History & The Arts
The moral equality of combatants
...de Vitoria, subjects must fight – the guilt falling, as in Henry V , on their leaders. Vitoria’s argument suggests how firmly political life is set, even in the pre-modern state, against the very idea of volition in time of war. ‘A prince is not able,’ he writes, ‘and ought not always to render reasons for the war to his subjects, and if the subjects cannot...
