Hi,
yes, just see that nowadays killing a rabbit, a goat or even a chicken is a part of the commando survival training for the Special Forces and the young guys seem very stressed whan they have to break the bunny's neck. A few years ago any country boy could do that with no special feeling. In some countries it's still true.

I think that killing in battle from say post Charlemagne to circa 1300 was more of an individual act perpetrated against other individuals. The Viking sagas for instance usually speak of one or maybe a few warriors fighting and killing one or a few others even in a pitched battle. Most medieval armies were a barely controlled mob compared to a Roman legion or European armies post Fredrick the Great and as such rallying around a dynamic leader was very important to the cohesion of the fighting force and its battle effectiveness.

Where there seems to be shift in this is basically during the Hundred Years War when the use of disciplined ranks of skilled commoners, ie longbow men, began to turn warfare back into more of a science and organized, goal directed activity and less a quest for individual glory and enrichment. To be sure those things were still very prevalent on the Medieval battlefield.

Back to the main topic. I think most Medieval warriors were highly desensitized to death and violence due to disease, accidents, crime, tourneys and warfare, so they probably didn't go through a lot of introspection about their vocation.

I think the best current analogy for what life was probably like for a lot of people in that age can be found in what is happening right now in northern Mexico. The central government is basically a weak joke and can only bring authority to bear in limited places for limited amounts of time. The day to day operation of the society is controlled by various factions of hyper-violent sociopathic men who enforce loyalty to themselves through dispensing rewards to their followers and using extreme violence toward anyone who opposes them and to enrich themselves. The common folk are left to fend for themselves and run a daily gauntlet of terror and mayhem just to survive. There is no real rule of law and if you want to get anything done you have to petition the warlords who have the weapons and man power to help you, for a price of course. All in all the middle ages could be a very scary place to have lived, and I don't think those of us who live in reasonably functional, affluent western countries can ever really know what it was like.

I don't want to launch this thread on the maladies of the modern world, the preceding was just a comparative analysis.

When it comes to the viking saga, there is a quite noticeable difference between the icelandic sagas, which tend to be more heroic, and the later Norwegian ones, which rarely describe combat in detail at all.
This would be a natural consequence of the blood feud/primitive warfare nature of conflicts on iceland, versus the more organized formation doctrine used in Norway.

OT: But Ben, you're an Exarch! You live and breathe death!

Hahaha! :D

I didn't know you were a 40K fan. Which army? (Loosens power sword in case you give the wrong answer)

It's interesting to see the 'killing an animal' example.
I've killed perhaps two wallabies in my time, one was a swift shot under the armpit mid-bounce and into the heart (So at a distance and because it was reletivly painless for both parties), but our father still insisted we 'finish' what we started and so I shot it in the head at very close range, which was far more troubling than from further away. The second time doesn't bare thinking about, lest to say it was aweful, but did teach me the value of life, and if needing to take it (we did eat the said wallibies) making it as quick as possible.
Since this is my only experiance in taking the life of a mammal, I can only summrise that whilst, as pointed out, it is nothing like a human being, I can only imagine that in the moment it would be a similar feeling to an opponet. Almost a berudging duty.
With regards to fighting in groups, a friend of mine once stated that fighting in a group has a (and forgive this) "Combat Multiplyer" effect, that is to say that it offers a +1 to ones ability to attack (dysentry is a -2), as one feels more confident in a group.
I'm surprised that philosophy hasn't cropped up yet.

I didn't mean to say that medieval armies couldn't or didn't fight in a disciplined manner, they certainly did at times. One example that comes to mind is Richard I's use of infantry at Acre, and there are many other examples. What I was, imprecisely it seems, driving at was the warrior's motivation in combat.

Most medieval armies prior to the 14th century (exceptions are to be found) were composed of feudal levies and their liege lords and nobles, ignoring the mercenaries for the moment. The levies fought because they were required to (drafted/impressed into service) while the nobles were there both to fulfill their obligations and to enlarge themselves financially and make a name for themselves. Heralds recorded their doings so they and their peers would know what they did on the field. These forces did not have the strict chain of command and control that are employed in modern industrialized armies. For example, the accounts of the pushing, shoving and bickering that went on in the French ranks at the opening of the battle of Agnicourt, although that was 15th cent I know.

