War summary

In 1731, a British seafarer, Captain Jenkins, lost his ear. He claimed that Spanish sailors had cut it off after accusing him of smuggling. Jenkins complained to the English king, but, for seven years, nothing happened. Eventually, the captain produced what he said were the remains of his ear. And the following year, in 1739, Britain went to war with Spain.

Jenkins’ ear was, of course, merely an excuse to start the war. In reality, Britain had other motives, like its desire to enter lucrative trade with the West Indies and Spanish America. Meanwhile, the Spanish wanted to preserve their monopoly in the region.

If you’re at all interested in the European Middle Ages, chances are you’ve heard the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. 

In the medieval period, stories like this were told and retold by generations of young men. They looked up to knights like Launcelot and Galahad for their honor and virtue, as well as their battlefield skills. The very idea of being a hero was a cornerstone of chivalry, a culture that encouraged men to prove their valor. The reward was usually a woman’s hand in marriage. 

The date: September 20, 1792. The place: Valmy, a small village in eastern France.

The French army –⁠ poorly equipped and badly organized –⁠ is going head-to-head with the highly disciplined Prussians. The French sustain greater casualties, yet the Prussian forces are being depleted by dysentery. The Prussians ultimately decide to retreat. 

On March 29, 1461, two English royal houses, the Yorks and the Lancasters, fought the Battle of Towton. It was, and remains, the bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil. Fifty thousand soldiers participated, and as many as 28,000 of them died. The violence was so astonishing that the field on which that battle occurred came to be known as the Bloody Meadow. 

Wars are undeniably bloody. And yet men, and sometimes women, have consistently been drawn to fight in them. Why?

Civilians are a special category of people during times of war, and various sets of rules have attempted to define how they should be treated. Usually, these rules declare that civilians and their property should not be harmed. But, of course, regulations tend to go out the window in the heat of battle.

In the age of modern warfare, military strategists sometimes coldly refer to civilians as the “collateral damage” that results from war. When their side is defeated, civilians may be killed, enslaved, or deported. But war isn’t always bad for them – in fact, it can sometimes provide benefits, like opportunities to make money. And civilians aren’t always passive bystanders. Often, they have great passion for war, just like the soldiers themselves.

A young Harvard graduate named John Reed traveled to Mexico in 1913. For four months, he accompanied a Mexican rebel leader called Pancho Villa. One day, Reed showed Villa a curious pamphlet. It outlined the new rules of war adopted at the Hague Conference in 1907. 

Villa was very interested in the pamphlet and pored over it for hours. But he couldn’t understand the motivation for making rules about war. “It is not a game,” he said. “What is the difference between civilized war and any other kind of war?”

What sensations, smells, sights, and emotions characterize fighting? There isn’t just one answer.

The ancient Greeks, for instance, had a rather dispassionate way of describing battle. Wounds were merely catalogued: a spear piercing a groin here, an arrow sticking someone in the eye there.