Did the firearm make warfare more or less brutal? I would have said less, if you discount the scale at which they allowed war to happen in by the transitive property that they allow reliable control of a population.
Similarly, I don't think advanced weaponry make fighting more brutal. Also, MBTs are going out of style pretty fast, and some of those other things are outdated too.
>Did the firearm make warfare more or less brutal?
It absolutely did. Ancient warfare almost never really consisted of the grand bloody battles you see in movies. A vast majority of it was siege and intimidation tactics. Routing your enemy from the field was the goal, not the annihilation of their forces. This old world of warfare persisted through the invention of early firearms into the Napoleonic era, but came to a crashing halt in the American Civil War, when generals finally had to leave those tactics behind in the face of modern artillery, repeating rifles, and industrially driven "total war". From that point on, warfare changed completely. The objective became destruction of the enemy forces, and their country's ability to wage war, and this came to a head with the American bombings of Germany and Japan in WWII; an event unparalleled in world history for its sheer brutality and number of innocents killed.
I don't think this is correct. I could mention many cases where the objective was annihilation of the enemy and the destruction of a country. The men were killed and the women and children were enslaved. This was the ancient norm.
I'll mention the battle of Cannae, where 60% of the Roman army of 86,000 was killed in one day, in hand to hand fighting with spears, lances, and swords:
>I'll mention the battle of Cannae, where 60% of the Roman army of 86,000 was killed in one day, in hand to hand fighting with spears, lances, and swords:
Point being, Cannae is in the top 3 battles for the entire history of ancient Rome. That's 500 years of warfare, with a few instances of casualties at that level. Whereas, those kind of casualties were a normal occurrence that would hardly make the news on the Western Front in WW1, or the eastern front in WW2.
It's also about the sheer brutality of modern warfare. People were never disembowled into hundreds of pieces on a regular basis in ancient warfare. You never had the experience of watching an entire column of troops next to you be vaporized instantly. It's a completely powerless experience, as opposed to hand to hand fighting with an enemy you can confront face to face.
Similarly, I don't think advanced weaponry make fighting more brutal. Also, MBTs are going out of style pretty fast, and some of those other things are outdated too.