For a long
while now I have found that one regular source for many stories in the main
media is the Science Daily web site. For
any hapless intern or late running journo’ it can be a treasure house of
potential items which with a bit of summary and reworking can be made into a
printable or viewable story.
Quite often
indeed there is a “hot story” claimed to be from determined work that is given
a slant or edge to make a point to the punters.
“The Mail” is one newspaper that makes free and sometimes imaginative
use of this web site.
The trouble
is the hacks that work for the main media often do not quite understand what
the article they borrow is really driving at.
Sometimes they make a mess of it.
Usually there are subtleties missed or caveats ignored.
On
advantage of this web site is that it can be possible to go back to source and
see the fuller item in the shape of its original publication. This can be very instructive if compared
against what the main media might make of it.
The story below
about ransom practice in medieval warfare was intriguing because it puts the
fighting in this era into an altogether different perspective.
Many of the
key fighting men, the Captains and Sergeants who did the business, were
mercenaries, paid men who did not necessarily act from personal loyalties or
any of our modern notions of nationalism
It might
explain why down the years the rulers and elites were anxious to gain and keep
control over the way men actually functioned in the battles they were asked to
fight.
In later
centuries when the cannon and the musket and later rifles put the killing and
contact at a distance and changed all this, as did the later murderous industrialisation
of the battlefields.
Given the
way that Chivalry was supposed to work for the horsed elite, if indeed lower
down the ranks in some sphere of the battlefields or indeed the way a battle
was conducted was less about killing and more about winning and taking
prisoners then it makes the typical film or blood and thunder productions very
wrong.
Of course,
this introduces elements of uncertainty into the warfare. Certainly, there were times when a bloodbath
was intended or happened if the combat went out of control. All too often these were members of one
family were seeking to wrest power from their siblings or cousins.
In our
modern age in the conflicts we get into the West seems to have the idea that to
inflict a defeat or two should be enough and then we might negotiate. But what if our enemies neither want to end
the fight nor to talk?
We could be
in the process of finding out.
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