Marxism Never Died, It Just Went Underground

[Speaker to Animals]

The upside of having professional armies is that they don't just form up into free companies and go looting when the conflict is over, which was fairly common medieval Europe.

Good point. Maybe that is why we always had professional armies. Good convo.

We might be having a definition problem. I don't know if I would call the loose alliance of various lords, and the ad hoc groups of foot soldiers they would bring with them for most conflicts 'professional' in any meaningful sense.
Also, the amount of destruction leveled against a town would change based on the goals. A lord coming through to claim a productive area by some sort of old right or treaty would be restrained, but they could be absolutely brutal in a scorched earth kind of way to cities that changed sides.
And codes of chivalry didn't really apply to people who weren't nobles. The large battles, when they were met, could also be restrained, but since one of the ways to get your enemy actually meet you on the field was to run around his lands killing his villeins and serfs and anyone else who fell out of the chivalric purview, I doubt things looked all that rosy.

Sure, many more people die in modern wars, but the proportion of the population affected has gone down substantially, so if I got to choose, I would unhesitatingly choose modernity on statistics alone.

Why would you not call professional soldiers professionals?

[Fife]

Think Locally, Act Locally

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Good point. Maybe that is why we always had professional armies. Good convo.

We might be having a definition problem. I don't know if I would call the loose alliance of various lords, and the ad hoc groups of foot soldiers they would bring with them for most conflicts 'professional' in any meaningful sense.
Also, the amount of destruction leveled against a town would change based on the goals. A lord coming through to claim a productive area by some sort of old right or treaty would be restrained, but they could be absolutely brutal in a scorched earth kind of way to cities that changed sides.
And codes of chivalry didn't really apply to people who weren't nobles. The large battles, when they were met, could also be restrained, but since one of the ways to get your enemy actually meet you on the field was to run around his lands killing his villeins and serfs and anyone else who fell out of the chivalric purview, I doubt things looked all that rosy.

Sure, many more people die in modern wars, but the proportion of the population affected has gone down substantially, so if I got to choose, I would unhesitatingly choose modernity on statistics alone.

Why would you not call professional soldiers professionals?

There were professional soldiers in the mix, but the whole army was not. A professional soldier in an ad hoc force is more like a mercenary.

[Speaker to Animals]

We might be having a definition problem. I don't know if I would call the loose alliance of various lords, and the ad hoc groups of foot soldiers they would bring with them for most conflicts 'professional' in any meaningful sense.
Also, the amount of destruction leveled against a town would change based on the goals. A lord coming through to claim a productive area by some sort of old right or treaty would be restrained, but they could be absolutely brutal in a scorched earth kind of way to cities that changed sides.
And codes of chivalry didn't really apply to people who weren't nobles. The large battles, when they were met, could also be restrained, but since one of the ways to get your enemy actually meet you on the field was to run around his lands killing his villeins and serfs and anyone else who fell out of the chivalric purview, I doubt things looked all that rosy.

Sure, many more people die in modern wars, but the proportion of the population affected has gone down substantially, so if I got to choose, I would unhesitatingly choose modernity on statistics alone.

Why would you not call professional soldiers professionals?

There were professional soldiers in the mix, but the whole army was not. A professional soldier in an ad hoc force is more like a mercenary.

No. They were professional soldiers. The knights were raised professional from birth.

[Hwen Hoshino]

In medieval Europe, there were strict codes of conduct about warfare. It was very limited amongst European peoples. It was only with foreign races that we exterminated all our enemies whenever possible. The Enlightenment saw an end to the idea that we treat one another as something more important than foreign peoples.

Actually annihilating an entire city of fellow Europeans would have been grounds for a cassis belli for total war to destroy the offending aristocracy. The Pope would stop that shit forthwith.

I am not saying it was all noble and sweet either. It was still brutal. But very limited compared to modern warfare. The only analog in western history is what we do to foreign invaders who legitimately threatened our civilization. Read Carnage and Culture for more.

The Pope would stop it? GTFO, Rome got sacked.

Like those codes got obeyed.... Foreign people were treated as more importnat. France allied with the Ottomans, Russians allied themselves with Mongols and paid tribute, Byzantium used all sorts of steppe people as hired muscle or sent tribute to them, the crusaders sacked Constantinopole instead of taking back the Holy Land. I could go on.

This post is full of historical problems with respect to my argument. Rome got sacked in late antiquity, not the medieval period. Russia was not part of Western Europe at all and aligned with the Mongols because nobody was coming to save them.

You don't understand what you are talking about or even what I was trying to explain to you.

Go read Carnage and Culture.

When we dealt with existential threats from foreign peoples, we would exterminate them if possible. But when dealing with one another, we followed a loose code of conduct. There existed no such thing as a chivalry or laws of armed conflict anywhere else in the world. We invented it. Then we ignored it when we adopted the Enlightenment, and the wholesale slaughter of our own people ensued.

You asked me who wouldn't want to live in modernity. Well, I'd say any of the many hundreds of millions of innocent people slaughtered by it.

You don't get what you are talking about. You should eb able to explain it wqithout making me read a book.

Rome got sacked in the 16th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Rome_(1527)

They would still take their chances in modernity. There was no real unified European front just some fairly impotent crusades.

[Martin Hash]

The prime example of Marxism coexisting with liberty is the military; a totally Marxist organization ostensibly protecting liberty.

[Speaker to Animals]

What does Come being sacked by a bandit religion of Arabs have to do with anything I said?

You are just throwing random shit out there without apparently understanding what I said.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Why would you not call professional soldiers professionals?

There were professional soldiers in the mix, but the whole army was not. A professional soldier in an ad hoc force is more like a mercenary.

No. They were professional soldiers. The knights were raised professional from birth.

But each knight was in a larger army for themselves, not as a professional unit. Even the king had to offer lands, or treaties or whatnot to get the various lords to show up. They were professional fighters, and spent a lot of time practicing fighting, but it was not a professional army.

[Speaker to Animals]

There were professional soldiers in the mix, but the whole army was not. A professional soldier in an ad hoc force is more like a mercenary.

No. They were professional soldiers. The knights were raised professional from birth.

But each knight was in a larger army for themselves, not as a professional unit. Even the king had to offer lands, or treaties or whatnot to get the various lords to show up. They were professional fighters, and spent a lot of time practicing fighting, but it was not a professional army.

I think trying to redefine the word professional advances the argument nowhere. You can rename them pink unicorn troopers and changing the name does not alter the historical reality. These were professional armies organized under a feudalism system, and they didn't often run around like bandits.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

No. They were professional soldiers. The knights were raised professional from birth.

But each knight was in a larger army for themselves, not as a professional unit. Even the king had to offer lands, or treaties or whatnot to get the various lords to show up. They were professional fighters, and spent a lot of time practicing fighting, but it was not a professional army.

I think trying to redefine the word professional advances the argument nowhere. You can rename them pink unicorn troopers and changing the name does not alter the historical reality. These were professional armies organized under a feudalism system, and they didn't often run around like bandits.

They weren't, and they did.