Was warfare with swords and spears more JUST before guns were used?

Being speared in the face must have been hell. I've spent perhaps too much time pondering what it ACTUALLY must have been like. Too many people think of history as a movie and not as a REALITY.

It must've taken some serious balls to get any kind of military combat experience. Sounds terrifying, to me.

>people unironically thing meele and arrows were worse than knowing you could receive a bullet to the head any second and the noise of modern warfare

>if you were really good. You could avoid arrows and still kill people
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Crécy
real life isn't anime

What is the roman army.
Just because it was rare to use swords as a primary weapon doesn't mean that people didn't do it.

>theres no social rules or pacific religions telling you murdering is bad
the entire point of a triumphal parade in ancient rome was to cleanse the soldiers because they had commit murder and murder is bad

being peacefully sniped in the head by an enemy is far less painful than being hacked and slashed through your armor

Sounds intense, but I'd still rather take a bullet than have a drawn-out bloody battle with some guy wielding a mace or a ball and chain.

What is this bullshit.

Really? I feel like it's the opposite.
Before gunpowder, if you were very skilled and rich enough to buy good armor, you could more or less trust you'd survive.
Today no matter how good or well equipped you are, you can just be blown up without ever noticing what happened.

these days you are cannon fodder.
In the past you had value.

>hail of arrow to the body and die in few minutes of agonizing suffering

vs

>bullet to the head and die instantly without any suffering involved

I honestly don't care that much the suffering, it's not comparable to something like torture.
Sure it sucks, but I'd rather die to something i see coming.

What a shitty comparison. Ofc instant death is less painful than a prolonged one. That is no relevant to the question as instant death isn't all that common and happened on the field of battle in in ancient times aswell. If a bullet can splatter your brain all over the place so can a well aimed javelin, arrow or spearstrike.

A better and more suitable comparison would be:
Ancient: Close to no worries untill the general calls for a battle, in which you take your position and pray to god that the enemy doesn't kill you.
VS
Modern: Constant nagging sensation that the enemy might be upon you causing you to twitch at every unexpected sound.

>stabbed in the heart and die instantly

vs

>blown up by IED, get trapped in your carrier, survive with third degree burns over 90% of your body then succumb to your wounds weeks later in hospital

Most people could trust that that they'd survive an ancient battle, especially if they were on the victorious side. Most casualties took place during the flight, which is why ancient battles tend to have really lopsides stats. The trick on the losing end was to not break first and not be amongst the last to run.

thanks for the input 13 year old

Just for who?

I'm 22.
Games like overwatch with a healthbar are liked more than first person shooters with guns that kill you instantly.
That's because instant death is cancer and cannot be countered. Modern war is full of instant death to everyone.

Lindy?

>Heroes are People that go on a frenzy

People that did this were crusified in the roman army

Are you 10? Why are you on a history board?

> Literally lewronggeneration shitposting

You're oversimplifying this to a degree that's just ridiculous , how dumb are you?

I'm a darksoulsfag

Less than the average person I think.
These days a bomb can wipe out millions.
In the past every soldier had value because you couldn't just delete all of them unless you sank their ship or burnt their castle or some shit.

Military history has and amazing fluctuation in worth of soldiers because of Thrones way they were used, western soldiers today have An amazingly valuable function simply because they are relatively few, there is no "canonfodder" today, save forthé french foreign legion

A roman soldiers in comparison was much more dispensible, just look at the practice of decimation, yes they were orthopedie a lot and probably had a great deal of honour but i would rather ben a recruit in today's army than a centurion in the roman army.

*Honored a lot, goddamn autocorrect

Also please kurk a bit more before responding tot threads you have clearly no knowledge about and please Remember that this site is 18+ "darksoulsfag"

>Also please kurk a bit more before responding tot threads you have clearly no knowledge about and please Remember that this site is 18+ "darksoulsfag"
"no"

yeah sure because western armies don't fight alot. They just use drones and precision strike operations to get things done. That's not really war.
When a real war takes place like it did back in ww2, You'll see huge hoards of people just dying by the millions.
Roman centurions were maybe disposable but they saw the arrows coming and knew how they died instead of simply ceasing to exist.

