Fort Tary's survivors

Were the handful of wounded Temple Loyalist survivors of the Fort Tary's attack court marshalled and hanged by siddarmark?

The Text evidence was that they were given the best care available after the attack but if Siddarmark is hanging all the TL's who were militia/regulars for Treason then wasn't it a case of the survivors being out of the "frying pan and into the fire?"

I imagine the enlisted have chance of living.

The "officers"?

Hang em high.

Alistair wrote:Were the handful of wounded Temple Loyalist survivors of the Fort Tary's attack court marshalled and hanged by siddarmark?

The Text evidence was that they were given the best care available after the attack but if Siddarmark is hanging all the TL's who were militia/regulars for Treason then wasn't it a case of the survivors being out of the "frying pan and into the fire?"

There was no comment that I recall of trying militia for trason. That discussion had to do with deserters who violated their oaths from the regular RSA.

However I would also think that militia officers and enlisted alike could be tried for war crimes. That bunch in Ft Tairys was elbows deep into that sort of thing in Shiloh. So not being tried for treason doesn't mean they get off scot free.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

Alistair wrote:Were the handful of wounded Temple Loyalist survivors of the Fort Tary's attack court marshalled and hanged by siddarmark?

The Text evidence was that they were given the best care available after the attack but if Siddarmark is hanging all the TL's who were militia/regulars for Treason then wasn't it a case of the survivors being out of the "frying pan and into the fire?"

There was no comment that I recall of trying militia for trason. That discussion had to do with deserters who violated their oaths from the regular RSA.

However I would also think that militia officers and enlisted alike could be tried for war crimes. That bunch in Ft Tairys was elbows deep into that sort of thing in Shiloh. So not being tried for treason doesn't mean they get off scot free.

Don

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A fine legal case could be made for trials for treason for every single citizen of Siddarmark who took up arms against the government of the Republic - militia, RSA, irregular; officer, enlisted, individual enthusiast. But it's a terrible political argument for resolving any civil war: you end up with a resolution of it that amounts to legal genocide. So you get a whole lot of forgiveness, and to make things settle down, you don't even bring up anything but the worst of it: punish the leaders in ways that eliminate their ability to lead any repeats of that, and smack around hard the people whose activities were worse than mere war allows for and for whom you've got knock-down evidence of that wrongdoing.

Safehold doesn't have quite the refined sensibilities we do, so they may be able to get away with a lot more execution - approaching Stohnair death camps - than we would, or at least be cheerfully tolerant of it in the event but setting themselves up for generations of upset as a result. (Our own refined sensibilities do come from learning the hard way - no reason that Safehold can't have that still ahead of them!)

War crimes are going to be trickier things here. Certainly the conduct of Temple Loyalist forces has exceeded the laws and customs of war on Safehold, but this has been a holy war, not a conventional secular one, so holding people to those customs may be considered unfair. On the other hand, it's the effective position of the Allies that this really is a conflict that can and should be conducted and considered as a more-or-less secular, conventional one, and they are themselves treating enemies on those terms, so holding enemies to those standards is plausible and arguably necessary.

This sort of thing is another reason not to envy Stohnair and other Republic officials at all. I think I can frame the issues pretty well, but framing them just means, in this case, appreciating that making the decisions will be awful.

JeffEngel wrote:A fine legal case could be made for trials for treason for every single citizen of Siddarmark who took up arms against the government of the Republic - militia, RSA, irregular; officer, enlisted, individual enthusiast. But it's a terrible political argument for resolving any civil war: you end up with a resolution of it that amounts to legal genocide. So you get a whole lot of forgiveness, and to make things settle down, you don't even bring up anything but the worst of it: punish the leaders in ways that eliminate their ability to lead any repeats of that, and smack around hard the people whose activities were worse than mere war allows for and for whom you've got knock-down evidence of that wrongdoing.

Safehold doesn't have quite the refined sensibilities we do, so they may be able to get away with a lot more execution - approaching Stohnair death camps - than we would, or at least be cheerfully tolerant of it in the event but setting themselves up for generations of upset as a result. (Our own refined sensibilities do come from learning the hard way - no reason that Safehold can't have that still ahead of them!)

