> It was a bloody chaos. The troops plundered the civilian population, friend and foe alike.
Unfortunately, I think it was basically "business as usual" for the pre-industrial, pre-railroads warfare. See below.
> progress in military affairs brings not only chemical and nuclear weapons, but also things like better logistics that lessen the suffering of the civilian population
I think you've got that backwards, at least the part about logistics...
At any rate, I highly recommend the series on pre-industrial military campaign logistics by Bret Devereaux, starting with
There, Devereaux explains how economic and technological affairs in the pre-industrial societies shaped military logistics, which determined the nature of the warfare. And how that looked from both military and civilian points of view.
I love Brett's blog, but I heaven't read that one. Thanks for the suggestion! But even without reading it I dare to guess: The Thirty year's War happened at the unfortunate moment when armies got too big to get away with the old "live out of the land" system and before modern military logistics were invented.
If the armies couldn't "live out of the land", they wouldn't last 30 years, would they? ;)
Tragically, "live out of the land" means "live out of _peasants_" — taking by varying amounts of force the goods the rural population — enemy's or even your own — had produced. As long as the army itself produces nothing, especially on the march. And the process wasn't pretty...
Your concluding paragraph has me wondering, are there more pieces to come that will address the other narratives mentioned there (World War II, 19th century nationalism)? It would be nice if you were to write on those for completeness, if not for anything.
I guess there's enough content about WWII around, but doing the nationalist narratives, even on country by country basis, how they invented national history and even forged documents to support it, that would be fun.
> It was a bloody chaos. The troops plundered the civilian population, friend and foe alike.
Unfortunately, I think it was basically "business as usual" for the pre-industrial, pre-railroads warfare. See below.
> progress in military affairs brings not only chemical and nuclear weapons, but also things like better logistics that lessen the suffering of the civilian population
I think you've got that backwards, at least the part about logistics...
At any rate, I highly recommend the series on pre-industrial military campaign logistics by Bret Devereaux, starting with
https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-they-do-it-part-i-the-problem/
There, Devereaux explains how economic and technological affairs in the pre-industrial societies shaped military logistics, which determined the nature of the warfare. And how that looked from both military and civilian points of view.
I love Brett's blog, but I heaven't read that one. Thanks for the suggestion! But even without reading it I dare to guess: The Thirty year's War happened at the unfortunate moment when armies got too big to get away with the old "live out of the land" system and before modern military logistics were invented.
If the armies couldn't "live out of the land", they wouldn't last 30 years, would they? ;)
Tragically, "live out of the land" means "live out of _peasants_" — taking by varying amounts of force the goods the rural population — enemy's or even your own — had produced. As long as the army itself produces nothing, especially on the march. And the process wasn't pretty...
Your concluding paragraph has me wondering, are there more pieces to come that will address the other narratives mentioned there (World War II, 19th century nationalism)? It would be nice if you were to write on those for completeness, if not for anything.
I guess there's enough content about WWII around, but doing the nationalist narratives, even on country by country basis, how they invented national history and even forged documents to support it, that would be fun.