Chivalry and Honor

[Ricky B]

Hi Rudolph,

I think you hit on what Paul mentioned, which was the Chivalry was dying by the Napoleonic Wars - and I doubt any war, being a brutal occupation, didn't result in cases of brutality. I believe though that the balance went in cycles through history, or even in single wars, with a tendency toward chivalry or brutality.

Regarding the US Civil War, I see it as a great example of the mix of chivalry and brutality that many or most wars tend toward, with most getting more brutal as the fighting goes on. The Civil War did see brutal prisons on both sides, generally but not always without malice but more due to a lack of desire to improvide conditions for the large numbers of prisoners kept in them, more than any sanitation system could handle in the limited space given over to the prisoners, for those that suffered from sanitation problems.

But the flip side is that early on in the war both sides did offer parole to prisoners, allowing them to go home and await an exchange before fighting again, and this worked fairly well. I think it was the Union that decided to stop exchanging prisoners to make the South's manpower problems worse, but could be wrong there.

However, in general the civilians on both sides suffered relatively little during the war. There were exceptions, of course, sometimes due to purely criminal acts by rogue bands of soldiers, other times due to higher level policy, but in general the higher level policy of ones such as Sherman who impacted a large part of the Southern citizens was to "make war hell" but without taking so much that the civilians could not survive. His men had orders to take food from the civilians in the areas they passed through, making his "march to the sea" possible, but to be sure and leave each family enough food to last them through to the next harvest. They had orders to destroy homes and businesses when involved in the war in some way, and I don't believe they generally destroyed homes outside of those that were used in military/guerilla ops against them. Again, there were exceptions but that was the idea - to make people decide the damage they would suffer if they resisted the Union soldiers would be worse than giving in.

The soldiers themselves often treated each other as distant family in many cases, trading tobacco for sugar, fraternizing, etc, as long as they weren't in battle. This amazes me just because they fought so hard in battle, and lost so many friends, but many could still deal with the other side honorably.

I just bring in the Civil War because I know it and it had a lot of examples of both sides, but I would have to say that overall, considering the passions of the North and South, the soldiers especially respected each other generally and treated each other honorably, doing what they felt they had to do but most not going past that point.

Rick