War crimes are going to be trickier things here. Certainly the conduct of Temple Loyalist forces has exceeded the laws and customs of war on Safehold, but this has been a holy war, not a conventional secular one, so holding people to those customs may be considered unfair. On the other hand, it's the effective position of the Allies that this really is a conflict that can and should be conducted and considered as a more-or-less secular, conventional one, and they are themselves treating enemies on those terms, so holding enemies to those standards is plausible and arguably necessary.

This sort of thing is another reason not to envy Stohnair and other Republic officials at all. I think I can frame the issues pretty well, but framing them just means, in this case, appreciating that making the decisions will be awful.

Agreed...mostly. But let's move the discussion out of the realm of the abstract. If George has murdered Sam, raped and killed his wfe and teen aged daughter before Sam's eyes before his eyes he dies, the principle that meeds to be established here is that George can't claim that he was doing God's will. What he did was criminal and needs to be punished as such.

Finally, that is my point.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:This sort of thing is another reason not to envy Stohnair and other Republic officials at all. I think I can frame the issues pretty well, but framing them just means, in this case, appreciating that making the decisions will be awful.

Agreed...mostly. But let's move the discussion out of the realm of the abstract. If George has murdered Sam, raped and killed his wfe and teen aged daughter before Sam's eyes before his eyes he dies, the principle that meeds to be established here is that George can't claim that he was doing God's will. What he did was criminal and needs to be punished as such.

Finally, that is my point.

Don

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Oh yeah, no argument there - that one is splendidly well evidenced and it's clearly an atrocity by the customs of war. (Alas, probably not an uncommon event though, nor one that wouldn't be allowed to pass often enough.) The divine command theory of rape and murder, if any defense lawyer would care to try it, can and should be stamped down with a vengeance as soon as it comes up.

But when it comes to "ordinary" wartime activity, it'd set a bad precedent legally to punish every instance as treason and the political effect would be to guarantee more civil war down the road.

Maybe the thing to do is to reject the God's will defense whenever it comes up, and ignore it where the putative crimes would be forgiven anyway in order to achieve reconciliation and peace.

Been a while since I've had time to post anything, but IIRC, weren't captured Temple Loyalists being sent to southeastern Siddarmark to work on forced labor farms? There was a brief description somewhere of the conditions being harsh, but survivable, with a fair amount of proselytizing taking place and large numbers of guards. I seem to recall that the Charis forces were even "selling" this as a differentiator between them and the Church forces... "If we capture you, at least we won't murder you like the Church does..."

What would likely happen is the officers would be tried for barraty (legal term for mutiny by officers) and treason and as likely be executed. Enlisted would likely also be tried for mutiny against the government and receive long prison sentences, they could also be sent to penal units and used as cannon fodder.

JeffEngel wrote:

Oh yeah, no argument there - that one is splendidly well evidenced and it's clearly an atrocity by the customs of war. (Alas, probably not an uncommon event though, nor one that wouldn't be allowed to pass often enough.) The divine command theory of rape and murder, if any defense lawyer would care to try it, can and should be stamped down with a vengeance as soon as it comes up.

But when it comes to "ordinary" wartime activity, it'd set a bad precedent legally to punish every instance as treason and the political effect would be to guarantee more civil war down the road.

Maybe the thing to do is to reject the God's will defense whenever it comes up, and ignore it where the putative crimes would be forgiven anyway in order to achieve reconciliation and peace.

I would agree that no one should be punished for acting as a soldier, but there is the treason issue if someone was enlisted in the army and switches sides. As we see from textev in HFQ, that becomes more complex.

Don

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WeberFan wrote:Been a while since I've had time to post anything, but IIRC, weren't captured Temple Loyalists being sent to southeastern Siddarmark to work on forced labor farms? There was a brief description somewhere of the conditions being harsh, but survivable, with a fair amount of proselytizing taking place and large numbers of guards. I seem to recall that the Charis forces were even "selling" this as a differentiator between them and the Church forces... "If we capture you, at least we won't murder you like the Church does..."

Yeah, but that was for dealing with Temple Lands regulars, Dohlarans and Desnairians, not RSA turncoats.

Don

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