de Vattel: Of the Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of Ambassadors and Other Public Ministers

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)Emmerich de Vattel

Print |

Email |

Of the Rights, Privileges, and Immunities of Ambassadors and Other Public Ministers§ 80. Respect due to public ministers.§ 81. Their persons sacred and inviolable.§ 82. Particular protection due to them.§ 83. When it commences.§ 84. What is due to them in countries through which they pass.§ 85. Ambassadors going to an enemy's country.§ 86. Embassies between enemies.§ 87. Heralds, trumpeters, and drummers.§ 88. Ministers, trumpeters, etc., to be respected, even in a civil war.§ 89. Sometimes they may be refused admittance.§ 90. Every thing which has the appearance of insult to them rnust be avoided.§ 91. By and to whom they may be sent.§ 92. Independence of foreign ministers.§ 93. How the foreign minister is to behave.§ 94. How he may be punished. 1. For ordinary transgressions.§ 95. 2. for faults committed against the prince.§ 96. Right of ordering away an ambassador who is guilty, or justly suspected.§ 97. Right of repressing him by force, if he behaves as an enemy. § 98. Ambassador forming dangerous plots and conspiracies.§ 99. What may be done to him according to the exigency of the case. § 100. Ambassador attempting against the sovereign's life.§ 101. Two remarkable instances respecting the immunities of public ministers.§ 102. Whether reprisals may be made on an ambassador.§ 103. Agreement of nations concerning the privileges of ambassadors. § 104. Free exercise of religion.§ 105. Whether an ambassador be exempted from all imposts.§ 106. Obligation founded on use and custom.§ 107. A minister whose character is not public.§ 108. A sovereign in a foreign country.§ 109. Deputies to the states.
   1. An enormous infraction of the law of nations caused the ruin of the powerful empire of Khovarezm, or Kakesm, and opened a door to the Tartars for the subjugation of almost all Asia. The famous Gengis-khan, wishing to establish a commercial intercourse between his states and those of Persia, and the other provinces subject to Mohammed Cotheddin, sultan of Khovarezm, sent to that prince an ambassador, accompanied by a caravan of merchants. On the arrival of that caravan at Otraw, the governor caused them to be arrested, together with the ambassador, and wrote word to the Sultan that they were a company of spies. Mohammed thereupon ordered him to have the prisoners put to death. Gengis-khan demanded satisfaction of the sultan for this barbarous massacre; and, finding him backward to give it, he took up arms. The conquest of the whole empire of Khovarezm soon followed; and Mohammed himself, reduced to the condition of a wretched fugitive, died of a broken heart in a desert island of the Caspian Sea.
Canson, the last sultan of the Mamelucs, having put to death the ambassadors of the Turkish emperor, Selim the First, the injured monarch took a signal vengeance for the atrocious deed. He conquered all the dominions of Canson, and, having defeated and captured that prince near Cairo, he caused him to be hanged at one of the gates of the city. Marigny, History of the Arabs, vol. ii. p. 105, 427.
   2. Memoires de Martin du Bellay, liv. ix.
   3. Solis's history of the Conquest of Mexico. § 17.
   4. Wicquefort's Ambassador, book I. § 1.
   5. In Verrem, orat. i.
   6. Wicquefort, book i. § 3.
   7. Wicquefort, book i.
   8. Wicquefort, ubi supra.
   9. Idem. ibid.
   10. See Wolf. Jus Gent. § 1059.
   11. The fact is advanced by Antony de Vera, in his "Idea of a Perfect Ambassador:" but Wicquefort suspects the authenticity of the anecdote, — not having, as he says, met with it in any other writer. Ambassad. book I. § 29.
   12. The king of England having received information that the French and Spanish ambassadors had severally collected considerable numbers of armed men, for the purpose of supporting, on a solemn occasion, their respective claims to precedency, made a general request to all the foreign ministers not to send their carriages to attend the public entry of the Venetian ambassador. The count d'Estrades, at that time minister from the court of France, having complied with his majesty's desire, — Louis XIV. testified his dissatisfaction at the deference paid by the count to the British monarch's message, "which was no more than a simple request not to send carriages: — whereas, even if he had issued an express order (as being at liberty to give what orders he pleases in his own kingdom,) you should have replied that you receive no commands but from me: and if, after that, he had attempted to use violence, the part which remained for you to act, was that of withdrawing from his court." — I think the French monarch entertained erroneous ideas on the subject; since every sovereign must surely have a right to prohibit all foreign ministers doing any thing in his dominions which may tend to produce disorder, and which, moreover, is not necessary to the exercise of their ministerial functions.
