A scene from Poul Anderson's Technic History and a scene from SM Stirling's
Make The Darkness Light series come together in one readers' mind although their settings could not be more dissimilar: a future history and an alternative history. A Merseian steps from a wrecked building and waves a white flag. A hand waves olive branches from behind rubble. Two symbols of surrender. Hastening into
town on a Saturday, I leave it to blog readers to locate these references. This evening, a Robin Hood play in
Williamson Park. Tomorrow, a Viking Festival in
Heysham Village. We walk through legend and history.
8 comments:
Short sharp wars are better than long grinding ones -- they cause less damage, in the end. Shocking your enemy into surrender spares lives and reduces wastage.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But a strategy of short, sharp wars doesn't always work. Frederick the Great of Prussia was nearly ground down to utter ruin because his enemies stubbornly fought on despite frequent defeats.
Shock tactics of the kind seen in the Roman campaign against Parthia in THE WINDS OF FATE will most often work if you have a decisive technological edge over your enemy. An edge relentlessly used to break him before he has time to master new tech and weapons.
Ad astra! Sean
Could Marcus Aurelius have demonstrated the new weapons to the Parthian king, then invited incorporation into the Roman Empire against the new threat from China?
Paul: well, that would sacrifice surprise -- and the Parthian king probably would consider the story about China irrelevant and probably made up out of whole cloth.
The Parthians and Romans had fought for centuries, by this point, and there was a lot of animosity.
Not as much as when the Sassanids took over Persia, of course. That happened in a couple of generations.
Sean: Yeah, that happens when opponents are closely matched. If the Czarina Elizabeth hadn't died at 52 and been succeeded by a demented Frederick the Great fanboy, who knows what would have happened?
OTOH, when one opponent has a serious tech advantage -- the Partition of Africa comes to mind -- there's often a shocked reluctance to fight after a couple of engagements.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul. Unlikely, what you suggested, re Parthia. For the reasons Stirling gave.
A real-world example: even if the US tried to convince Japan to surrender by exploding one of its nukes as a demonstration in 1945, I don't believe that would have made the Japanese gov't give up. Too much rage and fanaticism. It needed the direct, rare, intervention of the Emperor for Japan to surrender even after getting bombed with two nukes.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, if Empress Elizabeth had lived six months longer Frederick would have been toast.
Because a good hard shock at the beginning of a war, like that with Parthia, might prevent a long grinding struggle.
It helped that Vologases IV, after he surrendered, persuaded Parthian holdouts to also surrender.
Ad astra! Sean
Note that when the Zulu king heard the number of casualties from Isandlwana -- a Zulu victory -- he cried out: "A spear has been driven into the belly of the nation!"
By the Battle of Ulundi -- the last major engagement in that war -- the Zulus were much less ready to charge with their spears. They'd been taught a lesson -- even when you win, fighting breech-loaders with spears is a loser's game.
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