[pradn]

Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a flat battlefield, as we see in war movies. Historically, it's been really hard to get soldiers to charge to their deaths, which makes sense if you think for a second. Most armies throughout history were nonprofessionals levied by their lords or seasonal opportunists, who fought for extra income. Sometimes, the leaders would get the soldiers drunk before they went in, and they'd retreat and have to be coaxed into running in again.

Aside from all this, contrary to some sort of received chivalric ideal of loyalty and fighting-unto-death, a great number of military engagements in every part of the world were decided by bribery and deception. People don't want to risk their lives and are often tempted by monetary gain. Countless forts have fallen to people opening the doors from within. There's instances of Sufi leaders being admitted into forts only to open the gates. Hyderabad was conquered by Aurangazeb in great part due to bribery, too.

The calculus changes dramatically if the attacker has a history of lenient behavior toward those who surrender, versus massacre for those who do not. The Mughals regularly incorporated surrendering lords into their feudal system, with honors, income, and opportunities for social advancement. The Mongols razed the Khwarezmia because of their disastrous refusal of their envoys.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

>> Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a flat battlefield, as we see in war movies. Historically, it's been really hard to get soldiers to charge to their deaths, which makes sense if you think for a second. Most armies throughout history were nonprofessionals levied by their lords or seasonal opportunists, who fought for extra income. Sometimes, the leaders would get the soldiers drunk before they went in, and they'd retreat and have to be coaxed into running in again.

In some historical periods that was true. In others, not so much. The Zulu at Isandlwana were seasonal warrior-farmers, but they sure charged the British lines with their goat's hide shields and short, thrusting spears, and massacred the British despite the latters' technological superiority. Alexander's army comprised regular professional soldiers and they sure marched in a phalanx (the phalanx didn't quite charge as it was too slow moving to do so) and Alexander himself of course charged at the head of his Hetairoi. The armies of medieval feudal lords were in their majority levies, as you say, but the Crusaders, in the same time period, were for the most part elite knights who fought with unending courage (and commited incredible atrocities) against enemies many times their numbers. And so it goes.

As to bribery, sure, many battles were fought with money or politics rather than swords. Yet again others were not. Think of WWI for example, or WWII. No chivalric ideals there, but the battles were bloody and the corpses piled on high.

Btw, thanks for reminding me to read about the Khwarazmians.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> the battles were bloody and the corpses piled on high.

Quite literally at times. Guadalcanal WWII:

> Enemy bodies were (literally) piling up so rapidly that he — or other Marines, depending on the story — had to vacate their defensive positions to knock over the growing wall of flesh so they could reestablish clear fields of fire.

[XorNot]

Conversely the phalanx was practically a superweapon of hand to hand combat against the enemies of the time. As a soldier in Alexander's army's you were in relatively little danger provided the phalanx held - this is also true of the Roman legions.

Battles for a soldier were a few minutes of danger, followed by being pulled to the back of the line to rest and recover in relative safety: which makes sense of course. Anyone who's ever tried boxing knows how exhausting it becomes very quickly.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> Anyone who's ever tried boxing knows how exhausting it becomes very quickly.

True, most people have about 30 seconds of actual fight in them, if that. You really don’t want to go to the ground with someone who does it often, you will not win.

[France_is_bacon]

This is true. As someone who has done a lot of sparring, I can go for a long time, but it is only because I have learned how to be perfectly relaxed. Most people tense up their whole body and stay that way. Also breathing is incredibly important. But mostly, it is keeping your body relaxed, which also relaxes the breathing. But that's extremely difficult to do, when one hasn't done it thousands of times.

[GarvielLoken]

"anybody" = an office worker that has spent his life behind a desk. We are talking about farmers and craftsmen that has marched on foot for years with their gear. And now days we know that even our fastest runners train 80% of theri weekely training in a low steady state traingins, the kind of conditioning that increases the heart size, lowers the resting pulse and improves your ability to work after rest.

