Hachinan tte, Sore wa Nai deshou! - Ch. 106 - More Than A Dispute Yet Not Quite A War
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- May 12, 2018
- Messages
- 11,037
Disputes for water are more common than one might think. There is currently a dispute between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia regarding the latter's construction of an hydroelectric dam on the Nile's source. Egypt and Sudan are complaining that Ethiopia is holding off water that would serve for their agriculture or that less silt is being carried than usual, which is used in Sudan for making bricks (and they're in the middle of a civil war, so they need those to reconstruct...).
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2025
- Messages
- 4,556
Supporter
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2018
- Messages
- 8,037
So, basically, politics?
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2018
- Messages
- 21,963
Alas, the ruling nobles will still need to deal with all the normal politics in their fiefdoms, but then will also get this foolisness on top of it. I suppose this will serve as dodgy training for the soldiers, but they will also learn bad habits from non-lethal fights. Those bad habits could be a disaster if they ever need to face a real enemy.
But the king must still be happy with the whole mess, seeing how he allows it to continue.
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2020
- Messages
- 1,595
This.... is actually a quite decent rundown of what in medieval times was known as "baronial warfare".
The small-scale stuff that was an almost-yearly occurrence in many places over... almost anything. Not the big battles for conquest, but, indeed, water rights/access, hunting/exploitation rights, and control over the smaller trade towns.
And always partly "what your uncle Heinrich said about our Nan at last years' christmas party" and much larger factional disputes.
And, as has become clear over the last few decades as digitisation made ever more contemporary surviving documents available for translation .... BILLS!!, of that Christmas party... and who gets to pay them, and who didn't.....
Except the training weapons bit.... That didn't happen.. your survival was up to God's Grace, and while it was customary to prefer taking Hostages, there were also far, far more lower Nobles than Available Spots.... And the less scrupulous never missed a chance to thin out the Competition a bit...
Up until the Nobility got....Soft.... you're still talking about a Caste of professional Warriors... Not quite musclebrains, but very much able and willing to see Option B, C, and D as a valid, and often easier, Option.
Non-lethal settlement of Disputes was an option.... Tourneys, both the original "training excercise" as the much more evolved high-medieval Tournaments were used to settle disputes without actual warfare, in both the foot tournaments and the much more high status Jousting.
But that meant Going Public with your gripes, and had a whiff of "not being able to Handle Things", and a definite risk of losing much more status if you lost than merely duking it out on Saturday Morning in some muddy field, out of sight..
Which...... well... Not the preferred option.
The small-scale stuff that was an almost-yearly occurrence in many places over... almost anything. Not the big battles for conquest, but, indeed, water rights/access, hunting/exploitation rights, and control over the smaller trade towns.
And always partly "what your uncle Heinrich said about our Nan at last years' christmas party" and much larger factional disputes.
And, as has become clear over the last few decades as digitisation made ever more contemporary surviving documents available for translation .... BILLS!!, of that Christmas party... and who gets to pay them, and who didn't.....
Except the training weapons bit.... That didn't happen.. your survival was up to God's Grace, and while it was customary to prefer taking Hostages, there were also far, far more lower Nobles than Available Spots.... And the less scrupulous never missed a chance to thin out the Competition a bit...
Up until the Nobility got....Soft.... you're still talking about a Caste of professional Warriors... Not quite musclebrains, but very much able and willing to see Option B, C, and D as a valid, and often easier, Option.
Non-lethal settlement of Disputes was an option.... Tourneys, both the original "training excercise" as the much more evolved high-medieval Tournaments were used to settle disputes without actual warfare, in both the foot tournaments and the much more high status Jousting.
But that meant Going Public with your gripes, and had a whiff of "not being able to Handle Things", and a definite risk of losing much more status if you lost than merely duking it out on Saturday Morning in some muddy field, out of sight..
Which...... well... Not the preferred option.
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2018
- Messages
- 1,492
Indeed, all of this. Thank you so much for that breakdown, Grikath.
Something else that I also appreciate are the realistic numbers. I get so tired of seeing these stories where they're pulling outrageous numbers with tens- or even hundreds-of-thousands of soldiers out of seemingly nowhere, when having a force of just 10,000 is already impressive for an equivalent middle-age or even early-modern setting.
(The American Civil War is a notable outlier as being one of the most bloody conflicts in all of history, but this is a matter of the sheer amount of territory involved - all of the southern states versus all of the northern states - combined with improved firearms technology and poor medical science. This one conflict exacted a cost in lives - both military and civilian - that outweighed all other conflicts the USA has been involved in, up to and including the Vietnam War.)
To contrast, in the USA, the US Army had about 560,000 active duty members in 2011. This was when we were pretty much balls-deep in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Also keep in mind this figure is for all active duty regardless of rank or title, so in addition to enlisted, it also includes officers and non-coms as well as logistical support personnel and command staff. So in reality, we probably had something more like half of that for actual soldiers on the ground.
Minor add onto what Grikath and BlackAeronaut said:
A good chunk of the levies were made of the noble's workforce. Farmers, laborers, etc.
Having high casualties was a bad idea because as it turns out, it's really hard to run a territory if a good portion of your workers are dead.
This was before the era of professional soldiers, so with the exception of the small circle of nobility, everyone else had day jobs or rather normal jobs that they had to go back to else the territory/fief would collapse.
A good chunk of the levies were made of the noble's workforce. Farmers, laborers, etc.
Having high casualties was a bad idea because as it turns out, it's really hard to run a territory if a good portion of your workers are dead.
This was before the era of professional soldiers, so with the exception of the small circle of nobility, everyone else had day jobs or rather normal jobs that they had to go back to else the territory/fief would collapse.
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2018
- Messages
- 1,154
Thanks for the chapter!!
Dex-chan lover
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2018
- Messages
- 7,418
nah, he should go with "kill the chicken to scare the monkey"
