The Strasbourg Agreement of 27 August 1675 is the first international agreement banning the use of chemical weapons. The treaty was signed between France and the Holy Roman Empire, and was created in response to the use of poisoned bullets. The use of this weaponry was preceded by Leonardo da Vinci's invention of arsenic and

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

-packed shells that can be fired against ships. These weapons had been used by

Christoph Bernhard von Galen Christoph Bernhard Freiherr von Galen (12 October 1606, Drensteinfurt – 19 September 1678) was Prince-bishop of Münster. He was born into a noble Westphalian family. Background, education and conversion to Roman Catholicism Christoph Bernha ...

Bishop of Munster A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

, in the

Siege of Groningen (1672) The Siege of Groningen was a battle that took place in 1672 during the Franco-Dutch war. It was a Dutch victory that ended all hope of the Bishop of Münster to push deeper into the Netherlands. The Münster army was so weakened by the defeat t ...

- thus provoking the Strasbourg Agreement between the belligerents of the

Eighty Years' War The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt ( nl, Nederlandse Opstand) ( c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Refo ...

. The

Hague Convention of 1899 The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 are a series of international treaties and declarations negotiated at two international peace conferences at The Hague in the Netherlands. Along with the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Conventions were amon ...

also contained a provision that rejected the use of projectiles capable of diffusing asphyxiating or deleterious gases. The next major agreement on chemical weapons did not occur until the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Today, the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons is different from the use of poison as a method of warfare and is particularly noted by the International Committee of the Red Cross as existing independent of each other.

References

"Chemical Weapons and the Chemical Weapons Convention"
*Clarke, Robin (1968), ''We all Fall Down: The Prospect of Biological and Chemical Warfare'' ( London:

Allen Lane Sir Allen Lane (born Allen Lane Williams; 21 September 1902 – 7 July 1970) was a British publisher who together with his brothers Richard and John Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, bringing high-quality paperback fiction and non-fictio ...

; The

Penguin Press Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initial ...

). *

Hersh, Seymour M. Seymour Myron "Sy" Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. Hersh first gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War, for which he received t ...

(1968), ''Chemical and Biological Weapons: America's Hidden Arsenal'' (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company). Arms control treaties Treaties of the Kingdom of France Treaties of the Holy Roman Empire Chemical warfare 1675 in France 1675 in the Holy Roman Empire 1675 in military history 1675 treaties France–Holy Roman Empire relations {{weapon-stub

See also

References