[IkmoIkmo]

And yet professional boxers regularly gas after 5 rounds of 3 minutes... Now add equipment, particularly armour.

Or look up a Judo match, particularly during tournaments. You can see these guys are often wrecked after a particularly long match, and typically matches last only a few minutes. Just see Judo matches in the last Olympics, guys who typically have 3 to 5 training sessions a day, 7 days a week, for 2 decades.

[morpheos137]

The Zulu warriors were supposed to be celibate. So they had plenty of pent up rage.

EDIT:

For the downvoters see

http://smu-facweb.smu.ca/~wmills/course316/9Zulu_Shaka.html

>units of unmarried females were assigned to each impi to prepare food and perform other domestic duties. However, Shaka insisted on abstinence from sexual activities among his warriors (like some football and soccer coaches today). Any woman who became pregnant, along with her lover, would be immediately put to death. Nor did Shaka allow his warriors to marry until he gave permission, which he did infrequently and only when the regiment was being retired. Then, he would order the entire regiment to marry and would specify the unit among the women that they were to marry (kind of like Rev. Moon).

[YeGoblynQueenne]

You're right about Shaka imposing celibacy, but my understanding is that it was only Shaka that did this and subsequent ruleres let their men free to breed as they saw fit. At Isandlwana Shaka was long gone and there was no celibacy rule, as far as I know - but I may be wrong of course.

[AussieWog93]

They also got high as a kite before they fought.

[pradn]

You are correct that these are all historically contingent.

[nradov]

The Napoleonic wars were full of massive charges, and long violent sieges against fortresses. Armies figured out how to instill enough discipline into soldiers to march straight into enemy fire. Casualties in the front ranks of the French army at Waterloo were horrific, yet they still kept attacking all day long.

"A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

[simonsarris]

Minor but annoying: Napoleon didn't say that and didn't mean it like that. When introducing the Légion d’Honneur (open to civilians too), the first introduction of an honor since the French Revolution, some on the left complained that this reintroduction violated the revolutionary concept of social equality. In 1802 when discussing the creation of it, Théophile Berlier sneered at the concept as merely baubles, and Napoleon replied:

"You tell me that class distinctions are baubles used by monarchs, I defy you to show me a republic, ancient or modern, in which distinctions have not existed. You call these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such baubles that men are led.

I would not say this in public, but in a assembly of wise statesmen it should be said. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling: honour. We must nourish that feeling. The people clamour for distinction. See how the crowd is awed by the medals and orders worn by foreign diplomats. We must recreate these distinctions. There has been too much tearing down; we must rebuild. A government exists, yes and power, but the nation itself - what is it? Scattered grains of sand."

He went on that in order to ameliorate that sand, "We must plant a few masses of granite as anchors in the soil of France."

His phrase "it is with such baubles that men are led" (and your paraphrase) are often quoted out of context as something cynical, but Napoleon was actually commending these things as the physical manifestations of honor. If he's cynical about something, it's the liberty and equality bits.

[dwohnitmok]

That is a fascinating quote. The original if anyone else is curious appears to be from here:

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Rfl9mwoQBzkC/page/n93/mod...

The line after "We must plant a few masses of granite as anchors in the soil of France" ("Nous sommes maîtres de la faire , mais nous ne l’avons pas, et nous ne l’aurons pas, si nous ne jetons pas, sur le sol de la France, quelques masses de granit.") is perhaps an even more cynical take in light of the French Revolution that directly preceded Napoleon's rise.

> Croyez-vous qu’il faille compter sur le peuple? Il crie indifféremment Vive le roi, vive la ligue! Il faut donc lui donner une direction, et avoir pour cela des instruments.

[pradn]

Exactly, this is my point. Napoleon's professional standing armies are a relatively recent (~200 years) and exceptional compared to the historical norm. Even Napoleon was able to take lots of territory by just negotiating with actors who knew they had no chance. People don't want to just go die; this requires a large amount of training. Not wanting to kill someone is something like a universal.

