[chmod600]

I have a theory that offensive weaponry advancements produce peace, while defensive advancements produce war. If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe. But if there are nukes and ICBMs, just stick with the status quo.

Any validity to this theory?

[jeffreyrogers]

I think it is the other way around. Cavalry could beat pretty much any group of non-cavalry unless they had a massive numerical advantage, so castles/walled settlements were the way to defend against that, but they only arose by necessity.

Carol Quigley's theory is that technology changes the balance of power, sometimes favoring centralized power other times favoring decentralized power. Cavalry/knights/castles favored centralized power because equipping knights with armor and feeding their horses required a lot of peasants. The invention of cheap firearms led to the masses having more power (and around this time democracy began to spread). Then tanks, ICBMs, aircraft, submarines, etc. centralized power again, where we remain today, although that may be changing with cheapish drones and semi-successful insurgency tactics.

[Balero]

Cavalry could absolutely not beat 'any group of non-cavalry'. Cavalry was a very specilised, powerful and effective tool. But the real world wasn't what the English guy said in Braveheart ("We have the heavy cavalry, we win"). Many knights fought on foot as well.

Cavalry could not break many infantry formations. You were safe in a square.

Cavalry was great at harassing supply lines in raids, and importantly running down fleeing infantry.

This is all purely a European perspective, steepe cavalry was very different, but many of their benefits were at a larger scale than a single battle.

Generally the whole thing is too complicated to draw some simple conclusion from. War is, and always has been complicated and messey, not a game of chess.

[jeffreyrogers]

Cavalry dominated the middle ages except in mountainous areas until artillery became prominent. Yes, cavalry could be defeated, but all things being equal it was far superior.

[mettamage]

Armchair general here, I've never been in any war. The biggest highlight of my general career was tower defence rushing unsuspecting human players in Warcraft 3 with orcs.

With that said: I think that whenever a human or organization has a stable situation with their current affairs, they can afford to take more risk. Attacking weapons don't necessarily make a situation stable, they simply give an edge when you have them. However, when you're the only one that has them and are stable enough, then you might be able to annihilate entire civilizations (e.g. the Aztecs versus a few hundred Spanish people). But when more people have them, then they can point them at you, making your own situation more unstable if you provoke those people.

[vagrantJin]

But this assumes the enemy is not knowledgable/simple, which is no longer the case.

[bluGill]

If you could build a caste (Expensive, even if you use slave labor) that also meant you had the ability to hire and train knights. In fact most castles were built because the king (who often wasn't very powerful, thus the need to make these deals) offered you rule over some area of land in exchange for raising those knights.

The Castle was built as a place to live on your land so you could keep it. If there was a peasant revolt the castle meant they couldn't do anything about you, while your army could leave anytime the peasants were busy elsewhere to harass them. Thus the castle enabled war as you said, but the castle generally came after raising the army in the first place.

[watwut]

All wanna be conquerors build and used offensive weaponry and produced war. Including Hitler. Plus practically, it is more off weaponry in general used for both offensive and defensive purposes based on strategic goals.

> If you're in a castle, it's easier to send armies around, knowing that you'll be safe.

I do not think that is how it worked historically.