Men will never be free until . . .

This is true of many, many religions.

Understood

People only ever go on crusade if they expect gain from it. The church declared the so-called Cathars to be heretical. However, it was not until Pope Innocent promised the King of France thta the lands of the Cathar lords would be forfeit to the conquerors that anyone could get a crusade actually going. Wars cannot be fought for free, there had to be a motive stronger than holier-than-thou.

So we are getting to the prime motivator in in humans. Greed.

Referring, I think to JWs, Max asked if "there are magic words that need to be said to be baptized".
I don't know, but as a baby catholic I was baptised before I knew any words.

I also was baptized a Catholic. I remember my mother was there and the priest spoke a foreign language. . . But these are hazy memories at best

Set, can you think of any motive for fighting other than loot, or were there also intangibles like a noble and couragous reputation (even knighthood) or avoidance of the charge of cowardice or lack of religiosity? Just curious.

Now you're asking about individual motives, which is entirely different from "national" or tribal motives. I'm certain that some individuals fought to avoid the charge of cowardice. Knighthood was a social and political estate as much, or more than a reward for courage. People were sometimes knighted as a reward for fidelity to an overlord.

I should not attempt to suggest (and if i did, i was wrong) that religious beliefs were never a motive for warfare. Scope has something to do with it, though. People did not go to war for years on end, or on a relatively large scale (relative to available human and material resources) without a prospect of reward, however. In some cases, very few, of which i know, religion seems to have been a prime motivator, although it's almost impossible to escape political and/or tribal motives. Einhard, in writing his life of Charlemagne, tells us that the Franks, as Christians, went to war with the Saxons, pagans, every year for nearly 40 years. However, scope matters, and it's not entirely clear that religion was the sole motive. By scope i mean that Charlemagne was not calling out the entire Frankish feudal levy every year to go exterminate Saxons. Equally, the motive was, at least in part, conquest, or the notion of self-defense. The Franks wanted to control that part of what we call Germany. At the same time, they needed to protect themselves from Saxon raids. But why were the Saxons raiding them? Saxons killed Christians because Christians killed Saxons on the excuse that they (the Saxons) were pagans. When it has gone on for as long as 40 years, at what point did it cease to be a matter of "They're pagans, kill them all!" or "They're Christians, kill them all" and simply become a continuous blood feud? The way feudal levies work, your feudatories, your feudal subordinates, show up with their men-at-arms as an obligation, and the sum of all the obligations met creates your army. But if there is not some return, in plunder, in slaves, in land--it's unlikely that JLN is going to show up with men-at-arms if there's nothing in it for him, no matter what authority i can claim as feudal overlord.

Once again, i consider religion to have been the casus belli, rather than the continuing, all pervading motive. How long can JLN motivate his soldiers to come fight for me if there isn't some prospect of gain?

Early in the history of any religion with a will to dominate, such as Christianity or Islam, there is going to be a certain amount of fervor on which leaders can rely. But how long does that last, and what real military value does it have? Arabs overran the Sassanid Empire (roughly, Iraq and Syria) when it was weak and corrupt, and its population was disaffected. They overran Persia on the same basis. In north Africa, not only were the essentially German (Vandal and Visigoth) monarchies weak and corrupt, but had always been seen as alien--so Berbers and "Moors" not only were prepared so watch their governments fall, they eagerly adopted the new reliigon and joined the holy warriors.

But when those same holy warriors attempted to push north from what we think of as Iraq, they ran into disciplined Roman troops, who weren't going to cave into a wild attack by fanatics. Those troops were sustained by a largely un-corrupt government with the support of the people in their territories who were happy to live under that governance. It took Islam more than 700 years to overrun the Roman Empire. It also took the fanatical Turks, whose fanaticism was for conquest, with religion a very distant motive.

Nothing in human affairs or history is ever simple, is ever cut and dried (or that is rarely the case). My reading of history is that religious bigotry, while gratifying to the bigots, cannot sustain either large-scale or prolonged warfare, if for no other reason than that wars are expensive, so their has to be at least some primitive return on investment.