[DenisM]

Rome had professional standing armies more than 2000 years ago.

[pradn]

You are absolutely right, my mistake. None-the-less, professional standing armies didn't exist in most locales for most of history.

[ethbr0]

Most locales for most of history couldn't afford standing armies.

And not even from a financial standpoint -- there simply wasn't enough excess goods or food to have them out of the workforce.

[pradn]

Yes, that's true. A war machine requires surplus value. One reason why feudalism developed in Europe was for mounted warriors to be able to supply their warhorses. Facing constant violence, only super-appropriation of peasant surplus could give local lords and warriors enough resources to hold their own. And much of the success of many of the empires of history lies in their ability to requisition surplus value and use it to hire enough military labor. Rome could muster more soldiers than Carthage, for example.

[jessaustin]

Many centuries passed during which there were no armies with the qualities that those of Rome shared with those of Napoleon.

[tasogare]

I agree about the not wanting to die but "Not wanting to kill someone is something like a universal." is clearly wrong in a lot of cultures. And ignoring this fact is precisely what lead to some recent military disasters as well as bloodshed within Europe.

[natmaka]

AFAIK this also was the approach adopted by the Mongols, as early as during the 13th century (Golden Horde khanate).

[AniseAbyss]

You get a lot of globalist shills here but the reality is that nationalism is a powerful force.

You can see that in Afghanistan: the Dutch embassy staff waved goodbye to the plebeians down on the Kabul airport when their military flight took off. Being a citizen of a country matters and it is worth fighting for.

[agumonkey]

Social pressure

Still at play in most hierarchical structures imo

[MichaelGroves]

Wellington used to say that the presence of Napoleon on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men. Partly due to Napoleon's tactical skill I'm sure, but I think this also speaks to Napoleon's unusual ability to motivate men. They didn't want to disappoint Napoleon so they were more willing to throw their own lives away. I think the defection of the Fifth Infantry Regiment at Grenoble probably corroborates this. There, they had the opportunity to shoot Napoleon dead and slaughter his rag tag forces but instead they chose to join him.

[crazy_horse]

It speaks to the power of belief in something. Napoleon represented something bigger than a person, he was French nationalism.

I think a similar story (this is in Ken Burn's doc, told by Shelby Foote) is when the Union forces at Fredericksburg took the city and then sent wave after wave of soldiers at the Confederate held hills with a wall at the base of them. I don't recall how many waves it was (10+), but it's difficult to imagine being in the sixth or seventh wave, watch man after man before you walk into a "wall of lead" and decide to do it anyway.

How many people today have that kind of conviction? We can't get people to wear masks.

[fladrif]

Oh but interestingly isn't that a kind of conviction itself? They've been fed some kind of idea of 'freedom' that they now strongly adhere to until death (I assume a lot of anti-mask are also anti-vaccine and are now the ones dying in the hospitals).

If you look at American politics over the past 5 years, trump has almost become another napoleon in how fervent the support he has, and how the idea of 'freedom' has held.

[glofish]

Excellent point, arguably NOT wearing a mask takes a lot more conviction than wearing it.

if you believe wearing a mask benefits you then there is no need for "conviction", it is just a belief and the person is trying to maximize their own benefit

[ngcc_hk]

Or others. Especially the heavy load to hosiptal system if one get sicks. There are two forces in live - self preservation and passion for others. Left and right coexist in one. That is the fundamental issue in life.

[Clubber]

>We can't get people to wear masks.

It's because we have weak, ineffective, self serving leadership, and have since probably LBJ.

