In 1813, 200 Years ago, 600.000 people fought the Battle of
Leipzig (Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig). Today 6300 played wargames at the very same place, to commemorate the 90.000 death. It is just disgusting. And its a
lie.
200 years ago, soldiers were mostly forced into the service,
then drilled, flogged for the slightest mistake, the tiniest bit of
misbehaviour. Those armies were just brutal. The battles back then were a butchering.
Soldiers, forced to march in long rows, lined
up..."Hold the pace! Steady!" ... They could not see a thing...the
smoke of gunpowder rose over the battlefield. (Not until the 1870ies ammunition
based on Nitrocellulose came into service.) The smoke of hundreds of thousands
of guns. Artillery firing, dampening the meadows with white steam.
They were charging into a grey fog. Sight: Nought. That´s
why to the left and the right they had drummers marching, and pipers. The drums
set the pace, gave the commands. One could not see the flags, the signals.
Stupor-like, driven to charge slowly towards enemy lines. Nothing but the fog
of war. And the noise. The deafening noise. The fear...the horror.
Cannons firing, guns going of round after round after round.
Horses dieing, shrieking. Soldiers getting hit, screaming in pain and agony,
left to their own misery. They charged. Line after line after line. A shell from an artillery
piece breaching a swath of havoc into the formation. ZING! WHOOOOSH! "Fall
in!" The lines close again - thirty are dead, easily.
The guns used at this time, like the French Mousquet Modèle
1777 or the British Brown Bess musket were acurat only within 100 meters. They
were muzzle-loaded pieces. A well drilled soldier could get of three rounds in
a minute. So, to get the most reasonable effect, the armies marched in long
wide rows. Firing at the same time. Loading at the same time. There was not
much of aiming. One could barely see ten meters. Meticulous drill was the key.
The officers drove the poor dogsbodies of a soldier to march towards enemy
lines. Into the gunfire, into artillery shells, into the fog. The screamig, the
yelling, the artillery and guns going of, the drums. The horror.
"Fire!" The line kneeled down, got their round of.
The the next line stepped forward, got their round of. Loading. Meanwhile the
enemy poor-sods got their rounds of. Heavy artillery pounding in. People going
down, your fellow soldiers, your comrades, your friends.
"Charge!" When the distance was too close for
firing, the officers sent the soldiers into melee. Attacking with sabers,
bayonets and weaponstocks.
Imagine! All around you is just fog, screaming, booming. You
are frightened, you cannot see nothing and they make you to run into sure
death. With nothing more than a blank piece of steel in your hand, just to take
the life of a guy who is just as unlucky as you. The horror! It is no knightly
fighting, it is slaughter.
If one got hit, one was lucky to die instantly. A clean,
painless death. The wounded, there was no such thing as proper medical
treatment. The few surgeons were mostly quacks, the lowest doctors of the low. Amputating, operating without anesthesia. With bloody, filthy hands. Hacking of
arms and legs, cauterizing wounds. The horror! Then came the infections, if one
didn´t get gangrenes then one would die on typhus or fever.
Those battles, all battles were butchering. Stupid, brutal
butchering. Mindles, dumb butchering. What´s the worth of a soldier, eh? Sheep,
drove into another to kill themselves, just to serve a higher cause like a
country or a king.
Soldiering was a tough business back then, don´t you think?
The right thing to reenact, right? Gladly we have nuclear weapons nowadays, a
good clean kill for thousands. Nor more need for brutality.
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