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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27386 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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But at least many conflicts of that era got settled with a basic handful of battles and the occasional siege.

And many didn't, as the names "Hundred Years War" and "Thirty Years War" tell you.

It's not industrialization which makes war an unceasing nightmare; there have been long non-industrialized wars and short industrialized wars. WWI, for all its horror, was only 4 years.

Hundred Years War

Funny enough interspersed with truce periods.

And the black death, which wiped far more than the actual war itself could ever hope to.

And yeah there were also long-ass crusades with similar death counts. BUT.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

This might actually be a decent Friday Fun thread topic. "Assume you're drafted into a 5 year stint in the military, and will be spending the duration on the front line, which you cannot desert but can be KIA. which long war in history would you prefer to end up fighting in?

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

Frontlines are a modern invention, enabled by the existence of railroads. Without them the soldiers would just starve to death.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

Nothing like trench warfare in the sense of two opposing armies in open country, but medieval sieges could last a long time. The song Men of Harlech is about a seven-year siege, and the Crusaders took seven years to siege Tripoli. Three years definitely on the long end, though.

Yes, sieges are a particularly grueling point of warfare back in the day. Seems to inherently suck worse for the defending side, though.

They probably don't come with the sense of futility that arises when you sacrifice dozens of men at a time in numerous infantry charges all to gain a couple hundred yards at a time, which could then be lost, at the same cost.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

The pyrrhic and second punic wars would seem to qualify, given they consisted of the armies chasing each other all over Italy.

You'd have to define what counts as 'front line', however.

Or else you'd just have people(like me) who'd play with the definition. Do defensive emplacements count? Cause I can think of places in the civil war that were both tactically critical, staffed the entire length of the war, yet saw very little combat.

Where are you thinking of in particular? I'm struggling to think of an option, unless we mean, like, the Washington defenses, which I think would be pushing out the definition of front line a lot. Maybe around Charleston?

Okay, this is where I admit my historical shortfall and getting a few forts mixed up; The fort I was thinking of was Fort Pike, which I had somehow thought was the fort along the Mississippi River. It's not; those forts are instead Jackson and St Philip. In contrast, those two saw one hell of a battle; whereas Fort Pike was taken without a shot.

I had also forgotten how soon New Orleans fell during the Civil War; I could have inexplicably thought it was taken much later.

So! There's a solid argument that Fort Pike wasn't that critical, disqualifying it.

If so, I'd probably pick Vicksburg, which saw... comparatively small causalities and was basically the last Confederate hold-out on the Mississippi.

The question as I intended it is approximately "manning a post in the physical location closest to the enemy and involved in combat such that the enemy does make occasional attempts to kill you."

And being fair, you also have to pick the war without being sure where you'd be stationed, precisely. WWII had so many theaters of operations you'd have to consider the pros and cons of each one before committing to signing papers and stepping in the time machine, as it could be anywhere.

My ultimate point is I think almost NOBODY would pick WWI as the one they'd suffer through if given the choice.

The question is can you pick a side. The Pacific was no picnic for the Marines, but it was much worse for the Japs.

Did you recently listen to the new MartyrMade podcast episode on WWI? He makes this point at length, mostly summarizing Junger et al on the topic.

For a fun question I'd allow that decision.

If I wanted a serious though experiment: "You'll be reincarnated as a soldier in EACH side of the conflict you choose."

I think it's more fun if we don't allow the decision! Now you have weigh a 50% chance of landing on the wrong team.

WWII American is an easy pick, but WWII Japanese would be terrible.

But then the wars that have more even distributions of forces tend to be worse for everyone involved.

I think I'd pick something pretty antique. One of the Greek city state conflicts, or the a mercenary in one of the sets of Italian wars.

Yeah, I don't think there's any way I'd want to end up in the Russian Army in WWII, either.

Ironically if you chose the French in WWII you'd most likely either die in one of the early battles or be a POW or resistance fighter thereafter.