People fight and die for a cause, what in the US is worth fighting and dying for for the average Joe? Constant surveillance, harassment by the state police, corrupt politicians, corrupt justice system, income inequality, shit healthcare, shit schools, shit housing, shit food, shit safety net, regressive taxes, massive debt given to the rich, bailouts for banks, foreclosures for the people, eroded civil rights, eroded constitutional rights? You have the American dream, then you have the American reality. I mean we reap what we've sewn for the last 40+ years. If we really had a serious existential military threat, where we had to reinstate the draft, I'm not sure how strong our response would be because of all this. Who wants to die for Amazon.com or Walmart or AT&T's profit? I mean the American way of life, as it stands today, how would you feel if you had to send your conscripted sons and daughters to die to protect it?

[bruceb]

US has plenty of problems, is still better than many countries. Ask all the people who move here, they generally will be a lot more optimistic about the US.

[Gollapalli]

>still better than many countries.

Who the hell wants to kill and die for "still better than many countries?" If you think your country is worth keeping, you need a positive vision for that country.

[Clubber]

>Ask all the people who move here, they generally will be a lot more optimistic about the US.

Here's the top 10 countries of origin for immigration to the US in 2018 (before COVID). We can assume people who immigrate to the US do it for a better life than the country they came from. Notice there aren't any "developed" countries in this list. Care to guess what that says about the US?

Mexico - 161,858, Cuba - 76,486, China - 65,214, India - 59,821, Dominican Republic - 57,413, Philippines - 47,238, Vietnam - 33,834, El Salvador - 28,326, Haiti - 21,360, Jamaica - 20,347

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigr...

[adventured]

> eroded civil rights

Civil rights in the US have been massively improved since the 1960s and 1970s. Even the prison population has been declining, finally, for about 12 years now. The war on drugs is ending.

You actually think eg black people or gay people are worse off in the US today than they were 30, 50, 70 years ago? It's an absurd premise. Just 30 years ago you couldn't even be publicly gay in Hollywood (left leaning Hollywood) or your career was toast. Gay people were widely culturally oppressed as recently as the 1980s and 1990s. Today Ellen is just about the biggest TV host in the country. Black people in the 1960s had something closer to no civil rights at all. Today the US has widespread protected class status for minorities, which wasn't the case as recently as the 1980s. In 1970 you could fire someone specifically for being a woman, or black, or gay, or just about anything else. You were largely free to mistreat today's protected classes to almost any degree you saw fit. Sexism in the workplace wasn't frowned upon as recently as the 1980s, there was no serious legal recourse, it was the status quo and almost universally tolerated. Try operating an office or business that way today, see what happens.

Or if you want to test things out culturally (litmus test it), go on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and go on a bunch of racist tirades. Use your real name and professional networks. See what happens to you professionally over time. You'll become an instant pariah.

Nearly across the board things are far better from a civil rights standpoint than in decades past. Both culturally and in terms of government. The primary exception remaining is minimum mandatory sentencing laws, which have been around for decades now.

> income inequality

There's absolutely nothing new about that. Go back to 1890 or 1920, income inequality was higher then than it is now. The US had a very brief period of time, lasting roughly only 20 years, where income inequality dropped lower.

> foreclosures for the people

There's absolutely nothing new about that. If you don't pay your mortgage, you get foreclosed on. That was true in 1960. It's true now. It should be true. The opposite is insanity.

> corrupt justice system

Whatever that means.

> harassment by the state police

The police were even worse 50 years ago than they are today. They were more violent, far more oppressive to minorities, and 100% got away with it. Their margin for getting away with abuse has declined considerably, despite propaganda to the contrary.

> corrupt politicians

True in most any nation that has ever existed or will ever exist.

> shit healthcare

US healthcare quality is closer to the OECD median. It's in fact not shit. It is exceptionally expensive for being at the median however. In the US it's the value proposition due to cost that is shit, not the actual quality of the healthcare.

> shit food

A bizarre, empty claim. The US is one of the most diverse nations in world history with one of the most elaborate consumer markets. You can eat whatever food you like.

> shit safety net

The US spends more of its economy on its social safety net than Canada or Australia. It has a lower homelessness rate than many of its prominent peers, precisely because its safety net is not shit (even if it's also not in the top tier).

