Page 78 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

78 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

caused by soldiers on civil populations – unlike his exegetes have done without fail. as
5
a matter of fact, his work turns out to be in a phase, in which the semantic and conceptual
framework anchored on terms such as “military,” “civil” and “population” and their cor-
relation and antinomies are still settling down and do not lack sharp contradictions. For
example, according to dictionaries, the noun “civilian” starts to have also the meaning
of “non military” in France and Italy only in the first decades of the eighteenth century ,
6
whereas in 1830 Thomas De Quincey considered using the word “civilian” «to indicate
simply a non-military person» as “a fashionable and most childish use of word now
7
current.” It is also true that, as regards the adjective, the use of the word “civilian” as
opposed to “military” dates a few centuries back: if Machiavelli distinguished the mili-
tary life from civil life already in the previous generations, in that era of commanders, in
which “soldier” meant mercenary, professional soldiers had taken the place of knights,
who used to be the main point of reference for war. Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti
used to consider “exercizio militare” as an alternative to “vivere civile [civil life]” .
8
It is still hard to include farmers in the “civil population”, who are depicted as the
victims in Callot’s engravings, but more rarely, also as tormentors of soldiers, who also
feed the ranks of rural bandits as depicted in the etching dedicated to L’impiccaggione
[The Hanging]. Hence, they fully participate in the band of a favored endemic violence
outside of battlefields, when it is not directly triggered by war. In fact, as it is commonly
known, the word “civilian” is derived from civis and pertains to an urban context under
every aspect (politics, customs, society and economics,) which is defined as the oppo-
site of the country side, to a wide extent. In the eyes of the most wicked supporters of
the supremacy of the city over country, farmers used to appear in the Middle Ages and
beyond as hornless oxen. As regards customs, while ruralness had – and still continues
to have – a more or less negative connotation (“villain,” “lout,” “boor,” “rustic,” etc) ,
9
cities on the other hand could impose themselves not only as a model for good manners,
but also as a laboratory of a keyword for contemporary history, namely “civilization.”

5 For instance, see Paulette Choné’s, Les misères de la guerre ou “la vie du soldat”: la force et le
droit, in Jacques Callot 1592-1635, pp. 396-400; AndrÉ Stoll, “Non si può guardare [It is not to
be seen.]” Dallo spettacolo della giustizia assolutista al crollo dei miti della civiltà. La guerra
nell’opera grafica di Callot e di Goya [From the performance of absolutist justice to the fall of
myths of civilization. War in the graphic work of Callot and Goya] in Le incisioni di Jacques Cal-
lot [Jacques Callot’s Engravings], pp.85-108; Yves-Marie Bercé, Callot en son temps, in Jacques
Callot (1592-1635), pp. 47-62.
6 Refer to Salvatore Battaglia , Grande dizionario della lingua italiana [The Great Dictionary of
the Italian Language], X, Torino, Utet, 1978, p. 401 and Manlio Cortelazzo - Paolo Zolli, Dizion-
ario etimologico della lingua italiana [Etymological Dictionary of the Italian Language], III, Bo-
logna, Zanichelli, 1983, p. 756. Le grand Robert de la langue française, II, Paris, Le Robert, 1987,
p. 633 in 1718 the use of the word “civil” was accepted as «qui n’est pas militaire», but militaire
was a noun that dated back to 1658 (ivi, VI, p. 456).
7 Refer to the entry “civilian” meaning «a non-military man or official» in The Oxford English Dic-
tionary, III, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 256.
8 Refer to S. Battaglia , Grande dizionario [The Great Dictionary], III, 1964, p. 211.
9 Refer to M. Cortelazzo - P. Zolli, Dizionario etimologico [Etymological Dictionary], I, 1979, p.
244.