Thanks for an impressive effort. By the way on what basis were the Turks "fanatical", if not religion?

Soccer?

Conquest, as i said. The highest accolade which could be awarded to a Turkish leader was a horse's tail. An ancient practice. you killed your enemy and his horse, and displayed the skull outside your hut and the horse's tail on your lance. The Turkish leadership were never actually interested in adminstration, religion, society--they just wanted to conquer all of their enemies. Their definition of enemy was rather flexible

Looks like a great abstract painting, right? Indeed, it looks almost like a great work by the abstract expressionist, Willem de Kooning.
Thanks

I can see how conquest can motivate the leader; what about the rank and file soldier. Was HE motivated by loot or by identification with his leader?
You have for history what Fresco has for philosophy: talent.

I know one good motivation for soldiers. If you desert, you're killed by your own. If you stay, at least you have a chance to survive. But conquest, and the prospect of looting enemy treasure was probably a good motivator for common soldiers as well. A leader could be promised land to secure his allegiance, and he would probably make promises to those beneath him for the same reason. Those he was forced to place trust in anyway.

But aside from gain, maintaining power can be a reason for war. If too many different factions threaten to upset the political balance, an external threat can motivate people to stand behind their ruler, no matter how bad they want his power. Wag the dog.

I just googled Turkish soccer, clicked on images and this came up

"this?" LOL

Actually that.

Cyracuz has answered your question. The prospect of plunder was what motivated the private soldier. It was very real, too. The feudal levy was never very reliable. You didn't know if your feudatories would actually show up, or how many people they would bring, or even if they would fight for you. At the battle of Bosworth, one of Richard III's supporters, Lord Stanley, held back to see which side seemed likely to win. His men approved because they felt that he would not risk their lives needlessly. The night before the battle, John Howard, Duke of Norfolk had found a note pinned to his tent which read: "Jack of Norfolk, be not too bold, For Dickon, thy master, is bought and sold." When Norfolk was killed, and the issue hung in the balance, Stanley threw in with Henry Tudor, Richard III lost and was himself killed.

But other kings had not been so foolish. The two successful kings in the Hundred Years War, which preceded the Wars of the Roses which ended with the death of Richard III had been Edward III and Henry V. Both of them relied upon the mercenary interests of their commanders and private soldiers. A captain, meaning just a leader of men, would contract to deliver a certain number of men-at-arms and a certain number of archers for a specified payment. An official of the treasury would sign the contract on behalf of the king, then cut it in half, along a wandering, jagged line, giving one half to the captain and keeping the other. At the end of the campaigning season, the captain, or his designate if he had died, would present that half of the contract, and would be paid, less any monies which had been advanced.

But that wasn't going to make anyone rich, and the captains had to pay their own men, so their was a real incentive to fight well, to be reliable. In 1346, Edward landed in France with a fairly large army, although not nearly as large as the French feudal levy. But the French dicked around, and it took forever to get things organized. In the mean time, Edward was not idle. He marched to Caen, the home of the Conqueror (the English archers and men-at-arms hated William the Conqueror and were eager to take Caen), which he intended to besiege. Caen was then the second largest city in France, and rich beyond the wildest hopes of the English soldiers in the army. Edward had had his troops spread out in a wide arc to make his army look as imposing as possible, probably in the hope of getting the defenders to agree to terms. As the troops approached the city (they really, really wanted to take the city), they saw people on the city walls taking down their banners, and abandoning the walls. They hacked their way into one of the city gates, and realized that the defenders--the citizens of a city defended the city walls, while the nobility and their men-at-arms defended the citadel--were abandoning the city. They moved around to the south and saw the defenders crossing a bridge. The wealth of the city, all the great houses, the warehouses, the rich shops, were all on the Ile St. Jean, which was surrounded by two rivers, but had no city walls. Suffering great initial casualties, the archers and the Welsh lancers, who not only had no orders but who were defying orders to fall back, fought their way across the bridge and waded the river, breaking into this rich, rich city. Those who survived gained wealth unimaginable to them. (French merchants came along in the days after the Ile St. Jean fell, and bought silks, brocades, silverware and plate, and other bulky items at bargain basement prices, but the private soldiers preferred to have coins in their pockets to attempting to carry huge bundles of goods on campaign.) Although by contract with the king, the captains had to pay their men at fixed rates, this was what the private soldier dreamed of, and Caen brought wealth to match that of fables.

