Pre-Modern Battlefields (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Pre-Modern Battlefields (2015)

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147 pointsTomte110 comments

There's a pretty telling anecdote in Suetonius's life of Augustus where "[Augustus] sold a Roman knight and his property at public auction, because he had cut off the thumbs of two young sons, to make them unfit for military service" (24). In fact, this was apparently not uncommon, with several more references to similar self-inflicted injuries to avoid service popping up in various texts. I think there were also direct reforms put in place that specified that men without fingers could still be deemed fit for service (I think this might have been the late imperial period but unfortunately the precise source was found in a library book that I don't have access to at the moment).

While war is obviously still horrific, I think it's a bit easier to forget that when discussing history when we don't have particularly realistic images to base our imaginations. That even the Romans, at the height of its power, feared sending their sons to war, kinda counters the notion that conquest was this glorious, honorable thing that built an empire and made men like Caesar into the immortal gods we remember.

In her book SPQR, the historian Mary Beard emphasizes that the Roman Empire was unable to conquer anything. The Roman Republic conquered the Mediterranean world, and then the Roman Empire failed at everything:

https://www.amazon.com/Spqr-History-Ancient-Mary-Beard/dp/18...

The only major, lasting conquest made by the Roman Empire was the conquest of Britain, under the Emperor Claudius. But for the most part, from the moment it was created, the Roman Empire was in a defensive crouch, trying to defend what the Roman Republic had built. The Republic had a culture that very much treated war as a glorious thing, and mobilized the public for total war, over and over again. The Roman Empire was very different, fighting became professionalized, and it became defensive.

> The Republic had a culture that very much treated war as a glorious thing, and mobilized the public for total war, over and over again.

I think there are two big differences.

Early on the legions were on “Team Rome”. Scipio Africanus and Asiaticus conquered large regions but never turned their armies against Rome. Sulla turned his armies against Rome. As did Julius. Legions were seen as more for the glory of a general than for the glory of Rome.

Second, conquering new territories was a way to increase a person’s prestige relative to their peers. So there was a kind of friendly competition with various consuls trying to outdo each other.

The Empire changed everything. The Emperor already had prestige relative to his peers. Trying to conquer new territories was a high risk activity for not that much upside (you were already emperor). For example, Augustus knew that Crassus (died at Carrhae) and Mark Antony(defeated in Parthia) had huge setbacks that undermined their position. Even Augustus suffered the disaster at the Tueteborg, but through a lot of PR effort was able to pawn it off on Varrus who conveniently was not a part of the immediate Imperial family.

The other danger was that if there was a victory, it might be enough to propel the commanding general to rivalry (see the later example of Vespasian and the Jewish rebellion). Augustus was an brilliant politician, but not that great of a commander, and had to rely on others (see Agrippa) for actual battlefield command.

Thus given these risks Augustus was not very aggressive about expansion (though he did conquer northwest Spain, and his armies made some expeditions in Germania).

Given that he was the first Emperor and ruled so long, he kind of set the precedent.

EDIT:

It is interesting that instead of launching a punitive expedition against Parthia to retrieve the captured Roman standards from Carrhae, he recovered them through diplomatic means.

Cicero sic in omnibus et Brutus aderat.

Please be careful about describing events and people 2000+ years ago, without attribution or sources.

> The only major, lasting conquest made by the Roman Empire was the conquest of Britain

If you consider Augustus to be the beginning of the Empire, then there were many lasting conquests under the Empire (parts of Hispania, Pannonia, Africa, etc). But even if you don't, the Empire conquered and held Dacia for over 150 years and held many parts of Armenia for long periods of time.

> mobilized the public for total war, over and over again

I'm not sure I would consider anything later than the Punic Wars to be a state of total war. At no point was Rome or Italy actually threatened in the Mithridatic Wars, Caesar's conquest of Gaul, etc. Slaves were not mobilized and property not confiscated for the state. The only times total war actually happened in the late Republic-early Empire - the period of Rome's greatest territorial gains - was during existential invading threats like the Cimbri or the Pannonian revolt. None of these were a result of Rome losing a battle in a war of aggression.

One of the reasons Christianity is considered a reason for why the Empire fell is absolutely the culture of war and nationalism that pagan Rome had though.

"One of the reasons Christianity is considered a reason for why the Empire fell is absolutely the culture of war and nationalism that pagan Rome had though."

