supported the Commission in this endeavour, and throughout the autumn of 1861 the newspaper published articles that lauded the USSC, attacked Finley and blamed the Medical Bureau specifically for the deaths of Union soldiers and the spread of smallpox through the ranks. The USSC launched another public attack on the Medical Bureau in August 1861, when it published a pamphlet on Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier. This document ran down Finley’s poor record of monitoring the health of the army’s recruits, while offering Commission-approved advice to generals on everything from the length they should keep their soldiers’ hair, to how to spot signs of venereal disease, to the number of steps each recruit should take per minute on the march in order to maintain optimal health. This was followed, in December, by a cadre of USSC doctors issuing a guidebook for Finley’s surgeons, advising them on the best practice for field amputations and the treatment of gunshot wounds.41 There was some push back to this assault from at least one press outlet, which responded to the USSC’s anti-Finley campaign by pointing out that Bellows and company were getting too big for their boots. In a series of articles published by the New York Times in late 1861, the USSC’s aggressive criticism of the Medical Bureau was written off as ‘in reality an appeal for more funds, combined with glaringly false statements, and malicious, but covert, attacks on the Medical Bureau of the army, and its energetic head –Dr Clement A. Finley’. Henry J. Raymond, the founder of the New York Times, had been in attendance at Bellows’s initial call to humanitarian arms in front of the Women’s Central Association in April 1861 and, through the medium of his newspaper, had supported the creation of the USSC and its initial exertions on behalf of the Union. Raymond, however, was also a key supporter of Lincoln’s administration, a friend of Finley and a staunch Republican. This naturally placed him at odds with the Democrat-favouring, USSC-endorsing paper, New York World, and
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led to him attacking the Commission’s penchant to blame every suffering endured by the Union’s soldiers on the Medical Bureau. For these reasons, Raymond supported the characterization in his paper of the USSC as a ‘small and expensive, ambitious and assuming’ organization, while arguing that ‘the Surgeon-General has neglected nothing that would secure the health of the troops’.42 Raymond’s questioning of the USSC’s legitimacy fooled few people and, in the already fissile public discourse over the Union’s military- medical situation, the New York Times’ critique of Bellows and his people was the exception rather than the rule, which held that ‘all the actions of the Commission in this respect has been in entire harmony with, and subjugation to, the regular surgical authorities’ and, as a consequence, ‘the Sanitary Commission has established its right to claim the confidence of the nation’.43 Beyond the generally glowing press depictions of the USSC, the appearance of the Commission’s inspectors at the foot of hospital beds everywhere from New York to St Louis also encouraged public support and raised morale among the army’s rank and file. This gift to the Union’s war effort did not go unnoticed within the army itself. The army surgeon Frank Hastings Hamilton was as mindful of the importance of nutrition in soldiers’ diets as he was of the difficulties quartermasters had in ensuring that Lincoln’s growing army was regularly fed. He saw the USSC as providers of an invaluable answer to this problem, and lauded their efforts to supply both tinned soups to men on the march and fresh food to hospitals in an effort to aid the recovery of the sick and wounded. General George McClellan also expressed appreciation for the USSC’s spirit-raising efforts to keep barracks clean, hospitals supplied and warm blankets and extra rations available. The support the USSC enjoyed from McClellan was not surprising. He had not only inherited McDowell’s rabble army after its bludgeoning at Bull Run but, as a member of the Delafield Commission that went to the Crimea in 1855, and a soldier who had been stricken by malaria and dysentery during the Mexican-American War of 1846, he was one of a new generation of generals who fully appreciated both the importance of keeping soldiers fighting fit through good medical treatment and plentiful rations, and the degree to which civilians could contribute to meeting these ends.44 Finley, for his part, remained unimpressed. Determined to be the Commission’s enemy, Finley resisted its unsubtle suggestions to reform his ways, ignored press support for its labours and denounced its interfering nature to anyone in Washington who would listen. As convinced of its collective wisdom as it was of Finley’s inability to fall in line with the new humanitarian order, the USSC responded by taking the drastic step of hatching a plot to remove the Surgeon-General from his position. To Bellows, this turn to political machination was as logical a step as it was necessary. Finley had to go before a root and branch reform of the Medical Bureau could take place, and a new era in which the plight of soldiers would be properly addressed could begin. This USSC-led coup began in the autumn of 1861, when Bellows and Olmsted complained to McClellan and Cameron of Finley being ‘too old and too tied to routine’ to be compatible with the new standards the USSC was setting for soldier welfare. The ‘inadequacy and incompetency of the Surgeon General’, they argued, was undermining the Medical Bureau ‘at this critical exacting hour of the public danger’. It is testament to the power and confidence the USSC had attained in the short space of a few months
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that its civilian members –not content with boldly attacking Finley in both the press and in correspondence with a general and the Secretary for War –went so far as to draw up a list of candidates to replace the President-appointed Surgeon-General. Equally telling is the fact that, when presented with this list Cameron was willing to look it over, albeit without commitment on account of his concern over the bad press that would emerge from yet another scandal at the Medical Bureau.45 The USSC, however, feared no scandal, and so continued to push its list of candidates to replace the aged Surgeon-General, at the top of which was William A. Hammond, an ‘admirable and efficient’ prospect who, Bellows argued, ‘would remove the frightful evils besetting the Medical Bureau’.46 Hammond’s record gave grounds to believe this prophecy. An accomplished thirty-three-year-old surgeon who had joined the army in 1849, the USSC’s candidate was born of a different generation of surgeons from the one to which Lawson and Finley belonged. Before the war, Hammond had toured Europe and there studied new techniques of battlefield surgery and outpatient treatment that had been born of the Crimean experience. He also had an interest in maintaining the welfare of soldiers away from the battlefield by issuing of nutritionally balanced rations while in camp, and housing the wounded in hospitals that, in keeping with the prevailing wisdom in Europe, would be of a pavilion shape that allowed for adequate ventilation. Young, open-minded, confident and progressive, Hammond was viewed admiringly by the USSC as the antidote to the stagnant Lawson-Finley poison. Bellows was so convinced of this that he took his behind the scenes lobbying for Hammond as high as the White House, where he spent the winter of 1861 urging Lincoln to drop Finley and usher in a new guard. With Cameron aware of the USSC’s list, Lincoln open to hearing Bellows out and even Finley’s journalist ally Raymond wavering in his loyalty, the case to keep the Surgeon-General rapidly eroded. Finally, on 18 April 1862, a final version of the bill that Bellows had initially drafted months before was passed by Congress. In addition to calling for a fresh surgeon recruitment drive, this bill gave the Surgeon-General new powers to reform the Medical Bureau and, most importantly, abolished the rule that seniority, rather than competence, would determine the appointment. His position being owed purely to the principle of seniority, Finley jumped before he was pushed and resigned his commission, paving the way for Hammond to become the new Surgeon-General and take the reins of the Medical Bureau on 25 April.47 The appointment of Hammond marked the ascendency of both the USSC as a political force, and its leaders’ belief in the need for the military-medical practices of old to be cast to the wind. The appointment was also a sign that innovation would now be the byword for American military medicine. As the USSC was aware, Hammond was an ambitious man who viewed the role of Surgeon-General as more than being the Union’s medical majordomo. In keeping with the thoughts of Bellows and Harris, Hammond believed that an efficient military- medical system, once victory was achieved, could serve as a platform to revitalize the humanitarian spirit of the re-United States and its moribund medical profession. Financial and political investment by the government in surgery, sanitation and civic hygiene during the war would, Hammond hoped, continue into the years of peace, and eventually improve the lot of the average American.48 With the aim to kick-start this process, within his first weeks in power
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Hammond began reorganizing Finley’s Medical Bureau, raising the entry standards of training for surgeons and placing orders for the latest field surgery kits. With the backing of the now politically muscular USSC, Hammond also lobbied Washington for money to build new pavilion hospitals, two of which were constructed over the summer of 1862, each with the capacity to hold two hundred wounded. Taking his cue from Nightingale, Hammond also made statistics –calculated from data gathered by USSC hospital inspectors –central to the planning of his new military-medical system which, unlike Finley’s, had room within it for the exertions of volunteers. Drawing together information gathered by Bellows’s inspectors on the prevalence of certain diseases in wards, heights and weights of the average soldier, types of wounds suffered and rates of recovery, Hammond was able to give his quartermasters more precise instructions on what supplies to order for particular military districts. This gave him a detailed overview of the Union’s military-medical system, and allowed him to identify areas that required either USSC assistance or adjustments in his surgeons’ practices.49 In a further departure from Finley, Hammond was also willing to delegate certain responsibilities to subordinates –a practice that Chenu, Longmore and other Crimean War veterans had identified as necessary for achieving maximum flexibility and inefficiency in army medical departments. To this end, in June 1862 Hammond appointed Jonathan Letterman as the new Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac. Letterman was only thirty-eight years old, yet highly experienced, having worked for years in frontier outposts across the United States, often deep in Indian territory. This had given him skills in adaptation, resource management and ingenuity –all qualities that fit the new, more progressive tone that Hammond wanted to set within the Medical Bureau. They were qualities, moreover, that Letterman was required to utilize to the fullest when faced with his first great test, namely, the battering taken by McClellan’s army during the final week of June 1862, when the general attempted to end the war in one fell swoop by striking at the Confederate capital of Richmond. Instead of decisive victory, the Army of the Potomac was beaten back in a series of battles, which led to an inglorious retreat to the safety of Harrison’s Landing on the banks of the James River. There, protected from complete destruction by a squadron of gunboats and hastily erected defensive positions, the 8,000 Union wounded baked in the summer heat, bereft of medical supplies, food and tents.50 Letterman was not blind to the enormity of the problems presented by the situation at Harrison’s Landing, or the extent to which the Medical Bureau, still in the process of adjusting to the Hammond regime, ‘was in a condition far from satisfactory’ to meet the soldiers’ immediate needs. The gathering of statistics that Letterman, like Hammond, believed was crucial to any modern military-medical service had not yet been normalized, and as such he struggled to obtain accurate information on the numbers of casualties and types of wounds that afflicted them. Harrison’s Landing, a plantation mansion converted into a hospital sited on the banks of the river, was ‘entirely inadequate to meet the needs of the army’ and, owing to a lack of vision on the part of the quartermasters ‘only a few wall tents could be obtained with which to enlarge the capacity of the hospital’. Thinking quickly, Letterman chose to use the river as the means of bringing salvation to McClellan’s troops. In a display of initiative that would have shocked Finley, Letterman made the decision, without first consulting
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Washington or anyone at the Medical Bureau, to send the much needed food and medical supplies up the James River to Harrison’s Landing using army steamships. For this act he received congratulations from the generals for remedying a dire situation, and set an example of how steamships could and should be used by for delivering supplies and evacuating wounded, particularly given that so many Union armies were operating for the most part in regions that were riddled with river systems.51 Hammond was suitability impressed by his new Medical Director’s ability to innovate that in the aftermath of Harrison’s Landing he gave Letterman unprecedented authority to reform the medical service of McClellan’s army. Already concerned with using steamships for river-bound transport, Letterman soon turned his attention to the long-standing issue of ambulances, which since Bull Run had routinely been requisitioned for all manner of uses not related to the transportation of wounded, such as ferrying officers to headquarters and carrying ammunition to the frontlines. The misuse of the ambulances was just as troubling to Letterman as their design which, despite the pre-war recommendations of some European surgeons for four-wheeled designs, were mainly based on Finley’s two-wheeled, cheaply made and difficult to manoeuvre model.52 In response to this, Letterman developed both an actual system of rules for the use of ambulances and a new model for the vehicles themselves. The ambulance he proposed was four-wheeled and therefore handled better over muddy tracks than Finley’s design. In acknowledgement of the fact that the numbers of wounded were only going to increase as the battles of the Civil War grew in size, the Letterman Ambulance was also capable of carrying up to six wounded men, in addition to medical supplies and water. Letterman adopted a similar philosophy of preparing for the worst when concerning himself with the outfitting of steamships, which he insisted had to be equipped with fitted rows of stretchers, a permanent staff of nurses, cooks and orderlies and stockpiles of food and medical supplies determined by statistical calculations of the number of wounded each ship would need to service in a particular region. Statistics, medical science and innovation formed the bedrock of Letterman’s reforms.53 Hammond and Letterman’s swift overhaul of the Medical Bureau was the most tangible indication of the success of the USSC’s mission to bring order to the Union’s military-medical regime. Through agitation, press awareness, political manoeuvring and a bloody-minded determination to improve the state of Lincoln’s troops, a small group of civilians had penetrated corridors of influence and power in Washington, shaken the dust off the Medical Bureau, deposed the Surgeon-General and paved the way for a new military-medical regime based on the ideas of younger, more progressive surgeons. This shattering of the old guard, however, was only the beginning of the USSC’s efforts to use science, logistics and mass civilian participation to mitigate the suffering of men at war. As the fighting spread further west from 1862 onwards, Bellows and his people expanded their purview and grew even bolder in marshalling ‘the volunteer philanthropy of the people to the unavoidable exclusiveness and stringent discipline of the army’. This was achieved to such an extent in fact, that one USSC member would later claim that by war’s end the USSC had ‘inaugurated a new era in the history of war’.54 Exaggeration this might have been, but like most myths a kernel of truth lay buried in the hyperbole.
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By the spring of 1862, the USSC had every reason to believe that it had not simply inherited the legacy of the Crimean War’s humanitarians, but was successfully building on it, creating a new, innovative vision for how to humanize war and control the suffering of its victims. The Commission’s initial, humble, objectives to provide advice to the Medical Bureau and monitor the welfare of the Union’s soldiers had been swiftly achieved. Now, with new theatres of fighting opening up in the mid-Western states, a competent Surgeon-General running a reformed Medical Bureau, and the USSC’s volunteers established as permanent features of the Union’s war effort, the time had come for the grander ambitions of the Commission’s founders –to utilize the latest sanitary science, further the development of military medicine and grow the power and influence of their organization –to be pursued. The last goal in particular was of great importance. For without prestige and power, the USSC could not hope to be taken seriously as an organization that was capable of both taking care of Lincoln’s soldiers in wartime, and building a new, healthier United States once peace finally came. The need to maintain and, if possible, improve its reputation was as imperative to the USSC’s leaders as the need to control the system of succour they had created – a system comprised of the mass mobilization of volunteers, close liaison with the Medical Bureau, and the planned integration of relief work with military operations. It was system that, having been developed by the USSC to correct the mistakes of Bull Run, modernize the Medical Bureau and improve the fighting efficiency of Lincoln’s troops, might best be described as the ‘Union way’ of military-medicine. Demonstrably successfully by the war’s middle years, it was a system, moreover, that the USSC guarded its leadership and administration of jealously. Ironically, it was Letterman –who had benefitted so much from the USSC’s ambitious agenda –who was among the first to offend the Commission’s leaders by seemingly questioning their mastery of the Union’s military- medical system. Both during the humanitarian operation at Harrison’s Landing, and in the months of triumph and success that Letterman enjoyed afterwards, the USSC kept a close eye on the maverick Medical Director, who Bellows soon came to view as being too driven by ‘professional ambition and zeal’ for his own good. This observation, as well as Olmsted’s backhanded compliment that Letterman, despite his ‘dry, taciturn and impenetrable manner’ was willing to try things his predecessors had balked at, revealed the extent to which the USSC leadership saw the professional, hard-working surgeon
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as first a facilitator of and then a possible threat to, their influence.1 As much was evident in the clash that occurred between Letterman and the USSC over the use of steamships. From late 1861 onwards, the Commission had been outfitting steamships, at significant expense, in order to transport supplies and evacuate wounded along the Mississippi and Ohio river systems. Understandably, the USSC was quite proud of this achievement, which had allowed it to carve out yet another innovative fiefdom in the Union’s military-medical system. The USSC representative in the Mississippi Valley was particularly pleased by the fact that no less a person than General Ulysses S. Grant had ‘also, by special order, given the control of another steamer to the agents of the Commission’ in 1862, based on the success of their operation of other vessels.2 As the ships had been gifted by the army and their operation paid for with Commission funds, the USSC saw itself as the ultimate controller of the vessels. In embracing the freedom granted to him by Hammond, however, Letterman assumed that he could use the USSC’s ships for his own needs, much as he had done with the army’s vessels at Harrison’s Landing. When he attempted to requisition a USSC ship operating on the Ohio River, however, Letterman received a harsh rebuke from Olmsted, who regarded the former’s actions as evidence of the Medical Director’s irritating habit of making decisions without consulting the Commission’s leadership. This was something that was bound to irk an organization that had risen, in barely a year, from a small group of charitable civilians into a political force that, in an indirect way, Letterman owed his position to. Letterman, for his part, was driven by this intervention into his affairs to further strengthen the Army of the Potomac’s medical capabilities and diversify its sources of supply, with the aim of eventually casting off any need for USSC assistance.3 Letterman was not the only one to knock heads with the increasingly territorial USSC. As the Western theatre of fighting expanded and the numbers of casualties from the Battles of Gettysburg, Antietam and Shiloh greatly stretched the Union’s military-medical resources, the USSC began to aggressively solicit new donors, absorb more philanthropic groups and innovate in its methods, the last leading to the aforementioned use of steamships.4 The expansion of the USSC’s operations in the Western theatre led not only to the dispute with Letterman but also to the Commission’s leaders turning on one who was there at the organization’s very beginning: Dorothea Dix. Despite working with Bellows and Harris on the original idea of the USSC, Dix never joined the organization, primarily out of fear that her closeness to such an initially unpopular body in Washington might further damage her already fractious relationship with the Medical Bureau. Dix was also protective of the notion of being ‘America’s Nightingale’, which required her being presented as the only person qualified to carry the Crimean torch of humanitarian wisdom. As a consequence Dix tended to view the USSC as an amateur group, despite its growing political influence and popularity. At best, she felt that the Commission could serve her as a potential ally in her ongoing battles with the Medical Bureau. Like Finley, Dix failed to fully comprehend the significance of the USSC’s rise and the extent to which its ambitions would inevitably lead Bellows and Olmsted –whose reach was now such that they were well aware of Dix’s bad-mouthing of the USSC to various philanthropic groups in the Union –to muscle in on her territory.5 This conflict between the USSC and the independent-minded head of nurses first emerged in the autumn of 1861, when Dix decided to back the creation of the
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St Louis-based Western Sanitary Commission, a new body founded by two of her old friends, William Greenleaf Elliot and James Yeatman. The Western Sanitary Commission was established as a response to the fighting in Ohio and Missouri and, in theory, its founders were acting in accord with Bellows’s vision of the USSC inspiring humanitarian-minded individuals across the Union. In practice, however, the USSC’s leaders could not countenance the idea of a rival developing independent of the Commission’s oversight, and saw the creation of the new body as nothing less than a humanitarian microcosm of the war itself –the Western Sanitary Commission playing the role of the seceding Confederacy to the USSC’s righteous Union. Dix was torn but, ultimately, she offered her support to Elliot and Yeatman’s upstart organization, fortified by her erroneous assumption that the USSC could do nothing to obstruct other humanitarians from going about their work. The extent to which this was not the case was made clear to Dix when, in response to the creation of the Western Sanitary Commission, the USSC began to cut ‘America’s Nightingale’ out of its plans. In October 1861, Olmsted issued a circular to the army which advised that only the USSC could be trusted as a distributor of relief supplies for the troops, a statement that directly undermined not only the Western Sanitary Commission, but Dix’s own personal supply distribution network that she had established even before the USSC had come into being. This was followed by Bellows declaring that his Women’s Central Association would no longer supply nurses to Dix. The message was clear –when it came to humanitarian matters, the USSC alone had the power.6 This assertion of its right to control humanitarians across the Union rested on the USSC’s conception of itself as the only accredited body that could be trusted with the weighty task of safeguarding the welfare of Lincoln’s soldiers. The emphasis on professionalism and scientific practices in all it did lay at the heart of this self- conception. As Stillé argued in his post-war history, there were no extant rules that could determine where the responsibilities of the Medical Bureau’s surgeons ended and those of civilian volunteers began. What was needed to avoid confusion, therefore, was for the volunteers to maintain a sense of discipline and focus in what they were doing and, following Nightingale’s best practice, curb the emotions that so often accompanied the carrying out of charitable works in favour of a more disciplined, clinical approach to humanitarian action. The enforcement of this system was, of course, the task of the USSC alone. Indeed, in the original proposal for the USSC sent to Wood, Bellows emphasized that the Commission would work ‘with great efficiency and harmony to contribute towards the comfort and security of our troops by methodizing the spontaneous benevolence’ of other, more ‘amateur’, humanitarians. The certainty of this philosophy only hardened as the war dragged on. With its storehouses bulging and quartermasters overwhelmed by the flood of chocolates, chess sets and hip flasks donated by well-meaning Union citizenry, in late 1863 the USSC sounded a warning to the amateurs via the pages of its Bulletin –a publication that, in its reporting of Commission activities and promotion of sanitary sciences represented yet another arena of empire-building for Bellows and his cohorts. In an article directed at those who had yet to recognize the USSC’s control of the Union’s humanitarian regime, the Commission warned of the ‘constant danger of falling backing into slovenly, wasteful and injurious ways of supplying the wants of the soldiers’. Against this threat the
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USSC asserted that ‘only the most persistent and strenuous resistance to an impulsive benevolence, the most earnest and obstinate defence of a guarded and methodized system of relief can save the public from imposition and the army from demoralization’.7 This preference for unemotional, ‘methodized’ humanitarianism meant that, in addition to its contretemps with the Western Sanitary Commission and Dix, the USSC also entered into a rivalry with the United States Christian Commission. Established on 14 November 1861 by members of the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Christian Commission was a wartime extension of America’s robust pre-war Evangelical movement. Like the USSC, the Christian Commission formed in response to the rise of public concern for the wellbeing of the Union’s soldiers. Unlike its rival, however, the Christian Commission saw itself not as an agent of progress and promotor of new medical ideas, but as the inheritor of a rich historic tradition of Samaritan philanthropy that stretched back from Nightingale, Seacole and the Sisters of Mercy, to the holy orders of St Vincent de Paul and the Knights Hospitaller.8 Looking to good works of the past for guidance, the Christian Commission offered a counter-vision of wartime humanitarianism to that proffered by the USSC, premised not on the latter’s adherence to methodization and professionalism, but on Samaritan goodwill, human feeling and Divinely guided moral regeneration. It was on these points of divergence that the Christian Commission openly attacked the cold indifference of the USSC, whose faith in science rather than God was deemed by their rivals to make them corrupt, untrustworthy and unfit to minister to the true needs of the Union’s suffering soldiers. Erroneous claims that the USSC’s hospital inspectors did it for the money, while the Christian Commission’s volunteers laboured unpaid were also put forward in donation drive pamphlets and letters to the editor of the New York Times, which were written by Christian Commission supporters in an effort to draw smaller volunteer bodies away from the USSC and into the orbit of the Union’s ‘real’ Samaritans.9 Despite the USSC leaders’ confidence in their ethos, these barbed criticisms from the righteous touched a nerve, the more so given that they arose at a time when the numbers of wounded in the Western theatre were placing great strain on the resources of both the Medical Bureau and the Commission. In an effort to both counter the Christian Commission’s accusations of coldness, and respond to its increasing burden of duties, from the middle of 1862 the USSC expanded its operations once again, this time by assigning field agents to each individual army corps, both to help process freshly wounded men on the frontlines and assist in their evacuation to rear hospitals. Within the hospitals themselves the USSC also altered its practices and, in addition to inspecting the cleanliness of wards and keeping them supplied, Commission agents got more into the habit of stroking wounded brows, offering words of comfort and writing letters home to soldiers’ loved ones. This greater engagement of the USSC in the care of soldiers, from the first moments of traumatic wounding on the battlefield to the long, painful days of treatment and recovery in the hospital, did much to humanize the USSC’s agents in the eyes of certain soldiers who had come to prefer the more personalized approach to succour taken by the Christian Commission. The USSC furthered this campaign to show itself as the true, benevolent friend of the Union soldier by establishing a service for tracing soldiers’ pay, and creating convalescent homes for amputees in the war’s latter years. In a further attempt to match the Christian
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Commission, the USSC also began to weave more religious language and sentiment into its donation drives, and published the personalized accounts of its agents, whose labours were presented as those of Samaritans doing God’s good work. Having formed a committee to liaise with the Christian Commission earlier in the war, by 1864 the USSC was even claiming that a ‘mutual esteem and confidence’ had been established between the ‘two great organizations’ and, having learnt much from each other in the field of wartime humanitarianism, ‘the two now work together harmoniously’.10 This was more propaganda than reality. The Christian Commission –claiming poverty despite receiving healthy financial donations –refused to transport USSC supplies via its own networks and, as late as 1864 was expressing concern internally that its presence in the hospitals and barracks was too small and unnoticed by the soldiers, compared to that of the Sanitary Commission.11 This rivalry between the USSC and the Christian Commission was demonstrative of a fundamental divide between what might be termed the ‘professionals’, and the ‘amateurs’ of the transatlantic movement to control the scale of suffering in war. Such a rivalry was present in Hall’s attitude towards Nightingale and, indeed, the latter’s rejection of Mary Seacole. In the case of the Civil War’s humanitarians, at the heart of the division lay the simple fact that, despite its apparent embrace of a more personalized and Samaritan form of humanitarianism, the USSC still viewed itself first and foremost as a professional organization, whose purpose was to control military-medicine and in so doing contribute to the Union’s war effort. The Christian Commission never laboured under any such ambitions or pretensions. Although it occasionally played politics with the USSC, even its official historian proudly recalled that the Christian Commission’s primary achievements were converting soldiers to Christ on their deathbeds, leading healing hymn-singing sessions in wards and offering ‘to talk of Jesus’ to men convulsing in pain from gunshot wounds. Such activities, the author argued, summed up the Christian Commission’s primary mission: to go ‘to the field laden with good cheer and tokens of love for the soldiers’.12 This divide in purpose and ambition is evidenced by the tone and substance of the instructions given to, and tasks carried out by both organizations’ field operatives –dubbed ‘delegates’ by the Christian Commission and ‘field agents’ by the USSC. The instructions given to the former embodied the more traditional Samaritan approach taken by the Christian Commission, whose delegates were told to take only food and a Bible to the battlefield –their principle tasks being either to nourish the body and soul of the living or to bury the dead. Although the delegates had to report to a Christian Commission supervisor upon reaching the frontlines and, where possible, avoid entanglement with military operations, there was still a notable loophole in their instructions which proffered the opportunity to meddle. A good Christian Commission delegate, it was stated, ‘should not fail of employing most prayerfully all his ingenuity, energy and enterprise in carrying on and extending his work’ beyond that which was laid down in the instructions, should needs dictate it. One such need was to cure soldiers of their sinful vices, namely liquor, women, gambling and swearing, and to reinvigorate faith in Christ among the rank and file who might otherwise be too concerned with fighting to read their bibles. Unsurprisingly, the reports the Christian Commission’s delegates had to fill out contained fields where they could specify the number of sermons delivered,
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hymns sung, psalm books distributed and ‘the number of soldiers personally conversed with about their spiritual interests’. There was little, if any, mention in the reports of what medical relief had been given.13 In contrast, the instructions given to USSC field agents –who served as part of a newly constituted Field Relief Corps in 1862 –speak to the Commission’s desire to service the requirements of the army. Even before venturing into a warzone the field agent had to make ‘himself acquainted with the wants of the different division, brigade and regimental hospitals’ and possess ‘a knowledge of the principles of army organization’. Once informed and supplied accordingly by the quartermaster, the field agent would then stock up with food and medical supplies, before attaching himself to a specific brigade or division for a number of weeks. During this time, the field agent would try to become one with the soldiery. By ‘sharing the toils and perils of his corps, he would find himself thoroughly identified with it’ and therefore be in a better position to understand the needs of the soldiers and attend to them accordingly. The field agent also had to keep themselves in a state of military-style readiness, ‘it being important not only to the health, but to the efficiency of every relief agent that his dress and equipment be kept in perfect order’.14 There was no room in such an ethos for the pushing of personal religious convictions or the waging of campaigns to win soldiers’ souls. The USSC’s emphasis on coordinating its efforts with the military was not just about making sure its field agents carried out their work effectively. The embedding of its people with the army and the support it gave to the revitalized Medical Bureau reflected the USSC’s aspiration to be less a fifth wheel, and more a vital cog in the Union’s war machine. The winning over of Washington to the belief that it could work in harmony with the generals always mattered more to the USSC than any competition with the Christian Commission for the souls and adoration of the rank and file. In order to drive this point home to Lincoln’s administration, any impressions of the USSC being a well-meaning, rabble of humanitarians were tackled head-on. Even before its inspectors first visited hospitals in the summer of 1861, the USSC leadership defined the very term ‘relief ’ to the army’s commanders, in order to make clear that the work of Commission’s inspectors was altogether different to the surgeries and frontline treatment conducted by the Medical Bureau’s surgeons. This line of demarcation was identified early, so Stillé argued, in order that Washington would understand that the USSC aimed to ‘supplement, not to supplant the government’. This same policy of cooperation with demarcation applied to the USSC’s relations with the soldiers themselves. Imbedded they may have been, the field agents knew the importance of falling in line, and so subordinated themselves to army commanders and only took their carts of supplies to areas of the front where they had been told they were needed. Even after the expansion of the USSC’s work in 1862, the field agents were mindful not to step on the toes of the surgeons, with the Field Relief Corps confining itself mostly to issuing additional supplies of food, medicine and comforts to soldiers and surgeons alike. It was only in the summer of 1864, and even then only under the strictest conditions, that USSC volunteers began to officially offer triage and transport services to the wounded, all the while being sure not to meddle in actual surgical operations. This integration with the work of the Medical Bureau and the army led Stillé to
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conclude that the ‘perfect subordination and accountability’ of the field agents had engendered military-medical successes that the ‘well-meaning, but indiscreet persons’ from other voluntary humanitarian groups could only hope to achieve.15 It is true that the record of the Christian Commission –the clear target of Stillé’s haughty assessment –was a mixed one. Throughout the war it ran donation drives and recruitment campaigns that were generally bereft of standardized practices or discerning judgements. This led to a wide variety of mostly unskilled volunteers bringing blankets, games, painting sets, books and Bibles with them on their trips to barracks and hospitals.16 The distribution of such a variety of wares by individuals who were genuinely moved by the plight of the troops undoubtedly did much for the morale of individual soldiers, however, the delegates also earned a reputation in some quarters for being holier-than-thou nuisances. Moreover, the tendency of the delegates to view Christ, rather than the generals, as their overlord led to instances of them wandering into restricted areas and even convincing soldiers that army regulations were inconsequential when it came to the need to follow instructions from the Almighty. Despite their whiff of divine amateurism, however, the Christian Commission still did well when it came to the earthly matter of money. Owing to its relentless donation drives, the Christian Commission managed to raise close to $3,000,000 over the course of the war, recruited nearly 5,000 delegates to its cause, and distributed uncounted tons of food and gifts to the Union’s wounded. The Christian Commission even received a note of endorsement from Nightingale who, upon reviewing the wartime record of the organization that had been sent to her –no doubt in expectation of receiving approval from the angel of Scutari –stated that ‘in the history of our time nothing more remarkable has occurred than the universal uprising, so to speak, of the Christian philanthropy of America’.17 The fact that the Christian Commission completed its work while influencing the practices of the USSC, and without adopting the latter’s preoccupations with playing politics in Washington or pursuing grand ambitions demonstrates that, despite the USSC’s apparent monopoly of the humanitarian response to the American Civil War, there was still a place for ‘amateurs’ who could offer something other than the Union way of doing things. One of the more notable alternatives to Bellow’s and Olmsted’s military-medical system during the war was provided by a thirty-nine-year-old clerk from the United States Patent Office named Clara Barton. Like Nightingale, Barton was an independent- minded woman who had spent her life relatively unbound by the social and intellectual expectations placed upon her gender. Moreover, despite possessing neither formal medical qualifications nor a powerful, well-funded organization to back her labours, Barton became both the Civil War’s most widely recognized ‘battlefield angel’ and, in later years, the founder of the American Red Cross. She was, by all measures, one of the humanitarian juggernauts of her age. Inevitably, she was regarded by many as ‘America’s Nightingale’, however, unlike Dix it was a comparison that Barton was more angered than flattered by. When, in later life, accusations of being an American imitator of the original were made, Barton was prone to react –as doubtless Nightingale would have if the roles were reversed –with neurotic outbursts, resentful reposts and bouts of crippling depression that sent her to her bed for days on end. Indeed, when the two women were staying only a few streets away from each other in London in the
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1870s, they confined themselves to a brief, polite exchange of letters and, not wishing to come face to face with someone they each believed to be a competitor and imitator, they refrained from ever meeting.18 Barton’s resentment over the comparisons likely stemmed from the fact that unlike Nightingale, who was a hospital-bound stickler for rules, she was a proud field humanitarian, who enjoyed the reputation she cultivated during the Civil War for thinking on her feet, spending her own money on supplies, and putting her life in danger in service to the Union’s troops. In many ways, therefore, Barton had as much in common with Elena Pavlovna’s nurses or Mary Seacole as she did with the ‘Lady with the Lamp’ to whom she was so often compared. Sallying forth onto the battlefield at Fredericksburg in December 1862 with little more than a roll of bandages in hand, Barton even took a bullet –albeit through the fabric of her skirt. This hands-on approach to humanitarianism had been Barton’s calling card since her first foray into nursing, which came barely a week after the attack on Fort Sumter when she hastened to the scene of an ambush of the Union’s Sixth Massachusetts Regiment by a pro-Confederate militia. A native of the Bay State herself, Barton was affronted by the attack on ‘her boys’, and no sooner had the wounded begun arriving via train then she leapt into action, directing the actions of like-minded volunteers to the tasks of fetching water and making bandages out of whatever was available. Barton even went so far as to attempt to resupply the regiment during its convalescence by raiding her sister’s house for supplies.19 Intrepid, resourceful, a lover of the Union and endlessly empathetic to the plight of its soldiers, Barton should have made a fine recruit for the Women’s Nursing Bureau. She was, however, put off by the rigid requirements that all nurses be bland, old and beholden to the commands of Dix. Given her independent mind and sense of self- assertiveness, Barton was also disinclined to join the USSC. Although she often made use of their supply depots, she found Bellows and Olmsted’s ambitions to be more than volunteer medics, their desire to exert control via boards, executive committees and report-writing, as well as their obsession with professionalizing and ‘methodizing’ humanitarian relief, unappealing. At the very least, Barton felt that by placing herself under the umbrella of either the USSC or Dix she would have to compromise her own ideas of how to succour the soldiers of what she only half-jokingly referred to as ‘my own army’.20 These ideas, and the motivations that shaped them, reveal a woman besotted as much by the righteousness of humanitarian action in war, as by the prospects for adventure that came with it. As Barton reflected years later, her job during the war was not to engender a brave new world for military medicine, or save the souls of soldiers. Rather, she conceived of herself as a mother to all those left scared, wounded and in need on the battlefield. Long-suffering, yet eternally charged with cleaning up the mess of ‘mischief and misery’ left by men of war, Barton felt that ‘someone must follow closely in their steps, crouched to the earth, toiling in the rain and darkness, shelterless like themselves with no thought of pride or glory or fame, praise or reward’.21 It was the fulfilment of this role of the hardened, uncomplaining figure willing to toil through mud and blood alongside the troops that shaped Barton’s adventurous, no-frills approach to humanitarian action. This conception of her mission meant that, as the war progressed and the USSC grew more professionalized and integrated with the army, Barton continued to work
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independently as a ‘Sanitary Commission of One’, going where she was needed with her cart of donated food and medical supplies, labouring alongside the fallen to the point of exhaustion before packing up and setting off for the next battlefield. Her ability to magically appear wherever troops were in pain soon built her a Nightingale- like reputation as the soldiers’ best friend and, like her British equivalent, Barton leveraged the goodwill attached to her name to enhance her reputation and build up her own supply and distribution networks, to the point where she no longer had to rely on whatever the USSC deemed appropriate to give her. Her labours even won Barton the favour of Hammond who, in defiance of the convention that the battlefield was no place for a lady, allowed her to accompany Letterman’s ambulances and have direct access to the wounded on the frontlines. Crucially, Barton’s head down, get on with it approach to her work, and her general disinterest in the politics of humanitarianism, kept her on the right side of the USSC for much of the war. Convinced that Barton, unlike Dix or the Christian Commission, posed no threat to their growing empire, Bellows and Olmsted were happy to let this odd, unambitious woman with a little cart of supplies go about her business, while they focused their minds on grander things.22 With the war reaching its end things were, indeed, looking grand for the USSC. By the time General Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Confederacy’s surrender on 9 April 1865 the Commission had established –or absorbed –close to 70,000 voluntary humanitarian groups across the Union, received over $15,000,000 in charitable donations, carried out hundreds of inspections of barracks and hospitals, distributed tonnes of food and medical supplies and handed out over 50,000 copies of pamphlets containing medical and sanitary advice to surgeons and army commanders. In keeping with its ambitions to forge a new, healthier United States and set high standards and practices in wartime relief, the USSC also enjoyed successes, in both a procedural and practical sense. Having started with a limited schedule of hospital inspections in 1861, by war’s end the USSC had pushed its field agents deep into the ranks of the Union’s armies, where they often assumed positions equivalent to Hammond’s own quartermasters. Some agents even managed to broker deals with army commanders to visit barracks, field headquarters and prisoner of war (POW) camps, the plight of Union soldiers in captivity having become a matter of concern for the both the USSC and the public that backed it by the war’s final years. This work broadened even further the scope of the Commission’s activities into inspecting and reporting on the condition of fresh recruits, war wounded, surgeons and POWs, as well as assisting in the rehabilitation of wounded and disabled soldiers after the war –activities that, though commonplace today in the work of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières and ex-servicemen’s leagues –were ground-breaking for the 1860s.23 The USSC also made a contribution to the development of military medicine – specifically the transportation of wounded –by incorporating both river and rail transport into its operations. Working on the principle adhered to by Hammond and Letterman that success in surgery required swift evacuation from the field in stability and comfort, Elisha Harris designed a railcar that was capable of transporting wounded men in a tiered system of stretchers secured to the walls and ceiling of the car. Fifteen of these Harris Cars were produced for the Union during the war, before the design was adopted by the Medical Bureau as a basis for a new generation of hospital railcars that were capable of carrying
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up to sixty wounded. Harris’s contribution to military medicine was also honoured internationally when his railcar was awarded a prize at the International Exposition in Paris 1867, before being adopted by the Prussian Army –albeit not without modifications –as the standard means by which it would ferry its wounded away from the frontlines via rail. Additionally, a new splint designed by Harris was including in a post-war treatise on battlefield surgery thus placing the USSC alongside Chenu, Longmore, Pirogov, Hammond and other venerable surgeons, as contributors to the transatlantic discourse on improving military-medical equipment.24 Where the USSC really excelled was in its appreciation of the importance of the little things that were so crucial to making the Union army a better-supplied, more professional and, arguably, more effective fighting force. Soldier cleanliness had never really been taken seriously by military forces of the United States, with the exception of the practices that sporadically emerged following a decree by George Washington during the Revolutionary War that all men had to bathe at least once a week. When the Commission initially offered similar advice to the Union’s soldiery many scoffed, so too to the idea of checking regularly for lice, being discerning about water supplies in camp and keeping food intake regular while on the march. By war’s end, however, many of the rank and file –bludgeoned by USSC pamphlets, lectures from inspectors and orders from their Commission-advised superiors –had begun to regularly clean their uniforms, take baths and question both the provenance of the water they drunk and the quality of the rations they ate. On this crucial issue of food the USSC also engendered change, using food barrels that were ventilated and sturdily built to transport their rations. As the army surgeon and author of the aforementioned treatise to which Harris contributed, Frank Hastings-Hamilton observed, the measures taken by the USSC in the transport of food meant that, unlike regular army cases that were poorly packed, often dented and the food therein spoiled, the Commission’s rations arrived at barracks and hospitals almost always in excellent condition. This success, in turn, forced a rethink within the quartermasters’ department of their methods for packing and transporting supplies. It was the attention given by the USSC to the detail of such seemingly trivial measures as food transportation, Hastings-Hamilton believed, that contributed to reductions in scurvy and the raising of the fighting ability of the Union’s armies during the final, decisive battles of the war.25 It would overstate the matter to claim that these and other measures adopted by the USSC ensured the Union’s victory. However, it would be equally misplaced to believe that the USSC was not a factor. Leaving aside the intangible benefits that its inspectors brought to the fighting capacity of the Union’s soldiers, the Commission’s determination to improve standards and practices in the Medical Bureau and invest Hammond as Surgeon- General did much to reverse the North’s military-medical fortunes. Whereas in 1861 one of four wounded Union soldiers died of infection or want of good medical treatment, by the final year of the war the figure was closer to one in ten. By the war’s middle years the Confederacy –which never had an equivalent to either the USSC or Hammond –suffered from as many as 40 per cent of its troops being incapacitated by wounds, infections and camp diseases such as malaria, dysentery and measles. At the same time in the Union, the rate of soldiers similarly afflicted to the point of being hors de combat dropped to just 20 per cent.26 At the very least, such figures demonstrate that the rise of a new military-medical
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consensus within the Union –based on the notion that the health and wellbeing of soldiers needed to be constantly monitored from the moment of recruitment, to the barracks, to the battlefield and, if necessary, to the hospital –was firmly embedded by the time the war had ended, primarily on account of the USSC. Outside of its contributions to building this consensus, the USSC’s grandiose ambitions to bring healing, humanitarianism and civic hygiene into the re-United States were also pursued with vigour. Assuming the role of liberators following the capture of New Orleans by the Union in April 1862, USSC workers moved in and unleashed the full might of sanitary science on the city. With the notable backing of the Union’s soldiers, the USSC established a sanitary police force to scour the occupied city, clearing stables, sewers, slaughterhouses, hospitals and barracks of any and all disease-carrying filth. This delivery of a new, more hygienic age from the North delighted Bellows, who by January 1863 had concluded that the lack of a significant disease outbreak in New Orleans was linked to the cleanliness forced upon it by the USSC. Similarly, when the Commission’s inspectors followed the Union armies to Chattanooga in the summer of 1864, they sought to repair the desolation inflicted on the area over the years of war by setting up a Sanitary Gardens where soldiers could recuperate by growing and harvesting crops for use in local hospitals. It was a project that, the USSC claimed, demonstrated the ‘benevolence and patriotism of the North’ in the quest to bring civilization, progress and healing to the South. The extension of this caring hand was also made when, following the triumphant march of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s troops into Savannah in December 1864, the USSC’s field agents sprang into action, setting up soup kitchens and emergency medical treatment tents for the citizens of the erstwhile enemy city.27 The USSC was as committed to cleaning up the towns and cities ravaged by the war as it was to ushering the Medical Bureau into a new, more progressive and professional era. It was this aspect of its work that, arguably, marked the Commission’s greatest achievement. By discrediting Finley and those like him who clung to views of a bygone age, the USSC sent a signal to Washington that change was needed in the field of American military medicine. With Hammond taking the helm, moreover, there was seemingly little chance of the clock being turned back. Hammond decided early in his tenure as Surgeon-General that he would not only raise standards in the Medical Bureau during wartime, but also establish an Army Medical Museum once peace had returned. This institution was intended to both make a reality of Hammond’s vision of a reinvigorated post-war medical community, and provide a permanent repository for all that he and his surgeons had learned over the course of the war about sanitary science, hospital design, amputation, ambulance organization and wound treatment. The knowledge stored within the Army Medical Museum was disseminated widely in the 1860s and 70s, during which it received a steady stream of visitations from surgeons and medical practitioners from across the world. Letterman’s work also left a legacy that contributed practically to the campaign to improve standards of military medicine. His ideas about field surgery and ambulance design were both embraced by the Prussian Army, and greatly influenced Longmore’s thoughts on how to improve the British army’s already lauded military-medical regime.28 Keen to ensure that its labours and successes would long be remembered, the USSC’s members spent the first months of peace compiling histories and reports that painted the
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organization as the natural successor to the Crimean humanitarians, albeit with ‘wholly original and peculiarly American’ characteristics that made it so much more than its forebears.29 There were grounds enough for this boast. The USSC had galvanized the Union’s nascent humanitarian movement, it had helped improve the army’s military-medical system and, by war’s end, it had begun the task of trying to heal the divide between North and South –activities that took it beyond anything achieved in the Crimea. The USSC had also refrained from resting on its laurels in the United States and, in the final months of 1863, it had attempted to internationalize what had started as a purely national, patriotic project by setting up and ‘English Branch’ and ‘French Branch’ of the USSC in London and Paris. The purpose of these overseas outposts was both to whip up patriotic support for the Union, and promote the Union way as a model that any army, of any nation, could adopt in order to effectively provide succour to its troops. In pursuit of the former objective, ex-pat Americans with loyalty to the North were recruited into the European branches, meeting regularly in London and Paris, donating money and spreading the good word of the Union while bad-mouthing the South to the European press, in particular for its maltreatment of POWs. The second imperative to promote the Union way to an international audience was also pursued via the dissemination of pamphlets and the delivery of public lectures by the USSC’s two agents in London and Paris, Edmund Crisp Fisher and Charles Bowles.30 Fisher was particularly active as the spearhead of the USSC’s propaganda campaign in Britain, publishing a work entitled A Woman’s Example and a Nation’s Work – a title chosen to both emphasize the love of Nightingale that was shared by the USSC and the British public, and suggest that the ‘nation’s work’ she had started was now being continued by Britain’s cousins across the pond.31 Convinced that the USSC was offering a gift for all humanity, Fisher also keenly distributed the numerous medical and sanitary pamphlets sent to him by Stillé. After establishing a reading room at the USSC’s London branch –a Georgian office building on Cockspur Street not far from Trafalgar Square –to house the reading materials, Fisher invited surgeons, politicians, philanthropists and even nobility to what he dubbed, ‘house warmings’, where dinner would be served and the story of the USSC told. The list of institutions targeted by Fisher was indicative of his desire to ensure that British humanitarians of all stripes learned of the Union way. The Royal College of Surgeons, St Thomas’s Hospital, the London Social Sciences Association, the Royal United Services Institution, the University of London, the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, Nightingale’s ally, Earl Grey at the War Office and even the London Peace Society’s Henry Cobden were all sent invites to the Cockspur Street reading room and, if they could not attend, were mailed an assortment of USSC pamphlets and reports. Nightingale, unsurprisingly, received both invites and copies of the USSC’s Bulletin, though there is little evidence to suggest that she took onboard much of the advice contained therein and instead –unable to resist her own instincts to guide and educate –sent instructions on hospital design and ward management direct to the Medical Bureau throughout the war.32 Spotty as the success of Fisher’s ‘house warmings’ were, the USSC’s assumption that it was now a global advisory body on wartime humanitarianism continued to be held even after the Civil War. Harris disseminated the USSC’s reports on hospital hygiene during his time as secretary of the American Public Health Association in the 1870s and, like many of his colleagues, he was at pains to draw a link between the
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USSC’s wartime work and the apparent explosion of post-war interest in medicine and civic hygiene in the United States. The achievements of the USSC were also promoted in Europe after the war by both Bowles and the dentist turned-adviser to the French Emperor Napoleon III, Thomas Evans –one of the more generous personal donors to the USSC Paris branch. Bellows, Olmsted and several Commission surgeons also struck up a correspondence with Longmore, Chenu and other military-medical figures on the Continent during the 1860s, with an aim to share the USSC’s wisdom with the Europeans. Public acknowledgement and praise of the USSC seemingly demonstrated the success of this internationalization campaign, with figures as diverse as the British Prime Minister William Gladstone, the Italian activist-politician Giuseppe Mazzini, King Wilhelm and Queen Augusta of Prussia and even the French anarchist Elisée Reclus all praising aspects of the USSC’s work. Small wonder that, once the war had finished, Bellows, Olmsted, Strong and Harris, as well as one of the Commission’s key allies from the Medical Bureau, Frank Hastings-Hamilton, formed a new organization – the American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields –the purpose of which was to continue the good work of the USSC both at home and abroad.33 In contrast to the grand ambitions that fuelled the American Association, the Christian Commission –true to its stated wartime goals –went quietly and willingly into the night once the Confederacy’s surrender had been received. Although its executive committee continued to meet in the first months of peace, there was little action taken beyond answering the odd letter from the concerned relative of a POW who had yet to return home, discussing what to do with the leftover donations of food, money and gifts or deciding who among them should write the organization’s official wartime history. Finally, having sung the final set of hymns that traditionally opened all their meetings, on 10 February 1866 the Christian Commission’s leaders declared that the ‘most sincere thanks are due to god for the termination of the rebellion and for thus opening the whole country to the influences of education and religion’, before closing up shop, their divine mission having now ‘happily ceased’.34 No such quiet satisfaction was forthcoming for the ever restless Barton, who ended the war burdened by feelings of failure, coupled with the growing sense that she was falling behind the humanitarian curve. Like Nightingale, Barton realized the importance of having the army back her work, and so cultivated relationships with not only Hammond, but also officers and quartermasters, on whose permission she depended to reach battlefields and replenish her supplies.35 This reliance on personal connections and ad hoc arrangements, however, could only take an independent operator so far. The rise of the USSC, Hammond and the subsequent implementations of systems and controls within the Medical Bureau led the Union army brass to the conclusion that itinerant humanitarians –however adored they may be by the average soldier –were too meddlesome and uncontrollable to have a place on the battlefield. It therefore grew harder and harder as the war progressed for even Barton’s friends in the army to release stores to the one-woman nursing brigade or, indeed, allow her to visit the frontlines. On at least one occasion, Barton was even collared for trespassing and ordered to leave an army camp after first surrendering her tent and stores. This rejection was crowned by the failure of her final great labour of the war, the establishment of the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the Union Army in
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1865. Although Lincoln himself had given her approval for the creation of this office just prior to his assassination, Barton was given no funding and no salary to carry out the work of tracing missing soldiers –an activity that was, notably, ahead of its time and very much in keeping with the increase in public concern over the fate of soldiers, particularly those who had disappeared into the fog of war. Progressive and, indeed, necessary as such work was, Barton struggled to manage the thousands of letters that came into her office and, bereft of personal income or success in acquiring donations to pay for additional staff, she eventually closed the office in 1869. For all her much- lauded efforts on behalf of the Union therefore, Barton ended the war just as she had started it –one woman, without official backing, soliciting donations and dipping into her own pockets while working day and night for a cause that even the beneficiaries showed little interest in supporting.36 The story of the USSC when compared to those of the Christian Commission and Barton is instructive in understanding the changes that were occurring in the campaign to control war during the 1860s. Against the backdrop of one of the largest and bloodiest conflicts the world had yet seen, the USSC continued the work begun by Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission. This was done with an aim to assist in the Union’s war effort and, in a more long-term sense, establish both a lasting consensus on the need to improve military-medicine, and a system that would harmonize the work of volunteers and army surgeons to this end. The Union way that was born of these drives unquestionably benefited the Union by improving the fighting capacity of its troops. As this was the initial purpose of the USSC, it would be right to conclude that its campaign to correct the errors of Bull Run was a success, and its desire to improve upon the achievements of the Crimean veterans was realized. As Stillé asserted, the Commission had developed ‘the most successful method of mitigating the horrors of war known in history’ and, by promoting its successes both within the United States and overseas, there was every reason to believe that the USSC could ‘teach those who come after us, when the misfortune of war befalls them, as it has done us, how much may be done to relieve its misery by a wise system of organized voluntary effort’.37 It seemed a given therefore that the USSC would be setting the agenda and tone for the future of wartime humanitarianism, perhaps even on both sides of the Atlantic. This task of taking the USSC’s work global would be completed by its successor, the American Association, which would continue to promote the Union’s now tried and tested model of humanitarian action, carried out in harmony with army operations. Even before the American Association’s founding in 1866, however, its members’ belief in the universality of the Union way was being challenged by the emergence of another vision of wartime humanitarianism –guided not by systems, science and military requirements but by the inherent goodness of Samaritanism, the allure of fraternal internationalism and the raw emotion of basic human empathy.
