War Aims

[sknox]

From the same article: "... A soldier earned a one-time praemium or discharge benefit ..."
When I hear pension I think of regular payments for the balance of a person's lifetime. When I mentioned a "mustering-out payment" I was referring to the praemium. It's a small point but perhaps worth making. Maybe "pension" has a different connotation in different countries. At least we aren't talking about hotels!

 

[Caledfwlch]

From the same article: "... A soldier earned a one-time praemium or discharge benefit ..."
When I hear pension I think of regular payments for the balance of a person's lifetime. When I mentioned a "mustering-out payment" I was referring to the praemium. It's a small point but perhaps worth making. Maybe "pension" has a different connotation in different countries. At least we aren't talking about hotels!

Modern English views Pension indeed as meaning "to continually pay" as you say, quite rightly, but the Roman mind viewed the word, or it's latin root words as simply meaning "to pay" which does not suggest a continual cycle of payments. So We are all technically correct I guess!

 

[Caledfwlch]

Incidentally, I am sure the Roman Army DID have a Pension in the sense of a continued payment over a period of time.
I read Simon Scarrows marvellous Macro & Cato books, and I am sure he mentions that Legionaries (I think voluntarily) pay into some sort of fund administered by their Legion, which was a combination of insurance policy if injured and unable to continue to serve, and a small pension of sorts.

 

[Caledfwlch]

This is more germane to our little side jaunt into Roman Pensions than the actual thread topic.
It's an interesting article from a "think tank" using the Romans, and the benefits such as Pensions they gave Imperial Troops, and how removing/downgrading those benefits contributed vastly to the collapse of the Empire, AND the Eastern and Western Empires, though when the Eastern Empire learned its mistakes (maybe they had a similar article to read?) it went on to live for another 1000 years, whilst the Western Empire stayed dead and buried - It's for Elites in the US Military & Civil Administration about the dangers of cost cutting on such things.
Lessons from the Late Roman Army

 

[sknox]

It is a bit of a side jaunt, though the general topic of how a society treats its army certainly is a factor in considering war aims. What a society does with its army in peace directly affects what it may hope to do in war.

When I look at the many wars with which I'm familiar (not because I'm a military historian but because there were a great many wars in the Middle Ages), the very phrase "war aims" gets awfully shaky. In the first place, going to war was not so clearly defined. A prince went to war, not a nation. That prince typically grievances of one sort or another, or claims or both, and resorting to physical violence was simply the means to redress or assert. He would present the case to his barons, who joined him or not. The prince declared a date and place for assembling troops, and it was always a bit of a surprise to see who actually turned up, and how long they stayed in the field with him.

Still more obscure would be the activities of individual barons (I use the term to cover all the lesser to middling nobility), who would launch raids against one another that often looked more like family feuds, or gang rivalries, than like wars. Then there were cities, which had militia that they deployed in endless military adventures, offensive or defensive. Most of these leave no trace of motives, but when something like a justification pops up, it's almost always couched as a defense of liberties or rights--not the way we think of this, but as liberties as specifically attached to bits of land.

There's the endless fighting in southern Italy, where the rules of vendetta formed the rules of war, and combat in the field blended over into kidnap and assassination. There's the almost as endless fighting in Spain between Christians and Moors, whose details look a crazy patchwork when viewed solely in terms of a war between religions. Similarly with the wars of the eastern frontier between Germans, Poles, Slavs and Russians. Broadly one can see it as Roman Catholics versus pagans versus Russian Orthodox, but in looking at specific campaigns it's clear that is more context than particular war aim.

I'm inclined to argue that it's misleading to speak of war aims during the Middle Ages in the same sense and degree that it's misleading to look at truces and peace treaties during that time in modern terms. There was a huge shift in the early modern era, and it divides medieval from modern. Because of this, I draw back from assertions that say war has "always" been this or that. Wars have changed. Looking at the specifics will tell us more than will any broad generalization. Humans are always more interesting than humanity, or so sez I.

