Why Did Soldiers Fight? | Soldiers' Lives

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The pike and shot era made war more deadly. As gunpowder weapons got more and more common from the 15th to the 17th, the number of casualties in battles also tended to increase. Losing a battle always cost many lives but now quite often even the victors suffered high losses. Simultaneously, campaigns became longer, and soldiers served farther away from home. Some even fought overseas in the Americas, which increased the risk of falling prey to diseases or bacteria unknown to the immune system. As the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes noted in his Leviathan (1651) life was “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short.” Given all these horrifying prospects, it is not clear at all why men chose to endure the extreme hardships of battle and what, in the first place, motivated them to join the army. In this video we will look into the reasons why men chose to become soldiers in the notorious pike and shot era.
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Chapters:
00:00-01:13 Intro
01:13-02:25 CuriosityStream
02:25-15:32 Why did soldiers fight?

Bibliography:
Baumann, Reinhard, Landsknechte, Ihre Geschichte und Kultur vom späten Mittelalter bis zum Dreissigjährigen Krieg, München 1994.
Fiedler, Siegfried, Kriegswesen und Kriegführung im Zeitalter der Landsknechte (Heerwesen der Neuzeit, Abt. 1, Bd. 2) Koblenz 1985.
Fiedler, Siegfried, Landsknechte. Waffe und Waffengebrauch (Heerwesen der Neuzeit, Abt. 1, Bd. 1) Koblenz 1984.
Showalter, D., Astore, W. J., Soldier’s Lives through History. The Early Modern World, 2007.

Видео Why Did Soldiers Fight? | Soldiers' Lives канала SandRhoman History