   13. Mons. Pequet, Discours sur l'Art de Negocier, p. 91
   14. See Sully's Memoirs, and the French historians.
   15. Wicquefort, book i. § 29.
   16. Idem. ibid.
   17. Livy, book v. chap. 26, where the historian peremptorily decides that those ambassadors violated the law of nations: "Legati, contra jus gentium, arma capiunt."
   18. Ambassad. book I. §§ 27, 28, 29.
   19. Et quamquam visi sunt (legati) commisisse ut hostium loco essent, jus tamen gentium valuit. Tit. Liv. Lib. ii, cap. 4.
   20. In his notes on Bynkershoek's treatise on the Competent Judge of Ambassadors, ch. xxiv. § 5, note 2.
   21. History of the Kings of the Two Sicilies, by Monsieur D'Egly.
   22. Cambden's Annal. Angl. ad ann. 1571, 1573.
   23. See the discussion of the question, and the discourse which Henry IV. held on this subject to the Spanish ambassador, in the Memoires de Nevers, vol. ii. p. 858, el seq., in Matthieu, vol. ii. book iii. and other historians.
Joseph Sofi. king of Carezem, having imprisoned an ambassador of Timur-Bec, Timur's secretary of state wrote him a letter couched in strong terms of expostulation on the subject of that infraction of the law of nations, — informing him that "It is a maxim with kings to consider the person of an ambassador as sacred: for which reason he is always held exempt from the punishment of death or imprisonment, if the sovereign to whom he is sent has even the slightest knowledge of the law of nations, or the ambassador himself does but possess sufficient prudence to refrain from the commission of any heinous offence, and to behave with common decency." La Croix, Hist. of Timur-Bec, book ii. chap. 26. The same historian, in his account of Barcouc, sultan of Egypt, who put Timur's ambassador to death, observes, — "that it was an infamous action; — that to insult an ambassador is a violation of the law of nations, and a deed at which nature herself shudders." Ibid. book v. chap. 17. Edit. A.D. 1797
   24. Appian, quoted by Grotius, lib. ii. cap. 28, § 7. According to Diodorus Siculus, Scipio said to the Romans, "Do not imitate that conduct with which you reproach the Carthaginians." Skipion ouk ephe dein prattein d tois Kapchedoi iois kegalousi Diod. Sic, Excerpt Peiresc. p. 290.
   25. Livy, book xxx. chap. 28, § 7. That historian makes Scipio say, "Though the Carthaginians have violated the faith of the truce, and the law of nations, in the person of our ambassadors, I will do nothing against theirs that is unworthy of the maxims of the Roman people, and of my own principles."
   26. Mezeray's Hist. of France, vol. ii. p. 470.
   27. General Hist. of Voyages, art. China, and Indies.
   28. Alvakedi's History of the Conquest of Syria.
   29. Ockley's History of the Saracens, vol. i.
   30. Choisy's History of St. Louis.
   31. Wicquefort's Ambass. book i. § 28, towards the end.
   32. See the Memoirs of Martin Du Beilay, book iv., and Father Daniel's History of France, vol. v. p. 300, etc.
   33. It is surprising to see a grave historian give into this opinion. See Gramond's Hist, Gall. lib. xii. The Cardinal De Richelieu also alleged this trifling reason, when he gave orders for arresting Charles Lewis, the elector Palatine, who had attempted to pass through France incognito, he said, that "no foreign prince was permitted to pass through the kingdom without a passport." But he added better reasons, drawn from the prince Palatine's designs against Brissac and the other places left by Bernard, duke of Saxe-Weymar, and to which France pretended to have a greater right than any other power, because those conquests had been made with the money furnished by that kingdom. See the History of the Treaty of Westphalia, by Father Bougant, vol. ii. in 12 mo p. 88.
   34. See the French historians.