Really? The Eastern empire (Byzantium) was Christian through and through, and yet rather warlike and survived for 1000 more years.

Even in the declining Western empire of the fifth century, there was quite a lot of fight left, with important military leaders such as Stilicho and Majorian. The problem was often the barely checked aggression within the Christian elites themselves. Both Stilicho and Majorian were killed by their internal Roman adversaries, not by an external enemy.

Stilicho and Majorian's armies were composed of at least a plurality of Germanic troops recruited from tribes that were stopped in their migrations by Rome. The Eastern Empire (and the Empire as a whole starting around Diocletian) had to force soldiers' children to serve because they had a shortage of willing recruits. All the evidence (conscription, hereditary service, large-scale incorporation of barbarians into the legions) points to manpower shortages due to the unwillingness of native Romans to serve. Republican Rome put barbarians into auxiliary units, not the legions, because they had no need for more men in the legions.

Even the Battle of Adrianople in 378 and Germanic incursions into Italy in the early 5th century did not force Rome into total mobilization of the population like when Hannibal invaded Italy. That points to a general unwillingness to defend the Roman state in the general population. Consider that Rome was able to repeatedly raise new, massive armies when Hannibal inflicted defeats, but the Eastern empire was unable to raise even a token force to combat the Goths after Adrianople.

There may have been elites with fight left in them, but the average citizen did not share the attitude of those of Republican Rome.

While they did fail when it comes to conquering, it should still not be understated how impressive the romans where in so many other areas. Their road network and how they built it is nothing but fascinating and it's always amazing seeing the roads in real life.

https://you.com/search?q=roman+roads https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/u5wlwh/mapped_roma...

Not to forget many other areas like architecture or arts. https://you.com/search?q=roman+architecture

The Romans were also up against some adversaries who fought desperately to not be Roman. Somewhat off topic, but I’ll bring it up anyway, it must have been better to have lived in a Gallic or Germanic or Iberian tribe than to have lived as a Roman ~citizen~ person if they were willing to die than submit. I’m sure honor had something to do with it, but the general trend seen in the archaeological record in the Middle East and North America is that people got shorter and had more teeth problems as they settle down into civilization than when they were hunter/gatherers or lived in settled communities for no more than a few years before hitting the proverbial road again. I’m sure the same thing applies in Europe during the Roman age.

> Somewhat off topic, but I’ll bring it up anyway, it must have been better to have lived in a Gallic or Germanic or Iberian tribe than to have lived as a Roman citizen if they were willing to die than submit.

Peoples conquered by Rome did not become Roman citizens with the rights and privileges associated with that, generally.

In the graded levels of rights in Roman law, depending on whether they were just conquered or had treaty status, they were two or three steps below citizens of Rome.

Good call. I mean "citizen" in the general sense like "person who lives under Rome" but wasn't thinking that "citizen" had a very specific meaning in the Roman context. I edited my answer

The reason these tribes usually resist isn't because the Roman lifestyle is bad, it's because the Romans ran the biggest slaving empire in the world. Those slaves that does everything in Rome, they get them from waging war. So strictly-speaking, there is a change that they won't even get to be a "person" if they submit to Rome, they would become a slave. So would their wives and children.

If anything, a lot of people want to be Roman citizens after they have tried it. There is a whole war in Italy called the "Social War" over extending formal, normal citizenship to Roman allies.

Where Gallic, Germanic, and Iberian tribes actually hunter/gatherers? By that time I thought Europe and the Mediterranean were dominated by farming cultures.

The take-home impression I got from reading through those two Cesar wars is that the legions were almost as dependent on local grain available to steal (ready to take in granary, or just ready to harvest, doesn't really matter) as trains are dependent on rails. I assume that except for bumping into an adequate rival in the east, they just gobbled up the entire "wheatosphere", quickly running out of steam (and, with a few notable exceptions, out of motivation) whatever they ran into hunter/gatherer economies.

But if there’s lots of grain to steal, doesn’t that indicate they’re not in hunter/gatherer territory?

Central and Western Europe have been farmed for thousands of years by that point. Farming in Southern France/Iberia was already well established around 7000 years BP (before present). By the time of Romans, the hunter-gatherer's lifestyle was wholly displaced from the area, with only minuscule fraction of resident population engaging in it, at best.

See e.g. First Farmers of Europe, https://www.amazon.com/First-Farmers-Europe-Evolutionary-Per...

