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The lesser class of mediaeval warriors among those whom the Church eventually dignified as Christian soldiers were notorious for spending their time in feudal wars around Europe. Their typically small-scale battles of Christians vs. Christians were more like a combination of gang violence (but armored & mounted) and brigandage. The gang violence was troublesome for peaceful locals, even if they escaped injury and robbery, because the battles would trample crops, and drive off livestock. These were common as disturbances of the peace, and the Church had been trying to rein in the violence, by devising, then tightening, its Pax Dei ("Peace of God"). Pope Urban II (1088–1099), who preached the First Crusade, seems to have been quite aware of the new opportunity to make progress on that persistent problem:
As it happened, European warriors responded with widespread enthusiasm: "God wills it!" Those men were also attracted by a plenary indulgence granted for their sins. …
This is a truly laudable and instructive comment. I hope that it influences the mind and conscience of all who read it.
Throughout history, almost every civilized society of Europe and Asia, whether Christian, pre-Christian, or otherwise, dreaded the presence of men under arms, especially professional soldiers, however necessary they might be. AlligatorDicax writes nothing but the truth in referring to them as brigands and to their conduct as gang violence. Everyone who ever studied ancient history learned that it was because of the danger and instability invariably associated with the presence of troops that the Roman Republic forbade the presence of the Roman legions on the Italian peninsula. The official demarcation of the peninsula's northern frontier was the river Rubicon, and it is thus, thanks to its crossing by Julius Caesar and his legions ("Alea iacta est"), that that name has become permanently linked with a decision from which there is no turning back.
I hardly need add that Caesar's treason to the Roman Republic was the direct cause both of its death and of the birth of the Roman Empire.
Even in this country, until the 1990s no soldier was permitted to leave a military post while clad in fatigues—his battle clothing. The wearing of what the military calls a Class-A uniform signaled the deference that the soldier had to the citizens who employed him and, through his being unarmed, his assurance to those civilians that he was no threat to their lives or property. The reversal of this centuries-old custom ought to reveal to all but the mentally disordered what the government thinks of us.
Topic: Barrage of missiles launched at American troops in Iraq (Read 1212 times)