Using the example of decimation to try to prove your point was not a good idea as it was seen as extremely harsh to the point that we only have a handful of examples over the centuries that it was on the books as a lawful punishment.
With that being said the romans are actually a good example as they due to their massive recruitment pool and dogged determination were fully prepared to plow through their own men if it meant victory.
As an example it can be worth pointing out that the amount of dead soldiers for the us during the vietnam war is about the same as the number of men the romans lost in a single battle against Hannibal.Sure the two wars are hardly comparable but it atleast gives a vague idea of the capacity for losing men and still keeping up the fight that the roman republic had

>JUST

>ancient warfare
>you can see the direct menace to your life
>you hold your shield up
>modern warfare
>bombardments and shelling come from unexpected places
>you cant know for sure where the menace will come from, and peeking for too long in the middle of a gunfight is not adviced

The explanation that historical people were more hardy can't be completly made up. Just take military discipline up to modern law, which would consist of hard physical punishment or even death for "indisciplines" such as getting drunk in camp or responding your commanding officer. Also, the fact that historical people were generally more inclined to fight to the death over minor stuff such as a game of dice is indicative of them just not perceiving death the same way we do.

He's talking about it being a percent, back then there wasn't much for young, able guys /but/ some sort of inevitable conscription so your soldier pool made them look more dispensable than you think. A small drown machine-guns a marine poking out an ally? A much bigger loss in practical terms for his chain of command than a longbowman peeking around an aqueduct or someshit and getting luckshot'd by an arrow himself

>Melee combat was less dangerous

Kek

Life Is not vidya you fucking idiot

It was. Its ridiculously hard to kill an armed and armoured man whos facing you and trying not to be killed

Are you literally retarded?
Battles before gun powder were much more brutal and lasted longer.
I am talking about actual fighting, line versus line, man versus man. I just wanted to point that out before you start screaming "but battles like Somma And Verdun lasted for months!!!1!". This was a different type of battle than those of medieval ages.
Now, reasons why combat today Is way less lethal and brutal are simple:
A) Medical advance connected to military advance. You no longer have to die after getting scratched by and getting infection.
B) Soldiers are way more valued than they were in past as countries put thousand of dolars/euros to train, equip and feed every single soldier. Concept of Cannon fodders is a thing of past when especially in medieval times, peasants and infantry were used to tire the enemy before heavy infantry/cavalry charges.
C) Killing a surrendering enemy is a war crime these days and even if that doesn't mean that every prisoner survives, accepting this prevents generals from slaughtering whole armies or slaughtering routing enemy. Ofc, there are exceptions to this, ie. Iraq war, but remember that in past more casualities usually happened when one of the armies started breaking.

Of course, you can argue that Wars Are more devastating today but that is not because they're more brutal but because the scale of wars is much larger

You obviously know more about this than me, and you're right i think 1/4th of the population of the roman Republic died at cannae although those numbers were probably inflated

>back then there wasn't much for young, able guys /but/ some sort of inevitable conscription
That's nonsense. Keep your fantasy away from historical discussions.

That depends on the armour the fighters are wearing. The neigh impregnable armour your talking about wasn't exactly common during the short historical timespan it was availible. Chainmail, if any armour, is historically the default, and that shit doesn't cover your whole body nor is it immune to weapons.
However people then just like now a days prefer to not get themselves killed which means that a fighter tends to not take unessecary risks in a battle if he can helo it.

guns are cancer in vidya and cancer in real life

Not if they did it against the enemy in the heat of combat you fucking retard. They'd only get into trouble if they disobeyed orders to do it.

youtube.com/watch?v=FDNyU1TQUXg

His video on this is pretty spot on. I agree with him that fighting other people in melee combat seems a lot less psychologically damaging them constantly worrying you could get sniped or annihilated by a shell every waking second. At least in the former case you have some control over the situation, and can run and shit if things start going south.

Also you're not being slowly deafened and poisoned, sometimes by the very weapons you're using to defend yourself with.

Most medieval battles lasted literally minutes.