Not sure if that makes it better per se.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

Apparently yes, according to this guy: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XQQy5V0jOkQ

The siege of Candia lasted 21 years. Enough time for someone to be born inside the walls, grow up, and start having children of his own. Turns out, medieval castles were very hard to take.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

The Peloponnesian War featured multiple Spartan invasions of Attica. So, probably not the exact same spot in a trench warfare sense, but certainly seeing the same area over and over again.

Can imagine that getting frustrating for a bunch of guys who really just wanted to stab the enemy.

There is indeed something about drawn-out trench warfare that I find particularly distressing. Probably has something to do with one's fate feeling completely out of your own hands. Regardless of your skills as a warrior you're not really enhancing your own odds of survival since the thing that gets you won't be another dude, specifically, but something you never even saw coming.

Kinda like the Longbow hard-countering the armored knight. Now some illiterate peasant with overdeveloped back muscles can one-shot you after a couple days instruction.

Without that issue, I can sort of conceive of a war as banding together with your bros for an adventure and your odds of survival turning much more on your individual skills AND your ability to plan and effectively coordinate rather than luck of the draw.

The other comments cover the broad point - longbowmen were a hell of an investment, and weren't a war-winning instrument alone - but I don't think they go far enough. The best book on this is probably Sumption's series on the Hundred Years War, and he makes the point that (1) longbowmen as used in the English army were invariably mounted and armored, and represented an investment broadly analogous to that of a armored man-at-arms; essentially, the English and French armies both had proper knights (far more french) and then a significant number of men-at-arms, and the English essentially stopped having traditional cavalry man-at-arms in favour of what are better imagined as primitive dragoons, and (2) the war winning instrument was less longbowmen and more reliable polearm infantry in compact blocks with field defenses. The role of longbows was important, but even without them the English army was incredibly lethal, as were other armies - e.g. the Flemish. Basically, the age of the knight was really coming to an end either way. It dominated the field against unreliable levy forces, but against forces who stand and fight and are professional enough to build consistent field defenses and not get caught out of position on a big field, it was always a somewhat non-viable strategy.

But! On your broader point, of war as being a fun adventure... the interesting thing is that it very much was viewed as that in this period... but by the English. Edward III was the archetypal chivalrous king, and people from all over Europe showed up to his campaigns against the French and the Scots. The English force was smaller (than the French - much larger than the scots) and much more professionalised, and the main feature of the first few decades of the hundred years war was English chevauchées into France, which tended to be lucrative and highly individual, and often very local - literally the earl of such and such and his friends and a bunch of men from the local towns and villages. I think it's an interesting but very understandable error to match up that image of war-as-adventure with the French knights, when you actually should have that image, but matched with the well equipped mounted longbowmen.

Without that issue, I can sort of conceive of a war as banding together with your bros for an adventure and your odds of survival turning much more on your individual skills AND your ability to plan and effectively coordinate rather than luck of the draw.

I'm not going to get into the longbow countering the knight thing as others have already, but it's hard to overstate how much of an advantage noble knights had in battle. You were not going to be given a role in battle that would amount to cannon-fodder/bait, you had presumably access to the best training, a horse, the best armor. It was pretty unlikely you'd be killed or seriously wounded on your feet and most importantly, no one was really incentivized in finishing you off if you found yourself surrounded or knocked down/out, as ransoming you was much more lucrative.

Kinda like the Longbow hard-countering the armored knight.

It really didn't. It meant "charging straight at the enemy's prepared across a muddy field and relying on your glittering form to terrify them into running away" was even MORE stupid than it might otherwise have been, but that kind of thing also failed against armies without longbows.

It just meant that the knights had to get a bit more sophisticated with their tactics. Speed and aggression, as at the battle of Patay, or use of pinning and flanking maneuvers, such as at Formigny, saw thousands of English longbowmen cut down by French chivalry.

Now some illiterate peasant with overdeveloped back muscles can one-shot you after a couple days instruction.