But for the captains themselves, although they profited as the private soldiers did, ransoms were their goal. Later the summer, they were trapped by the French army (the feudal levy) on a long ridge north of the River Somme in Picardy, near the village of Wadicourt, which is what they called the battle. (The main fighting was on the English right, at the south end of the line, in front of the forest of Crécy, which is what historians call the battle.) With that wonderful, stupid élan of the French knights, they attacked the English line late in the day, and were cut down in their thousands by the English archers, or the English men-at-arms when they finally reached the English line, badly disorganized. Mounted knights charging knee-to-knee are almost unstoppable. A mounted man who is not in a tightly packed formation is doomed. The Bishop of Durham kept pleading with the King to be allowed to join the battle, and when Edward finally released him, he charged into the flank of the French attack, swinging his heavy mace right and left (Bishops didn't use swords, because they were forbidden by the church to do so--maces were allowed on a technicality because they aren't mentioned in scripture). But he soon discovered that it was only him and his immediate bodyguard--his men-at-arms were plundering the French dead already on the ground, and looking for hostages. It was late enough in the day that the good Bishop was not endangered though.

And that was what the great captains were looking for--hostages to ransom. Later in the year, the Scots who had been convinced to invade England by their French allies, were routed at the battle of Neville's Cross near Durham (the good Bishop missed a wonderful opportunity, upon which the Archbishop of York capitalized). King David the Bruce was captured in that battle. His ransom was 30,000 pounds sterling. To put that in perspective, a laborer earned one penny a day--and there's 240 pennies in a pound. That ransom was the equivalent of a year's wages for 20,000 laborer's. King David was captured by a man-at-arms, and he popped him in the mouth with his mailed fist. It knocked out his front teeth, but he man didn't care. He "sold the King on," meaning he took a payment of 3500 pounds now rather than waiting for years to claim the 30,000 pounds. Everybody--who was not Scots--was happy. The ransoms from Crécy, and ten years later from Poitiers, when the King of France and his eldest son were captured, bankrupted France for several generations, and made King Edward and his nobles, as well as even humble English archers, very, very rich men.

In the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries, the Spanish had the most feared army in Europe. They never even bothered to pay their soldiers. They just turned them loose in the nearest city, and let them "pay" themselves.

Interesting reading, Setanta.

I remember a story about Napoleon and his clever way of inspiring loyalty among his soldiers. He would tell his officers to make sure that in this company, the third man from the left fought in an earlier battle, and in that company, the first from the right fought in another battle.
Then, when he inspected his soldiers, he would stop by these men, claiming to recognize them from the earlier battles. The soldiers believed he cared so much about them that he knew them all by their faces, or at least they felt confident that he would notice their bravery. A very clever thing to do, but alsom somewhat cynical. But then again, can you even have an army without at least a bit of cynicism?

I entertain a very low opinion of Napoleon as a leader of soldiers. Your anecdote doesn't surprise me at all. He was a big phony.

One important thing to remember about soldiers is that they love a winner. Thomas Jackson, known in American history as Stonewall Jackson, never did anything to conciliate his troops, never did anything to make himself popular with them. He had men shot at the side of the road for straggling on the march. But his men loved him, and would go anywhere and do anything for him. He won consistently, and at a very deep level, soldiers understand that their chances of survival depend on the success of their commanders.

Napoleon's genuine regard for his troops can be seen by his attitude toward medical services. The French had basically invented the military medical corps under Louis XIV a century before Napoleon. They standardized medical care, set high standards for surgery and regularized the services of supply for their medical corps. Napoleon didn't do a goddamned thing for his men's medical care, and let the best military medical services in the world decay into the primitive state of centuries gone by when a commander hoped there were some former butches in the ranks to perform amputations.