After all the grain has been stolen, you are in for a rough year where hunter/gathering might reappear + cannibalism. Imagine it less as a "civilization appears" moment, and more a "metal locusts from outer space eat previous civilization and leaf behind large slave farms after years of famine.

That's what I meant: I take it as a given that if they were successfully invaded, they must have left the hunter/gatherer state behind, likely by a considerable margin.

Sorry, misread your comment

They were farming some crops but wouldn't have been as dependent on them as Romans would have been and would have had a lot more variety including meat in their diets

Caesar in his Bellum Gallicum -- the gauls had cities (that Caesar's army had to build siege engines to take) and kings. The regions had millions of people living there. In one tribe alone (Atuatici), Caesar, to punish them sold 53,000 people from a single tribe into slavery. This isn't the entire population, just what he could round up in a single town.

I don't think small tribes of wandering hunters with small farming plots can sustain that many people. Caesar ran around and laid sieges to these things regularly during the Gaullic Wars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppidum

The good farmland was farmed, but this left a lot of hillcountry which was kind of marginal for that purpose.

You might want to read the book

The Art of Not Being Governed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed

which discusses in some detail the advantages of living in "marginally" farmable hillcountry.

Gauls had better metallurgy than Romans.

They literally Romanized the entirety of Europe to the extent we don’t even know what the Gauls spoke anymore. If that’s not conquering I don’t know what is.

> The Republic had a culture that very much treated war as a glorious thing, and mobilized the public for total war, over and over again.

This is contrary to the modern world where democratic countries are much less willing to go to war

It certainly feels like the US has been in more wars in the last 100 years than any 100 years of Roman history.

It's actually surprisingly close. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_wars_and_battles, there were 21 Roman wars in the 2nd Century BC. US count (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...) for the 20th century AD is 31, but you also have to factor in the fact that the whole world is much more connected, and that the Roman war-and-intervention count was almost certainly limited by communication and transportation abilities of the time. In the context of the ancient world, 21 wars by one state in one century seems like an enormous number. The Achaemenid Persian empire, which existed a few centuries prior and was very expansionist for its time, averaged perhaps 6-8 wars per century, depending on how you quantify wars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Iran).

And also rely on a lot less infantry so casualties are lower. Even with as brutal as Russia-Ukraine is, the total number of military men killed is comparable to a single decent-sized WWII battle

I don't think one can reasonably compare modern democracies with universal suffrage, with the Roman Republic which had a much more limited voting population. Also the Roman Republic was, for much of its history, at war with his neighbors, so it had the civil structures and incentives (at all levels of the society) that went with near-constant war, so choosing to continue to go to war was an easy decision.

My experience has been to the contrary.

War, battlefields and military service are three very different things. Up until the Korean war, soldiers were much more likely to die from disease than combat. Living in unsanitary war camps was more likely to kill you than the enemy. Even peacetime military service would have, in Roman times, involved marching all over the place working on fortifications and roads. Roman soldiers got sick in camp and were injured in what we would today call industrial accidents. Even simple travel, especially if by ship, was often lethal. So when we read of a parent not wanting to send their son to the army, do not think that it is a fear of the battlefield. That was a secondary concern to all manner of non-combat dangers.

Great point. The picture you paint seems generally like the ancient world. In Rome, malaria, unsanitary apartment buildings burning down, highway men if you travel by road, pirates if by sea, everyone was sick (I vaguely recall Cicero mentioning another senator suffering from diarrhea soiling himself in public) and the bread you ate wore down your teeth. Do you happen to know if the Romans thought that these things were especially worse on campaign (wouldn't doubt it at all)?

A soldier on the move would probably have been healthier than a slave in the heart of a Roman city. But deaths associated with day-to-day life are very different than deaths far away on campaign. Remember that it would be many months, possibly years, before a family knew whether their son had survived his military service. And a good number of sons that did survive never actually came home, instead settling in some far away place or were stuck without money enough to make the return trip.

The glory of battle is always a big lie told by old men to sucker the young.

When there’s weighty debates among Senators about sending men to kill and be killed, watch who the strident patriots are who are out for blood. In general they are fat pasty types who’ve never fought anything more dangerous than a bean burrito. It’s one thing we have in common with the Romans.

> counters the notion that conquest was this glorious...

