n7axw wrote:Hi Lyonheart et al.,
I really don't believe BGV is going to start committing atrocities either. But PeterZ is right to be concerned about his anger. Then there is the fatigue factor along with all the burned out farms and villages they've seen...
Were I to decide what to do with POWs, I would detail dragoons as guards and then start transporting them to the rear with the empty wagons/sleds that brought forward my provisions. Once you have them where the supply access is better, establish a POW camp.
If you can transport them in heated, covered wagons without rations or winter clothing inside, you can do without many guards at least - break out and you're dead. Stay a well-behaved prisoner and you live, even get to sit down and enjoy the ride without having to march.
That does assume that you can get back to more guards before it gets warm, and that you can spare that much wagon, food, and even that reduced amount of guards. I worry that they may have planned on not taking prisoners just to make this winter campaign work - not to kill them outright, just to leave them without weapons or much shelter. But that's not substantially much less of an atrocity if it's sure to kill them anyway.
BGV has a lot of anger. I'm sure his troops do too. And that anger has been well earned. It's just that so many of the people who will be within range of it are poor suckers drafted into the AoG or even TL militias on no personal account more than they lived somewhere where they could be scooped up, and have followed orders just like the ICA troops across the field. Sure, some of them could have been heroes and martyrs who refused to carry them out, or very clever sorts who didn't carry them out and weren't caught. But that's a high bar to meet, and the military discipline the ICA itself has would look down on people treating its orders that way for whatever reason.
It's not a call to treat everyone in an AoG or TL militia uniform with kid gloves. That's too much to ask and it's never going to happen anyway. It's just a reminder that war IS hell and a hope that characters we like can carry it out without being any more like devils than they have to be.