HKB
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Often appears with: strategy and the aims of war · difference in opinion · conquest, plunder, and captives · causes of war
Usually: argument (1) · censure (1) · irony (1)
“It is a very kingly, honourable, and frequent practice, when one prince desires the assistance of another, to secure him against an invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison, or banish, the prince he came to relieve.” Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels into Several Remote Nations of th · insight
The narrator lists causes of war across European states—ambition, ministerial corruption, sectarian “difference in opinion,” strategic fears and opportunities, and profitable alliances—then mocks soldiering as hiring Yahoos to kill in cold blood.
many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. “Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrels with another for fear the other should quarrel with him. So…