Not really, especially in the face of so much evidence that the Romans generally thought this way. It does show, however, that not everybody thought glory was worth it. That's hardly surprising, given that societies are always diverse populations. But segments of society disagreeing with the culture at large does not disprove that the culture had certain proclivities.

People didn't want to go to war like anyone else I suspect.

Although it could be a good choice for some Romans. My understanding was the legions were one of the few paths to "move up" the social order. The rewards / rights of a solider could be pretty big if you retired and odds were pretty good you would retire. As opposed to being poor and remaining poor ... maybe an appealing choice.

It's also probably why that incorrect image exists: projecting such an image would have been absolutely vital for morale, and those stories influence the stories we tell today. In many ways, it's still vital for morale today, but it would have mattered a lot more when morale was as decisive as it was then.

Interesting read! Funnily, this reminds me of World of Warcraft 40 vs 40 horde vs alliance battles in Alterac Valley (in vanilla). Can a game battle be taken as a realistic simulation of real battle? Anyway, it matches this description of grouping.

Depending on the current meta, both sides would generally urge each other to 'charge' immediately to the enemy base and win. This was called rushing the base. However, sometimes the opposing side would mount a defense. In that case, a battle line would naturally form. Both sides would face off at 40 yards, which was roughly the maximum spellcasting range. They would pick at each other with long range spells, cautiously, no one wanting to do a suicide charge.

Then smaller teams on each side (cohorts?) would urge each other to charge in simultaneously. A grouped warrior or mage +healer, if they charged in together, could decimate (yes) the enemy. When that happened, the enemy would attempt to back up. Sometimes they couldn't back up fast enough; they had overcommitted. Then they got 'wiped'. Other times, they retreated and the battle line was re-established closer to their base.

> The losers could suffer appalling casualties in the battle itself or in the ensuing pursuit, but the victors rarely suffered more than 5 per cent fatalities even in drawn-out engagements.

One of Rome’s biggest advantages was that their training and discipline were such that even when they lost, they would often still extract a high price from the opponent (see Pyrrhus).

This could be a real problem during civil wars and the opposing Roman legions would devastate each other.

Well, except for Cannae and other Hannibalic battles.

Or the ambush in the Teutoburg Forest where the Romans lost 16k+ troops vs only minor losses for the Germanic tribes.

The exceptions prove the rule, though. Cannae, Teutoburg, etc. were permanently etched in the Roman mind, and triggered immediate, major military campaigns in response. If these events had not been so utterly unthinkable at the time, the blowback simply wouldn't have materialized.

Do you have a source for the 'only minor losses for the Germanic tribes'? Afaik we know very little about the Germanic side at all. Most of what we know is in fact due to Roman historians who mostly wrote about the events decades and centuries after they happened.

I don't have 'proper' sources, this is just what it says on wikipedia. The article does motivate why they say Germanic losses were only minor though, for example by comparing relative prevalence of Germanic and Roman archeological remains on the site.

Interesting, the German wikipedia article (that is considerably longer) doesn't mention anything of the sort, only that we don't know. There's even a lengthy discussion (and a separate article [0]) about how we don't even know the location of the battle, so any statements about the battle based on archeological evidence should be taken with a huge grain of salt (there are some candidates, and there's even a giant statue at a supposed location, but that has more to do with nationalism than archeology). Sounds like it might be worth adding a [citation needed] to the English version.

[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theorien_und_Spekulationen_zum...

Yeah and there was also Carrhae.

But those cases either involved a brilliant general (Hannibal was probably top 10 of all time generals) or else ambushes in unfamiliar territory far from their home base.

I think the original point still stands.

From Livy's History of Rome, when Scipio Africanus and Hannibal met at a party once:

> Africanus asked who, in Hannibal's opinion, was the greatest general of all time. Hannibal replied: 'Alexander, King of the Macedonians, because with a small force he routed armies of countless numbers, and because he traversed the remotest lands. Merely to visit such lands transcended human expectation.'

> Asked whom he would place second, Hannibal said: 'Pyrrhus. He was the first to teach the art of laying out a camp. Besides that, no one has ever shown nicer judgement in choosing his ground, or in disposing his forces. He also had the art of winning men to his side; so that the Italian peoples preferred the overlordship of a foreign king to that of the Roman people, who for so long had been the chief power in that country.'

> When Africanus followed up by asking whom he ranked third, Hannibal unhesitatingly chose himself. Scipio burst out laughing at this, and said: 'What would you have said if you had defeated me?' 'In that case', replied Hannibal, 'I should certainly put myself before Alexander and before Pyrrhus - in fact, before all other generals!'

