Would like to read a story that describes a military battle in an era before there were firearms. Fiction or non-fiction.
Would like to read a story that describes a military battle in an era before there were firearms. Fiction or non-fiction.
Lumpy is currently posting https://storiesonline.net/n/34072/in-the-shadow-of-lions and that qualifies.
Argon has https://storiesonline.net/s/72279/the-tales-of-tanitsar - which qualifies - and the three stories in https://storiesonline.net/universe/620/knights-and-commoners which almost qualify, some guns are present but are considered unreliable luxuries.
colt45 had https://storiesonline.net/s/44463/sea-king https://storiesonline.net/s/47790/shastas-tale and https://storiesonline.net/s/51360/quest-for-knowledge (premier only)
Jay Cantrell has https://storiesonline.net/s/70888/always-on-guard and https://storiesonline.net/s/17413/the-rise-of-azkoval (unfinished).
The stories in https://storiesonline.net/universe/65/damsels-in-distress also fit.
Having been born a couple of years after the invention of firearms, I don't know how realistic the battle scenes are. My suspicion is that Argon's stories come closest.
Maybe historical accounts of real battles would be a better way to go.
Some of FantasyLover's stories fit. Like the Earl's Man. https://storiesonline.net/a/fantasylover
I recently come across a material (unfortunately I'm unable to immediately link to it) with claimed to be summarizing/popularizing quite a wide research and they claimed to rather considerably review popular understanding of ancient, and not so ancient, battle from individual soldier's point of view, triggered by seeming discrepancies of historical statistics, namely the relatively little casualty rate of supposedly brutal battles, especially on the winning side.
What they come up was, basically, that you should rather look at protests clashing with police as a surprisingly reliable and realistic model of pre-firearms combat rather than the great war meat grinder that has redefined our understanding of it all. And for a reminder, it was a considerable shock when it happened.
And so, the most of battle the front lines are relatively static, not in direct contact, and instead few braves are taunting each other to break cohesion -- with is paramount. With few exceptions of real elites. Where the clashes do occur, so does rotations, individual combat measured in minutes. It all made ton of sense. Unfortunately or not rendering much of the popular imagination of epic mass combat to be just that, popular artistic misconceptions.