War and Warfare

I watched a movie this week about the changing face of warfare that I found very interesting. In this day and age a soldier is thought of as courageous, we honor our men and women in uniform. But it turns out that when gunpowder was invented not only was it inefficient (shooting in any direction it wanted)but it was the opposite of courageous. A knight took pride in his skills with a sword, now being a knight was not his only job. To be respected a knight had to learn about the arts since firing a gun at your opponent didn't take much training. Knights no longer could face the man they were dueling, duels did not exist. All of these issues led to the downfall of the knight as it was once known. Gunpowder changed battlefield medicine. Recovery from a sword wound was relatively simple. When gunpowder came around so did a massive amount of amputees, bullets would shatter the bone making it impossible to save. From these severe injuries came disease like gangrene.
There were of course the occasional soldiers that refused to carry a gun or fire a cannon, however the majority stood in awe as the primitive cannons blew nothing but a rock and a lot of smoke at both sides of the battlefield. I wonder why more people didn't speak out about gunpowder. Probably because it meant power. It seems to me that the more "powerful" the weapons become, the less honor there is in fighting. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Is it courageous to hit a button and assume that the computers will direct the bomb to the correct target? I tend to think not.
All in all gun powder may very well be one of the worst inventions in the history of man kind, even if it did also create fireworks.