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Notes -
laughs in thirty years war
Wesphalian Peace mentioned in proxy!
Occasional reminder that the Nazi's rhetorical explanation for giving up at the end of ww2 was "if this continues the devastation will approach that of the 30 years war and we don't want that"
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Or the high time of european chivalry, the Hundred Years War.
After a battle they routinely executed all prisoners who were commoners, while the nobles were allowed to ransom their lives. One such man was King John II “the good” who was living large in captivity while France bankrupted itself to pay his ransom. At the same time, his subjects had trouble surviving the standard noble chevauchée tactic, where a small mounted force kills villagers, livestock and destroys crops, to force the rest inside protected walls, destroying the enemy’s agricultural, tax, and ultimately, population base.
But, noblesse oblige. The financial obligations of his starving people to his noble title, that is. And he was considered particularly chivalrous, as his surname alludes to. For the people of the time chivalry did not mean what functor implies, some kind of protective duty towards the weak. It meant the right etiquette for courting highborn ladies, and riding into battle like a total jackass like King John the Blind, another shining beacon of chivalry of the time, who died strapped to his horse like a useless bag of fertilizer of his own chivalrous volition.
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