> regressive taxes

The US has one of the most progressive tax systems in the developed world. It's far more progressive than Scandinavia by comparison. The US middle class pays exceptionally low taxes, which is one of the reasons the US middle class also has among the world's highest disposable income figures - comparable only to nations like Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway.

> massive debt given to the rich

No idea what that's supposed to mean. US households are in good financial condition compared to most of their affluent peers around the world.

> shit schools

Obviously far too comprehensive of a claim. The US has 17 of the top 20 universities in the world, give or take a position. Its top 100 universities are collectively unrivaled by the rest of the world. There is nobody close. The rest of the world has spent the entire post WW2 era trying to catch up to and mimic the US university outcome.

> shit housing

Plain false. US housing remains more affordable than housing in peer nations. Americans are able to buy larger, cheaper housing than their peers can. When it comes to having a ridiculous amount of space at a decent price, only a few developed nations compare to the US.

[Clubber]

I would agree with you with the gay and LGBTQ community, but I think you're off base on the rest of it. Also I wouldn't put Hollywood up as a good example as what's good with the US culturally.

I mean we don't lynch black people anymore, so hu-rah USA? We don't use child labor anymore (at least in country) so hu-rah USA? Instead of brutalizing black protestors, the police brutalize protestors in an equal opportunity fashion. Hu-rah USA. We're only as economically inequitable as the 1920's robber baron era, hu-rah USA. I suggest you try to expand your view a little and see what the WHOLE country really is like.

[acjohnson55]

It's one of the things that made the First Crusade so remarkable. Once the Crusaders were in way over their heads, it paradoxically made them far more committed than the warlords they were fighting against. The invaders were nowhere near hospitable lands, fighting for their lives.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Sorry to nitpick, but I wouldn't call the caliphs, sultans, emirs and kings of the muslim world of the 1090's "warlords". Even the Seljuks had essentially ceased being nomads by that time and had settled down.

[acjohnson55]

From the Wikipedia article on the Seljuks:

"Alp Arslan authorized his Turkmen generals to carve their own principalities out of formerly Byzantine Anatolia, as atabegs loyal to him. Within two years the Turkmens had established control as far as the Aegean Sea under numerous beghliks (modern Turkish beyliks): the Saltukids in Northeastern Anatolia, the Shah-Armens and the Mengujekids in Eastern Anatolia, Artuqids in Southeastern Anatolia, Danishmendis in Central Anatolia, Rum Seljuks (Beghlik of Suleyman, which later moved to Central Anatolia) in Western Anatolia, and the Beylik of Tzachas of Smyrna in İzmir (Smyrna)."

I'm def not an expert, but this seems to match my understanding that at least in the recently lost Byzantine lands in Anatolia and northern Syria, it was more of a warlord situation than conquering through a centralized state. To be fair, this is pretty similar to pre-Manzikert Byzantine Anatolia or the Western Europe the crusaders hailed from. My point is that as the Crusaders conquered their way through the Near East, they weren't facing a single Islamic empire, but different local rulers, who weren't always coordinating.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

In that case it depends on what you consider a "warlord". Kilij Arslan, the son of Alp Arslan (their second name means "lion"), commanded the Sultanate of Rum in Anatolia and was the first muslim ruler of the Middle East to confront the Crusaders. The Sultanate took up quite a large area of Asia Minor and included many major cities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Rum#/media/File:S...

The muslim world was certainly fragmented into small kingdoms, more like city states, that constantly fought each other and that for a long time could not find common cause enough to present a united front against the Crusaders - and sometimes even sided with them to fight each other. But I think of them as kingdoms rather than tribes, so I don't think of their rulers as "warlords" but as, well, kings. And sultans, emirs, caliphs, etc. Then of course there was Egypt, that was generally a centralised state (and that also fought the Crusaders with a little more focus than the rulers of Syria and Anatolia).