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Visions from Geneva
As Barton was traversing battlefields, Christian Commission delegates were visiting hospitals and the USSC was expanding its power and influence in Washington, on the other side of the Atlantic several European politicians, surgeons and monarchs were taking receipt of a letter from a group calling itself the Geneva Committee for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers (the Committee). The letter’s message was simple and impassioned: come to Geneva to attend ‘a meeting of those persons who, in the various countries, have at heart the philanthropic work in question’, namely the work of ensuring the welfare of sick and wounded soldiers.1 This missive –despatched to the courts of Europe in September 1863 –marked the culmination of nearly four years of anguished contemplation by an unsuccessful thirty-five-year-old Swiss businessman named Henry Dunant on the question of how soldiers, in an age of massive armies and devastating ordnance, could be protected from unnecessary suffering. Sent by Switzerland’s Federal Council on behalf of the Committee Dunant had helped to found, this letter began a process that led to an international conference in 1864, at which an agreement was made by the heads of twelve European states to ratify to what today is the most famous code of international humanitarian law and one of the cornerstones of the campaign to humanize and regulate war: the Geneva Convention. Given Dunant’s background, it seems strange that he was so moved by the sufferings of soldiers that he sought an international agreement to address their suffering. He had never served in an army, and had lived most of his life as aloof as anyone in nineteenth century Europe could be from matters of war. Dunant did, however, possess a lifelong sense of sympathy for the plight of others. Raised a Calvinist, from the youngest age Dunant was involved in Samaritan work on behalf of Geneva’s poor, distributing food, reading to orphans and offering pastoral care to the aged, all with an evangelical fervour. This practice of Christian works, in cosmopolitan environs for the benefit of his home city’s downtrodden focused Dunant’s mind more so than the plight of men at war. During Switzerland’s short, but decisive Sonderbund War of 1847 Dunant never visited a battlefield, and appears to have taken no notice of the volunteer Zurich Relief Society, a civilian body that raised funds to supply and equip army ambulances. Instead, as war loomed to the east of Lake Geneva, Dunant continued to busy himself distributing pamphlets for the Société Évangélique de Genève and manning their soup kitchen on weekends. Years later, as volunteers like Nightingale, Seacole and the Sisters of Mercy laboured in the Crimea, Dunant remained at home, reading books to
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Geneva’s disabled, old and imprisoned on behalf of the Union Chrétienne, the Swiss offshoot of the YMCA. Outside of these selfless labours to aid the poor in his own town, Dunant’s only other concern at the time of the Crimean War was how to balance his zeal for good works with the more practical impetus to make money –a goal that eluded him for most of his life. His first significant misstep in business was to be his most fateful, in that it drew his attention significantly for the first time to the plight of soldiers, and sent him on the path to becoming one the century’s great figures in the campaign to control war.2 Dunant’s journey to this mantle began in 1856 when he acquired a small patch of land in Djémila, Algeria, with the intent of turning it into a profitable farm. In need of water concessions to irrigate his dusty would-be crop fields, the Swiss businessman set off from Geneva in the summer of 1859 in the hope of gaining a personal audience with Emperor Napoleon III of France, who was campaigning in northern Italy at the time against the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef.3 Dunant followed Napoleon’s forces as they marched through the Lombardy countryside, tracking them to the outskirts of the village of Solferino, where he arrived on the evening of 24 June. As he came to a halt atop a hill overlooking the village and his eyes took in the sight below, such pressing matters of business as had brought Dunant to Solferino swiftly evaporated. The once pleasant, fruit tree-riddled valley was now strewn with broken carts, dead horses and thousands of wounded soldiers who, bereft of medical treatment had been left, as Dunant later recalled, ‘helpless on the naked ground in their own blood.’4 Dunant beheld the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, at which the combined Franco-Sardinian forces of Napoleon and King Victor Emanuel II defeated Franz Josef ’s army, paving the way for the signing of the armistice that would end the Italian War of Independence. The weighty political outcome of the engagement, however, mattered little to Dunant as he stumbled down the hill in a stupor of confusion and shock into a valley glutted with the fallen bodies of over 30,000 dead and wounded men. He estimated that those still alive had lain for hours without water or succour in the baking sun, while others had bled out for want of an ambulance to evacuate them or bandages to dress their wounds. As he wandered through the carnage –conspicuously out of place with his freshly trimmed mutton-chop moustache, crisp white suit and summer hat –all Dunant could think of was the men who could have been saved had forethought been given by the generals they served to so basic a matter as medical care. Medical care had indeed, been absent from pre-battle planning. The Sardinians had been so unconcerned by the prospect of casualties that commanders rejected the offers made by village doctors to join the army on its march to Solferino. Five years removed from the humanitarian disaster of the Crimea, and despite Chenu’s calls for reform, the French army boasted the same well-trained, yet small and under-equipped continent of surgeons who, like their Austrian enemies, expected to do their work well away from the front lines in hospitals to which the wounded would be evacuated.5 Neither side, however, had made adequate provision for ambulances to carry out this task on a scale to fit the battle. Even the often-depended-on ranks of army musicians were not enough to handle the thousands felled by the deadly combination of minié rounds and heavy artillery. As the number of wounded grew and the battle drew to a close, it was left to civilians from the surrounding villages to corral mules and fashion stretchers from bed
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clothes and scrap wood in an effort to evacuate the fallen to whatever sanctuary they could find. Once recovered from his initial shock, Dunant rolled up his sleeves and joined these fellow Samaritans in the alien practice of cleaning wounds, bandaging limbs and carrying the wounded and dying to places of refuge. It was an experience that left the gentle-souled Genevan traumatized, simultaneously ‘worn out by fatigue and unable to sleep a wink’ long after darkness had fallen on the valley.6 The experience was transformative for Dunant. The pall of Solferino refused to lift from his mind even after he’d washed the blood from his hands and resumed his original quest for an audience with Napoleon, three long days after arriving at the battlefield. In the end, Dunant only got as far as the Emperor’s civil attaché, who politely informed him that his request for irrigation concessions in Djémila had been turned down. It was in the wake of this latest and most significant setback for Dunant the businessman that Dunant the humanitarian emerged in full. As dejected as he was troubled, Dunant returned to Solferino and rejoined the effort to tend to the wounded, the transport of which to hospitals in Milan and Brescia was still going on nearly a week after the battle had ended. Long after the last of the wounded had finally been evacuated, the battlefield marked on a map for posterity and peace concluded between the Austrians and the French, Dunant continued to ponder the gory scenes he had witnessed. Increasingly, he came to wonder if, perhaps guided by the hand of the Divine, he had happened upon the carnage at Solferino for a reason. Unable to lift these restless thoughts from his mind, in 1861 Dunant finally capitulated to his conscience and locked himself away in isolation in Geneva, where he composed a small, emotive and instructional record of what he had seen.7 Released in 1862, the end product of Dunant’s isolation –A Memory of Solferino – was brief, easy to read and deliberately graphic in its depictions of barbaric slaughter being carried out on European soil, in an age of supposed human progress. Despite more than a few admiring passages on the courage and valour of the soldiers, Dunant championed no great cause to justify the bloodshed, and left his readers with nothing close to a happy, triumphant ending. Instead Dunant, who had not actually witnessed the bulk of the battle proper but had instead arrived in its wake, painted a picture of ‘a struggle between savage beasts, maddened with blood and fury’, a charnel scene in which good Christian men were ‘killing one another on piles of bleeding corpses, felling their enemies with their rifle butts, crushing skulls, ripping bellies open with sabre and bayonet’. Even the cavalry, the most noble of Europe’s warriors, were ‘crushing the dead and dying beneath their horses’ hooves without mercy. Equally as detailed were Dunant’s depictions of the parlous state of the medical response. Overwhelmed surgeons, medical students from nearby schools and shocked passers-by like himself laboured tirelessly in a ‘scorching, filthy atmosphere in the midst of vile, nauseating odours’ until, ultimately, they ‘withdrew one by one, for they could no longer bear to look upon the suffering which they could do so little to relieve’. These desperate scenes flowed one after the other as the book progressed to its crescendo: a simple proposal from Dunant that could ‘solve the question of such immense and worldwide importance, both from the humane and Christian standpoint’. This proposal was for societies of volunteers to be formed and, with the approval of their governments, set to work as providers of medical aid to all soldiers in times of war.8
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Solferino was received by politicians, monarchs, military men and medics as a revelation at the time, despite containing little in both style and substance that was new. With an emphasis on enlightening the reader about the sufferings of soldiers, Dunant’s graphic prose mimicked that adopted by William Russell and other war correspondents of the age. His belief that generals had to show compassion for their wounded men harkened back to the thoughts of the Swedish King Gustave Adolphus who, nearly two centuries prior, had organized one of the first army medical services in Europe and, to the minds of some military men, Dunant’s talk of medical volunteers was little more than a plea for a return to the age of the camp followers of centuries past. The more informed, however, could also see in Dunant’s belief that volunteers were necessary in an age of mass armies – a simple reiteration of the premise that had given birth to the USSC. In fact, so unoriginal was Solferino that Dunant was later accused of plagiarism by the French pharmacist Henri Arrault who, in 1861 published a pamphlet calling for the neutralization of both wounded and army surgeons. Arrault’s accusation had little substance, and it is clear that the unoriginality of Solferino was not born of plagiarism, but of ignorance on the part of its author who, prior to 1859, had channelled practically none of his considerable humanitarian zeal into matters of military medicine –recent developments in the field to which he was also clearly aloof. Arrault’s paper was composed at the same time that Dunant had shut himself away in Geneva writing Solferino, which was released just as the USSC was becoming a force in wartime humanitarianism thousands of miles away. Like most philanthropists of his era, Dunant had heard enough about Nightingale to admire her but, focused on affairs in Djémila in the years after the Crimean War, he had neither studied her reports in depth nor followed the development of the subsequent military-medical reforms in Britain.9 Indeed, what set Dunant apart from the aforementioned parties was that he was both a newcomer to and an honest broker in, the humanitarian game. He was neither a nurse nor a surgeon, let alone a sanitary adviser to an army. It is even doubtful that Dunant, despite his financial difficulties, thought he could make money out of Solferino. The initial run of 1,600 copies was paid for out of his own rather empty pocket, and the first press sent by him personally to military men, surgeons and other worthies who he felt would appreciate the book’s sentiments and, possibly, act on them. It was perhaps the selfless, unvarnished and personal nature of Solferino that led its readers to rate it so highly, to the point that additional copies had to be printed to meet demand, and its author was hailed as a visionary in salons, clubs and corridors of power across Europe. The timing of Solferino’s release, and the pre- existing concerns held by those who read it, was also very important to its success. Seven years after the Crimean War had ended and only three years removed from the Battle of Solferino itself, Dunant was preaching to a choir already moved by the ‘fearful loss of human life’ that would come with battles on Solferino’s scale and what Henry Raymond –who was present on the battlefield as a correspondent for the New York Times and witnessed Dunant’s labours –called the ‘barbarous cruelty which attended the removal of tens of thousands’ of wounded.10 The response in Geneva itself to Dunant’s book was particularly encouraging and, on 9 February 1863, a fateful gathering of the Société Genevoise d’Utilité Publique
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took place with the aim of discussing the book and the implications of its author’s recommendations. The meeting was organized and chaired by the president of the Société Genevoise, Gustave Moynier, a humourless, self- critical and cautiously pragmatic lawyer who was two years Dunant’s senior. Moynier was Geneva-born but educated in Paris, where he had produced a thesis on Roman law that, despite allowing him to pass the bar, underwhelmed the high-achieving young man. Restless and in need of a vocation where he could both excel and meet the progressive expectations of his class, Moynier –whose family’s wealth ensured that he could move from job to job at will without imperilling his own household –set his eye on bringing some measure of social reform to his hometown. He pursued this goal via the medium of the Société Genevoise, an institution infused with both Calvinist philanthropic and progressive liberal ideas. Like Dunant, Moynier knew nothing of war and his interests lay squarely in bettering the state of unfortunates in his own backyard. Unlike Dunant, however, Moynier kept abreast of legal-humanitarian developments outside of Switzerland, and was well connected to Geneva’s many philanthropic groups. Dunant, therefore, picked his target wisely when he chose to send a copy of Solferino to Moynier, who was so impressed with the message contained therein that he agreed to put it before the next meeting of the Société Genevoise for discussion.11 Present at this decisive meeting were three other men who, like Moynier, would become instrumental in turning Dunant’s words into deeds. The most enthusiastic of these was Louis Appia, a respected surgeon and head of the Société Médicale de Genève, who had both followed military-medical developments in the Crimea and the United States closely and, unbeknownst to Dunant, had also helped to evacuate wounded from Solferino’s battlefield. Like Longmore, Appia was one of a new generation of surgeons who were devoting much of their time to figuring out how best to treat the terrible wounds inflicted by the minié bullet, as well as the means by which bones could be better set and life-saving amputations more safely performed. He shared these interests with his mentor and fellow surgeon Théodore Maunoir who, in addition to keeping an eye on military-medical developments in Europe, was also aware of what Hammond and the USSC were up to. Maunoir’s conclusion, based on his knowledge of military medicine on both sides of the Atlantic, was to concur with Dunant’s view that the standards of soldier welfare across the Western World were, despite the best efforts of men like Hammond, Longmore and Letterman, inadequate to meet the demands of war in a changing age. The third attendee was a retired General of the Swiss Army and hero of the Sonderbund War, Guillaume Henri Dufour. A former tutor of Napoleon III who still had some influence with the emperor, Dufour had encountered Dunant during the latter’s travels in 1859 and so had some familiarity with Solferino’s author when he received a strategically sent copy of the book in the mail. The concern Dufour had held for the health of his men while he was active in the military had not abated in retirement. He agreed broadly with Dunant’s idea that more needed to be done to care for the wounded though, knowing well the extent to which the suggestion of civilians roaming battlefields would ruffle military feathers, he urged caution. At the end of the meeting it was decided that these three men, in addition to Moynier and Dunant, would form a committee –Grandiloquently titled the International Committee for
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Relief to Wounded Soldiers –in order to further investigate the feasibility of the latter’s proposal to establish volunteer medical units.12 It speaks to the pervasiveness of the concern for soldiers at this time that five individuals of such varied backgrounds and life experiences could come together to form a group that, by 1876, would become the International Committee of the Red Cross –the foremost humanitarian agency in the world today. United by Christian faith and concern for war’s victims they might have been, the members of the Committee held very different ideas both about how to turn Dunant’s vision into something tangible and, indeed, the purpose of such an exercise. Already devout, in the years after his ordeal at Solferino Dunant became more and more convinced that a Divine hand was guiding him. He therefore brought both a missionary zeal and a certain flair of utopianism to the Committee, which often placed him at odds with his companions, who generally held less heaven-sent expectations for their enterprise. Dufour had sympathy for Dunant’s belief that volunteers were key to the project but, ultimately, he had one foot firmly planted in Nightingale’s camp. Rejecting Dunant’s faith in unbridled Samaritanism, Dufour believed that volunteers should at best serve as a complement to an army’s pre-existing medical staff which, ultimately, had to be in charge of maintaining soldier welfare. Appia was initially more interested than anything else in figuring out how Dunant’s proposed volunteer societies would be trained, equipped and suitably protected on the battlefield, while Maunoir believed that the Committee had to start by ‘conveying its views to everyone, high and low in Europe’ in order to engender a mass, grassroots humanitarian movement. Moynier, the group’s cynic-in-chief, had little time for such grand visions of the masses roused to do good. He acknowledged that the communications revolution had led to a ‘transformation of the public mind’ and the engendering of a world in which ‘the immediate knowledge of what our brothers are suffering influences us and causes us to act’. However, unlike Maunoir, he looked to the top of society rather than the bottom for people capable of responding to such changes. Like most lawyers, Moynier was fixated with the paperwork and he insisted that Dunant’s idea for ‘some international principle, sanctioned by a convention’ was the key to getting the proposals implemented. The path to the creation of such an international agreement, he argued, had to start by soliciting the support of Europe’s high and mighty –the men who had the power to decide when and where guns would fire and men would die.13 Possessed of Dufour’s sense of caution when it came to poking military bears, Moynier also stressed to his colleagues that the proposed international agreement would only be successful if its articles were limited in scope, and their content such that adherence would not encumber the ability of generals to wage war. Without the support of Europe’s military men, the Committee’s work would be finished before it had even begun. Beneath this hard pragmatism, however, even Moynier possessed a streak of idealism that was reminiscent of the sentiments held, if not by Dunant, then at least by the ambitious leaders of the USSC. Having laboured on the Société Genevoise for years, Moynier hoped that the Committee’s work to humanize war might serve as the catalyst for a new era of civic progress, moral reawakening and Christian philanthropy in a Europe gripped by social discontent, pauperism and moral degeneracy.14 From the outset, therefore, the founders of what would become the Red Cross movement
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were far from on the same page as regards to how, why and for what, if any, greater purpose voluntary humanitarianism needed to be infused into war. One thing that the Committee –even Maunoir –accepted as one was Moynier’s argument that none of their concerns could be addressed without the cooperation of Europe’s leaders. And so, in the late summer of 1863 letters of invitation were sent out, and Dunant despatched to the capitals of Western Europe to rouse support for a conference in Geneva.15 There is a temptation to view what followed as inexorable –as if the Committee’s conferences and the Geneva Convention they spawned were, as Dunant believed, the product of Divine will. At the very least, the story of the Committee’s against-the-odds effort to get the states of Europe to sign up to the convention has become a much cherished foundation myth of wartime humanitarianism, to the extent that after it was signed in 1864 ‘the Battle of Solferino became to humanitarianism what the Treaty of Westphalia was to modern international politics’.16 This version of the story is as follows: the recipients of the Committee’s invitation agreed to send delegates to Geneva for a preliminary conference in October 1863, at which an agreement for states to organize Dunant’s proposed voluntary societies was discussed. This was followed by a second conference in August 1864 at which, after much debate, the final ten articles of the Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded in Armies in the Field –to give the agreement it its first, full, awkward name –were signed by the representatives of twelve states. The ten articles differed in their substance from Dunant’s initial vision, but were hailed as a triumph of humanitarian spirit all the same. Collectively, the articles declared that all medical staff on the battlefield were to be recognized by belligerents as neutral, a status conveyed by displaying the symbol of a Red Cross on a white background on their person and ambulances. The articles also made clear that commanders needed to return enemy sick and wounded to their own lines, and that civilians in war zones should be permitted to carry out humanitarian work on behalf of soldiers. After the signing of this epoch-making document, so the story goes, there began a new era of international humanitarianism, spearheaded by Dunant and Moynier’s little Committee that could. This Committee grew in prestige and importance in the years after 1864, taking its final form in 1876 as the International Committee of the Red Cross, the guardian and principle architect of international humanitarian law.17 It is a rose-tinted history. One, moreover, that ignores the fact that, far from humanitarian sentiment alone drawing delegates to Geneva, most of those who responded to the conference call did so in order to discover whether Dunant’s ideas might help them better organize their army’s military-medical systems and improve their soldier’s fighting efficiency –issues that had dogged Europe’s militaries since the end of the Crimean War. There was also a connection made by conference attendees between the gesture of signing the convention, and the need to provide a solution to the problem of an informed public wanting assurances from their governments that all was being done to care for soldiers.18 The traditional story also ignores the true place of the Committee in the wider transatlantic development of wartime humanitarianism, in favour of romanticizing both the Geneva Convention and its connection to Dunant’s Solferino-inspired vision. In addition to the aforementioned lack of originality in Dunant’s suggestions, the calling by five private citizens for an international conference
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on issues of war was not, as the Committee’s official historian has claimed, the spark of originality that set the Geneva Conferences apart from previous efforts to bring rules to war.19 For one thing, the 1864 conference was not actually called for by the Committee, but by the Swiss Federal Council, whose endorsement of the conference Moynier realized would be needed to give the invitation the political weight that the worthies of Geneva simply did not have. The idea of such a conference was also far from original. Indeed, it was yet another development in the international discourse on the laws of war that had a precedent dating from the Crimean War. Specifically, the signing by seven states of the Declaration of Paris on 16 April 1856, which established an important legal precedent for the convention. The declaration constituted an international agreement that outlawed privateering, regulated the manner in which naval blockades could be implemented and, arguably, provided a template for states faced with brokering future international agreements like the Geneva Convention.20 The substance of what was agreed at Geneva was also relatively underwhelming when compared to the idealized image of humanitarian action presented in Solferino. Dunant’s initial conception of the convention was of an agreement that would permit ‘zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified’ volunteers to be let loose in warzones without any need for military oversight.21 This utopian conception of volunteers running amok raised a bone of contention in the Committee’s early meetings and, by the time the 1864 Conference was held, Dunant had lost the argument. Instead of volunteers being granted licence to wander, article six of the convention declared that only ‘with the consent of the military authorities, committees may send volunteer nurses to the battlefield, where they shall be placed under military command’.22 Governments alone, therefore, would have the power to decide whether they sent volunteers to help their army surgeons and, presumably, what level of medical training said volunteers would need to possess. The source of this curtailment of Dunant’s dream came from within the Committee itself, chiefly from Moynier and Dufour. The former, in particular, was fearful that if the convention authorized civilians to do as they pleased on the battlefield then the very idea of a conference would be rejected by the Europe’s army brass. Dufour, possessed of the grim, pragmatic wisdom of an old soldier, could not help but agree. Sidelining Dunant with note-taking duties on the opening day of the 1864 conference at Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville, Moynier and Dufour took charge of proceedings, and made clear from the outset to attendees that ‘each government must have perfect liberty of action’ when it came to the question of recruiting, training and organizing volunteers. No party to the convention would be forced to recruit volunteers for the purposes of supplementing its army’s official medical departments.23 Dunant, at least, had better luck with his dissenting Committee colleagues on the issue of neutrality. For the same reasons that he shied away from discussing volunteers, Moynier had been loath to raise the issue of neutralizing medical staff during the initial 1863 conference. However, Dunant’s friend Johan Basting –a Dutch army surgeon and fellow evangelical who was both beholden to Dunant’s initial vision and believed that the Swiss was being guided from the heavens –insisted that the idea of protecting those who tended the wounded from attack and capture by designating them as neutrals was implicit in Dunant’s Solferino suggestions, without adherence to which there was no point in even discussing the convention.24 Despite Moynier’s protests, Basting’s view prevailed
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among the other attendees, and by the time proceedings concluded at the Hôtel de Ville articles declaring medical staff neutral had been added to the convention. This victory for Dunant aside, the vision for curtailing war’s horrors as presented in the Geneva Convention was still limited. Indeed, for some in the United States, the convention seemed positively innocuous when compared to what was already being practiced there. The USSC had, after all, been founded over two years before the Committee had first met, and the suggestion to form volunteer medical societies had circulated throughout Europe a full year after the Commission had established its Field Relief Corps. Furthermore, a month before the call for the 1864 conference went out, the USSC went a step further by forming the Auxiliary Relief Corps, comprised of teams of semi-trained volunteers who were tasked with providing frontline first aid. These volunteers even adhered to a USSC-designed convention, which had been drawn up in order to govern their conduct and properly demarcate their activities from those of the Medical Bureau.25 True, the formation of the Auxiliary Relief Corps was more a case of the Americans aping Dunant’s suggestions than vice versa, but in many respects its founding was simply the next step in the USSC’s steady evolution from sanitary advisor to humanitarian juggernaut. By the time the Committee emerged, the USSC’s capacity to mobilize civilian volunteers as field agents, nurses, stretcher-bearers, cooks and donation-solicitors among a host of other things, was undeniable. It was for this reason that the United States’ Minister in Berne, Charles Fogg, negatively responded to the Committee’s invite to the 1864 Conference. Fogg informed Secretary of State William Seward that ‘the great practical solving by our countrymen and countrywomen of nearly all the problems likely to be considered by this congress’ had already been achieved. Seward not only agreed with Fogg but also believed that, with the Civil War still raging, it was prudent for Washington to continue to adhere to the isolationist Monroe Doctrine and abstain from involving the United States in an international agreement that might affect the way it conducted war. Concern that representatives of the Union could run into ‘insurgent emissaries of the United States in Europe’ in Geneva was also a factor in the cool reception that Washington gave to the invitation. Despite these reservations Seward –like almost all statesmen who received the invitation to Geneva –nevertheless acknowledged that the Committee’s aims were ‘certainly laudable and important’. On that basis it was decided that a delegate from the USSC, along with Fogg, would represent the United States in an unofficial and strictly observatory capacity at the 1864 conference.26 A USSC presence on the big day in Geneva presented a golden opportunity for the Americans to dispel the notion, much cherished by Dunant and Basting, that the Samaritan Swiss had been chosen to awaken the world to the horrors of war. For if there was one thing clear to the USSC by the middle years of the Civil War, it was that they were the leaders of a humanitarian revolution that the Europeans now wanted to join. Praise was heaped on Dunant and the Committee by the USSC in its official Bulletin, however, the tone of the reporting conveyed the fact that the Commission felt a sense of ownership of Dunant’s mission. Citing a glowing article from the New York Evening Post, the Bulletin reported on how ‘the organization and complete success of the United States Sanitary Commission have awakened throughout Europe a warm and intelligent sympathy, which is likely to result in immense benefit to humanity at large’,
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particularly once the European established ‘a system of voluntary service, analogous with that in operation in the United States’. A noble cause certainly but for Fisher, the head of the USSC’s English Branch, ‘the official character of the delegates to the Geneva Congress, however much calculated to give authority to the deliberations will not, to many thoughtful minds, promise a favourable result’. This sentiment was in keeping with the USSC’s view of the Christian Commission and other, less professional, less pragmatic humanitarians. The gentlemen of Geneva meant well but, ultimately, they were playing catch-up with the real leaders of wartime humanitarianism.27 Something similar was felt by another party to the Civil War who, in regards to the concept of drawing up rules for war, had also beaten the Genevans to the punch. Writing to Republican Senator Charles Sumner in August 1861, a Berlin-born philosopher and university lecturer named Francis Lieber declared his: desire to write a little book on the Law and Usages of War, affecting the Combatants – some 200 pages 12 mo. Nothing of the sort having ever been written, so far as I know, it would require a good deal of hunting up, and God has denied me the two delectable things –a saddle horse and an amanuensis. Otherwise I would try to write something which Congress might feel inclined to recommend to the army.28
A year later, with his hastily recruited soldiers struggling to fight with a sense of discipline and order, and reports of civilians and POWs being maltreated making the newspapers, Lincoln agreed that Lieber should draw up his ‘little book’ in order that the conduct of the Union’s soldiers might be properly regulated. The document Lieber produced, General Orders 100: Instructions for the Government of the Armies of the United States in the Field, was issued to Union forces on 24 April 1863. That is, six months before Dunant and Moynier’s Committee held its first conference in Geneva.29 Today, the General Orders 100 –more widely as the Lieber Code –is recognized as the ‘seminal step in the detailed codification and exposition of the laws of war’ and the global campaign to mitigate its excesses.30 This reputation aside, the code’s author was far from a humanitarian archetype. Lieber had always been drawn to, fascinated by and enamoured of, war, despite being shot in the neck while serving as a teenage soldier in the Prussian Army at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Given the state of military medicine at the time it was nothing short of a miracle that the young man survived, albeit without his personal belongings, which were stolen from his wounded body by peasants who thought him good as dead. Neither this incident of carrion plunder, nor the wounds he sustained dampened Lieber’s enthusiasm for battle. After volunteering to fighting in the Greek War of Independence he relocated, first to London and then finally to the United States in 1827, where he established himself as a war theorist and man of letters. In this new guise, Lieber became a Professor of History and Political Economy at Columbia University, where the soldier-turned-scholar refined his ideas about the purpose of war. Unsurprisingly for one raised in the midst of the great European crusade against Napoleon, Lieber concluded that the practice was both ennobling and crucial for human development –the ultimate means by which states and societies could liberate themselves from tyranny.31 A greater contrast to the Samaritan Dunant and the civic-minded philanthropist Moynier one could scarcely hope to find.
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Lieber’s approach to regulating war was always going to be very different to that adopted by the Genevans. Unlike Dunant, who saw soldiers as victims caught in the maelstrom of war’s horror, Lieber conceptualized the soldier as a representative of the cause of his nation, whose task was to champion that cause through violence.32 This violence, however, had to be regulated and excesses avoided in order for war to be conducted in an efficient manner that would, in the context of the Civil War at least, give the Union the moral high ground. If that meant that the act of war itself became more humane in the process then so be it, but humanizing state-sanctioned violence was never Lieber’s main priority. What concerned him most when he wrote to Sumner was the ‘criminal rebellion’ of the Confederacy, which he believed could only be combated by a Union represented by disciplined and dedicated soldiers –men who could carry standards of civilization that would provide the instructive tonic to the South’s rampant barbarism. As he wrote to his friend and collaborator on the code, the military-lawyer General Henry Halleck: I know by letters from the West and the South, written by men from our own side, that the wanton destruction of property by our men is alarming. It does incalculable injury. It demoralizes our troops, it annihilates wealth irrevocably and makes a return to a state of peace more and more difficult. Your order, though impressive and even sharp, might be written with reference to the Code, and pointing out the disastrous consequences of reckless devastation, in such a manner as not to furnish our reckless enemy with new arguments for his savagery.33
In this respect, Lieber’s views aligned with those held by the USSC’s leadership, who both drew a connection between professionalism and civilized practice, and believed that their actions would facilitate the post-war process of reconciliation between North and South. Also like the USSC, Lieber’s efforts to control the Union’s conduct of the war began shortly after the route at Bull Run, in the wake of which he wrote an article in the New York Times addressing the now pertinent issues of POW exchanges and conditions of internment. The question of whether Confederate prisoners had any rights or, as traitors to the Union, should be put to death was at the forefront of Lieber’s thoughts. Despite the fact that ‘the insurgents have committed an enormous wrong and a most grievous mistake’, Lieber believed that ‘the integrity of our country is at stake and must be maintained at whatever cost’. To this end, he argued in favour of both prisoners being exchanged and of Confederate POWs being recognized as hors de combat, so that they could be treated in the same humane manner as unarmed citizens and ‘spared in person, property, and honour as much as the exigencies of war will admit’.34 In advocating this, Lieber acknowledged the fact that maltreating non-combatants had no tactical or strategic value –and therefore, was an unnecessary course of action for a commander to take –and provided a means of mitigating the desire for revenge once North and South began the process of post-war reunification. Pragmatic as such motivations were, the very idea of leaving civilians be, exchanging POWs and treating them as victims of war rather than as treacherous criminals unquestionably had a humanitarian outcome. These were some of the many examples within the code
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where Lieber’s emphasis on military professionalism and post-war politics manifested as humanitarianism. With such lofty goals as regulating the conduct of armies and promoting post-war reconciliation driving its author, Lieber’s Code, in contrast to the concise and limited Geneva Convention, was a bloated, sprawling mess of 157 articles. Like the USSC, Lieber thought big and as such, his code provided regulations not only on the treatment of POWs and civilians but also on partisan warfare, plunder, the protection of hospitals and surgeons, as well as assassination, poisoning and other ‘underhanded’ ways of war. In keeping with his belief that war needed to be fought to its fullest, however, Lieber provided an escape clause for generals who adhered to his code. Specifically, Lieber emphasized that any humanitarian concerns always had to be surrendered, at the discretion of military commanders, to the principle of military necessity in order for battles to be ended swiftly and decisively. For Lieber, military necessity was defined as ‘those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war’. Lieber may have stated that ‘in war we may inflict death, but we have no right to indulge in cruelty’, however, he still laid down in the code that ‘military necessity admits of all direct destruction of life and limb of armed enemies, and of other persons whose destruction is incidentally unavoidable in the armed contests of war’.35 It was in this defined space between military necessity and humanitarian-minded restraint that Lieber wished the Union to fight a controlled and ordered war. The Lieber Code was no treatise on wartime humanitarianism and its author’s concerns were very different to those of the Committee. However, when he received word of what the Genevans were planning, Lieber’s response was to ask Seward to be named Washington’s delegate to the 1864 conference. Somewhat frustrated by the government’s refusal to send an official delegation, on 16 July Lieber wrote to the USSC that, although he was ‘uninformed about the precise character of the Geneva Congress’ he was intrigued by the Committee’s plans and admiring of the contribution that the proposed convention might make to ‘the law of nations in peace and war, which will be one of the greatest, perhaps, taken in all, the greatest achievement of modern civilisation’. Despite his overtly militarist outlook, Lieber also felt that his own efforts to regulate war dovetailed with those of the Committee, and he was at pains to tell the USSC that he had been thinking about the laws of war for some time prior to Dunant’s emergence. Much like the USSC, Lieber –without really knowing or understanding what the Committee was trying to do –believed that he had cleared the way for the Swiss, and so insisted that Washington’s delegation take a copy of his code to Geneva in order to demonstrate how ‘we have anticipated the Congress on some points by some years’.36 Ahead of the game of codifying the laws of war he may have been, Lieber nonetheless had little to no impact on the shape and character of the Geneva Convention. The code had been sent by its author to various figures in Europe in the spring of 1863 and, as we shall see, it came to have an enormous influence on the work of international lawyers who sought to draw up rules for war in the decades that followed. Lieber’s name and work were seldom mentioned in either the Committee’s early correspondence, or the minutes of the 1863 and 1864 conferences. This was in part because only a handful of the Code’s 157 articles touched on matters pertinent
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to the Committee’s considerations. Although Moynier –who, as the Committee’s resident lawyer was the most familiar with Lieber’s work –may have discussed the code informally with his colleagues, it seems clear that the Genevans felt that they were blazing a very different, more humanitarian-focused trail than Lieber in the campaign to regulate and humanize war.37 The USSC, for its part, had firmer cause to believe that its influence had spread beyond American shores and into the hearts and minds of Europeans like Dunant. Not only had Fisher and his counterpart in Paris, Charles Bowles, bombarded surgeons, Samaritans, politicians and philanthropists with tales of the USSC, but the similarities between the Commission’s work and the suggestions being put forward by the Committee were also rather striking. In addition to proposing the creation of volunteer wartime humanitarian societies before Dunant first put pen to paper, the USSC had also pre-empted the Committee on the idea of marking said volunteers with a distinctive emblem. Specifically, white flags bearing the USSC’s seal of an angel hovering over wounded soldiers, which was displayed along with the customary yellow bunting of the Medical Bureau on military hospitals, as well as a variety of Red, White and Blue crosses on white backgrounds that were imprinted on the armbands of some USSC field agents from 1863 onwards. Even the concept of neutralizing medical staff had already been implemented by both the Confederacy and the Union via an agreement made in June 1862.38 Assessing this litany of achievements, Bowles in particular found it impossible to believe that the Committee wasn’t simply copying the USSC. Following Seward’s refusal to send official representatives to Geneva, Bowles enthusiastically accepted Bellows’s and Olmsted’s decision to have him accompany Fogg as part of the United States’ unofficial delegation. Despite his observer-only status, Bowles painted a picture in his report on the conference of attention being lavished on him and Fogg by other attendees, who to a man both supported the Union and greatly admired the USSC. Embracing this exulted position, Bowles claimed to have played the role of educator, distributing USSC pamphlets and Lieber’s Code, while telling stories of the Union way to a captive audience. As Bowles happily wrote, he had ‘the satisfactory conviction that my coming to Geneva had already been more than justified; that if the conference should succeed it, and the rest of the world in general would be largely indebted to our own Sanitary Commission, whose unparalleled achievements furnish a lever so powerful for its representatives to work with’. If we are to believe Bowles’s version of events then the USSC was regarded by the Committee and other conference attendees as the inspirational light in the international campaign to humanize warfare, without which the conference itself may well have been plunged into darkness.39 The truth was stranger than this fiction. Bowles may have wanted to validate his and Fisher’s propaganda efforts, but even the editors of the USSC’s own Bulletin had to concede that there was little indication that the English and French branches had accomplished their goal of educating the Europeans in the Union way. The resulting ‘strange spectacle’ that unfolded in Geneva, ‘of scientific men meeting to discuss, in the heart of Europe, the possibility of constructing a machine which had been for years in successful operation only a fortnight’s distance from where they sat’, dumbfounded Bowles and Fisher, prompting the latter to deliver a lecture to the London Social Sciences Association barely a week after the Geneva conference in which he
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marginalized Dunant, praised Nightingale and argued strongly that the USSC had already mastered –in a way that other, more idealistic humanitarians never could – the means of combining military discipline with volunteer philanthropy.40 It was as strong a riposte to the emergence of the Committee as the USSC could muster, yet it still smacked of pettiness and, moreover, betrayed the failure of Bowles and Fisher to complete the mission they had been sent to Europe to accomplish. Some army surgeons in Europe had been in contact with Bowles prior to the 1864 conference, and Maunoir both knew of the USSC’s work, and was greatly impressed by its ability to harness the collective humanitarian spirit of ordinary Americans engaged in a struggle against the backwardness of both slavery and battlefield barbarism. He alone among the Committee, however, appears to have had a true awareness of the USSC prior to 1864 and, although he related his knowledge of both the Commission and the pact made between the Union and the Confederacy to neutralize medical staff to his colleagues, the impact on them, much like the Lieber Code, was minimal.41 Dunant, for his part, exchanged letters with Bowles and Harris over the summer of 1864, conveying his ‘expressed proof of earnest sympathy towards the Sanitary Commission of the United States’ and belief that the French branch of the USSC represented the ‘point of union for two great continents for a holy work’. This, however, appears to have been the first time that Dunant had ever given serious thought to the USSC, and the correspondence an attempt to engender American interest in the upcoming conference through flattery. He certainly made no mention of the USSC in Solferino and there is no indication from the records of the Committee’s first meetings that he, or anyone else, discussed the Commission’s work as a basis for the draft articles of the Geneva Convention. Accounts of the 1864 conference also confirm that, aside from one instance of Appia and Maunoir circulating reports on USSC activities to a chorus of general endorsement, there was no in-depth consideration given to the Commission or indeed, to Bowles himself, whose claim to have influenced proceedings was not corroborated by Fogg’s own account.42 What neither Bowles nor Fisher would accept was that Dunant and his colleagues had conceived of an idea for providing humanitarian assistance to soldiers that, though very similar to that proffered by the USSC, had been developed in isolation, with key ideas drawn from the knowledge gained in European wars fought in the decades prior to 1863. There was little, if any, influence from across the Atlantic on the Committee’s thinking. In addition to this lack of consideration of the USSC and the Lieber Code, the context in which the Committee was born was always going to ensure that its composition, purview, style of humanitarianism and visions for the future would differ from those of its American cousins. The Committee, for one thing, was trying to craft a document that would be agreeable to multiple nations, rather than just the Union. This necessarily meant that the Genevans had to keep a narrow focus in their aims which, by the time the final draft of the convention was presented in 1864, were restricted to: enshrining the Red Cross symbol as sacrosanct and ensuring that the neutrality of medical staff and wounded was respected by belligerents. The USSC by contrast, always thought big, and were gifted with the need to respond on multiple fronts to the Union’s lax military-medical arrangements by innovating and experimenting with what volunteers could and could not do. Bellows and Olmsted were concerned from
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the very beginning of their enterprise with regulating barracks hygiene, managing relief stores, soliciting donations, keeping hospitals clean, developing new types of medical equipment, publishing sanitary advice, screening troops for diseases and influencing the practices of surgeons and army commanders, among a host of other concerns spanning the fields of sanitary science, battlefield surgery and military-medical policy. It wasn’t until decades after 1864 that the various societies that comprised the global Red Cross movement became concerned with such multifaceted humanitarian issues in times of both war and peace. That ambitious conception of the Red Cross, however, was far in the future in the summer of 1864, when the Committee was simply relieved to have convinced anyone of authority to sign the Geneva Convention’s ten, restricted articles. Compared to what the USSC was dreaming and achieving, therefore, the Committee’s aspirations were modest, which doubtless played a part in engendering Bowles’s view that the well-meaning Europeans were trying to follow the lead of the more visionary Americans. This hubris led the USSC’s leaders to welcome –with the exception of the odd condescending comment –the Committee’s apparent emulation as a validation of their work. It was ironic therefore that, in the years after 1864, Bellows and the other former USSC leaders found themselves in the unenviable position of falling behind the seemingly trailblazing Genevans. One reason for this was the collapse of raison d’état. The war had ended, the donations had dried up and the USSC’s leaders, for all their dreams and aspirations, were now concerned mostly with clearing up the organization’s finances and collating its archives.43 The ending of the war also produced another roadblock for Bellows and those who followed him in his mission to continue what had started at Bull Run. In addition to curtailing its support for the USSC, Washington also refused to sign the Geneva Convention, for fear that doing so would draw the United States into just the kind of international entanglements that the Monroe Doctrine prohibited. This was despite the continual cajoling of the American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields, the organization that Bellows had built out of the remnants of the USSC. The American Association’s three-point manifesto of 1865 laid down its aims as being to: ‘secure the adoption, by the Government of the United States, of the international compact’ made at Geneva, to ‘collect and diffuse information touching the progress of mercy and the advancement of sanitary science’ and ‘to cooperate with all other national associations, and with the Central Geneva Committee, in such ways as it may approve or find convenient for the furtherance of humanity on battlefields throughout the world’.44 The American Association, in short, was the unhappy inheritor of the USSC’s internationalization programme which, by the end of the Civil War, had been eclipsed by the Committee’s successful efforts to rouse the humanitarians of Europe on a scale that Fisher and Bowles could only have dreamed of. Bellows, for his part, accepted that the Americans were no longer running the show, and that the best they could do now was to get on board with the Committee. As he remarked in a hopeful letter to Dunant in 1866, once the American Association had persuaded Washington to sign the convention, it would then become a proud ‘American branch of you Comité Internationale’. Such a happy occasion would demonstrate ‘the oneness of America and Europe in all that touches the permanent interests and triumphs of Christian charity and universal brotherhood’.45
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The American Association may have applauded the efforts of its Genevan brothers, but other humanitarians were never so generous in their appraisal of Dunant and the Committee, whose ideas were viewed by some in Europe as presenting a possible threat to all that had been achieved in the campaign to improve military medicine. Notably, these dissenting voices came primarily from Britain and France –countries possessed of recent experience in the politics, science and practice of military medicine. The bad taste of the Crimea still in his mouth, Chenu believed that the Committee was the enemy of the military-medical professionals, whose status in the eyes of a cynical, broadsheet-fed public was already parlous even without the threat of courageous battlefield angels like Dunant riding to their rescue. Indeed, after attending the 1863 conference Chenu returned to Paris so incensed by what he heard that he composed a pamphlet, the expressed purpose of which was to dismantle the very foundations of Dunant’s vision. Specifically, Chenu rang alarm bells over the idea of volunteers being given any power, protection or status in times of war. Unlike Dunant, Chenu had some awareness of the USSC and, although he offered slight praise for its efforts, he took bitter note of how ‘the sanitary commissioners invaded the armed services’, to the point that ‘they came to function like an independent power’. No doubt in reference to the USSC’s ousting of Finley, Chenu used this cautionary tale of civilians meddling in military-medical affairs as evidence of the kind of anarchy that could unfold if, as Dunant intended, self-righteous volunteers were allowed to ran rampant in times of war. The chief physician of the French Army and Napoleon III’s representative at the Geneva Conferences, Martin François Boudier, chose a more direct route than Chenu for delivering his criticisms, opining at the 1863 conference that ‘soldiers can be improvised, but not medics’. Boudier believed that, even if placed under the control of a national Red Cross Society and given basic training, volunteers simply could not be relied on to supply themselves, get organized or administer quality care. At best, he envisioned volunteers raising awareness about the plight of soldiers and soliciting donations. At worst, he feared that a neutral civilian presence in warzones would, in addition to hindering the real work being done by trained surgeons, provide an opening for spies and saboteurs.46 A similar sense of scepticism towards Dunant’s ideas was held by Nightingale, for a very simple reason that illustrates the depth of Dunant’s ignorance of the military- medical changes that had been occurring across Europe since the Crimean War. In Solferino, Dunant claimed that his suggestion for organized volunteer societies had been inspired by Nightingale’s good work in the Crimea and yet, it is clear that if this was the case he fundamentally misunderstood both what she did at Scutari and, more importantly, what pearls of wisdom she had taken from her experience there. Nightingale had argued in her various post-war treatise that states alone had the responsibility to care for their soldiers by maintaining high standards in their military- medical departments. She had also placed great emphasis in her writings on the need for anyone attending to the wounded to be well trained and for statistics, science and sanitary theories to guide the practice of humanitarian action. The USSC had picked up on this advice, and woven it into both its philosophy in dealing with Washington, and the practice of its field agents.47 Dunant, by contrast, developed an idea that was premised on the opposing notion that volunteers –united in the spirit of Samaritan
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goodwill and international fraternity rather than as agents of a state –were the best option to tend to the sick and wounded. Implicit in Dunant’s suggestion was yet another key difference between his vision and that of Nightingale’s. The ‘Lady with the Lamp’ rejected the idea of giving volunteers free reign on the battlefield because she believed that only military discipline could reign in overzealous humanitarian instincts and thus make volunteers useful. Recalling his own life-affirming experience amidst the blood and mud of Solferino, Dunant held to the view that these very same instincts and willingness to tend to all and sundry that Nightingale wanted to stifle were precisely what made volunteers so useful. Nightingale was, therefore, unimpressed by Solferino’s sentiments when she sat down to read the copy Dunant had sent her in the autumn of 1862. By this stage in her career, she was at the zenith of her power and influence. Her expertise in nursing and most other matters of military medicine was widely recognized, and her place as the War Office’s chief advisor on all medical matters was cemented, to the extent that as she took delivery of Dunant’s monograph she was in the midst of making recommendations to the War Office on how best to prepare the troops and hospitals in Canada for a possible war with the Union.48 Already far advanced in her mission to safeguard soldiers, it was inevitable that Nightingale would treat Dunant like the latecomer to the humanitarian party he undoubtedly was. Convinced that he was little more than another do-gooding amateur –the kind she generally held contempt for –Nightingale responded to Solferino with a matron-like letter of rebuke, asserting that Dunant’s idea for volunteer societies to assume ‘duties which ought to be performed by the government of each country’ was nothing short of ‘objectionable’.49 Longmore was more sympathetic to Dunant’s ideas, yet he still held reservations about the limits of voluntary assistance that were born of his frontline experience and belief in the importance of military discipline. He also had Nightingale in his ear. Upon receiving the Committee’s conference invitation in 1864, Grey passed the issue over to Nightingale, who advised both Longmore and the other doctor chosen to represent Britain in Geneva, William Rutherford, to abstain from getting involved in the Red Cross project. Given all that had been achieved since the Crimean War, ‘it would be an error’, she cautioned the delegates, ‘to revert to a voluntary system or to weaken the military character of the present system’ by allowing Dunant to pursue his ‘absurd’ idea of establishing units of volunteer medics. This absurdity, she believed, had to be fought tooth and nail by Longmore and Rutherford, who would doubtless encounter at the conference the inward-looking naivety of ‘a little state like Geneva, which never can see war’.50 Informed in no small part by Nightingale’s firm and dismissive views, Longmore and Rutherford took the position at the conference that the solution to the global problem of tackling soldiers’ suffering had already been found in the form of their own Medical Staff Corps. Similarly to Bowles’s own promotion of the USSC and the Lieber Code, Longmore and Rutherford greeted their hosts by distributing copies of the Queen’s Regulations for the Management of British Army Hospitals and, on the rare occasions they spoke, they did so only to point out to other attendees that societies of volunteers were not needed by Britain, or anyone else who was prepared to follow their example and invest in official military-medical staff.51
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There were, therefore, a variety of alternative visions of battlefield succour put forward at the Geneva Conferences, all of which challenged Dunant and the Committee’s already diffuse conceptions to varying degrees. Whether proffered by Bowles, Chenu, Boudier, Nightingale or Longmore, the message was clear that unfettered volunteers were unwanted and that centralized control and cooperation with the military were essential components of any humanitarian response to war. The prevalence of these points of view, combined with Moynier and Dufour’s own concerns over the viability of their project and Dunant’s exclusion from many of the discussions at the Hôtel de Ville, all had an impact on the proceedings of the 1864 conference and the character of the convention it produced. Far from the picture painted in the oft-told tale of the Committee triumphant, when Dufour declared on the first day of proceedings that discussion of non-government sanctioned volunteers was off the table it seemed clear that Dunant’s Solferino dream was just that, a dream. The French, as noted, came into the conference sceptical about the value of volunteers, so too the Russians, who held similar fears about civilians carrying out sabotage and espionage under the guise of proffering medical assistance. It was only the Prussians who showed something close to unconditional enthusiasm for Dunant’s original idea, to the extent that their delegate, Friedrich Loeffler, joined Basting in kicking up a fuss when it seemed that Moynier wanted to deprive even government-approved volunteers of the neutrality granted to official military-medical staff by the Red Cross symbol. Although Moynier assured Loeffeler that this was the case, the wording of the relative article remained ambiguous which, as we shall see, was not without consequences for Red Cross volunteers and the movement itself in the decades to come. Perhaps the nearest thing to a manifestation of Dunant’s original idea came only when all parties agreed that if civilians opened their homes up to the wounded, they would earn the status of neutrals and be spared from both acts of plunder and demands to billet troops. This acknowledgment of the civilian Samaritan was, however, the exception rather than the rule in the conference proceedings.52 In the end, the Geneva Convention was a document of compromise. Although born of Solferino’s purist humanitarian spirit, the convention’s ten articles were ultimately shaped by the experiences, prejudices and practices of the military men, surgeons and politicians who gathered in Geneva to sign up to them. In a way that Dunant could not, these men drew on their military-medical knowledge of the Crimean War, the Wars of Italian Unification, colonial conflicts and, to a far lesser extent, the American Civil War, to craft a limited vision of wartime humanitarianism that was more modest than that forged by the USSC, and less professional than that conceived of by Nightingale. The shelving of the crucial idea to let volunteers run rampant was the decision that placed the convention in this grey area and, ultimately, led to the purpose of the convention being restricted in its scope. Moynier and Dufour’s decision to scrap the basis of Dunant’s initial idea was also the reason why, when Nightingale read over the copy of the convention brought to her by Longmore, her fears of the Genevans wrecking the narrative she had set for succouring soldiers melted away. Bereft of a clause empowering volunteers to do as they wished, Nightingale agreed with Longmore that it would be ‘quite harmless for our government to sign the convention as it now stands’, as it amounted to little more than a ‘declaration of humanity’. The convention,
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she confidently believed, would change nothing about the way that states waged war.53 Such cynical assertions about the Committee, the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross societies it engendered were as typical of Nightingale as they were premature. Rather than simply fade away, both the convention and the Red Cross movement it gave birth to became rallying points for the many and varied humanitarians of Europe who, in the years after 1864, became more determined than ever to address the horrors of the battlefield –by whatever means they deemed necessary.
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How Best to Serve the Suffering?
In the first freezing weeks of 1864, a long-running dispute between Denmark and Prussia over control of the border duchies of Schleswig and Holstein erupted into open conflict. Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s chancellor, had been anticipating a bloody settling of accounts with the Danes for some time and so, when King Christian of Denmark decided to absorb Schleswig into his realm in November 1863, Prussia’s armies were well equipped, highly trained and battle-ready to meet Denmark’s challenge with force of arms. This preparedness paid off. After the 38,000 men of the Danish army withdrew north from Holstein to defensive positions on the border with Schleswig, a combined force of 60,000 heavily armed Prussians and allied Austrians marched into their wake to occupy the disputed territory. They were soon followed by a procession of trains that cut through the snow-driven landscape bearing horses, food, bullets, artillery, warm clothing and medical supplies. In fact, so great a quantity and variety of medical material in particular had been assembled by the Prussians that the Daily Telegraph’s war correspondent believed that ‘half the ordinary trains had been suspended’ in order to carry the stacks of hospital beds that ‘were arranged in large packages blocking up the entry to the carriages, and hundreds of parcels of linen, collected from every corner of the Fatherland’. In addition to their numerical superiority and possession of ‘everything, in fact, told of war near at hand and imminent’, many of the Prussian and Austrian soldiers were armed with the Dreyse needle gun, a breech loading bolt- action rifle that –unlike the muzzle-loading weapons that were common among the Danes –could be reloaded and fired from a prone position. This allowed the Prussians to shoot from cover on Danes still reliant on reloading while standing and vulnerable. Outnumbered, under-equipped and outmatched in military technology, the likelihood of high Danish causalities was as real as the explosion of outrage across Europe at the prospect of a war of conquest in which a powerful, militarized state stood poised to crush a seemingly defenceless neighbour.1 If the Crimean War had eclipsed Europe’s era of relative peace, then the Schleswig- Holstein War of 1864 was the harbinger of a more belligerent age, in which territorial ambitions blended with enthusiasm for new military technology and nationalist sentiment to create a Europe more predisposed to the waging of continental war than had been the case for well over a generation. The peace-seekers having retreated and the USSC’s work –outside of its propaganda initiatives –confined to the states of the Union, the stage was set for the Committee and the Red Cross movement to which it
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had given birth to emerge as the spearhead of the campaign against wartime suffering in this new era.2 The ironic potential for the humanitarian Red Cross to grow strong in blood-soaked soil was something Dufour had acknowledged at the 1863 Geneva Conference, stating in his opening address that: in spite of the philanthropic efforts of peace congresses, to which efforts we may pay the respect and sympathy which they deserve –without failing to realise the small amount of success which they have any prospect of achieving –as long as human passions continue to exists, and this threatens to be the case for a long time yet, there will be wars on this earth. It is therefore necessary, rather than pursue the chimera of abolishing them, in order to be truly useful to humanity, to render their consequences less terrible.3
Such was the position of the Red Cross when it came to assessing the return of state- on-state war. Regrettable though it was, wars were growing not only in frequency but also in scale. Something beyond protest and agitation for a return to peace was required as a humanitarian response. News of the outbreak of the Schleswig-Holstein War was greeted in Geneva with a sense of nervous excitability. The Committee was still riding high on the euphoria generated by the apparent success of the October 1863 conference when word arrived that two of the states that had sent delegates to Geneva were now set to take up arms against one another. Sobering as that reality was –particularly for Dunant, who was the most pacifistic of the group –the Committee nonetheless realized that the war could offer a trial run for the still ambiguous concept of a Red Cross volunteer, one pledged to care for sick and wounded soldiers while wearing the emblem of the Red Cross as a symbol of neutrality and protection. Moynier in particular saw the benefits of the Committee sending such volunteers to Schleswig-Holstein where, he hoped, they could open ‘a theatre of observation and study’ in how to bring humanity to the battlefield. The war also gave the Committee an opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of the Red Cross ideal in practice to the Prussians, Austrians and Danes. Such a demonstration of the Committee’s impartial form of humanitarianism in action, Moynier thought, would at the very least engender greater support for the 1864 Conference at which –a swift conclusion to the war pending –the Geneva Convention would be signed.4 The two men who carried out this crucial first Red Cross mission were the ever- enthusiastic Louis Appia, and a retired Dutch naval officer by the name of Captain Charles Van Der Velde. A soldier turned artist and philanthropist, Van der Velde was, like his friend and fellow countryman Johan Basting, an earlier admirer of Dunant and adherent to his original conception of unconstrained volunteerism. Inspired by this vision, Van der Velde represented the Netherlands at the 1863 Geneva conference and, when the Schleswig-Holstein War broke out, he volunteered for the task of becoming the first living embodiment of Dunant’s great and noble idea. It was with little more than this sense of mission, a freshly sewn Red Cross armband, and a genial manner that Van Der Velde set off for Danish lines in April 1864, leaving the task of carrying the Red Cross torch to the Prussians in Appia’s hands. Despite his status as a
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representative of the Red Cross generally being accepted by the Danes, Van der Velde received a welcome as frosty as the February air. This was owing to the fact that his hosts, having established an ambulance service and procured some stretchers, were quite satisfied with their medical preparations. The fact that the ambulances were little more than straw-lined, two-wheeled wagons commandeered from nearby farms, and that Danish army surgeons still tended to carry out amputations using unclean tools without anaesthetic did little to dent the confidence of the Danes. This confidence was doubtless further bolstered by the presence of volunteers from a number of philanthropic Christian societies, many of which had formed of their own accord, without any Red Cross influence, during the first days of the war. By the time Van der Velde arrived at the Danish camp these volunteers had already solicited donations, purchased food and gathered lint for bandages in an effort to support the army’s humble cadres of surgeons. Given this mobilization in both the official and unofficial spheres, it was small wonder that the uninvited foreigner Van Der Velde was viewed as a superfluous, if not condescending, presence, by his hosts.5 Compounding this situation was the fact that neither Van der Velde nor the Danes knew exactly what a Red Cross volunteer was supposed to do. The officers Van der Velde encountered had heard something about the gentleman of Geneva and their ideas, and most understood that the Red Cross armband was meant to be a symbol of compassion and neutrality. The question of what these qualities meant in practice, however, lingered unanswered over Van der Velde’s mission. At times he tried his hand at visiting the wounded in the rear hospitals but there he struggled with the sight of young men ripped to shreds by artillery and rifle-fire, to the extent that on at least one occasion he fainted upon walking into a blood-splattered ward.6 He was on firmer ground when it came to tasks that did not involve the sight of gore. Having learned to avoid that which he could not bear, Van der Velde instead focused on conveying ‘the sympathies of the Committee’ to the suffering, and consulting ‘with the authorities and competent men on the best way to put the (medical) program into practice’. These advisory rather than operational activities took Van der Velde away from the grim business of military medicine, and demonstrated his mindfulness of the fact that the very legitimacy of the Red Cross was resting on how well his mission was received. Accordingly, Van der Velde resolved not to flaunt his humanitarianism, meddle with the surgeons or overtly preach the righteousness of the Red Cross cause. Rather, he adhered to the notion that by keeping his tasks simple, his demeanour humble and his spirit Samaritan he would inspire confidence in Dunant’s vision simply by being there for the wounded.7 Light-touch it may have been, Van der Velde’s interpretation of his mission was much in harmony with Dunant’s view of the Red Cross volunteer as a medium through which humanitarian thoughts, as much as actions, could be promoted for the benefit of not only the wounded, but of humankind writ large. Appia had a similarly idealized conception of his duties, however, on account of his training as a surgeon he was able to go about his business in a more hands-on way than Van der Velde. Seeking to ingratiate himself with his hosts, Appia’s first order of business upon reaching Prussian lines –other than bribing suspicious officers with wine and cigars –was to offer his services as a sawbones. He was not the only civilian to lend practical medical support to the Prussians. As in the Danish camp, the Prussians
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enjoyed the benefits of volunteers, many of whom, like Appia, were trained medics torn by the exigencies of war from their peacetime roles as village doctors or medical students. Unpossessed of the same sense of distrust towards volunteers shown by the French, British and Russians in Geneva, the Prussians gladly accepted this assistance, and used the civilians to strengthen their already impressive military- medical department. Among those volunteers approved by the army were representatives of the Prussian Central Committee, a precursor organization to the Prussian Red Cross Society that had been founded shortly after the 1863 Conference. It was the pre- existence of this Red Cross-inspired organization, and the fact that the army found it useful rather than disruptive to the war effort that led to Appia having an easier time with the Prussians than Van der Velde had with the Danes. Once accepted by his hosts as a beneficial contributor to the welfare of Prussian soldiers, Appia took the next step in his mission, morphing into the role of Red Cross apostle. Whether at the bedsides of the wounded, among the shivering rank and file in the trenches or in the relative warmth and comfort of an officers’ quarters, Appia told all whom he met of the story of Solferino, the righteousness of Dunant’s mission and the importance of Prussian and Austrian participation in the upcoming Geneva Conference. Among the recipients of his message were volunteers from the Order of St John of Jerusalem, the Hamburg Rauhe Haus, and other charitable Christian organizations that, like the Prussian Central Committee, had responded to the sound of war drums with just the kind of spontaneous Samaritan enthusiasm that Dunant had spoken of in Solferino. The very presence of these humanitarians at the front, labouring with such courage and spirit with the permission of the army convinced Appia that Dunant’s vision could, indeed was, being realized. Van Der Velde came to the same conclusion when he met the volunteers on the Danish side. Their efforts to provide bandages, coffee and a soothing bedside manner to the wounded were modest, but the actions of the village doctors, priests and women who rallied to the cause of the Danes were clearly in harmony with the message of Solferino. Van der Velde impressed this connection upon them and, by the time the war ended in October 1864, he had convinced the volunteers to reorganize and rebrand themselves as the first incarnation of the Danish Red Cross Society –the fifth such society to have been established since the Committee’s first conference a year earlier.8 The response of the volunteers on both sides of the Schleswig-Holstein War confirmed to the Committee the validity of their project. As Moynier saw it, Appia and Van der Velde had provided a perspective that was more valuable than ‘all our reflections and conferences’, a tangible example of humanity shining through the bleak winter of war, which ‘demonstrated the importance of our work and the correctness of the approach we were following’.9 This boost of self-confidence was important. French, British and Russian sceptics be damned, the first field work carried out by representatives of the Red Cross, thought Moynier, needed to be celebrated and the story disseminated. For that reason, during the summer of 1864 Moynier and Maunoir began working on Secours aux Blessés, a comprehensive guide to the Red Cross concept which, Moynier hoped, would both replace the more prose-like Solferino as the Committee’s manifesto, and guide discussions at the upcoming conference. The book contained reproductions of Appia’s and Van der Velde’s reports on their respective
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missions, together with Maunoir’s assessment of the USSC, an account of Dunant’s experiences at Solferino and –as a riposte to Chenu and Boudier’s criticisms –numerous examples of how volunteers could work in a beneficial way alongside army surgeons. As a manual for fledgling Red Cross societies, its publication was timely. In the wake of the 1863 conference, relief societies formed in quick succession in Wurttemberg, Oldenburg, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Prussia, as well as various other states in the months that followed. The emergence of these societies and their confirmation as Red Cross organizations after the Geneva Conference of 1864 seemingly signalled the arrival of the Red Cross movement in Europe, which grew more so in the next two years, during which the Geneva Convention was ratified by fourteen states. These participants in the Committee’s project included the initially reticent British and the notably non-Christian, non-European Ottoman Empire –a sign that the Committee was now sitting at the centre of not only a European but also an international web of humanitarian progress.10 Beneath this veneer of a new humanitarian order emanating from Geneva however, there were cracks in the Red Cross’s freshly laid foundations. For one thing, in the summer of 1867 the “father” of the Red Cross found himself embroiled in a scandal involving the Crédit Genevois bank, on the board of which the hapless Dunant sat. The bank collapsed in the spring of that year and Dunant’s investment of funds from the bank into land acquisitions in Algeria was seen by Geneva’s Commercial Court as a major contributing factor. For Moynier this was the last straw. Since their first fateful meeting in Geneva four years prior Moynier had struggled to see eye to eye with the Committee’s unbusinesslike, utopian co-founder. Mindful of the need to protect the Committee’s reputation at a time when the Red Cross movement was building momentum, Moynier all but ordered Dunant to step down, which he did, never to return to the organization he had inspired the creation of, on 25 August 1867.11 In his new capacity as unquestioned leader of the Committee it fell to Moynier to tackle yet another issue that threatened the Red Cross, far more so than Dunant’s dubious financial dealings. This was the lingering, fundamental question –raised continually by the Committee’s critics since 1863 –of who was volunteering for Red Cross work, what their qualifications were and how they should carry out their tasks. Insightful as their reports had been, neither Van der Velde, nor Appia had provided clear answers to these questions. Indeed, the fact that despite sharing the same status as Red Cross volunteers both men had carried out different tasks in Schleswig- Holstein confirmed how muddy the waters on these issues were. This lack of clarity was symptomatic of the fact that, in the words of the Committee’s official historian, ‘taken as a whole the Red Cross had neither constitution, nor statutes nor a central management’ in the first years of its existence.12 Secours aux Blessés did offer the Red Cross societies some guidance for how volunteers should act, however, even this codex of instructive tales could not overcome the fact that there was still no clear definition of what a Red Cross volunteer was supposed to be and, more importantly, how their work was supposed to align –or not align –with military operations. This was a legacy both of the compromises made in the ambiguous wording of the Geneva Convention, as well as the differing philosophies of Red Cross work espoused by Dunant and Moynier. The former had wanted a fluid practice in which volunteers would act
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without guidance from either the Committee or the armies whose soldiers they served. Moynier felt that the need to keep politicians and generals favourably disposed towards the Red Cross was paramount and, to this end, he rejected Dunant’s idea and, citing the example of the USSC, argued that the state as controller of all military-medical arrangements alone had the right to decide how volunteers operated. In this scenario the Committee’s role would be to offer loose guidance only, such as that proffered in Secours aux Blessés, rather than preach a prescriptive, universalist vision of relief work that might lead to Spanish and French Red Cross volunteers working the same as their counterparts in Prussia and Belgium.13 Their differing stances on the relationship of humanitarian volunteers to their states aside, Dunant and Moynier both shared the same opinion when it came to Geneva’s role. The Red Cross was not going to be a top- down operation in the vein of the USSC and, beyond general recommendations, the Committee would not tell any society what to do or how to do it. Red Cross volunteers would be on their own when it came to figuring out how best to serve the suffering. This message was received loud and clear by the many societies that emerged across Europe in the 1860s and, as a consequence, the manifestation of the Red Cross idea was variable from region to region, state to state and, in some cases, volunteer to volunteer. In France the main precursor organization to the French Red Cross, the Société de secours aux blessés militaires (SSBM), was spurned by the army and generally unsupported by the French people, from whom it struggled more than its equivalents in other countries to elicit donations of money, food, medicine and lint. This lack of confidence was doubtless a consequence of the fact that, since its inauguration in 1864, the SSBM’s members –mostly drawn from the petite noblesse of Paris –had spent most of their time and money on lavish charity balls, rather than actually developing any kind of relief system for times of war. The desire of its members to be seen to be humanitarian, rather than practice what Dunant had preached continued to blight the development of the SSBM for years to come. Consequently, when France went to war with Prussia in 1870 the surgeon Leon LeFort –who was given the unenviable task of coordinating the SSBM’s work with the army medical departments –came swiftly and angrily to the conclusion that the society’s hubris had left it bereft of money, a plan of action, a formal relationship with the army and even the most basic medical equipment. The French interpretation of the Red Cross idea therefore, was to pay lip- service to Dunant’s vision while doing little to nothing practical to make that vision a reality. It was, in many respects, a continuation of the half-hearted approach to military medicine that had been prevalent in the French army since before the Crimean War.14 Other Red Cross societies managed to draw more tangible benefits from the Geneva project. In Spain, the task of forging a national society was undertaken by Nicasio Landa, an expert in disease control who had successfully fought epidemics of cholera and yellow fever in Madrid and the Canary Islands. Although he was an admirer of Dunant and believer in the ‘grand and generous idea’ of the Red Cross as laid down in Solferino, Landa was also a military man who, having graduated from medical school in 1856, joined the Spanish army as a surgeon, with the aim to improve its standards in both barracks hygiene and the transport of wounded. To these ends Landa not only took note of the work done at Scutari by Nightingale and the British Sanitary Commission but, in the years immediately preceding the Geneva Conference,
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he studied the military-medical regimes of several European countries, as well as the latest ideas on ambulance design, ration nutrition and barracks hygiene that were being espoused by Hammond, Letterman and the USSC. Through his studies, Landa not only developed his own elastic suspension system for stretchers –yet another innovation that built on American efforts to dampen the concussive movement of the wounded while in transit –but he also came to understand the value of the USSC as both a mobilizer of humanitarian-minded civilians in times of war, and a beacon of science and medical advancement in times of peace. The professionalism shown by Olmsted, the humanitarian impulse of Bellows, and the innovation and knowledge of sanitary sciences embodied in Harris’s work all greatly impressed the Spaniard, who was able to skilfully weave notions of secular progress and scientific innovation into the more purely Christian character of the philanthropic groups that came together to forge the Spanish Red Cross.15 Landa’s view of Red Cross societies as necessities for a more war-like age was formed as early as the 1863 conference, where he had argued that, with new forms of ammunition like the minié bullet and the expanding “dum-dum” round causing horrific injuries, the age of small cadres of unassisted surgeons being enough to stem the flow of blood from ever-larger armies was fast approaching its end. As a means of addressing this reality, he did not go so far as to fully endorse Dunant’s vision. Indeed, like Chenu, Landa insisted that it should only ‘be for the purposes of entering the ranks of the regular army and obeying its discipline’ that volunteers should be allowed on the battlefield. In an echo of the ethos preached by the USSC, however, Landa argued that the main utility of Red Cross societies should be to ‘increase the resources of the government, in order to serve as a connecting link between the official service and public enthusiasm, and in order to transmit to the former, at a given time, all that force which the second may give, but without taking its place’.16 Accordingly, the Spanish Red Cross was to function as a crucible for grass-roots humanitarianism which, in times of war, would channel its energies towards assisting the state. To Landa’s mind, there was no reason why Red Cross societies could not be both agents of humanity and facilitators of victory for the armies they served. The Prussians, for their part, followed a similar concept in their interpretation of the Geneva project. In the most practical way, from the very start of their engagement with the Committee the Prussians regarded the Red Cross as something that could contribute, first and foremost, to the fighting efficiency of their armies.17 This clear- eyed interpretation was shared by the generals, the army surgeons and the royal family, all of whom supported Dunant’s initiative from the beginning. Solferino was widely read and well received in the Prussian court, and both King Wilhelm and his Queen Augusta enthusiastically backed the creation of Red Cross societies throughout their kingdom in preparation for the war with the Danes –that is, before the Geneva Convention was even produced in its final form. By the time that Prussia embarked on its next war with its erstwhile ally Austria in 1866, this experiment in incorporating Red Cross volunteers into military operations was near to being perfected. As Colonel Henry Montague Hozier, a British officer attached to the Prussian Army as an observer during the brief and decisive Austro-Prussian War noted, not only did his host have excellent sanitary arrangements in barracks, but Prussian ‘surgeons, attendants and
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stretcher-bearers wore on their left arm a white band with a Red Cross, as a mark of their professional and their neutrality’. This was a sight of harmony between trained professionals and untrained volunteers that impressed Hozier greatly.18 Hozier’s reports of a professionalized and militarized Prussian Red Cross were no mirage. Rather than being left to their own devices when the Austro-Prussian war broke out, Prussia’s many philanthropic societies were placed under the control of the Central Red Cross Committee in Berlin, which had on its board three government officials tasked with liaising with the army in order to work out how best to make use of the volunteers. Count Stolberg, a leader of the Knights of St John during the Schleswig-Holstein War, was also brought in to offer his expertise in hospital management and sanitary measures to the task of coordinating a nation- wide humanitarian network. The creation of this well-planned, integrated military- medical operation was, however, not the product of a humanitarian revolution exploding in the midst of Europe’s most militarist state. The rise of the Prussian Red Cross was simply one element in a broader programme of reform that had been going on in the Prussian army since the early nineteenth century, the aim of which was to create Europe’s finest war machine. By the 1860s this process was reaching an apex. In addition to the Dreyse gun being standard issue for Prussian infantry by 1866, the artillery was also was also in the midst of a significant overhaul, with rifled Krupp cannons capable of firing explosive rounds replacing old smooth-bored, iron ball firing artillery pieces. General Helmuth von Moltke, the army’s soon to be legendary chief of staff, was also updating the army’s attack doctrine in response to the emergence of new, deadlier, fast-firing weapons. Under his guidance, the frontal assault of times gone by was relegated to the back pages of the handbook in favour of mass envelopment manoeuvres that would utilize trains for fast deployment. When considering the development of new ideas about medical responses in tandem with changing military doctrines, it was perhaps no coincidence that the man overseeing Moltke’s reforms was Count Albrecht von Roon, the Prussian Minister for War who had been one of the keenest supporters of the Red Cross movement from the moment he had first read Solferino.19 Roon was no humanitarian. Like most military men with an interest in the Red Cross, his embrace of Dunant’s ideas was born of the notion that volunteers –if properly organized –could take some of the strain off army surgeons, and even perhaps prove useful as political weapons. This last purpose was demonstrated during the Austro- Prussian War by the Prussian volunteers’ scrupulous adherence to article six of the Geneva Convention, which stated that even their enemies needed to be cared for. Not only did the Berlin Central Red Cross Committee donate funds to Austria’s various relief societies, but Austrian wounded left behind by their retreating comrades were duly collected by Prussian stretcher-bearers and taken to the nearest hospital. There, in an effort to save life as much as to speed up the process of reconciliation between the two sides, the Austrians were given the best medical treatment the Prussians could offer.20 Doubtless there was some humanitarian motives behind the gesture, but the tangible gains of turning present enemies into future friends by offering succour was as clear to the Prussians as it had been to the USSC, whose relief work, for all its patriotic overtones, was always conducted with one eye on the post-war period.
