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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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Yep.

All the worse because it inflicts pain on civilian population.

That said, it would also depend on the nature of the attacker, and whether you could expect decent treatment upon surrender.

The factor that really weighs against joining Medieval armies is the tortures one could end up in if captured by the other side. Although there's certainly evidence that we as humans haven't improved much in that regard.

I just watched a video on Vlad the Impaler and I can say that his existence ALONE is enough for me to not want to enlist to fight on EITHER side of the war with the Ottoman Turks in the mid to late 1400's.

I would not be particularly worried about torture as a medieval soldier (nobles, of course, would get three squares and a cot while they waited to be ransomed) - in times of war it was a rare occurrence limited to some instances of intimidation, like difficult sieges, a few religious conflicts, and, of course, rebels or traitors. You would be much more likely to get a quick death than tortured, but at the luckiest you'd be stripped and let go or, for professionals, offered a place in the other duke's army. Somewhere in the middle would be impressment for war labour or, if the captors weren't Christian, relocation or lifetime slavery. At worst, worse than almost any transient torture, you could be impressed as a galley slave. Harsh or torturous punishments such as blinding were considered shocking enough to Western medieval chroniclers to be specifically noted when they occurred (e.g. Henry I blinding a man who sang insulting songs about him). I'm not saying there was anything pleasant at all about being taken prisoner in the Middle Ages, just that to my knowledge torture is relatively rare in the sources compared to ransom/execution/release/enslavement, all of which are easier and generally more beneficial to the captors. The exceptions, outside of a minority of inter-faith wars, would be rebellions - unfortunately, you probably don't get much of a choice as to whether your war is considered a legitimate conflict or a rebellion...

I think in my book, a 1% chance of being tortured using the most advanced methods a postclassical civilization can devise is intolerably high.

And there are a lot of slave or indentured servant jobs that were also pretty tortuous if only because they were indefinite in length. I wouldn't necessarily be unhappy with being forced to compete in Gladiatorial games, though.

To say nothing of being a Castrato or Eunuch. Not torture per se, but... ugh.

Although another 'fun' debate is how medieval torture compares to stuff the Drug Cartels do in modern day.

Anyway, I just want to stay far away from any battlefield where inflicting excess suffering on enemies is not tabooed harshly.

Castration was done to prepubescent boys(that is, not soldiers).

You're not making this time period sound more enticing.

Good thing we've moved past that sort or practice, eh.

Very understandable position! I would say even 1% is a significant overstatement of how likely a captured medieval footsoldier was to be tortured, but we'll never know for sure, and captivity would have been unpleasant enough to count as "cruel or unusual" today, besides a nontrivial chance of losing your head and a far higher chance of dying of disease.

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