My source for all this is "Les Croisades Vues par les Arabes" by Amin Maalouf (French title: The Crusades through Arab eyes). So I may well be missing a wider context.

[isr]

I've read the English translation of that book. Quite simply, the best history of those wars (which could be called the real First World War, if anyone thought to name it as such), period. Hands down.

Strongly recommended!

[acjohnson55]

Good points! I'll put that book on my reading list.

[crazy_horse]

It helps when you have guys that are so convinced that they have found the lance that pierced the side of Christ that they are willing to walk through fire to prove it.

[kamaal]

You mention a lot of points about Indian history. Most are right. One big factor in these things was the Caste system. With regards to the Mughals or other Central Asian cultures that ruled India. Most people in Geographical India just didn't feel the need to fight. Plus Mughals really intermarried and mixed with the local populace.

Atal Bihari Vajpayee(Former Prime Minister of India) said at one point in several key wars, there were more people sitting on the hills watching battles than actually participate in them. Most of it has to do with the Caste system barring participation, but the general point stands. A large section of people don't mind any political master ruling them as long as they are allowed to live in peace. This is why a general amnesty and treating local populations with respect, and just letting them be goes a long way in establishing your legitimacy over them.

In many cases when the political systems bought by an invading political force is better than existing political entity ruling them. Taxes are lower and they bring better ideas. In the case of India's independence. Watching movies and reading popular stories feels like the Independence movement was in peak intensity everywhere. In reality only major urban centers, and a few states saw these peak movements. Everywhere else it was business as usual. In states like Karnataka post the original wars between the Mysore Kingdoms and British, you barely hear any other stories. Even in the those wars, post defeat, the administration of Mysore Kingdoms moved in their entirety to British administrated political systems. The local public didn't really mind anything at all.

>>Aside from all this, contrary to some sort of received chivalric ideal of loyalty and fighting-unto-death, a great number of military engagements in every part of the world were decided by bribery and deception. People don't want to risk their lives and are often tempted by monetary gain. Countless forts have fallen to people opening the doors from within. There's instances of Sufi leaders being admitted into forts only to open the gates. Hyderabad was conquered by Aurangazeb in great part due to bribery, too.

Yup this is what happened in Mysore Kingdom. It is easy to label this treason or whatever. But people like Purnaiah and Mir Sadiq quite literally took money and made the British victory happen. Same thing happened in Bengal with Mir Jafar.

[pradn]

The success of a military system comes from it being able to muster strength in numbers, train and equip them appropriately. And all this depends on the economic system underneath.

A European feudal monarch might only have a few thousand men under his direct command, with the rest coming from levies from his vassals. This limits the amount of strength one person can hold on a battlefield, though the issue of lower-level leaders is already solved (this problem will always be present.) Compare this to nation-states being able to field massive armies under the control of one person.

In the same way, not being able to take advantage of all of the people in a society is a problem too. I am unsure to what effect caste inflected military participation. I doubt it was ever so strict as to prevent farmers from taking up arms. I'm unsure how many peasant rebellions happened in India, relative to other areas. China certainly had many. AFAIK, for much of Indian history there was more land than people to till it, so lords had to be careful to induce them to stay, lest they run away to better areas, with lower taxation and such.

[LeanderK]

>> Battles have rarely been massive charges from two sides of a flat battlefield, as we see in war movies.

Except e.g. WW1, which was just waves of senseless charging into machine-guns. It's hard to convince soldiers to charge into almost certain death but in war on an industrial scale (to which I would also count the napoleonic wars) it's possible. War can be unbelievable cruel, just compare the practice of decimating your army in roman times. You just kill every tenth soldier of your own army, because an army nine tenth its size that follows your orders is more useful than an army in full strength that does not.

[nicbou]

WW1 was a lot more dynamic than popular history credits it to be. Over a few years, every practice of warfare evolved to make the charge across no man's land as successful as possible, while the enemy tried its best to thwart it.

Remember that this war started with cavalry charges and ended with tanks and airplanes.