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This was not the only tie to bind the USSC to the Prussian Red Cross. Thomas Evans, a native of Philadelphia who served as both dentist and confidant to Napoleon III at the time of the American Civil War, was despatched across the Atlantic by the emperor in the summer of 1864 with an aim to take the measure of the war situation, and advise on the likelihood of the Union achieving victory. During this brief return to his homeland Evans became familiar with the work of the USSC and, impressed by what he saw, he returned to Europe fully converted to Bellows and Olmsted’s vision. So convinced was Evans that the USSC was the future of military medicine that he preached his new gospel not only to Napoleon but also to the king who would soon become France’s greatest enemy –King Wilhelm of Prussia. Having ingratiated himself with Wilhelm and Augusta in late 1864, Evans set to work convincing them of the usefulness of the Union way, in response to which, so he later claimed, Prussia’s rulers ‘repeatedly expressed to me their unqualified sympathy with the work accomplished by the United States Sanitary Commission, and had deigned to encourage me in the efforts I was making to propagate in Europe the idea of a sanitary enterprise, similar to that which American had rendered so great services to humanity’. According to Evans, this crusade to transfer American knowledge of military medicine and volunteerism over to Europe began in Wurttemberg, where a ‘sanitary service’ based upon ‘the principles of the Geneva Convention, and even a certain tendency to profit from the example given by the United States Sanitary Commission’ was established using guidelines he laid down.21 This might have been hyperbole –Evans had the flair and tone of a self- promoter –but there is some evidence that his advocacy of the Union way was, indeed, well received at the Prussian court. In 1867 the Prussian army purchased the plans for Harris’s stretcher-holding railcar from Evans, as well as a variety of other USSC and Medical Bureau designs for stretchers, splints, ambulances and field surgery kits. In the years before this buy-up of Civil War leftovers, the Prussians were also reading from the Americans’ playbook, by not only developing Sanitary Detachments that were based on the USSC’s Auxiliary Relief Corps, but also authorizing military trains for use by the Red Cross, and making the telegraph available to the humanitarians free of charge in order that their efforts could be coordinated with great precision. Collectively, these measures demonstrated the extent to which the Prussians had not only studied the work of Hammond’s Medical Bureau and the USSC, but also fully comprehended how important the latter’s integration of volunteers into the army’s wider war effort had been for the Union.22 In contrast, the Austrians demonstrated the problems armies might encounter if they ignored the example set by the USSC, and the merits of both the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross project that was blossoming from it. Emperor Franz- Josef had refused to sign the Geneva Convention in 1864 –primarily because his enemy Napoleon had openly praised Dunant and the sentiments of Solferino. Vienna therefore, was uninterested in anything Red Cross at the time war broke out with Prussia and, consequently, there was no Red Cross society in Austria or knowledge of the convention in the minds of Franz-Josef ’s soldiers. This ignorance of, for example, the prohibition on capturing medical personnel as laid down in the convention, led to instances like the abandonment of tens of thousands of uncared for wounded at the Battles of Custoza and Königgrätz, on account of Austrian surgeons fearing that they
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would be made prisoners if they didn’t join the retreat. It was this practice of abandoning wounded, combined with the Prussians’ willingness to abide by the convention and offer medical care to the Austrians, plus the high rate of casualties caused by the Dreyse rifle, that led to a peculiar scene noted by one observer of Prussian hospitals where ‘there were always two and even three times as many Austrians as Prussians’.23 The lack of a Red Cross society also hindered the effectiveness of the Austrian army’s medical system –the composition and structure of which had changed little since the Battle of Solferino. This parlous situation was not for want of ideas or vision. In Solferino’s aftermath, a former soldier-turned army surgeon named Baron Jaromir von Mundy had laboured alongside Dunant in service to the wounded and dying, from which he drew the same grim conclusions as the Swiss that more needed to be done for Europe’s soldiers. Mundy, like so many surgeons of his era, was fascinated by the relationship of new weapons to medical techniques and, in the years after Solferino, he studied the work of Hammond, Longmore, Appia and the USSC, as well as involving himself deeply in the world of the Red Cross through an exchange of correspondence with the Committee. On the eve of the war with Prussia, Mundy was busy formulating his ideas for new stretcher designs, larger, better- equipped ambulances, and an integrated military- medical system that would utilize volunteers. With Mundy’s thoughts to guide them, therefore, the Austrians could have marched to war with a more organized means of caring for their soldiers. Mundy, however, lacked influence in the army’s upper echelons and was not trusted owing to his support for the unpopular Dunant. Consequently, he was left to join the disorganized ranks of the surgeons who laboured hopelessly without direction on the battlefield at Königgrätz. There, to his dismay, he watched as wounded men were piled on top of each other in open-top, thinly straw-lined farm carts that sufficed for ambulances, a formative experience that would set Mundy off on a crusade to improve the transport of wounded, which would culminate in him founding the Volunteer Ambulance Society of Vienna in 1881.24 On the ground years earlier in 1866, however, the Austrian’s struggled to find both ambulances and stretcher-bearers in adequate numbers. Bereft of a Red Cross society, the foremost humanitarian organization to lend assistance to the army was the Austrian Patriotic Society, yet another Solferino-vintage institution that had been gathering dust for seven years at the time the conflict with Prussia began. This dormancy meant that, unlike the Berlin Central Red Cross Committee, the Patriotic Society had absorbed few of the lessons proffered by either the Geneva conference’s attendees, or the USSC. Patriotic Society volunteers were mostly untrained and, owing to the lack of ratification of the convention, they wore no Red Crosses to indicate their neutrality. Kept away from the battlefields by ‘do-gooder’ averse officers, the volunteers were mostly confined to organizing bandage collections in their home villages, and offering words of comfort to the wounded at hospitals far back from the front lines. These efforts, when compared to Count Stolberg’s harnessing of the energies of over 120 philanthropic groups –some of which boasted trained surgeons and volunteers who had gained frontline experience of stretchering wounded in the Schleswig- Holstein War –smacked of pre-Crimean War practices. It was not until after their final defeat at Königgrätz on 3 July that the Austrians realized that things had changed since the 1850s. Mindful, no doubt, of the scores of Austrian wounded in Prussian hospitals,
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Vienna finally saw matters Geneva’s way and, with Mundy pushing the issue, agreed to sign the convention on 21 July. Within months of Austria joining the Red Cross, Portugal, Saxony and Russia also signed up to the Geneva Convention as a new wave of Red Cross momentum flooded across Europe, stirring those nations whose military- medical regimes were similarly deficient to the Austrians’ to action.25 These latecomers were all, however, playing catch- up with the trend- setting Prussians, whose mastery in the art of utilizing volunteers had placed them at the vanguard of both the burgeoning Red Cross movement, and the long- standing Crimean War-era campaign to professionalize military medicine.26 In September 1868 the Prussian War Ministry created a new Medical Division for the army, led by a Surgeon-General who had the authority to develop peacetime training programmes for army surgeons, collect statistics from hospitals in order to identify areas of shortfall for quartermasters, and oversee the medical examinations of new recruits prior to deployment. This was followed, in April 1869, by the issuing of an order to army commanders that they were to take the advice of civilian doctors attached to each army corps, and regularly consult the Medical Division’s staff on all matters relating to sanitation, ration quality, water supply, camp design and soldier hygiene. That same year, the Prussian delegation to the International Red Cross Conference in Berlin –an occasion that brought Moynier’s Committee together with the likes of Mundy, Landa and other key figures of the Red Cross movement –proposed that the peacetime work of any Red Cross society should be to train volunteers in preparation for war, and ‘contribute to the progress of human welfare’ by channelling the Red Cross spirit into philanthropic schemes such as feeding the poor, setting up hospitals and ‘disseminating knowledge about the laws of humanity to all classes and people’. This vision of the Red Cross as a means of bettering civic society in times of peace, while also preparing for war aligned perfectly with the conceptions of men like Roon and Moltke, who saw war as an all-encompassing political, societal and now, seemingly, humanitarian activity.27 The military men of Europe were not the only ones who had to adapt their thoughts on war in response to the rise of the Red Cross movement. The fact that ‘the means of destruction have made gigantic progress, but also that superior measures for the restoration and maintenance of health are being extensively adopted’ did not go unnoticed during the 1860s by the peace societies of the United States and Europe, whose concern –contrary to that of the many volunteers now stirred to humanitarian service –had always been to end the practice of war, rather than mitigate the suffering of its victims.28 Unlike the humanitarians who were now flocking to the Red Cross banner, these peace-seekers had a claim to leadership of the campaign to control war that long predated Nightingale’s work in the Crimea, Dunant’s revelation at Solferino and the USSC’s harmonizing of military medicine with civilian philanthropy. Transatlantic networks of Christian, liberal and socialist peace-seekers had been steadily developing since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, led by the two most prominent peace societies of the age, the London Peace Society and the New York-based American Peace Society. United though they may have been in their conviction that wars needed to be prevented, like the Red Cross movement itself, the members of these societies’ differed in their views on how and to what end they should pursue their goal. The role of religion, the need or lack thereof to link the ending of war to addressing social and economic issues,
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the viability of absolutely rejecting war in all its forms and the question of whether international trade or national self-determination should serve as the foundation for a peaceful world were some of the many points of debate that arose throughout the string of international conferences that culminated in the final, desperate attempt by Richard Cobden to rally the peace-seekers in Edinburgh in 1853.29 The years since that conference had not been kind to the peace societies. In the wake of the Crimean War memberships had declined, funds had dried up and by the early 1860s even the once vibrant London Peace Society had to concede that the spread of ‘warlike excitement’ across Europe, ‘which unhappily prevailed to so large an extent, and rendered the doctrines of peace very unwelcome to the ears of the multitude’ was strangling the European peace movement. The American peace- seekers suffered similarly from the outbreak of the Civil War, during which a number of Quakers –the base of the United States’ peace movement –threw their support behind the Union, on the grounds that Lincoln’s campaign to abolish slavery was a righteous enough cause for which to shed blood. The sense of futility among the peace-seekers was palpable by the time of the Austro-Prussian War, in the wake of which the London Peace Society could only claim hollow defiance in the face of those who thought that the crusade for peace was dead, by hoping forlornly that Prussia would soon settle down, and that the rest of Europe would become exhausted by the death and destruction.30 The fact that this did not occur served only to shift the campaign to control war out of the peace-seekers hands and into the army surgeons and Red Cross volunteers who saw mitigation, rather than eradication of conflict as the new way forward. Crucially, with the exception of the pacifistic Dunant, there were few among these new servants of the suffering who were willing to carry the flickering torch of the peace societies. The Prussians, as mentioned, saw wartime humanitarianism as a means to the end of making their armies more efficient. Likewise, neither Landa nor Mundy believed that peace was lurking on Europe’s horizon, and so prepared for the more likely onset of mass carnage accordingly. Barton felt that ‘every step taken towards softening and humanizing war is a double step towards its exculpation from the codes of practice between nations’, but accepted that this was more a notion of hope than reality. Nightingale, for her part, saw no end to war, and even went so far as to share Lieber’s view that war, if carried out quickly and efficiently, could be humanitarian. As she opined to Longmore during the Schleswig-Holstein War, ‘tho’ I don’t reckon myself an inhuman person, I can conceive of circumstances of force majeure in war where the more people are killed, the better’.31 Dufour was of a similar mind, and had little time for those who chose to pursue peace to the detriment of a more practical humanitarian response to war. Despite the gratitude Dufour expressed to the peace movement for its efforts in the past, he made quite clear at the 1863 Geneva Conference that the world was moving on: It has been stated that instead of seeking expenditure to render war less murderous we should do better to attack the evil at its root and to work towards universal and perpetual pacification of the world. To hear our contradictors, it would really seem that we are tending to do nothing less than legitimise warfare by having it looked
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at as a necessary evil. Is this criticism serious? I cannot believe so. We certainly desire, as much as and more than anyone, that men shall cease to butcher one another . . . however, we are convinced that it would be necessary for a long time to reckon with human passions and endure their baleful consequences. Why then, if we cannot absolutely and immediately do away with them should we not seek to lessen them?32
Given the rapid expansion of the Red Cross movement, the signing of the Geneva Convention by a number of states, and the spread of Prussia’s wars, it was difficult to argue against Dufour’s assessment. And yet, there were some within the peace movement who tried. Struck by the popularity of the Red Cross with humanitarians who, hitherto, might have worked for the cause of peace, the American Peace Society focused on the implications of the development of new laws for the conduct –if not facilitation –of war by both Lieber and the Committee in its journal, the Advocate of Peace: We welcome, as entering levers for the ultimate over-thrown of the war system, such attempts as this to conciliate war with the laws of humanity. Such reconcilement will be found impossible. The principles underlying, and the spirit pervading the system are essentially inhuman, cruel and barbarous. Take away these qualities, and you annihilate the custom itself. You may smooth them over, but you can no more make war either Christian or humane than you can mix oil with water, or blend light with darkness.
Testament to the confusion the rise of the humanitarians brought to the peace movement, this denouncement was followed by an acknowledgement of the contributions the Red Cross faithful could still make to the cause of peace. In conceding that ‘wars, if less bloody, used to be longer and more ruinous than they are now’, the American Peace Society felt that ‘it certainly will do no harm for the crowned heads of Europe and their representatives to deliberate upon the horrors of war. If successful in mitigating these, they will win and deserve perpetual blessings from the people’. On the subject of humanitarians on the battlefield, there was also room for the peace-seekers to give qualified praise to the USSC and the surgeons of the Medical Bureau, whose labours were judged to be ‘most satisfactory to humanity’. Similarly bland endorsements of the surgeons and volunteers were expressed by members of other peace societies throughout the 1860s, though always with the underlying sentiment that, although ‘we rejoice in all such efforts to curtail and relieve the miseries inseparable from war; the shortest, easiest, and only sure way is to abolish the custom altogether’.33 Moynier, for his part, extended a similarly fragile hand of comradeship to the peace-seekers, albeit with an underlying sense of confidence that the Red Cross was in the ascendancy. His follow-up to Secours aux Blesses –a tract published in early 1867 in collaboration with Appia entitled La Guerre et la Charité –went beyond the “handbook” character of his and Maunoir’s prior work, and focused both on repositioning the Red Cross movement in the broader, decades-old campaign to control the destructiveness of war, and providing it with some much needed leadership towards a uniform purpose.
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Instead of canonizing what had happened in Geneva in 1864 –and in so doing, turning Dunant from Red Cross outcast into humanitarian messiah –Moynier and Appia drew heavily from the works of other humanitarians and surgeons, some of whom had criticized the Committee and Dunant personally in the past. Prior observations on the destructiveness of new weapons and their implications for battlefield surgery, as well as the influence of the press and the importance of public opinion made by Chenu, Nightingale, Longmore, Evans, Letterman, the USSC, Napoleon’s legendary army surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey, the founder of the Italian Red Cross Ferdinando Palasciano, and even of the great Prussian strategist and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz were referred to, more often than not with some form of deference for the wisdom each proffered.34 Mindful that the peace-seekers went back further in their efforts than most of the aforementioned, room was also made in the book to address the relationship between the crusade for peace and the work of the Red Cross. Citing the utility of Red Cross conferences in bringing humane and philanthropic minds together, Moynier and Appia claimed that: Those who take part in them will, unknown to themselves, be inspired with more fraternal sentiments towards foreigners, they will leave behind them some scraps of national prejudices, and they will return to their homes with inclinations essentially pacific, and fully prepared to afford assistance to persons suffering, without inquiring under what flag they may be serving.35
It was not just in the conference chambers that the Red Cross could do its bit for the causes of peace and international fraternity. As Moynier claimed: in organizing succour for the wounded, in addressing fervent appeals in their favour to the various nations, in exciting pity by the relation of their miseries, and in laying bare, with a view to help our cause, the lamentable spectacle of a field of battle, in unveiling the terrible realities of war, and in proclaiming, in the name of charity, that which policy has often an interest to keep concealed, we shall do more for the disarmament of nations than those who have recourse to economical arguments, or to the declamations of a sterile sentimentalism.36
Moynier’s allusion to the Red Cross as a possible agent of peace was not, as some have argued, an expression of a hidden, peaceable mission on the part of the Committee.37 Rather, this was Moynier at his most politically astute, devising a placatory response to the peace-seekers that would both tip a hat to their aims while making it clear that the Red Cross –as inheritors of Europe’s rich legacy of military medicine and wartime humanitarianism –was now in command of the war against war. In recognition of Prussia’s growing influence in this campaign –the Prussians had even established the humanitarian literary competition to which La Guerre et la Charité was submitted –it was on the subject of war that Moynier most dwelled. Beyond the brief mention of peaceable possibilities, the lion’s share of the book was not devoted to reflecting on the decline of the peace movement, but to convincing critics that the Red Cross was on the rise and, moreover, that the Committee had a vision for how to lead the movement’s various societies forward as one. Using
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Chenu and Nightingale’s point ‘that the state not only has the right to assist the victims of war, but it is its positive duty to do so’, Moynier and Appia pointed out the inefficiency of numerous army medical departments across Europe, and the consequent need for Red Cross volunteers to pick up the slack. The further need for these volunteers ‘to be organized before they can act’ was also emphasized, so too the idea that, when entering a warzone any Red Cross brassard-bearer should subordinate themselves to the military authorities. Moynier and Appia did not go so far as to state that beyond the battlefield the military should have control of Red Cross societies, but they certainly made it clear that Dunant’s unfettered volunteerism should be discouraged, and that ‘frequent communication must necessarily be kept up with the sanitary authorities of the army’. This, however, had to be carried out with the full understanding that Red Cross volunteers must at all times avoid ‘the appearance of wishing to exercise control over the authorities’ lest they be regarded as politically meddlesome –a reference, no doubt, to the USSC’s machinations with the office of Surgeon-General. This was but one example of how the lessons taught by the USSC, which was described by the authors as ‘the most vast, the most energetic, and the most persevering’ of humanitarian organizations, as well as those of the Prussian Red Cross, leapt from the pages of La Guerre et la Charité.38 The practices of the Prussians were clearly an influence on the authors’ recommendations that Red Cross societies keep themselves war ready in times of peace. There was no hint of the notion that the humanitarians should use the time between wars to campaign, as the peace-seekers of old had, for maintenance of the status quo. Instead, Moynier and Appia implored societies to recruit in peacetime where possible from sanitary boards, medical schools and religious orders that had long been dedicated to healing the wounded. This suggestion both implied an acceptance of the inevitability of war, and marked yet another step towards Chenu’s argument that Red Cross societies had to both recruit trained volunteers and use times of peace to get them war-ready.39 It was in the midst of this process of refining the Red Cross concept that leading members the movement met in Paris on 26 August 1867, at the first International Conference of Societies for the Relief of War Wounded. This grand event had been called at the behest of the SSBM, whose leaders had insisted on extending the invitation not just to members of Red Cross societies but also to representatives from chivalric and religious orders, army medical departments, philanthropic bodies and scientific think tanks. Though the final number of fifty-seven attendees representing nine states was smaller than anticipated, the conference was nonetheless a magnificent affair, convened amidst the gaiety and optimism of the International Exposition in Paris, a seven-month-long event held under a great domed pavilion on the Champs de Mars, at which all manner of new technologies and inventions were displayed to the great and good of the world. At the insistence of Evans and the SSBM, the Red Cross acquired 700 metres of floor space under the pavilion. A portion of the space was devoted to showing off Evans’s USSC ambulance carts, flags and food barrels which, with the enthusiastic permission of Bellows, he had further augmented with additional pieces of equipment from the Commission’s storehouses. Opposite this impressive display was an array on stretchers, field surgery kits and Red Cross insignia that had been donated by Mundy, Landa and Appia among others. As in operations so in braggadocio, the
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USSC again beat the Red Cross to the punch, its exhibit being awarded an array of prizes that Evans’ duly pocketed on Bellows’s behalf.40 The one-upmanship of Evans’s display aside, to many an observer at the International Exposition the array of medical equipment and the high-minded speeches presented by the Red Cross and USSC painted the picture of a united and organized humanitarian movement on the rise. The hosting organization, the SSBM, was described as the ‘most admirable institution’, ‘well supported by a people to whom the horrors of war are not personally known’. The USSC, ‘which is but a Red Cross society under another name’, won a grand prize. It was clear to any attendee who was fortunate enough to encounter the ‘exhibition of intense interest’ laid on by Evans and the SSBM that the Red Cross, and the ‘principles on which it is founded, are recognized by every great state of Europe’.41 Away from the exhibition floor, however, such unity and positivity was often found wanting. Barely hours into the first conference session it became apparent that few among the Red Cross faithful had absorbed the message of La Guerre et la Charité. Rather than agreeing on the vision laid down by Moynier and Appia, there was much debate over how best to revise and improve the convention, as well as the tasks, jurisdiction and composition of Red Cross societies, and the nature of their relationship to their nation’s militaries. Doubtless drawing on the work done by the various ladies lint collection organizations in the Union, as well as the Women’s Central Association for Relief, Charles Bowles –who along with Evans was still claiming to represent the now defunct USSC –spoke of the need for women to be at the centre of any society’s humanitarian activities, and to be organized into committees that could source donations, make bandages and even provide medical support to surgeons. Although mildly supported by the Prussians, Bowles’s argument drew criticism from the French delegates who continued, in the main, to show reticence towards anything that might lead to a further encroachment of volunteerism into the realm of the surgeons. The lingering questions of whether governments needed to fund Red Cross societies from state treasuries, and if the military should have ultimate control over the societies were also discussed at the conference, albeit without leading to any definite conclusions.42 The only major developments to emerge related to modifying the Geneva Convention itself, specifically via resolutions to extend its articles to maritime warfare, and add articles that would compel belligerents to keep records and exchange information about dead and wounded with the enemy. Ultimately, these suggestions led to a follow-up conference in Geneva in October 1868 where, despite the efforts of the Committee to get an agreement on updating the convention, the delegates who travelled from thirteen states to attend this sequel to the triumph of 1864 went away having ratified nothing.43 The failure of the 1868 attempt to revise the Geneva Convention was not the only bump in the road for the Red Cross during this period of forward momentum. The question of who was actually steering the Red Cross ship and what conception of the Red Cross ideal should be followed came sharply to the fore at the 1867 Paris Conference when, on the final day of proceedings the French delegation suggested to the worn-out attendees that the headquarters of the Committee should be moved from Geneva to Paris –a challenge that, to Moynier and Appia’s relief, was defeated by a show of hands in favour of keeping the heart of the Red Cross in neutral Switzerland.44 There was some justification for the French delegation’s rather undiplomatic criticism of the Committee’s role as “leader” of the movement. Leaving aside the fact that the Red
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Cross societies were steadily developing independent of Geneva, there was a certain nerve to Moynier and Appia using La Guerre et la Charité to position themselves as beacons of a new, better organized and more disciplined Red Cross. This was because, a year before the Paris Conference, Appia had engaged in just the kind of freewheeling, cavalier humanitarianism that he and Moynier cautioned against. When, during the Austro-Prussian War, the charismatic firebrand Giuseppe Garibaldi led Italian troops in an effort to reclaim Venice from Austrian control, Appia and his brother George formed the Volunteer Corps of the Valleys, a four-man team of humanitarians that attached itself to Garibaldi’s force with an aim to bolster its meagre medical staff. In keeping with the humanitarian zeitgeist this might have been, Appia’s team did not belong to any Red Cross society and its mission was not officially sanctioned by the Committee itself, as had been the case for the surgeon when he travelled to Schleswig- Holstein. Appia, however, appears to have been so swept up in the romance of it all – the battlegrounds were, after all, very close to Solferino –that he ignored any of the notions about the limitations of voluntary action that he would soon enshrine in La Guerre et la Charité. Instead, with a rucksack full of bandages and his portable surgery kit in hand, he set off for Lake Garda, had a local tailor make Red Cross uniforms for his team and then set to work.45 Even within the Committee itself, therefore, there remained some uncertainty after 1864 about what a Red Cross volunteer was and what parameters they should operate within. For all the momentum and apparent credibility the movement had gained since its inception in October 1863, there were still many question marks over what Red Cross work, in an age of more frequent and destructive wars, should constitute. Furthermore, although the treatise he and Appia produced represented Moynier’s attempts to both confine Dunant’s vision to the past and offer a blueprint for a more focused Red Cross future, the fact remained that from the outset the Committee never really had control of the humanitarian forces it had unleashed, and no words from Moynier or anyone else were going to change that. This was because, rather than engender the movement to humanize war the Committee was, as Moynier himself conceded in La Guerre et la Charité, simply one of many groups that was looking to control wartime suffering. The peace-seekers may have lost their footing in this campaign, battered into redundancy as they were by both the return of war as a norm in Europe, and the corresponding rise of the mitigators of suffering to prominence. But for the Committee, it was the existence of its many precursors –be they the USSC, Nightingale, the benevolent Christian orders in Europe or, indeed, the industrious army surgeons who were now guiding certain Red Cross societies –that made Moynier and Appia’s struggle to create a unified vision that much more difficult. The work of these humanitarians fired the passions of the Red Cross faithful as much, if not more, than anything Dunant, Moynier or any of the co-founders decreed. As a consequence, the various Red Cross societies that emerged after 1864 did so marching to the beat of their own drum. As much was made evident when, only three years after La Guerre et la Charité was published, it was not an army of disciplined volunteers in the mould envisioned by Moynier, but an assortment of adventurers, half-trained medical students and well-meaning Samaritans who came together under the banner of the Red Cross to bring humanity to a conflict that would crown the triumphs of Schleswig-Holstein and Austria, and confirm Prussia’s emergence as Europe’s premier military power.
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Figure 1 Nightingale’s nurses at Scutari © ICRC Archives.
Figure 2 The USSC’s Field Relief Corps –one of the first iterations of a Red Cross relief column, 1864 © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 3 Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross © ICRC Archives.
Figure 4 The Committee of Five –Dufour’s centrality suggests an awareness of the importance of military endorsement from the outset of the Geneva project © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 5 Demonstrating a Red Cross ambulance at the International Exposition in Paris, 1867 © ICRC Archives.
Figure 6 The enemy of the ‘amateurs’, Jean-Charles Chenu © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 7 Napoleon III’s dentist and avid promoter of the USSC in Europe, Thomas Evans © ICRC Archives.
Figure 8 The USSC’s propaganda man in Paris, Charles Bowles © ICRC Archives.
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When Angels Go to War
Prussia had barely concluded its trouncing of Austria when Bismarck turned his thoughts to constructing a new geopolitical block in the heart of Europe –the North German Confederation. The establishment in the summer of 1867 of this formidable economic, political and military power, comprised of twenty-two Germanic states, provoked fear and anger in King Wilhelm’s neighbour to the west, Napoleon III. Even before the decisive Prussian victory at Königgrätz, the once energetic and ambitious ruler of France had been sliding into ill- health and despondency, watching on nervously as the seemingly untouchable Bismarck redrew the map of Europe and, in the process, acquired hundreds of thousands of new recruits for Moltke’s ever-growing war machine. Under mounting pressure to do something about the enemy at his gates, Napoleon spent the years after Austria’s defeat scrambling to find allies, only to fail to persuade the Italians, Russians or British to unite with France for what looked to be an inevitable future showdown with the Prussians. Bereft of allies to dissuade him of such folly, Napoleon eventually succumbed to both the political machinations of Bismarck and public pressure at home. In what would prove to be a gambler’s effort to bring the ascendency Wilhelm had enjoyed since 1864 to an end, on 19 July 1870 Napoleon declared war on Prussia.1 The humanitarian response from both sides to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War was predictable enough. The Prussian Red Cross –experienced, well-funded, meticulously organized and coordinated with the army –mobilized within days of war being declared. The charitable networks that had been established across the North German Confederation under the auspices of the Prussian Red Cross’s patron, Queen Augusta, sprung to life, with numerous volunteers collecting parcels of food, clothing, lint and medicine, all of which were sent via train to Red Cross depots that had been strategically sited along the railway lines that criss-crossed Wilhelm’s kingdom. Having taken receipt of these supplies, teams of Prussian Red Cross volunteers attached themselves to the battalions being transported by rail to the front, all under the watchful eyes of army quartermasters. In contrast to these visions of discipline and organization, France’s army surgeons, lacking in financial and material resources and reliant on what one of the head surgeons, Leon LeFort, described as ‘lazy drunks’ and ‘battlefield pirates who robbed the dead rather than tending to the living’ to staff the SSBM, muddled their way through the process of mobilization as best they could. This was always going to be a struggle for ‘in France’, as one volunteer later noted, ‘when the
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war broke out there was barely a few thousand Francs in the SSBM’s coffers, and the Convention of Geneva was almost unknown, even in the military headquarters and medical department of the army!’2 Organized Prussians and ill-prepared French were not the only manifestations of the Red Cross movement during the Franco-Prussian War. Within days of war breaking out a wave of volunteers from all manner of national Red Cross societies, Christian groups and medical organizations flooded into France. Benefitting from the ambiguous wording of the Geneva Convention’s articles regarding the neutrality and status of volunteers these civilians –most of whom had likely never heard of La Guerre et la Charité or read and understood the convention –journeyed from a range of countries for a variety of personal, professional and philosophical reasons. Confused as this humanitarian response was, the arrival of such a varied cast of humanitarians into France proffered the first great test of the notion that, collectively, the Red Cross societies could provide an ordered, effective and convention-governed response to what most at the time realized as the most significant war to have broken out in Europe for decades.3 This was the moment for the humanitarians to prove their worth. Clara Barton was one of the volunteers who participated in this mass Red Cross experiment. Following the fizzling out of her efforts to trace the whereabouts of POWs and missing soldiers at the end of the Civil War, Barton grew restless in her now suddenly unadventurous, peaceful, post-war life. Exhausted mentally and physically by her wartime exertions, she suffered several bouts of illness and depression before taking the advice of her doctor and leaving the newly re-United States in the spring of 1869 for a recuperative excursion to Europe. After touring Britain, France and Corsica, Barton settled on staying with friends in Geneva where, despite the elegance of the city, the tranquillity of the surrounding countryside, and the generosity of her hosts, she spiralled further into despondency at the prospect of never again finding a purpose in her life as important or thrilling as that provided by the Civil War. Indeed, there were only two things that really invigorated Barton during her stay in Dunant and Moynier’s hometown. The first was the news that France had declared war on Prussia, which left her and ‘all Europe stood aghast’ and fearful of what was to come. The second came via two visitations she received from a party of ‘gentleman of thought, character, intelligence, position and culture’ who ‘introduced themselves as officers of a society known as the International Convention of Geneva –more familiarly, the Red Cross’.4 It was Appia who sought Barton out in the winter of 1869. It is unclear how he came to know of her, though it is likely that he and Moynier would have come across her name while doing researching for La Guerre et la Charité. Having realized that Barton was present in the very heart of the Red Cross world, Appia resolved to meet with ‘America’s Nightingale’ in order to inquire as to why a country that had not only produced her and the USSC, but was now at peace and no longer at risk of compromising its foreign policy, was continuing to abstain from signing the Geneva Convention. This was a question Barton could not answer because she had never heard of the convention, the Committee or the Red Cross. Consumed by her work and distant from the USSC during the Civil War, Barton had remained ignorant of both the story of Solferino and the Geneva conferences in the years of peace that followed. Her illness and withdrawal from the humanitarian world since coming to Europe had further kept
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Barton in the dark over the growth of the Red Cross movement, to say nothing of the American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields’ floundering efforts to get Washington to sign the convention. When faced with Appia’s question, therefore, Barton found herself at a loss. Struggling to comprehend herself how such momentous developments had occurred without her realizing, Barton could only conclude that, given that the ‘American people did not know a thing about it or had even heard of it . . . some officer of the government, to whom the matter had been assigned, had decided upon and declined individually’ to sign the United States up to the convention. The idea that the United States, and her with it, could have let the Red Cross pass them by was the biggest shock she had received for quite a while. It was a shock, however, from which she swiftly and excitedly recovered. Awoken from her malaise, Barton gladly accepted the copies of the convention, Solferino, Secours aux Blessés and La Guerre et la Charité that Appia left her. By the time he called on her again with Moynier in tow barely a week after the French declaration of war on Prussia, Barton was up to date on all things Red Cross. Energized for the first time in years, Barton volunteered to join Appia on his journey to the Committee’s mustering point at Basel, from where she intended to procure medical supplies and a cart in order to pick up where she left off on the battlefields of the United States –albeit this time as a fully fledged member of the Red Cross family, rather than a lone wolf humanitarian. If Appia’s party moved fast enough, she hoped, ‘not a drop of blood could flow before they would be there to staunch it, not a soldier could fall before practiced and well-provided hands would be there to gather him up’.5 Barton was not alone in viewing events in France as an opportunity for both a humanitarian adventure, and a noble crusade that would cement the place of the Red Cross volunteer on the battlefield. Appia’s nephew, Frédéric Ferrière, was a shy, wiry medical student not long into his education when he first heard news that the Prussians were once again on the march. Ferrière was twenty-two years old, spoke no German and had never witnessed a battle, yet to him these were trifling issues when compared with the need to meet the challenge to humanity presented by the war. He recalled that when ‘sensing my physical and nervous inferiority when faced with the struggle for existence, I realized I had to take the plunge in order to learn to swim, failing which I might well remain a piece of wreckage destined to float at the whim of outside influences as long as I lived’. Inspired by the Red Cross evangelicalism of his uncle, Ferrière agreed to join Appia’s mission to France, where he attached himself to a Prussian army unit which, having suspected him of being as spy, subsequently abandoned him during a battle, after which he was made a prisoner of the French. Riddled with fever and unrecognized as a neutral despite his Red Cross armband, Ferrière narrowly escaped execution by way of an administrative error, before slipping away from his captors. He remained undaunted. Still plagued by poor health Ferrière returned to Switzerland to recover from his ordeal, before embarking once more to the front in order to succour the same Prussian soldiers who had abandoned him to near-death.6 Ferrière’s sense of mission and desire to do good for all in the midst of conflict – what might be dubbed the ‘Red Cross spirit’ –drove countless others like him during the summer of 1870. The convention’s aforementioned lack of clarity on the definition
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of a Red Cross volunteer, combined with Moynier’s spotty leadership of the movement, made the Red Cross an open house through which an array of humanitarians could trample, provided that they wear the sacred symbol and speak of their desire to heal the wounded. The ease with which one could become a Red Cross volunteer dovetailed with the fact that the movement itself was reaching the crest of a wave. In the seven years since the first fateful meeting of the Committee twenty-five Red Cross societies had formed, and many of their volunteers had gained tantalizingly brief and exciting experiences of wartime work in Schleswig-Holstein, Austria and Italy. The tales told and opinions shared at the three International Red Cross conferences that had been held in Würzburg, Paris and Berlin, as well as at various statistical and medical conferences during the 1860s had fired the imaginations of humanitarians, surgeons and military men from Constantinople to Cincinnati. The likes of Landa, Mundy, Longmore, Hastings-Hamilton and Evans had further excited the Red Cross cause by producing and disseminating all manner of treatise on methods for evacuating the wounded and treating gunshot wounds –tasks that the average Red Cross volunteer took to with relish despite often lacking even basic medical training. This vibrancy of the movement, combined with the growth of public interest in the plight of soldiers, also led in most European countries to a increase in the investment of money, matériel and time by the general public in all things Red Cross in the years immediately preceding the Franco-Prussian War.7 When the war broke out, it was as if a damn filled to brimming had at last broken. ‘France and Germany’, as one volunteer recalled ‘were covered with a network of aid committees. This contagious benevolence spread to other countries . . . Everybody talked of and worked for the Red Cross.8 So widespread and normalized was the practice of humanitarian volunteers in war that even peace-seekers, specifically, the British Quakers, despatched two groups of volunteers to Metz with the aim to offer succour, primarily to civilian victims of the conflict. This group, dubbed the Friends War Victims Relief Committee, was not a Red Cross organization, but its creation at the same time that the Red Cross movement was reaching a peak speaks to the influence the movement was having on all manner of people, even those who, during the Crimean and Schleswig-Holstein Wars, had confined themselves to protest in favour of peace rather than humanitarian action in response to war. The Friends War volunteers, moreover, were cut from the same cloth of the many who travelled to France under the Red Cross flag. Guided by the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Quaker volunteers paid their own way to France and, once established there, distributed food, blankets and whatever other comforts they could to any and all war-blighted souls they encountered. All very Dunant-like in ethos and practice, despite the lack of affiliation with Geneva.9 In eschewing the Red Cross symbol, however, the Quakers placed themselves in the minority among the international volunteers. In the war’s first weeks the SSBM headquarters in Paris was inundated with village doctors, priests, nuns and assorted philanthropists from Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Austria, Italy and even the United States, all of whom arrived bearing Red Cross brassards on their arms.10 Even the British rallied, despite the fact that the Red Cross movement had failed to come to life in Britain after 1864, stifled as it was by a combination of official indifference towards the Geneva Convention, and Nightingale’s dogged opposition to any notion that her reformed
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military-medical system needed to be bolstered by Red Cross volunteers. The most she had countenanced in this regard was to agree to sponsor the London-based Ladies Committee for the Relief of Sick and Wounded during the Austro-Prussian War. However, so determined was Nightingale to stop the spread of the Red Cross across the Channel, she had insisted that the Ladies Committee ‘was meant to be entirely private’ and ‘had no more to do with the international society of Geneva for wounded than it had to do with the London-Bridge Rail Terminus’.11 Longmore, for his part, had been drifting from Nightingale on the issue of the Red Cross’s importance since the 1864 Conference. More impressed than he had expected to be by what had transpired at Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville, Longmore became one of the few Britons who showed any interest in the burgeoning Red Cross movement. In addition to maintaining a regular correspondence with Moynier and Appia, Longmore attended the Paris and Berlin conferences where, despite revelling in proceedings, he felt embarrassed that he was representing the one country in Europe that was still treating the Red Cross like a passing fad. His exposure at these conferences to the Red Cross family –a steadily growing, self-confident and purposeful group committed to solving the problem of soldier suffering that Longmore had spent much of his career trying to solve –confirmed to him that Nightingale’s dismissiveness was untenable. The thoughts and experiences of the men who gathered at these conferences under the banner of the Red Cross, he felt, had to be considered by any state that wished to safeguard the welfare of its fighting men. To push this point upon his countrymen, Longmore delivered a lecture to the Royal United Services Institution in 1866, in which he reflected sourly on how ‘the volunteer philanthropy of this nation, its liberality, and the examples of personal devotion that were so conspicuous during the Crimean campaign’ had faded in the decade since that war had ended, while across Europe the Red Cross idea had taken hold, leaving Britain behind.12 Longmore’s message that Britain needed to catch up with the continental Red Cross societies did not fall on deaf ears. Captain John Burgess, the head of the Royal United Services Institution, as well as Captain Henry Brackenbury and John Furley of the Order of St John of Jerusalem were three of the more notable figures who felt similarly that Britain was falling behind the curve. Furley, in particular, saw great possibilities in the Red Cross. An Oxford solicitor who understood the sinews that connected civic philanthropy to wartime humanitarianism, Furley accompanied Longmore to the Red Cross Conference in Berlin and agreed to translate La Guerre et la Charité into English as a means of enlightening his fellow Britons of all matters Red Cross. It was not until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, however, that Furley’s labours paid off and genuine interest in the idea of a Red Cross society arose in Britain. This public interest was awakened by a letter to the editor of The Times, composed shortly after the outbreak of war by the Victoria Cross recipient and Crimean War veteran Sir Robert Loyd-Lindsay. Plagued since that war’s end by flashbacks of dying men left unattended by overwhelmed surgeons at Sevastopol, Loyd-Lindsay felt that ‘voluntary organisations, unimpeded by official restrictions, are alone capable of giving auxiliary relief ’ to sick and wounded soldiers.13 Frustrated, like Furley, by the refusal of Britons to learn the same lesson he had from the Crimea, Loyd-Lindsay wrote to The Times in July 1870 in lamentation of the fact that ‘England alone stands aloof in selfish
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indifference’ while ‘almost every civilised nation in Europe has been for years lending a helping hand in this great and good work’. As it had worked for the likes of Russell and Longmore during the Crimean War, so Loyd-Lindsay’s recourse to public shaming achieved the desired effect fifteen years later. On 4 August 1870 the British National Aid Society (NAS) was formed with Loyd-Lindsay as its president. Volunteers stepped forward, royal endorsement was attained, donations from the well to do were received, and preparations to send the first Red-Cross bearing NAS ambulance to France were begun.14 Even Nightingale participated somewhat in this sudden explosion of enthusiasm for wartime humanitarianism in Britain. Despite her irritation at attempts by would-be nurses to cajole her into joining the NAS proper, Nightingale agreed to have her name attached once again to the donation-soliciting Ladies Committee, based on the not unreasonable assumption that her star power would serve to boost the cause. Beyond that, however, she excluded herself from proceedings and, as the war progressed, took great pleasure in mocking Loyd-Lindsay’s often floundering efforts to organize his volunteers.15 In Nightingale’s defence, those who carried the Red Cross flag for Britain were an idiosyncratic bunch that in ways many and varied, validated her scepticism towards the Geneva project. Emma Pearson and Louisa McLaughlin –trained nurses from affluent families –were among the first to heed Loyd-Lindsay’s call, and in August 1870 they set off from Dover to Le Havre to join the NAS ambulance, ‘with all the fresh enthusiasm of untried soldiers’, yet ‘sternly resolved to go through any amount of hardship’ in the name of humanity. Without question they did. Over the course of their journey from Sedan to Versailles they slept on barn floors, lived off black bread and tended to soldiers deformed by gruesome shell and gunshot-inflicted injuries. On one occasion they even found themselves walking through the ruins of a farmhouse gutted by fire and blasted by shells, only to discover that the floor beneath their feet was carpeted with the charred bones of men, women and children. Grim as this and many other experiences were, when it came time to pen the account of their journey through France’s war-scarred countryside Pearson and McLaughlin chose a title – Our Adventurers During the War of 1870 –which conveyed the extent to which both volunteers, like Barton, saw their labours as being as much daring test of their will as a grim mission of mercy.16 Pearson and McLaughlin were just two of a number of Red Cross volunteers possessed of various competencies and motivations, who crossed the Channel despite their own nation not having a dog in the Franco-Prussian fight. Some of these volunteers had done little more than feed London’s homeless and downtrodden before deciding to become battlefield angels –a charitable instinct serving as motivation enough to join the NAS. Others, like the twenty-one-year-old Edinburgh-based Australian medical student Charles Ryan, found sympathy for the plight of militarist Prussia’s latest victim as a cause for which to risk life and limb under the banner of the Red Cross.17 Such risks were also acceptable to the 250 men from Dublin who formed the Irish Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Conceived of and organized by Reverend Tom Burke, this ostensibly humanitarian outfit was driven by a complex array of motivations: Catholic solidarity with France, hatred of the Prussians and, by forming independently of the NAS, the pursuit of Irish independence from Britain in any way, shape or form. The
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pervasiveness of these military and political motivations was demonstrated when, following Burke’s decision to slim down the size of the corps before it left Dublin, a number of volunteers discarded their bandages and stretchers and instead shouldered arms, determined to continue their journey to Le Havre in order to fight on behalf of noble France. Understandably, the Irish Ambulance aroused deep suspicions at the British Home Office, which launched an investigation into the political motivations of the volunteers.18 Another Irish volunteer, Thomas Weldon Trench, joined the NAS with all the spirit of adventurism and desire to do good possessed by Pearson and McLaughlin. Unlike the aforementioned, however, Trench knew next to nothing about medicine. Fortunately, just prior to offering his services to Loyd-Lindsay Trench bumped into an old surgeon friend, Christopher Davis. In a vain attempt to prepare the young man for the grisly challenge of treating the damage done to flesh and bone by minié bullets, Davis gave Trench a brief run down on how to staunch bleeding, rinse wounds and apply and change bandages. Trench, realizing at this point that he was out of his depth, pleaded with Davis to accompany him. ‘A medical man’ he wrote ‘could do so much more than a civilian with the wounds and I told him how humanely he might save the lives of many a poor soldier through knowledge which I had not’. Though Davis would eventually join the earnest recruit, it was initially with little more than a ‘short code of directions which he gave me in about five minutes’ and some tea, milk and chocolate purchased with NAS funds that Trench set off for France, far from sure of what he was doing and how he was going to do it.19 Such a spirit of adventure was not good enough for some volunteers who saw the war not as a personal or political crusade, but as an opportunity to further the cause of professionalizing military medicine. George Halstead Boyland, a veteran surgeon of the Civil War who found himself in Metz at the start of the fighting, joined the French ambulance corps that was being organized there. From the account he later composed, it seems that Boyland was an adherent to the USSC’s version of history –the same one that Bowles believed had revealed American leadership of the transatlantic movement to humanize war. In addition to describing the various Red Cross societies as ‘sanitary commissions’, he found that the ‘excellent arrangements made by the Sanitary Commission for the care of soldiers during the Civil War in the United States were not without their effect beyond the Atlantic and, in 1864, deputies from the different states of Europe met in a Convention at Geneva’. The task for Boyland was to transfer the Union way across the Atlantic, however, in this endeavour he found little but disappointment. Already unimpressed by the two years of medical education required by the army, Boyland felt that the behaviour of the French surgeons demonstrated their lack of both training and crucial battlefield experience. There was one colleague of Boyland’s in particular who he noticed on multiple occasions taking refuge in coffee houses and sleeping while men lay dying in nearby hospitals –one of the many French surgeons who he characterized as having ‘a taste for cafes and absinthe’ rather than service. He also despaired at the absence of Harris Cars on the rail lines, and thought little of the two-wheeled ambulance cart used by the French to transport the wounded in the field. Devoid of springs to absorb the shock of being dragged across rough terrain and with a capacity to carry only two men, the cart was an old Finley-style model, and clearly inferior to the four-wheeled ambulance that Letterman had designed. Moreover, unlike
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in Hammond’s Medical Bureau, ‘no one director had any charge of the whole medical service of the army’ in France, creating a situation where ‘each ambulance seemed to work for itself ’. To Boyland’s mind, the only thing that kept France’s ambulances going was ‘the generosity and patriotism of private citizens’, the official military-medical regime being clearly ill-fit for purpose.20 This was the conclusion of someone who had experienced both the successful management of volunteers by the USSC and the professionalization of the Medical Bureau under Hammond, a breakthrough in the organization of military-medicine that seemed very distant to Boyland as he laboured amidst the uncared-for wounded, drunken volunteers and shoddy ambulances that comprised the SSBM. Thomas Evans was another American who tried to school the French in the Union way. In addition to singing the praises of the USSC in Prussia, Evans –who was, at heart, a Francophile –also reported to the man who had sent him as an observer to the Civil War, Napoleon III. Evans’s glowing appraisal of civilians mobilized to serve their nation in the name of humanity was well received in the French court, after which he resolved to ‘make known to European sanitarians by practical examples’ the benefits of adopting the Union way.21 To this end, during the Franco-Prussian War Evans joined forces with another American present in Paris, Edward A. Crane, a surgeon who had served the USSC as a troop inspector in New Orleans during the Civil War and, following the defeat of the Confederacy, had joined Bellows’s American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields. Together, the two men established a Paris-based ‘sanitary committee’, the purpose of which was to facilitate an exchange of ideas between ‘the Sanitary Association of the United States, the Société Internationale, the Société de Secours aux Blessés and other kindred associations’.22 The Civil War might have been over, but the USSC’s internationalization programme was still alive and well –at least, in theory. In practice, however, the SSBM was a shambles that was mostly unresponsive to American influence, the glories of the USSC were long past, and the American Association itself was moving into twilight. An appeal was made by Bellows and Harris at the start of the war for their fellow Americans to rally to the cause of humanity, for the government to finally sign and ratify the Geneva Convention, and for the United States to follow the British into the Red Cross family and despatch a neutral body of humanitarians to France.23 With the exception of an initial wave of money, food and medicine donations, however, the response in the United States to the plight of France was more whimper of indifference than a roar of outrage. In Washington, the convention remained unsigned and, when Evans wrote to the ageing Bellows requesting that he do more to rouse the Red Cross faithful in the United States, the former USSC majordomo replied that he was ‘too feeble to do much myself at present’. Clearly irritated –and perhaps still smarting from Evans’s apparent theft of the USSC display prize at the Paris Exposition three years prior –Bellows also stated that the American Association ‘may think you have exceeded the perfect truth in calling, in their name, upon American citizens abroad for assistance’. So ended Evans’s pretences to be a transatlantic conduit of the Union way. This ambition was further damaged when Bellows decided to simply divide the bandages and medicines the American Association possessed equally into two batches, before forwarding the consignments directly to the French and German high commands, rather than bother to use Evans as a middleman.24
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Supplies were not the only thing that Crane, Evans and the other Civil War veterans struggled to bring over to France. The teaching of the Union way was also made difficult by their French hosts, with whom they clashed over the long-festering issue of volunteers. Both Evans and Boyland felt strongly that the French surgeons’ woes would be resolved if only they used volunteers as surgical assistants, carriers of the wounded and, if necessary, distributors of frontline first-aid. LeFort and Chenu –who, as in the Crimea, found himself grappling with poor French military-medical arrangements – continued to stick to the belief that the SSBM was the problem, rather than the solution. ‘With the exception of two or three’ Chenu later wrote, the volunteers recruited by the SSBM ‘were dirty, ignorant, careless, disobedient and insolent’. Chenu also despaired of the various ad hoc ambulances that had emerged as if from thin air on the streets of Paris ‘without order or direction’, staffed by wayfarers bearing ‘the flag of the Red Cross that one could buy anywhere and distribute to whosoever wanted one’. Too great in number to manage and too lacking in training to be useful, Chenu found it ‘impossible to recognise the real purposes of these ambulances’. In the midst of this sea of dubious medics, the most that Chenu would countenance for assistance were trained surgeons like Boyland and Evans, whose services he welcomed while reserving his bile for the volunteers the Americans so valued.25 Wariness of volunteers was not confined to those who manned the Parisian ambulances. Although they could not keep the untrained entirely at bay, the NAS leadership tried to follow Nightingale’s advice by insisting that, before embarking for France, each volunteer had to sign a set of rules governing their behaviour and presentation. These rules emphasized that volunteers need to be uniformed, to display the Red Cross symbol on their armband, to refrain from passing any intelligence they acquired from belligerent to belligerent, to ‘obey the orders of the Medical Officer under and with whom the undersigned may be serving’ and ‘to obey implicitly the orders of the head of the Society with whatever Army it may be serving’.26 It was a valiant attempt by the NAS to keep its people on a leash, however, in practice the rules were seldom followed. Pearson and McLaughlin were chastised for, among other things, not wearing the correct uniforms. This attempt at disciplining them, moreover, had little effect. When they were brought up on ‘charges’ of disobeying Loyd-Lindsay’s directives and given their marching orders from the NAS ambulance, they simply joined another group of humanitarians.27 That there was a double standard being applied to the nurses –perhaps on account of them being women –is hard to refute when one considers the unpunished, yet similarly cavalier actions of the NAS co- founder John Furley. In much the same way that Appia had defied the edicts of La Guerre et la Charité by his actions in support of Garibaldi so too did Furley take to the role of itinerant battlefield humanitarian in a manner that defied the NAS rulebook. From Le Havre to besieged Paris and from Sedan and to the shell-blasted ruins of Bazeilles, Furley wandered at will through what he regarded as ‘one of the most important chapters in my life’, sleeping rough in barns, scurrying from ambulance to ambulance, treating the wounded to the best of his abilities and taking on supplies where he could, often without even wearing a Red Cross armband or being in possession of a signed letter of free passage from the army.28 Such devotion to humanitarian service rather than
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military rules was hardly surprising considering his background. Like others who were labouring in France, Furley had volunteered for auxiliary medical service in both the Crimean and Schleswig-Holstein Wars, and in both cases had returned home burdened with frustration and contempt for official military-medical services. In the late 1860s he joined the Order of St John, the skeletal remnants of the once venerated Knights Hospitaller, a medical-military order that could trace its lineage back to the First Crusade. Through his work with the Order of St John, Furley had come to know and admire Dunant, whose belief that volunteers should be guided by Samaritan spirit rather than the orders of generals was completely embraced by the Briton.29 Writing some decades later, Furley further justified his fast and loose approach to wartime humanitarianism as a reaction to the ambiguities still present in Red Cross work in 1870, a time when ‘there were a few who had a faint idea of the objects of the Convention of Geneva, there were many who had never heard of it, but all were equally ready to respond to an appeal on behalf of the sick and wounded’. Furley would later become a champion of the opposing idea that the passions of volunteers needed to be constrained and that Red Cross societies should work hand in glove with their nation’s militaries. Such a view of the Red Cross, however, lay in his future. The crusade he shared with Longmore and fellow members of the Order of St John to get Red Cross action on the agenda in Britain having finally borne fruit in 1870, Furley was not about to be leashed, and so relished the fact that ‘it did not matter to me which side I was on’ because ‘in those days much more licence was allowed to Red Cross representatives than would now be permitted’. Rules be damned, Furley could and did wander where he pleased, doing as he pleased, all in the name of humanity.30 Furley was not alone in ignoring the already ethereal rules of the Red Cross in favour of taking to the road with only his humanitarian instincts as a guide. The French volunteer Coralie Cahen –whose only medical qualification was that she was the widow of a doctor –started working for the SSBM in Metz before abandoning the city in the guise of a refugee when it fell to the Prussians in October 1870. Having struck out on her own after successfully crossing Prussian lines, Cahen wandered the roads of her war-torn country, earning a reputation for treating both French and Prussian wounded with equal care and consideration. She also gained notoriety for her habit of moving across battlefields at will, and continually butting heads with Prussian commanders who refused to recognize her neutrality under the Red Cross flag. Moreover, despite there being no mention in the Geneva Convention of humanitarian treatment being required for POWs, Cahen negotiated her way into a number of Prussian camps, where she tended to French POWs and acted as an intermediary between the two belligerents in negotiations for the release of selected prisoners. All of this was accomplished without any genuine oversight from the SSBM or adherence to the actual duties outlined for Red Cross personnel in the convention.31 Amidst these unconventional and cavalier volunteers there was also room in the Red Cross family for professionals, such as the surgeons of the Anglo-American Ambulance. Originally comprised of Civil War veterans from both the North and the South, the ambulance formed in Paris and attached itself to both the French military-medical departments and Evans and Crane’s ‘Sanitary Committee’, with an aim to coordinate its activities with the SSBM. This collaboration should have worked
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well. The SSBM may have failed to learn the lessons of the Civil War, but a number of LeFort’s surgeons had studied the work of Hammond and the USSC, and incorporated elements of the Union way, such as pavilion hospital and tent design, into their own practices.32 There were, however, still some areas of debate that were heated enough to cause the Americans to fall out with both the French surgeons and Evans’s committee. These included the latter’s plans to treat the wounded in Paris rather than on the frontlines, as well as the French practice of keeping the windows of hospitals shut, lest a draught be let in. Most of the American surgeons countered these practices by extolling the merits of ventilation in wards and the importance of Hammond’s dictum of frontline first-aid, followed by rapid evacuation as a means of reducing casualties. As this schism widened, surgeons from the NAS arrived in Paris and agreed to link up with the disgruntled Americans, excluding Evans and his colleagues, who decided it best to stay in Paris and set up a permanent hospital amidst the flower-decked gardens of the Bois de Boulogne.33 The Americans and Britons who left the capital formed a sixteen man unit, complete with wagons of supplies and ambulance carts, under the command of Dr James Marion-Simms, yet another American surgeon from Napoleon’s court, and Dr William MacCormac, an experienced Irish surgeon from St. Thomas’s Hospital.34 Travelling with the army from Paris to Sedan, the Anglo-American Ambulance bore witness to the swift disintegration of the French war effort, and the suffering of beaten and bloodied soldiers that came with it. After the catastrophe at Sedan –the decisive battle at which the French lost over 15,000 men to death and injury, and 100,000 men, including their Emperor, to humiliating captivity –Napoleon’s retreating troops became a mob in which ‘men of all arms were mixed up together in irremediable confusion’. As the ambulance passed through the scattered ranks that had made their way back to Paris, MacCormac noted with disgust that no provision had been made by quartermasters for supplying the defeated and demoralized soldiers. This meant that some men, having slaughtered their steeds out of desperation, ‘were cooking horseflesh, some were eating it even raw. Many were lying about the streets in the deep sleep of fatigue. Everything and everybody looked utterly miserable’. Amidst this chaos the surgeons disembarked from their wagons and fanned out to do their best, darting from one cluster of battered soldiers to another, distributing what food they had and ‘performing amputations, excisions, and removing deeply lodged balls and pieces of shell, only interrupted, from time to time, by calls to see some fresh arrival’. It was a miserable experience, but for many of the volunteers such scenes of woe provided important proving grounds, and the ambulance itself a temporary home. Pearson and McLaughlin, for example, linked up with the ambulance after their split with the NAS, the bitterness over which Pearson could barely contain when she wrote to The Times complaining of how the Anglo-Americans were being denied supplies by Loyd-Lindsay, who was determined to keep British supplies in the hands of British humanitarians only. Other volunteers, such as Charles Ryan, were able to more diplomatically navigate their movement between different ambulance units, while Furley, though never officially joining the Anglo-American Ambulance, used it as a moving depot from which to both resupply and gather intelligence on where next he would be needed.35
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As a travelling hub for both the trained and untrained, the Anglo-American Ambulance also became a key medium through which the volunteers shared with each other, and the French and Prussian surgeons they encountered, some of the emerging ideas about military medicine, sanitation and the changing character of war. These conversations present a telling snapshot of how far the campaign to humanize war had progressed since the bad old days of Balaclava, Solferino and Bull Run. The value of volunteers was agreed on by all in the Ambulance, to the point that MacCormac declared that in future wars, volunteers would need to be recruited early and incorporated into army ambulances as standard before deployment.36 Consensus was also reached on matters as small as acknowledging the superiority of British-made bandages, through to subjects as weighty as a standardized method for treating gunshot wounds, based in no small part on Longmore’s influential 1863 treatise on minié bullet wounds and Joseph Lister’s recent pioneering work on antisepsis. As was becoming the norm in all facets of military medicine, the method devised focused on rapid response, involving the surgeon applying chloroform for anaesthetizing the patient, extracting the bullet with carbolic acid-cleaned forceps and then using swabs soaked in the same solution to clean the wound. The administering of this process, followed by the liberal application of carbolic acid to the healing wound during the patient’s recovery at a permanent hospital behind the lines was, MacCormac claimed, the primary reason for his ambulance’s impressively low mortality rates. This method of wound treatment also helped to standardize the use of chloroform in the field –something that more progressive army surgeons had been advocating for since the Crimean War. Building on this, MacCormac also took the advice of a company of former surgeons from Hammond’s Medical Bureau, and had his surgeons apply morphine via syringe for pain relief once the wounded were taken from the frontlines, a notable breakthrough in the norms of post-operative care for soldiers that engendered ‘most happy results’.37 Aside from treatment, some measure of standardization in the transportation and processing of wounded was also achieved during the Franco-Prussian War. J. H. Porter, a Crimean War and Indian Mutiny veteran who worked with the NAS ambulance in France, drew on Longmore when he recommended that ‘it is most desirable that three men should accompany every stretcher which is to be used for carrying wounded from the field of action’, lest one of the stretcher-bearers be shot. Porter also laid down advice for a tiered system of patient processing, describing the duties of surgeons on the frontline and second line of treatment, as well as the merits or lack thereof of a number of stretcher and splint designs conceived of by Mundy, Appia, and the surgeons attached to the Anglo-American Ambulance. Notably, Porter emphasized not just the need for rapidity in the evacuation of wounded but the fact that ‘its importance and efficiency from a military point alone involves the interest of the sick and wounded, but also strategic plans may be promoted according as the work is done well or ill’. Much as Longmore had regarded the Geneva Convention as a means of tempering public unease at the poor treatment of soldiers, and the USSC had drawn the link between health and soldier morale, so Porter came to the conclusion that if the ambulance service of an army was organized and efficient, then the confidence of both the troops and the nation they served would be boosted. The merits of new ambulance designs and methods of usage were also recorded by Furley who, after the war, incorporated
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these ideas into the peacetime hospital work of the Order of St John of Jerusalem –the first manifestation of Furley’s push to follow the Prussian model of blurring the lines between the work of the Red Cross in times of peace and war.38 Outside of the Anglo-American Ambulance, the Prussian army and its Red Cross also set new standards for the use of rail for transporting wounded which, in turn, led to innovations in the development of trains for military-medical service in France and Austria after the war. In developing their system of rail evacuation the Prussians utilized not only the modified Harris Car, but some of the recommendations made by Letterman on how to arrange the wounded on stretchers. As venerable an observer as the Crimean War surgeon Nicolai Pirogov –who, despite his advanced years laboured on the battlefields of France as head of a Russian Red Cross unit attached to the Prussian army –noted that, although it took a while for his hosts to master the American system, once they made their own modifications to Harris and Letterman’s designs there was a marked improvement in the stability of transport for the wounded and a reduction in the instances of additional injury.39 Like the Americans and the British, the Prussians had drawn the conclusion that rapid evacuation was key to reducing death rates and, much like the army itself had harnessed the railways as a means of deploying troops quickly, the medical staff used trains to remove wounded from the field so that treatment could be administered speedily, while allowing healthy soldiers to continue to fight unencumbered by scores of wounded.40 The French, for their part, had recognized the significance of trains prior to the war, however, as LeFort recalled bitterly, ‘during the medical exhibition in 1867 we tested transport by rail but the military commissariat would not entertain our concerns’. As a consequence, during the Franco-Prussian War ‘our wounded were transported lying on straw in freight and cattle cars without medical personnel to accompany them’. It was only by war’s end that the French finally realized how superior the Prussian modification of the Harris Car was and made plans to spend the money necessary to construct a fleet of them as part of a new military-medical strategy which, as Chenu advised, was premised on recognizing the importance of rapid evacuation and treatment.41 To glance at these developments in military medicine, one could be forgiven for thinking that the Franco-Prussian War was a triumph for those committed to mitigating the suffering of war wounded. This may have been true in regards to methods of treatment and the organization of official military-medical services, but for the volunteers the war proffered a test of the Red Cross’s credibility that resulted in failure. Barton’s hopes of recreating her heroic exploits of the Civil War were dashed not long after she left Basel. On her journey to Strasbourg, she had to constantly defend her right to even be near a warzone to distrustful peasants and contemptuous soldiers alike. Convinced that once she actually got down to work such difficulties would fade away Barton laboured on, only to be accused of spying by the French and threatened with arrest. Accepting at this point that she was unlikely to receive either the freedom of movement or the gratitude of the soldiery that she had enjoyed in the Civil War, Barton fell back from the frontlines in order to focus on tending to refugees in Strasbourg. Although an important development in expanding the purview of wartime humanitarianism, the distribution of food and clothing to civilians blasted from their homes, and the restriction of her other activities by military men was not
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what the re-energized, battlefield-hungry Barton had initially envisioned when she set off with Appia from Geneva.42 Accusations of spying and obstruction of activities were also reported by Pearson and McLaughlin, Cahen, Furley, Ferrière and even Dunant himself who, although no longer official affiliated with the Committee, was still the same man he was at Solferino and could not help but lend his services to the people of Paris when the great city fell under siege in September 1870. It was there, in the place he had called home since being cast out of Geneva three years prior, that Dunant witnessed what was arguably the nadir of the Red Cross during the war, when in March 1871 the French capital imploded and fell under the control of the revolutionary forces of the Communards. The Communards saw themselves as the living, breathing legacy of those who had stormed the Bastille in 1789 –defenders of liberty representing the will of the people of France who, owing to the badly fought war and myriad other calamities of leadership, had been betrayed by those who ruled over them. To Dunant’s delight the Communards initially promised that they would follow in the deposed regime’s footsteps and abide by the Geneva Convention, as it embodied such noble notions of brotherhood and humanity. Dunant was even granted an audience with Paris’s new masters where, in a manner that once again completely overstepped the bounds of a Red Cross volunteer’s duties, the Swiss negotiated the release of some of the prisoners taken during the uprising, one of whom was an incensed Chenu. Although he had some success in these negotiations Dunant was clearly entering the uncharted territory of revolutionary civil conflict, an arena of war that the creators of the convention had scarcely considered, let alone codified rules for. Bereft of any written articles, Dunant was acutely aware that he would have to operate on nothing more than the goodwill of the Communards. Unsurprisingly, once things started going wrong for the revolutionaries this goodwill evaporated, particularly when counter-revolutionary forces from Versailles descended on Paris to retake the capital in May 1871. In the bitter fighting that followed neither side was prepared to adhere to the convention or, indeed, any norms of civilized conduct. As a consequence, over the course of what became known as ‘Bloody Week’, Dunant watched on helplessly as Communards were strung up from lamp posts, civilians cut down indiscriminately, Red Cross hospitals shelled and volunteers –some wearing Red Cross armbands –executed by firing squads on suspicion of being either reactionary spies or revolutionary conspirators. Chenu, at least, was spared because of his value as a surgeon, which allowed him to escape to Versailles in time to avoid the carnage. Dunant, for his part, could not bear to leave the city that he now called home, yet he realized that the possibility of carrying out humanitarian work on the riotous streets of Paris without being killed was slim. As the fighting reached a crescendo Dunant retreated to the relative safety of a house owned by long-time admirers. There, from the window of his dubious refuge, the old Samaritan watched as the city of light was consumed by a maelstrom of fury and blood, the savagery of which –for all the apparent progress in the campaign to humanize war –put the horrors Dunant had witnessed at Solferino firmly into the shade.43 The attacks on volunteers during ‘Bloody Week’ reflected a wider problem for the legitimacy of the Red Cross during the war –the near-complete lack of regard for the sanctity of the emblem. Much like the accusations of spying, the accounts left by
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volunteers are peppered with references to Red Cross flags being displayed in attempts to protect ammunition stores, artillery wagons, columns of soldiers and private property, as well as numerous instances of Red Cross-emblazoned ambulances and armband-wearing volunteers being shot at or shelled despite clearly displaying the supposedly neutral flag. The worth of this flag as a symbol of neutrality was ostensibly one of the great achievements of the 1864 Conference, yet for Pearson and McLaughlin protection came from ‘the Union Jack that floated bravely over our Convent home’, more so than the emblem of the Red Cross. This view was owed to the fact that the Red Cross armband was so readily available throughout France that its quality of sanctity was next to non-existent. John Lumley-Savile, the British Ambassador in Brussels, had seen so many waves of Red Cross wearers passing through the city en route to the French border that he had advised the Friends War volunteers to use the symbol of a red and black star –which was not sanctified by any international agreement –to signify their neutrality as Quakers. For Furley who, as a wanderer should have relied more than anyone on the Red Cross symbol for protection, the armband he had when he first set off from Le Havre was not worth wearing by the time he got to Sedan. The accoutrement, he observed, was ‘often worn by commercial travellers who were anxious to do business with the troops and by other people who desired to circulate amongst the belligerents, and in this category I must include a number of undoubted spies’. Such usage made it ‘a symbol so much abused that I really was ashamed to wear it’. One of the more telling accounts that sums up this endemic misuse of the emblem was made by a diarist trapped in Paris during the siege, who observed how the Prussians ‘fired point blank on the ambulance of the press, though the flag of Geneva was displayed’. The fact that war correspondents had no right to claim protection under the symbol of the Red Cross was not understood by the diarist, who instead concerned himself with the bad press the Prussians would get once the story of them violating the convention got back to Britain.44 The capacity of the otherwise Red Cross-perfectionist Prussians to violate the symbol of neutrality was also noted by both Chenu and Boyland, the latter observing first-hand how, during an exchange of fire at Rezonville ‘one of our men, Henri, while attempting to aid a wounded colonel to descend from his horse received a ball in the intestines’ from the Prussians lines. Although the Prussians realized they had made a mistake and withdrew, the incident still confirmed to Boyland that the system of protection for volunteers and surgeons devised in Geneva was far from perfect. Such instances also fortified Chenu’s belief that the Geneva Convention ‘needed to be modified or amplified because in the beginning (of the war), many of the articles were neither understood nor accepted by the belligerents’. To the mind of the British military observer attached to the Prussians, J. H. Ker Innes, ignorance of the convention ‘was common even among the educated officers’, and those who did understand the articles realized that they could only be followed ‘at the cost of great inconvenience and military detriment’.45 For all the breakthroughs in wartime humanitarianism and military medicine enjoyed by those who served under the Red Cross flag, the fundamental problems of guaranteeing recognition of the symbol and adherence to the convention remained unsolved, to say nothing of the ever-present question of where and how volunteers should be used. In addition to these problems,
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the Franco-Prussian War had also exposed the extent of the carnage wrought by new weapons, and the mass suffering that continental wars on such a scale could inflict in such a short space of time on soldiers, civilians and POWs alike. This case of affairs suggested that something more than a simple adjustment to the nature of Red Cross work and the status of volunteers was needed. Specifically, a response that would use words rather than deeds to curtail the horrors of war.
