A bit of revisionist history. “Old wars” like what?
The American Civil war, Mexican American War, the Seven Years war… all fought on battle fields and in towns and front yards.
Go back as far as you like, in the middle centuries they’d fight urban battles- in fact from the middle century back to thousands of years ago, to Rome and records before Rome- battles were fought in cities. In fact sometimes by necessity since cities were often themselves fortified fortresses and walled cities, and many fortresses, castles etc. had their own “mini cities” or sprawling burgs since such fortifications tend to need a lot of goods and services to support the personal and upkeep, and in sieges and such it was prudent to have means to produce goods, food and materials, repair things etc.
Some of our earliest accounts of war involve battles among the towns people. As technology has progressed, the weapons and tactics of war have often become more indiscriminate. One soldier today can wield destructive power equivalent to 10,20,1000 or more men from times past.
The further you went back in war the more personal it became. The closer a soldier needed to be to another. You didn’t snap your finger and a man died, possibly without you even seeing- you had to deliberately and often with brutality and gore stab or bludgeon them to death or such. It might take a battalion of archers to lay down the field of fire in rounds per minute one soldier with a mounted heavy machine gun can.
So our ability to destroy and kill at scale on a per soldier basis has generally increased while our weapons have often become more prone or able to impact large areas or penetrate structures. Destroying a city at one point would usually require deliberate intent (outside of siege against fortified cities), where now destroying a city is a general consequence of proximity to a modern battle. It’s also much easier to hide or distribute active combatants and direct combat support in urban centers and more common in general.
That isn’t to say war is “better” or “worse,” a primary tactic of siege warfare was to force famine and plague upon entire fortifications or cities until everyone died, gave up, or lost their effectiveness to fight.
It could take months or years or more.
So I don’t know what’s worse- being trapped in a walled city for years, locked off from the outside world living in anxiety and fear and vigilance while you and people around you waste away unless the enemy gives up, is somehow routed, or you finally succumb- or having a few really big bombs dropped on you and having all the deaths and suffering (minus the aftermath of war) concentrated in a few days or weeks. But- war has always been a brutal and cutthroat affair with most popular portrayals of historical conflict being fictions.
The American Civil war, Mexican American War, the Seven Years war… all fought on battle fields and in towns and front yards.
Go back as far as you like, in the middle centuries they’d fight urban battles- in fact from the middle century back to thousands of years ago, to Rome and records before Rome- battles were fought in cities. In fact sometimes by necessity since cities were often themselves fortified fortresses and walled cities, and many fortresses, castles etc. had their own “mini cities” or sprawling burgs since such fortifications tend to need a lot of goods and services to support the personal and upkeep, and in sieges and such it was prudent to have means to produce goods, food and materials, repair things etc.
The further you went back in war the more personal it became. The closer a soldier needed to be to another. You didn’t snap your finger and a man died, possibly without you even seeing- you had to deliberately and often with brutality and gore stab or bludgeon them to death or such. It might take a battalion of archers to lay down the field of fire in rounds per minute one soldier with a mounted heavy machine gun can.
It could take months or years or more.
So I don’t know what’s worse- being trapped in a walled city for years, locked off from the outside world living in anxiety and fear and vigilance while you and people around you waste away unless the enemy gives up, is somehow routed, or you finally succumb- or having a few really big bombs dropped on you and having all the deaths and suffering (minus the aftermath of war) concentrated in a few days or weeks. But- war has always been a brutal and cutthroat affair with most popular portrayals of historical conflict being fictions.