Where I was going was that I believe that fighting was more based on each individual's motivation to be in combat rather than the group think of the modern army. Frankly many medieval battles were decided when the main leader of an army was killed and his forces then lost heart and fled the field since there wasn't any other motivation to stay and risk their necks. Although this also varied considerably from period to period and culturally. The Norse and Germanic armies often died to the man defending the body of their fallen chieftain.

I just think there is a discernible shift in how European armies fought starting in the mid-1300's; away from the search for personal glory and enrichment toward achievement of the group's goal of winning the battle.

Also, I wanted to point out that the medieval warrior was rewarded by his culture for fighting. Prowess in battle was not only encouraged it was expected and men were highly honored for engaging in, and winning, in combat be it individual such at the tilt or in group battle. There was little if any or the modern western idea of pacifism or trying to find a non-violent, consensus based solution to conflict. Men often fought to avoid being disgraced and thought cowardly as well as fighting to increase their fame and financial worth. It was a very different world from our own. Add to that the Germanic tradition of the blood feud to obtain justice in the absence of a reliable tort and criminal judicial system and one finds that violence was not only much more acceptable then but also expected. So given that cultural outlook I think it is very plausible to assume that many if not most wariors of that age had very little personal restraint in killing other people.

The feeling of anonymity provided by a face covering helmet only added to a man of that time's inclination to kill.

Besides, I think many of them found it enjoyable to hurt and kill given the culture's requirement for men to prove their superiority over other men. It dosen't take much to remove the veneer of civilization from a person and have them fall back on their basic genetic programming and act like animals, you see it all the time in the news all around the modern world.

(You guys get all the cool artwork *Sniff*)

If I may, I was talking to my Dad about this very subject.

He worked in a Slaughterhouse at one point in his life. And while it's nothing like killing a person it does desensitize to you to the smell and the gore. He said he went through tons of livestock and after a while it just becomes mattter of fact.

So, I would imagine that medieval trainers would have their students hack down some livestock (Hey, it saves the Castle staff the trouble of killing said animal for the feast)

I think most would agree that medieval people must have been much more accustomed to acts of up close violence and killing. Public executions and judicial mutilations, cities under siege, prosecution and mass murder of religious minorities were fairly common after all.

Today we'd call many of the same hardened military men "mentally war damaged" in need of psychological support and therapy, or they could become like many Vietnam veterans no longer coping with normal peacetime society. I believe the US military have programs in place specifically for this purpose. Some soldiers today we'd even call war criminals for doing what came naturally to medieval soldiers mutilating and killing prisoners, looting the dead and dying and such and dumping it all in a landfill. I wonder if domestic and everyday street violence was much more common back then as an effect of it, or can we simply assume it was?

Ben P -Killing livestock would certainly be a way to start a young warriors' career. Getting used to the smell of blood, knowing basic anatomy (if the head comes off or you stab the heart it's dead outright, or you can bleed it out from many smaller wounds) and what it takes to kill a man sized beast like a big pig. It's also imagineable how hunting boar and other dangerous animals with a spear would add to your weapon skill and cool in battle as a warrior. I think this was common practice in soldier or earlier warrior cutlure families, if at all possible where you lived.

Ben,

I still do not buy it. There is a world of different between training for order and discipline and to become desensitized to the humanity of ones enemies. I have lots of family and friends that were and are military and have asked about this same thing. I also teach in an area that has a base real, real close, several of my classes have more soldiers than civilians in them. I brought this up and none of them felt they were conditioned to be desensitized to look at their enemy as unhuman or any such. They all knew their job and did it to the best they could when required which at times required fighting etc. My guess is that the hard training weeds out those who would be less able to fulfill the military's needs.

RPM

Randall, isn't that the very definition of modern day soldiers, how training and motivation nowdays differs from the old days so we don't have them coming back from war as psycho killers?
Also, the modern day soldier that kills with the press of a button and aims through a computer game-like console won't have the same traumas that a front line combatant might. Some kind of it perhaps, but probably less obvious and less severe.