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Brooding from the safety of Switzerland on the ugliness of the fighting in France, Moynier came to the realization that changes needed to be made in the campaign to control war. No field humanitarian, the Committee’s president had done his bit for the Red Cross by presiding over a POW tracing bureau, which had been setup in the summer of 1870 at a casino in Basel. There, Swiss volunteers manned a communications hub, into which communiques relating to prisoners were received from both the French and Prussian military and civilians concerned for their loved ones. The Basel bureau also acted as a storehouse for the tons of donated food and medical supplies that were carried by Red Cross volunteers into the warzone. Although it signalled the Red Cross’s movement into new areas of succour –not the least of which being the realm of POWs that had been so glaringly absent from the Geneva Convention –Moynier knew in his heart that it was not enough. Observing the volunteers come and go from Basel and Geneva, and learning first hand of their ignorance of the convention, Moynier could only conclude that something had gone amiss since that great day in Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville six years prior. Like Chenu and LeFort, he despaired at how those who wore the Red Cross armband had so foolishly ‘imagined that under the convention they could venture freely amidst the fighting’. Owing to the fact that Longmore had lectured the volunteers in Britain specifically on the need to be mindful of their unique status on the battlefield, Moynier singled out the free-wheeling NAS that had ‘believed wrongly that the military authority of their country was adequate to neutralize them. English armbands for example, bore the seal of the English War Department’. The implication, as indicated in the accounts of Pearson, McLaughlin and Furley, that the Red Cross armband was deliberately discarded by the NAS on account of its dubious status in the eyes of belligerents was not lost on Moynier, who was so taken aback by the NAS’s conduct that he raised with Longmore the question of whether Britain intended to keep abiding by the convention. As other stories of Red Cross mishaps made their way into Switzerland from the pens of war correspondents and the mouths of wearied volunteers, Moynier’s panic over the Red Cross’s reputation grew, the more so when a number of newspapers and generals began to openly question the purpose of the Geneva Convention itself.1 The future of the Red Cross was not the only thing weighing on Moynier’s mind during the war. The heart-wrenching pleas of mothers at the Basel bureau for information on their captured and missing sons, and the rolling newspaper reportage
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on shell-pummelled towns, maltreated civilians, and acts of pillage by soldiers on both sides left Moynier aghast. Much as he conceded that on the battlefield ‘there will always be unforeseen events that escape an easy application of the law’, he increasingly felt that more needed to be done to regulate the conduct of soldiers, and in so doing limit the scale of human suffering and wanton destruction.2 It was with an aim to devise a solution to this problem that Moynier decided, in the winter of 1870, to pen Étude sur la convention de Genève, a work that served as both a follow-up to and departure from La Guerre et la Charité. Like the latter, Étude sur la convention contained a plea for the Red Cross societies to better organize and discipline their volunteers. A notable addition to this lament was Moynier’s argument that the scope for the application of violence on the battlefield also needed to be reduced. Musing on the impact of new weapons, war correspondence and the plight of refugees in France, Moynier argued that ‘the unlimited use of force which was once accepted without question’ was no longer tenable, and ‘the existence of a natural law that man can not violate with impunity’ had to be recognized by those determined to still participate in the ‘barbarian prejudice’ of war.3 Moynier believed that the solution to the problem of brutality in war did not lie alone in the Geneva Convention which, he claimed, was fine as it was and not in need of addition, amendment or abolition. Seemingly peculiar given his doubts over the status and activities of volunteers, Moynier not only felt that ‘the current time would not be appropriate to modify the convention’, but also that ‘most of the abuses that took place would not have had the belligerent governments taken appropriate measures to prevent or punish’ those who breeched the sacred document’s articles.4 This riposte to the convention’s military critics was the product of both Moynier’s despondency over the lack of discipline and adherence to international law shown by soldiers during the Franco-Prussian War, and the defensive wall he built up in an effort to shield the Red Cross from criticism. A sense of personal failure and, possibly, guilt also fuelled his defensive stance. Since the early 1860s Moynier, Longmore and Landa, in particular, had campaigned to get the Red Cross societies to better disseminate knowledge of the Geneva Convention to their nation’s soldiers. Owing to Moynier’s ‘hands-off ’ approach to leading the movement, however, his pleas for the Red Cross faithful to educate the soldiers generally fell on deaf ears. This lack of awareness of the convention among both the rank and file and those who lead them was something that, Moynier himself bitterly conceded in the face of so many first-hand accounts, had contributed to the suffering being felt in France.5 A sense of frustration and helplessness over the shortcomings of the movement he was supposed to be leading, as well as a desire to point a finger at the generals were not the only reasons that Moynier resisted the demands, made within the Red Cross and outside of it after the war, to update the convention’s articles. As Étude sur la convention demonstrated, Moynier believed it was foolish to view the convention as a solitary shield against the evils of war. Rather, he had come to see it as simply one piece of the giant puzzle that would need to be solved before war could become more humane. The attempt to solve this puzzle would take Moynier’s focus beyond trying to simply safeguard the wounded, and instead drive him to address the ‘uncertainty that exists relating to the law of the conduct of hostilities’.6
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The key to resolving this uncertainty was not to abandon the convention, but to strengthen it by repositioning its articles as one facet of a broader, humane initiative. As Moynier wrote: Currently, the way forward is marked by the Conventions of Paris, Geneva and St Petersburg. Seemingly, it is from these directives that we will try to draw a barrier against the outbreak of a desire for fury amongst combatants . . . by building fortifications that rely on one thing, sometimes another, we will eventually establish a continuous line of defence that will humanise war as much as possible.7
What the lawyer-cum-humanitarian wanted was to craft a series of new international agreements that would regulate warfare, rather than simply plug the convention’s many glaring gaps. The ground for this enterprise may have been prepared by the international law conferences of the previous two decades, but such grand talk of creating barriers to shield civilization from barbarism –to say nothing to the implication that he was clearly growing more comfortable with the idea of issuing decrees to army men – was somewhat of a departure for the otherwise conservative Moynier. No less than the volunteers themselves it seems, the Franco-Prussian War had deeply affected the Committee’s president. The clearest evidence of the war shocking Moynier into broadening his horizons was his idea to establish an international court at which violations of the convention could be investigated and punishments decided on, a suggestion that pre-empted by some decades the establishment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg after the Second World War. He also wanted all governments signed up to the convention to agree to its articles, and any additional laws of war, being reproduced in operational manuals for their armies. This, he felt, would both inform the soldiers of their obligations on the battlefield, and help to create a new international consensus on the rights and wrongs of war that would stretch from the frontlines to cabinet war rooms. This consensus would reject the practice of civilian and POW maltreatment, the use of unnecessarily harmful weapons and tactics, the wanton damage of property, as well as re-enforce the role of the Red Cross as a neutral protector of the wounded.8 Moynier’s campaign for new international laws led to a change in his status within the world of the humanitarians. Instead of simply being the president of the Committee and, in theory if not wholly in practice, leader of the Red Cross movement, following the publication of his calls for an international court and his ruminations on the convention’s place in international law, Moynier found himself the darling of Europe’s international legal fraternity. Similarly shaken by what had happened in France, these jurists and legal philosophers had also begun to argue for an international consensus on regulating the conduct of war that would go beyond the humble –and increasingly fragile –achievements of the Geneva Convention. Like Moynier, they believed that this consensus had to be built through international law, the foundations of which would be built on notions of moral progress, historic codes of civilized behaviour and an acceptance that war was an inevitable factor in international relations that needed rules to limit how it was waged.9 This collective musing led Moynier and ten of the world’s leading international lawyers to found the Institute of International
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Law (IIL) in September 1873. There, over the course of several well-catered days of what one participant described as ‘Flemish feasting’ within the resplendent confines of Ghent’s Hôtel de Ville, lawyers from as far afield as Buenos Aries, New York and St. Petersburg discussed the horrors unleashed during the American Civil and Franco- Prussian Wars. As a response, the lawyers pledged themselves to guide ‘the progress of international law by striving to formulate the general principles of the subject in such a way as to correspond to the ‘legal conscience of the civilized world’.10 They resolved, in short, to develop international laws that could pull the world back from the brink of normalizing such blood-sodden chaos. The pursuit of such a lofty goal in the face of several years of escalating battlefield violence required men possessed of intelligence, ambition and confidence –if not arrogance. Moynier was the archetype, however, among the IIL’s founders he soon found his equals, if not betters in all of the aforementioned criteria. His friend and IIL co-founder Gustave Rolin-Jaequemyns was a younger man, but already a legend among Europe’s legal fraternity by the time that Moynier began to hammer together the first draft of the Geneva Convention. In 1868, as Moynier was struggling to get states interested in the maritime-focused update to the convention, Rolin-Jaequemyns, along with other future IIL members, the Dutchman Tobias Asser and the Briton John Westlake, was producing the first copies of the Review of International Law and Comparative Legislation, a cutting-edge journal that served as an international hub for the exchange of new ideas about state, society and war between lawyers, philosophers and even the odd anarchist.11 Representing the United States among the IIL’s founders was David Dudley-Field, a New York lawyer who, enamoured of the idea of building networks of like-minded lawmakers on both sides of the Atlantic, was highly active in legal and reformist circles in Britain. It was there, in consultation with colleagues from the British Association for the Promotion of Social Sciences, that he developed the idea of authoring a single code of international law for the purposes of regulating relations between states. His friends thought it impossible but by 1872 Dudley-Field had produced the massive five-hundred plus page treatise, in which he covered everything from the governance of state relations over territory, to maritime law, to the extradition of prisoners, to regulations for how to use the telegraph.12 No less ambitious was the Swiss-born lawyer and theorist Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, who would go on to become the key figure and public face of the IIL. Well established as an authority on international law long before the institute was founded, Bluntschli produced a number of seminal works on state governance, international relations and law during the 1850s and 60s. Within these works, Bluntschli laid down some of the key principles that would later be adopted by the IIL, including the notion that for international laws to be effective they had to be drawn from historical cultural and political norms that reflected the values of the people whose behaviours the codes were meant to govern. The fact that Bluntschli himself had only begun taking a specific interest in laws governing warfare in 1863 did not prevent him from breezily applying this principle to his assessment of the Geneva Convention. States party to the convention, he argued, had only ‘recognised the legal principle that medical care for their wounded, as well as for their enemies’ was a requirement of civilized states because behavioural norms in Europe that stretched back to the middle ages informed
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their judgement. ‘Thus’ so Bluntschli concluded ‘was the Christian principle of loving one’s enemy translated into a binding agreement to recognise human rights’.13 Loving one’s enemy, however, would never be enough to remedy all the evils of war. Like Moynier, Bluntschli saw the convention, and indeed the work of the Red Cross as a whole, as merely one component of a wider humanitarian campaign that the IIL had pledged itself to join. Such a campaign required the lawyers to broaden their minds beyond what had been achieved in Geneva in 1864 and, as had recently been the case with certain Red Cross societies, they looked across the Atlantic for a source of inspiration. Specifically, the IIL focused on the work of the now venerable doyen of warfare regulation, Francis Lieber. Lieber may have been forced by Washington to sit out the Geneva Conference, and the impact of his code on the convention itself may have been negligible, but since 1863 his influence on Europeans who desired to regulate the practice of war had been substantial. A regular correspondent of Bluntschli’s, Lieber had sent him copies of his code shortly after it was issued in April 1863, and within months the 157 articles were being dissected by the finest international lawyers in Europe, almost all of whom heaped praise on this apparent breakthrough in the fight to bring order to the battlefield. Bluntschli himself was among Lieber’s most enthusiastic advocates, stating that the instructions developed by his learned friend were ‘much more detailed and studied than the laws of war practiced by European armies’. Furthermore, as Lieber’s code was ‘in keeping with the awareness of humanity and civilized implementation of law’ Bluntschli rejected the idea that its articles were only applicable to regulating the conduct of a specific army in a specific conflict. Rather, Bluntschli felt that a code possessed of such breadth and wisdom could ‘contribute significantly to modern international law within the borders of the United States and beyond’.14 As had been the case in 1864, the significance for Europe of what he was doing in the United States was not lost on Lieber himself. Having been unsettled like so many by the brutal similarities of the wars fought in France and the United States, Lieber both raised concerns about the state of warfare regulation with Dudley-Field and, like Moynier, wrote to Bluntschli and Rolin-Jaequemyns in 1872, suggesting the formation of an international think tank that could develop a robust and wide-reaching codex of law. As Moynier recalled: Dr Lieber in the United States was toying with the idea (of establishing the IIL) for a long time, during the very same period when this writer, moved by the same desire, was seeking an outlet for his aspirations. These two separate currents supported one another. From New York and Geneva, at virtually the same moment, appeals went forth from the person in question to a great and warm- hearted scholar. I refer to Rolin-Jaequemyns, who was struck by the correctness and beneficial consequences of his friends’ views.15
Lieber died suddenly in October 1872 and so never took his place alongside the other founders of the IIL. His code and the theories that underpinned it, however, lived on in the hearts and minds of the Europeans. A sense of how Bluntschli believed the code
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could be used by the IIL can be gleaned from his clear-sighted assessment of the merits of Lieber’s view of law and war: Everywhere reigns in this body of law the spirit of humanity, which spirit recognizes as fellow beings with lawful rights, our very enemies and which forbids our visiting upon them unnecessary injury, cruelty or destruction. But, at the same time, our legislator remains fully aware that, in times of war, it is absolutely necessary to provide for the safety of armies and for the successful conduct of a campaign that; to those engaged in it, the harshest measures and most reckless exactions cannot be denied and that tender-hearted sentimentality is here all the more out of place because the greater the energy employed in carrying on the war, the sooner will it be brought to an end and the normal condition of peace restored.16
In the code therefore, Bluntschli saw a pragmatic and humane source of ideas that were universal in principle and, therefore, adaptable for use in constructing the kind of truly international humanitarian consensus on war that the IIL sought.17 But was Lieber’s code truly the answer? For all the praise Bluntschli and his ilk heaped on the code as a tool that was both philosophically and practically sound, during the Civil War itself adherence to the articles was never a particularly striking aspect of the Union’s war effort. Moreover, when the code’s articles were followed, the ‘spirit of humanity’ supposedly embedded in them was often hard to find. It is difficult, for example, to reconcile the solemn declaration in article seventy-five that POWs must not be subjected to ‘intentional suffering or indignity’ with the day to day deprivations and, in some instances, deliberate maltreatment and starvation inflicted on Confederate POWs in Union camps.18 The Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s infamous ‘March to the Sea’ across Georgia in August 1864 provided further examples of how problematic the Lieber Code could be in practice. Sherman –a commander who staunchly defended his army’s acts of plunder, violence against civilians and damage to private property –believed he was not bound by any law to abstain from waging whatever type of war he deemed necessary to finish off the Confederacy once and for all. As he wrote to the City Council of Atlanta in an attempt to persuade them to remove women and children from his unbending warpath, ‘my orders are not designed to meet the humanities of the case . . . you might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible hardships of war’.19 The fact that a Union general was conducting operations in ignorance of a code that had been developed to regulate the behaviour of his soldiers was bad enough. Of equal note is the fact that, whether Sherman knew of the Lieber Code or not, by placing the need for victory ahead of humanitarian concerns he was actually following Lieber’s central dictum of military necessity. This was the prerogative for generals to take ‘those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern law and usages of war’, even if that meant unleashing great and terrible destruction on cities, private property, civilians and POWs. ‘The more vigorously wars are pursued’ so Lieber had it ‘the better it is for humanity’.20 Following this line of thought, Sherman could have both followed the code and defended his actions in Georgia using the argument that it was necessary for him to do everything
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in his power to bring the Confederacy to heel in order to expedite the end of a long, brutal war.21 Sherman’s actions demonstrated one of the key problems of the Lieber Code as a tool for humanizing war: despite ostensibly limiting the scope and brutality of conflict, the code could also be interpreted as a licence for generals to act however they wanted in order to bring hostilities to a close. This contradiction was most likely the reason why the code was embraced both by positivist, humanitarian regulators like the IIL, and the generals of Prussia, France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, all of which adopted the code in some form as a guide for the conduct of their soldiers in the years after the Civil War.22 The most notable of the aforementioned powers to embrace the Lieber Code was Prussia which, on the eve of its war with Austria in 1866, accepted an almost word-for- word translation by Bluntschli as the basis for its army’s manual.23 As a first practical attempt by Europe’s legal fraternity to translate Lieber’s words into wartime practice, the results were somewhat mixed. The code’s decrees that medical staff should be treated as non-combatants and that the wounded of both sides are entitled to medical treatment were followed, however, the impact of the code on Prussian practice seems minimal if one considers the norms in military medicine and the acceptance of the Red Cross that had already occurred during the Schleswig-Holstein War. A similar case of the code simply reinforcing pre-existing practices came in the form of the Prussians’ treatment of guerrilla fighters. Lieber’s declaration that irregular partisans –those who act ‘without commission, without being part and portion of the organized hostile army, and without sharing continuously in the war’ –should be dealt with ‘summarily as highway robbers or pirates’ dovetailed with Moltke’s zero-tolerance approach to guerrillas. Not that the Prussian army leadership needed it, but it was Bluntschli’s translation of these articles from the code that provided a legal basis for the merciless treatment given to the Francs-Tireurs, armed civilians that sprung up behind Prussian lines during the war in France with an aim to harry the invader’s advance.24 Underpinning the maltreatment of the Francs-Tireurs was the most significant point of harmony between Prussian military ethos and Lieber’s own thinking –the importance of military necessity. Unlike in Sherman’s case, where the code’s articles were ignored in the pursuit of military objectives, the Prussians studied Lieber’s dictum closely. The conclusion they arrived at, however, authorized behaviour that was little different to Sherman’s. This was because Moltke had decided that Lieber’s principle of military necessity was a form of Kriegsraison, a long-standing doctrine in Prussian military thinking that permitted war to be conducted in an unlimited manner, in which commanders had full discretion to dispense with both humanitarian concerns and the laws of war in order to achieve military objectives. It is not surprising that Moltke came to this conclusion. Both he and Lieber were adherents to the teachings Carl von Clausewitz, who famously wrote off the idea of ‘self-imposed restrictions’ in the waging of war as irrelevant and ‘hardly worth mentioning’ once the realities of using violence to ‘compel an opponent to fulfil our will’ were accepted.25 Lieber may have been influenced by Clausewitz however, unlike Moltke, he was insistent that armies needed to continually weigh the costs and benefits of their actions from both an operational and moral point of view. Lieber, therefore, held to the view that any breach of his code for the purposes of military necessity had to result in an advantage
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that justified the suffering caused by the breech. Moltke’s Kriegsraison was more straightforward and purely Clausewitz –war was always best fought in an unlimited way in order to achieve swift, decisive victory. Unlike Lieber’s military necessity, Kriegsraison could be followed without even having to weigh the humanitarian costs of fighting war without restraints.26 Prussian interpretations of the Lieber Code demonstrated both the strengths and weaknesses of using its author’s theories as a basis for the IIL to build a more humane international consensus on the waging of war. On the one hand, the Prussians had followed the same path they had taken with the Geneva Convention by interpreting the articles in a way that benefitted them militarily above all else –adopting a process by which, as one influential German lawyer of the age had it, ‘the application of the rules of the Geneva Convention are such that they can be reconciled with the demands of war’.27 Through such a lens, the impetus to use the articles of either the convention or the code to humanize war was near to irrelevant for Moltke, whose ultimate goal still lay in achieving military dominance over other nations. This was a reality that somewhat dented the IIL’s belief that, by using Lieber as a starting point, it’s work on the laws of war could contribute to the creation of an international community in which ‘those principles of justice and humanity which should govern the mutual relations of peoples shall prevail’.28 On the other hand, Prussia’s adherence to those articles that aligned with the pre-existing practices of its generals, surgeons and Red Cross volunteers gave credence to Bluntschli’s and Rolin-Jaequemyns’s theory that the laws of war were most effective when grounded in long-standing cultural and societal norms. The problem for the IIL was that if the source of those norms in military culture was someone like Clausewitz and his ethos was that of Kriegsraison, then the humanitarian imperative could be easily cast aside. The IIL, however, was not a lone voice in the campaign to regulate the conduct of war and, before Bluntschli and Moynier had even begun to draw from Lieber, another, more humane version of military necessity was being defined in Europe. Notably, this version was not authored by a positivist think tank but by a gathering of diplomats and military men, called together by the ruler of a nation that was notorious for possessing neither liberal values nor a progressive, humanitarian outlook in its military affairs. This ruler was Tsar Alexander II who, in 1868, called for a conference at which he hoped to forge an international agreement for limiting the use of new weapons. Specifically, the Tsar wanted to ban the exploding bullet, a devastating form of ordnance that had been adopted by a number of European armies in the early 1860s. The original purpose of the bullet had been to destroy ammunition cases and barricades but, as its use spread, fears arose among generals that a new norm of using the rounds against soldiers would develop. The Russian Minister for War, Dmitry Milyutin –a scholar, military theorist and spearhead of the post-Crimean War reform of the Russian army –was perturbed by the prospect of his troops being subjected to the burns and amputation- necessitating wounds caused by the exploding rounds, and so appealed to the Tsar to call for an international ban. The precedents set for such conferences in Paris in 1856 and Geneva in 1864 ensured that delegates from seventeen nations responded to the Tsar’s request by travelling to St Petersburg in November 1868. The Declaration of St Petersburg that came out of the near two weeks of subsequent deliberations contained
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the desired clause banning exploding bullets, albeit without any further agreements on limiting the production of other new forms of ordnance. The fact that the prohibition on exploding bullets was allegedly broken soon after by both sides during the Franco- Prussian War seemingly confirmed that the conference had only taken the most modest of steps forward on the path to humanizing war.29 The St Petersburg Declaration did, however, produce one significant breakthrough. This was not laid down in the articles of the document but in its preamble, which stated that: Having by common agreement fixed the technical limits at which the necessities of war ought to yield to the requirements of humanity, the undersigned are authorized by the orders of their governments to declare as follows: Considering: 1. That the progress of civilization should have the effect of alleviating as much as possible the calamities of war. 2. That the only legitimate object which States should endeavour to accomplish during war is to weaken the military forces of the enemy. 3. That for this purpose it is sufficient to disable the greatest possible number of men. 4. That this object would be exceeded by the employment of arms which uselessly aggravate the sufferings of disabled men, or render their death inevitable. 5. That the employment of such arms would, therefore, be contrary to the laws of humanity.30
This passage of text offered a new way forward in the laws of war that refined Lieber’s definition of military necessity along more humanitarian lines. The preamble acknowledged that exploding bullets were unnecessarily cruel and, as Lieber himself would have stated, not in keeping with the requirements of military necessity. However, the declaration also made clear that necessity itself had ‘to yield to the requirements of humanity’, rather than the other way round, as the multiple caveats in Lieber’s Code and the doctrine of Kriegsraison implied. The irony of this was that the Prussian delegation had suggested that the scope of the St. Petersburg Conference be widened to include discussions about the inherent cruelty of other new weapons, most likely as a means of killing off the idea of the Tsar’s initiative by making it seem too utopian for military men to countenance. By forcing the attendees to consider the broader implications of new military technologies, the Prussians had inadvertently set the table for an agreement to enshrine the importance of the humanitarian imperative in the laws of war, and in so doing redefined what was and what was not necessary to achieve victory on the battlefield.31 This milestone in the laws of war was only the beginning of the extraordinary story of Russia’s campaign to regulate warfare –a campaign that in scope and achievement would dwarf the efforts of the IIL. To the mind of the scholar and renowned legal philosopher of the age, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Tsar Alexander’s ‘enthusiasm for humanity’ was the reason why the Russians sought to ‘give general fixity and to
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humanise the law of land war’. Such praise was not completely undeserved. Alexander was a reformist Tsar who had generally bucked the trend of ruthlessness that had defined the reigns of his predecessors. His role in personally calling the 1868 conference played no small part in ensuring that Europe responded favourably.32 It was after 1868, however, that the true leader of Russia’s campaign to regulate war emerged in the form of Fedor Fedorovich von Martens, a lawyer and political advisor whose decades of effort to improve upon the work done by the Tsar, Moynier, Lieber and the IIL led him to proudly boast at the dawn of the twentieth century that ‘after the signing of the Geneva Convention in 1864, all the initiatives and démarches devoted to limiting the evils of war emanated from Russia’.33 This immodest advocate of Russia’s humane initiatives had humble origins. An orphan from the Baltic port of Pärnu, Martens’s rapacious appetite for study earned him a place at St Petersburg University, where he commenced a degree in law in 1863 at the age of eighteen. The quick-minded, ambitious student impressed his professors, who encouraged him to take a tour of Europe’s great universities in order to gain a truly international perspective on law by learning from an array of legal experts. One such expert Martens encountered was Bluntschli, who went on to become a mentor to the younger man. It was under Bluntschli’s tutelage that Martens became a believer in the idea that laws should reflect the culture of the societies they govern, and that the development of international law was an inherently progressive activity that could act as a ‘civilizing’ influence on the world. Although he was too junior to attend the St Petersburg Conference, by the early 1870s, Martens’s ambition, sense of self-worth and recognized ability led him to become the foremost legal advisor at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a professor of law at the University of St Petersburg, in which capacity he became the perfect candidate to lead Russia’s initiative to bring order into war. This career path opened shortly after the Franco-Prussian War when Martens, driven by the same concerns held by Moynier and the IIL, submitted a draft text for an international convention on the laws of war to the Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov. The draft was well received both by Martens’s superior and Milyutin, who subsequently took the chair of a committee comprised of Martens and several army officers tasked with refining the draft.34 The end product was nothing if not ambitious. Drawing on his observations of cratered battlefields and smouldering ruins during a trip to France in 1871, as well as the theories espoused by Bluntschli, the ethos of the Red Cross, the preamble of the St Petersburg Declaration and –quite substantially if not in some instances verbatim –the articles of the Lieber Code, Martens drafted a document of 56 articles and additional sub-clauses. These covered everything from the treatment of POWs and civilians, to the behaviour of soldiers as fighters and occupiers, regulations for the use of certain weapons, treatment for sick and wounded and procedures for negotiating armistice and surrender. Such a broad suite of issues reflected the general unease in Europe – both in civilian and military circles –over the steady re-emergence of war as regular state practice since the 1850s.35 This context of concern, combined with the same forces of public pressure and political curiosity that had previously benefited Dunant and Moynier, led to an excellent attendance in Brussels where, on 27 July 1874, the Tsar’s conference to discuss Martens’s proposals opened under the chairmanship of the head
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of the Russian delegation, Baron Jomini, who praised the Emperor for convening ‘this conference in Brussels for the purposes, above all, of humanity’. Face to face with one another around the conference table, the beribboned delegates all nodded in agreement with this statement, conveying to Jomini an outward visage of unity and shared purpose. Away from the genteel confines of the conference room, however, most delegates were wary of pursuing Martens’s purpose, which was nothing less than to obtain acceptance of a universal code that would dictate how and by what means states could make war. There were even suspicions, voiced particularly in the halls of power in Paris and London, that the whole proposal was some kind of trick, a cynical attempt by the Tsar to take the moral high ground in the movement to humanize war or, more seriously, to create of ‘code of conquest’ in anticipation of the next Russian attack upon the Ottoman Empire. In Britain, the ever caustic press openly called out the hypocrisy of ‘a nation more unpopular in Europe than Germany’ leading the ‘pretend initiative’, as well as the extraordinary theory that the whole thing was being orchestrated by the puppet-master Bismarck in order to gather military intelligence on the Kaiserreich’s rivals within the pleasantly innocuous surroundings of a humanitarian conference.36 In Geneva, Moynier had conflicting feelings about the Tsar’s soiree. On the one hand, Martens was proposing a code that was akin to what Moynier had been wanting since 1870. On the other, the suggestion that Martens’s code should cover the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers caused Moynier many a sleepless night. He feared that if the proposed articles were accepted then the already damaged Geneva Convention would crumble into obsolescence. This was an outcome that would both derail Moynier’s attempts to build a new corpus of international laws around the convention, and threaten the very existence of the Red Cross movement. Invoking his full powers as Committee president, Moynier responded to this threat by sending out letters to the heads of all the national Red Cross societies whose governments had been invited to Brussels, urging them to place whatever pressure they could on their delegations to have any questioning the convention removed from the conference agenda. In the end, it took the combined efforts of the Swiss, Swedish, German and Russian delegates at Brussels to grant Moynier his wish in the form of the conference recognizing that ‘the obligations of belligerents with respect to the service of the sick and wounded are governed by the Geneva Convention of 22 August 1864, save such modifications as the latter may undergo’. In so doing Moynier –despite his friendship and shared objectives with Martens –ended up committing an act of sabotage against the greatest attempt yet made to comprehensively regulate the conduct of war.37 Moynier was not the only Red Cross founder whose work was threatened by the expansiveness of Martens’s code. A decade had passed since the great achievement of 1864 but Dunant, still smarting from the shock of his experiences with the Communards, had not been idle. Unwilling to leave his beloved Paris, in June 1872 the impoverished Red Cross exile established a new organization there, which he felt could tackle the ills of modernity both in times of war and peace. This was the Universal Alliance for Order and Civilisation, a group of humanitarians and peace-seekers who, among a plethora of concerns relating to social welfare, international arbitration and worker’s rights, desired a new convention that would correct the blind spot of its 1864 predecessor by laying down an international code for the treatment of POWs. It was
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to this end that Dunant, barely weeks after the Alliance’s inaugural congress, set off for London with a purse of borrowed money from his brother, determined to raise public awareness of the plight of POWs and entreat Whitehall to call a conference at which the Alliance’s proposed convention could be discussed.38 Dunant’s mission to Britain was a failure. He was lauded in the press as the founder of the Red Cross, the lectures he delivered to Longmore, Furley and other humanitarian fellow travellers were well received and even Nightingale felt moved –whether by admiration or pity is unclear –to send him a note of praise for the good work he had done for humankind. Dunant’s reputation as both an agitator and dreamer, however, followed him across the Channel. No one from the British government was willing to meet with him, and the only supporter of merit the Universal Alliance had in Britain, the Earl of Denbigh, decided to disassociate himself from the group once he realized who was actually running it. Dunant’s continued harrying of the Foreign Office in the months after his trip resulted only in the despatch of a circular through Whitehall, which decreed that any overtures received from Dunant or his followers should be ignored. He received similar short shrift in France where he was told in no uncertain terms by the Quai d’Orsay that the shattered country was now following a policy of disengagement from such grand initiatives as Dunant was proposing. Ignoring this wall of official indifference Dunant reached into his past and, as the Committee had done in 1863, he convened his own preliminary conference in February 1874, at which agreement was reached on the need for a new convention that could do for POWs what the Geneva Convention had done for the wounded. Like the lectures Dunant gave in Britain, however, this conference was attended by admirers, Red Cross affiliates, army surgeons and philanthropists –the converted preaching among themselves. Moreover, the humble momentum generated by Dunant’s conference was soon halted by news of the Tsar’s great gathering, at which POW treatment would be on the agenda. The old Samaritan could not help but feel blindsided, particularly when his expectation to receive an invitation to Brussels was not met and his attempts to force his way into proceedings as a representative of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society –one of the many fly-by-night humanitarian societies that Dunant either joined or founded – proved unsuccessful. One can only imagine his further frustration had he been privy to a Whitehall memorandum comparing his overtures with the Tsar’s, in which the Foreign Secretary admitted that ‘as the project in question was only taken up by a private society, I had not thought it a matter in which Her Majesty’s Government ought to take part; but by the Russian government having taking it up, the question was thereby placed on a different footing and should receive the serious attention of Her Majesty’s Government’.39 The fact that the British were willing to pay ‘serious attention’ to the Tsar’s proposals, combined with the strong attendance in Brussels, was testament to how normalized the process of states engaging in legal efforts to control war had become by the mid-1870s. For the likes of the Universal Alliance, this apparent victory for the forces of humanity was a double-edged sword. Heartening as this was, the rejection by the British and the French of Dunant’s POW proposals –which were identical to Martens’ –in addition to his exclusion from the Brussels conference was symptomatic of the other emerging norm of humanitarian sentiment taking a back seat at such international soirées. For
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all Martens’s ambitions and the pithy sentiments of humanity triumphant espoused by Jomini, what actually occurred in Brussels was a cautious discussion on the conduct of war by a wary assembly of military men and statesmen –it was not a place for the likes of Dunant. Of the twenty-seven delegates at the conference, seventeen turned up in uniform, a stark contrast to the one major and three army surgeons who featured in the nineteen-man list of attendees in Geneva in 1864.40 The weight of brass in the room at Brussels was understandable given the number of warfare-related regulations that were up for discussion. However, with the greater engagement of the military came a contraction of the space for humanitarian-centred discussions, something that was further assured by the fact that both Martens and Bluntschli were confined to the role of legal advisors for the Russians and Germans respectively, and proceedings were opened by Jomini acknowledging that the points up for discussion had been drawn primarily from the code of the recently departed, Clausewitz-inspired Lieber.41 Europe’s familiarity with Lieber’s work doubtless helped proceedings along, however such a reliance on the code –several articles of which were reproduced word for word in Martens’s draft –meant that the Brussels Declaration that was finally hammered together after of month of debate did little more than reiterate most of Lieber’s arguments and, ironically owing to Moynier’s agitation, marginalize humanitarian discussion further by keeping the treatment of sick and wounded within the purview of the Geneva Convention. This departure in tone from 1864 was captured by the German delegate, the recently retired General Konstantin Bernard von Voigts-Rhetz, who stated that, although from a ‘humanitarian point of view we must respect the Geneva Convention, if there had been as many soldiers as doctors when it was made, we would certainly have conceived otherwise’.42 Despite such sentiments hanging ominous over proceedings, there were some small victories for the humanitarians. Voigts-Rhetz and others raised the long-standing problem of Red Cross volunteers being nowhere mentioned in the convention and so, technically, being illegal participants on the battlefield. There was a general agreement, however, from all present that ‘whatever the abuses that can be committed under the cover of the Red Cross, the purpose of the work is excellent and outstanding services are given by the many companies established and operating in the most honorable way in almost all countries’. This conclusion that, despite its recent failings in France the Red Cross still had a place in war sent a signal that the volunteers were here to stay.43 Ensconced in a cheap hotel streets away from the conference venue Dunant, despite the frustration he felt at his exclusion, could also take some solace from the fact that his efforts to forge a POW agreement were both acknowledged by Jomini and, as the conference progressed, soon began to bear fruit. In a departure from Lieber, who wrote in his code that ‘all prisoners of war are liable to the infliction of retaliatory measures’ and ‘a commander is permitted to direct his troops to give no quarter, in great straits, when his own salvation makes it impossible to cumber himself with prisoners’, the Brussels Declaration did not mention retaliation, banned the notion of giving no quarter and clarified the status of POWs as ‘lawful and disarmed enemies’ who ‘should be treated humanely’.44 Although far from being a comprehensive reassessment of how POWs should be treated, such statements nonetheless marked a victory for the humanitarians.
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The real heart of the discussions at Brussels, however, concerned two intertwined issues that sat lower on the humanitarian’s agenda –the classification of non-military combatants and the right of occupied populations to resist an invading force. With the recent experience of the Francs-Tireurs in mind, Voigts-Rhetz held to the Lieber view that ‘war rebels’ in occupied territories were illegal combatants and should be treated accordingly.45 The Belgian delegate Baron Auguste Lambermont emerged as the most vocal of a number of delegates who opposed the German viewpoint, arguing that restricting the ability of nations to organize their citizens as a defence force by branding them illegal would give a military advantage to Europe’s great powers, while compromising the defence strategy of smaller states. In addition to other states with small armies like the Netherlands and Switzerland, the Belgians enjoyed the support of both the German-hating French and the British who, historically, had relied on just this kind of territorial defence in lieu of maintaining a large standing army.46 It was the counter-arguments posed by delegates from these nations that led to the final draft of the Brussels Declaration stating that ‘the population of a territory which has not been occupied, who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had time to organize themselves in accordance with article nine, shall be regarded as belligerents if they respect the laws and customs of war’. To this was added another important article, which stated that: The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions: That they be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates That they have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance That they carry arms openly That they conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. In countries where militia constitute the army, or form part of it, they are included under the denomination of ‘army’.
In this short passage the Brussels Declaration laid out a definition of an irregular, guerrilla fighter that, with few alterations, has held true in the laws of war to this day.47 The production of a more humane and less contradictory set of rules for POWs than those offered by Lieber, the clarification of the status of irregular fighters and the enshrining of the right of occupied populations to resist were the main accomplishments of the Brussels Conference. However, taking into account the broad range of ideas and intentions laid out in his draft, even Martens had to concede that his great labour was a ‘complete failure’. What truly made this so was the fact that after nearly a full month of deliberations the delegates still refused to sign an actual binding agreement. Instead of a convention like that agreed to in 1864, the most that the delegates would commit to was a declaration which, bereft of government ratifications, amounted to little more than a gesture in favour of the articles having some merit. This lack of an actual agreement, combined with what the IIL described as ‘the elasticity or the vagueness of certain terms’ within the Brussels Declaration left the lawyers underwhelmed. The most the IIL could say of proceedings was that it was a decent start to the process of
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engendering a new era in international law and, going forward, ‘nothing would prevent a revision of the declaration, once we reach agreement on improvements’.48 This hope for an IIL-led revision of the Brussels Declaration at a later date was a dubious prospect. If there was one clear message to come out of the conference, it was that the long-standing gap between military men and humanitarians was widening into a deep schism. As much was evident in the mindset both factions formed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War. The humanitarians had come out of the war shaken, wide-eyed and fearful of the grim precedents set for future conflicts. Their response, embodied both in the formation of the IIL and the campaigning of Dunant, was to try to build on what had been achieved in 1864 by introducing new, more expansive laws of war that would both limit the actions of soldiers and create a global consensus that wars needed to be fought in as humane and limited a manner as possible. As the IIL talked of this consensus and the standardization of ‘civilized’ warfare, the powers of Europe were reflecting on the Franco-Prussian War in a very different way. Specifically, Europe’s military and political leaders were looking at the discipline, preparedness and effectiveness of the Prussians with a sense of both terror and awe. What mattered to the military men gathered at Brussels was how best to respond to the Prussian victory by both safeguarding their own unique capabilities and the strengths of their militaries, and ensuring that the men they commanded would maintain freedom of action in any wars to come. The space in such considerations for the kind of blanket restrictions on technology, tactics and soldiering suggested by Martens were, therefore, always going to be at a premium in Brussels.49 The failure of the conference was determined in no small part by this schism, which itself marked an important shift in the campaign to control wartime suffering. In the wake of the 1864 Geneva conference even the most sceptical states found justification to sign up to an agreement that was both demonstrably humane and, with the exception of Chenu and Nightingale’s critiques, generally regarded as being beneficial, in that it would dampen public criticism and help safeguard the wellbeing and fighting ability of soldiers. Arguably, the same motivations underpinned the preamble of the St Petersburg Declaration and the POW-focused articles discussed at Brussels, both of which were aimed at limiting certain aspects of war –unnecessarily cruel weapons and prisoner maltreatment, respectively –that contributed little to the attainment of victory. The idea of agreeing to broader limitations that might compromise other, more vital means of waging war was a step too far. This stark reality manifested in the heated debate between small states and great powers over the status of irregular fighters, the defence by Voigts-Rhetz of the need to preserve military necessity and the flat refusal by the sole British delegate to discuss naval regulations for fear that an agreement might be reached that would imperil the Royal Navy’s mastery of the seas.50 This was but one area in which Britain proved adept at disrupting the IIL’s ambitions at Brussels. The fact that Whitehall alone of Europe’s governments had decided to send only one delegate, General Alfred Horsford, reflected the narrow lens through which the British viewed proceedings, focused almost exclusively on ensuring that whatever was agreed to would in no way compromise Britain’s naval supremacy. Accordingly, following the practice that his country and the French had begun at St Petersburg in 1868, Horsford insisted that there should be no general discussions on limiting new
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military technology or introducing measures that would require naval commanders to abide by the Geneva Convention on the high seas. Such obstruction was typical of both the British and the French, who were equally resolved to undermine the development of humanitarian regulations at Brussels. Prior to the conference, statesmen in London and Paris agreed to act in concert in order to ensure that whatever document they agreed to would do little more than ‘express humane sentiments in vague terms’, so as to make the Tsar feel like he had accomplished something. The Germans, for their part, were guided by their long-standing faith in Kriegsraison and convinced by recent triumphs of their unassailable martial wisdom. In addition to contributing to the general climate of scepticism, German aloofness also manifested as a form of cruel pragmatism that was similar to Horsford’s stance, in which humanitarian considerations were flagrantly demoted to little more than window dressing in the main discussions. Voigts-Rhetz, despite representing a state that was far from impoverished, mockingly rejected the Norwegian and Swedish delegates’ suggestion that soft lead bullets be considered for banning, on the grounds that the cost of refitting Europe’s militaries with replacement ammunition would outweigh the humanitarian benefits of using hard bullets that made smaller wounds.51 The unfortunate timing of the conference also contributed to the creation of what one journalist called the ‘feeble and hesitating’ atmosphere, in which an agreement to ‘fetter the limbs of Europe’ of the magnitude envisioned by Martens was put out of reach.52 Raw memories of the Mitrailleuse –a French wheel-mounted volley gun capable of firing up to 100 rounds per minute –cutting down lines of charging Prussians, the unpredictable attacks of and brutal retaliations against the Francs-Tireurs, the shelling of homes, churches and schools and the devastating scale of Molkte’s triumph were carried into many a conference session, so too the aforementioned suspicions that beneath the veneer of Russian benevolence lay a plot designed to further St Petersburg’s military ambitions. Here lay the crux of the matter in the growing divide between the humanitarians and the military. The IIL, Dunant and Martens believed that, by holding the conference so shortly after the close of the Franco-Prussian War they could steer a shocked Europe onto a more humane path. The military men, however, viewed the war as confirmation that the only way forward was to develop new weapons, tactics and logistics in order to successfully wage the wars of the future. The conference was not an arena for post-war humanitarian soul-searching, but an opportunity for the delegates to gauge the mettle of their rivals and plan for conflicts to come.53 In the face of this reality, the IIL’s crusade to develop new international laws seemed destined to flounder. The most that was achieved was an unratified and non-binding code that presented Lieber’s view of how to control war to an international audience. And then, as if to test the strength of this fragile outcome, barely a year after the conference concluded Europe was once again rocked by a new, brutally lawless war. This came in the summer of 1875 when a rebellion against the Sultan’s rule engulfed the western half of the Ottoman Empire, characterized by ‘shocking atrocities on the one side and awful reprisals on the other’.54 Such acknowledgement of both sides’ viciousness was rare in the European press, which through its initial criticisms of the Ottoman troops’ response to the uprisings brought to the surface a narrative that had long existed in Christendom’s consciousness when it came to the Balkans: that of ‘civilized’ Christian
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peoples, oppressed by ‘barbarous’ Muslims. This framing of the initial uprising against the Sultan’s rule in Herzegovina –which spread in a matter of months into Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro –appeared at its most glaring in the spring of 1876, when war correspondents in Bulgaria reported on Ottoman irregular troops, the Bashi-Bazouks, beheading Christian prisoners and defiling their corpses. More disturbing than the atrocities committed against armed men, so reported Januarius MacGahan of the Daily News, was the fact that after the arrival of the Bashi-bazouks, Bulgaria became a blood-sodden wasteland of burned villages and shattered bodies, a place where ‘the vilest outrages were committed upon women’ and ‘the hacking to pieces of helpless children and spitting them upon bayonets’ was commonplace.55 Like Russell before him, MacGahan played a decisive role in alerting Europe to the horrors of war on its eastern doorstep and in so doing, evoking a humanitarian response from a concerned public. His exposure of the Bulgarian atrocities drew the attention of such influential figures as the former British Prime Minister William Gladstone and the journalist and editor of the Northern Echo, William T. Stead, both of whom argued passionately –with futility in the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s commitment to keep Britain neutral –for a British-led humanitarian intervention in response to the atrocities being committed in the Balkans. Their pleas ignored, the task of intervening on behalf of the rebels was taken up by the Tsar who, in an act of solidarity with Russia’s Orthodox Christian brothers in the Balkans –as well as to gain revenge for the Crimean War and pre-empt Ottoman advances into Russian territory –declared war on the Ottoman Empire on 24 April 1877, further escalating the conflict.56 Omnipresent in both foreign policy and international law, Martens played a hand in justifying the Russian intervention on the grounds that it was the duty of the Tsar to save Christians from the depravities of the Bashi-bazouks who, he argued, had no respect for the Geneva Convention or, indeed, any international law.57 Although his arguments appeared conveniently conformist to St Petersburg’s foreign policy, Martens’s call for an intervention had some justification on both humanitarian and legal grounds. The idea and practice of intervention in conflicts –particular within the Ottoman Empire –by third parties for humanitarian purposes had a lineage stretching back many decades.58 Building on this all important foundation of history and custom, the IIL’s response to the Bulgarian atrocities was to back Martens’s view that the Bashi-bazouks needed to be reigned in. Indeed, Westlake went so far as to argue that armed intervention was justified in this case, as by breaching its pledge to safeguard its Christian subjects under the terms of the 1856 Treaty of Paris, Constantinople had placed itself beyond both the pale of international norms and, in unleashing the Bashi- Bazouks, civilization itself. Officially, the IIL struck a more cautious note, arguing in a published resolution of 1877 that ‘if these troops are absolutely incapable of acting like rational human beings, the mere fact of using them, as taught by its many authors, is a breach of the laws of war’. Consequently, the IIL’s official response to the atrocities was not to insist on an armed intervention by a European state, but to demand that Constantinople commit to educating its soldiers about battlefield conduct by familiarizing them with the still unratified Brussels Declaration.59 This request, however, went unheeded and until the conflict ended in 1878, lawless violence and atrocity continued to characterize the
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behaviour of combatants on all sides.60 For the IIL, therefore, the Balkans conflicts marked a continuation of its failed efforts at Brussels to infuse both humanitarian principles and a semblance of law and order into war. Defeated, Moynier accepted that a change of tactics was, once again, required. With the backing of his IIL colleagues, in 1880 he produced a document comprised of 86 articles, which covered multiple aspects of the laws of war that had been developed since Lieber’s time. The preface of this document, which would become known as the Oxford Manual, made clear that Moynier’s purpose was not to pursue the chimera of a comprehensive, international humanitarian code, but to translate the Brussels Declaration into something practical that could be used by soldiers: The Institute attempts this although the governments have not ratified the draft issued by the Conference at Brussels, because since 1874 ideas, aided by reflection and experience, have had time to mature, and because it seems less difficult than it did then to trace rules which would be acceptable to all peoples. The Institute, too, does not propose an international treaty, which might perhaps be premature or at least very difficult to obtain; but, being bound by its by-laws to work, among other things, for the observation of the laws of war, it believes it is fulfilling a duty in offering to the governments a ‘Manual’ suitable as the basis for national legislation in each State, and in accord with both the progress of juridical science and the needs of civilized armies.61
The fact that the IIL waited six disappointing, war-wracked years before attempting to salvage something tangible from what had happened at Brussels speaks to the fact that the lawyers had come to accept that any progress in their efforts to regulate and humanize war would have to be gradual and the gains, incremental. This was a sobering denouement to Moynier’s labours with the IIL. It was also the first sign that the humanitarians who had been trying to control the excesses of war were not only failing in their mission but, possibly, even contributing to the growth of a war-like spirit that seemed to be engulfing the world.
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The Sound of Drums
As the IIL waited in vain for the Bashi-Bazouks to adhere to international law, a humanitarian crisis was unfolding in the Balkans. Thousands of refugees, driven from Bulgaria and Serbia, streamed into the Montenegrin mountains during the winter of 1876, wounded, hungry and desperate. Preoccupied though he was with the IIL, Moynier saw the need for a Red Cross relief mission to the Balkans and began planning accordingly. This was yet another indication of how the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War had forced him to relax any by-the-book notions of how the Red Cross should operate. Moynier was painfully aware that the Geneva Convention’s articles mentioned nothing about the Red Cross offering assistance to civilians or intervening in civil conflicts –which the uprisings in the Ottoman Empire were acknowledged by all to be. And still, he cited recent cases of men like Furley and Landa going rogue under the flag of the Red Cross, and assisting civilians and POWs during the Carlist War of 1872 in Spain as justification to despatch a team led by Appia’s nephew, Fréderic Ferrière, to the mountain-bound city of Cetinje in January 1876. Ferrière’s mission brief was as unorthodox as the decision to send him into the heart of the Balkans conflicts. Despite Montenegro being a principality of the Ottoman Empire and the civilian refugees gathered at Cetinje lying beyond the official purview of the Red Cross, Ferrière was tasked by Moynier with establishing a ‘national’ Montenegrin Red Cross Society and offering succour to the civilians. The solemn Committee declaration that Ferrière was to avoid the appearance of having any partial sympathy with the anti-Constantinople rebels was a fig leaf.1 It was not only the Committee that rallied in favour of the refugees, despite the lack of a Red Cross mandate. Shortly after Ferrière arrived at Cetinje he was joined by a cadre of volunteers from the Russian Red Cross, which had set off even before their country entered the war. The volunteers –most of whom belonged to the same Sisters of Mercy that had laboured in the Crimea three decades earlier –brought donations of beds and linen, medicine, food and money, the latter of which was gifted to them by the German (formerly Prussian) Red Cross. These humanitarians assisted local volunteers from Ferrière’s newly created Montenegrin Red Cross in treating the city’s many wounded and starving. And still the Red Cross presence grew. By 1877 new Red Cross societies had been established in Serbia and Romania and, in October 1878, a Bulgarian Red Cross society was setup under Russian guidance. Even the Ottomans – whose soldiers had initially attacked Red Cross volunteers on the grounds that the
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Christian symbol on their brassards was an affront to Islam –beat the Geneva drum by resurrecting their hitherto moribund Red Cross society under the less religiously offensive guise of the Ottoman Red Crescent. The fact that Moynier approved Constantinople’s request for this controversial change of the convention-sanctioned symbol was a further sign that, faced with the sectarian politics and brutal violence of the Balkans conflicts, the Committee president had decided to cast protocol to the wind in the name of humanity.2 Here was the Red Cross rebounding from the setbacks of the Franco-Prussian War in a way that would have made Dunant proud. Ambiguities over the status of volunteers were seldom fretted over, the limited scope of the Geneva Convention was quietly forgotten and Ottoman troops were, for the most part, treated well by volunteers from the new Balkans Red Cross societies. All it seemed, were stirred as one to adhere to the view expressed by William Gladstone in his plea for British intervention in the Balkans, that ‘there are states of affairs in which human sympathy refuses to be confined by the rules, necessarily limited and conventional, of international law’.3 As if the spirit of the summer of 1870 was repeating itself, one volunteer recalled how from the Balkans to the Caucasus everyone was ‘seized with the Red Cross fever: making bandages, sending off supplies of tea and tobacco, treating the regiments that went through with food and drink, collecting money, planning and executing enterprises of beneficence’. Such reactions had more in common with the work of the Quakers – who, still aloof from the Red Cross movement, sent their own team to Bulgaria to help rebuild villages that had been torched by the Bashi-Bazouks –than with the more proscribed humanitarian work that the Prussian Red Cross had developed to such great acclaim.4 Beneath the surface of this mass humanitarian initiative, however, there were indications that the campaign to humanize war was not, in fact, going back to the age of Solferino. Neither Moynier nor Ferrière realized it, but the Balkans conflicts heralded an era in which professional, accountable, politicized and, above all, militarized humanitarianism was coming to the fore. This development forced the Dunantists and amateur humanitarians of years gone by to take their final bow. In typically contrarian fashion, this development manifested in the Balkans most acutely in the response of the Red Cross family’s black sheep –Britain. Under the twin pressures of graphic newspaper coverage and Whitehall’s suggestion that, owing to a lack of military intervention Britain needed to muster some kind of humanitarian response, shortly after Ferrière arrived in Cetinje Loyd-Lindsay begrudgingly began to resurrect the NAS. The old soldier had good reason to be hesitant. Left to gather dust since 1871, the NAS was now a shadow organization, moribund and riven with internal disputes. This rot started at the top. When the NAS’s work in France had finished Furley had ‘urged on my colleagues the advantage of employing the income of that society on hospital work in times of war and peace, so that not only would great benefits accrue to civilians suffering from the accidents of daily life, but a large number of hospital helpers would be trained for the exigencies of war’. This desire to mimic the Germans by maintaining a Red Cross society that was constantly active, well trained and ready for mobilization when war drums sounded was rejected by Loyd-Lindsay, who soon came into conflict with Furley, Longmore and the other NAS co-founder Colonel Brackenbury, over his unwillingness to develop the Red Cross in Britain. Even
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after the tales of the Bashi-Bazouks’s atrocities made the headlines, Loyd-Lindsay was of a mind to continue sitting on the sidelines and, it was only once prompted by the government that he roused the NAS from its slumber, marshalled the leftover £7,000 in unspent donations from the Franco-Prussian War and put the call out for fresh volunteers. This led to the despatch in June 1876 of five surgeons and medical supplies onboard a ship, the Belle of Dunkirque, as the vanguard of Britain’s humanitarian mission to the Balkans.5 On the heels of this sluggish start came controversy, fuelled by the emotions unleashed by the atrocities, as well as Russia’s intervention, which politicized the motives and actions of many British volunteers. Pearson and McLaughlin, for example, donned army uniforms and volunteered for exclusive service with the freshly minted Serbian Red Cross. As Furley explained in a riposte to the criticism the women received in the Pall Mall Gazette, the wearing of military garb by Red Cross volunteers was not uncommon and, indeed, had occurred during the Franco-Prussian War.6 What was clear in Pearson and McLaughlin’s memoirs, however, was that despite their claims to be ‘strictly neutral’, both women conceptualized their mission as less a continuation of their humanitarian adventure of 1870 than as a contribution to the struggle between Western civilization and Eastern barbarism. The account they left of their mission was focused on painting the Serbs as sufferers of Ottoman despotism, dating back to the fifteenth century invasion of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, whose ‘invasion was regarded with terror by all in Europe’. All, it seemed, except the brave Serbs whom Pearson and McLaughlin were now serving in their centuries-long fight for independence which, they argued, ‘all thinking persons who really know Serbia and the Serbs’ regarded as necessary for the once great kingdom to rise again. This was vital, the authors deemed, for drawing a line in the sand against the Ottomans, and ensuring that the ‘flood of barbarism might cease to overflow Europe’.7 Their overt sympathy for the Serbs aside, Pearson and McLaughlin had another reason to avoid joining the NAS ambulance that was being led by their old boss, Loyd-Lindsay. In addition to the bad blood that still existed between the two parties from their time in France, Loyd-Lindsay carried his own prejudices with him to the Balkans –the prejudices of a Crimean War veteran who was coming once again to the aid of the Sultan. Like Pearson and McLaughlin, Loyd-Lindsay travelled to Serbia with the NAS ambulance, however, once in Belgrade he soon got on the wrong side of many of the other volunteers, both because of his now woefully out of date suggestion that they set up a hospital three days march from the frontlines, and his barely concealed partiality to the Ottoman cause. As a consequence of the unfavourable atmosphere he created, Loyd-Lindsay did not stay long in Belgrade before heading to the more welcoming surroundings of Constantinople. He defended both this retreat and his pro- Ottoman stance publicly but, as his wife later recalled, what really drew Loyd-Lindsay to the Balkans was a ‘double desire of personally superintending the work (of the NAS) and also of seeing something of the campaign and studying on the spot the problems of Eastern politics’. What this meant in practice was that in between leading the NAS, Loyd-Lindsay found time to report on the military situation to his fellow pro-Ottoman Prime Minister Disraeli, as well as pen many a stinging critique of the Serbs for both starting the war and running a terrible military-medical service.8 He may having been
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wearing a Red Cross brassard, but the man who had rallied Britons to the Red Cross in 1870 was now acting as both an Ottoman apologist and political observer for the British government, while simultaneously leading a supposedly neutral humanitarian mission. A similarly mercenary interpretation of the Red Cross spirit was held by another Franco-Prussian War veteran, the adventurous Australian surgeon Charles Ryan. Wandering idle and penniless around Europe in the summer of 1877, Ryan –who did not answer Moynier’s call for volunteers to assist refugees in 1876 –was stirred instead by news that the Sultan was offering money for medics. This was necessitated by the fact that the Ottomans had done little to update their military-medical system since the 1850s, leaving their soldiers reliant on a Red Cross society that, despite being founded in 1868, had withered into non-existence by the time the Balkans conflicts began. The resurrection of the Ottoman Red Cross as the Red Crescent did little to improve things from a military-medical standpoint, and so the decision was made to use donations from within and outside the empire to fund the recruitment of foreign surgeons. Excited by the chance to both fill his pockets and hone his surgical skills, Ryan signed up to join the Red Crescent as a sawbones for hire. He was just one of the many paid to provide relief to the Sultan’s troops, despite the insistence of the Red Cross founders that those who volunteer under the neutral flag should do so ‘without distinction of nationality’ and with ‘solicitude and impartiality’ for all.9 With few exceptions, it was not until Ryan was trapped in the besieged, typhus-ridden town of Erzurum in the winter of 1877 that he extended a hand to the Ottomans’ enemies, by informing surgeons from the Russian Red Cross that some of their soldiers were sick outside the city’s walls. Ryan and two other volunteers then helped to treat the Russian sick. Such gestures, however, were the exception rather than the rule to his conditions of service.10 Ryan’s conditions of service were not set by Constantinople, but by a British organization that had been gifted a portion of its funds from the Ottoman treasury. This organization was founded on 12 December 1876 by a small group of landed gentry who gathered at Stafford House, a mansion overlooking St James’s Gardens in London. The house’s owner and leader of the group, the Duke of Sutherland, was familiar with organising wartime relief. During the winter of 1871 he had worked with Thomas Evans to supply French POWs with food and blankets.11 Five years later, Sutherland’s concern was ‘to consider what steps could be taken to alleviate the great sufferings which prevailed among Turkish soldiers’, and it was to this end that he called together a group of similarly minded friends to discuss how best to assist the Sultan’s men. The Stafford House Committee –as the group would dub itself – was a curious beast. Although humanitarian in impulse, Stafford House was quite comfortable with organising the distribution of relief to Ottoman soldiers only, to the detriment of providing succour to either the insurgents in the Balkans or, indeed, the many civilians who were suffering from both displacement and acts of barbarism. Old British loyalties to Constantinople –which had long stood as a defender against Russian territorial expansion into British spheres of influence –made the idea of Stafford House’s humanitarian volunteers aligning themselves with the Ottoman army both logical and uncontroversial. And so, having equipped themselves with £12,000
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worth of supplies and signed up for a wage of £1 per day, Stafford House’s surgeons departed Constantinople on Ottoman army trains bound for the frontlines, where they served side by side with the troops, sharing rations, living space and the experience of the many dangers and horrors of war.12 This vision of wartime humanitarianism differed greatly from both the refugee- tending scenes being presided over by Ferrière and the Quakers, and the supposedly impartial relief work of the NAS. Before sending their surgeons to Constantinople Stafford House made an agreement with other British relief organizations that ‘soldiers are served first, the refugees after. Stafford House pays for the rations served to soldiers, the other societies for the fugitives’.13 The reference to people who had been driven from their homes by avaricious troops as ‘fugitives’ was in line with Stafford House’s conception of its mission as being solely to sustain the fighting fitness of Ottoman soldiers –this was first and foremost a military operation, not a mission of mercy. Consequently, the coordinator of Stafford Houses’ operations, Vincent Kennett- Barrington, had to justify to Sutherland his decision to lend four surgeons to the Turkish Compassionate Fund, which had been setup to succour the refugees that had bled into Constantinople from the warzones to the west. Kennett-Barrington defended his choice on the grounds that: There was no proper staff of medical men attending the masses of refugees in the mosques of Sultan Achmet (sic) and St.Sofia; small pox and typhoid fever were rapidly on the increase, and a great epidemic of these diseases appeared imminent. In the meantime, surgeons came in batches from their broken-up sections, and I had a few to spare while making new arrangements for the redistribution of our staff. An epidemic in the town would be a terrible danger to the troops, as it would be sure to extend to them.14
Kennett-Barrington’s argument was clear: it was only once disease threatened the soldiers that the humanitarian hand of Stafford House was extended to civilians. The author of this ostensibly cold report deserves closer scrutiny as it was he, rather than the Red Cross purist Ferrière or the independent-minded Loyd-Lindsay, who typified the emerging archetype of a battlefield humanitarian. A lawyer and part- timer in the Middlesex Militia, Kennett-Barrington was no stranger to the world of humanitarianism when he was appointed by Sutherland in May 1876 to coordinate Stafford House’s operations. In addition to having volunteered as a nurse on the battlefields of the Franco-Prussian and Carlist wars, Kennett-Barrington was also closely affiliated with the Order of St John, to which Furley and Brackenbury belonged. Initially much like Furley in his love of unfettered humanitarianism, Kennett- Barrington soon evolved into a disciplined volunteer –a steady hand on whom one could depend to demonstrate, as Sutherland put it, ‘untiring energy with great tact and administrative ability’ in constructing ‘a practical system of voluntary field ambulance and hospital relief work under circumstances of exceptional difficulty’. Such was his confidence in the man that Sutherland entrusted Kennett-Barrington with both £3000 of cash, and the authority to recruit whichever surgeons he felt qualified to bind the wounds of the Sultan’s soldiers. Acknowledging that he was no medical expert –like
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most volunteers, he had little training beyond that which he had received on the job –Kennett-Barrington differed to the wisdom of the Anglo-American Ambulance veteran William MacCormac, who joined Stafford House as an advisor and recruiter of surgeons. Professionalism being valued over enthusiasm, one of the surgeons MacCormac recruited was Baron von Mundy from the Austrian Red Cross, who was put in charge one of the largest ambulances in the Balkans, and the construction of a floating quarantine hospital in the Golden Horn. Kennett-Barrington also sought help from other specialists from outside of the medical bubble, recruiting civil engineers, as well as officers from the Ottoman army and officials from the Rustchuk-Varna Railway Company to help with food, transport, housing, construction and other operational issues.15 In his deference to professionals who understood military medicine and logistics Kennett-Barrington was a clear successor to the Nightingale’s and Olmsted’s of the humanitarian movement –an administrator who desired efficiency and demonstrable outcomes above all else. He was not, however, as cut and dry as those who came before him. Kennett- Barrington had neither the USSC’s penchant for grand schemes, nor the personal ambition of Nightingale. There was also a lingering sense of the ‘Red Cross spirit’ about him. The letters Kennett-Barrington sent home from his various campaigns in Spain and the Balkans contained many a heartfelt expression of sympathy for the ‘poor fellows’ he nursed, as well as a record of yet another breech of his mandate –in addition to his decision to succour refugees in Constantinople –which involved him trying to ascertain the fate of Serbian POWs. He also confided to Stafford House that, of all his duties the most rewarding was the simple act of ‘providing nourishment for the men at intervals on their long journeys from the front to the various hospitals’.16 He might have been paid to keep Ottoman troops fighting fit, and been mindful that the Russians ‘seemed to look on Stafford House men almost as belligerents’, but Kennett- Barrington himself never lost the humanitarian impulse that had originally driven him to volunteer. That said, he was also accepting of the fact that he was a part of the Ottoman war machine. He had no compunction about ordering refugees to bury the dead during a smallpox outbreak in Constantinople in order to protect the city’s garrison and, when a handful of surgeons abandoned their posts in Erzurum, he wrote to ‘press Dr Ryan to try and find out these rascally curs and have them hanged or shot’. These instances of pragmatic, military-style decision making did not mean, however, that Kennett-Barrington was pro-Ottoman in the vein of Loyd-Lindsay. Although he had more than one scathing comment to make about the Russians, by war’s end he was disenchanted with his employers, remarking to his wife of the shame he felt in wearing a Red Crescent brassard, and his sense that ‘if there was a revolution to put down the authorities that be (in Constantinople) I should feel half inclined to lead it! I certainly would if I were a Turk! But then, would any Turks be fit to rule?’17 Sympathetic to the suffering of all war victims, yet bound to prioritise those he was paid to treat. Stickler for discipline, yet prepared to ignore his orders to address the plight of civilians in extremis, a professional who approached his humanitarian work like it was a military commission yet remained unmoved to support the cause of either belligerent, Kennett-Barrington was the apotheosis of over a decade of confusion, evolution and adaptation within the humanitarian’s campaign to control wartime
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suffering. The end product of this evolution was a volunteer who was professional, partial and accepting of the need to work within limits for the cause of humanity. Such a recruit was much desired by Stafford House which, by publishing its final report, keeping meticulous track of its accounts and having to defend itself either from press accusations of fund misappropriation or Foreign Office inquiries into whether its surgeons were passing intelligence to the Russians, exemplified another phenomenon of the humanitarian world during the 1870s –the growing need for humanitarian organizations to demonstrate professionalism, fiscal responsibility and effectiveness.18 The accountability of humanitarians was much on the mind of war correspondents throughout the Balkans conflicts, who were quick to report, in particular, on the deficiencies of the NAS’s Belgrade hospital. Set up, as per Loyd-Lindsay’s request, ‘150 miles from the front, for 150 beds, few of which are yet ready for occupation’, the hospital was derided for the fact that during its first week of operation its sole patient was a ‘small boy who blew himself up with fireworks’. The newspapers’ mocking assurance that ‘the wounded will doubtless come in presently, being cases sent from the Russian hospitals at the front’, made clear the underlying message: what use was there in the NAS spending £1,600 to establish such a seemingly useless hospital?19 Stafford House endured similar criticism of its purpose, with an array of newspapers demanding to know the success rates of its surgeons, the number of ambulances it deployed and what lay between the money the organization received and its closeness to the Ottoman authorities. Targeting one of Stafford House’s liaisons in Constantinople, a correspondent from The Standard even declared that ‘if the Stafford House Committee wish their money to be applied in the purchase of guns and ammunition, Ahmed Vefyk has done well. If, however, they wish it to be applied to the curing of gunshot wounds and the extraction of bullets, Ahmed Vefyk has not acted for the best’.20 The importance of efficiency, press criticism of waste and the partiality shown by Pearson, McLaughlin, Loyd-Lindsay and the Stafford House surgeons during the Balkans’ conflict offered some portents of the future of wartime humanitarianism. Excluded from this future, however, was the type of piecemeal recruitment conducted by both the NAS and Stafford House and, in the case of the latter, the idea of paying the recruited surgeons to carry out specific duties in a particular conflict. Instead, the prevailing zeitgeist among those committed to providing succour to the wounded was the notion that for a voluntary humanitarian force to be effective it had to be permanent, continually active in peacetime and ready to mobilize quickly at the outbreak of war. Desires for such a well-drilled humanitarian force were not new. The recommendation for volunteers to receive peacetime training went back to the writings of Nightingale and Chenu in the late 1850s, and the need for said volunteers to be attached to army medical departments had been recognized by the Prussians since the 1860s. It was only after 1871, however, that this conception of humanitarian volunteers as war-ready auxiliaries ceased to be an ideal for certain Red Cross societies to strive for, and instead became a necessity for any modern army. The reason for this was plain enough to see, even for long-time detractors of the Red Cross. The creation of the Kaiserreich had placed a cat among Europe’s pigeons, heightening the fears over military preparedness that had been so blatantly displayed at the Brussels Conference in 1874. In the years after the conference, tensions between states continued to grow in
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tandem with armaments production, the sum of which was something frighteningly palpable: the possibility of a great and terrible future war in which causalities would be created on a scale hitherto unseen. This fear was fed as much by the reality of German triumphs, as by the dark fantasies of writers like Ivan Bloch, Albert Robida and George Tomkyns Chensey, contributors to the burgeoning genre of future war literature that depicted flying machines bristling with machine guns, cannons the length of trains, the destruction of the Royal Navy by German wunderwaffen, and fields of unattended wounded being left to the designs of merciless, death-dealing enemies. These were visions of a future war in which, as the war correspondent Archibald Forbes argued, army surgeons would be overwhelmed by the ‘consequence of the immense number of wounded which the altered conditions of military armaments and of fighting will bring about’.21 Both peace-seekers and humanitarians were mindful of the future war and reacted to it in their own unique ways. As early as 1862, Richard Cobden had mused on the connection between future war invasion scares in Britain and the growth of armaments, suggesting that the sinister cycle of fear and expenditure needed to be broken as part of the global campaign for peace –an argument that was later taken up by Bloch and other literary peace-seekers.22 Humanitarian minds were, naturally, more fatalistically accepting of the potential reality of the future war, and the role they would have play in it. Many of the Franco-Prussian War’s surgeons left accounts of their disbelief at the damage inflicted on, and the numbers of men felled by Dreyse rifles, fast-firing Krupp cannons and the dreaded Mitrailleuse, whose ‘effects are terrific and the noise it makes is something dreadful; that of musketry and cannon is music compared with it’.23 The scale of carnage caused by such weapons could only be countered, so the surgeons argued, by the mobilization of large numbers of humanitarian volunteers. It was in acknowledgement of this reality that even the volunteer-hating Chenu, three years after his emperor had been deposed, the Commune crushed and France brought to its knees by Moltke’s armies, struck a rare conciliatory note in his otherwise relentless campaign against the meddlesome Red Cross. Reflecting on his nation’s military-medical woes, he argued that ‘our brave army surgeons and our courageous volunteers drew many lessons from our misfortunes, and we must learn these lessons of the long months of bitter experience’. Only then could the humanitarians, in tandem with the army surgeons, hope to respond to the ‘further progress in the art of destroying men’ that had been taken forward so dramatically during the Franco-Prussian War.24 MacCormac drew similar conclusions when considering the link between new weapons, the size of armies and the burdens that would need to be shouldered by volunteers and surgeons alike in conflicts to come. In future wars where so many could be felled so quickly by weapons like the Mitrailleuse, MacCormac argued that a coordinated system of triage and first aid, involving volunteers working hand in glove with army surgeons, would be necessary to save men from unnecessary death. This level of cooperation would require a new type of volunteers, more skilled and medically trained than the Bartons and Seacoles of the past. The only way to supply such trained volunteers was, so the Franco-Prussian War veterans concluded, to use times of peace to prepare the humanitarians for war.25 The consequences for a nation that failed to prepare in this way were made clear in the Ottoman Empire’s desperate search for surgeons during the Balkans conflicts.
