How brutal were the battles in the ancient or medieval times? Is there any first person or witness account on them?
Like imagine a giant boulder falling next to you and crushing 5 guys underneath, or seeing somebody getting his arm chopped off by a sword, or having to put a spear through a horse to take down an enemy. Shit must have been pretty awful if you ask me.
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Think about this every time somebody pines for the "old days" of legend. You don't even have to go that far back: the civil war was extremely brutal.
Pretty chill.
If you were hired to kill some other hired dudes, would you actually do it or would you rather just poke at each other until your bossman gets bored and nobody gets hurt and also gets paid.
>If you were hired to kill some other hired dudes, would you actually do it or would you rather just poke at each other until your bossman gets bored and nobody gets hurt and also gets paid.
lol wow
In ancient battles you usually formed units with other people from your village/family. So imagine your brother getting split in half by a battleaxe right next to you.
In medieval times in europe, armies didn't really have super recognizable uniforms. Both armies would meat and it would turn into a crazed melee. Basically everyone stabbing everyone.
This was actually the case in Italy because the different mercenary bands realized they could make more money and cost less lives if they didn't try too hard to actually kill eachother. The city states had no professional armies so they would pay mercenaries. In other situations though like a war of conquest the armies would actually attempt to kill.
Very brutal. Since antiquity to modern times, battles and wars have always been a bloodbath. There were extreme forms of slavery, widespread torture, sudden violence and not to mention diseases, infections, famine, humid climates causing combatants to worsen their gangerenous tissue, hot climates causing blood to flow faster and gush out of wounds, makeshift weapons made with no regard to the safety of either the wielder or the victim.
Also widespread unhygienic practices and lack of modern medicine means all ailments are a huge problem, even rotten teeth, a superficial cyst or appendicitis.
Read Thucydides. The descriptions of the Athenians getting exterminated on Sicily and the raids on Sphacteria are just horrifying.
based john hawkwood made guido pay him every time he took a shit
Neat, thanks
Depends on when you're talking an what side you were on. Broadly you never, ever wanted to be on the losing side. As far as the winning side was concerned the front ranks mill each other a bit, causing relatively minimal damage to each other and that's kinda hardcore, but it gets really hardcore when one side breaks and tries to flee. Then it turns into slaughter.
sauce on that pic OP?
This happened between Landsknechts, because they weren't super professional, but much cheaper than the Swiss Pikemen that were sort of the merc gold standard. But then when you pitted Landsknechts vs Swiss Pikemen, they each had a chip on their shoulder and occasionally this nonsense would happen because they're both playing chicken with pointy sticks and neither one blinked.
watchmen you absolute moron
thanks.
yeah fuck front line combat, i'd be an longbow archer
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It was relatively comfy if you were a knight though, impervious to infantry shits and everyone wanted to capture you alive
Play some Mount & Blade
> you farm your land
> people come and kill your family and you
Things that never happened.
What's the point of killing free labor?
They don't care about farming your land and don't want to take slaves? Plenty of people just raided and killed, took stuff then left.