Johan,
the worst recorded mass murders of people while using ideology ( read ''religion'') were performed by nations who thought themselves to be the most advanced, and were deemed to be so by fairly objective standards regarding their production of philosophers, musicians, artists, industrial engineers, medical doctors etc..
Mass murders and human cruelty are as present through the ages and cannot be assigned only to so-called medieval or primitive societies, nor can they be reasonably blamed on a few psychotic basket cases who got out of hand while millions looked the other way.
I think one should be carefull in not confusing technical changes with moral choices. How is the use of napalm less cruel and degrading than hacking away with a sword ?People who use napalm as a weapon know what it can and will do to humans, as do those who plant anti-personal devices along pathways. They also know that these mines will keep on killing and maiming way after the conflict has ended, yet they are still used. So cruelty adapts to technological advances, but can revert real fast to more primitive methods when the occasion arises, as recently seen in many war zones.
On the matter of how one goes about dehumanizing any adversary, our modern examples are chock full of expressions used by members of many advanced societies, I don't think anyone here ignores the names we use for the ''other''...and I don't want to make a list of the most famous modern derogatory terms, they are just so numerous. Just remember how our ancestors used the word ''savages'' to describe another ethnic group, and how this word served as a general justification for murder, land grabing, rape, genocide through biological warfare, and so on... In fact, the Savages Act only finally got a name change up here in Quebec in the 1960's, and this is a geographical area where the occupation by whites goes back way further than most of the rest of North America, and also came about in the least conflictual manner. Nevertheless, the
''other'' was a ''savage'', so it was a good thing that we converted and civilized them, even though they practically disappeared in the process. I think you get the picture.
I think that it is dangerous to assume that technological progress has somehow made Mankind more humane. The world wars, the numerous attempts at genocide, ongoing conflicts, all make it quite clear to me that man is still a wolf to man, though some come it more easily than others, depending on circumstances, situations and the importance of the propaganda machine that they are involved with.

Randall, I think we're basically talking about the same thing. I know a number of military folks who emphasize the psychological intensity of their training/conditioning. Some explicitly describe themselves as killing machines or in similar terms. I hear this from both anti-war veterans and die-hard hawks, so - combined with the obviously practical utility of crafting soldiers who don't hesitate to follow orders or engage the enemy - I suspect there's considerable truth to it. Even volunteers genuinely willing to shoot and get shot at benefit (in terms of effectiveness) from rigorous mental preparation.

Getting away from the politically charged modern-day matter, I'll reiterate that the evidence suggests experienced historical warriors killed with little reluctance under the right circumstances. Our time simply has never seen hand-to-hand slaughters to match that of battles like Cannae, Towton, and Ravenna. As horrible as modern weapons may be, it's hard to argue they require more courage or bloodlust to wield than swords and spears. I imagine the spectacular success of certain units relied significantly on greater enthusiasm for the terrifying task of close combat with edged weapons.

I think it's safe to say we modern folks are exposed to death quite a bit through media like video games, movies, TV shows, gangsta rap, etc. But it's mostly fictional death or real death recorded far away. Most of us are fortunate that we're not surrounded will actual death on any regular basis (exceptions to apply for soldiers, law enforcement, medical professionals, etc.). Mortality rates are lower now where most of us live than they were in the Middle Ages. Lifespans are much longer now. Crime rates are likely lower in the areas where most of us live than in an average medieval city.

Medieval folks were exposed to actual death--up close--more often than most of us are today in the form of violent deaths in conflict and in crime, short lifespans, and virulent diseases unchecked by good health care. They weren't necessarily inundated with fictional or remote death back then; they had the real thing. Apart from stories around the fire, most people back then wouldn't have had as frequent an access to stories about death--no movies, tv, internet, video games, recorded music, and low literacy rates meant most people couldn't even read about it, assuming they could afford a luxury like a book. They had more regular access to actual death, though.

I'm not sure it's apples-to-apples to compare our feelings about death to theirs. We live in such different circumstances.

Nothing breeds cognitive dissonance like seeing your mates get killed and/or maimed by religious fanatics using the most cowardly and indiscriminate means possible.