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This reality, moreover, was augmented by terrifying fictions that weighed heavy on many a humanitarian’s mind. Furley, for one, made reference to Tomkyns Chensey’s Battle of Dorking –a novella released in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War in which German forces invade and brutally conquer a militarily unprepared Britain –when he wrote of how Britain’s army surgeons and its fragmented, fly-by-night NAS would never be able to handle the number of causalities created by ‘improved small arms, long-range artillery and quick-firing machine guns’.26 This need to prepare for the future war, combined with the shambles he had witnesses in France, was part of the reason why after 1871 Furley turned away from his belief in free-wheeling Red Cross work in order to prepare Britain’s humanitarians for the horrors to come. Frustrated by the NAS’s stagnation, in 1877 Furley formed the St John Ambulance, an organization that he later claimed would answer the ‘questions affecting the preparation of hospital assistance in times of war’ while also ensuring that ‘the vast field of suffering caused by the accidents of daily life should not be neglected’. It was an organization, in short, that would follow the model for voluntary humanitarianism that had been established by the all-conquering, war-ready Germans.27 Brackenbury felt similarly that the time had come for Britain to follow the examples set by Germany and France where, ‘in both countries the national voluntary aid societies have redoubled their exertions to prepare for the next struggle’. In what was a clear shot across the bows of Stafford House, in 1877 he wrote of how Britain could no longer rely on ‘the adventurer who volunteers his services for the sake of what he can make indirectly’ or ‘men who merely take service under a national aid society as they would under a contractor, for the sake of wages’, to the detriment of assembling and maintaining a permanent humanitarian force.28 Longmore too, argued for the necessity of a battle-ready Red Cross society and, notably, conceived of the training of humanitarian volunteers as analogous to the training of soldiers. In a speech he delivered to the Royal United Services Institution in 1872 he asked his audience whether, given that ‘the regular army is strengthened not only by its militia reserves but also by a numerous volunteer force, may not the latter be got to supply, under proper direction, at least for home service, a proportion of men willing to undertake those duties in aid of the sick and wounded?’ For a nation that –like all great powers –was expecting a grand conflagration, was there not now a need more than ever for ‘a force consisting of army, militia and volunteers’? A need to break down the barriers between those who inflicted wounds and those who nursed them, and to recruit and train both sets of volunteers as one?29 Longmore’s argument to blend the worlds of humanitarian volunteerism and military requirements was not a quirk of the lacunal path down which Britain had marched since signing the Geneva Convention. Indeed, in 1862 Bellows had suggested to Lincoln that the USSC should screen its humanitarian volunteers and soldiers together at the point of recruitment for disease and fitness.30 Harmony between the worlds of humanitarianism and militarism grew during the 1870s, when most of the great powers embarked on campaigns of military reform which, owing to fears of mass casualties, incorporated discussions of Red Cross volunteers as not simply outsiders recruited in extremis, but as permanent, necessary components of their armies. This was a global development. In January 1877, a few months before Brackenbury voiced
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his demands for a permanent British Red Cross, Count Sano Tsunetami established a voluntary relief corps –the Haskuaisha –as an auxiliary to the Japanese army. This was in response to the outbreak of a rebellion by dissident samurai against imperial rule in Satsuma province, where a modernising army outfitted with American-made Gatling machine guns, German Krupp artillery and French Chassepot Rifles cut down some of the last of Japan’s revered warrior caste. As part of the modernization program that aided this victory, the army also made use of Tsunetami’s Haskuaisha volunteers as providers of medical care and bearers of stretchers. According to the classic origin story of this precursor to what, in 1887, would become the Japanese Red Cross, Tsunetami was first taken with the idea of voluntary humanitarianism on a tour of Europe in 1867, during which he attended the International Exposition in Paris and beheld the power of humanity conveyed through the Red Cross display of medical equipment. A meeting in Geneva between the Imperial Vice-Chancellor Iwakura Tomomi and Moynier in 1873 crystallized the idea that Japan needed a Red Cross society and, with the guidance of an Austrian Japanophile named Alexander von Siebold, Tsunetami began constructing such a society, using the Austrian Red Cross as a model, and German military-medical procedures as a basis for training his recruits.31 This Eurocentric interpretation of the origins of the Japanese Red Cross has been challenged by those who claim that Tsunetami was less influenced by the Red Cross movement in Europe than by long-standing humanitarian traditions in his own country.32 Regardless of degree, it is clear that whatever Tsunetami drew from either Japanese traditions or European military medicine, his overriding concern was not to develop a benevolent society of Samaritans, but a corps of volunteers who would be trained in peacetime, like the soldiers themselves, to serve the emperor once war broke out, operating ‘under the command of the military-medical corps in wartime’. Comparisons to the German Red Cross are as hard to ignore now as they were at the time. In addition to Tsunetami’s relationship with Siebold and the lessons other Japanese officials learned from their interactions with German delegates at the International Red Cross conference in Karlsruhe in 1887, early promoters of the Red Cross in Japan made clear links between the sponsorship of the Austrian and German Red Cross societies by their respective emperors, and the fact that similar reverential connections between service to the emperor, and the need to carry out patriotic works in times of national emergency also existed in Japan.33 The age in which the Haskuaisha was created and the extent to which Tsunetami was a product of that age, were also important factors in determining the military character of the Japanese Red Cross. Although he had medical training, at the time he was first exposed to the Red Cross in 1867 Tsunetami was stationed at the Nagasaki Naval Training Centre, an institution that had been established in 1855 in order to school a new generation of naval officers and engineers in the Western way of warship construction and operation. Accordingly, in addition to attending the International Exposition with an aim to review the latest Western military technology, Tsunetami also visited the Dutch port of Dordecht, where he oversaw the final stages of construction of a new, steam-powered warship for the Japanese Navy. It is through this lens of a military scouting mission –one of many in Japan’s campaign of adopting Prussian military methods during this period –that Tsunetami experienced the International Exposition and, like the Prussians, took away
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with him the impression that the Red Cross was, first and foremost, an organization that could help Japan prepare for the future war.34 The link between military reforms and the peacetime organization of humanitarians was also recognized in Russia. Like many medical observers in the Franco-Prussian War, Pirogov found much to admire in the Prussians’ adoption of the Union way – rapid evacuation, use of trains and the amalgamation of volunteers into the army’s medical system. During the 1870s, he argued for similar practices to be adopted in his home country, as well as for Russia’s Red Cross volunteers and army surgeons to meet regularly in peacetime with counterparts in other countries, as a means of keeping up to date with the latest practices in military-medicine. Much like his counterpart reformist on the military side, General Milyutin –who wanted a mass conscript army in which capability and training would replace class and largesse as indicators of soldiery merit –Pirogov also wanted a large, well-trained and continually active Red Cross. He also wanted, like Martens, for both soldiers and Red Cross volunteers to be well schooled in the Geneva Convention, as a means of ensuring that their conduct, whether in fighting or providing succour, was professional and disciplined.35 Neither Pirogov nor Milyutin got what they wanted. Although Russia’s nursing community grew during the late nineteenth century under the auspices of the Red Cross, and both battlefield training and medical education programmes were run for the volunteers, the means of connecting the humanitarians to the army remained elusive up until the twentieth century. During the Russo-Turkish War, the Red Cross was deployed inefficiently and, as a British observer with the Russians noted, ‘the sanitary condition of this army left much to be desired. No provision had been made for winter clothing, neither boots nor sheepskin coats having been prepared’. Despite the volunteers at their disposal, the Russians also struggled to cope with the butcher’s bill of the war, with their ‘wounded being as little heeded as the dead’ amid the army’s many overcrowded, under-supplied field hospitals. Martens, at least, could claim success in his goal to imbue Russian soldiers with a knowledge of international law. In June 1877, a manual featuring elements of the Brussels Code and the Geneva Convention was distributed to Russian troops who, in the main, adhered to the instructions, sometimes even helping to move wounded Ottoman soldiers to the nearest Russian hospital.36 The outcomes of Russia’s military reforms were mixed, but the intentions were clear all the same. Martens, the lawyer, Milyutin, the military man and Pirogov, the surgeon were all in agreement that a reform of Russia’s military had to not only feature the development of new armies and the adoption of new weapons, but also a reconceptualization of the Red Cross as an organization that in times of peace would keep its volunteers trained and –like the soldiers themselves –educated in international law. In France, the process of reform along similar lines began in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, albeit in a way that was ill-planned and sluggish. It was not until New Year’s Eve 1870, after Metz had fallen and the full scale of the disaster at Sedan had become apparent, that a pronouncement was made that the SSBM would have control over the various volunteer groups in Paris and that, in an effort to improve coordination, it would report on the activities of said groups to the army. Further reforms followed after 1871, including the introduction of a more rigorous programme of peacetime training for surgeons, greater investment in new equipment and the
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standardized use of trains for evacuating the wounded. This culminated in the passing of new laws in the 1880s, which decreed that in peacetime Red Cross supply depots would be created across France for each division of the army and, in wartime, that the volunteers would be placed under the direct control of the war ministry, thereby bringing ‘the society into harmony with the military changes that had taken place since the war of 1870–71’. It was a situation that, as one historian has adroitly observed, mobilized civil society in France in the name of the Red Cross as never before, ‘offering its members both fear of international conflict and a comforting means of coping with it’. In the years after Prussia’s triumph over France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and the various kingdoms that comprised the Kaiserreich also adopted many, if not all, elements of the Prussian military-medical system. It was these developments on the continent that spurred Brackenbury and Furley to argue for similar reforms in Britain which, to Furley’s mind, was now in nothing short of a race with other great powers to get its humanitarians as prepared for a future war as its soldiers.37 Ironically, the nation that had done so much to bend humanitarianism to military needs was among the last to join the reformist party of the late nineteenth century. Warring Europe may have provided opportunities for the Union way to develop, but in the post-bellum United States the legacy had mostly withered on the vine. Dorothea Dix’s position as head of nurses was abolished in 1865, and in that same year a steady demobilization of the 1,997 surgeons employed by the Medical Bureau began, leaving a grand total of 187 surgeons to tend to the needs of the similarly shrunken army by 1870. Bereft of both funding and a grand conflict to focus their energies these surgeons, despite still being held to a standard of training that would have made Hammond proud, spent most of their time treating the fevers and skirmish wounds suffered by soldiers manning the forts of North America’s Western frontier.38 Stagnation was also prevalent in the American Red Cross (ARC) project. The American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields had continued to meet after the end of the civil war but, as its large but blank page-ridden minute book indicates, it had precious little to talk about. The reason for this was simple: Washington was still refusing to sign the Geneva Convention, despite constant petitioning from Bellows. Despondent and frustrated in equal measure, he began to wind down the American Association in the wake of its underwhelming performance in the Franco-Prussian War, before finally announcing its dissolution to Moynier in 1876.39 The ARC dream did not, however, die with the American Association. Barton – who had been languishing in yet another bout of inertia and depression since the end of the Franco-Prussian War –eagerly took over from Bellows as chief Red Cross agitator in Washington. In this capacity she too endured multiple rejections to her appeals, premised on the not unreasonable grounds that, as the nation faced no threat of war, it didn’t need a Red Cross society. News of the Bulgarian atrocities, however, seemingly gave Barton a chance to stir the humanitarian impulse that seemed to be so lacking in her homeland. As she wrote to Appia, her countrymen would be moved by ‘the flash of the bayonet’ and ‘the march of armies trampling down the harvests’ in the Balkans and, like the British, would rally as neutrals to the cause of humanity’.40 No such humanitarian awakening occurred. Some donations of food and medicine were sent to the Balkans from across the Atlantic but, bereft of an ARC, there was no means
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of centralising the scattered labours of America’s philanthropists. This prompted Barton to try yet another tactic, persuading Civil War veteran groups, philanthropic societies and sceptical politicians that, rather than serving as an auxiliary to the army or a neutral humanitarian actor in the drama of someone else’s war, the ARC could work as a responder to peacetime disasters. It was this non-militarized version of the ARC that was finally brought into being on 16 March 1882, when the United States Senate authorized the signing and ratification of the Geneva Convention, barely weeks after Bellows died still hoping to see his labours bear fruit. This triumph was a double- edged sword for Barton, who assumed leadership of an ARC that was tasked with providing assistance to victims of forest fires and floods, rather than picking up where the Civil War humanitarians had left off. The nearest she came to the battlefield was in 1896, when she led a five-person ARC team to the Ottoman Empire in response to the massacre and displacement of the Sultan’s Armenian subjects. A bold endeavour certainly, but civilian relief work by any other name.41 And then, on the morning of 15 February 1898, ‘America’s Nightingale’ got the chance she had been waiting for when the USS Maine exploded –possibly on account of a Spanish bomb –while at anchor at Havana, sparking the Spanish-American War. The need for ARC involvement in the resulting conflict was clear from the outset. The Army Medical Department’s Surgeon-General, George Sternberg, embraced new medical technologies and was a world-leading expert in bacteriology. Sternberg was also not shy in informing the War Department that troops deployed to tropical Cuba during the rainy season would have to be protected from the onslaught of malaria, typhoid, yellow fever and various other tropical diseases. In response he ordered the liberal distribution of quinine and carbolic acid, the requirement for all water to be boiled before use, and the need for commanders to strike camp only in places with adequate drainage. Most of his recommendations were accepted, however, Sternberg’s Medical Department bore the legacy of the post-1865 demobilization of the United States’ army medical services. Even as the troops headed off for Cuba, the Medical Department was still underfunded and understaffed. As an added parallel to the days of Finley and the USSC, Sternberg –for all his progressive views –was hostile to Barton’s suggestion that her volunteers could help to mitigate the Medical Department’s parlous situation by at least providing additional stretcher-bearers, nurses and supplies.42 In Sternberg’s defence he was, like most military men in the United States, relatively ignorant of his nation’s Red Cross, on account of the fact that it had always been a civilian organization concerned with responding to peacetime disasters, and did not have a positive reputation even for this work. Barton’s insistence that the ARC’s true mission was to provide succour to the army, however, eventually carried the day and in June 1898 she secured permission from the State Department to accompany a steamship –aptly named The Moynier –to Cuba as part of an official Red Cross mission.43 Promising as this all seemed for Barton, her work in Cuba turned out to bear more than a passing resemblance to her unsatisfying labours during the Franco- Prussian War. Obstructed by the Medical Department, Barton and her volunteers were mostly confined to feeding refugees and providing care to civilians interned within the Spanish-run concentration camps. Only by chance did Barton and her team get to treat the wounds of American soldiers when a field hospital at Siboney was pushed
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to its breaking point by an influx of casualties. Viewing the aftermath of a skirmish between Spanish and American troops near Siboney from the Red Cross ship State of Texas, Barton ordered the volunteers to disembark, whereupon they set to work distributing supplies, setting up beds and treating wounds in defiance of multiple acts of obstruction on the part of frustrated and embarrassed army surgeons.44 The ending of the war in August 1898 provided a timely moment for contemplation of the past, present and future of the ARC, by both its members and the military. As Barton had argued to Sternberg, once surgeons actually experienced what it was like to have someone there to help change bandages, administer medicine and evacuate wounded, they began to warm to the idea of embedding the Red Cross into their operations. Accordingly, in 1903 the Medical Department ordered a report on the state and usefulness of the ARC in times of war, the findings of which did much to confirm the suspicion that, useful as it seemed in prospect, Barton’s organization was out of its depth. While most of the world’s Red Cross societies were now working alongside their nation’s militaries in ever closer union, the ARC had manifested in Cuba as little more than a bothersome appendage to the army. Perhaps mindful of the extent to which official indifference had caused this, blame for the society’s lack of military-focused development was not laid solely at Barton’s feet. The report conceded that the army’s leadership and surgeons would have to accept the necessity of volunteers in conflicts to come. The ARC, for its part, was advised to follow the example of the Germans and the Japanese, and get itself trained, organized and ready to submit to military control.45 This should have been music to Barton’s ears. Disaster relief work had, after all, been simply a means to the end of getting the ARC established in peacetime, and she had long believed that the army, if it were to be truly effective, would have to accept a Red Cross that would be ‘ready with whatever is necessary, to be on the field at the sound of the first gun’.46 Despite such militaristic pronouncements, however, Barton was carrying the baggage of the ARC’s unimpressive past into an age where Furley, Tsunetami and Kennett-Barrington had been shaping the zeitgeist. To her detriment Barton had trodden a very different path to these men, presiding over the development of a Red Cross that was designed to harness philanthropic energies at a local level in order to carry out peacetime relief work. Like the Quakers, moreover, the work of her volunteers on the battlefield had also manifested more in service to civilians than soldiers. A boon for the cause of humanitarianism writ large this may have been, this diversification of the ARC’s scope of operations was indicative of the scattergun way the movement had evolved in the United States where –in a manner that replicated Moynier’s relationship with the Red Cross in Europe –Barton had been unable to control the various drives and ideals of the ARC’s many regional branches. At the time of the Spanish-American War, therefore, the ARC was simply too dysfunctional and fragmented to be marshalled by Barton into the kind of disciplined, humanitarian auxiliary force that the army required.47 The ARC’s lack of relationship with the army was not the only problem Barton faced in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War. On the cusp of her eightieth year, her ability to adapt the ARC to an age of greater accountability and oversight was also questionable. Indications of this emerged during the war when the New York Times latched onto the story of how Barton had forgotten to complete the manifest
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for one of the ARC’s ships, an action that led to a $500 fine having to be paid from the society’s donation-fed coffers.48 Like Loyd-Lindsay’s NAS, Barton’s ARC quickly developed the aroma of the amateur –a humanitarian organization that was no more resourceful, organized or effective than any grassroots philanthropic group in the United States. Criticism along these lines came not only from the press and Sternberg but, most distressingly of all for Barton, from her own volunteers. Attacks from some of those who served with her in Cuba were focused primarily on Barton’s inability to keep accurate records of donations received and money spent, her tendency to run the ARC like it was her personal fiefdom, and her irritating habit of offering unwanted medical advice to trained surgeons. George Keenan, a journalist who had promoted Barton’s humanitarian efforts since the 1870s and had been one of the first to volunteer for the ARC in 1881, was also dissatisfied with Barton’s political acumen. Specifically, Keenan criticized Barton for ordering healthy ARC volunteers to abandon colleagues, surgeons and wounded struck down with yellow fever at Siboney and retreat to the safety of the State of Texas in order to quarantine the sick and curtail the spread of the disease. It was not so much Barton’s abandonment of the sick that irked Keenan. What really struck him was that, by ordering the volunteers to fall back, Barton had shown her aloofness to the fact that the army’s surgeons were looking for any opportunity to prove that the ARC was unable to cope in the face of genuine battlefield challenges.49 Keenan was right to suspect the prevalence of such a view. Three years before the war, the state of the ARC was the subject of intense discussion at the annual Association of American Military Surgeons Meeting in Buffalo. Citing the example of the SSBM’s performance in the Franco- Prussian War, the surgeons agreed that ‘enthusiasm in individual cases will enable the worker to be of value but, as a rule, it cannot be expected that volunteer aid, subject to no orders and uncertain as to the progress of events, will be as efficient amidst the confusion and dangers of the battlefield’. In an echo of Longmore’s suggestion that humanitarians and soldiers be recruited as one mass, the surgeons favoured drawing from the National Guard to staff the ARC – the character, training and mettle of the average National Guardsmen being deemed more appropriate for wartime service than that of ‘a company of volunteer civilians’ who were ‘liable to become disintegrated by any unexpected event of an alarming or threatening character’. Informed by the opinions of their colleagues in Europe, the surgeons concluded that if left in the hands of untrained volunteers, ‘it is not likely that the American Red Cross Association will be of material service on future battlefields’.50 The apparent confirmation in Cuba of the surgeon’s fears, combined with the groundswell of internal criticism against Barton, led to a post-war push from both within and without the ARC for a complete restructure. The veteran cavalryman of the Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt –who, notably, decades earlier had been a founding member of the American Association –championed this idea and, when he became President of the United States in 1901, he joined the new Surgeon-General Robert O’Reilly in advocating for a reimagining of his nation’s Red Cross along German and Japanese lines. This led to the production of a paper on the structural, financial, operational and leadership aspects of the world’s other Red Cross societies, which was presented to the United States Senate in 1904. The numbers scattered throughout the report alone were jarring to a government that had long regarded the Red Cross as an
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afterthought. The $4,188,172 of funds available to the Japanese Red Cross, the 300,000 strong members of the German Red Cross, the capacity of the French Red Cross, despite its relatively small membership of 55,000 to field 317 ambulances, staffed by 806 surgeons under the supervision of the Army Medical Department, to say nothing of the Russians’ 4,000 trained nurses –this was a picture of the Red Cross, not as a rabble of humanitarian idealists, but as a global phenomenon, the benefits of which were being realized and harnessed by the world’s militaries. In Japan, where the Emperor had donated some of his own lands to the Red Cross so that it could build a training hospital and headquarters, a particularly tantalising vision of harmony between the military, the state and its humanitarians appeared in the pages of the report. This vision was experienced as reality by the Medical Department’s Major Charles Lynch when, in 1905, he travelled to Manchuria as an observer to the Russo-Japanese War, at the conclusion of which he declared –like the other observers despatched from Germany, Britain and France –that the Japanese Red Cross represented the epitome of wartime humanitarianism. The outcome of these reports and inquiries was the incorporation of the ARC as a government body in 1905 led, not by an aged humanitarian with a thirst for bandage-in-hand battlefield heroics, but by an executive committee comprised of former military men and Surgeon-General O’Reilly.51 As part of this drive for reorganization Barton was pushed aside. Murmurs of discontent over her leadership in Cuba had grown into a steady chatter of conspiratorial plotting, scattered with talk of fund misappropriation, pettiness, incompetence and avarice. It was, one volunteer believed, as if ‘her name is never mentioned without shrugs and looks of doubt’.52 And yet, despite the cloud of amateurism that hung over her Barton was still the mother of the ARC and could not simply be removed. As her fiercest critic in the society, Mabel Boardman, opined to a fellow anti-Bartonite, the trick would be to salve Barton’s ego by offering her a honorary presidency for life of the organization she had worked so hard to found. Only then, Boardman believed, could the ARC get itself ‘a well-known man as president’. This, she hoped, would both deflect ongoing investigations into the ARC’s financial irregularities, and pave the way for a fresh start for the organization. Worn down by the constant questioning of her leadership and an inquiry into her mismanagement of donations –for which she was eventually acquitted of all charges –Barton jumped before she was pushed, stepping down as president of the ARC in 1904 and bringing to an end her forty-three-year-long mission to bring humanity to the battlefield on her own terms.53 Barton was not the only casualty of this period of change for the humanitarians. Stafford House attempted to continue its work in 1879 when Britain went to war with the Zulus. However, following the realization that the British army, unlike the Ottoman army, had no need for mercenary surgeons it was left to a small team of nurses –less than half the size of the contingent that Nightingale had led to Scutari –to carry the Stafford House flame. Limited to a mandate to, if necessary, lend ‘additional nurses to his (the Surgeon-General’s) present staff, and to forward him by the weekly steamers such medical comforts and hospital necessaries as might not be procurable in sufficient quantities at Natal’, the volunteers were quickly marginalized. Stafford House itself had to conclude that the army’s ‘medical officers seemed to feel that the work was not yet of proportions beyond the means of assistance they already had to meet,
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and seeing the difficulty of discriminating and of keeping volunteer and amateur help under necessary discipline and control, they declined the assistance of nurses in these hospitals’. This confirmed that, as it was no longer tied to an army medical service, Stafford House was now surplus to requirements –an amateur, unwanted relic of a bygone age. As had occurred in Barton’s case, the press smelled blood in the water. Although there were a number of bland ‘thank yous’ directed Stafford House’s way in print, at least one ‘Perplexed Enquirer’ wrote to The Times asking why Stafford House was appealing for money when it had so little to do. More damaging was the assessment given in The World, where the ‘body of fashionable dames’ sent out by Stafford House was presented as symptomatic of the wider problem of ‘so momentous a matter as the relief and nursing of the sick and wounded in war’ being ‘left to the tender mercies and precarious operations of private enterprise’. Striking a tone that dovetailed with Furley and Longmore’s concerns over the future war, the author spoke of how ‘in Germany, as in other countries, the State provides the nurses and doctors just as much as it does the bayonets and the Krupp guns’. The idea that Stafford House’s very existence indicated a weakness in Britain’s military-medical system was also picked up on by in Parliament by Lord Elcho, who thought it ‘discreditable that in a war with a savage nation there should be committees and collections in churches for such a purpose, notwithstanding all the money that has been voted’ by the government for the provision of quality, professional medical assistance.54 Without an army to validate it, Stafford House faded quickly into obsolescence. The fate of the NAS was not too dissimilar. When Britain went to war with the Boers in South Africa in 1898 the NAS, the St John Ambulance and the Army Nursing Reserve all came together under the banner of a Central Red Cross Committee. Chaired by the omnipresent Loyd-Lindsay, this Central Committee was supposed to provide trained and fully equipped auxiliaries that would ‘render effective assistance to the Army Medical Service in times of war’. What it delivered instead was chaos. As a Red Cross Commissioner in South Africa Furley tried but, ultimately, he could not prevent armbands and medical supplies from going missing, coordination with the army faltering, officers and army surgeons obstructing the volunteers, and manifold violations of the Red Cross symbol –sometimes even by the volunteers themselves, some of whom cast off their brassards and joined the fighting ranks of the Boers. When Loyd-Lindsay died in 1901 he was under a pall of press criticism for his lack of preparedness and indifference to the scale of waste and mismanagement within the NAS. Despite this, his successor and nephew, Archie Kirkman Loyd, wanted to continue his uncle’s vision of a Red Cross unbound to military discipline and unaccountable to none but its leadership. Furley, for his part, was unwilling to let the rot continue. Having waited for years to correct the mistakes of the Franco-Prussian War, he took his chance after Loyd-Lindsay’s death to call for an overhaul of the entire concept of the Red Cross in Britain, along the lines that had been adopted decades earlier by the French.55 Longmore having died in 1895, Furley found support for this reform from another star of the Royal Army Medical Corps, Surgeon-General William MacPherson, a no- nonsense military-medic who was both well educated in the history of the Geneva Convention and had a deep interest in the Japanese and German Red Cross societies.
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MacPherson attended the International Red Cross Conference in Vienna in 1897, from which he returned dumbfounded by how far Britain –once the trailblazer –was now lagging behind other nations in its military-medical preparations. The report MacPherson compiled on the conference supported Furley’s calls for reforms, and received the crucial support of the War Office, where concerns were already rife that in a future war Britain’s Red Cross volunteers ‘would come upon the military authorities in the form of a mass of assistance unorganized and untrained and unsuitable for the requirements of the moment’. The solution to this problem, as MacPherson expressed it, was simple: end the days of the Red Cross being and outsider and instead make the volunteers ‘integral parts of the military hospitals and ambulance’, and ensure that ‘the protection afforded by the convention to the military-medical organization must obviously include all voluntary aid organized to supplement these’.56 With War Office backing, Furley and MacPherson presided over a turn of the century reimagining of the British Red Cross that was not too dissimilar to that being undertaken at the same time by the ARC. Both were reincorporated in the first years of the new century as auxiliaries to their nation’s militaries. Their executive leadership was assumed by men with either extensive military or professional medical experience and, in regards to their organization of everything from stretcher-bearers, to the deployment of surgeons, to the use of trains and ships and procurement of medical equipment, both the British and American Red Cross societies looked to the models developed primarily by the Japanese, French and Germans for guidance.57 The term, ‘militarization’ has been used to describe this process of change across the world’s Red Cross societies in the final years of the nineteenth century. This term is accurate, in as much as the ultimate goal of these changes was to both better integrate the work of humanitarians into military operations, and make Red Cross volunteers subject to military control.58 The unpreparedness shown by the medical departments of Russia and the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, the United States in Cuba and Britain in South Africa did much to accelerate this militarization, which was also fed by rising international tensions and increased war-mindedness. The resulting push in Britain and the United States in particular to wed Red Cross volunteerism to their military- medical systems, was not, however, as dependent on this context as it first appears. If the history of the Red Cross is seen through the broader lens of the development of wartime humanitarianism since the 1850s it becomes clear that the ‘militarization’ of the movement was less a departure from the norm than it was a return to the path of professionalization and preparedness that had been advocated by Chenu, Pirogov, Nightingale, Longmore and the USSC in the years prior to the Geneva Convention being signed. A deviation from this path had occurred when Dunant emerged with a vision of wartime humanitarianism that championed Samaritan spirit and enthusiasm over accountability, training and military oversight. However exciting this alternative was initially to certain volunteers, by the time the Franco-Prussian War broke out much of Dunant’s vision had already faded into shadow. It will be recalled that Barton had never heard of the Red Cross prior to her meeting with Appia in Geneva. Moreover, many of the volunteers who joined the NAS failed to mention Dunant, the story of Solferino or much else Red Cross as sources of motivation for their journey to France, save a desire to wear the rather fetching armband and, in the case of the women in
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particular, follow the example set by the still greatly venerated Nightingale.59 Add to this the influence of the Civil War veterans –most of whom also took their cue from either Nightingale and the USSC if they were untrained volunteers, or Hammond and Letterman if they were surgeons –on Red Cross pioneers like Landa and Pirogov, as well as Moynier and Appia’s advocacy in La Guerre et la Charité of the need for more disciplined and better trained volunteers and it seems that the ‘militarization’ of the Red Cross movement in the years after 1871 was merely the next step in a long journey that had begun as far back as the 1863 conference, when Moynier had tried to shelve all discussion of free-roaming volunteers on day one of proceedings. This journey had its lacunas. Loyd-Lindsay’s laissez-faire conception of the NAS was one, Barton’s peacetime disaster relief version of the Red Cross was another. Generally though, the story of the humanitarian campaign to control war since Nightingale first set sail for Scutari in 1854 had always been characterized by the need to create professional, well-trained and accountable volunteers –humanitarians who could handle the ever increasing demands of war. What happened at the end of the nineteenth century therefore, was not a transformation of the Red Cross, but an explicit culling of the many idiosyncrasies and ambiguities that had dogged the movement since its inception. This endgame for the amateurs was driven in part by post-1871 external forces such as the need for greater accountability, and the desire for military reform on the part of men like MacPherson, Milyutin and Tsunetami. But it is also clear that the push to militarize humanitarian action had always been strong within the ranks of the Red Cross family. Longmore, Pirogov, Chenu, Brackenbury and Furley all backed the process of militarization. In the case of the latter, this about face from his initial interpretation of the Red Cross idea was initiated –no less than Moynier’s musings over the limits of the Geneva Convention –by the inarguable lesson taught to humanitarians by the Franco-Prussian War: without a rethink, the humanitarians would continue to fail the challenges posed to them by an increasingly belligerent world. The idea that adaptation was necessary for the humanitarians to survive was articulated best by Longmore in 1872, when, in reflecting on the past and future of the Red Cross he opined that: We are justified in believing that the establishment of National Aid Societies for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in time of War has obtained so deep and extended a hold in Europe that no efforts made by persons who object to their existence will succeed in uprooting and putting an end to them. If this proposition be assented to, all must agree that the consistent and wise part will be so to direct their action, that no impediments to the military operations in which armies are engaged shall result from it, no risk of international difficulties be engendered; but, on the contrary, that their action shall be made to conduce, to the fullest practicable extent, to the mitigation of those sufferings to which the Societies owe their origin, and on account of the existence of which they are supported.60
This notion of humanitarians serving their nation’s militaries gave a focus to the Red Cross movement that neither Moynier nor Dunant had ever been able to provide. For better or worse, the ‘militarization’ of the Red Cross was what gave it vibrancy,
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energy and clarity of purpose, particularly once fears of a future war became pervasive. A focusing of the minds of the humanitarians and the military men was not the only outcome of the steadily rising rumble of war drums. Indeed, as the Red Cross volunteers prepared for the carnage to come another, older enemy of human suffering stirred from its enforced slumber: defiant, energized and more determined than ever to prove that the future war was by no means an inevitability.
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Enter the Peace-Seekers
Baroness Bertha von Suttner expressed the concerns of a generation of peace-seekers, international lawyers, and humanitarians when, in 1889 she released a novel with the expressed purpose of educating Europe about the beastliness of war and its futility. As a graphic chronicle of the wastage of life caused by armed conflict, Suttner’s novel, Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms) had more than a whiff of Solferino about it. This was not surprising given Suttner’s admiration for the author of the now classic humanitarian tale, who was presented in Lay Down Your Arms as ‘that notable patrician of Geneva’, the brave composer of a ‘heart-rending cry of woe’ who had engendered ‘an impulse of popular sympathy’ for the plight of soldiers. This conception of Dunant and his achievements came from the mind of the protagonist of Suttner’s story, Martha Althaus, a fictionalized representation of every women still waiting for a husband or son who would never return from the battlefield. In what was perhaps a further nod to Dunant, Suttner commenced Althaus’s painful odyssey with the Italian War of Independence, during which she loses her husband at the Battle of Magenta, before resolving to dedicate her life to the cause of peace. Despite her best efforts, however, war continues to batter Europe, and Althaus herself is repeatedly left its victim. Over the course of the Schleswig-Holstein, Austro-Prussian War and Franco-Prussian Wars, the countess endures the loss of her second husband and other family members to wounds and disease, their pointless sacrifices leaving her alone ‘to weep bitter tears and utter sighs of agony’ for the rest of her days.1 To a Europe in which thousands were living through the reality of Althaus’s fictional tale Suttner’s message resonated, more so given the fact that the author used first-hand accounts from those left widowed and wounded by the battles of Königgrätz, Sedan and Solferino to craft her story. Such care in preparation paid off for Suttner, and within a few years of its German release Lay Down Your Arms had been translated into a number of languages and disseminated across Europe and the United States, rising in popularity and influence to such an extent that Suttner was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905 for the work.2 Flattering as this plaudit was, Suttner’s goal was not to garner praise, and Lay Down Your Arms was more than a lament for the pain unleashed when men go to war. Much as Dunant had used Solferino to show how volunteers could mitigate the sufferings of soldiers, so Suttner wove the story of Europe’s peace movement into Althaus’s tale, with an aim to bring hope to her readers that the future war could be prevented. To bring corporeality to this dream, it was less to the Quaker
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pacifists and free-trade faithful of the pre-Crimean War age that Suttner referred, and more to men like Bluntschli, who makes an appearance in the narrative as ‘the great professor of law’ who, with the help of the visionaries of the IIL had responded to the Franco-Prussian War by setting ‘to work to obtain the views of various dignitaries and governments on the subject of national peace’. It is through her growing awareness of Bluntschli, the IIL and various peace societies that Althaus comes to the realization that lasting peace is achievable if only the world’s powers could be convinced to grasp it. Praise for Dunant aside, the solution proffered by Suttner through her protagonist was not to further regulate the conduct of soldiers or support the labours of humanitarians. Instead, Althaus realizes that the only cure for the poison of war is for governments to accept that ‘when disagreements begin, an arbitration tribunal, not force, is to decide’. Through Althaus’s exploration of the concept of arbitration –the idea that states should submit their disputes to a neutral tribunal of adjudicators in order to achieve a peaceful resolution –the book draws to its close, sending a clear message to any reader moved by the tale that they are not alone in their concerns, and that peace through international arbitration is both necessary and achievable.3 The release of Lay Down Your Arms –and its message that arbitration could nullify the threat of future war –came at a decisive moment for the peace-seekers who, as the 1890s dawned, were finally starting to regain some of the momentum they had lost decades earlier. Aside from the Red Cross’s takeover of the fight to control war, as well as the increasing regularity of conflict epitomized by Prussia’s many triumphs, Europe’s peace movement had also suffered from internal rupture throughout the 1860s, caused in no small part by long-standing divergences of interest among the movement’s members. These fractures were brought spectacularly to the fore in September 1867 – barely weeks after the similarly fissile Red Cross conference in Paris –at an event that was supposed to unite the disparate peace-seekers, give them a focus for their collective energies and reignite their floundering cause. This was the Congress of Peace, a four- day gathering held at the Salle du Conseil Général in Geneva, just across the road from the Hôtel de Ville where, only three years earlier, the Geneva Convention had been signed in tacit acceptance of the notion that wars would always need to be fought. The fact that the same idea of war’s inevitability was also accepted by some of the Congress’ attendees, was only one of the reasons why the event was described by one reporter has having ‘began with platitudes and ended in violence’. In an effort to draw the attention of the press, the organizers recruited the quintessential freedom fighter of the age, Giuseppe Garibaldi, to speak on the opening day. As if deliberately playing into the doubts already expressed by moderate pacifists over the idea of having one of Europe’s most notorious proponents of revolutionary violence deliver a keynote, Garibaldi used the occasion to call for war against the Papal States, before abandoning the congress early in order to head to Italy and turn his words into actions. Although Garibaldi’s charisma and fire ensured that he was generally well received, the explosive tone he set, and his abrupt retreat from proceedings, led to the congress spiralling out of control. All sense of unity having collapsed, the days that followed Garibaldi’s departure were a riotous, incoherent mess in which, as The Times reported, ‘every man was tuning his own instrument, attending to it alone and making himself as deaf as possible to the jarring din around’. This din consisted of speeches covering everything from the
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corruption of the papacy, to the despotism of monarchs, the viability of anarchism as a political basis for peace, the need for socialist upheaval across Europe and the benefits of nationalist insurrection. There was much for the international coterie of police and spies tasked with monitoring the 6,000 attendees to take in, especially when it became apparent that amidst the outcries from the supposedly pacifist crowd were incitements to revolution and the forced redistribution of wealth –sentiments that further damaged the more moderate peace-seekers by linking the congress to the meeting of the First International that had taken place in Lausanne only days before.4 His sensibilities ruffled by such fire and brimstone, Moynier nonetheless paid close attention to the mob of peace-seekers, socialists, agitators and anarchists that had descended on his city shortly after he himself had returned disgruntled from the Red Cross conference in Paris. Beyond seeking respite from the headaches induced by his duties as Committee president, Moynier’s interest in the Congress of Peace was understandable. Were not these men, despite their excitable behaviour, like him in desiring a better world? Were they not fellow travellers in the campaign to control war and all its horrors? Having followed the politely scathing coverage of the congress in the local press, Moynier took little time to conclude that the answer, for the most part, was no. This was particularly true in regards to the organizer of the congress, Charles Lemonnier, the leader of the Ligue Internationale de la Paix et de la Liberté, which at the time was one of the largest and most influential peace societies in Europe. It was also one of the most radical –the whiff of socialist revolution that hung over Lemonnier’s group setting it apart from the more Christian, Quaker-influenced peace societies of the pre- Crimean War age. At the heart of Lemonnier’s view was the notion that social justice, the promotion of democracy and internationalism were prerequisites to a world at peace. The pursuit of social justice was something that Moynier could agree with, however, the conservative in him was unnerved by the radicalism of Lemonnier’s desire to form ‘outside of the governmental sphere, not only without their permission but against their will, a lasting and permanent democratic institution . . . which would become the general assembly of the United States of Europe’. Moynier also balked at Garibaldi’s peace through self-determination which, if the speeches at the congress were anything to go by, could only be achieved through the paradoxical pursuit of violence. More appealing to Moynier was the view espoused by another pre-eminent European peace-seeker who, openly and with purpose, had declared that he would not be attending Lemonnier’s great and chaotic event. This man, who advocated a more systematic and pragmatic form of peace-seeking to what was being preached in Geneva, and whose work would do much to reinvigorate the European peace movement, was Frédéric Passy.5 Born in Paris in 1822, Passy was a writer, theorist and lecturer in economics who, horrified rather than inspired by the stories told to him as a boy by his father of fighting alongside the great Napoleon, was resolved from an early age to question the purpose of war. This questioning did not abate as he entered adulthood and commenced his studies, in which he first focused on law, before switching to the exploration of economics and its role in global politics. Passy’s interest in this field dovetailed with his concerns over the damaging effects of war, and from his years of study he developed a peaceable outlook that, unlike Lemonnier, was grounded more in economic and political realities than emotion and ideology. In developing his views on the relationship between economics
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and peace, Passy held to an idea that had been trumpeted by the pre-Crimean War peace-seekers, namely, that free trade between nations was the necessary foundation of a peaceful world. As tensions rose between France and Prussia in the late 1860s Passy – in defiance of the clear decline of Europe’s peace movement –continued to promote the idea of peace through trade by publishing an appeal in Le Temps for the creation of a society that could persuade Prussia and France of the economic prosperity of peaceful cooperation. Despite the enthusiasm for war in France, Passy was able to form the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix, whose membership quickly grew to include representatives from Italy, Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and the United States. For three years the Ligue Internationale laboured in the midst of rising political tensions to keep the peace between France and Prussia, usually by means of personal appeals to Napoleon III, Wilhelm, Bismarck and Queen Augusta. Even after combat was entered Passy continued his campaign by peppering Wilhelm with letters urging him to declare peace, in particular after the decisive Prussian victory at Sedan. Passy was so desperate that he even toyed with the idea of taking a perilous balloon ride across Prussian lines in order to gain a face-to-face meeting with the emperor. At heart, however, Passy was a realist, and he knew fully well that no gesture – however dramatic –on his part, would persuade either Wilhelm or Bismarck to relent. The Prussians marched on, crushing both France and the raison d’être of the Ligue Internationale which, with its membership scattered and its message of peace spurned by the drum-beating press, soon faded into obsolescence.6 No less than Dunant’s vision of volunteerism, Moynier’s hopes for a coordinated Red Cross movement and the IIL’s pursuit of a global consensus on the regulation of war, the Ligue Internationale was a casualty of the Franco-Prussian War, and the preparations for future war that arose across Europe in its aftermath. Much as the lawyers and the humanitarians had tried to adjust the laws of war and the work of volunteers in response to this new era, so Passy used the spectre of war as a catalyst for change in the peace movement in the years after 1871. Instead of reverting to fiery denunciations, demands for unrealistic peace treaties or appeals to economic self- interest, Passy advocated a response similar to that devised by the IIL –to play the long game. The gradual development of new, more peaceable norms via international ‘compliance with a law and acceptance of authority as a remedy for the passions of conflict’ Passy believed, was the key to sparing the world from self-destruction. To champion this aim, in the years after the Franco-Prussian War Passy not only joined Dunant’s Universal Alliance –like Suttner, Passy had been a fan of Dunant’s since the release of Solferino –but he also reformed and renamed his Ligue Internationale as the Société Française pour l’arbitrage entre Nations.7 As the name of his new organization suggested, Passy believed that arbitration was the best means by which lasting peace between nations could be achieved. This belief in the importance of a systemized, procedural means of achieving peace through the submission of international disputes to a neutral tribunal was the thing that most set Passy apart from the more revolutionary Garibaldis and Lemonniers of the peace movement. Faith in arbitration and the laws that would underpin it was also the reason why Moynier, despite his presidency of the Committee –whose very existence depended on wars being waged –decided to join Passy’s Ligue Internationale in 1868 and, even
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after the Franco-Prussian War had decimated the peace movement, continued to ally himself with Passy’s cause. As was true of Moynier’s conciliatory appraisal of the peace movement in La Guerre et la Charité, this was not a case of the Committee president being a closet peace-seeker. Rather, his belief in Passy was owed to their shared desire to promote international law, encourage dialogue between states and reject the hysterics and utopians of both the humanitarian and peace movements. It was on these principles that Passy the peace-seeker found common ground with not only Moynier, but many of the other Lieber-loving lawyers of the IIL. As Rolin-Jaequemyns put it, the participants at the Geneva Peace Congress in 1867 were ‘absurd’ in their arguments for ‘revolutionary peace’, which sat in opposition to the IIL’s belief that, if the cause of peace was to be successful championed, it could only be done so by those who were ready to ‘move on to something more tangible than vaguely worded wishes and diatribes against warfare’. Like Passy, Rolin-Jaequemyns saw arbitration as the means by which the peace-seekers could move forward in this more pragmatic direction.8 The IIL had, of course, been created to craft new international laws rather than to forge global peace. Indeed, Rolin-Jaequemyns’s expressions of contempt for peace- seekers were similar to those espoused by certain army surgeons when discussing Red Cross volunteers –amateurs who were disrupting the efforts of those who actually knew what they were doing. This did not mean, however, that the attainment of peace as a principle was rejected by the IIL. Tied as international law was to the maintenance of healthy relations between states, the pursuit of peace was always a factor in the IIL’s mission, and its statutes made clear that the organization should contribute ‘within the limits of its competence, either to the maintenance of peace or to the observance of the laws of war’. As a future president of the IIL recalled, its members recognized that the ‘advance of international law is the basis necessary to all efforts for peace and justice in international relations’.9 This connection between the order and stability provided by international law and the pursuit of peace was demonstrated even before the IIL’s founding when, in Geneva in 1871, one of the most successful chapters in the story of international arbitration was written. During the US Civil War, neutral Britain had assisted the Confederacy by secretly constructing warships for its fleet. The most notorious of these ships, the CSS Alabama, went on to devastate the Union’s merchant and naval vessels, at a cost in blood and treasure that Washington demanded recompense for once the war had ended. The issue simmered in Anglo-American relations for years until, finally, in 1871, both sides agreed to use arbitration as a means of resolving the dispute. This process was presided over by a tribunal consisting of representatives from the United States, Britain, Italy, Switzerland and Brazil, who assembled at that most fateful of locations, Geneva’s Hôtel de Ville, to adjudicate the matter. The results were exactly what the IIL and, indeed, Washington, had hoped for. In addition to the United States receiving $15,500,000 compensation from Britain, the process guided both parties into talks that would culminate in the Treaty of Washington, at which a number of outstanding issues of discontent in Anglo-American relations were ironed out. It was, as Passy recalled, the clearest example yet to governments that peace was no chimera and that, in the form of an arbitration tribunal, ‘they had at their disposal an amicable and legal means of resolving conflicts that might arise between them’.10 Carried on the
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wave of post-Alabama Claims excitement, many of the lawyers who would go on to form the IIL in 1873 also saw what had happened in Geneva as a turning point in the campaign to bring about an global consensus on the importance of international law as a mechanism to either regulate war or keep the peace. Moynier’s call for the setting up of an international court to investigate violations of the Geneva Convention came a year after the Alabama Claims, the outcome of which also inspired David Dudley- Field to develop his gargantuan code of international law in 1872. Throughout the text itself, moreover, the importance of arbitration as a central, omnipresent factor in international law was emphasized, with Dudley-Field decreeing that all parties to his code had to agree to contribute to a ‘Joint High Commission and a High Tribunal of Arbitration’, the members of which would meet at an annual conference to discuss ‘the provisions of this code and their amendment, averting war, facilitating intercourse and preserving peace’.11 Arbitration as promoted by Dudley-Field, therefore, would come with the territory of any subscription to international law. Outside of the IIL’s meeting rooms, the significance of the Alabama Claims was also not lost on those who had either never considered the cause of peace or, if they were aware of such a cause, had been inclined towards more radical means of achieving it. The British politician and dedicated pacifist Randal Cremer was an example of the latter. Although he had long recognized the benefits of arbitration, Cremer’s faith in socialism led him to both become secretary of the First International, and form an alliance with Lemonnier’s League de la Paix. In the wake of the disastrous Peace Congress in 1867, however, Cremer began to feel that both the First International and the League de la Paix were too extreme, and their desire for either worker-led revolution or peace through agitation and violence, too utopian. These thoughts were bolstered by the success of the Alabama Claims, which drew Cremer away from his more radical peace-seeking views and refocused his mind on linking his work with labour organizations to the popularization of arbitration. It was to this cause that Cremer dedicated himself from the 1870s onwards, leading the British wing of what was fast becoming a large, transatlantic pro-arbitration movement.12 It took Suttner a while but, eventually, she too joined the movement. At the time of the Alabama Claims she was living in the Caucasus with her new husband Arthur, teaching music, writing novels and struggling financially to sustain her relatively carefree existence. The prospect of a grand crusade in the name of humanity lay far from her mind. Shortly after moving back to Austria in 1885, however, Suttner’s attention was grabbed by the noise of the pro-arbitration movement and the promise of peace their schemes held. Like Passy, she had grown up with military men for paternal figures and although she didn’t develop the same opposition to war early in life, her liberal, cosmopolitan sensibilities, as well as her distaste for the kind of chauvinist militarism that had become so prevalent in the Kaiserreich, ensured that when Suttner heard that ‘the idea of justice between nations, the struggle to do away with war had assumed life and form’, she felt driven to lend support to the cause. To this end, Suttner read up on the Alabama Claims, reached out to Passy and members of the newly formed Britain-based International Arbitration and Peace Association and, in acknowledging that her greatest asset was her command of the written word, she resolved ‘to be of service to the Peace League . . . by trying to write a book which should propagate their
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ideas’. Accordingly, Suttner not only made a last minute modification to her work in progress, The Machine Age, in order to include a critique of the armaments trade but, shortly after that book’s release, she threw herself into the production of Lay Down Yours Arms.13 Astride the worlds of international law and the Red Cross, Moynier’s reaction to the post-Alabama Claims resurgence of the arbitration movement was always going to be more complicated than that of the aforementioned peace-seekers. On the one hand, he could not help but share the view that arbitration was the most tenable step towards universal peace. On the other, he had to reckon with the fact that, his personal sympathy for Passy’s aims aside, the Red Cross societies had long been ambivalent to the cause of peace and, particularly since the Franco-Prussian War, were becoming more focused than ever on marrying themselves to their nation’s armies.14 There was never any question, therefore, of Moynier taking the radical step of altering the trajectory of the Red Cross towards pro-arbitration peace-seeking. He nonetheless did make an effort to use the success of the Alabama Claims to serve the cause of humanizing war. Specifically, he proposed to the Committee the idea of using an arbitration tribunal to adjudicate not only on disputes between states on the precipice of conflict, but on violations of the Geneva Convention during war itself. This experiment in using a system designed for peacemaking to regulate war was as ambitious as it was controversial and, ultimately, unsuccessful. Moynier’s fellow lawyers questioned the proposal on the grounds that, although neutral adjudication could work in the cause of maintaining peace, it was unlikely that states that were either already at war, or in the midst of its vengeance-laden aftermath would be willing to let their soldiers’ behaviour be scrutinized by outside parties. The reality of this problem was confirmed by the tepid response Moynier received to his suggestion from Europe’s governments, none of which showed more than a passing consideration for the idea of submitting their convention-violating troops to a neutral tribunal. Even the Red Cross societies distanced themselves from the proposal, which seemed altogether too radical at a time when the movement was still struggling from the many blows dealt to its credibility by the Franco-Prussian War. Indeed, with the exception of the ever-enthusiastic Nicosia Landa –who lauded both the efforts of the IIL and the merits of arbitration in his 1877 study of the laws of war –most Red Cross leaders kept their distance from the peace- seekers, and held aloof to the arbitration-fuelled renaissance. Despite Moynier’s best efforts, in the end all that linked the Geneva Convention to the Alabama Claims was the fact that the arbitration tribunal had sat in the same room in the Hôtel de Ville where the 1864 conference had taken place, and the tribunal’s president Count Sclopis had accordingly paid tribute to the Committee as the organization that had started Europe’s trend of ‘turning the proposals of good men into terms of international law’.15 His attempts to link the Red Cross to the arbitration movement may have floundered, but through the IIL Moynier would enjoy greater success. As adherents to the notion that international law was the product of culture, history and the values of civilized societies, the IIL had very firm grounds to believe –based on the explosion of new pro-arbitration societies and peace-promoting newsletters across Europe during the 1870s –that a post-Alabama Claims world was hungrier than ever for some kind of legal mechanism that could preserve peace.16 The evidence for this grew overwhelming
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in the final decades of the nineteenth century, during which pro-arbitration societies met with increasing regularity, Lay Down Your Arms was released to great acclaim and, most importantly, a range of disputes between Britain and the United States over territorial rights in Venezuela, seal hunting in the Bering Sea and the borders of Alaska were resolved by the two parties submitting their grievances to arbitration tribunals. These tribunals were made up of arbitrators from France, Sweden, Venezuela, Norway, Canada, and Russia which, in the case of an 1895 border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana, was represented by Martens, who was increasingly becoming Europe’s go-to chair for all things arbitration. He was not the only international lawyer to get involved in the Venezuela case. Indeed, the very idea of submitting the dispute to arbitration came from a letter sent to The Times by John Westlake, who was supported in this initiative by Rolin-Jaequemyns.17 Arbitration therefore, was seized on successfully by the IIL as a means of rejuvenating itself and reacquiring focus following the setbacks of the Brussels Conference and the Balkans conflicts. Passy also benefitted from the popularity of arbitration, and sought a means of promoting it as the necessary foundation of a new, peaceable world order. In addition to working with Cremer and his associates in Britain on their campaign to lobby politicians on the issue of arbitration, Passy made contact with two of the leading lights of the American peace movement, the veteran arbitration advocate Elihu Burritt and the secretary of the American Peace Society, Reverend James B. Miles. Since the end of the Civil War the American Peace Society had been agitating in Washington for the passing of a bill that would ensure the United States’ participation in arbitration in all international disputes. Like the Europeans, therefore, Burritt and Miles saw the Alabama Claims as both a vindication of their belief in arbitration, and a watershed that could revive the transatlantic peace movement that had been destroyed by the both the Civil War and Prussia’s rise. Excited by these developments, Burritt despatched Miles to Europe in 1873 with the task of forming an international pro-arbitration coalition of lawyers, peace-seekers and whoever else was willing to contribute to the cause. The purpose of this coalition, as Burritt saw it, would be both to promote transatlantic dialogue on the issue of peace, and draft an international code that could be used to guide arbitration tribunals sitting anywhere in the world. The first indication that Miles’ grand assignment would not be so straightforward came when he met Rolin- Jaequemyns for the first time. Despite sharing the Americans’ desire for peace, the lawyer’s old prejudices towards the peace-seeking mob of 1867 shone through and, having heard Mile’s proposal, he questioned the ‘practical utility of peace societies’ being involved in the pro-arbitration campaign. Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave such an important task in the hands of the more knowledgeable lawyers from Ghent? Desperate for allies in a France that was still burning with war-hungry resentment towards the Kaiserreich, Passy proved more receptive to Miles’ overtures. The American even made some headway with Lemonnier, who not only met with him and Passy, but agreed with their argument that the old days of shoddily organized agitation were over, and that the future for the peace-seekers lay in working together to get an international code for arbitration drafted, signed and ratified.18 Despite Rolin-Jaequemyns’s reservations, it was clear to all parties that the IIL, the Passy peace faction, Lemonnier and the Americans were moving, roughly, in the same
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direction. Together, therefore, the IIL and Miles decided to convene an arbitration conference in Brussels in 1873, at which the best way forward from the Alabama Claims would be discussed. Unlike the Ghent meeting that had led to the founding of the IIL, this event was designed to be ‘of a more popular character, and with a professed object more calculated to elicit public sympathy’ for the peace-seeking cause.19 In this sense the conference was supposed to correct the disaster of 1867 by bringing the various factions of the peace movement together to discuss the common ground of arbitration that had been so damagingly lacking at Lemonnier’s now infamous gathering. Much like Martens’s conference on the laws of war that would take place in the same city a year later, however, the Brussels Conference for the Reform and Codification of the Laws of Nations ended up exposing divisions between the supposedly united peace-seekers. Alongside the IIL founders, Passy, Miles, Burritt and a number of veteran British peace- seekers were also in attendance, including Montague Bernard, an esteemed professor of international law at Oxford, IIL member and advisor to the tribunal that had sat on the Alabama Claims. It was perhaps owing to his impressive resume and recent experience of arbitration that Bernard was the most vocal of those present, which would have been fine for the harmony of the conference had he not been fixated from the first day on pointing out the schisms that existed between the Passy faction and the IIL. In Bernard’s defence, these schisms were rather glaring. This was particularly so on the fundamental issue of whether or not arbitration should be made compulsory via an international code. Whereas the Passy faction was insistent that such a code of law was needed to force all parties to submit their disputes to arbitration, the IIL took the view that a coalition of private individuals such as was gathered for the conference had no legal right to tell governments what to do. Taking this issue as his starting point, Bernard correctly identified another, related, problem with the Passy faction’s view –the fact that they didn’t even appear to understand what an international code was. To their mind, an international code was a law that all the world’s nations would have to abide by. This was a notion that, Bernard and other IIL members repeatedly pointed out, was both a nonsense given that the nations of the world did not share the same legislative structures, and a complete misunderstanding of what the lawyers themselves meant by the term international code. It was left to Dudley-Field, fresh from authoring his magnum opus, to burst the Passy faction’s bubble by pointing out that ‘an international code was simply a treaty for the various nations which agreed to accept it’. The realization of a binding, universal code that could force states into arbitration was something that, as Bluntschli explained to Passy, ‘must be done little by little, by the means of special treaties’ of which, there would need to be many. This was the same argument Moynier had put forward after the Franco-Prussian War when discussing the place of the Geneva Convention in the laws of war –one document among a corpus of treaties that would together provide the foundation for an international consensus on the need to regulate and humanize war. For the cause of peace the same formula was advocated by the IIL. Rather than pursue the fantastical panacea of a single code that would force peace upon the world, the lawyers of Ghent argued for the development of a series of treaties that would gradually normalize the practice of arbitration.20 Already deflated by the IIL’s advocacy of such a softly, softly approach, the Passy faction endured another bloody nose when Bernard pointed out that the resolution of the
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Alabama Claims had been far from a smooth, amicable process, and had instead been beset by legal difficulties and political complexities. The idea that the same process of arbitration that had worked for the Americans and the British on this specific occasion would be successful in all cases of dispute across the world was untenable in light of the cold, hard fact that the motivations of states –even ones like the United States and Britain that shared similar values and, indeed, had a history of submitting themselves to arbitration that went back to the late 1700s –could never be uniform.21 Flexibility in arbitration, Bernard argued, was the only way that it could work on a global scale. Persuaded by Bernard’s viewpoint, Bluntschli and Rolin-Jaequemyns, among other IIL members, resolved to reject any notion of arbitration being mandatory. Passy was left to quibble over how the word ‘obligatory’ would be recorded in the conference minutes before reluctantly, ‘for the sake of the authority of the resolution voted on’, submitting to Bernard’s point of view.22 The IIL’s stance was a reality check not only for Passy, but for the American peace- seekers, who had always been more idealistic in pursuing their aims, and captured by the divine quality of their mission more than their European counterparts.23 At Brussels, Miles had spoken of the ‘grand work of enthroning, in the place of the lynch law which now prevails among the nations, righteous, beneficent law’, and of how ‘law, which is only another word for the will of God’, flowed throughout the universe and could be harnessed to usher states away from ‘those terrible conflicts, which so often arise and deluge broad countries with blood’.24 Such romanticizing of the power of law doubtless entered the minds of certain IIL members from time to time as they reflected on their grand mission. However, when it came to the day to day work of the IIL –proudly and somewhat pompously described by Rolin-Jaequemyns to conference attendees as the application of ‘scientific methods, those of patient and laborious study, for the purposes of the elucidation of the various questions’ related to international law –it was made clear at Brussels that the lawyers and the peace-seekers were speaking different languages. Unsurprisingly, by the time the conference ended the ostensibly resurgent transatlantic peace movement had resolved to divide itself for the sake of pursuing its shared, if not entirely agreed upon, cause of arbitration. This led to the IIL sticking to its professional, ‘scientific’ exploration of international law while the Americans, Cremer and Passy went on to found two organizations that would march to their own, preferred drumbeat. These were the International Law Association (ILA), founded in 1873, and the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU), founded in 1889.25 The founding of the ILA and the IPU out of what had been a seemingly fractious and unproductive conference, was testament to the enduring promise of arbitration within the peace movement. The creation of the IPU was also a sign that Passy and Cremer –the organization’s founders –had taken onboard Bernard’s warnings at Brussels about needing to consider the complexities of international relations and the role of diplomacy in the campaign for arbitration. Both the IPU and the ILA acknowledged ‘the ominous signs that pity, as an operative force in the mitigation of war has nearly reached its limit’ and, consequently, there was now a pressing need to reject the utopian radicalism of peace-seekers gone by. This imperative was woven into the IPU’s statues, which laid out the organization’s task as being to:
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secure recognition in their respective states, either through legislation or by international treaties, of the principle of solving disputes between nations by arbitration or other friendly and judicial means. It has also the further objective of studying other questions of international laws and, in general, problems relating to the development of peaceful relations among peoples.