> This reply, with its elaborate Punic subtlety, and this unexpected kind of flattery...affected Scipio deeply, because Hannibal had set him (Scipio) apart from the general run of commanders, as one whose worth was beyond calculation.

Philip Sabin, quoted in TFA, is a professor at King's College London with a long list of publications related to warfare [1]. He is also known as a war game designer where he puts his ideas in rule sets designed to simulate the battles he has studied. See his list of game credits in [2].

[1]. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/professor-philip-sabin

[2]. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/6341/philip-sabi...

While pre-modern battlefields were certainly horrific, I wonder which is more terrifying:

1) Hand-to-hand combat where your fate is decided within a few seconds but you have some control over the situation.

2) Sitting in cover while artillery shells rain down randomly around you.

I have read opinion (and don't have source at hand) that as horrific as battlefields were it suited human nature well. The clashes lasted minutes (and most battles were series of clashes rather then day long non-stop combat) and even during multi day battles (like Pharsalus or Philippi) there were night breaks etc.

Being in constant danger for days (like WW1 trench warfare) is more traumatizing for a human.

The amount of control over the situation in hand-to-hand combat is extremely limited, especially for the poorly trained fighters making up much of pre-modern armies.

You can try to back out, which was in fact extremely common, especially among the poorly trained. Soldiers in trenches couldn't even let their head protrude above the edge (to not get shot by snipers), and had to live in horrendous conditions for months.

Yes, desertion was always a problem, but in pre-modern battles there would usually be a lot more of your people behind you, making it hard to get away. Stuck between a spear and a hard shield.

http;//www.acoup.blog had some excellent posts about this recently.

Stress is more about the feeling of control rather than actual control. And you absolutely feel more in control in close combat than when you're targeted by artillery.

For a relatable example, compare driving a car to riding in a rollercoaster. Driving is more dangerous and you're not really in control of other drivers who can hit you, but you feel in control because you hold the wheel.

Stress is a long-term thing. In close combat, you're not stressed, but terrified. The way you'd be in a car if you suddenly find yourself on the wrong side of the highway divide.

Not sure that's a great example - roller coasters aren't thrilling because you're not in control but because you're experience crazy g-forces,... sitting on a train is pretty relaxing usually.

The article claims that the former is, soldiers fled trenches where they'd have been getting shelled the moment the enemy managed to get close enough with hand to hand weapons.

If I remember correctly the book "on killing" discusses this very question--the short answer is that hand-to-hand combat is far more terrifying because it has an innate, animalistic psychological component. To see the face of someone who wants to kill you is far more traumatic than a metal tube from the sky. That tube does not hate you. That tube won't show up in your dreams.

Those are some bold claims when vets terrified of fireworks exist.

The latter is way more terrifying because lack of agency multiplies fear.

Not to mention that modern war is way, way, way more deadly.

Yes. In pre-modern times, far more soldiers died to disease than to combat.

How do you reckon melee combat is finished so quickly?

Humans with penetrating wounds to the torso don't fight much longer. Such wounds can be created with sharpened sticks (as well as a variety of slightly more advanced weapons), while preventing such wounds requires armor of complicated manufacture. Humans with concussive damage to the head tend to stop defending themselves, which also means they don't fight much longer. Such wounds can be created by anything dense, such as rocks or big sticks (as well as a variety of slightly more advanced weapons), while preventing such wounds requires very modern high-quality helmets. Once steel and higher-quality swords and polearms came along, a variety of new types of wounds became more likely, many of which also quickly led to cessation of fighting on their victims' part.

Even unarmed fights are usually shorter than portrayed in popular fiction. If ancient battles lasted days, that's because they were organized to move combatants around and avoid actual combat until advantage could be taken. Melee between two groups of armed humans could be over in less than a minute. Note that the most common way for melee to cease would be for the losing side to retreat (perhaps without those of their number who had already succumbed), which is viable when ranged weapons aren't used.

Watch any UFC match, then extrapolate that to the death.

UFC would be much slower than conflict between groups of men with weapons. In a 1-on-1 situation, grappling and extended engagement become viable techniques. Anyone who tried to wrestle in the middle of a melee would have a very short lifespan.

Go test it out. Come back and report your findings.

Not only pre-modern. I got to know quite a couple of WWII veterans. PTSD was invented for them and coping mechanism #1 was alcohol.

