Outlaws at War in the Middle Ages | Hacker News Reader

Outlaws at War in the Middle Ages

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34 pointsVigier9 comments

>For Edward I, filling his army with criminals made perfect sense.

But it works even in modern times. Wagner group used to enlist criminals who were pardoned if they chose to join Wagner. Many didn't live enough to finish their conscription period.

You could argue that Wagner group itself is a criminal organization. They are even illegal in Russia, they have no actual legal backing. Not that it matters in practice, obviously. It is step further I would say - explicitly illegal organization, hiring from jail and even involved in actual organized criminality (smuggling, murders).

You know who else freed prisoners? https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-releases-prisoners-combat-e...

Including members of the Ukrainian “Tornado battalion”, previously imprisoned by Ukraine for the rape and murder of civilians (including children) in the east: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-tornado-battalion-rogue-para...

Yes the same thing. Probably the thinking is along the lines "better for criminals to die instead of innocent people and if they die we don't have to pay for their accommodation and the society will have to worry about one predator less."

Probably they use criminals in the most risky of situations.

Maybe it's not very moral but the politicians are more worried about their calculations than about morals. Most of the times the difference between some politicians and criminals is just on which side of the bars they are.

In other cases of "what's old is new again", riot police look like ancient soldiers employing ancient battle tactics.

They often use ancient tactics, too [0]

[0] https://medium.com/@ceithernach/ancient-warfare-and-riot-tac...

French Foreign Legion was a famous example of putting people in service instead of expensive prison time.

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

In the bargain you get a brand new identity, provided by the French state.

FTA: “why implement such a potentially damaging recruitment policy? […] Second, the type of attritional, low-skilled warfare practised in the Anglo-French war, from siege to scorched earth, suited the potential military capabilities of these recruits.”

How do we know which of these is cause and which is effect? For me, it seems at least as likely that the available army influenced the strategy chosen as that the strategy was picked first, and an army recruited for it.

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