[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Icelander

. . . I'm trying to find ballpark figures for TL2 to TL4 wars. And historians at that time rarely recorded facts about the incidence of rape or murders contrary to official policy.

This covers a lot of ground. Armies of the Thirty Years War [1618-48] were known to be pretty savage in terms of atrocities -- their foes were of the Wrong Religion so torture, murder and other crimes seemed to make God happy. (In the eyes of the atrocity-committers, I should note.)

Two generations later such atrocities were frowned upon in intra-European wars. (They did happen but were against orders and punishable.) In the eighteenth century most wars were for limited objectives -- the gaining of a province or so (see Silesia in the War of the Austrian Succession.) Mass atrocity would not only anger the people you were trying to add to your state but would also cut down on your income. (Killing lots of workers and driving others off does tend to cut down on the GDP.)

That said there were always exceptions. If the defenders of a town refused to surrender under certain conditions (after the creation of a "practicable breach", for example) the common soldiers saw said refusal as justifying the worst possible behavior. See Badajoz, 1812. Even Wellington, known as a pretty fierce disciplinarian, could not restrain his troops from the sack of a friendly (Spanish) town after the French garrison had inflicted incredible casualties on the British assault.

So preventing atrocity depends on several factors, including, but not limited to:

1.) How severe is the punishment for atrocity;

2.) How likely this punishment is (how efficient is the provost marshal & his men {MPs for later ages;})

3.) How much justification the soldiers themselves can find for atrocity (heavy losses, death of a popular commander, lack of pay and food, possibly general anger);

4.) How alike, or different, are the potential victims of atrocity (just like you, or God-cursed blasphemers!)

5.) How important is the maintenance of discipline to the soldiers themselves (if they pride themselves on self-order and discipline vs. various armed mobs -- tell them that mass atrocity is what thugs in uniform do, not the Brigade of Steel).

No one approach is going to guarantee or eliminate atrocity, but an intelligent commander can shift the odds.

Very few people truly enjoy war.

There are exceptions. See Patton and Ernst Junger.