Chivalry and Honor

[Steel God]

Ah yes, but I'm not talking about the 20th (and 21st) century. My point was that I think the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries showed a particular tendency towards honorable behavior amongst enemy combatants, a period of warfare that was clearly different than what we live in today. I don't think we need to go into details on what warfare in the our day is like, as we all lived through some of it, but none of us was alive in the age of Nelson. And I wonder why it was so. Now Paul (Hucker) has put forth that all eras are nasty brutish and short for the common man, and that my rose colored view of things applies only to a few gentlemen. I admit that life was hard for the common man, and less so for the gentlemen, but those gentlemen were in charge, and made decisions that effected the common man, and the documented history shows clearly that the honorable treatment of prisoners and conduct under fire was applied to all equally, and not just the gentlemen, and it crossed national, religious, and even ethnic lines. I don't think we can dispute that fact as there is too much evidence to support it. My question is really why was it that way? What made men of such varied differences behave so generously towards their opponents and when/where/why was that lost?

Rick offers that the tendency is cyclical and driven by the difference between wars for national advantage versus wars for ideology. I'm not so sure that ideology wasn't present though, we are talking about staunchly Catholic France and Spain against Protestant England. Now I will admit that the wars from 1797 through 1815 were not driven by religion, but at least in the beginning, they certainly line up along religious lines, and that tells me ideology was in play if not the primary motivator. Yes still, chivalry amongst enemy combatants at sea in this period is at it's highest.

So, my question was, is and remains, when did we lose that? Why did we lose that? Or was it never lost and is it indeed cyclical as Rick suggests. I don't accept that it was never so because we have evidence that it was.