 

[Caledfwlch]

I think it depends on whether we decide there is a formal set of "proper" War Aims, and if something does not fall within those, then it's "muddled" etc.

I could see that "proper" aims would be stuff like "defend our land" "conquer land for its wealth/agriculture/resources etc" "Revenge against opponent for past issues " "flex my muscles so nobody will mess with me and my dawgs"

Whilst "im going to war because Lord X cheated at our last Poker game" would be more muddled.

Even your example of Moors v Christians - whilst as you say describing them simply as "Religious Wars" is a very simple Aim to subscribe to a complex situation, it does still essentially boil down to "Us" vs "Them" in a context where "Them" came from somewhere else.
Sure, a Christian Lord may well work with a Moorish Lord in order to take out, or take from another Christian Lord, and all sorts of combinations of that, but that's more a case of immediate Greed perhaps getting in the way of an ideal Long Term Goal.
The Germanic Invasions of dark ages Britannia for example fairly simply boil down to 1 aim on each side: Germanics: "We need to steal good Land to settle" the Britons "We need to stop our Land being stolen, and send those barbarian thugs back across the Germanic Ocean"
That's the long term ideal aim of both sides. But the reality is, British Kings would have allied with Germanic Kings, to attack and harm rival British Kingdoms, Saxon Kings would betray Saxon Kings to the Britons, in order to achieve an immediate aim based on personal greed, or even as part of the ultimate aim - maybe betrayed King was a danger to the goal of "steal Good Land to protect for me and my people" and for whatever reason, the alliance with the British King has caused that ultimate Aim to be delayed by 10 years, BUT not going for that alliance/the betrayal could have seen that ultimate aim defeated within 4 years - the British King actually wanted to come after you first, he wasn't being bothered by your now betrayed rival, also because your betrayed rival knew the British King wasn't coming after him, he was planning on attacking you from the rear, once your lads were engaged with the Britons, however, you either promised a better deal, or paid a bit more gold, so your deal, despite being less advantageous to the British King, in terms of his ultimate Aim, was taken, thanks to the British Kings own immediate greed.

 

[sknox]

I guess it's the boiling down that gets under my skin. As a historian, it's the variation that interest me, not the reduction. Pretty much all human behavior and all human societies can be boiled down until there's nothing left but bones, and yes bones merit study in their own right, but that's not the whole of the story.

Where I get bothered is when people look at the bones ("the bottom line", "what it all boils down to", "what it really is", and all such variations) and speak as if they have found some truer truth and further examination is unnecessary. The rhetoric of boiling down invites that. We have, the words imply, arrived at the destination and the journey is over. We have the core truth, so the discussion is over.

I'm pretty sure I worry over this not least because I'm a teacher. My whole job is to teach students to keep going, that the discussion is never over, to get them to elaborate rather than to boil down, to explore rather than to declare. And because it is a human instinct to simplify, my job is eternal. Sometimes it spills over into forums. This is exacerbated because I'm now also a writer. I never want characters who have only one motive, one behavior, and there is never a core truth. Finally, I worry over this because I'm sure I'm right, that the proper practice of the historian's craft is precisely not to boil down, but to describe human behavior in all its complexity and resist the temptation to reduce, for reductionism is a cardinal sin among our folk.

All that taken together can make me a bit of a bore.

>I think it depends on whether we decide there is a formal set of "proper" War Aims
Exactly. The phrase should be used with some awareness of historical context. Is it the same in 400BC as in 400AD as in 1400 as in 2000? I argue it is not; therefore, it is a mistake to speak of war aims as if they were a universal and constant concept.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Very few wars have been waged against countries that have nothing or relatively little for the aggressor to gain.

Most wars have been fought with some justification from the aggressor for their actions. Whether those justifications were justified depends on whether they won or not. The Americans used the atomic bomb against Japan to end WW2 quicker; the British firebombed major German cities for the same reason. If it had been the Japanese or Germans that had carried out those acts, they would have been seen as warcrimes or crimes against humanity. As it was the victors who did it they were seen as necessary acts.