During the 80th you could witness a lot of vets, who were blind, men who had lost limbs - quite common here. Not to mention rape for the women.

These folks shaped the daily live.

Not sure about what's being said here but given what other comments are claiming

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-traumatic_stress_disorder...

> Early in 1978, the diagnosis term "post-traumatic stress disorder" was first recommended in a working group finding presented to the Committee of Reactive Disorder

> The addition of the term to the DSM-III was greatly influenced by the experiences and conditions of U.S. military veterans of the Vietnam War.

Ham-fisted a film as it was, First Blood w/ Sylvester Stallone really launched the term into the American consciousness and completely changed the perception and sympathy towards Vietnam veterans. The DVD commentary is arguably more interesting than the movie.

> PTSD was invented for them

You think nobody suffered PTSD before WW2? Look up the battle shock that people suffered in WW1.

They're referring to the semantic term. Also 'shell shock' is a more common term for WW1's version.

George Carlin had a classic bit on the topic of evolving names for PTSD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

PTSD is also less common in soldiers than in other jobs. Many types of doctors (oncology, some branches of pediatrics) are pretty much expected to experience symptoms after a given number of years. It is also very very common amongst train engineers. And prison guards.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

I propose Betteridge's law of internet comments:

Any question at the start of a reply can be answered with, "No, that's obviously not what they said, let's try to keep the drama to a minimum please."

The efficiency of well-trained armies such as the imperial legions at their peak just defies belief. At the battle of Watling Street in Britain, two Roman legions (~10,000 soldiers, including auxiliaries) faced off against an estimated 230,000 tribal warriors. They came out victorious, with minuscule losses (~400) compared to an estimated 80,000 Britons (not all warriors) who left their lives in the battle. The odds were so heavily stacked against the Romans prior to the battle that the commander of the Legio II Augusta had refused an order to join the outnumbered troops (and committed suicide after hearing the outcome).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_of_Boudica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_II_Augusta

On the other hand Cannae...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae

Well, two well-trained armies facing each other is a wholly different story, as the example shows.

Another interesting exploration of maniples is available at https://yewtu.be/watch?v=croWDsDhgPo, at the end of which he references a excellent battle scene from the HBO's Rome (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=J7MYlRzLqD0).

The pike scene from Alatriste (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=4y6agtVxWi8&t=125) also gives a good idea of how terrifying close-quarters battle must've been (disclaimer: I'm not a historian so I can't vouch for the historical accuracy). Imagine being the little guy with the dagger who has to duck under all that.

Methinks a key difference in "terror level" is that in close combat, you see the enemy and their deadly possibly bloodied weapons up close. Much more psychologically present. Ranged weapons give a different overall stress of "I could suddenly die without warning", but you're not facing your death as clearly.

'Why was cold steel a “unique terror” for troops in combat?' The most terrifying part of Saving Private Ryan is private Mellish's death after hand to hand combat with a knife.

I haven't seen that movie in a while, but the gist of that scene is burned into my brain. The grossest death of the movie, IMO, and it isn't even that gory.

It would be interesting to try and model this scenario in a videogame (the Total War series has a morale system of course, but it doesn't seem to quite match this description -- units with good "leadership" bonuses can sustain fighting basically from full strength to death), or a pen-and-paper RPG (the idea that the neutral state of armies is a sort of stand-off situation could be beneficial for a couple reasons -- mechanically simpler with less going on, the players can perform heroic feats in the stand-off area, and the psychological differences between the various fantasy races could play with the scenario interestingly).

A book [1] that's nearly 30 years old now by one of the best military historians of his age, John Keegan: The Face of Battle. It looks at what it was actually like to be there, in the midst of it, at three famous battles. I need to read it again.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Face-Battle-Study-Agincourt-Waterloo/...?

Just a small contribution to the discussion: my understanding is that alcohol also had a lot to do with loosening soldiers up enough that they'd be willing to actually charge the enemy. They don't call it "liquid courage" for nothing.

If you were in a battlefield that was not terrifying, you were not in a battlefield.

With apologies to those for whom this is just dreamstuff...

A long time ago I was trying various therapists to get help with some personal problems, and one of them did something that they called "germ-line regression". This was like a hypnotic past life regression, but rather than going back through previous incarnations, it was going back through the genetic line of my ancestors.

