Most people today don’t understand the majority of
slaughter came when one side broke and turned to run.
Well put. In those days, turning your back and running was a death sentence in less you were in the cavalry. Better to hold your ground and die than run. It was almost certain death. There wasn’t much of a way to pull off a strategic or staggered retreat. The absolute gore on the battlefields in those days must have been horrific. Tens of thousands of bodies laying around, some with limbs hacked off, barely seeing our of your helmet, slipping in pools of blood. Now we fight wars over the horizon. We don’t even see the enemy except from advanced optics and space based platforms. I always wonder how Julius Caesar would operate on the modern battlefield.
Somewhere I read a translation of a letter to the commander of the Roman army complaining about his troops, they had been stopped at a small bridge by one naked Viking.a Bezerker I presume as they usually wanted to die for various reasons and from records they fought naked and to the end to go to Valhalla in glory. One man held them at the bridge for three hours so his fellow troops could escape. I think I found it Gutenberg press or maybe Internet Arvhive