There may have been a whiff of idealism in this statement, but beneath it lay the reality that the IPU was more than a gang of concerned conference conveners. Instead, it was an international lobby group, comprised of individuals with varying degrees of political power and influence, who were prepared to use these assets to persuade their governments to accept arbitration as the way of the future. The IPU also maintained a consistency in advocacy that Passy had long desired by meeting regularly and, in 1892, establishing a permanent base for itself in Berne. The IPU, in short, was the manifestation of the peace movement moving beyond the realms of grassroots agitation and sporadic conference organization, into an arena where its members could engage politically in the process of normalizing arbitration in international relations.26 In this sense, the IPU was to the pursuers of peace what Stafford House and the German and Japanese Red Cross Societies were to the mitigators of wartime suffering – a professional, organized and pragmatic reaction to the fears of future war. The key difference, of course, was that the humanitarians’ raison d’être to provide succour to soldiers was better aligned with the prevailing acceptance by states of the future war’s inevitability and, therefore, more attainable than the peace-seekers’ goal of stopping the grand conflagration before it ignited. The humanitarians had also had the time to grow, adapt and adjust their campaign. Bereft of the stagnation inflicted on the peace movement during the 1860s, the humanitarians had used many a battlefield and international conference to experiment with different models of response to war, reflect on their shortcomings and successes and to work out how best to refine their activities and aspirations. The peace-seekers, navigating the twists and turns of their renaissance, had to start from the beginning, turning back to the old ideas of arbitration and peace built on free trade in order to fashion an effective response to the pervasive war-mindedness around them. It was for this reason that the Passy faction struggled to find the same page as the IIL at Brussels, and was forced in the aftermath of the conference to embark on a steep learning curve. The creation of the IPU was one of the more notable outcomes of this crash course in peace-seeking and, by the 1890s it had become the spearhead of a resurgent movement that was growing in size, complexity and confidence. Indeed, so confident were the peace-seekers in their renaissance that they resumed their polite quarrel with the humanitarians by penning an open letter to attendees at the International Red Cross conference in Rome in 1892, the purpose of which was to convert the volunteers to the cause of ending, rather than humanizing war: you, then, who are laboring earnestly for the good of men, and who do not despair of virtue, must desire, as we do, the cessation of war, and you certainly would be happy to see the day when civilized nations should no longer need your cooperation . . . United with us, then, we pray you, in the work of the better
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preservation of society, case a vote which shall render our causes common; oppose energetically war in all its forms, you who with the noble purpose of rendering it humane have virtually declared it to be barbarous.27
The call for unity in the name of peace between humanitarians and peace-seekers, however, went unheeded at a conference where an acceptance of future war hung ominous. This was reflected in an agenda that featured calls for a reconsideration of the 1868 articles to extend the Geneva Convention to maritime warfare, and an exchange of ideas over how to ‘take precautions for the storm, because we know that once the storm is unleashed, it will be too late to prepare’.28 By the time of the International Red Cross conference in Vienna in 1897, the peace-seekers were openly criticizing their hoped-for humanitarian allies, whose increasing turn to war-readiness was now palpable. ‘In its original conception the Red Cross movement was a noble and promising one’ recorded the Herald of Peace in its disappointed review of the Vienna conference. Now, however, ‘as the auxiliary or the agent of militarism its character is changed altogether’.29 As they marched towards the future war that lurked on Europe’s horizon, therefore, both peace-seekers and humanitarians remained resolved to keep firmly to the separate paths they had chosen. In addition to their inability to change the direction of the Red Cross, there were other signs that the peace movement was not as juggernaut-like as some of its members assumed. The near-annual international peace conferences of the 1890s developed steady momentum for the movement; however, even the peace-seekers themselves admitted to being ‘painfully aware that the congresses of today are in no- wise intellectually superior to the earlier ones’ from the golden, pre-Crimean War era. The spread of peace fever across Europe also clearly had its limits. The Hamburg Peace Congress of 1897 was a thinly attended affair, convened by the German peace-seekers who were still struggling, despite the continent-wide renaissance, to pursue their aims within a nation that seemed hell-bent on war. There was even outrage expressed in the press when, at the start of the congress, no message of thanks was given by the lovers of peace to Kaiser Wilhelm II.30 Moreover, although they were seldom as divisive as those of the past, the congresses held over the course of the decade in Hamburg, Bern, London, Rome and Antwerp nonetheless featured many a heated debate over whether ad hoc arbitration tribunals, formed for the purposes of solving a specific dispute, should be abandoned in favour of establishing a permanent international court of arbitration, as well as the related issue of the place of enforcement in the arbitration process. There were even some peace-seekers who suggested that an international army be formed as a means of ensuring –presumably by threat of force –that states submit themselves to peaceful arbitration. In addition to disputes over the forms that arbitration should take there were also notable setbacks for the practice itself. Off the back of the successful Venezuela arbitration in 1895, a treaty was drafted requiring Britain and the United States to submit all further disputes to an arbitration tribunal –a proposal that harkened back to the arguments in favour of mandatory arbitration that had been presented by the Passy faction at Brussels in 1873. The outcome of the treaty negotiations proved the validity of Montague Bernard’s opposing view. The United States Senate rejected the proposal
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on the grounds that it could not countenance such a deprivation of Washington’s freedom of action in international affairs. This outcome only re-enforced the view of the international lawyers that, for all the achievements made since the Alabama Claims, the idea of the world’s nations accepting arbitration as mandatory was as difficult a task as it had ever been. Moreover, pursuit of such a fantastical goal was increasingly viewed by the IIL as an unwanted distraction from what it saw as the more urgent matter of establishing a permanent court of arbitration. Such a body, through its permanency and the continued education of its judges in the various treaties of international law would, so one advocate believed, ‘be better trusted to adjust its awards to the entire body of international principles, distinctions and rules’ than ad hoc tribunals that would struggle to set precedents in international law.31 Away from debates over how to embed arbitration into international relations, Suttner was busy demonstrating that there was still room in the peace movement for more grass roots activism. In 1896 she travelled to the Swiss village of Heiden in order to recruit to the cause of peace the man who, as she put it to him, had brought ‘burning charity to the service of mankind to mitigate and prevent the evils inflicted by war’. Worn out by the ups and, more recently, downs of his life, the ageing Dunant had left Paris for Heiden some years earlier, embittered and poverty-stricken to the point of having to subsist on a bland diet of vegetables and grain. For any pleasure in life he was reliant –ironically, like so many wounded soldiers tended to by the Red Cross –on donations of food, clothing and gifts from philanthropic societies in Berne. Stuck in his rut and wallowing in self-pity, Dunant was resistant to Suttner’s suggestions that he step back into the fray of the campaign to control war, nearly two decades after his Universal Alliance had evaporated into the ether and his thunder had been stolen at Brussels by Martens and the Tsar. He was, however, a pacifist of old at heart who believed, in a manner shared by few at the time, that there was cause for common ground between the humanitarians and the peace-seekers. Indeed, Dunant conceived of the campaigns to alleviate suffering and prevent it from ever happening as holistic –each contributing to the grander cause of ensuring the triumph of humanity over barbarism. Aside from this pre-existing belief, Dunant’s confidence was restored somewhat by the content and tone of Suttner’s letters to him, wreathed as they were in flattery and evocation of his past successes. For this reason, Suttner eventually won Dunant over, acquiring for the cause of peace the founder of the Red Cross –a movement that, to the mind of certain peace-seekers who had observed the steady evolution of the volunteers into army auxiliaries, was now contributing to the likelihood of future war by facilitating the transformation of wounded men back into fighting fit soldiers.32 Oddly, given her insistence on recruiting Dunant, Suttner was one such critic of the humanitarians. Aside from her peaceable sympathies, it was perhaps her first hand experiences that darkened her view. She and her husband Arthur had dabbled in the Red Cross world, albeit briefly, during the Russo-Turkish War, when they had both volunteered to serve as nurses with the Russian Red Cross. Suttner’s motives, however, were no less partisan than those of Pearson, McLaughlin or Loyd-Lindsay. Her ‘sympathies’, she recalled, ‘were with the Russians. The word was ‘to free our Slav brethren’; that was the common talk all around us and we accepted it in perfect faith’. Neither Slavic patriotism, nor purist humanitarianism, however, were enough
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to motivate Suttner to take up service with the Red Cross once she was told that she would have to work in a separate hospital from her husband. Clearly, her heart was never truly in being a Red Cross volunteer. And yet, years later, she still remembered the noble sentiments of Solferino and the empathy for war’s victims held by its author who, in the years since his triumph, had been so cruelly cast aside by the Committee. It was with an eye on the propaganda value of bringing the once lauded Red Cross founder into the fold, therefore, that Suttner stirred Dunant from his slumber so that his name –and what little credibility was left hanging from it –could be lent to the resurgent peace movement. This pursuit of Dunant marked a notable divergence of tactics between Suttner and the likes of Passy and Cremer. Although she supported their efforts to agitate for arbitration through Europe’s corridors of power, Suttner remained convinced of the importance of popularizing the peace-seeker’s campaign through emotive speeches and stirring works of propaganda, and to that end she encouraged Dunant to speak, which he did, dramatically so, at the Hamburg Peace Conference a year after their meeting in Heiden. It was not to the politicians and the press –whose drum-beating relish for war she both detested and wished to discredit – but to the public and the impassioned like Dunant that Suttner looked for fuel to power the peace campaign.33 It was therefore, with a certain sense of shock that Suttner received the news, delivered by her excited postman on a warm August day in 1898, that Tsar Nicholas II had called, like his grandfather Alexander had in 1874, for a grand international conference. There was no hint, however, that this conference was being convened for so war-like a purpose as converting Lieber’s Code into an international agreement. Instead, Nicholas desired a gathering of statesmen in order to tackle the problems of increasing armaments production and the ever-heightening tensions between the great powers, as a means of seeking an agreement for a lasting, international peace. Taken aback as she was by this suggestion from ‘one of the highest warlords to all governments’, Suttner responded quickly by publishing an article in which, despite arguing that it was only thanks to ‘public spirit’ that Nicholas had been moved in this peaceable direction, she nonetheless acknowledged that ‘the Tsar’s rescript is the greatest event which, up to the present time, the peace movement has had to show’.34 Dunant, for his part, interpreted the Tsar’s call for a conference as a sign that his alignment with the peace movement was a sage decision, and that momentum was moving as never before in the peace-seeker’s favour. He wrote to Suttner of how ‘it is a gigantic step and, whatever happens, the world will not shriek Utopia! Disdain of our ideas is no longer possible’.35 Passy, likewise, warmed to news of the Tsar’s rescript, seeing it as confirmation of his assertion, made two years prior, that the work of the IPU was influencing not only politicians and long-time peace-seekers, but ‘even old army officers’ who, rightfully concerned by the range of new and devastating weapons that would await them on the battlefields of the future war, were now ‘enrolling themselves in the army of peace’.36 Heady with these thoughts, the members of the resurgent peace movement readied themselves for a decisive moment in their history –a grand international gathering at which the debates had by humanitarians and peace-seekers in decades gone by would be reignited, and the future of war, peace and humanity would be decided.
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Figure 9 The wounded and battle-weary trudge alongside an ambulance through the snow during the Franco-Prussian War, 1871 © ICRC Archives.
Figure 10 The Red Cross in action during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870 © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 11 A Red Cross flag flies in the background as refugees and wounded soldiers are helped by female volunteers in Serbia, 1876 © ICRC Archives.
Figure 12 Russia’s architect of international law, Fedor Fedorovich Martens © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 13 The peace-seeker, Bertha von Suttner © ICRC Archives.
Figure 14 Red Cross volunteers or soldiers? A scene from the Boer War © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 15 The delegates gather for The Hague Conference, 1899 © ICRC Archives.
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Figure 16 The Convention is finally updated. A scene from the Geneva Conference, 1906 © ICRC Archives.
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Regulating Apocalypse
The news that an emperor had called for a conference to achieve ‘the most effective means of ensuring to all peoples the benefits of a real and lasting peace, and above all of limiting the progressive development of existing armaments’, electrified both humanitarians and peace-seekers.1 Grander in prospect than the Brussels Conference of 1874, conceived in the court of one of Europe’s great military powers, and proposed to an impressive cast of potential attendees –including diplomats, military men and lawyers from not only Europe, but China, Japan, Persia, Mexico, the Ottoman Empire and the United States –the Tsar’s conference seemed the most promising opportunity yet to forge an international consensus on the need to control war. It was not in the name of peace and humanity alone, however, that the Tsar proffered such a gift. Russia’s capacity to keep pace with the armaments expenditure of its rivals was highly questionable by the 1890s and, to the minds of the many diplomats and journalists who pored over the Tsar’s rescript, the idea that he was simply trying to buy time by getting an agreement to put the arms race on hold seemed the most likely reason for the conference call. Strategic calculations aside, the Tsar was also a man who was easily influenced, and as susceptible as anyone of his era to fears of future war. Nicholas had been deeply moved by the story of Althaus in Lay Down Your Arms and, according to William T. Stead –the activist-journalist who interviewed the Tsar in the lead up to, and would go on to document, the peace conference –he had also been shocked by the portents of Ivan Bloch’s rumination on the implications of the Franco-Prussian War, Is War Now Impossible? Convinced by the author’s argument that the next great conflict would not only spill blood on an unprecedented scale, but tear human civilization itself asunder, the Tsar instructed his Foreign Minister Mikhail Muraviev to draw up plans for a diplomatic project that could steer the world clear of catastrophe. Muraviev’s own experiences as a Red Cross volunteer during the Russo-Turkish War might also have been regaled to his master, further fuelling what Stead described as the ‘humanitarian enthusiasm of the young emperor’. Nicholas’s desire to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Alexander by playing the role of grand benevolent to a concerned world was also a likely source of motivation. For his part, Nicholas later claimed that it was hope more than fear that drove him. Specifically, it was the hope personified in the activities of the IPU, the peaceable cause of which was now so justified in his mind as to demand a champion of imperial magnitude.2
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One thing certain about the origins of the Tsar’s proposal was that it was conceived of more as an exercise in diplomacy than an IIL-like ‘peace through law’ initiative. As much was clear from the fact that neither Nicholas nor Muraviev bothered to consult Martens for advice on how to organize the conference proposed in the rescript. Consequently, it was only after the proposal had been sent out that Russia’s pre- eminent authority on international law and arbitration was informed fully of the Tsar’s intentions and was promised, among other things, an ambassadorship in return for giving the conference idea corporeality. His considerable sense of pride wounded by such late inclusion in the scheme, Martens nevertheless worked hard to get things in order, drawing on his vast knowledge of the successes and failures of the IIL and the peace movement, the progress of international law since the 1850s and Russia’s place in international affairs in order to craft the conference programme. Ever mindful of the political stakes attached to the scheme, Martens adhered to the suggestion made by Muraviev’s office that the conference be convened, not in St Petersburg where, should proceedings prove disastrous the stench of failure might attach itself to the Tsar, but at the Huis ten Bosch –the House in the Woods –a seventeenth-century palatial residence outside The Hague in the neutral Netherlands. The venue having been decided on, Martens turned his attention to figuring out exactly what was to be discussed within the confines of its magnificent baroque sitting rooms. This seemingly straightforward task was complicated by the lack of thought that had been given by Muraviev’s office to the actual proposals that would need to be drawn out of the Tsar’s rescript which, to Martens’s shock and fury, had no accompanying memoranda and, despite the weeks that had passed since it had been sent out, remained little more than a paper gesture.3 It was not just the disorderly origins of the Tsar’s proposal that obscured the conference’s purpose. Outside of Russia, peace-seekers, humanitarians, diplomats and the ever hyperbolic press shook with rumour, fear, speculation and criticism, creating a public view of the conference that was as confused and ambiguous as anything emanating from St Petersburg. Thoughts that, ‘although the European public has received ample warning not to expect too much from the diplomatic gathering at The Hague, its hopes have already been raised as to what might be expected’ were commonplace.4 The peace-seekers, naturally, dared to hope that the conference would achieve nothing short of engendering a new, peaceable world order. How could the outcome be anything but? An emperor had, after all, just bowed to the once ridiculed cause of peace. Ferenc Kemény, the head of the Hungarian Peace Society, conveyed this sense of seismic shift in the peace movement’s importance when he wrote to Suttner asking ‘can it be possible, can it be true’, could it be that the Tsar had made it ‘a pride and joy to be a friend of peace?’ Moreover, if this was the case, how could the peace- seekers ensure that they used this ‘victory’ against the forces of war wisely?5 How could they make certain that The Hague conference was not a standalone event that, upon concluding, would see the Tsar lose his interest and the peace-seekers be once again relegated to the shadows that had consumed them in the 1860s? How could they ensure that this greatest of opportunities to bring an end to war would not collapse in failure? These questions inspired as much as they vexed. The pages of the American Peace Society’s journal, the Advocate of Peace, were scrawled with hope that the simple action
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of statesmen from across the world meeting as one to discuss peace would be enough to ensure a favourable outcome. For, with the ‘vast and growing burdens of European militarism’ weighing heavily on so many nations, and the ‘large expression of intelligent public interest in every country’ fixated on peace, the delegates would have to leave the House in the Woods with some form of agreement to slow the march to war. Anything less would surely amount to political suicide. Passy, ever-leery of utopianism, thought that the Tsar’s call to limit the ‘progressive development of existing armaments’ was too ambitious, and that wholesale attachment to the idea of disarmament by the peace- seekers would undo the IPU’s years of credibility-building once the conference broke down under the weight of its own grand ambitions. For Passy, the conference’s success depended on the IPU’s long-standing proposal to form an international arbitration tribunal being accepted, if only in principle, by the attendees. This modest achievement, he believed, would be enough for the peace-seekers to declare victory. Others dreamed bigger dreams. Stead, impressed after interviewing the Tsar in the autumn of 1898, believed that The Hague conference needed to be less about cementing old peaceable ideas and more about outlining bold visions for a new age, by placing public pressure as never before on world leaders to down their arms. Just as he had interpreted the Bashi-Bazouks’s atrocities in Bulgaria as a moral challenge for the states of Europe, so Stead saw the Tsar’s initiative as something that could stir all right-minded peoples to the cause of peace. Journalists, he believed, were ‘the most immediate and most unmistakable exponents of the national mind’, and as such he took it upon himself to lead this new ‘Peace Crusade’.6 The centrepiece of Stead’s crusade was a periodical –War against War –which he started in order to document the rumours, plans and agitations that would pave the road to the House in the Woods. He also embarked on a speaking tour of Europe in the spring of 1899 to rally the continent’s peace societies to full voice in support of the Tsar’s proposal. As he intended, the crusade got plenty of publicity, and his efforts even drew the eye of the now retired war correspondent William Russell who, fortified in his desire for peace by a career in which he repeatedly witnessed the ‘unutterable misery caused by war’, offered unequivocal support to his fellow maverick journalist.7 Suttner also backed Stead and, when he visited her in Vienna some months after the rescript had been issued, they spoke at length of their hopes for the Tsar’s great gathering. United as they were in principle, Suttner was as suspicious as ever of the sincerity and courage of men of power, and so was more reserved in her expectations than Stead for what might be achieved. The Tsar himself may have been in earnest, but to Suttner’s mind the ‘petty ugliness’ displayed by certain recipients of the rescript –not the least of which being the ever-belligerent government of the Kaiserreich –would ultimately bedevil and undermine proceedings, irrespective of how effective Stead’s ‘Peace Crusade’ was. Her resolve to keep her hopes in check was hardened when, in the wake of Stead’s departure, Suttner received a surprise visit from Muraviev. It was testament to her standing within the peace movement and the accuracy of St Petersburg’s assumption that Suttner would be attending The Hague conference as an observer, that the Russian foreign minister saw cause to meet with her. The honour, however, was marked with words of caution. Playing down any expectations that the peace-seekers might have for a decisive and pleasing outcome to the conference, Muraviev reminded Suttner
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of the many years that it took the Red Cross to establish the credibility of its Geneva Convention. ‘It is not to be expected that the end will be reached in a short time’ he warned her, ‘only one step must be made at a time . . . for the present, the cessation of armaments is the first stage’.8 For some figures within the peace-seekers’ ranks, even this first hurdle was too tall to climb. Bluntschli, Dudley-Field and other men of Ghent may have died by the time the Tsar’s rescript was issued, but the new generation of international lawyers who replaced them at the IIL were as sceptical as their predecessors had been towards the notion that a binding global peace could be forced upon sovereign states, particularly by means of disarmament. Heinrich Lammasch, a professor of international law at the University of Vienna who would go on to act as the legal adviser to the Austro-Hungarian delegation at The Hague conference, thought that the idea of disarmament was both unreasonable and illogical, given the vast sums of money that had already spent on new warships, soldiers and weapons by the great powers. His Austrian compatriot and fellow IIL member Felix Stoerk went further, openly rejecting disarmament on the grounds that it would render states unable to defend themselves –an argument that was infused with an acceptance of the future war’s inevitability. The French members of the IIL were of a similar mind, not only because any agreement to reduce armaments would retard France’s ability to one day regain the territories lost to Germany in 1871 but also because, as Albert Lapradelle, the youngest of the new IIL members at only twenty- nine years of age had it, ‘the requirements of sovereignty required extreme caution’ when discussing the ‘illusions and mirages’ of international disarmament. The old issue of international agreements having to bend to state sovereignty that had divided Passy and Cremer from the IIL back in the 1870s was still fundamental to the IIL’s conception of the limits and possibilities of their enterprise. Even Martens felt that his Tsar might have stepped into a land of fantasy on the issue of disarmament. His frustration at not being initially consulted by Nicholas aside, Martens could not help but view the rescript through the lens of his failed attempt to get a similarly ambitious agreement for the waging of war accepted in Brussels in 1874. This taunting memory, combined with his exasperation at the lack of a clear policy from Muraviev’s office, led Martens to confide to his diary that ‘the more I think it over, the more I come to the conclusion that the Russian initiative will be a fiasco’.9 The doubts of the lawyers were matched by the wariness of the politicians. In London and Paris minds were also cast back to Martens’s 1874 conference, leading many statesmen to draw the same conclusions about Nicholas’s intentions as had been raised in response to his grandfather’s overture decades earlier –there was every possibility that the whole thing was a sham, and that the Tsar was simply biding his time to prepare for a war that Russia was currently unprepared to wage. The fact that ‘since the first proposal made on this subject in August 1898 there has been some increase in the armament of several powers’, and that ‘unless His Majesty’s Government have been erroneously informed the Russian government have themselves participated’ in the growth of armaments did not go unnoticed in Whitehall.10 The Tsar’s royal cousins also saw little more than Russian intrigue behind the rescript. Britain’s future King Edward thought the whole thing a manipulation of Nicholas by the scheming Muraviev, while Kaiser Wilhelm II interpreted the conference call as both a cunning move by the
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Russians to halt the arms race and, more seriously, an affront to his divine right to make war. For all his indignations and excitable belligerence, the young Kaiser also understood the significance of the gesture politics that was woven into the initiative. Accordingly, he told the delegates selected to represent the Kaiserreich that, sham or not, he wanted some sort of agreement to come out of the conference in order for Nicholas to save face. This, however, was a hollow concession by Wilhelm to his natural instincts, which were to pledge to ignore whatever was agreed to at the conference, in favour of continuing to ‘rely on God and my sharp sword!’11 Much as he shared the scepticism of some of the conference’s detractors, the ever ambitious Martens had no more of an appetite for failure at the turn of the century than he had possessed in 1874. Determined to put on a better show than he had at Brussels, Martens used his position as agenda-setter to head off the growing wave of discontent among diplomats over the idea of a general disarmament, by calling for discussions on a ‘means for putting a limit to the progressive increase of military and naval armaments’ for ‘a term to be agreed upon’. A temporary slowing down of the recent acceleration of armaments production, rather than a blanket prohibition on producing new weapons, would form the basis of disarmament talks at the conference. Martens also put on the agenda a proposal for states to agree, ‘in principle, of the use of good offices, mediation and voluntary arbitration’ as a means of keeping the peace, and the need for a reconsideration of the law of war code he had proposed at Brussels – two matters that the IIL had been deeply concerned with since its inception. As a means of clarifying this new direction for the conference, in January 1899 Muraviev’s office despatched a second circular to prospective attendees, in which mention of disarmament was de-emphasized in favour of suggesting that the conference focus more on arbitration and the laws of war. The latter issue in particular was laid out in detail in the agenda, which highlighted the need to regulate specific, unnecessarily destructive weapons and explosives, reconsider the Geneva Convention’s abandoned maritime warfare articles from 1868, and construct an international code for the waging of war, based on the articles of the as yet unratified Brussels Declaration.12 This was not the agenda of a peace-seeker, but of a man stood at the nexus of diplomacy, humanitarianism and international law –anxious, yet determined, to draw all three elements together into something that was both meaningful and workable. Designed as it clearly was to save the face of the emperor and, indeed, himself, by obscuring the unpopular chimera of disarmament, Martens’s agenda was also calculated to right the wrongs of the Brussels conference, while tying the loose threads of nearly four decades of efforts by humanitarians and lawyers to either regulate or prevent war. In contrast to the anticipations of many peace-seekers, therefore, Martens saw The Hague conference as a place to end these decades-old discussions, rather than an arena in which to map out a new age of perpetual peace.13 Suttner, already alive to the general aura of scepticism that hung over the Tsar’s rescript, was agitated by Martens’s apparent capitulation to those who lacked the vision to see a world brought to peace through disarmament. She felt that ‘by this introduction of questions concerning military customs and the humanizing of war into the deliberations of the peace conference, a wedge (surely not without purpose) was driven into it, calculated to rob it of its individual character’. The inclusion of the
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Red Cross and its war-facilitating convention on the agenda of what was supposedly a peace conference irked in particular, for ‘in the press numerous utterances had declared that the only reasonable and positive result which could be attained by the conference was to be found in modifying the regulations of war and in the domain of the Red Cross’. Despairing, she wrote to Dunant, asking him to exert whatever influence he might still have on the Red Cross to appeal against Martens’s decision to place the Geneva Convention on the agenda, thereby preventing talk of war regulation from becoming a ‘trap that opens up in front of the feet of the pacifists’.14 Dunant, however, had long ago surrendered his influence in Geneva. Moreover, still a Red Cross man at heart despite his recent turn to the peace-seeking cause, he viewed Martens’s talk of the Geneva Convention and the Brussels Declaration somewhat differently from Suttner. Less aghast than her at the prospect, Dunant saw the inclusion of war regulations on the agenda as less a betrayal of the rescript, and more a catalyst for disastrous bloating. He recalled to Suttner shortly before her departure for The Hague: I was in Brussels in 1874 when Prince Gorchakov cheated me out of my congress in favour of prisoners of war (under preparation for two years) by supplanting it with a congress on the ‘usages of war’, swallowing up the prisoners and even the Geneva Convention! I suffered terribly at that time, for there was no result and here for twenty-five years those deliberations taken in secret congress have remained a dead letter!
The possibility of the Tsar’s conference collapsing under the weight of a similarly overburdened agenda to the one drawn up at Brussels was, Dunant believed, more a threat to the peace-seekers’ aims than any debates on the laws of war. Accordingly, he cautioned Suttner who, with Passy unable to travel due to an eye injury had assumed the position of majordomo of the small army of peace-seekers that was descending on The Hague, to forget about those who wanted to regulate war. Instead, he urged her to keep her mind focused on the one goal that mattered –the attainment of peace. To do so would involve refraining from firebrand agitation in favour of talking ‘the delegates over’ on the topic of arbitration behind closed doors and away from the conference chambers, in order ‘to win them one by one, to astonish them by the moderation of our desires and the definiteness of what we wish’.15 Old age and disappointments, it seemed, had at last infused Dunant with a sense of political acumen. Still bound to the Red Cross in a way that his Committee co-founder was not, Moynier could not afford to focus on peace while ignoring the threat posed to the Geneva Convention by its inclusion on the agenda of yet another Russian conference. Like Dunant and Martens, Moynier cast his mind back to 1874, when the prospect of the Committee’s humanitarian convention being incorporated into a Lieber-inspired code for waging war had first been raised. On that occasion Moynier had pulled every string within his grasp to ensure that the delegates refrained from discussing the convention. Over two decades later Moynier was now into his seventies, sickly, worn out and as distant from the leaders of the Red Cross societies as he had ever been. Most of his old IIL colleagues –a number of whom had cared little for the Red Cross anyway –were dead and, even more damagingly, Red Cross adherents who
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might have argued for the convention to remain the sole concern of the Committee had also joined the ranks of the departed. Appia had died four months prior to the rescript being issued. Longmore had passed in 1895, Landa in 1891, Maunoir in 1869 and Dufour who, as a respected military man and co-founder of the Committee might have carried some weight at the House in the Woods, had been laid to rest in 1875. Even the cantankerous on-again, off-again friend of the Red Cross Chenu had been dead since 1879. The old guard decimated, Barton under siege and Furley focused on getting the St John Ambulance in order, the only Red Cross affiliates present at the conference were the French delegate Louis Renault, the Swiss delegate and secretary of the Committee, Edouard Odier and the Japanese delegate Nagao Ariga –a lawyer who both saw harmony between the Tsar’s proposals and the ongoing militarization of the Red Cross and, despite his affiliation with the latter, attended the conference as a representative of the Japanese navy.16 The capacity of Moynier to influence discussions was, therefore, minimal. With trepidation, the Committee’s ageing president had to accept that both the future of the still unrevised 1864 convention, and the failed 1868 maritime convention would be decided at the House in the Woods, that he would be powerless to influence the discussions, and that he would have to rely primarily on his compatriot Odier to ensure that the Russians did not consume the Red Cross project that he had dedicated so much of his life to.17 Beyond the world of peace-seekers and humanitarians, Martens’s agenda was received with fewer complications and, overall, it fulfilled its author’s intent of giving the conference both viability and clarity of purpose. Washington was on the same page as Martens when it came to promoting arbitration higher up the agenda to the detriment of discussing disarmament. As the Secretary of State John Hay put it to Andrew White, the head of the United States’ delegation, ‘the expediency of restraining the inventive genius of our people in the direction of devising means of defence is by no means clear, and, considering the temptations to which men and nations may be exposed in a time of conflict, it is doubtful if an international agreement of this nature would prove effective’. Should the future war come, the United States had to maintain flexibility in its military planning and usage of weapons. This did not mean that the Americans were contemptuous of pursuing peace. Hay instructed White that, in addition to preserving the United States’ ability to wage war, his delegation’s focus had to be on ensuring that such freedom to deploy new weapons would not be needed. To this end, he urged White to support the arbitration proposals, pregnant as they were with an ‘opportunity thus far unequalled in the history of the world for initiating a series of negotiations that may lead to important practical results’.18 In Britain, there was similar sympathy for the object of peace, provided that it could be achieved in a way that was not self-destructively utopian. The government was mindful that Stead’s promotion of the Tsar’s initiative was being received warmly everywhere he went in Britain, from the Huddersfield town hall, to the docks of Aberdeen, to the private clubs of London. The public expectations raised by Stead’s campaign, combined with the wariness held by the Admiralty and the War Office towards Martens’s proposed laws of war revisions, and the government’s wish to squeeze something tangible from the conference, ensured that the delegation led by the veteran of arbitration tribunals, Sir Julian Pauncefote, arrived at the House in the Woods with every intention to talk
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arbitration. The French, for their part, offered mild support for Martens’s agenda. They were, however, unsettled by the prospect that arbitration might rob them of the ability to one day right the wrong of 1871 and recontest Germany for possession of Alsace- Lorraine. French policy on arbitration, therefore, was to agree to the creation of an arbitration tribunal on the condition that recourse to it be kept strictly voluntary for the aggrieved parties, the best outcome of which would be a limitation in the frequency, but not the eradication of, war.19 In Germany –where Suttner, Stead and their allies were regarded by the government as ‘unsophisticated and occasionally dishonest fanatics’ –there was neither the degree of public pressure felt in Britain to put in a good show at the conference nor an inclination, as in the case of the French, to bother too much with offering alterations and caveats to Martens’s suggestions.20 Whether it was disarmament, the laws of war or even arbitration, the view from Berlin was of The Hague conference as a colossal charade that was not about keeping the peace or amending the rules of war, but about placating the Tsar, keeping Russo-German relations healthy and avoiding any agreements that might compromise the Kaiserreich’s preparations for future war. The delegation assembled to fulfil this brief was among the most idiosyncratic and volatile to descend on the House in the Woods. Aside from military delegates whose purposes were –like the military delegates of most nations represented –to ensure that the freedom to develop new weapons and ships was guaranteed, the choice of legal expert for the German delegation was Karl von Stengel, a Bavarian law professor who was known both for his love of war and rejection of the IIL’s belief that the development of international law was a necessary component of human progress. He was joined by another lawyer, Phillip Zorn, who rejected Blunstchli and Martens’s view of international law as developing from the history and values of societies, and instead believed it to be the product of the whims of monarchs like the Kaiser. The capacity of Zorn and Stengel to create awkward moments at the conference was matched by that of the head of their delegation, Count Georg Herbert zu Münster, a stiff-backed, well-seasoned diplomat who distrusted telephones, thought medical science ‘humbug’ and, in preferring backroom negotiations to grand-standing, had an acute dislike of just the kind of conference he was having to participate in. Backward in the face of technological and diplomatic developments he may have been, Münster understood well enough the Kaiser’s view of the conference, and so saw the delegation’s objective as being to keep faith with the Russian project only ‘as far as respect for German security and the fundamental principles of monarchy’ allowed.21 When proceedings commenced at the House in Woods on 18 May 1899, Münster was unabashed in making his stance clear, particularly when it came to arbitration – the issue that most delegates saw as representing the best chance of the conference living up to its promise to keep the world’s peace. Rejecting this aim on principle, Münster brusquely informed a shocked White that ‘Germany is prepared for war as no other country is or can be; that she can mobilize her army in ten days; and that neither France, Russia nor any other power can do this’. An arbitration tribunal, therefore, was unacceptably damaging to the Germans, as its deliberations ‘would simply give rival powers time to put themselves in readiness’ to fight the otherwise dominant Kaiserreich. Worryingly for both the peace-seekers and delegates like White who
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felt that, once Münster’s bluster had subsided some actual good might come of the conference, such sabre-rattling was not confined to the German delegation.22 The most notorious non-German delegates to share Münster’s views were two naval delegates who had spent many years pondering the effects of changing military technology on war planning: Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan from the United States and Admiral John ‘Jackie’ Fisher from Britain. The goal of both men was to ensure that whatever was agreed to would in no way hamper the military decision-making of their respective nations. For Mahan –the hard man within White’s otherwise amenable delegation –this stance manifested most glaringly in his argument against the proposed ban on gas weapons. This was made on the grounds that ‘since projectiles of this kind do not really exist’ discussion of their prohibition was as pointless as it was damaging to military innovation. He also opined that ‘from a humane standpoint, it is no more cruel to asphyxiate one’s enemies by means of deleterious gas than with water. That is to say, by drowning them, as happens when a vessel is sunk by the torpedo of a torpedo-boat’. The similarly bullish Fisher argued strongly against prohibitions on new weapons out of fear that, ‘even a restriction in inventions and construction of new types of warlike devices would place the civilized peoples in a disadvantageous position in times of war with less civilized nations or savage tribes’. Informed by the British colonial experience, this line of thought was backed by his fellow delegate John Charles Ardagh, the Director of British Military Intelligence in South Africa, who opposed banning expanding ‘dum dum’ bullets on the grounds that ‘there is a difference in war between civilized nations and that against savages. If, in the former, a soldier is wounded by a small projectile, he is taken away in the ambulance, but the savage, although run through two or three times, does not cease to advance’. Ordnance designed to create excessive wounding such as the ‘dum dum’, Ardagh argued with the support of Mahan, was vital for dealing with such ‘savage races’ as Britain’s colonial forces encountered. The end result of this obstruction in the face of the delegates who supported an outright ban was an agreement to prohibit the use of ‘dum dums’ between states party to The Hague conference agreements, which implicitly permitted their continued use against ‘uncivilized’ peoples.23 To the peace-seekers, Münster, Mahan and Fischer were obnoxious, disruptive and, in their refusal to countenance the thought that peace might be achievable, completely out of place at the House in the Woods. There, within a magnificent domed hall surrounded by walls draped in Chinese silk tapestries and fine baroque paintings, sat at green-topped desks alongside ‘cool-headed diplomatists’ who, despite their initial scepticism, had succumbed to the ‘magnitude of the work of the conference’ and agreed to work in concert for the cause of peace, the men in uniform continued to hold to the brutal ‘intransigence of militarism’. Their very presence, as the Advocate of Peace put it, was an absurdity that was tantamount to ‘sending butchers to a congress in the interests of vegetarianism!’.24 Ostensibly, the peace-seekers had good cause to feel that the military men were stealing ‘their’ chance to put the world to right. Unlike the humanitarians who had been shut out at Brussels in 1874, there seemed to be a place for the apostles of peace at The Hague conference. Suttner, having established herself in a hotel suite not far from the House in the Woods, flew a white flag out of her window and received a steady stream of delegates and diplomats over the course of proceedings. She was also ‘besieged by an army of reporters and interviewers’, all of whom were keen
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to pick her brains as to the thoughts of the peace movement that she was now leading. A darling of the Tsar’s event whose championing of the cause of peace was recognized by all and respected by most, it was not for nothing that despite being unattached to a delegation Suttner was invited to the opening address of the conference –the only woman granted such a privilege. Stead’s great ally in the ‘Peace Crusade’, Felix Moscheles, captured this changed status of the peace-seekers at The Hague conference in his recollections of ‘the awkwardness’ he felt once he realized that it had now became a ‘daily occurrence that my opinions on subjects connected with the (peace) movement are asked, and matters have come to such a pass that more than once I have actually been treated with respect’.25 It was, however, hard to reconcile this apparent regard for the peace-seekers with the fact that Suttner’s circle and the many journalists who had assembled at The Hague, were shut out of the day-to-day conference proceedings in accordance with the wishes of almost all the delegates –as great a brush-off as any given to the humanitarians at Brussels decades earlier. The peace-seekers, however, still saw themselves as participants and so kept busy passing information from delegation to delegation, writing reports for various peace publications and, in the case of Stead, prying into delegate’s minds, dispensing ‘curious information and abounding in suggestions’ at many an after-conference function.26 Relegated to the sidelines, there was little the peace-seekers could do to prevent the likes of Mahan, Fisher and Münster from turning ‘their’ peace conference into an occasion to prepare for war. Fischer in particular, saw his mission as such. Less concerned with how to humanize war –the very notion he thought akin in futility to ‘humanizing hell’ –the conference sessions on maritime warfare were regarded by the admiral as an opportunity to muse on the strategic significance of Russian and German demands to build particular classes of warships, the likelihood of the United States Navy using gas shells, and the extent to which the articles of the 1868 Geneva Convention might favour a naval juggernaut like Britain, while retarding the war-making capacity of nations with smaller fleets. All this Fisher took note of while ensuring through objections and back-room negotiations that all articles proposed for inclusion in a new maritime warfare convention that ‘were likely to in any way fetter or embarrass the free action of the belligerents’ were ‘carefully eliminated’ from the discussions. The sessions held to discuss the incorporation of the Brussels Declaration into a new convention were also important for the more war-minded delegates. Both the Belgian and British delegates in particular, were keen to get Martens’s old articles from 1874 relating to the formation of militias for the purpose of repulsing invasion signed and ratified –the protection of such combatants being crucial for small states that relied on militias for territorial defence.27 It was not all war-planning though. The discussions on territorial defence provided Martens with an opportunity to pull off a coup that in part redeemed his 1874 failures, and skilfully combined humanitarian sentiments with war regulation. This came in the form of his insertion of a preamble into what became The Hague Convention regarding the Laws and Customs of War on Land, which declared that: Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the regulations adopted
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by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilised nations, from the law of humanity and the requirements of the public conscience.
With this passage –remembered today as the Martens Clause –the architect of The Hague conference laid down a nebulous, but important edict. This was that, irrespective of what was agreed to at the House in the Woods or at any other future venue at which the laws of war would be discussed, there was a need in times of war to accept that there are ‘civilized’ norms of behaviour to which belligerents must adhere. A personal victory for its author and the international fraternity of lawyers he represented, the acceptance of the Martens Clause by the delegates also confirmed that, depending on how broadly one wished to interpret the deliberately open wording, the dictum of military necessity was no longer the be all and end all in the process of weighing up humanitarian considerations with the use of force.28 The support that was generally given to the Martens Clause demonstrated that, for all the mercenary machinations of Fisher and those like him, there was a willingness on the part of the delegates to engage in discussions pertinent to the humanizing of war. This continued into the conference sessions dealing with the adoption of the Geneva Convention of 1868 to protect the wounded and sick at sea. It helped that these sessions were somewhat of a formality, and the debates within them were, as one delegate recalled, ‘happy-go-lucky’. This was because of both the aforementioned acceptance of the need for humanity to be brought to the seas, and the fact that in the decades since the introduction of the 1868 articles, numerous diplomats and naval men had refined, updated and clarified their wording.29 By 1899, therefore, the articles were generally acceptable to non-Red Cross minds, particularly those alerted to the lack of humanitarian law at sea by the recent bloody naval engagements of the Sino- Japanese and Spanish-American Wars. Discussion of the 1868 articles also served as a welcome medium through which to explore long-standing issues relating to the ever problematic 1864 convention, such as the need for relief to be distributed impartially, for ambulances –or, in the maritime context, hospital ships –to be protected from attack, and for said ships to ‘in no way hamper the movements of belligerents’. In this respect, despite the peace-seekers’ sense of affront at their inclusion by Martens, the 1868 articles were a near-to perfect agenda item at The Hague conference, serving as a focus for the war-planning interests of military delegates, the humanitarian considerations of those fearful of mass casualties in future war, and the concerns of those who saw a need to re-examine the Geneva Convention in an arena of high politics beyond the closeted world of the Red Cross. The strength of this receptivity was evident in the fact that the 1868 articles were incorporated with few modifications into one of the first products of the conferences’ weeks of discussions –the Hague Convention for the Adaptation to Maritime Warfare of the Principles of the Geneva Convention –and, in the years after 1899, were further developed and refined by lawyers and naval men alike.30 The fact that the 1868 articles formed the basis of the ‘first definite result achieved by the peace congress’ was difficult for the peace-seekers to swallow, so too the fact that
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an additional sixteen articles derived from the Brussels Declaration pertinent to the treatment of POWs, were also passed with few quarrels.31 Suttner, either out of spite or ignorance, held that the Brussels Declaration was simply an extension of the Geneva Convention. Conflating the two documents –and the objectives of those who authored them –she reacted to the success of talks concerned with rescuing wounded sailors and caring for POWs by opining to a delegate that ‘the question of the humanization of war –especially in a peace congress –cannot interest me. The business concerns the codification of peace’. Stead sidestepped the issue of war regulation being achieved at a peace conference by depicting the success of the 1868 articles discussions, the failure to completely ban ‘dum dum’ rounds, and the practical non-existence of the disarmament talks as signs that, without knowing it, the war-makers were paving the road to peace by ‘making warfare so terrible that no one will dare to fight’. The line taken by the Advocate of Peace was not to dwell on the substance of what had actually been agreed on, but to instead focus on ‘the immediate moral results’ of the conference that were clearly ‘greater than even this convention’. What mattered was that ‘the conference has proved that it is possible for the nations, in spite of their historic animosities, their sharply differing traditions, customs and languages, to meet together on a basis of peace and confidence and successfully consider their great common interests without ulterior motives’.32 The peace-seekers were clearly as sensitive to the presence of the war-planners as they were to the successes of the humanitarians and the lawyers. Given the decades of benign rivalry that had existed between the two sides such a reaction was unremarkable, albeit unwarranted given that among the war-focused regulations The Hague conference did secure a victory for the apostles of peace –an agreement to a system of arbitration. As Martens had intended, arbitration was the main event of the conference, bringing together both those genuinely hopeful of a peaceable outcome with the more mercenary diplomats who sought to bring something, anything, tangible back with them from The Hague. The viability of arbitration over disarmament in this respect meant that preparations to discuss it were made well in advance of the conference. White brought a draft proposal for an arbitration system with him to the House in the Woods, so too did Baron de Staal of the Russian delegation and Britain’s Pauncefote. It was the latter’s plan –built on the French prerequisite of submission to arbitration being strictly voluntary –that was adopted as the template for the discussions, which covered everything from whether arbitration should take place only in the case of minor disputes, to the utility of developing a neutral commission that could inquire into the casus belli of states on the brink of war. The need to reach an agreement on these proposals, and in so doing demonstrate a sincere commitment to peace, was paramount for the Russians, the British and the Americans in particular –the delegations of the latter two nations sitting under the ever-focused microscope of public scrutiny. With these forces arraigned against him and the need to maintain healthy Russo-German relations ever pressing, even Münster’s concrete resolve in the face of all peaceable expressions began to fracture. Badgered by Pauncefote and White –each of whom paid daily visits to the German delegation’s hotel suite with an aim to convince them that obstruction would demonize the Kaiser as a war-lover in the eyes of the world –Münster reluctantly sought new
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orders from Berlin. This was followed by a wave of attacks in the press against the Germans by Stead, the despatch of a member of the American delegation to Berlin to seek a personal audience with Wilhelm, and the growth of concern within the German Foreign Office over the damage being done to reputation of the Kaiserreich. As Zorn put it somewhat generously, the ‘eager and successful participation of the German delegates’ in the discussions on the Brussels Declaration and the Geneva Convention had ensured the success of the German delegation’s goal of keeping onside with the Russians. This, he believed, would be jeopardized if they proved obstructive on the issue of arbitration. Under these pressures the Kaiser finally relented, albeit with his aforementioned caveat to keep his sword by his side come what may. The public side of this private braggadocio was Wilhelm allowing Münster to enter into negotiations that would lead to 26 delegations at The Hague conference signing the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. Although submission of grievances to the arbitration process was made entirely voluntary in the final wording, the fact remained that by the time the conference ended on 29 July 1899, the delegates had constructed a system designed to accomplish the original goal of the Tsar’s rescript –the avoidance of future war.33 For Suttner, the realization of the goal that the peace-seekers had pursued for decades was not enough. Pleased though she was with an outcome that took emphasis off the agreements to regulate war, she continued to bemoan what could have been ‘if the princes of the Triple Alliance had thought exactly the same way as Nicholas, if the press had finally helped, and the social democrats not sneered at us!’.34 This was not the lament of a greedy dreamer. Suttner understood that the arbitration agreement had been built on a foundation of public pressure and concerns over saving face, more so than enthusiasm on the part of states to submit their foreign policy decisions to international scrutiny. She also realized that so narrow an agreement as one that compelled nations to voluntary submit grievances to arbitration was not enough to cure the spread of war fever. As much was evident in the fact that war broke out in South Africa shortly after proceedings at the House in the Woods had concluded, raging on until 1902 without any agreement to pursue arbitration, despite the Convention for Pacific Settlements coming into force on 4 September 1900 and the Transvaal government suggesting arbitration as on option to its enemy, Britain.35 Admittedly, the South African war was an internal affair for Britain, and so recourse to arbitration was somewhat complicated. More brutally clear, however, was the fact when two actual states –Russia and Japan – went to war in 1904, no serious attempt at arbitration was made, despite Suttner’s best efforts to convince the United States’ President Theodore Roosevelt to appeal for both sides to agree on submission of grievances to a tribunal. In the end, it was only once Japan had decimated Russia’s fleet at the Battle of Tsushima and defeated the Tsar’s 350,000 strong army at the Battle of Mukden in early 1905 that Roosevelt –hoping to forge peace in the midst of stalemate –agreed to Tokyo’s suggestion that he mediate an end to the increasingly bloody conflict. Although Roosevelt’s brokering of peace after the loss of well over 100,000 lives was somewhat removed from the war-avoiding purposes of the Convention for Pacific Settlements it was still, as Martens tried to argue, ‘in absolute accord with the new and nobler ideas solemnly sanctioned by The Hague Conference of 1899’.36
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Martens’s attempt to link the settlement between two states at war to the agreements made at The Hague conference underlined the fact that, despite the Convention for Pacific Settlements coming into force and the peace-seekers meeting more regularly than ever to discuss new pro-arbitration campaigns after 1899, the establishment of a more peaceable world order was still a distant prospect. The IPU’s idea to use the conference to spark a resurrection of an old and much cherished idea within the peace movement –the formation of a permanent ‘Congress of Nations’ devoted to maintaining peace –went nowhere, despite the final resolution of the conference declaring that it had ‘almost certainly proved to be the commencement of a real parliament of the nations in a much wider sense than any previous international congress had been’.37 The lack of a follow-up on both this promise, and the connected pledge made in the final act of the Hague Convention that a ‘subsequent conference’ would be called sooner rather than later, led to a growing sense among many peace-seekers that what had happened at the House in the Woods might well have been an aberration. Concerns within the movement that The Hague process was in a period of stasis were further heightened by the fact that in 1906 the long-awaited Second Geneva Conference to revise and update the forty-two-year-old Geneva Convention finally convened. The gathering had been forced on Moynier by events at the House in the Woods, where the Committee’s secretary Edouard Odier had successfully prevented absorption of the Geneva Convention into The Hague Conventions by way of an adroit trick. Using a position long held by the IIL –that experts should be left to tackle matters requiring expertise –he argued that the assembly of diplomats and military men at The Hague were ‘not competent to proceed to revision of the Geneva Convention’. This stance was backed by the IIL’s Tobias Asser, who pointed out that, without army surgeons and Red Cross leaders at the table, ‘the commission is incompetent, in fact, to pass on questions of a medical and sanitary nature’. This led Odier to agree that a follow-up to the 1864 Geneva Conference would be called as soon as possible, in exchange for which The Hague Convention contained a brief article confirming that ‘the obligations of belligerents with regard to sick and wounded are governed by the Geneva Convention of August 22 1864, subject to any modifications that may be introduced into it’.38 The modifications that were eventually introduced into the revised convention at the Geneva Conference of June 1906 were small but in ways both practical and symbolic, demonstrative of the direction the campaign to control war had taken. Attended primarily by military representatives, the conference discussion was primarily focused on tightening up existing articles and providing a final, inarguable definition of what exactly a Red Cross volunteer was. Neither the near-to-retired Moynier nor Odier realized it until proceedings had commenced, but the conference was also about formalising the Red Cross’s transformation into an auxiliary medical force for the world’s militaries. As John Ardagh, the man who had successfully opposed the prohibition of ‘dum dum’ rounds at The Hague Conference and who was now representing the British government in its dealings with the Committee saw it, the underlying purpose of the gathering in Geneva was to continue what had started during the discussions of the 1868 articles at the House in the Woods by taking the campaign to control war out of the hands of ‘utopian fanatics’ and placing it into those of military men. This meant bending the discussions away from matters the Committee
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saw as pertinent –such as protecting its rights as both an independent body and the architect of international humanitarian law –towards discussions that would confirm the Red Cross’s place as a provider of volunteer medics for the future war. To this end, Ardagh, with the bullish support of the reformist British Red Cross member William MacPherson and delegates from Japan and the United States, argued for articles that would confirm that volunteers had to receive permission from the military authorities to lend their services, and submit to full supervision once on the battlefield. He also wanted Red Cross equipment to be classified as military equipment and so be fair game for seizure, for rules governing the standards of hospitals and ambulances to be set, and for those protected by the Red Cross symbol to be able to carry arms. With the acquiescence of attendees similarly unimpressed with the idea of Red Cross chaos ensuing on the battlefields of the future war, most of these wishes were granted to Ardagh by the time the new convention was signed on 6 July.39 Ardagh was not the only one to throw his weight around at the Geneva conference in an effort to bend the Red Cross project to his will. Martens, who represented Russia at the conference, tried once again to blur the lines between The Hague and Geneva by suggesting that quarrels over interpretations of the Geneva Convention should be referred to The Hague’s court of arbitration. Supported by most delegates but never made an actual article, this suggestion by Martens indicated, no less than Ardagh’s dominance of the issues of volunteers and medical equipment, that the trend towards lawyers and military men controlling the Red Cross movement’s purpose and direction was now well established.40 In both its substance and the influence of those who shaped it, therefore, the revised Geneva Convention of 1906 officially ended the post-1864 era in which the humanitarians roamed unbound and the Committee –with results that were, admittedly, patchy –sought to guide the work of the various societies. Fittingly, as the curtain fell on the original Red Cross idea, so did the convention’s architects exit the stage. Moynier and Dunant, both now in their eighties, died within weeks of each other, in the autumn of 1910. That same year their first and most formidable antagonist, Florence Nightingale, who had laid the groundwork for the militarization and professionalization of humanitarian work that eventually consumed Dunant’s vision, was also put to rest. The peace-seekers, for their part, were still very much alive in the years after The Hague conference and, despite both the apparent transformation of humanitarians into facilitators of war, and the failure of arbitration in South Africa, they still scored some small victories. These included but were not limited to, the resolving via arbitration tribunal of an Anglo-Russian dispute over the sinking of British vessels in the lead up to the Russo-Japanese War, the settlement of the long-disputed maritime boundary between Norway and Sweden, and the peaceful ending to the ongoing blockade of Venezuela by Britain, Italy and Germany in 1904. These successes did little, however, to satiate the peace-seekers’ desire for a definitive breakthrough in their fight to end war. Ironically, it was left to Roosevelt –a former cavalryman who had backed the creation of a more militarized ARC and was reputed to carry a firearm with him at all times –to form an alliance with the apostles of peace that could break the post-Hague inertia. Even before brokering the ceasefire between Russia and Japan, Roosevelt had agreed to the requests he received in early 1904 from both Suttner and the IPU to call the
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nations of the world together for a second peace conference. His plans to do so were scuppered by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, but the fact that the president of the United States was now talking about resuming what had begun at The Hague still had the effect of taking the genie out of its bottle. In the end, Roosevelt agreed to step aside as champion of the peace conference initiative, allowing the Tsar –humiliated by his defeat at the hands of Japan and desperate to reassert his authority on the world’s stage –to once again take the reins. This led to St. Petersburg calling in April 1906 for a second international gathering, as had been promised in the final act of the 1899 convention.41 The initial signs that the Second Hague Conference, which commenced on 7 June 1907, would both pick up where the last conference left off and expand on the peaceable projects first discussed in 1899, were promising. The peace-seekers who desired a ‘Congress of Nations’ were heartened by Washington’s suggestion that hitherto absent South American nations be invited to the conference. This swelled the number of delegations to 44, such a mass that proceedings had to be moved from the House in the Woods to the Binnenhof, a sprawling warren of gothic halls and chambers in the centre of The Hague that had long served as the home of the Netherlands’ parliament. There, so the American delegate Joseph Choate had it, would sit a harmonious and truly international gathering, ‘composed of as able and earnest a body of public men as ever had been assembled for a similar purpose’.42 This purpose, moreover, would be much clearer than it had been in 1899. As Martens himself had to concede, the 1899 resolutions on arbitration had made the process ‘rather clumsy’, and there was a need for refinements that would lead to arbitration tribunals being instantly ‘available when any difficulty arose’. Consequently, measures to establish a Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague were put on the agenda of the second conference. Disarmament, once again, was a perfunctory inclusion that, as the instructions to the British delegation laid down, was to be discussed primarily to placate public opinion and, if one was inclined to the faint optimism held by Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal government, ‘keep the door open for continuing negotiations on the subject’. However, with hostility towards disarmament still palpable from Germany and the recently defeated Russian military in need of a rebuild, it was accepted as a given by the British that any discussion of curtailing the arms race ‘would not lead to a satisfactory conclusion’.43 This sense of resignation over the disarmament issue was indicative of the wider trend of apathy and exhaustion at the Binnenhof, where any hopes of a true breakthrough in the campaign to control war were soon eclipsed. The continuation of the arms race, the semi-regular outbreak of wars and the conspicuous passage of years since the first great event meant that the anxious buzz of excitement that had emanated out from the House in the Woods eight years earlier was reduced to a low, steady hum of limited expectation by 1907. At the Binnenhof, veterans of the first conference and statesmen familiar with the tone and aims of the 1906 Geneva Convention chaired sessions covering ground that had already been well trodden in 1899, albeit this time with greater depth and consideration. This was particularly true when matters of war were discussed. The 1899 regulations were revisited, refined and in some aspects, expanded. This included the uncharacteristically smooth incorporation of the recently
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revised 1906 Geneva Convention into The Hague Convention’s articles pertaining to the treatment of the wounded and sick at sea. The need to recognize neutral territories as inviolable in war, to resort to arbitration rather than force when it came to resolving matters of debt collection, and to give a prospective enemy fair warning that you intended to wage war upon them were also inked into the revised conventions, along with a host of new articles dealing with sea mines, submarines, blockades and other aspects of naval warfare. It was not for nothing that Suttner –who along with Passy and Stead attended once again with the aim to cajole delegates into more peaceable discussions –declared that the Tsar’s once visionary idea had manifested as ‘conferences for consolidating war’, at which ‘you only hear about wounded and sick persons and belligerents!’.44 Suttner had identified the key characteristic of the Hague conferences that so concerned the peace-seekers. Leaving aside the discarding of disarmament, the lack of grand, peaceable ambitions and the focus on refining the laws of war, the second Hague Conference was in spirit and character as much a successor to the Geneva Conference of 1906 as it was to gathering of 1899. Continuing the trend set by Ardagh and MacPherson in Geneva, proceedings at the Binnenhof confirmed that the campaigns to regulate, humanize and even prevent war were now in the hands of military men, world leaders and statesmen, most of whom had long accepted that the future war was next to inevitable. At most, the delegates were still willing to hedge their bets on the question of war and peace. Amidst all the refinements of war regulations, the second Hague Conference produced a revision of the Convention for Pacific Settlements, which contained an acknowledgement of the need for a permanent court of arbitration to sit at The Hague, accessible at all times to any nations in dispute.45 As an affirmation of the sentiments first expressed in 1899, the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the implied recognition of its potential to calm international tensions were, despite Suttner’s grumbling, victories for the peace-seekers, which demonstrated that for all the militarization of humanitarianism and the rejection of disarmament, hope for peace was not entirely forlorn, and the campaign to control war was far from being at an end.
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Conclusion –1914: The Campaign Ends?
In 1910, ailing and two years from death, Passy reflected on his life’s work. He was proud, certainly, but he regretted the time and energy that his crusade for peace had taken away from his duties as a husband and father. The question of whether it had all been worth it was very much on his mind. Although he hearteningly spoke of ‘what a difference there now is between the ancient and the present conditions of things’, a note of foreboding crept in when he spoke of a world in which, despite the peace-seekers’ labours, ‘divisions, competitions, jealousies and distrust still exist, threatening still every hour the world with new troubles’. These were the thoughts of a man unblinded by the steady momentum the peace-seekers had enjoyed in the years since the Tsar had issued his rescript. The peace movement had continued to grow into the new century, with close to 200 different societies spread across the world, meeting regularly, devising new initiatives and lobbying politicians via the IPU to further strengthen the system of international arbitration that had been born of the Hague conferences. In addition to the movement’s vibrancy, in 1913 a grandiose Peace Palace to house the Permanent Court of Arbitration was constructed at The Hague, using funds solicited by that great advocate of arbitration, Andrew White, from the millionaire industrialist Andrew Carnegie. There was substance enough in these developments to believe that, despite Suttner’s view that the Tsar’s initiatives had served only to strengthen the hand of those who believed war could be humanized, the peace-seekers had come out of The Hague conferences on the right side of history.1 The world, however, was turning in a very different direction to the one Passy had long hoped for, and at a speed he knew was outstripping the peace-seekers’ achievements. It was clear even before the delegates reached the Binnenhof that the sequel to the conference at the House in the Woods was not going mark a peaceable end to the campaign to control war. Rather, as Stead and Suttner grew more desperate in their demands for something immediate and profound, cautious delegates held to the view that the Second Hague conference was simply the next link in a chain –The Hague was a process, rather than a last stand against the threat of war. It was a process, moreover, that would continue to bring the world’s statesmen together every eight or so years to draft new regulations for weapons development and wartime suffering, or add improvements to the nascent international arbitration system. As the delegates left the Binnenhof, they did so in the belief that they would meet again at a third Hague Conference, scheduled for the summer of 1915. Instead of a measured meander to
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this next gathering, however, The Hague process was ended abruptly seven years after the Binnenhof conference, when the future war that had haunted the minds of humanitarians, peace-seekers, world-leaders and military men for decades finally arrived, delivered from the barrel of Gavrilo Princip’s pistol. The race between peace and war had ended, catastrophically so, in the latter’s favour. Suttner did not live to see the carnage. On the morning of 21 June 1914 she passed away at her home in Vienna, aged 71. The Advocate of Peace’s obituary listed in glowing terms her many contributions to the cause of peace, crowning her life story with the hope that ‘the cause waits for other earnest and consecrated leaders to take the place she has left vacant. Her work has not ended, it has only begun’.2 Whether through editorial sloppiness or gallows irony, the article immediately below the obituary announced the postponement of the upcoming peace congress in Vienna, on account of the outbreak of the war that Suttner had spent years trying to prevent. Their agenda shattered, what followed seemingly replicated the situation that had beset the peace-seekers sixty years earlier, when Richard Cobden and John Bright had urged their followers to focus on containing the Crimean War before it ignited into a global conflagration. Passy and Suttner’s peace movement, however, was a more sophisticated beast than that of their predecessors. Rather than rely solely on protests, prayers and personal appeals, plans were laid to establish peace bureaus in Paris, London and The Hague for the purposes of exploiting any overtures from statesman who were willing to drag their nations back from the precipice. Such peace feelers as were put out by the belligerents, however, went nowhere and, when the IPU’s urgent demand for a last minute peace conference was rejected by the belligerents in August 1914, the peace-seekers were thrown onto the back foot, albeit only temporarily. Testament to the peace movement’s renewed strength, the war did not have the same shattering effect on it as the Crimean conflict of the 1850s had. Rather than fade into obsolescence, the peace-seekers were steeled and their purpose made imperative, particularly after trench warfare set in following the Battle of the Aisne in September 1914. As the months of stalemate dragged into 1915, casualties mounted and tales of unmatched misery made their way from the trenches to the home front, new peace societies emerged, primarily in Britain and the United States. Some of the societies continued to lobby politicians while others, such as the No Conscription Fellowship, formed to support Britain’s thousands of conscientious objectors. In the end, however, peace was only realized after the collapse of the Kaiserreich in 1918. Bloodshed, blockade and societal implosion, rather than arbitration, conscientious objection and diplomacy had brought peace back to the world. Their relentless activism throughout the war, however, ensured that the peace-seekers survived the cataclysm with both their credibility intact, and their mission recognized by statesmen, the general public and even some soldiers as being more relevant than ever. Perversely, this happy outcome for the peace-seekers was facilitated by the pall of disgust and disbelief that hung over a post-war world that, despite decades of anticipating the future war, was in no way prepared for the scale of suffering and destruction it unleashed.3 The humanitarians, for their part, faced the arrival of the future war as best they could. Not that they had any choice to do otherwise. The road from Scutari to the Somme was one of both validation and discredit for the volunteers who risked their
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lives to provide succour to war’s victims. For all the failures and successes endured by the Red Cross, the Quakers, the USSC, the angels of the Crimea and the surgeons of Stafford House one certainty had become clear by the summer of 1914 –humanitarian action was now as much a reality of war as guns, bombs and camp disease. Accordingly, as Europe’s armies mobilized, so too did the Red Cross movement. In Geneva, the new Committee president Gustav Ador re-established the information bureau that had first been setup during the Franco-Prussian War as both a hub for collecting information on POWs, and a base from which to coordinate the many relief operations the Red Cross would have to undertake as part of its now fifty-year-old mission to plug the gaps left by army medical services. Ador also ordered the Committee’s bulletin to publish violations of the Geneva Convention, the official, vastly understated number of which reached 80 by war’s end. This was a decision that honoured his predecessor Moynier’s belief that the Committee had a solemn duty to both protect the integrity of the convention, and enlighten all who went to war as to the importance of its articles –a fusion of Red Cross activities with the IIL’s campaign to use the laws of war to promote a more humanitarian consensus on the battlefield and beyond.4 For the Red Cross societies, mobilization took a more corporeal form. In Britain, a plan for humanitarian relief had been drawn up as early as 1909, when both the British Red Cross and the St John Ambulance were requested by the War Office to develop Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs). Notably, the VADs scheme was initiated as much by Red Cross reformers and military men who recognized the need for volunteers, as by would-be nurses who saw participation as a means of furthering the women’s movement –Nightingales for a new age. The scheme saw VADs, having received basic medical training, form units that would act as all-purpose humanitarian auxiliaries, operating primarily behind the lines, but with a flexible mandate to be deployed wherever they were needed. Led by a medical officer, but staffed by both male and female volunteers who, depending on competencies, could act as anything from stretcher-bearers and nurses to cooks and quartermasters, the VADs embodied the merger of military requirements and humanitarian imperatives that had come to define the Red Cross.5 This phenomenon of humanitarians as army auxiliaries was global. Analogues of the VADs appeared across the world, either through deliberate replication, or as a result of war planners and Red Cross leaders being guided by the same belief in the importance of mass humanitarian mobilization that had finally been recognized in Britain. In the United States, the ARC’s Relief Columns were developed using the VADs, the German Red Cross’s Sanitary Relief Corps and the observations made by Charles Lynch of Japanese Red Cross work as points of reference. In preparing the Relief Column manual Lynch even reached back into his own country’s humanitarian past, promoting the same strategy of consolidating and controlling grassroots philanthropy that Bellows and Olmsted had developed during the Civil War, by advising Red Cross instructors to educate their district’s charitable groups, rifle clubs and retired serviceman’s leagues in first aid and sanitary procedures. That way, when the United States entered the war, the process of nation-wide humanitarian mobilization would run smoothly. A similar emphasis on national mobilization was present in France, where the SSBM had spent years preparing for the future war via a series of recruitment drives, focused in particular on something Chenu would have
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once scoffed at, namely, bringing women in to serve as nurses, just as the men served as soldiers. Like most Red Cross reformers, the French looked to Japan for inspiration, in awe of the discipline and patriotism that characterized the emperor’s humanitarian legions. These were comprised of 4,538 trained volunteers, assigned to man 132 Red Cross ambulances and two hospital ships even before Japan formally declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. Stirred by the twin forces of service to the emperor and a desire to demonstrate its qualities as a ‘civilized’ nation to its allies in the Entente, Japan’s Red Cross successfully balanced the demands of medical auxiliary service with the Dunant-like ethos of impartially treating one’s enemies with respect and care.6 The extent to which this global mobilization of humanitarians reduced the scale of suffering during the First World War is impossible to gauge. An analysis of the numbers of wounded compared to the numbers treated by Red Cross volunteers would be both asinine and near to impossible, for the lines between official army medical staff and volunteers –both of which were now wearing Red Crosses –had become irrevocably blurred by 1914. Of relevance here is what this mobilization reveals about the humanitarians’ decades-long campaign to both normalize voluntary action on the battlefield, and make military medicine and soldier wellbeing objects of concern for nations at war. Over the summer of 1914 Germany began calling up both medical students –all of whom had received at least six months military training in addition to their medical studies –and village doctors to work alongside army surgeons and Red Cross volunteers, who together had been drilling their evacuation and first aid procedures for well over a decade. In France, private doctors, cooks and nurses hitherto unattached to either the Red Cross or the army medical services were also mobilized. The USSC’s decades-old advice to harness any and all medical resources in preparation for the worst had been well developed on the continent, so too the sense that such medical preparedness was key to the success of any modern army. As this mobilization was taking place in Germany and France, moreover, a Royal Army Medical Corps contingent of 10,900 surgeons, orderlies and medical officers, along with 600 trained nurses was crossing the Channel as part of the British Expeditionary Force. To this deployment would later be added tens of thousands of VADs, whose assistance was demanded by the War Office in 1915 once it became obvious that further medical resources were needed to maintain the fighting fitness of Britain’s soldiers –an acknowledgement by Whitehall that without volunteers the war effort itself might be endangered.7 Seventeen years before, a similar call for help came from Washington, when it asked Barton to lend the ARC’s services, in a modest capacity, to the war effort in Cuba. This only occurred, however, because Barton herself had spent many months cajoling to this end. Eighteen years before this request for ARC support, Red Cross volunteers from across the world had flooded uninvited into France, where they were obstructed by generals, fired on by soldiers and often spurned and derided by overwhelmed army surgeons. Eleven years before the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian War, Dunant had been one of a number of passers-by who wandered onto the battlefield of Solferino without authorization or direction in order to tend to the needs of the wounded and dying –men whose commanders had cared so little for their wellbeing that they had rejected the encumbrance of taking ambulance carts to the battlefield.