We went back to a man who lived in Europe at the time when the Romans were making inroads up there. His name was something like "Otygh" and he was a huge "Conan the Barbarian"-looking dude, biggest and toughest guy in his village. He was pretty much the top of the local food chain and social hierarchy, no one above him but the gods themselves.

And then the Romans show up...

They're short (not too short, there were standards, but shorter than the barbarians), smelly (garlic eaters, eh?), weak and (seemingly) stupid, they're like beast-men, orcs. They should be easy to defeat, every other living thing has been, but damned if they don't keep winning fights! They always win!? WTF!? How is this possible? I can't exaggerate the rage and frustration Otygh felt at losing to these Romans. It was totally incomprehensible.

For what it's worth, which may not be much, Otygh loved battle. Far from terrifying, it was exhilarating, right up until he started losing and the Romans torched his village and killed or enslaved everybody he knew and loved. Don't shed any tears for him, he was a murderous dickhead who did the very same thing to other villages.

If that helped you, or at least gave you some enjoyment in a fun story to tell, good for you. But you should know that the therapist that did this was an absolute quack.

Please, don't seek help from quacks.

> If that helped you, or at least gave you some enjoyment in a fun story to tell, good for you.

It did help, not enough to keep going to that therapist but it helped. (I left out the cathartic part of the story/dream.)

> But you should know that the therapist that did this was an absolute quack.

What would happen if I didn't know that?

The Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuria in WWII used to use living prisoners for their bayonet training.

I suspect that we have a coping mechanism wired in where a certain part of our mind tries to refute bad conscience over something we have done that we consider really bad by repeating the deedwhile internally shouting down the horrified parts "see? it's not that bad, life goes on". Repeating the deed, or exceeding. I'd imagine that conditioning (I refuse to call it training) to have been exceptionally effective.

It is estimated that the number of intraspecies killings in humans is about six times higher than the average of all mammals.

The 20th century compared to the Middle Ages, was a peaceful affair. It's estimated that in the good olden times about 12 percent of recorded deaths were inflicted by killing, in the century of two Great Wars, the Holocaust and some minor naughties like the Holodomor, Cambodia, Rwanda etc. just about 1.3 percent.

It seems humans don't have to be taught to suppress a "natural" kill inhibition, but to suppress a natural tendency to kill. You know, I guess there is a reason, God Allmighty had to forbid it explicitly in almost all of his writings from time immemorial. It's always itching the brains of his loverly creatures so much that somehow they can't let it go.

By the way, those Japanese believed wholeheartedly they did it for a greater good and it would strengthen them to inflict severe fear, pain and death on their enemies. They didn't needed to be desensitized.

When pre-modern battlefields are brought up, I often think of the Battle of the Bastards scene from Game of Thrones. One of the few battle scenes that gives me the cold sweats. Watching the absolutely suffocating clash of flesh and metal is horrific.

Some real terror was the early days of WW1. We had long standing generals who just did not know how to adjust to the (at the time) modern battlefield. So they would just lead mass charges into fortified positions with artillery and machine guns. It was the definition of a meat grinder.

I would suggest checking out Dan Carlins Hardcore History podcast for more about it! The series he did on WW1 was called "Blueprint for Armageddon" Its really good and Dan does a great job of pulling you into the narrative.

> Some real terror was the early days of WW1

> So they would just lead mass charges into fortified positions with artillery and machine guns

That wasn't just in the early days, lots of countries, armies and generals failed to adapt. Cadorna from Italy, von Hotzendorf from Austria-Hungary, most Ottoman and Russian generals sent their men to die the same way at the end as at the beginning. Germany, France, UK learned (sometimes) from their mistakes, but not everyone did. For instance when the US joined, the US commander, Pershing, disregarded all allied military experience and advice and the US army had to learn everything the hard way because they were led by someone stuck in another type of conflict (punitive expedition against an inferior enemy).

But the begining of WWI was especially terrible due to the the emphasis on attack, colourful uniforms, and the disregard for defense. Machine guns mowing troops marching with music... There were mass charges in the first weeks and in the last weeks, but they were vastly different (creeping barrage to protect infantry and soften up the enemy, helmets to protect heads, coordination, etc.)

> So they would just lead mass charges into fortified positions with artillery and machine guns. It was the definition of a meat grinder.