Other people have covered how the longbow takes a lifetime to master - and English Longbowmen were capable melee fighters themselves, with coats of brigandine and rondel daggers specifically designed to get at the weak joints of plate armor.

But also, the Longbow did not "one-shot" a man in armor. The advantage of the longbow came from (1) its ability to loose arrows in a ballistic arc instead of just the flat trajectory of crossbow bolts, (2) the incredible rate of fire that seasoned longbowmen could muster for brief periods of time, and (3) the longbow's effective range.

Individual longbow arrows were nuisances to a man in full-plate. But shoot 150 arrows at him and one will likely find a joint or seam, or just ring his bell hard enough that he'll fall down (and in plate, a man on the ground is essentially dead, either to a swarming enemy or to getting trampled by his own side). Also, those arrows were murder on enemy horses.

There was no unified French command structure at Agincourt. You had four or five different French lords with their own forces. Since each one individually had more troops than the entire English army, they were more concerned about getting in there and getting credit for the victory than about survival and overall victory, which already seemed assured. So instead of a unified attack on the English line, you had several piecemeal assaults that got diced up and defeated in detail. They forgot to achieve Harry, and then sell his bones.

They also let the bowmen get set up and deploy their stakes, didn't bother to think ahead about the effect the churned-up muddy field would have on successive charges, were dumb enough to run down their own missile troops out of impatience and malice, and didn't bother to vary their axis of advance substantively. Just an absolute disaster from the jump.

All true.

And why its fair to say Artillery is the modern day equivalent there.

You might still survive an Artillery barrage if you're in a heavily armored vehicle, but the existence of heavy artillery forever changed the tactics involved.

Obviously Cavalry was still used straight up into WWI itself, and flanking, exploiting weaknesses in the ranks and running down retreating enemies was still useful for a long time, but the days of 'individual glory' on the battlefield kinda ceased when massed projectiles are a risk.

Kinda like the Longbow hard-countering the armored knight. Now some illiterate peasant with overdeveloped back muscles can one-shot you after a couple days instruction.

It has been a while since I did a deep dive on the literature, but I believe that a traditional longbowman was a skilled fighter that required a significant training investment. It didn't require the capital investment of a knight, but you couldn't grab Any Random Asshole out of the fields and expect him to be effective.

It wasn't until crossbows and firearms that we saw the terrifying power of Armed Masses of Random Assholes.

How do you train a longbowman? Start with his grandfather.

The new weapon that was a game changer and only required a short period of instruction was indeed the matchlock gun, not the longbow.

Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?

No, but this has more to do with feeding and supplying an army than anything else. The modal soldier in pre-modern warfare might spent 2 - 3 years more or less walking in a giant, slow circle, almost starving to death every day. And then actually starving to death.

I have read of that, and hence why it was valid strategy to burn your own fields while retreating.

I also read about, e.g. Alexander the Great's wars of conquest and the distances traveled and I gather that the greatest asset a soldier could have in those days was the ability to briskly walk for days on end and still be combat-effective after a bit of rest.

Are there any movies or T.V. shows that focus on depicting what it was like to just walk, walk, walk through slowly changing landscape on the way to a future battle?

Are there any movies or T.V. shows that focus on depicting what it was like to just walk, walk, walk through slowly changing landscape on the way to a future battle?

Lord of the rings is kinda an allegory for that... the "war" for Frodo and Sam is mostly just them walking a lot, being very tired and very hungry and very scared for some hypothetical future battle.

Tolkien also describes troop mustering and movements in a way that is fairly consistent and just barely superhuman (or super-horse in the case of Rohan's rush to re-enforce Minas Tirith). But that is consistent with his world where a lot of the men/orcs/elves are intended to be superhuman (and obviously the horses of Rohan are the best of the best).

Hah, that is a great way to look at it.

First movie especially.

But I'm imagining a film about a couple random Roman Legionaries or some privates in Napoleon's army as they're marching through Europe for like a week and just shooting the breeze along the way.

Of course that adaptation of Stephen King's The Long Walk just came out, but that's not quite on the theme I'm talking about.

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