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Five years before that fateful day in Lombardy, a British medical mission of a very different kind to that which arrived in France in 1914 was launched when Nightingale set off for Constantinople with thirty-eight volunteer nurses on a mercy mission to rescue a doomed army from the indifference and ineptitude of its medical staff. That humanitarianism, military medicine and war preparation had evolved in lock-step with one another since the Crimean War in such a way that the soldier was now an object of pity, and the humanitarian an accredited angel of mercy, is undeniable. The parts played by trailblazers like Nightingale, Dunant, the USSC and others in this nexus between humanitarianism and war is also difficult to overstate. What is less clear is whether there were any alternatives to the form of humanitarian action –militarized, professionalized and reliant on mass mobilization –that developed out of this aspect of the campaign to control war. In A Memory of Solferino Dunant wrote of the spirit of tutti fratelli –we are all brothers. He did so as a means of promoting the idea that all soldiers, irrespective of nationality, were equal in their plight. As Dunant espoused it this notion also applied to humanitarians, who were linked by something more powerful than nationhood –the bonds of Samaritanism, charity and humanity.8 The internationalism woven into the Red Cross conferences, the sharing of a globally recognized symbol and the extension, albeit reluctantly by a leadership that was white, male, Christian and European, of Red Cross status to societies in Asia and the Middle East spoke to this hope that the Red Cross might be a means of uniting the world. This internationalist vision might have inspired the men of Geneva, but the actual manifestation of their campaign to make war more humane came in forms more aligned to notions of patriotic volunteerism and war-readiness. The fact that Nightingale and the USSC had given early inspiration to a number of Red Cross volunteers, and the more militarist societies of Japan and Prussia had provided a laudable model to follow on the road to 1914 indicates that the campaign to control suffering in war was, ultimately, defined more by transnational exchanges of ideas and alignment to national and military interests than notions of international fraternity.9 This was also true of the campaign to control war through law. With the exception of the initial Geneva Conferences of 1863 and 1864, at which participation was primarily motivated by a need to demonstrate humanitarian mindfulness to a concerned public, the international law conferences of the late nineteenth century were occasions at which either national interest or military planning upset the loftier intentions of those who convened them. The 1868 maritime revision of the Geneva Convention floundered on the frustrations of naval delegates, who saw the proposals as posing an unnecessary risk to their ability to wage war at sea. The St Petersburg Conference managed to ban exploding bullets, but this was only so on account of the fact that few military commanders believed them to be war winners. The Brussels Conference leaned too heavily on the idea that Lieber’s Code –devised for the Union army alone –could be translated into an international project, a problematic idea made more so by the fact that it was pursued at a time when war planning against Prussia was the priority for most European governments. Ironically, the most successful conferences pertaining to international law and war regulation were The Hague ‘peace’ Conferences where, in order to downplay disarmament and provide a backup should discussions of arbitration
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end in failure, Martens chose to include topics pertaining to the waging, rather than ending of, war. It is true that the IIL had one success –the Oxford Manual of 1880. However, when set against the lofty ambitions of Bluntschli, Rolin-Jaequemyns and Moynier to create a global consensus on law, humanity and civilizational progress, the compiling of an army manual using Lieber’s thoughts as a template seems well short of what the lawyers believed they could accomplish. No less than the peace-seekers and the Red Cross purists, the IIL’s achievements paled in the shadow of their ambitions. Does this mean that the campaign to control war was a failure on all fronts? Judged by the standards set by many who waged it, it was. Neither the USSC nor its successor, the American Association, was able to spearhead a global humanitarian movement based on the Union way of military medicine. The IIL did not bind the wounds of the world with international law. Martens struggled to find satisfaction in The Hague conventions, and both Suttner and Barton died with regrets for the unfinished way their respective missions had ended. The First World War was a defeat for the peace- seekers who believed that arbitration could save the world. For the humanitarians and the lawyers it was easy to read every image of the conflict as a memento of failure. Millions of soldiers dead, wounded and mutilated, countless civilians displaced and brutalized, trenches wreathed in clouds of poisonous gas and towns turned to fields of fire-scorched chimneys, combined with the inevitable military-medical failures and breaches of international law that came with a conflict of such scale indicated that, at best, the humanitarians had a lot more work to do both on the battlefields and in the conference rooms.10 It was seldom apparent to them at the time, but amidst all this both the peace-seekers and the humanitarians did achieve a significant victory –they were given the chance to continue what they had started once the guns fell silent. The Committee would face a challenge to its leadership of the Red Cross movement when, in 1919, the ARC tried to take the lead by forming the League of Red Cross Societies –a curious throwback to the age when the USSC believed that it could guide the international humanitarian movement. This internal dispute aside, the Red Cross still emerged from the war with the value of its volunteers as controllers of suffering acknowledged by all. When viewed in the broader context of the effort to humanize war dating back to the 1850s, this normalization of war-time volunteerism was clearly the product, not of the extremis of the First World War alone, but of the decades of labour by the likes of Barton, Furley and Kennet-Barrington –just three of the thousands who contributed in various ways to making the idea of civilians roaming battlefields in the name of humanity palatable to military commanders. Likewise, the once utopian ideas of arbitration, disarmament and international brotherhood were not concepts confined to history’s ash heap in the wake of the war. Indeed, the entire post-war settlement –embodied in the League of Nations –was premised on both the importance of these issues, and the need to continue building the corpus of international law that had been started a generation earlier. The importance of international law, both in international relations and in the regulation of conflict itself, was not laid open to question by either the outbreak of the First World War, or the brutal manner in which it was fought. Much like wartime humanitarianism, the decades of work put in by the likes of Moynier, Martens, Lieber and Bluntschli ensured that this would be so.11
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The credibility proffered the campaigns of both peace-seekers and humanitarians was hard won by the figures who have featured in this story. It is easy, when looking back, to attribute their achievements to something greater than their own actions – the notion, much cherished at the time, that the world was moving inexorably in a direction that was more internationalist, more progressive and more humane. Trends as significant as humanizing war, normalizing its regulation or accepting that there are means of preventing war altogether do not, however, just happen. In an age in which the pax Europa broke and fears of a future war loomed, the peace-seekers and humanitarians nurtured grand visions into fragile realities that, though falling short of their desires, were nonetheless critical in ensuring that voluntary humanitarianism, compassion for victims and the need for limitations in war were notions that survived the First World War, however battered by the enormity of the cataclysm. Very few of the aforementioned, however, lived to see their campaign through into its post-war phase, leaving a new generation of peace-minded statesmen, concerned Red Cross leaders, inventive army surgeons and ambitious international lawyers to pick up the torch they had ignited. Like-minded generations have followed in their wake, ensuring that the campaign to control war, started over 160 years ago, continues to this day –as complex and demanding as it ever was. Many who have contributed to the campaign have been lost to history, their names subsumed into a movement, an institution or an ‘ism’. Buried back in December 1900, however, there is a monument to the original spearheads of the campaign, which encapsulates both their mission and their era near- perfectly. This monument is the first Nobel Peace Prize, born of a scheme developed by a man who had grown rich after inventing a stable form of explosive, only to be persuaded by the arch-pacifist Suttner to reward those who either sought to prevent the use of such weapons, or provide succour to those wounded by them. Initially intended to be given to one outstanding contributor to the cause of humanity, the judging panel decided instead that there would have to be two recipients of this inaugural honour.12 The winners were obvious to anyone who had followed the campaign to control war – they were Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy.
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Notes Introduction: A Time for Angels 1 Dunant speech reproduced in Martin Gumpert, Dunant: The Story of the Red Cross (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938), 286–287. 2 David J. Hacker, ‘A census-based count of the Civil War dead’, Civil War History, 57:4 (2011), 307–348. 3 David Gates, Warfare in the Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 114–150; Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler, eds., On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Stephen Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War (London: Atlantic Books, 2012), 340–354; Mark Ravina, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Hoboken: Wylie, 2004), 200–204; Quotes from The War Correspondence of the Daily News, with a Connecting NarrativeForming a Continuous History of the War Between Russia and Turkey (London: MacMillan, 1878), 331. 4 Henry Dunant, The Proposal of His Majesty, the Emperor Nicholas II (1898) reproduced in Gumpert, Dunant, 289. 5 Bertha von Suttner, Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life, vol. 2 (Boston: Gin and Company, 1910), 230–231. 6 Robert M. Coupland, ‘The effect of weapons and the Solferino cycle: where disciplines meet to prevent of limit the damage caused by weapons’, British Medical Journal, 319 (October 1999), 864–865. 7 A sample introduction for the reader would be: David Kennedy, Of War and Law (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2005); Jackson Harvey Ralston, International Arbitration from Athens to Locarno (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1929); Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare (London: Methuen, 1983); Richard A. Gabriel, Between Flesh and Steel: A History of Military Medicine from the Middle Ages to the Wars in Afghanistan (Dulles: Potomac Books, 2013). 8 A good summary of this scholarship is provided in Douglas Porch, Wars of Empire (London: Cassell, 2000). 9 I am indebted to the participants in the closing remarks session of the Continuities and Change Red Cross conference at Flinders University in September 2016 for discussion of this issue.
1 The Crimean Crucible 1 Christina Phelps, The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930), 52–60; Quote from Richard Cobden
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speech, ‘Abstract of the Proceedings at the Edinburgh Peace Conference’, Advocate of Peace, 11:2/3 (February–March 1854), 39. 2 ‘The Peace Conference’, The Times, 15 October 1853. 3 Andrew C. Rather, The Crimean War in Imperial Context, 1854–1856 (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), Introduction; Clive Ponting, The Crimean War: The Truth behind the Myth (London: Chatto and Windus, 2004), 1–21. 4 Martin Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: The British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 45–46; Bill Cash, John Bright: Statesman, Orator, Agitator (London: I. B. Taurus, 2012), 209–210 citing The Dairies of John Bright, Robert Alfred John Walling (ed.) (New York: William Morrow, 1931), 9 August 1855. 5 John L. H. Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar: Army and Society in Russia 1462–1874 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 324; Saul David, Victoria’s Wars: The Rise of Empire (London: Penguin, 2007), 184–187. 6 James Phinney Baxter, The Introduction of the Ironclad Warship, reprint edition (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 2001), 69–91; Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade (London: Allen Lane, 2010), 355–356; Charles Chenevix Trench, A History of Marksmanship (Chicago: Follet, 1972), 222; Kim Coleman, A History of Chemical Warfare (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 8–9. 7 Figes, Last Crusade, 147–153. 8 Stefanie Markovits, ‘Rushing into print: “participatory journalism” during the Crimean War’, Victorian Studies, 50:4 (2006), 559–585. 9 H. J. Leech (ed.), The Public Letters of John Bright (London: Sampson Low, 1885) – Bright to Absaolm, 29 October 1854, 26–36. 10 ‘Annual report on Proceedings of the London Peace Society’, Advocate of Peace, 12:8/ 9 (1856), 124; ‘After scenes of the Battle of Alma’, Advocate of Peace, 11:13 (January 1855), 201–202; ‘Letter by a Russian Sister of Mercy’, Advocate of Peace, 12:2 (February 1856), 29–30. 11 Christopher Hibbert, The Destruction of Lord Raglan, A Tragedy of the Crimean War, 1854–1855 (Ware: Wordsworth Reprints, 1999), 251–252. 12 John Black Atkins, The Life of Sir William Howard Russell: The First Special Correspondent (London: John Murray, 1911), 85–104, 124–122; William Howard Russell, The British Expedition to the Crimea (London: Routledge, 1858), 37–38. 13 Russell, British Expedition, 49; ‘Arrival of the Wounded in the Bosporus’, The Times, 9 October 1854. 14 Julian Spilsbury, The Thin Red Line: An Eyewitness History of the Crimean War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005), 21–25; John Shelton Curtiss, The Russian Army under Tsar Nicholas I, 1825–1855 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1965), 115; Jack Edward McCullum, Military Medicine: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008), 93. 15 Gabriel, Between Flesh and Steel, 140–158; Martin Howard, Wellington’s Doctors: The British Army Medical Services in the Napoleonic Wars (Stroud: Spellmount, 2002), 23–24, 85–93. 16 Wellcome Library Trust Archives, Papers of Sir Thomas Longmore, hereafter WL:RAMC LP 423/1 –‘Letter to the right honourable the secretary at war on the reorganisation of the medical department’, 1855; For examples of recruitment practices, see generally The National Archives of the United Kingdom, hereafter TNA:ADM 97/219. 17 British Library, Papers of Florence Nightingale, hereafter BL:ADD MS.43393 – Longmore to Birkett, 16 February 1855.
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18 Quote cited from Henry Connor, ‘Use of chloroform by British Army surgeons during the Crimean War’, Medical History, 42:2 (1998), 162–193; BL:ADD MS.45773 – Longmore to Alexander, 3 February 1865. 19 Candem Badem, The Ottoman Crimean War, 1853–1856 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 185–188. 20 John Shepherd, The Crimean Doctors: A History of the British Medical Services in the Crimean War, vol. 1 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1991), 73–75, 113–145; John S. Haller, Battlefield Medicine: A History of the Military Ambulance from the Napoleonic Wars through World War I (Chicago: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 17–18. See generally TNA:WO 28/177 for reports on surgeons being drunk on duty, abandoning patients with undressed wounds and stealing medical supplies. 21 Ponting, The Truth behind the Myth, 191–194. 22 Spilsbury, Thin Red Line, 256; Shepherd, Crimean Doctors, vol. 1, 64–66. 23 ‘The Wounded at Constantinople’, The Times, 16 October 1854 24 ‘The Wounded at Constantinople’, The Times, 16 October 1854; ‘Surgeons for the Army’, The Times, 24 October 1854; ‘The War in Crimea’, The Times, 28 October 1854; Thomas Longmore, Sanitary Contrasts of the British and French Armies during the Crimean War (London: Charles Griffin, 1883), 24. 25 Charles Shrimpton, The British Army and Miss Nightingale (London: A & W Galignani, 1864), 3. 26 Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend (London: Penguin, 2009), 85–101, 183–186. 27 The position of Secretary of State at War was a more clerical version of the Secretary of State for War, which at the time was held by the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Henry Pelham-Clinton. 28 Edward Cook, The Life of Florence Nightingale, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Macmillan 1913), 146–51; BL:ADD MS.43393 –Herbert to Nightingale, 19 October 1854. 29 ‘Nurses for the Wounded’, The Times, 24 October 1854. 30 Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, ch. 21. The most negative portrayal of Nightingale is in F. B. Smith, Florence Nightingale: Reputation and Power (London: Croom Helm, 1982). One of the more balanced views is to be found in Monica Baly, Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 31 TNA:WO 43/963 –‘Confidential Report on the Nursing System since its Introduction to the Crimea on the 23rd of January 1855’, 24 December 1855; Hall to Smith, 10 November 1855 –reproduced in Siddha Mohana Mitra ed., The Life and Letters of Sir John Hall (London: Longman, Greens, 1911), 401–403. 32 WL:RAMC 524/14/15/5 – Papers of Sir John Hall –Transcript of Diaries, 1853–1856, see generally 14–31 July 1853, quote from 12 July. 33 TNA:WO 43/963 –Herbert to Nightingale, 20 October 1854. 34 Florence Nightingale, A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army during the Late War with Russia (London: Harrison, 1859), 349. 35 See generally BL:ADD MS 43393, quote from Nightingale to Herbert, 19 February 1855; Zachary Cope, Florence Nightingale and the Doctors (London: Museum Press, 1958), 48–55. 36 Shepherd, Crimean Doctors, vol. 2, 349–356; Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 332–334. 37 Christopher J. Gill and Gillian C. Gill, ‘Nightingale in Scutari: her legacy reexamined’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 40:12 (2005), 1799–1805. 38 Shepherd, Crimean Doctors, vol. 2, 395–400; TNA:WO 32/7580 –Statement on the Proceedings of the Sanitary Commission Despatched to the Seat of War in the East.
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39 The Army and Its Medico-Sanitary Arrangements (Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 1859), 25–26. 40 Ian Hay, One Hundred Years of Army Nursing (London: Cassell, 1953), 35–39; Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 377–388. 41 Florence Nightingale, Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army, Founded Chiefly on the Experiences of the Last War (London: Harrison, 1858), 1. 42 The full, cumbersome title speaks to the ambition of this treatise: Regulations for the duties of inspectors-general and deputy inspectors-general of hospitals for the duties of staff and regimental medical officers; for the organization of general, regimental, and field hospitals and for the duties of officers, attendants, and nurses; for sanitary measures, and precautions for preserving the health of the troops; for the duties of sanitary officers attached to armies and for drawing up sanitary and medical statistics and reports (London: John W. Parker, 1859). 43 During the war, Hall derided the suggestion of a Medical Staff Corps as ‘useless’ unless interpreters could be found to coordinate the actions of British surgeons with locally recruited stretcher bearers. The basic idea, however, he thought to be good – WL:RAMC 524/14/15/5 – Hall Diaries, 16 July 1853; TNA:WO 43/987 –Smith to Grey, 20 May 1855, Hall to Smith, 7 May 1855; A. E. W. Miles. The Accidental Birth of Military Medicine: The Origins of the Royal Army Medical Corps (London: Civic Books, 2009), 149–153; John Sweetman, ‘The Crimean War and the formation of the Medical Staff Corps’, Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 53: 214 (1975), 113–119. 44 Lynn McDonald, Nightingale at First Hand (London: Continuum, 2010), 89; WL:RAMC 423/6 –Charles Alexander Gordon, Remarks on a Proposed System of Sea Transport for Troops Employed in India and China (Serampore: Marshall D’Cruz 1864). 45 Mary Seacole, The Wonderful Adventures of Ms. Seacole in Many Foreign Lands (London: James Blackwood, 1857), 89–90. 46 Jane Robinson, Mary Seacole: The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea (London: Constable, 2005), 85–90; Lynn McDonald, ‘Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole: on nursing and healthcare’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 70:6 (2014), 1436–1444. 47 Humphrey Sandwith, A Narrative of the Siege of Kars and of the Six Months Resistance by the Turkish Garrison under General Williams to the Russian Army (London: John Murray, 1856), 284–286, 333–337. 48 John Shelton Curtiss, ‘Russian Sisters of Mercy in the Crimea, 1854–55’, Slavic Review, 25:1 (1966), 84–99; Laurie S. Stoff, Russia’s Sisters of Mercy and the Great War: More than Binding Men’s Wounds (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2015), 21–23. 49 Nancy Mandelker Frieden, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 1856–1905 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1981), 1–11; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 338–340. 50 ‘Obituary of Sir Thomas Longmore’, The British Medical Journal, 12 October 1895. 51 WL:RAMC:524/14 –Longmore to Alexander, 4 January 1855; BL:ADD MS 43393 –Longmore to Birkett, 16 February 1855; ‘The War in Crimea’, The Times, 28 October 1854. 52 Longmore, Sanitary Contrasts, 24–28. See also Longmore’s Treatise on the Transport of Sick and Wounded Troops (London: HMSO, 1869) and Gunshot Injuries: Their History, Characteristic Features, Complications and General Treatment (London: HMSO, 1895).
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53 Louis Appia, ‘Nécrologie du Sir Thomas Longmore’, Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, 27:105 (1896), 18–21. 54 John F. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 26. 55 Jean-Charles Chenu, Rapport au Conseil de santé des armées sur les résultats du service médico-chirurgical aux ambulances de Crimée et aux hôpitaux militaires français en Turquie, pendant le campagne d’Orient en 1854, 1855 et 1856 (Paris: Victor Masson et Fils, 1865), 711–713. 56 TNA:WO 43/963 –‘Rules and Regulations for the Nurses Attached to the Military Hospitals in the East’ (undated, 1854). 57 See generally Nightingale, Notes Affecting. In particular, 170–176 for deficiencies in Crimean military-medical matters caused by poor training and, 218–234 for the importance of discipline, medical staff selection and more rigorous training procedures for the Medical Staff Corps. 58 WL:RAMC 1139 LP54/7–8 –Nightingale to Sir Thomas Longmore, 23 July 1864; RAMC 1139/LP22 –Longmore Minute, 3 August 1864.
2 Citizen-Humanitarians 1 William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (Boston: Burnham, 1863), 3 July 1861, 376–377. 2 Adam I. P. Smith, The American Civil War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 54–69. 3 Martin Crawford, ‘William Russell and the confederacy’, Journal of American Studies, 15:2 (1981), 191–210. 4 Russell, My Diary, 29 April and 3 July 1861, 151, 373. 5 Joseph G. Dawson III, ‘The first of the modern wars?’, in Susan Mary-Grant and Brian Holden Reid (eds.), Themes of the American Civil War: The War between the States, Second Edition (New York: Routledge, 2010), 64–80; Stig Förster and Nagler, ‘Introduction’, in Stig Förster and Jörg Nagler (eds.), On the Road to Total War: The American Civil War and the German Wars of Unification, 1861–1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–25, 1–11. 6 John Keegan, The American Civil War: A Military History (London: Vintage, 2010), 38, 52–56; James M. Mcpherson, Battle Cry Freedom: The American Civil War (London: Penguin, 1990), 331–333. 7 Horace. H. Cunningham, Doctors in Gray: The Confederate Medical Service (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1958), 21–25, see Appendix 1, 274 for war appropriations for the Confederate Army Medical Department. 8 Horace H. Cunningham, Field Medical Services at the Battles of Manassas (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 1–4; Scott McGaugh, Surgeon in Blue: Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care (New York: Arcade, 2013), 49–50. 9 Charles Janeway Stillé, The History of the United States Sanitary Commission, Being the General Report of Its Work during the War of the Rebellion (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1866), 32–34; Frederick Law Olmstead, Report of the Secretary with Regard to the Probable Origin of the Recent Demoralization of the Volunteer Army at Washington and the Duty of the Sanitary Commission with Reference to Certain Deficiencies in the Existing Army Arrangements Suggested Thereby (Washington: USSC, 1861), 10–15.
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10 Louis C. Duncan, The Medical Department of the United States Army in the Civil War (Washington: Government Printing Office, undated), 8–21. 11 Russell, My Diary, 22 July 1861, 467. 12 George Worthington Adams, Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 24–27; Quote from ‘Items from the Sanitary Commission’, New York Times, 21 July 1861. 13 Olmstead, Report of the Secretary, 15; Phillip S. Paludan, ‘ “The better angels of our nature”: Lincoln, propaganda and public opinion in the North during the Civil War’, in Förster and Nagler, On the Road to Total War, 357–375. 14 Richard Delafield et al., Report on the Art of War in Europe in 1854, 1855 and 1856 (Washington: George W. Bowman, 1860), 68. Generals and statesmen from what would later become the Confederacy also paid close attention to events in the Crimea –Horace Perry Jones, ‘Southern Military Interests in the Crimean War’, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 25 (2012), 35–52. 15 ‘Necessity of Sanitary Organization’, New York Times, 9 June 1861; ‘The Latest from Washington’, The Cape-Vincent Gazette, 25 May 1861; ‘Special Session of the Massachusetts Legislature’, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 14 May 1861. 16 Albert Love, The Geneva Red Cross Movement: European and American Influence on Its Development (Pennsylvania: Medical Field Service School, 1942), 8–9; Judith Ann Giesburg, Civil War Sisterhood: The U.S. Sanitary Commission and Women’s Politics in Transition (New Hampshire: Northeastern University Press, 2006), 14–15. 17 United States National Archives and Records Administration, hereafter NARA:RG 112 Entry 14, Box 10 –Bailey to Wood, 22 June 1861, Byrne to Finley, 20 July 1861; Adams, Doctors in Blue, 5–7. 18 Thomas J. Brown, Dorothea Dix: New England Reformer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 230–239. 19 The United States Sanitary Commission: A Sketch of Its Purposes and Its Work Compiled from Documents and Private Papers (Boston: Little Brown, 1863), hereafter USSC Docs –Wood to Cameron, 22 May 1861, 9–11. 20 Cameron to Finley, 10 June 1861 quoted from Brown, Dorothea Dix, 290. 21 Quote reproduced in Caroline A. Burgardt in Tiffany Francis, The Life of Dorothea Lynde Dix (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1891), 341. 22 Quote reproduced in Frank R. Freemon, Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care during the American Civil War (London: Associated University Press, 1998), 53–54. 23 Helen E. Marshall, Dorothea Dix: Forgotten Samaritan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1937), 203–209. 24 The two women would eventually fall out over their differing views on how to train nurses and physicians. Blackwell may also have held a personal grudge against Nightingale, based on resentment over the latter’s fame and success –Julie Boyd, ‘Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Blackwell’, The Lancet, 373:9674 (2 May 2009), 1516– 1517; Alfred Jay Bollet, ‘Essays on Civil War medicine: the relationship of two English women, Florence Nightingale and Dr Elizabeth Blackwell, and their contribution to medical care during the Civil War’, Journal of Civil War Medicine, 4:2 (2000), 1–3. 25 Walter Donald Kring, Henry Whitney Bellows (Boston: Skinner House, 1979), 227– 229; William Quentin Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel: The Political History of the United States Sanitary Commission (New York: Longman, Greens, 1956), 4–7. 26 Stillé, History of the United States Sanitary Commission, 31–32; Archives of the United States Sanitary Commission, New York Public Library, hereafter NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/15.5 –‘Scheme of a proposed organisation’, 30 May 1861.
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27 Kring, Henry Bellows, 270–271; ‘In Memory of Dr Elisha Harris’, Public Health Pap Rep, 10 (1884), 509–510. 28 Unless otherwise footnoted, material in the following paragraphs is sourced from George M. Fredrickson, The Inner Civil War: Northern Intellectuals and the Crisis of the Union (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), ch. 7 and William Y. Thompson, ‘The U.S. Sanitary Commission’, Civil War History, 2:2 (1956), 41–63. 29 Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 346–48, 328–332; Trudy E. Bell, ‘Benjamin Apthorp Gould’, in Thomas Hockey, et al. (eds), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Astronomers (New York: Spring-Verlag, 2007), 833–836; Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (eds), The Diary of George Templeton Strong, abridged version (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1952), 4 November 1862, 220. 30 Jane Turner Censer (ed.),The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Defending the Union, vol. 4 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986), hereafter FLO Papers –Olmsted to Bellows, 1 June 1861 and Olmsted to Mary Perkins Olmsted, 29 July 1861. 31 Elizabeth Stevenson, ‘Olmstead on F street: the beginnings of the United States Sanitary Commission’, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, 49 (1973), 125–136.; See generally Olmsted, Report of the Secretary. 32 USSC Docs –‘Sanitary Commission order by the Secretary of War and approved by the President’, 9 June 1861. 33 Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 8. 34 Allan Nevins, ‘The United States Sanitary Commission and Secretary Stanton’, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, vol. 67 (October 1941–May 1944), 402–419; Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 311–315. 35 Templeton Strong Diary, 190; FLO Papers, vol. 4 –Olmsted to Forbes, 15 December 1861, Olmsted to Bellows, 25 September 1861. 36 McGaugh, Surgeon in Blue, 51–52; Frank Hastings-Hamilton, A Treatise on Military Surgery and Hygiene (New York: Ballière Brothers, 1865), 168. 37 NARA:RG 112 Entry 14, Box 10 –Byrne to Finley, 24 July 1861; Freemon, Gangrene and Glory, 36–37. 38 ‘Necessity of Sanitary Organization’, New York Times, 9 June 1861. 39 On the USSC’s westward expansion and finances see Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 185–191; Stillé, USSC History, 188–189. 40 NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/14.2 –Bellows to King, 9 May 1862, Box 15.10 –‘Draft copy of bill to alter to position of Surgeon-General’; FLO Papers, vol. 4 –Olmsted to Bellows, 16 August 1861. 41 Margaret Humphries, Marrow of Tragedy: The Health Crisis of the American Civil War (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013), 141; See generally, William Holm Van Buren, U.S Sanitary Commission: Rules for Preserving the Health of the Soldier (New York: USSC, 1861) and WL:RAMC LP/423/6 –‘Sanitary Commission Report of a committee of the associate medical members of the sanitary commission on the subject of amputations’, 6 December 1861. 42 ‘The Recent Circular of the Sanitary Commission’, New York Times, 28 December 1861; ‘The Sanitary Commission and the Hospitals in Washington’, New York Times, 2 December 1861; Francis Brown, Raymond of the Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 201–202; For discussion of Raymond’s motivation for attacking the USSC, see Humphries, Marrow of Tragedy, 141–145. 43 ‘Proceedings of the Sanitary Commission’, National Republican, 26 October 1861, ‘To the loyal women of America’, National Intelligencer, 9 October 1861.
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44 Hastings-Hamilton, A Treatise on Military Surgery, 66–68; Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 25–30, 296–299; Stephen W. Sears, George P. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 15, 45–48; On McClellan’s differing views from generals of previous generations, see Matthew Moten, The Delafield Commission and the American Military Profession (College Station: Texas A and M University Press, 2000), 117–119. 45 Templeton Strong Diary, 23 October 1861, 190–191; NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/14.1 – Bellows to McClellan, 1 September 1861, Bellows to Cameron, 12 September 1861. 46 NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/18.2 –Bellows to Preston King, 9 May 1862 47 NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/18.2 –Bellows to Lincoln, 14 November 1861; For Raymond’s change of opinion see NYPL:MSS.COL 22261/5.28 –Douglas to Olmsted, 11 December 1861. 48 Bonnie Ellen Blustein, Preserve Your Love for Science: Life of William A. Hammond, American Neurologist (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 56–58; Shauna Devine, Learning from the Wounded: The Civil War and the Rise of American Medical Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2014), 15–17. 49 Frank R. Freemon, ‘Lincoln finds a surgeon-general: William A. Hammond and the transformation of the union army medical bureau’, Civil War History, 33 (1987), 5–21; Ira. M. Rutkow, Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine (New York: Random House, 2005), 113–119. 50 Stephen W. Sears, To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 347–351. 51 For the relief of Harrison’s Landing and the importance of steamships as medical assets see Jonathan Letterman, Medical Recollections of the Army of the Potomac (New York: Appleton, 1866), 5–21. 52 Adams, Doctors in Blue, 25–26. 53 McGaugh, Surgeon in Blue, 64–67. 54 NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/2.3 –E. C. Fisher, ‘The working of the United States Sanitary Commission with regard to armies in the field’, 10 February 1865, 1.
3 The Union Way 1 Bellows quote from Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 160–161; Olmsted quote from Frederick Law Olmstead, Hospital Transports: A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862 (Boston: Tickner and Fields, 1863), 160. 2 NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/16.4 –Olmsted outline of conditions for usage of USSC ships, 26 May 1862; Details of how the steamships were manned can be found in NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/17.2; USSC Docs, vol. 1, doc. 42 –A Visit to Fort Donelson, Tennessee for the Relief of the Wounded, 15 February 1862 and doc. 64 –J.S Newberry to W. P. Sprague, 16 February 1863. 3 McGaugh, Surgeon in Blue, 75–78; Letterman had some success in this, as by 1864 certain hospitals in Virginia were self-sufficient in supplies –NYPL:MSS.COL 18782/ 12.3 –Stevens to Douglas, 1 September 1864. 4 Stillé, USSC History, 138–147. 5 Brown, Dorothea Dix, 284–287, 294; NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/14.6 –Bellows to Dix, 19 February 1863.
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6 Brown, Dorothea Dix, 297–299. 7 USSC DOCS –Bellows et al. to Wood, 18 May 1861; The Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 1:1 (November 1863), 1. 8 Drew Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 51–53; Lemuel Moss, Annals of the United States Christian Commission (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1868), 13–60. 9 NARA:RG 94, Entry 740, Box 14 –Circular Letter: Office of the U.S. Christian Commission, 30 July 1864; Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 191–193, 222–223; A summary of the Christian Commission’s relations with the USSC can be found in Moss, Annals of the Christian Commission, 63–102. 10 Frances M. Clarke, War Stories: Suffering and Sacrifice in the Civil War North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 92–95; The Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 1:13 (May 1864), 397. 11 NARA:RG 94, 740, Box 15 –Smith to McKilton, 22 April 1862, Chamberlain to Stuart, 12 August 1864. 12 Edward P. Smith, Incidents of the United States Christian Commission (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1869), 1. 13 ‘Instructions to Delegates about Entering upon Their Work’, 15 September 1864 in Moss, Annals of the Christian Commission, 542–550. Quotes on 547; For reports of Christian Commission delegates, see generally NARA:RG 94, Entry 740, Box 9. 14 USSC Docs, vol. 2 –Account of the Field Relief Corps of the United States Sanitary Commission in the Army of the Potomac, 19 September 1863, doc. 72; Stillé, USSC History, 257; NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of USSC Standing Committee Meetings: regulations for deployment of Field Agents, 8 July 1864. 15 Stillé, USSC History, 244–246, 257–262; USSC Docs, vol. 3, doc. 92 –Report Concerning the Field Relief Service of the United States Sanitary Commission with the Armies of the Potomac, Georgia and Tennessee, June 1865. 16 NARA:RG Entry 740, Box 12 –see generally files marked ‘Donations and volunteers’ and ‘Answered letters’. 17 Moss, Annals of the Christian Commission, 41, 519–525; M. Hamlin Cannon, ‘The United States Christian Commission’, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 38:1 (1951), 61–80. 18 William Eleazar Barton, The Life of Clara Barton: Founder of the American Red Cross, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 339–343. 19 Stephen B. Oates, A Woman of Valour: Clara Barton and the Civil War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1994), 4–10. 20 Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton, Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 100–102. 21 Library of Congress Archives, Papers of Clara Barton, hereafter LOC:BP MSS.11973, Box 153, Microfilm Reel 107 –Barton Lecture on Franco-Prussian War, undated. 22 Oates, Woman of Valour, 367–369; ‘Order from Surgeon-General Hammond’, 11 July 1862 reproduced in Cora Bacon-Foster, Clara Barton: Humanitarian (Washington, DC: Columbia Historical Society, 1918), 13. 23 The scope of the USSC’s duties and the postwar expectations of soldiers for what it could do for them are well-demonstrated in the field reports and requests for assistance contained in NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/3.7–9. Discussions on the maltreatment of POWs had been rife throughout the war, but for the USSC’s decision to launch an investigation see NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of USSC Standing Committee Meetings, 31 May 1864.
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24 Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 297–298; McCallum, Military Medicine, 153–154; NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of USSC Standing Committee Meetings, 28 July 1864. 25 Suellen Hoy, Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit of Cleanliness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 40–46; Hastings-Hamilton, Treatise on Military Surgery, 87. 26 Freemon, Gangrene and Glory, tables on 118 and 215. 27 John Duffy, The Sanitarians: A History of American Public Health (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 113–114; ‘The Sanitary Gardens at Chattanooga’, Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 1:18 (15 July 1864), 555–556; NYPL:MSS.COL 222863/ 3.1 –Statement of the work of the Sanitary Commission in Savannah, Georgia, 22 February 1865. 28 Longmore collected a number of pamphlets and treatises from army surgeons in Europe and the United States, among them Hammond and Letterman, and incorporated the information contained therein into his own published works and lectures, see generally Wellcome Library Trust Archives, Papers of Sir Thomas Longmore, hereafter WL:RAMC LP 423/4 and 423/6; Devine, Learning from the Wounded, 49–52; McGaugh, Surgeon in Blue, 273. 29 Stillé, USSC History, 32–34. 30 For the establishment of the two branches, appointments of Fisher and Bellows and details of start-up funding, see generally NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/1.12. 31 NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/2.3 –Edmund Crisp Fisher, A Woman’s Example and a Nation’s Work (London: William Ridgeway, 1864); NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/2.6 –Edge to Jenkins, 15 August 1864. 32 See letters of receipt from these and other organizations in NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/ 1.3. Cobden, it seems, never attended, but did acknowledge receipt of the material – NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/2.1 –Register of letters received, USSC English Branch, 26 October 1864; Earl Grey de Ripon Papers, British Library Archives, hereafter BL:RP 8522 –Nightingale to USSC, 22 February 1865; MacDonald, Nightingale at First Hand, 90. 33 Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 286–288, 310–311; Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 1:5 (1 January 1864), 140; Elisée Reclus, ‘La Commision sanitaire de la guerre aux États- Unis’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 51 (1 May 1864), 155–172; Thomas W. Evans, Sanitary Institutions during the Austro-Prussian-Italian Conflict (Paris: Simon Raçon 1868), 18; For Evans’ donations see NYPL:MSS.COL –22263/1.6 –Statement of the Result of Subscriptions to the USSC European Branch, 1 March 1864. 34 NARA:RG 94 753, Box 1 –Minutes of the Christian Commission Executive Committee meeting, 10 February 1866. 35 See various documents indicating Barton’s permission to travel to the frontlines reproduced in Bacon-Foster, Barton: Humanitarian, 11–18. 36 Barton was eventually given $15,000 by order of Congress in March 1866 –Oates, Woman of Valour, 51–52; Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 10, 117–118, 134–138. 37 Stillé, USSC History, iv–v.
4 Visions from Geneva 1 NARA:RG 200 P108, Box 2 –Circular of Convocation, 1 September 1863. 2 Ellen Hart, Man Born to Live: Life and Work of Henry Dunant, Founder of the Red Cross (London: Victor Gollancz, 1953), 38–42; Louis Appia and Gustave Moynier, Le Guerre et la Charité, trans. John Furley (Geneva: ICRC, 1867), 62–65.
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3 Pierre Bossier, History of the International Committee of the Red Cross: From Solferino to Tsushima (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1985), 9–13. 4 Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino, reprint ed. (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1986), 38. 5 Leon LeFort, La Campagne d’Italie en 1859 au point de vue Médico-chirurgical et administratif (Paris: Victor Mason, 1869), 27–29. 6 Bossier, From Solferino to Tsushima, 20–28, quote from Dunant, 28. 7 Hart, Man Born to Live, 96–97. 8 Dunant, Solferino, 19, 38–40, 63–64, 116–117. 9 Caroline Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (London: Harper Collins, 1998), 7–8; Georges Lubin, ‘Henry Arrault, une priorité disputée ou la guerre des deux Henry’, in Roger Durand and Jacques Meurant (eds), Préludes et Pionniers: Les Précurseurs de la Croix-Rouge, 1840–1860 (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1991), 211–223. 10 Hart, Man Born to Live, 102; Brown, Raymond of the Times, 172–177. Quotes from ‘The Victory at Solferino’, New York Times, 12 July 1859 and the front page of Le Constitutionnel, 2 July 1859. Although bombastic in tone, the number of dead at wounded at Solferino was still emphasized in articles and accounts published in French newspapers such as Le Constitutionnel, Le Siècle, 3 July 1859 and Le Presse, 5 July 1859. 11 François Bugnion, Gustave Moynier, 1826–1910 (Geneva: Henry Dunant Society, 2011), 12–16. 12 Hutchinson, Champions of Charity, 22–23; Roger Durand, ‘Théodore Maunoir: One of the Red Cross Founders’, International Review of the Red Cross, 18:204 (1978), 137–154, 151. 13 Hart, Man Born to Live, 110–112; Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 51– 52; Maunoir quote from Jean-François Pitteloud, ed., Procès-verbaux des séances du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, 17 Février 1863–28 août 1914 (Geneva: Henry Dunant Society, 1999); hereafter Procès-verbaux, minutes from 17 February 1863, 18; Dunant quote from Solferino, 116–117. 14 Bugnion, Moynier, 19–23. 15 Procès-verbaux, minutes for 17 February and 17 March 1863, 16–23. 16 Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 1. 17 Of the many versions of this story, perhaps the most readable and concise is to be found in François Bugnion, From Solferino to the Birth of International Humanitarian Law (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 2009). 18 Peter J. Hoffman and Thomas G. Weiss, Sword and Salve: Confronting News Wars and Humanitarian Crises (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 38–39. 19 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 164. 20 Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, hereafter ICRC: PGM 1.2.2 – Swiss Federal Council to Moynier, 19 June 1863; Jan Lemnitzer, Power, Law and the End of Privateering (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014). 21 Dunant, Memory of Solferino, 115. 22 Geneva Convention 1864, Art. 6 23 NARA:RG 200 Entry P108, Box 2 –Proceedings of the International Congress of the Amelioration of the condition of the wounded soldiers of armies in the field, 20 August 1864, 6. 24 Compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale réunie á Genève les 26, 27, 28 et 29 Octobre 1863 pour étudier les moyens de pourvoir à l’insuffisance du service sanitaire
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25 26 27 28 29
30 31 32 33 34 35 36
37 38
Notes dans les armées en campagne, second edition (Geneva: ICRC, 1904), hereafter Compte rendu 1863, 113–114; For Basting’s contributions to the Geneva conferences, see Leo van Bergen, ‘Joahan Hendrik Basting: his ideas on War and Medicine’, in Humanitaire et Médecine: les premiers pas de la Croix-Rouge, 1854–1870: actes des Journées d’études internationales tenues a la Fondation Louis Jeantet (Geneva: Genève humanitaire, centre de recherches historiques, 2013), 55–61. NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of the USSC Standing Committee Meetings, 13 June 1864; Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 249. Foreign Relations of the United States, hereafter FRUS, Fogg to Seward, 6 August 1864; Seward to Fogg, 13 July 1864. The Sanitary Commission Bulletin, 1:22 (September 1864), 674–675 and 1:6 (July 1864), 170–171; NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/2.3 –Fischer, A Woman’s Example, 8. Letter from Lieber to Sumner, 19 August 1861, cited in Frank Freidel, Francis Lieber: Nineteenth Century Liberal (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1947), 129. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 3, vol. 3 (online edition) –http://ebooks.library.cornell. edu/m/moawar/waro.html –Orders from the Adjutant-General’s Office, 24 April 1863, 148. Stephen C. Neff, War and the Law of Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 186. Richard Shelley Hartigan, Lieber’s Code and the Law of War (Chicago: Transaction Publishers, 1983), 5–6; John Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code: The Laws of War in American History (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 175–179. James F. Childress, ‘Lieber’s interpretation of the laws of war: general orders 100 in the context of his life and thought’, American Journal of Jurisprudence, 21 (1976), 34–70. Thomas Sergeant Perry, ed., The Life and Letters of Francis Lieber(Boston: James R. Osgood, 1882) –Lieber to S. Tyler, 14 April 1861 and Lieber to Halleck, 20 May 1863. ‘The disposal of prisoners: would the exchange of prisoners amount to a partial acknowledgement of the insurgents as belligerents according to international law?’ New York Times, 19 August 1861; Lieber Code, Art. 22. ‘The laws and usages of war’, New York Times, 13 January 1862; Lieber Code, Arts. 14–15. NARA:RG 200 Entry P108, Box 2 –Lieber to Bowles, 16 July 1864, reproduced in Appendix of Report of Charles S.P. Bowles, Foreign Agent of the United States Sanitary Commission, upon the International Congress of Geneva (New York: USSC, 1864) hereafter, Bowles Report, 25. Frank Friedel, ‘Francis Lieber and the International Law of War’, in Préludes et Pionniers, 31–45, 44–45; Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 164–165; Fabian Witt, Lincoln’s Code, 343. USSC DOCS –Meeting of the European Branch of the United States Sanitary Commission, 30 November 1863, 62–64; George W. Davis, ‘The Sanitary Commission-The Red Cross’, The American Journal of International Law, 4:3 (1910), 546–566; The decision to use the USSC badge was, notably, finalized only weeks before the Geneva Conference. Whether this was prompted by the draft convention articles that suggested using the symbol of the Red Cross to neutralize medical staff is not clear –NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of USSC Standing Committee Meetings, 28 July 1864.
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39 NARA:RG 200 Entry P108, Box 2 –Bowles Report, 10–19. For support of Bowles’ suggestions see Love, The Geneva Red Cross Movement, 22–23 and Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, ch. 13. 40 USSC Bulletin, 1:6 (January 1865), 171; NYPL:MSS.COL 18818/2.1 –Edmund Crisp Fisher, Military Discipline and Volunteer Philanthropy (London: William Ridgeway, 1864). 41 See in general Théodore Maunoir, Note sur l’æuvre des comités de Secours aux États-Unis D’Amérique, in Théodore Maunoir and Gustave Moynier, Secours aux blessés: Communication du Comité International faisant suite au compte rendu de la Conférence Internationale de Genève (Geneva: Frick, 1864); NARA:RG 43 Entry A12 Box 1 –Neutralization of Wounded and of the Medical Service, Historical Precedents, undated; For Basting and Landa correspondence with Bowles, see NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/1.7. 42 Dunant to Bowles, 21 May 1864 in NARA:RG 200 Entry P108, Box 2 –Bowles Report, Appendix A, 21–22; NARA:RG 43 A12 Box 1 –Fogg to Seward, 14 September 1864; Procès-verbaux, 16–29. Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, hereafter ICRC:AF 5.2 –Bowles to Dunant, 14 May 1864, Harris to Dunant, 7 June 1864. 43 The minutes of some of the final meetings of the USSC Standing Committee were so perfunctory that they were simply scrawled out on single sheets of scrap paper. See generally NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/5.2 –Minutes of Standing Committee meetings, 1865–1878. 44 The American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields: It’s Constitutions, with a Sketch of the International Movement for the Amelioration of Suffering among the Sick and Wounded of Armies in the Field (Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers, 1866), 3–4. 45 Quotes from The American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields, Letter from Rev. Henry Bellows to Jean-Henri Dunant (New York: American Association, 1866); Bellows’ appeals to Washington became increasingly desperate as time wore, see NARA:RG 200 Entry 041, Box 5 –Bellows to Seward, 27 April 1866, Bellows to Seward, 1 October 1870, Fish to Bellows, 14 November 1870. 46 Jean-Charles Chenu, Observations sur l’insuffisance du service de sante en campagne et sur les Propositions Présentées a la Société d’Utilité Publique de Genève (Paris: Environ, 1864), 699, 692; Compte rendu 1863, 65–69. 47 Stillé, USSC History, 254–260, 508–513. 48 Papers of Earl Grey of Ripon, British Library Archives, hereafter BL:ADD MS.43546 – Nightingale to Grey, 10 December and 11 November 1862. This was in response to the Trent Affair, in which a British ship carrying Confederate envoys bound for London and Paris was boarded by forces from the Union, thus violating British neutrality and engendering a diplomatic crisis that led to London preparing for war –Kenneth Bourne, ‘British preparations for war with the north, 1861–1862’, English Historical Review, 76:301 (1961), 600–632. 49 Quote from Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 42. 50 Papers of Sir Thomas Longmore, Wellcome Library Trust Archives, hereafter WL:RAMC LP 1139/22 –Nightingale to Longmore, 23 July 1864. 51 Maunoir and Moynier, Secours aux blessés, 13–19. In what was his only real contribution to proceedings, Rutherford had first suggested that the British example was the best one to follow during the initial 1863 conference –Compte rendu 1863, 47–48.
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52 NARA:RG 200 Entry P108, Box 2 –Proceedings of the International Congress 1864, 11–13, 18–20. 53 Papers of Florence Nightingale, BL:ADD MS.43393 –Nightingale to Longmore, 31 August 1864.
5 How Best to Serve the Suffering? 1 The November Constitution that called for Schleswig’s incorporation into Denmark was the product of the previous policy of King Frederick. His sudden death on 15 November 1863 placed Christian in the unenviable position of signing the constitution only three days after taking the crown, despite knowing that this action would likely lead to war with Prussia –Dennis Showalter, Railroads and Rifles: Soldiers, Technology and the Unification of Germany (Hamden: Archon, 1975), 77–125; Quotes from Edward Dicey, The Schleswig-Holstein War, vol. 1 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1864), 31. 2 Best, Humanity in Warfare, 135–138. 3 NARA:RG 200, P108 Box 2 –Proceedings of the First Meeting of the Geneva Conference, 26 October 1863, 4. 4 Gustave Moynier, La fondation de la Croix-Rouge: Mémoire présenté au Comité international (Geneva: Imprimerie I. Soullier, 1903), 5–6; Procès-verbaux, minutes for 13 March 1864, 26–27. 5 J. H. Rombach, ‘Two great figures in Red Cross History’, International Review of the Red Cross, 2:16 (July 1962), 351–361, 357–358; Tom Buk-Swienty, 1864: The Forgotten War that Shaped Modern Europe, trans. Anette Buk-Swienty (London: Profile Books, 2015), 52–56; Dicey, The Schleswig-Holstein War, 90–92, 264–265. 6 Buk-Swienty, 1864, 54. 7 Charles Van Der Velde, ‘Sa Mission Auprès de L’Armée Danoise’, in Secours aux Blessés (1864), 9–10. 8 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 96–98; Louis Appia, ‘Sa Mission Auprès de L’Armée Alliée dans le Schleswig’, in Secours aux Blessés (1864), 113–115; The Danish Society remained loose in its organisation until it was officially inaugurated on 26 April 1876 – www.rodekors.dk/om-os/historie. 9 Quote from Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 99. 10 Hutchinson, Champions of Charity, 38–39. 11 Hart, Man Born to Live, 179–187. 12 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 173. 13 François Bugnion, Le Comité International de la Croix-Rouge et la protection des victimes de la guerre (Geneva: ICRC, 1994), 18–20; Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 30–34. 14 Leon Le Fort, La chirurgie militaire et les sociétés de secours en France et à l’étranger (Paris: Germer Ballière, 1872), 234–235; Rachel Chrastil, ‘The French Red Cross, War Readiness and Civil Society, 1866–1914’, French Historical Studies, 31:3 (2008), 445–476. 15 Jon Arrizabalaga and Guilermo Sánches-Martínez, Nicasio Landa, 1830–1891: le Comité de Genève et la première Croix-Rouge espagnole (Geneva: CSIC, 2013), 170– 196; Jon Arrizabalaga and Juan Carlos Garcia-Reyes, ‘Between a humanitarian ethos and military efficiency: the early days of the Spanish Red Cross, 1864–1876’, Neuere
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Med Wiss Quellen Stud (2011), 20, 49–65; NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/1.7 –Landa to USSC French Branch, 4 March 1864. 16 NARA:RG 200 P108, Box 2 –Proceedings of the International Conference in Geneva, 26 October 1863, 37–41. 17 William Brian McAllister, ‘Fighting the good fight: German military medicine, 1860– 1914’, M.A. Thesis (University of Virginia, 1990), 19–21. 18 Appia, Sa Mission Auprès de L’Armée Alliée, 73, 79; Henry M. Hozier, The Seven Weeks War: Its Antecedents and Incidents (London: MacMillan, 1870), 200. 19 Robert M. Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years’ War to the Third Reich (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 149–151; Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 537–538. 20 Evans, Sanitary Institutions, 123–126. 21 Evans, Sanitary Institutions, 18, 110; Thomas Evans, Memoirs of Dr Thomas W. Evans: The Second French Empire (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1905), 126–142. 22 Evans, Sanitary Institutions, 18–20, 74–75; Dicey, Schleswig-Holstein War, 89–90. 23 Geofrey Wawro, The Austro-Prussian War: Austria’s War with Prussia and Italy in 1866 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 123; Gordon Alexander Craig, The Battle of Königgrätz: Prussia’s Victory over Austria, 1866 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 162; Quote from Evans, Sanitary Institutions, 80. 24 Markus Fiogl and Linda E. Pelinka, ‘Jaromir Baron von Mundy –Founder of the Vienna Ambulance Service’, Resuscitation, 66 (2005), 121–125. 25 Angela Bennett, Geneva Convention: The Hidden Origins of the Red Cross (Stroud: Sutton, 2005), 104–105. 26 Jon Arrizabalaga and Guillermo Sánchez-Martínez, ‘Humanitarian aid in peacetime: conflicting narratives in the International Red Cross Movement, 1867– 1884’, Revista de Historia de la Medicina y de la Ciencia, 66:1 (2014), 2–17; On Dutch adoption of Prussia’s strategy for training military nurses in time of peace see Leo van Bergen, ‘Duty leads to right, right leads to duty: Dutch Red Cross nursing and war, 1870–1918’, in Wolfgang U. Eckhart and Osten Phillips (eds.), Schlachtschrecken, Konventionen. Das Rote Kreuz und die Erfindung der Menschlichkeit im Kriege (Freiburg: Centaurus, 2011), 67–88. The Prussian model was regarded as so superior that the Americans still acknowledged its importance forty years after the founding of the Prussian Central Committee, see NARA:RG 200, Box 8 –Study on Relationship that Should Exist between Army and Charitable Organizations, 1904. 27 Compte Rendu des Travaux de la Conférence Internationale tenue a Berlin, 1869 (Berlin: 1870), hereafter Compte Rendu 1869, 26–30; McAllister, ‘Fighting the good fight’, 9–14; Jules Rochard, Historie de la chirurgie française au XIXème siècle (Paris: J. B. Ballière et Fils, 1875), 874–878. 28 ‘The American Rebellion’, The Advocate of Peace, 1:10 (1869), 151. 29 David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 25–44; Vanessa Lincoln Lambert, ‘The Dynamics of Transnational Activism: the International Peace Congresses, 1843–1851’, The International History Review, 38:1 (2016), 126–147. 30 ‘London Peace Society: its annual report and proceedings’, Advocate of Peace, 12:8/9 (1856), 124; Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815– 1914 (Oxford: OUP, 1991), 25–29; Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists, 74–75; Jordan Ryan, ‘The dilemma of Quaker pacifism in a slaveholding republic, 1833–1865’, Civil War History, 53:1 (2007), 5–28.
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31 ICRC:AF 5.1 –Barton to Moynier, 26 July 1877; BL:ADD MS.43393 –Nightingale to Longmore, 31 August 1864. 32 NARA:RG 200 P108, Box 2 –Proceedings of 1863 Conference, 5. 33 ‘The mitigation of war’ and ‘The American rebellion’, The Advocate of Peace, 1:10 (1869), 150–151; ‘Meliorations of War’, The Advocate of Peace, 1:9 (1869), 140. 34 Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 1–40. 35 Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 333. 36 Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 119. 37 Nicholas O. Berry, War and the Red Cross: The Unspoken Mission (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1997). 38 Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, 59. Quotes on, 76, 234–236. For their assessment of the USSC and the contrasting humanitarian efforts of the Confederacy, see 138–143. For quotes on the role of the states and volunteers, see 218. 39 Appia and Moynier, La Guerre et la Charité, xii, 176–177. 40 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 199–201; Quentin-Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 289–290. 41 Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition, vol. 3 (London: HMSO, 1868), 206–207; ‘The Great French Exhibition’, The Times, 7 June 1867. 42 On the influence of the Women’s Central Association on American attitudes to female volunteers see Henry Brackenbury, ‘Help for the Sick and Wounded’: two articles reprinted from the Standard of January 7th and 27th 1868’ in Furley, Help for Sick and Wounded, 433; Compte rendu, Première Conférence Internationale des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge tenue à Paris, 1867, 23–51; ‘Extract from a Report by Professor Longmore on the Proceedings at the International Conference of the Societies for Aid to Wounded Soldiers in time of war, held at Paris, inclusively from 26th to the 31st of August, 1867’. 43 Dietrich Schindler and Jiří Toman, eds., The Laws of Arms Conflict: A Collection of Conventions, Resolutions and Other Documents (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1988), 285–288. 44 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 212–213. 45 Roger Boppe, L’Homme et la Guerre: Le Docteur Louis Appia et les débuts de la Croix- Rouge (Geneva: J. Muhlethaler, 1959), 98–113.
6 When Angels Go to War 1 Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France, 1870– 1871 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 16–40. 2 Leon LeFort, ‘Le Service de Santé dans les armées nouvelles’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 86 (1871), 88–133, 126; Carl Lüder, Le Convention de Genève au point de vue historique, critique et dogmatique (Erlangen: Édouard Besold, 1876), 77–78; Emmanuel Comenech, Historie de la Campagne de 1870–1871 et de la deuxième ambulance dite de la presse française (Lyon: Imprimerie de Salut Public, 1871), 49. 3 Victor Segesvary, ‘During the Franco-Prussian War: the birth of Red Cross solidarity’, International Review of the Red Cross, 10:117 (December 1970), 633–685; Bertrand Taithe, ‘The Red Cross flag in the Franco-Prussian War: civilians, humanitarians and war in the “modern age”’, in Rodger Cooter, Mark Harrison and Steve Sturdy (eds.), War, Medicine and Modernity (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), 22–47. 4 Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 153–154; Quotes from Papers of Clara Barton, Library of Congress, hereafter LOC:BP MSS.11973, Box 153, Microfilm Reel
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107 –‘Barton Lecture on Franco-Prussian War’, undated, hereafter LOC –Barton Lecture, 33. 5 Eleazar Barton, The Life of Clara Barton, 2–5; LOC – Barton Lecture, 34–37, 45–46. 6 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 257–259. 7 Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream, 60–62; Best, Humanity in Warfare, 142–143. 8 John Furley, ‘The convention of Geneva and national societies for aid to sick and wounded soldiers in war: a lecture delivered on 19 May 1872’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institution, 20 (1876), 632–657, 635. 9 Robert Spence Watson, The Villages around Metz (Newcastle: J. M. Carr, 1870); Margaret Hirst, The Quakers in Peace and War: An Account of Their Principles and Practice (London: Swarthmore, 1923), 259–267. 10 Jean-Charles Chenu, Aperçu historique, statistique et clinique sur le service des ambulances et des hôpitaux de la Société française de secours aux blessés des armées de terre et de mer: pendant la guerre de 1870–1871 (Paris: Dumaine, 1874), 16. 11 BL:ADD MS.43393 –Nightingale to Longmore, 14 February 1867. 12 ‘Longmore Lecture to Royal United Services Institution’ reproduced in Appia and Moynier, La Guerre, 386–388, 391. 13 See generally WL:RAMC LP 1139/44, in particular Furley to Longmore, 4 June 1869; Harriet Loyd-Lindsay Wantage, Lord Wantage: A Memoir (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1907), 172–173. 14 ‘Help for the sick and wounded’, 29 July 1870, ‘Society for the aid of sick and wounded in war’, 22 July, 1870; The Times; Archie Kirkman Loyd, An Outline of the History of the British Red Cross Society from Its Foundation in 1870 to the Outbreak of War in 1914 (London: British Red Cross Society, 1917), 1–8. 15 WL:MS.9004 –Nightingale to Verney, 24 November 1870. 16 Emma Pearson and Louisa McLaughlin, Our Adventures during the War of 1870 (London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1871), 3, 48. 17 Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester: MUP, 2013), 56–57. 18 Michael McCarthy, ‘The Franco-Irish Ambulance Brigade 1870–71’, The Old Limerick Journal, 25 (1989), 132–138; See generally TNA:HO 45/8444. In the end, it was found that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the volunteers were anything other than unruly amateur medics –TNA:TS 25/1695 –‘Case of the Irish Ambulance Corps (so called) for the Opinion of the Attorney and Solicitor General’, 6 October 1870. 19 Welcome Library Trust Archives, Papers of Thomas Weldon Trench, hereafter WL:TP MS.7846/43–Trench Letter, undated. 20 George Halstead Boyland, Six Months under the Red Cross with the French Army (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1873), 13–15, 54–55, 104. 21 Walter Cohen, ‘Dr Thomas W. Evans: a nineteenth century renaissance man’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 139:2 (June 1995), 135–148, 135– 136. For Evans’ relations with the USSC and his initial observations, see Quentin- Maxwell, Fifth Wheel, 289–290 and Evans, Memoirs, 142. 22 Crane to Bellows, 19 July 1870 reproduced in Thomas Evans, History of the American Ambulance Established in Paris during the Siege of 1870–1871, Together with the Details of Its Methods and Its Work (London: Sampson Low, 1873), 1–12. 23 The Association released a pamphlet to this end: The Work of Humanity in War: Plans and Results of the Geneva Congress and International Treaty (New York: Anson D. Randolph, 1870).