I read something a while back that, while I'm not sure how accurate it is, got sort of seared into my brain. In medieval times, permanent fortified positions (castles and such) were of the utmost importance, and sieges were a major part of war. With the arrival of gunpowder, cannons could wreck walls and other fortifications, and warfare in the open field largely replaced siege warfare.

The single biggest military failure of WW1 (by both sides) was that the then-modern military doctrine told them to treat trench warfare as slow-moving open warfare, where it should've instead been fought as a slightly mobile form of siege warfare.

"Fighting siege warfare" means that both sides can expect to "win" by doing nothing and sitting in their defenses. It's unclear if this really applies to WW1 Western Front.

Perhaps Germany was in a position were it was happy to sit in their trenches and just endure, but France was not. France had to be able to compel Germany to come to terms and restore French territory (which we should also remember contained a good chunk of French industry). While the blockade of Germany was clearly effective, it's not clear to this day (and certainly would not have been clear to the western allies at the time) if the blockade alone could have compelled Germany to terms.

And certainly the western allies DID attempt to strategically outflank Germany. It just... didn't really work.

WW1 generals understood sieges. They generally understood what fortifications could and could not do. There's a reason the Belgiums kept building forts. There's a reason why Germany built ever bigger artillery. WW1 generals got to see the Russo-Japanese war 10 years ago. They got to see a 6 month siege of Port Arthur. They got to see the ridiculous causalities that modern weapons could inflict. But they also saw something - the attack WORKED. The costs were awful, but the Japanese achieved their goals.

> "Fighting siege warfare" means that both sides can expect to "win" by doing nothing and sitting in their defenses. It's unclear if this really applies to WW1 Western Front.

The problem with a siege isn't that you win by doing nothing, it's that the attacker always loses, hard, by trying a head-on assault. The really novel aspect of trench warfare is that you had both sides in a fortified highly-defensible position at the same time.

Yes, and of course after WWI the French in particular largely took the lesson that forts work; they just need to be bigger, better, and more numerous.

I think this is still true for the case of a conventional war. This can be checked in Ukraine right now. As far as I know, most of the losses of Russian troops at the beginning of the conflict are associated with hidden groups of Ukrainian soldiers who did not show up while the Russian tanks were making the initial march. And then, when supply caravans were heading to the front line, these hidden groups instantly attacked them from the side, and then hid again in the woods by the roads. Then the Russians changed tactics - no rush, but intense shelling of the front line with all kinds of artillery for several days, then a small advance, then a sweep, and then the cycle repeats.

The good news would have been that without encirclement, siege warfare would have been delightfully similar to peacetime. The bad news that this war would still be going on. Which would be good news again, because of all those other wars that could not have happened in the meantime.

That battle was a terrible representation of medieval warfare. And it was still one of the better representations of the entire show.

Is there a similar show without the fantasy/supernatural elements that you might recommend, if you see what I mean?

I don't need it to be historically accurate (if anything I'd prefer it didn't even pretend to be about 'Romans' or whatever, like GoT doesn't, since then there's an historical truth for it to (likely) miss) but the more GoT went on the more dragony, visiony, giants-y, etc. it seemed to get, and while I enjoyed it I do find it harder to engage (or perhaps rather easier to disengage, take a while to get into, etc.) with that sort of stuff.

HBO's Rome is pretty good, but only two seasons. Its from the mid 00s.

'Vikings' is great. It has many battles and focuses a lot on strategy and tactics.

It has a touch of the supernatural since it's based on the Icelandic sagas, but it's a fairly minor element.

It really was terrible, but the aspect of the fighters getting pushed ever closer together, to the point where it's hard to watch it's so terrifying, really did happen. The battle of Cannae was apparently like that, where soldiers were so terrified they started digging holes to crawl into.

The article mentions this as possibly one of the things that make a flanking attack so terrifying -- it would squish the ranks together in a way that a frontal attack didn't.

The pile of bodies in that battle is completely unrealistic. About the only thing that was realistic was the shield wall. But then the writers left a huge plot hole because the good guys had a giant that could have just broken the lines.

Well, modern and post-modern are pretty terrifying too.

>>> combat as a dynamic balance of mutual dread

enough said ...

I really like this introduction of the terror aspect. It really is key. Another place I recognize this concept being utilized is by Jordan Peterson. One of the foundational pillars to his analysis of human psychology is that we are surrounded by malevolence and he uses that in his analysis to better understand human behavior. It certainly makes for compelling arguments because that foundation is so true. And, it seems to be missing from his critics.

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