I heard that, throughout most of history, military battles were not particularly deadly affairs. The expectation was not that a lot of people would be killed, but that when it seemed when one side had an advantage the other would just retreat, and they would keep the vast majority of their soldiers.
Is this true? Were military skirmishes not that deadly in, say, the era of the Roman Empire?
It depends, roman battles tended to be bloodier than Greek battles for instance.
The population of earth was much, much lower back then. So yes, the casualties of battles tended to be much lower than you'd imagine simply because the total number of people involved is much lower than you'd expect. This doesn't mean that battles were less brutal, however. It just means that fewer people are involved.
Well yes obviously commanders would try their best to avoid unnecessary casualties you fucking retard use your brain.
It depends on what you mean by deadly. But yes, battles like Cannae where the losing force was eradicated almost to the last man were the exceptions, not the rules. And most casualties would be inflicted in the post-rout chase, so the winning side of the battle often had negligable casualties. But a lot of people still died. If you're looking at roman era battles, than assuming our sources are accurate (ehhh), and taking a few off the top of my head, we have battles like Cynoscephalae, where the Romans committed about 32,500 troops to have 700 killed, and the Macedonians had about 25,500 of which 8,000 were killed. Pharsalus had about 33,000 on Caesar's side, of which about 230 died (again, if you believe your sources, which in this case is Caesar, who might not be truthful), and Pompey's boys committed about 50,000, of which at most 15,000 died. Actium saw a combined 7,500 killed of a force that was at least combined 40,000. These sorts of figures would be higher than in the classical greek era, but lower than in other premodern battles, like the crusader era. There's a lot that goes into it.
Another factor is that for most of history, slavery was an accepted practice, and so you had an incentive to try and take enemy soldiers alive whenever possible.
Look up the Roman-Jewish wars. The casualty numbers for both sides are ridiculous high.
>but that when it seemed when one side had an advantage the other would just retreat, and they would keep the vast majority of their soldiers.
Most battles werent big brawls with people fighting all over. People kept in line, the line protected you. If you left the line you would be easily singled out and attacked. It usually was one big pushfight (in cases were both sides had shields) and one would keep up the pressure and await for an opening in the enemies shieldwall to poke your spear or sword in.
Lindybeige raised some points about this. The majority of times when battles turned into bloody slaughters was when one of the sides fled, not a tactical retreat, but ran away and was promptly chased and slaughtered by the other side to avoid the enemy to regroup and having to fight them all over again.
some battles have hardly all combatants engaged,also controlling an army as a commander numbering more than 20000 is a very huge task,basically you need to rely on your subordinates for local actions
encirclements are hard and most large forces would be able to break through,even the most savage of encirclement (Cannae) had a number of Romans fighting through
Why did those wars end up being particularly bloody? Was it having the global populations of jews spread out through your empire that did it?
Not him, but it was primarily because there were reprisals against civilians on both sides, and once that particular line is crossed, you start getting more or less indiscriminate slaughter every time an army passes through an area under the control of the other side. Military losses weren't particularly exceptional for any of the 3 Jewish wars, it was the civilian deaths that were way higher than normal.
that was because for a long time in history, professional armies did not exist... a nation simply couldn't afford to lose 5000 farmers on a military campaign
Depends, but it's not all that uncommon for wars to have very few major battles and consist primarily of maneuvering and sieging.
Off the top of my head, Belisarius' campaigns in Italy against the Ostrogoths were almost exclusively maneuvering around and seizing settlements with only one major (indecisive) pitched battle.
The 30 Years' War was also like that. The majority of the war consisted of maneuvering around and subjugating occupied regions with a major battle coming only once every couple of years.
Without gunpowder, killing an armored man is extremely difficult.
Did the Jews even stand a chance? I know they were capable of causing some real damage but was there ever a hope for total victory?
Against Rome at its apex? Lol no.
Why even try then? Was it because Jesus wasn't the warlord Messiah they were hoping for and decided to just expedite the whole thing?
Well, Jesus wasn't the Messiah at all, as far Jews were concerned. Christian Jews did not take part in the rebellions.
Revolts are simply not entirely rational events, and the Jews REALLY fucking hated Roman rule for a variety of reasons, internal and external.
Because you dont want a group of people imposing their language, culture and system
You know what is funny, germanics are so retarded that they think ancient Hebrews behaved the same as modern "jews"
What do you mean? As in that Jews were more willing to get into open confrontations than they are today?
I don't know enough about Jews during Roman rule
The first one had an outside chance. It was launched almost simultaneously with the collapse of the Julio-CLaudian dynasty, and if you had a real dissolution of the Empire in the Year of the Four Emperors rather than any one claimant clawing his way to the top, you probably would have had a Judean victory. But that's more opportunism than anything in particular the Hebrews did, and even so, they'd probably wind up as a client to one of the successor states/empires.
The other two, nah.