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24 Bellows to Evans and Crane, 13 August 1870, reproduced in Evans, History of the American Ambulance, 11–12; The American Association: It’s Constitution, 1; NARA:RG 200 041, Box 5 –Extract from The American National Red Cross: Its History, Organization and Activities, 1866–1872, 14; NYPL:MSS.COL 22290/1.2 –Minutes of American Association Meetings, September 1870. 25 Chenu, Aperçu historique, 145, 200. 26 WL:RAMC LP 1139/110/3 –‘National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War Rules’, August 1870. 27 Pearson and McLaughlin, Our Adventures, 139–140. 28 John Furley, In Peace and War: Autobiographical Sketches (London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1905), 26. 29 Joan Clifford, For the Service of Mankind: Furley, Lechmere and Duncan: St John Ambulance Founders (London: Robert Hale, 1971), 17–18. 30 Quote from Furley, In Peace and War, 48. 31 Margaret H. Darrow, ‘The story of the Franco-Prussian War heroine Coralie Cahen and the French Red Cross, 1871–1914’, Journal of the Western Society for French History, 36 (2008), 167–180. 32 Bertrand Taithe, Defeated Flesh: Welfare, Warfare and the Making of Modern France (Manchester: MUP, 2010), 90. 33 Letter from Simms to Loyd-Lindsay reproduced in William MacCormac, Notes and Recollections of an Ambulance Surgeon, Being an Account of Work Done under the Red Cross during the Campaign of 1870 (London: J & A Churchill, 1871), 19–21; Evans, American Ambulance in Paris, 19–22. 34 Simms was a controversial pioneer in the field of gynaecology, who was known to use female African slaves as human research subjects –Lewis Wall, ‘The medical ethics of Dr J Marion Simms: a fresh look at the historical record’, Journal of Medical Ethics, 32:6 (2006), 346–350. 35 Quote on the French Army from MacCormac, Notes and Recollections, 45. ‘The Anglo-American Ambulance’, The Times, 4 November 1870. Ryan served in multiple ambulances, see generally Charles Ryan, With an Ambulance during the Franco- German War: Personal Experiences and Adventures with Both Armies, 1870–71 (London: John Murray, 1896). For the involvement of others in the Anglo-American Ambulance see Furley, In Peace and War, 43–44 and Pearson and McLaughlin, Our Adventures, 138–140. 36 WL:B.21309851 –‘MacCormac’s Report to Loyd-Lindsay on Anglo-American Ambulance’, 21 October 1870, 3. 37 Steven Heys and Thomas Scotland, Wars, Pestilence and the Surgeon’s Blade: The Evolution of British Military Medicine and Surgery during the Nineteenth Century (Solihull: Hellion, 2014), 193–194; J. H. Porter, The Surgeon’s Pocketbook: Being an Essay on the Best Treatment of Wounded in War (London: Charles Griffin and Company, 1875), 17; Report of the British National Aid Society for Aid to Sick and Wounded –Report of the Executive Committee (London: Harrison and Sons, 1871), 10–11; Valentine A. J. Swain, ‘Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871: voluntary aid for the wounded and sick’, British Medical Journal, 3 (1970), 511–514; WL:B.21309851 – ‘MacCormac’s Report to Loyd-Lindsay on Anglo-American Ambulance’, 21 October 1870, 5–6. 38 Porter, Surgeon’s Pocketbook, 10–16; WL:MS 7843 –Papers of J.H. Porter –J. H. Porter, ‘On some forms of Extemporaneous Conveyances for the Sick and Wounded in Peace
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and War’, 24 June 1878; WL:RAMC LP/423/6 –John Furley, ‘A Paper read before the Knights of St John of Jerusalem at their General Assembly’, 24 June 1883. 39 Evans, Sanitary Institutions, 18–21; Letterman, Medical Recollections, 28–30; Nicolai Pirogov, Bericht ueber die Besichtung der Militair-Sanitätsanstalten in Deutschland, Lothringen und Elsass in Jahre 1870 (Leipzig: F. C. W. Vogel, 1871), 45–49. 40 Charles Alexander Gordon, Lessons on Hygiene and Surgery from the Franco-Prussian War (London: Balliére, 1873), 95–96; Haller, Battlefield Medicine, 69–71. 41 Le Fort, La Chirurgie militaire, 150; Chenu, Aperçu historique, 102. 42 Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 168–169. 43 Alistair Horne, The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871 (London: Phoenix, 2004), 53–54, 106; Hart, Man Born to Live, 231–245. 44 William Jones, The Quaker Campaigns in Peace and War (London: Headley Brothers, 1899), 86; Pearson and McLaughlin, Our Adventures, 299, see also, 48–50; Furley, In Peace and War, 48. Other accounts of the abuse of the Red Cross flag and lack of trust towards volunteers can be found in NAS Report of the Executive Committee, 6; MacCormac, Notes and Recollections, 38–39; Chenu, Aperçu historique, 192–200; Boyland, Six Months, 13. For the account from Paris see Felix M. Whitehurst, My Private Diary during the Siege of Paris, vol. 2 (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1875), 102–106. 45 Lüder, Le Convention de Genève au point de vue historique, 227–228; Boyland, Six Months, 56, 61; Chenu, Aperçu historique, 147–48, 242; TNA:WO 33/23 –‘Reports from Medical Officers on the War between France and Germany in 1870–71’, 64.
7 Humanity and Necessity 1 Gustave Moynier, La Convention de Genève pendant la guerre franco-allemande (Genève: Imprimerie Soullier & Wirth Cité, 1873), 6, 7, 15; Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 263–265, 271–272; WL:RAMC LP/23/1–18 –Longmore to Moynier, 28 December 1872; ICRC:AF 8–2.1 –Moynier to Longmore, 9 January 1873. 2 Moynier, La Convention de Genève pendant la guerre franco-allemande, 6. 3 Gustave Moynier, Étude sur la convention de Genève pour l’amélioration du sort des militaires blessés dans l’armées en campagne, 1864 et 1868 (Paris: Cherliez, 1870), 3–5. 4 Moynier, La Convention de Genève, 2–6, quotes from 52 and 53. 5 WL:RAMC 1139/LP/27 –Longmore to Army Medical School, 4 November 1871, Lugard Memorandum, 3 November 1871; Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 279–282. 6 Gustave Moynier, La Croix Rogue: Son Passé et son Avenir (Paris: Sandoz & Thullier, 1882), 10. Quote from ICRC:PGM 3–4.4 –Gustave Moynier, Réminiscences Belgique, Pays-Bas, Luxembourg, 23. 7 Moynier, Étude sur la convention, 30–31. 8 Moynier, Étude sur la convention, 19–21; Christopher Keith Hall, ‘The first proposal for a permanent international criminal court’, International Review of the Red Cross, 38:322 (1998), 57–74. 9 Neff, War and the Law of Nations, 177–178. 10 James Lorimer, Studies National and International, Being Occasional Lectures delivered at the University of Edinburgh, 1864–1889 (Edinburgh: William Green, 1890), 79–84; Statues of the Institute of International Law, Art. 1, 10 September 1873.
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11 André Durand, ‘The role of Gustav Moynier in the founding of the Institute of International Law (1873) –the war in the Balkans (1857–1878) –the manual of the laws of war (1880)’, International Review of the Red Cross, 34:303 (1994), 542–563; Francis Stewart Leyland Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 1815–1914 (Leiden: A. W. Sythoff, 1963), 218–219. 12 Henry M. Field, The Life of David Dudley-Field (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), 221–233; David Dudley Field, Outlines of an International Code (New York: Diossy, 1872). 13 Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Das Moderne Völkerrecht der civilisirten Staaten als Rechtsbuch dargestellt (Nördlingen: C. H. Beckschen Buchhandlung, 1868), 39; Betsy Röben, ‘The methods behind Bluntschli’s “modern” international law’, Journal of the History of International Law, 4 (2002), 249–292, 250–251. 14 Bluntschli, Das Moderne Völkerrecht, 7; Burrus M. Carnahan, ‘The Civil War origins of the modern rules of war: Francis Lieber and Lincoln’s General Order no.100’, Northern Kentucky Law Review, 39:4 (2012), 661–697. 15 Moynier speech to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in 1890, reproduced in Paul Ruegger, ‘Gustav Moynier’, International Review of the Red Cross, 16:178 (1976), 3–12. 16 Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, ‘Lieber’s service to political science and international law’, in Daniel C. Gillman (ed.), The Miscellaneous Writings of Francis Lieber: Contributions to Political Science, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott, 1881), 12–13. 17 Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 39–47. 18 Lieber Code, Art. 75; Roger Pickenpaugh, Captives in Gray: The Civil War Prisons of the Union (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 180–219; James M. Gillespie, Andersonsvilles of the North: The Myths and Realities of Northern Treatment of Civil War Confederate Prisoners (Denton: University of Texas, 2008), 71–108. 19 General Sherman’s Official Account of His Great March through Georgia and the Carolinas, from His Departure from Chattanooga to the Surrender of General Joseph E. Johnson and the Confederate Forces under His Command (New York: Bunce and Huntington, 1865), quote from Sherman to Calhoun, 12 September 1864, 59–60; Noah Andre Trudeau, Southern Storm: Sherman’s March to the Sea (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 509–548. 20 Lieber Code, Arts. 14, 29. 21 Lieber Code, Arts. 14–16; David Luban, ‘Military necessity and the cultures of military law’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 26 (2013), 315–349. 22 L. Lynn Hogue, ‘Lieber’s Military Code and Its Legacy’, in Charles R.Mace and Henry H. Lesesne (eds.), Francis Lieber and the Culture of the Mind (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 51–60; Burrus M. Carnahan, ‘Lincoln, Lieber and the Laws of War: the origins and limits of the principle of military necessity’, The American Journal of International Law, 92:2 (1998), 213–231. 23 Bluntschli made reference to both Lieber and the 1864 Convention in his preface – Johann Kaspar Bluntschli, Das moderne Kriegsrecht der civilisirten Staaten (Nördlingen: H. C. Beck, 1866), 4. 24 Lieber Code, Arts. 53, 79, 81–85; Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871 (London: Routledge, 2001), 251–256; Mark R. Stoneman, ‘The Bavarian Army and French Civilians in the War of 1870–71: A Cultural Interpretation’, War in History, 8:3, 271–293.
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25 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paget (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1984), 75; Fabian-Witt, Lincoln’s Code, 184–185. 26 Lieber Code, Arts. 14–16; Scott Horton, ‘Kriegsraison or military necessity? The Bush administration’s wilhelmine attitude towards the conduct of war’, Fordham International Law Journal, 30:3 (2006), 576–598; William Gerald Downey Jr, ‘The law of war and military necessity’, American Journal of International Law, 47:2 (1953), 251–262. 27 Lüder, Le Convention de Genève au point de vue historique, 258. 28 Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 39–52; Statutes of the Institute of International Law – Ghent, 10 September 1873, Art. 1. 29 Scott Keefer, ‘ “Exploding missals”: international law, technology, and security in nineteenth-century disarmament conferences’, War in History, 21:4 (2014), 445– 464; Milyutin was a supporter of the Red Cross, though he felt that international law should be left to governments, rather than private bodies –NARA:RG 200 P108, Box 2 –Milyutin to Dunant, 29 October 1863, reproduced in Proceedings of the International Conference in Geneva, 26 October 1863, 25; For an account of exploding bullets being used by the Prussians, see Chenu, Aperçu historique, 270–71. 30 Italics are author’s emphasis –Declaration Renouncing the Use, in Time of War, of Explosive Projectiles under 400 Grammes Weight –Saint Petersburg, 11 December 1868, preamble. 31 William H. Boothby, Weapons and the Law of Armed Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 10; Henri Meyrowitz, ‘Reflections on the Centenary of the Declaration of St. Petersburg’, International Review of the Red Cross, 8:93 (1968), 611–625. 32 Henry Sumner Maine, International Law: A Series of Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge (London: John Murray, 1888), 128; Edward Radzinsky, Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar, trans. Antonina W. Bouis (New York: Free Press, 2005), ch. 5. 33 Fedor Fedorovich Martens, La Paix et la Guerre (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1901), 82. 34 Vladimir Vasilievich Pustogarov, Our Martens: F.F. Martens: International Lawyer and Architect of Peace (The Hague: Simmons and Hill, 1996), 4–21, 109–112; Lauri Mälksoo, ‘F.F. Martens and his time: when Russia was an integral part of the European tradition of international law’, European Journal of International Law, 25:3 (2014), 811–829; On the concept of ‘civilization’ as adhered to by Martens and Bluntschli, see Gerrit W. Gong, The Standard of ‘Civilization’ in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 24–81. 35 Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Laws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 1; Best, Humanity in Warfare, 156–157. 36 Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles de 1874 (Paris: Librairie des Publications Législatives, 1874), Quote from Jomini on 4. See generally TNA:FO 83/481–484. Quote from TNA:FO 83/481 –Lumley to Derby, 7 July 1874. Quotes from ‘The Congress at Brussels’, Daily News, 29 July 1874. 37 Project of an International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War – Brussels, 27 August 1874, Art. 35; François Bugnion, ‘Doit de Genève et droit de La Haye’, International Review of the Red Cross, 844 (2001), 901–922; Daniéle Bujard, ‘The Geneva Convention of 1864 and the Brussels Conference of 1874’, International Review of the Red Cross, 14:164 (1974), 575–584. 38 Hart, Man Born to Live, 272–275.
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39 Hart, Man Born to Live, 256–270; ‘The Treatment of Prisoners of War’, The Times, 7 August 1872; Yves de Pourtalès and Roger Durand, ‘Henry Dunant, Promoter of the 1874 Brussels Conference, Pioneer of Diplomatic Protection for Prisoners of War’, International Review of the Red Cross, 15:167 (1975), 61–85; TNA:FO 881/ 2483 –Dunant and Houdetot to Derby, 14 April 1874, Derby to Lyon, 17 April 1874. Quote from Derby to Doria, 14 May 1874; For Denbigh, see Hansard, vol. 220, 3 July 1874, 986. 40 NARA:RG 200 P108, Box 2 –See ‘Protocols of the Plenary Meetings of the Brussels Conference’, 27 July 1874, 1 and ‘Congrès de Genève: lists provisoire de messieurs les plenipotentiaries’. 41 Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 26. 42 Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 19. 43 Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 17–21, quote from 17. 44 Lieber Code, Arts. 59–60; Actes de la Conference Bruxelles, 14; Brussels Declaration, Arts. 13, 23–34, quotes from Art. 23. 45 Lieber Code, Art. 85; Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 22–23. 46 TNA:FO 881/2542 –Horsford to Derby, 1 and 9 August 1874; Sibylle Scheipers, ‘The status and protection of prisoners of war and detainees’, in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers (eds.), The Changing Character of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 394–409, 403–404. 47 Brussels Declaration, Arts. 9–10; Edward Kossoy, Living with Guerrilla: Guerrilla as a Legal Problem and Political Fact (Geneva: Libraie Droz, 1976), 22–42. 48 Pustogarov, Our Martens, 113–115. Martens quote from, 113; Institut de Droit International: Examen de la Déclaration de Bruxelles de 1874, 30 August 1875. 49 Included in this was a disinclination to give much consideration to civilian war victims –Hugo Slim, Killing Civilians: Method, Madness and Morality in War (London: Hurst & Company, 2008), 16–17; Best, Humanity in Warfare, 143–145. 50 TNA:FO 412/15 –Derby to Her Majesty’s Representatives in Countries Invited to Take Part in the Brussels Conference, 4 July 1874; Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 69–75, 164–166. 51 Isabel Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 122–126; TNA:FO 83/ 316 –Buchanan to Stanley, 25 July 1868; TNA:FO 412/18 –Horsford to Derby, 31 July 1874; TNA:FO 83/481 –Derby to Lyon, 28 August 1874; Actes de la Conférence de Bruxelles, 9. 52 ‘The Sittings of the Brussels Conference’, The Times, 25 August 1874; ‘The Brussels Conference’, The Spectator, 29 August 1874. 53 Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 345; Maine, International Law, 128–131; TNA:FO 412/16 –Lyons to Derby, 22 July 1864. 54 ‘The Eastern Question’, The Times, 3 December 1875. 55 ‘The Bulgarian atrocities: special inquiry’, 28 July 1875, in Eugene Schuyler (ed.), The Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria: Letters of the Special Commissioner of the Daily News, J.A. MacGahan (London: Bradbury, Agnew, 1876), 11; Asli Çirakman, From the ‘Terror of the World’ to the ‘Sick Man of Europe’: European Images of Ottoman Empire and Society from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 2002), ch. 3. 56 Alexis Heraclides and Ada Dialla, Humanitarian Intervention in the Long Nineteenth Century: Setting the Precedent (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 148– 155; David MacKenzie, ‘Russia’s Balkan Policies under Alexander II, 1855–1881’, in
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Hugh Ragsdale and Vallerii Nikolaevich Ponomarev (eds.), Imperial Russian Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 219–246, 229–232. Fedor Fedorovich Martens, ‘Etude historique sur la politique russe dans la question d’Orient’, Revue de droit international et de législation comparée, 9 (1877), 49–77. Davide Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2011). Application du Droit des Gens á la guerre de 1877 entre la Russie et la Turquie: observations et voeux, Resolutions of the IIL, 28 May 1877; John Fischer- Williams, Memoires of John Westlake (London: Smith, Elder, 1914), 110–111. The extent to which further massacres were committed by all sides after 1877 is disputed, see James J. Reid, Crisis of the Ottoman Empire: Prelude to Collapse, 1839– 1878 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2000), 438–445; Quintin Barry, War in the East: A Military History of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878 (Solihull: Helion, 2012), 289–295. Preamble to The Laws of War on Land, Oxford, 9 September 1880.
8 The Sound of Drums 1 Procès-verbaux, minutes for 10, 17 and 20 December 1875; Fréderic Ferrière, Une Mission au Monténégro en 1876 (Geneva: Imprimerie B. Soullier, 1876), 55–58; Moynier, Passé et son Avenir, 174–175; ‘La guerre civile’, Bulletin International des Sociétés de Secours aux Militaires Blessés, 24 (October 1875), 188. 2 Bossier, Solferino to Tsushima, 302–307. 3 William Gladstone, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London: John Murray, 1876), 30; Moynier, Passé et son avenir, 136. 4 Bertha von Suttner, Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life, vol. 2 (Boston: Gin and Company, 1910), vol. 1, 231; Jones, Quakers in Peace and War, 221–225. 5 Gill, Calculation Compassion, 108–110; Quote from John Furley, The Use of Ambulance Litters and Horse Carriages for the Removal of Sick and Injured Persons, Especially in Reference to the Metropolis (London: Harrison and Sons, 1882), 2–4; Wantage, Lord Wantage, 218–221. 6 ‘Red Cross surgeons in Servia’, Pall Mall Gazette, 4 September 1876. 7 Emma Pearson and Louisa McLaughlin, Service in Servia under the Red Cross (London: Tinsley Brothers, 1877), 7–15, quote on neutrality, 359; On the tendency of humanitarians to position themselves as defenders of ‘civilized’ states against ‘barbarous’ ones see Taithe, Defeated Flesh, 174–175. 8 Wantage, Wantage Memoirs, 218–220; Dorothy Anderson, The Balkan Volunteers (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 82–84. 9 References to the impartiality of volunteers were made in Solferino, 90–100 and the need for impartiality was reiterated after the Franco-Prussian War by Moynier, La convention de Genève, 45–46. For the history of Red Cross neutrality and impartiality, see Marion Haroff-Tavel, ‘Neutrality and impartiality: the importance of these principles for the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and the difficulties in applying them’, International Review of the Red Cross, 273 (1989), 536–552.
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10 Charles Ryan, Under the Red Crescent: Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum, 1877–1878 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897), viii, 2–10, 388–391. 11 ‘The French prisoners in Germany’, The Times, 7 January 1871. 12 Sutherland Papers, Staffordshire Record Office, hereafter SRO:D593/P/26/2/1 – Report and Record of the Operations of the Stafford House Committee, hereafter Stafford House Report, 1–2; R. B. MacPherson, Under the Red Crescent, or, Ambulance Adventures in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 (London: Hamilton, 1885), 45–46. 13 Report of Chief Commission Stoney to Stafford House, 16 January 1878, reproduced in Stafford House Report, 25. 14 Kennett-Barrington Report to Stafford House, 17 March 1877, reproduced in Stafford House Report, 31, italics are my emphasis; Oliver Bell Bunce, ‘The Turkish compassionate fund’, The Decorator and Furnisher, 30 (1897), 172–174. 15 Stafford House Report, 2–4 and Kennett-Barrington Reports, 21 and 28 September 1877, 19–20; Bertrand Taithe, ‘Barrington, Sir Vincent Hunter Barrington-Kennett (1844–1903)’ – Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/50267 (accessed 11 November 2016). 16 Kennett-Barrington to Fleetwood, 26 December 1876 –reproduced in Peter Morris, ed., First Aid to the Battlefront: The Life and Letters of Sir Vincent Kennett-Barrington (1844–1903) (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992), 126–127; SRO:D593/P/26/4/2 – Stafford House Minute Book, 29 November 1877. 17 First Aid to the Battlefront–Kennett-Barrington to Alice, 25 February 1878, 141–142, 6 March 1878, 147–148, 15 March 1878, 153. Notably, Kennett-Barrington toned down his language when reporting the incident to Stafford House, saying that he wished for Ryan to ‘catch them and have them punished’ –Stafford House Report, 31. 18 Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange and Bertrand Taithe, ‘The Charity-Mongers of Modern Babylon: bureaucracy, scandal and the transformation of the philanthropic marketplace, c.1870–1912’, Journal of British Studies, 54 (2015), 118–137; SRO:D593/ P/26/4/2 –Stafford House Minute Book, 4 January 1878 and November 1878; ‘The Stafford House Committee’, 11 July 1877, ‘The Stafford House Fund’, The Times, 28 July 1877. 19 ‘How the British relief fund is administered’, Manchester Times, 23 September 1876; ‘British aid to wounded’, Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 19 September 1876; ‘The war in the east’, Daily News, 18 September 1876. 20 See generally SRO: D593/P/26/2/7 for press criticisms. 21 Ignatius Frederick Clarke ed., The Tale of the Next Great War, 1871–1914 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995); Quotes from Archibald Forbes, Memories and Studies of War and Peace (London: Cassell, 1895), 247. 22 Michael A. Matin, ‘Scrutinizing “The Battle of Dorking”: the Royal United Service Institution and the Mid-Victorian Invasion Controversy’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 39:2 (2011), 385–407. 23 ‘A doctor’s story of the war’, The Times, 29 November 1870. 24 Chenu, Aperçu historique, 269–72. 25 WL:B.21309851, ‘MacCormac Report’, 3–7; TNA:WO 33/23 –‘Reports from Medical Officers on the War between France and Germany in 1870–71’, 24; MacCormac, Reflections of an Ambulance Surgeon, 27. 26 John Furley, ‘The convention of Geneva and the care of sick and wounded in war’, 24 April 1896. 27 Furley, Autobiographical Sketches, 278–279.
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28 Henry Brackenbury, ‘Philanthropy in War’, Blackwood’s Magazine, 121 (February 1877), 150–174, quotes 161–162. 29 WL:LP RAMC 423/2 –Thomas Longmore, ‘On the Geneva convention of 1864’ – speech delivered to the Royal United Service Institution, 12 April 1872, 13. 30 NYPL:MSS.COL 22263/14.3 –Bellows to Lincoln, 14 July 1862. 31 Olive Checkland, Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, 1877–1977 (Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1994), 3–6. Nagao Ariga, La Croix-Rouge en Extrême- Orient. Exposé de l’organisation et du fonctionnement de la Société de la Croix-Rouge du Japon (Paris: A. Pedonce: 1900), 10–11. 32 Frank Käser, ‘A civilized nation: Japan and the Red Cross, 1877–1900’, European Review of History, 23:1–2 (2016), 16–32; Sho Konishi, ‘The emergence of an international humanitarian organization in Japan: the Tokugawa origins of the Japanese Red Cross’, American Historical Review, 119:4 (2014), 1129–1153. 33 Neihon Seijujisha, The History of the Red Cross Society of Japan (Tokyo, 1919), 43–47, quote 63. There was also a need, in the minds of early Japanese chroniclers of the Red Cross, to use the Red Cross as a means of linking Japan to ‘civilized’ Europe –Gregory John DePies, ‘Humanitarian empire: The Red Cross in Japan, 1877–1945’, Ph.D. Thesis (San Diego: University of California, 2014), 32–35. 34 For Japanese adoption of the Prussian military system in the 1860s, see Xavier Bara, ‘The Kishū Army and the setting of the Prussian model in feudal Japan, 1860–1871’, War in History, 19:2 (2012) 153–171. 35 Vladimir A. Kalamanov, ‘The emergence and development of the Red Cross movement in Russia’, in Roger Durand et al. (eds.), Préludes et pionniers: les précurseurs de la Croix-Rouge, 1840–1860 (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1991), 83–93; Pirogov, Bericht ueber die Besichtung der Militair-Sanitätsanstalten, 7–8; E. Willis Brooks, ‘Reform in the Russian Army, 1856–1861’, Slavic Review, 43 (1984), 63–82. 36 Susan Grant, ‘From war to peace: Russian nurses, 1917–22’, in Adele Lindenmeyr et al. (eds.), Russia’s Home Front in War and Revolution, 1914–1922 (Bloomington: Slavica, 2016), 251–270; Arthur Wellesley, With the Russians in War and Peace: Recollections of a Military Attaché (London: Eveleigh Nash, 1905), 167, 261; Durand, Solferino to Tsushima, 307. 37 See generally Furley, ‘The Convention of Geneva’; Taithe, Defeated Flesh, 88–97; Haller, Battlefield Medicine, 70–73; Quote from Chastril, ‘The French Red Cross’, 454–458. 38 Mary C. Gillett, The Army Medical Department, 1865–1917 (Washington, DC: Centre of Military History, U.S. Army, 1995), 11–14. 39 NYPL:MSS.COL 22290/1.2 –Meeting minute book. The appeals to Washington can be found in NARA:RG 200 041, Box 5; ICRC: AF 5.1 –Bellows to Moynier, 16 July 1876. 40 Barton to Appia, 17 May 1877 and Bellows to Barton, 21 November 1881 – reproduced Eleazar Barton, Life of Clara Barton, 121–124, 165–166. 41 Marian Moser-Jones, The American Red Cross: From Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 2013) chs. 2 and 4; Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 217–222. 42 Vincent C. Cirillo, Bullets and Bacilli: The Spanish-American War and Military Medicine (New Brunswick: Rutgers Press, 2007), 6–12, 26–29; Eugene and Carol Flaumenhaft, ‘Evolution of America’s pioneer bacteriologist: George M. Sternbger’s formative years’, Military Medicine, 158:7 (1993), 448–457; Office of Army Medical Department, Spanish-American War Reports and Papers –Surgeon General’s Circular,
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25 April 1898. http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/spanam/ARSG1898/ ARSG1898ReportsCirculars.html 43 See letters between Barton and various Washington departments reproduced in Clara Barton, The Red Cross in Peace and War (Washington, DC: American Historical Press, 1899), 394–396. 44 Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 307–312. 45 NARA:RG 200, Box 8 –Study on Relationship that Should Exist between Army and Charitable Organizations, 1904. 46 Barton, Red Cross in Peace and War, 26. 47 Brown Pryor, Professional Angel, 307–308. 48 ‘Miss Barton Leaves Havana’, New York Times, 3 September 1898. 49 NARA:RG 200, 102 Box 11 –George Keenan to Chairman of Red Cross Investigation Committee, 24 March 1904. 50 Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States, 21–23 May 1895 (Cincinnati: Earhart and Richardson, 1896), 100–102, 340–341. 51 NARA:RG 200, 041 Box 4 –Red Cross Society in Other Countries, 2 March 1904; An overview of the various observers’ findings is provided by an unnamed British Officer, ‘The literature of the Russo-Japanese War’, The American Historical Review, 16:4 (1911), 736–750. 52 NARA:RG 200, 101.11, Box 9 –Thomas to Morlan, 31 March 1898. 53 David H. Burton, Clara Barton: in the Service of Humanity (Westport: Greenwood, 1995), 141–156; NARA:RG 200, 102, Box 11 –Boardman to Logan, reproduced in Walter Phillips Memo, 16 March 1903. 54 SRO:D593/P/26/4/4 – extracts from The Times, ‘The sick and wounded in Africa’, 18 June 1879 and ‘Parliamentary Debates’, 4 July 1879, ‘Dear old staff again!’, The World, 11 June 1879; For Stafford House’ concerns over these criticisms see SRO:D593/P/26/ 2/4/2 –Minute Book, meetings for June and July 1879. 55 Quote from BRC:WAN 14/1/7 –WO to Provisional Red Cross Committee, 19 January 1899; S. H. Best, The Story of the British Red Cross (London: Cassell, 1938), 65–94. 56 BRC:WAN 14/1/7 –Report by Surgeon-Major MacPherson on Red Cross Societies, 8 July 1898 & Sir William McCormac’s Report on MacPherson’s Observations, 1898; TNA:PRO 30/40/2 –Report on the Seventh International Conference of Red Cross Societies, 1897; See generally minutes in TNA:WO 32/7146. 57 Hutchinson, Champions of Charity, 226–249. 58 See generally Hutchinson, Champions of Charity and Best, Humanity in Warfare, 141–143. 59 Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–1914 (London: Routledge, 2000), 139–140; Gill, Calculating Compassion, 66. 60 WL:RAMC LP/423/2 –‘Longmore lecture on the Geneva Convention of 1864, delivered by Deputy Inspector-General Maclean’, 12 April 1872.
9 Enter the Peace-Seekers 1 Bertha von Suttner, Lay Down Your Arms: The Autobiography of Martha von Tilling, trans. T. Holms (New York: Longmans, Green, 1908), quotes from, 220, 353, 422; Suttner, Memoirs, 301–302.
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2 Niles Holt, ‘The popular pacifism of Bertha von Suttner’, Peace Research, 34:1 (2002), 117–125. 3 Suttner, Lay Down Your Arms, quote on Bluntschli, 423, quote on arbitration, 353. 4 Marx’s rival Mikhail Bakunin had elected to attend the Peace Congress. Marx and Engels themselves, however, boycotted the event on the grounds that it was no more than a bourgeois talking-shop – Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism, 36–38. Mark Leier, Bakunin: The Creative Passion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 177–180; Anthony Campanella, ‘Garibaldi and the First Peace Congress in Geneva in 1867’, International Review of Social History, 5:3 (1960), 456–486; Quotes from ‘The Peace Congress’, 17 September 1867 and ‘London, Monday, 16 September 1867’, The Times, 16 September 1867. 5 André Durand, ‘Gustave Moynier and the Peace Societies’, International Review of the Red Cross, 36: 314 (1996), 532–550; Quote from Charles Lemonnier, Le Vérité sur la Congrès de Genève (Berne: Chez Vérésoff et Garrigues, 1867), 32. 6 Michael Clinton, ‘Frédéric Passy: Patriotic Pacifist’, Journal of Historical Biography, 2 (2007), 33–62; ‘To the Editor’, Le Temps, 26 April 1867. 7 Frédéric Passy, Historique du mouvement de la paix (Paris: V. Giard and E. Brière, 1905), 46; Hart, Man Born to Live, 249. 8 Rolin-Jaequemyns quote from Durand, ‘Moynier and the Peace Societies’, 536–537. 9 Georg Francis Hagerup, ‘The Work of the Institute of International Law’, Nobel Lecture, Oslo, 24 August 1912 –http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/ laureates/1904/international-law-lecture.html 10 Alabama Claims of the United States of America against Great Britain, 8 May 1871–14 September 1872; Treaty of Washington (8 May 1871), arts. 6 and 11. For an overview of the Alabama Claims see Adrian Cook, The Alabama Claims: American Politics and Anglo-American Relations, 1865–1872 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975). Quote from Passy, Historique du mouvement, 48. 11 Dudley-Field, Draft Outlines, 370–371; Ralston, From Athens to Locarno, 124–125. 12 Quote from Passy, Historique du mouvement, 48. For Passy’s collaboration with Cremer, see 88–90; Howard Evans, Sir Randal Cremer: His Life and Work (London: T. Fischer and Unwin, 1909), 35–38; ‘William Randal Cremer –A White Knight of Peace’, The Advocate of Peace, 70:8 (1908), 180–181. 13 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 1, 287–294. 14 Yves Sandoz, ‘The Red Cross and peace: realities and limits’, Journal of Peace Research, 24:3 (1987), 287–296. 15 Gustave Moynier, Note sur la Création d’une Institution Judiciaire Internationale propre a prévenir et a réprimer les infractions a law Convention de Genève (Geneva: Soullier and Wirth, 1872), 3; Procès-verbaux, minutes for 26 June 1872, 270–271; Nicasio Landa, El derecho de la guerra conforme a la moral (Pamplona: Imprenta de Joaquin Lorda, 1877), 27–29; Sclopis quote from Hart, Man Born to Live, 264. 16 Statutes of the Institute of International Law –Ghent, 10 September 1873, art. 1.D; Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 48–49. 17 William G. Grewe, The Epochs of International Law, trans. Michael Byers (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000), 517–519; ‘The Venezuelan Boundary Question’, The Times, 6 January 1896. 18 ‘History of the American Peace Society and its Work’, Advocate of Peace, 69:1 (1907), 15–20; Quote from Rolin-Jaequemyns to Miles, 7 June 1873, cited in Irwin Abrahms, ‘The emergence of the international law societies’, The Review of Politics, 19:3 (1957), 361–380. 19 Lormier, Studies National and International, 85.
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20 Reports of the First Conference held at Brussels, 1873 and the Second Conference held at Geneva, 1874 (London: West, Newman and Co, 1908), hereafter IIL Conference Reports, 16–19. Quotes from Dudley-Field and Bluntschli, 16–17. 21 In accordance with the Jay Treaty of 1794, Britain and the United States successfully submitted a border dispute to a process of arbitration in 1795. Before the success of the Alabama Claims, this process was praised by peace-seekers as evidence that arbitration could work –George Schwarzenberger, ‘Present-day relevance of the Jay Treaty arbitrations’, Notre Dame Law Review, 53:4 (1978), 715–733. 22 IIL Conference Reports, 18–25. Passy quote, 44. 23 Valarie Ziegler Morris, ‘The early nineteenth-century American peace movement: from consensus to division’, Journal of Church and State, 27:3 (1985), 499–517. 24 IIL Conference Reports, 13–14. 25 IIL Conference Reports, 19; The ILA was dubbed as such in 1893, after initially being called the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations – Abrams, ‘The Emergence of the International Law Societies’. 26 John Westlake, ‘Improvement of the Laws of War’, in Lassa Oppenheim (ed.), Collected Papers of John Westlake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), 279; Quote from statues cited in Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 327–329; Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism, 91–95; Cortright, Peace, 59–52. 27 ‘Letter of the Peace Societies of Europe to the International Conference of the Red Cross Societies’, Advocate of Peace, 54:3 (1892), 62. 28 Compte rendu: Cinquième Conférence Internationale des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge tenue à Rome, 21–27 April 1892, 8. 29 ‘Humanising War’, Herald of Peace, 578 (October 1897), 299. 30 ‘The Hamburg peace congress and the peace movement in Europe’, Advocate of Peace, 60:8 (August–September 1897), 1; Chickering, Imperial Germany and a World without War: The Peace Movement and German Society, 1892–1914 (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975), 54–56. 31 Michael Blakeney, ‘The Olney-Pauncefote Treaty of 1897 –The Failure of Anglo- American General Arbitration’, Common Law World Review, 8:3 (1979), 175–190; Maine, International Law, 213–219; Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism, 61–63. 32 Quote from Suttner letter to Dunant, 28 September 1895, cited in Hart, Man Born to Live, 315–322; André Durand, ‘The development of the idea of peace in the thinking of Henry Dunant’, International Review of the Red Cross, 26:250 (1986), 16–51. 33 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 165–166, 230–231; Beatrix Kempf, Suffragette for Peace: The Life of Bertha von Suttner, trans. R. W. Last (London: Oswald Wolff, 1972), 36–42. 34 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 189–190. 35 Dunant Letter, 21 September 1899 reproduced in Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 196. 36 Frédéric Passy, ‘Peace movement in Europe’, Journal of Sociology, 2:1 (1896), 1–12; Frédéric Passy, ‘The peace question’, The Advocate of Peace, 51:4 (1894), 77; Frédéric Passy, ‘The armaments of the future –where will they stop?’, The Advocate of Peace, 52:5 (1895), 101.
10 Regulating Apocalypse 1 Tsar Nicholas’ Hague Rescript, 12/24 August 1898, reproduced in Documents Relating to the Program of the First Hague Peace Conference (Oxford: Clarendon, 1921), hereafter Hague Documents, 1–2.
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2 Dan L. Morrill, ‘Nicholas II and the call for the first Hague Conference’, Journal of Modern History, 46:2 (1974), 296–313; James L. Tryon, The Interparliamentary Union and Its Work (Boston: American Peace Society, 1907), 4; Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 193; Quote from William. Thomas Stead, The United States of Europe on the Eve of the Parliament of Peace (London: Review of Reviews, 1899), 171. For Stead’s assessment of the Tsar’s character, see 147–167. 3 Pustogarov, Our Martens, 157–163; Thomas K. Ford, ‘The genesis of the first Hague Peace Conference’, Political Science Quarterly, 51:3 (1936), 354–382. 4 ‘The Peace Conference’, The Times, 24 April 1899. 5 Kemény to Suttner, 29 August 1899, reproduced in Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 195. 6 ‘What the Conference at The Hague may be expected to accomplish’, The Advocate of Peace, 61:6 (June 1899); Clinton, ‘Patriotic Pacifist’, 52–53; William Thomas Stead, ‘Government by journalism’, The Contemporary Review, 49 (1886), 653–674, quote from 654. 7 Stéphanie Prévost, ‘W.T. Stead and the Eastern Question (1875–1911): how to rouse England and why’, Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 19 (2013), 1–16; Arthur Eyffinger, The 1899 Hague Peace Conference: The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World (The Hague: Kluwer International, 1999), 63; Quote from ‘The Peace Crusade’, The Times, 28 January 1899. 8 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 215–218. 9 Quote from Martens’ diary cited from Pustogarov, Our Martens, 160–161; Lapradelle quote from Albert Geouffre de la Pradelle, La Conference de la Paix (Paris: IIL, 1899), 12. 10 TNA:FO 881/7473 –Salisbury to Scott, 14 February 1899. For discussion of the rescript and reactions from various embassies in Europe, see generally this file and TNA:FO 412/65. 11 Edward quote reproduced in Miranda Carter, The Three Emperors (London: Penguin, 2010), 251, Wilhelm quote from Remarks of Kaiser Wilhelm II in Von Bülow to Wilhelm II, 21 June 1899 –Johannes Lepsius, Albrecht Mendelssohn Batholdy, Friedrich Thimmie, eds., Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914, Band 15 (Berlin: Deutsche verlagsgesellschaft für politik und geschichte, 1924), hereafter GP, 305. 12 Circular Note of Count Mouravieff to the Diplomatic Representatives accredited to the Court at St Petersburg, 30 December 1898 –Hague Documents, 2–3. 13 Arthur Eyffinger, ‘Friedrich Martens, the founding father of the Hague tradition’, KVÜÕA toimetised, 15 (2012), 13–43, 24. 14 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 228–229; ‘trap’ quote from Brigitte Hamann, Bertha von Suttner: A Life for Peace, trans. Anne Dubsky (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1996), 144–145. 15 Dunant to Suttner, 16 May 1899 reproduced in Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 246–247. 16 Ariga’s views on the Red Cross are encapsulated in –Nagao Ariga, La guerre russo-japonaise au point de vue continental et le droit international d’après les documents officiels du Grand État-major japonais (Paris: A. Pedone, 1908). 17 Neville Wylie, ‘Muddied waters: the influence of the first Hague Conference on the evolution of the Geneva Conventions of 1864 and 1906’, in Maartje Abbenhuis, Christopher Ernest Barber and Annalise R. Higgins (eds.), War. Peace and International Order? The Legacies of the Hague Conference of 1899 and 1907 (New York: Routledge, 2017), 52–68. 18 Andrew White, The First Hague Conference (Boston: The World Peace Foundation, 1912), 5.
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19 Daniel Hucker, ‘British peace activism and ‘new’ diplomacy: revisiting the 1899 Hague Peace Conference’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 26:3 (2015), 405–423; Keith Hamilton, ‘Britain and the Hague Peace Conference of 1899’, in Keith Hamilton and Edward Johnson (eds.), Arms and Disarmament in Diplomacy (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2008), 9–32. 20 Quote from the Frederick Augustus Voigt, ed. and trans., Memoirs of Prince von Bülow, the World War and Germany’s Collapse, 1909–1919, vol. 2 (New York: Little Brown, 1931), 329 in Chickering, World without War, 230–231. 21 Mark W. Janis, America and the Law of Nations, 1776–1939 (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 144–146; Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World before the War, 1890–1914 (New York: Random House, 2014), 282–283; Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer, 208–211; Quote from GP –Bülow Minute, 14 May 1899, 193–194. 22 White, First Hague Conference, 12, 19. 23 James Brown Scott, ed., The Proceedings of The Hague Peace Conferences (New York: OUP, 1920) hereafter, Hague Proceedings, Third Meeting of the First Commission at The Hague, 22 June 1899, 283, 286–287 and Annex II to Third Meeting, 293. 24 George Herbert Perris, ed., A History of the Peace Conference at The Hague (London: International Arbitration Association, 1899), 4–9; ‘The absurdities of militarism’, Advocate of Peace, 67:2 (1905), 37–38. 25 Felix Moscheles, ‘Impressions at The Hague’, in Perris, History of the Peace Conference, 11. 26 Hamann, A Life of Peace, 149–151; Quote from White, First Hague Conference, 13. 27 TNA:FO 83/1697 –Fischer Memorandum, 22 July 1899; Quotes reproduced in Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (London: Vintage, 2007), 431–432; Scott Keefer, The Law of Nations and Britain’s Quest for Naval Security: International Law and Arms Control, 1898–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 95–97. 28 Although Martens’ precise motives are still debated, his Clause is regarded as laying down the principle in customary international law that a lack of a treaty prohibiting a means of war does not indicate that said means is ethically or legally acceptable –V. V. Pustogarov, ‘The Martens Clause in International Law’, Journal of the History of International Law, 1 (1999), 125–135; Rupert Tichurst, ‘The Martens Clause and the Laws of Armed Conflict’, International Review of the Red Cross, 317 (1997), 125–134. The Germans, notably, never accepted this, and continued to place their faith in military necessity as their guiding dictum –Isabel Hull, A Scrap of Paper: Making and Breaking International Law during the Great War (Ithaca: Cornell, 2014), 75–76. 29 White, Hague Conference, 80. 30 Hague Proceedings –Annex to the Fourth Meeting, 20 June 1899, 31–41; For discussion of the 1868 articles at The Hague see Wylie, ‘Muddied Waters’. For a reflection on what came after see J. Ashley Roach, ‘The law of naval warfare at the turn of two centuries’, The American Journal of International Law, 94:1 (2000), 64–77. 31 ‘The peace congress’, The Standard, 16 June 1899; Hague Proceedings, 32; Hague Convention, 1899, ch. II. 32 Suttner, Memoirs, vol. 2, 278; William Thomas Stead, ‘Impressions at the Hague’ in Perris, History of the Peace Conference, 17; ‘The immediate and the future results of the peace conference’, Advocate of Peace, 61:8 (1899), 176. 33 David D. Caron, ‘War and international adjudication: reflections on the 1899 Peace Conference’, American Journal of International Law, 94:1 (2000), 4–30; Ralston, International Arbitration, 255–258; Tuchman, Proud Tower, 295–296; GP –Zorn to Bülow, 18 June 1899, 293–296.
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3 4 Quote from Hamann, Life for Peace, 152. 35 Britain refused on the premise that the Transvaal was not a signatory to The Hague Convention –Francis Parker, Arbitration or War? A View of the Transvaal Question with a Glance also at Arbitration in Politics Generally (London: Harrison and Sons, 1899). 36 Robert K. Godwin, ‘Russian and the Portsmouth Peace Conference’, American Slavic and East-European Review, 9:4 (1950), 279–291; Fedor Martens, ‘The Portsmouth Peace Conference’, The North American Review, 181:588 (1905), 641–648. 37 Final Act of the International Peace Conference, 29 July 1899; On the concept of a Congress of Nations in the peace movement see William E. Butler, ‘Congress of Nations: A Nineteenth Century View’, World Affairs, 128:2 (1965), 102–106. 38 Hague Proceedings, 386–394. Hague Convention –Law and Customs of War on Land, ch. 3, art. 21. 39 TNA:FO 83/1886 –Ardagh memorandum, 15 October 1900; TNA:PRO 30/40/ 15 –Ardagh to Gowan, 29 July 1899, Draft Articles for the Revision of the Geneva Convention of 1864, 16 June 1903; Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field (26 July 1906), articles 8, 10 and 11. 40 William Hull, The Two Hague Conference and Their Contributions to International Law (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1908), 198–199; George B. Davis, ‘The Geneva Convention of 1906’, The American Journal of International Law, 1:2 (1907), 409–417. 41 Francis Stewart Leyland Lyons, Internationalism in Europe, 1815–1914 (Leiden: A.W. Sythoff, 1963), 357–358; P. Hamilton, H. C. Requena, L. van Scheltinga, B. Shifman, The Permanent Court of Arbitration: International Arbitration and Dispute Resolution, Summaries of Awards, Settlement Agreements and Reports (The Hague: Kluwer, 1999), 35–37, 51–56, 297–300. 42 Joseph Choate, The Two Hague Conferences (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1913), 54–56. 43 Grey to Fry, 12 June 1907; Grey to Nicholson, 15 February 1907, nos.178 and 206 – British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914, eds. George Peabody Gooch and Harold William Temperley, vol. 8 (London: HMS-O, 1932), hereafter BDOW, 207–209, 242–250. 44 Alfred Eyffinger, ‘A highly critical moment: the role and record of the 1907 Hague peace conference’, Netherlands International Law Review, 54 (2007), 197–288; Quotes cited in Margaret MacMillan, The War that Ended Peace: How Europe Abandoned Peace for the First World War (London: Profile, 2013), 284 and Hamann, Life for Peace, 164. 45 Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, 1907, ch. II, arts. 41–50; Tjaco T. van der Hout, ‘Resolution of international disputes: the role of the permanent court of arbitration –reflections on the centenary of the 1907 convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes’, Leiden Journal of International Law, 21 (2008), 643–661.
Conclusion –1914: The Campaign Ends? 1 Quote from Fédéric Passy, ‘Was I wrong?’, The Advocate of Peace, 72:11 (1910), 266; ‘The temple of peace at The Hague’, The Advocate of Peace, 75:9 (1913), 200–201; Michael Howard, War and the Liberal Conscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 50–53.
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2 ‘Death of the Baroness von Suttner’, Advocate of Peace, 76:8 (August–September 1914), 175–177. 3 W. B. Fest, ‘British war aims and German peace feelers during the First World War (December 1916–November 1918)’, Historical Journal, 15:2 (1972), 285–308; Thomas C. Kennedy, The Hound of Conscience: A History of the No-Conscription Fellowship, 1914–1918 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1981); Francis Ludwig Carsten, War against War: British and German Radical Movements in the First World War (Berkley: University of California Press, 1982). 4 Lindsey Cameron, ‘The ICRC in the First World War: unwavering belief in the power of law?’, International Review of the Red Cross, 97:900 (2015), 1099–1120. 5 Thekla Bowser, Britain’s Civilian Volunteers: Authorized Story of British Voluntary Aid Detachment Work in the Great War (New York: Moffat, 1917), 8–16. 6 John F. Hutchinson, ‘Bandage battles: the American Red Cross and the politics of emergency response on the eve of World War I’, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 19:2 (2002), 375–398; Charles Lynch, American Red Cross Text Book on First Aid and Relief Columns (Philadelphia: P. Blakiston’s Sons, 1918), 219–225; NARA:RG 200.140.1 Box 19 –Tentative Scheme of Organisation for the Bureau of Medical Service, 23 April 1914; Chrastil, ‘War Readiness and Civil Society’, 445–476; Yoshiya Makita, ‘The alchemy of humanitarianism: the First World War, the Japanese Red Cross and the creation of an international public health order’, First World War Studies, 5:1 (2014), 117–129. 7 Fiona Reid, Medicine in First World War Europe: Soldiers, Medics, Pacifists (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 4–6, 37–42; Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 17–19; Ana Carden-Coyne, The Politics of Wounds: Military Patients and Medical Power in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 19–21. 8 Dunant, Solferino, 59. 9 Heather Jones, ‘International or transnational? Humanitarian action during the First World War’, European Review of History, 16:5 (2009), 697–713. 10 Heather Jones, Violence against Prisoners of War in the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Alan Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); André Durand, From Sarajevo to Hiroshima (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1984), 48–96. 11 Hull, Scrap of Paper; Barnett, Empire of Humanity, 82–94; Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); William Mulligan, ‘Justifying international action: international law, The Hague and diplomacy before 1914’, in War, Peace and International Order, 12–28. 12 Burton Feldman, The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy and Prestige (New York: Arcade, 2000), 33, 290–294.
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Theses and Dissertations DePies, Gregory John, ‘Humanitarian Empire: The Red Cross in Japan, 1877–1945’, PhD Thesis (San Diego: University of California, 2014). McAllister, William Brian, ‘Fighting the Good Fight: German Military Medicine, 1860–1914’, M.A. Thesis (University of Virginia, 1990).
Online Sources British Medical Journal –www.bmj.com British Library Newspaper Archive –www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk Cornell University Library –www.ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moawar/waro.html ●● The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Danish Red Cross –www.rodekors.dk/om-os/historie Europeana Newspapers – www.europeana-newspapers.eu Foreign Relations of the United States –www.frus.com Hansard Online – www.hansard.parliament.uk Hathitrust – www.hathitrust.org ●● Herald of Peace ●● Advocate of Peace ●● The Sanitary Commission Bulletin Institut de Droit International –www.justitiaetpace.org International Committee of the Red Cross Website –www.icrc.org New York Times Archives –www.nytimes.com Noble Prize Website –www.nobleprize.org Office of Army Medical Department –www.history.amedd.army.mil/index.html ●● Spanish-American War Reports and Papers Oxford Dictionary of National Biography –www.oxforddnb.com The Times Online –www.thetimes.co.uk/archive Washington Post Archives –www.washingtonpost.com United States Newspaper Archive –www.newspaperarchive.com/us/
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Index A Memory of Solferino 59–61 Ador, Gustav 193 Alabama Claims impact on peace movement 157–61 American Association for the Relief of the Misery of Battlefields ending 144 establishment 55 failure to elicit support in Franco-Prussian War 106 mission statement and activities 71 American Civil War (1861–1865) military-medical preparations for 27–30 origins 25–6 American Peace Society 10, 87, 160 American Red Cross (ARC) establishment and character 144 in Spanish-American War 145–8 reforms (early 1900s) 148 Anglo-American Ambulance establishment and schism 108–9 significance in diffusing military- medical ideas 110 Appia, Louis activities in Italy 92–3 background 61–2 correspondence with Barton 100 in Schleswig-Holstein War 78–81 views on reforming Red Cross 91 arbitration debated at The Hague Conferences 177–81, 184–5 successes 159–60, 164–5 see also Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, Alabama Claims and Brussels Peace Conference (1873) Ardagh, John Charles comments at Hague Conference 181 and reform of Red Cross 186–7, 189 Asser, Tobias 118
Austro-Prussian War (1866) 83–4 Austrian Red Cross performance in Austro-Prussian War 86–7 Balkans conflicts (1875–1878) atrocities committed and reported on 131 IIL response 131–2 origins 130–1 Red Cross responses 133–6 Barton, Clara activities in American Civil War 50–1, 55–6 attitude to military-medicine 50, 88 background 49 in Franco-Prussian War 111–12 makes contact with the Committee 100–1 relations with Nightingale 49–50 relations with USSC 51 removed from power 148 response to Balkans conflicts and establishment of ARC 144–5 in Spanish-American War 145–7 see also American Red Cross Bashi-bazouks 131, 134–5 Basting, Johan 64–5, 74 Bellows, Henry Whitney attacks Finley 37–9 ambitions for USSC, 36, 41 background and establishment of USSC 32–3 rejects Evans 106 relations with Dunant 71–2 Bernard, Montague 161–2 Blackwell, Elizabeth 32 Bloch, Ivan 140, 173 Bluntschli, Johann Kaspar background and establishment of IIL 118 views on Lieber Code 119–21 views on peace movement, 161
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Boardman, Mabel 148 Boer War (1899–1902) 185 Red Cross response 149 Bowles, Charles activities in Europe 69–70 at Geneva Conference 69 Boyland, George Halstead activities in Franco-Prussian War 105–7 Brackenbury, Henry 134, 137 views on ‘future war’ 141 Bright, John 8, 10 British Red Cross (aka. NAS) activities in Balkans conflicts 134–6, 139 establishment and activities in Franco- Prussian War 104–5 reforms (early 1900s) 149–50 schism 141 British Sanitary Commission (BSC) influence on USSC 32 work at Scutari 17–18 Brussels Conference (1874) Proceedings 127–30 Russian intentions for 124 Brussels Peace Conference (1873) 161–2 Bull Run, Battle of (1861) 28–9 Burgess, John 103 Burritt, Elihu 160–1 Cahen, Coralie 108 Cameron, Simon 31, 36–9 Chenu, Jean-Charles Background and activities in Crimean War, 22–3 in Franco-Prussian War 107, 112 opinion of military-medicine, 23, 58 opinion of Red Cross idea, 72, 74, 91, 113, 140 Clausewitz, Carl von 90, 121 Cobden, Richard activities in Crimean War 7–10 views on war and peace 140 Confederacy preparedness for and performance in, the war 27, 52 Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, 185 Crane, Edward A 106–7 Cremer, Randal 158, 160, 162
Crimean War background and nature of 8–9 military-medicine in 11–13 Declaration of Paris (1856) 64 Declaration of St Petersburg (1868) 122–3 DeLeon, David 27 Delafield Commission 29–30 Dix, Dorothea background 30–1 relations with USSC 44–5 Dudley-Field, David 118–19, 158, 161 Dufour, Guillaume Henry background and view of Red Cross idea 61–2, 64, 74 views on peace movement 78, 88 Dunant, Henry advocacy of POWs and Brussels Conference (1874) 125–7 background and activities at Solferino, 57–9 correspondence with USSC, 70–1 differences of opinion with other the Committee founders, 62–4 differences of opinion to Lieber, 67 joins peace movement 165–6 reaction to Hague Conferences, 166, 178 removed from the Committee (1867) 81 shares Nobel Prize with Passy 197 in Siege of Paris 112 writes Solferino and forms the Committee, 59–61 Edge, Frederick Milne 22 Evans, Thomas and Anglo-American ambulance in Franco-Prussian War 106–9 background 85 relations with and advocacy of USSC 55, 85 at 1867 Paris Exhibition 91–2 Ferrière, Frédéric in Franco-Prussian War, 101–2 in Montenegro, 133 Finley, Clement background and character 35–6 relations with USSC 37–9 Fisher, Edmund Crisp 54, 66, 69–70
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Index Fisher, John ‘Jackie’ 181–2 Fogg, Charles 65, 69–70 Forbes, Archibald 140 Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) as catalyst for future war fears 129, 140–1 Origins 99–100 Red Cross responses to 100–5 French Red Cross founding and character 82, 91–2 performance in Franco-Prussian War 99–100, 106–7 postwar reforms 144, 148 Furley, John activities in Franco-Prussian War 107–8, 113 Background 103–4 changes view of Red Cross 134–5 founding of St John Ambulance 110–11 and future war concerns 141, 144 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 93, 154 Geneva Conferences (1864–1906) 1863 and 1864 origins and proceedings 62–5 1868 Maritime conference 1906 origins and proceedings Geneva Convention 1864 63, 74 and creation of Red Crescent 134 failed attempt at revising (1868) 92 Moynier’s plans for future of (1870s) 115–18 violations of 112–13, 149, 193 1906 revision 186–7 Geneva Peace Congress (1867) 154–5 Gould, Benjamin Apthorp 33 Hague Conference (1899) attitude of great powers to, 176–7 peace movement’s expectations for 166, 174–8, 185 proceedings and outcomes of 181–4 Tsar’s call for 166, 173–4 Hague Conference (1907) proceedings and outcomes of 188–9 Hall, John opinions of military-medicine 12–13 relations with Nightingale 16–17
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Hammond, William A 39–41, 51–2 Harris, Elisha background and vision for USSC 32–3, 35 development of railcar 51–2 Harrison’s Landing 40–2 Hastings-Hamilton, Frank 52, 55, 102 Herbert, Sidney 15–18 Horsford, Alfred 129–30 Institute of International Law (IIL) attitude to disarmament at Hague Conference (1899) 176 at Brussels Conference (1874) 124–9 founding and mission 117–20 problems with peace-seekers 157, 160–2 response to Balkans conflicts 131–2 Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) 162–3 International Law Association (ILA) 162 International Committee of the Red Cross (Committee) British criticisms of (1900s) 186–7 distant relationship with Red Cross movement 81–2, 116 founding 61–4 See also Geneva Conference (1864) International Red Cross Conference (1867) Red Cross divisions at 91–2 USSC exhibition at 52, 85 International Red Cross Conference (1892) 163 International Red Cross Conference (1897) 164 Irish Volunteer Ambulance Corps 104 Japan Red Cross origins and character of 142 praise for work in Russo-Japanese War 148 Kennett-Barrington, Vincent activities and attitude to humanitarian action 137–9 as archetype humanitarian 138, 146 King, William S. 28 La Guerre et la Charité publication and purpose 89–93
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254 Landa, Nicasio 82–3, 88, 102 Lawson, Thomas 27–8, 30, 35–6 Lay Down Your Arms publication and purposes 153–4, 160 League de la Paix 158 LeFort, Leon 82, 99, 107, 109, 111 Lemonnier, Charles 155–6, 158 Letterman, Jonathan 40–2 clash with USSC 44 legacy 53 Lieber, Francis Background 66 impact of Lieber Code on Brussels Conference 120–4 praised by IIL 119 thoughts on war and regulation 67–8 Lincoln, Abraham 25–6 and Civil War 25–7 view of USSC 35 Loeffler, Friedrich, 74 London Peace Society 54, 87 Longmore, Thomas background and actions in Crimean War 21–2 at Geneva Conferences (1863–1864) 73 relations with Nightingale 74, 103 relations with the Committee 116 thoughts on reform of Red Cross 108, 115, 134, 141, 147 Loyd-Lindsay, Robert activities in Balkans conflicts 134–5, 139 background and formation of NAS 103–4, 107 see also British Red Cross Lynch, Charles 148, 193 McClellan, George 38, 40–1 McDowell, Irvin 28–9 McLaughlin, Louisa in Balkans conflicts 135 in Franco-Prussian War 104–5, 107, 109 MacCormac, William and future war concerns 140 and innovations of Anglo-American Ambulance 109–10 recruitment by Stafford House 138 MacGahan, Januarius 131
Index MacPherson, William criticisms of Red Cross 149–50 influence at Geneva Conference (1906) 187, 189 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 181–2 Marion-Simms, James 109 Martens Clause 183 Martens, Fedor Fedorovich and arbitration 160 and Brussels Conference (1874) 124–9 planning of Hague Conference (1899) 174–6 reaction to Balkans conflicts 131, 143 Maunoir, Théodore 61–3 view of USSC 70 Miles, James B. 160–1 Military necessity as Kriegsraison 121–3 and international law 123, 129, 182–3 as principle 68, 120 Milyutin, Dimitri 122, 124, 143 Moltke, Helmuth von 84, 87 and military necessity (Kriegsraisson) 121–2 Moynier, Gustave assessment of Franco-Prussian War 115–17 background, character and founding of the Committee 61–5 concern over Brussels Conference (1874) 125 concern over Hague Conference (1899) 178 and development of Red Cross 62, 64, 69, 74, 80–1, 93 ‘hand’s off ’ approach to Red Cross movement 82, 91, 102 proposed expansion of international law and founding of IIL 117–18, 132 proposes tribunal to deal with violation of Geneva Convention 158–9 relations with Dunant 81–2 thoughts on pacifism 89–90, 155–6 Mundy Jaromir von attempts to establish Austrian Red Cross 86–8 recruitment by Stafford House 138 Münster, Herbert von 180–1 Muraviev, Mikhail 173–7
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Index Napoleon III 55, 58–9, 99, 106 National Aid Society (NAS) See British Red Cross Nightingale, Florence activities in Crimean War 16–17 attitude to military-medicine 22–3 background, character and competencies 14–15 and British military-medical reforms 18–19 influence in America 29–30, 32, 40, 45 opinion of Red Cross 72–5 views on war 88 Odier, Edouard 179, 186 Olmsted, Frederick Law background and founding if USSC 34 opinion of Finley 35, 37–8 opinion of Letterman 43–4 Order of St John of Jerusalem 80, 103, 111 Oxford Manual (1880) 132, 196 Pacifism Red Cross attitudes towards 78, 88–90, 155–6 Paris Commune 112 Paris International Exposition (1867) 52, 91 Paris, Siege of (1870–1871) 112–13 Passy, Frédéric Background and participation in Franco-Prussian War 155–6 criticises Hague Conference 175, 191 founds IPU 162–3 response to Tsar’s rescript 166 shares Nobel Prize with Dunant 197 views on peace 156–7, 160–1 Pauncefote, Julian 179, 184 Pavlovna, Elena 20–1 Pearson, Emma in Balkans conflicts 135 in Franco-Prussian War 104–5, 107, 109 Pirogov, Nicolai Background and activities in Crimean War 21, 22, 24 views of USSC and Prussian Red Cross 111, 143 Porter, J. H. 110–11
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Prussia military reforms 84 Prussian Red Cross adopts USSC methods 84–5, 111 in Austro-Prussian War 84–5 performance in Franco-Prussian War 99–100 regarded as model Red Cross society 133–4, 139 in Schleswig-Holstein War 77, 80 Quakers influence on American peace movement 88 relief units in Franco-Prussian War and Balkans conflicts 102, 113, 134 Raymond, Henry 37–9 Reclus, Elisée 55 Red Cross movement militarization of 150–1 need for accountability 139, 146, 150–1 Red Cross symbol idea of 63, 70, 78–9 mis-use of 115–16 modified to Red Crescent 134, 136 Ripon, Earl Grey de 18, 73 Robida, Albert 140 Roosevelt, Theodore 147, 185, 187–8 Rolin-Jaequemyns, Gustave Background and formation of IIL 118–19 views of peace-seekers 157 Roon, Count von 84 Royal Army Medical Corps (Medical Staff Corps) 19, 23, 30, 149, 194 Russell, William Howard in Crimean War 10–13 denounces war 175 observations of Union and Confederacy 25–6, 28 Russian Red Cross 20, 137, 165 Russo-Japanese War (1905) 148, 187–8 Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) see Balkans conflicts Rutherford, William 73 Ryan, Charles in Franco-Prussian War 104, 109 recruitment by Stafford House 136
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256 Sandwith, Humphrey 20, 22 Schleswig-Holstein War (1864) 78–81 Scutari Barracks 11, 13–15 Seacole, Mary 19–20, 22–3 Secours aux Blessés 89, 101 Seward, William 65, 68–9 Sherman, William Tecumseh 120–1 Siebold, Alexander von 142 Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires (SSBM) see French Red Cross Solferino, Battle of 58–59 South African War (1899–1902) see Boer War Spanish-American War (1898) 145–7 Stafford House Committee 136–7, 139 criticisms of 141, 148–9 Stanton, Edwin 35 Stead, William T and Hague Conference 173–5, 179–80 response to Balkans conflicts 131 Sternberg, George 145–6 Stillé, Charles Janeway 32–3, 54, 56 Strong, George Templeton 33–5 Suttner, Bertha von Background and release of Lay Down Your Arms, 153–4 criticises Red Cross 165 differing views to Passy and Cremer 166 and Hague Conference (1899) 166, 174–8, 181–2, 184–5, 189, 191–2 joins peace movement 158–9 recruits Dunant to peace movement 165 volunteers for Red Cross 165–6 Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) 19 Tomkyns-Chesney, George, 140–1 Trench, Thomas Weldon 105 Tsunetami, Sano 142, 146
Index Union Army Medical Bureau inadequacies 27–9 United States Christian Commission conclusion of activities 55 origins, mission and clash with USSC 46–9 United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) and adoption of protective symbol 69 clash with Christian Commission 46–9 clash wth Western Sanitary Commission 45 conclusion of activities and transformation in American Association 55 contrasting press coverage of 37–8 founding, mission and character 32–5 and Geneva Conference (1864) 70–2 influence on post of Surgeon-General 36–9 innovations and legacy 51–3 ‘militarization’ of work 48–9 promotion in Europe 54–5, 69 use of steamboats 44 Washington’s view of 35 Universal Alliance for Order and Civilisation 125–6 Van der Velde, Charles 78–80 Voigts-Rhetz, Konstantin Bernard von 127–30 Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) 193–4 Western Sanitary Commission 45 Westlake, John 118, 131, 160 White, Andrew 179–1 Women’s Central Association for Relief 30, 32, 92 Wood, Robert 30–2, 35–6
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