Hey James, enlightening stuff, but I didnt word it right. I meant if there was a significant disparity in performance/quality between Europeans under Muslims and Christian Europeans, when it came to warring.
-Cormac MacArt
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I have mulled this question via the warring factions in my own riven brain. By European I will assign Arуans or Indo-Europeans of the greater Caucasian race. We will begin with the Semitic, Punic, Berber, Anatolian Caucasians, those who were all, in every age, bested in war by their northern cousins. To my mind, the race is an adaptation to climate, and the Arуans were superior in war because they were forged and then periodically expelled southward by the harsh northern realms they were bred in. As a question of faith and war we will end by pitting men of vying faiths of the same Arуan race.
First, the Arabs, with low technology, an historical reputation for poor morale and low intelligence, were propelled by Faith alone, poorly equipped, to spread that faith and their language wider than Rome had ever expanded its empire. They imposed their faith on physically and mentally superior Berbers, Germans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Pashtuns, Turks and Tartars.
Light cavalry, without even bow and arrow, simply the saber, conquered a world for the one and only time that such means was sufficient to do so. The places were the flame of Islam burned the brightest, the furthest and the longest, were areas that had been the scenes of protracted religious wars. Hundreds of years of war between the disciples of Christ and Zoroaster had exhausted both Persia and Eastern Rome. The religious priesthoods of both faiths in Asia switched sides and became propagators of the New Faith. That is not a battle between Arуans of varied faith, but between Semites and Arуans in which the Arуan priests betray their warrior class to become the brain trust of the ascendant sand people.
USG veterans might relate.
From Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria to Morocco, for 400 years, orthodoxy and some 30 sects of heretics had battled and murdered each other over points of Christian doctrine. Nowhere was Islam accepted more readily than here, where the Latin/Berber/German warrior classes had been subject to the bickering of a fanatic and schismatic priesthood for two sorrowful ages.
So much for the initial success of Islam. In later ages, how did Arуan Christians perform in war against Arуan Muslims?
In our own age of bug hunt warfare faith seems a mute question, with secular atheists ruling the increasingly remote battle space. I will not look for the connection, simply survey Medieval and Early Modern match ups. Do recall, that the apex warriors of the Middle Ages were not Christian or Muslim:
Huns were heathen Arуans,
Mongols were heathen Asiatics
Timur, conqueror of the world and lord of Tartary, was described by his Arab slave as “white” [Aryan] and refused the appellation of The Sword of Islam, and allied readily with Christians, seemingly panrelgious like his grandson Akbar, founder of the Mogul Empire.
The Crusades, [except for Nicopolis in 1396] also provide no comparison, as they pitted Arуans versus Arabs and Turks. During this period, technology increase favored increasingly Western European innovation, over faith and physical courage, with generalship coming into its own as being more important in the Black Powder Era of warfare than in ages before and since, when the very nature of the combating armies and the technology management and extended logistic capacity made a greater difference than generalship. Indeed, modern post industrial armies have made a direct effort to discourage generalship and leadership in favor of logistical managerial weight and now robotic interface.
Let us look at the samples:
The Song of Roland, 1000
Christian Franks are depicted as combatively superior to Muslim Visigoths.
+1 for Jesus
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Nicopolis, Battle, 1396
The Janissaries in their early stages, stood better than their Christian foes. The Janissaries were “taken” from Christian families as youths, as a slave tax, but seem to have been nominally Muslim and eventually secular.
+1 for Mohound, as Teraldus the Norman would say
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Fall of Constantinople, 1453
Janissaries are getting better.
+1 for Islam
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Vlad, Dracula’s Resistance, 1460s-70s
Against Christian traitors of 4 nations and Janissary slaves, Vlad demonstrates that Christian fanaticism combined with ethnic animus and creative leadership, easily trumps the doggedly slavish bravery of the Janissaries
+1 for Jesus
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Siege of Vienna, 1529
Essentially a draw decided by extended Turk supply chain.
-scratch
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Malta, Siege, 1565
Outnumbered, the fanatical 600 Knights of Saint John hold out for months against the 40,000 Janissary foes.
+1 for Jesus!
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Lapento, Naval, 1571
Depleted Janissary corps, also serving as marines at sea are slaughtered by Christian navy.
+1 for Jesus
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Battle of Vienna, 1683
Polish Catholics route the Turks.
+1 for Jesus
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Oglethorpe in Austrain Service, 1710-20
The Janissaries are now barely on par with conscript criminal infantry extracted from European prisons.
+1 for Jesus
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Barbary Pirates, 1700s
Christian and Old Testament Western European converts to North African bag of rats style Sultanic Islam almost always defeat Christians on the high seas, as far as Iceland, and even raid New Orleans to kill a traitor to the Sultan of Istanbul.
+2 for Islam, in consideration of the vast material superiority of the European sea powers.
6 for Jesus to 4 for Mohamed.
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Napoleonic Age, 1780s to 1815
In the very well researched and appointed, morale-based battle system of the classic 7 player Napoleonic game Empires in Arms, morale values are such:
Guards: 5.0
British Foot: 4.5
European Horse 4.0
French Foot: 4.0
Old Regime Foot: 3.0
Janissaries: 3.0
Other Horse: 3.0
Militia: 2.0
Asiatic/Balkan/African Rabble: 2.0
What we see here is that the modern discipline of criminal secular Brit conscripts and atheist French volunteers equals European horse morale and doubles the traditional infantry morale of impressed foot soldiers. These, from all faiths, have a 2.0 value.
Arуan conscripts under Islam, Jannisaries, have a 3.0 value, elevated to that of Muslim horse.
Guards, organized into warrior cults as of ancient Heathen ways, have the highest morale values. Elite guards units in modern armies have one supreme deity, the Unit.
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Conclusion
Recently impressed foot soldiers of all races and faiths are inferior.
Christian and Muslim Arуan foot soldiers, with the same technology and logistics are equal.
Arуan Christian and secular horse soldiers are superior to Arуan Muslim.
Patriotic atheist volunteer foot soldiers are superior.
Brutalized criminal conscript foot soldiers are better yet.
Brutalized neo-Heathen elite foot soldiers are the best.
Ideology, either racial, national or unit based, are replacement faiths in the functional martial sense.
At the low level all faiths seem to produce cowards.
On horse Christians seem the most effective, and this seems to have extended to vehicles of various sorts. [1]
On foot Muslims Arуans seem equal to Christian Arуans.
Criminals and patriots beat either traditional faith on foot.
Elite units which have evolved out of Christian tradition, through the above professional secular process, and of functional psychological necessity, back into an ancient warrior cult, are the top dogs of war.
Notes
-1. Some modern western soldiers are still nominal or practicing Christians. However, the organizations are strictly secular, channeling religious impulses into military service. Even pious Christians in the military under USG constantly find their faith at odds with their service, with only the interdenominational Chaplain to offer lip service to their betrayed soul. A postmodern Christian soldier is like a Janissary that retained a secret Christian faith under the Sultan’s profane and only nominally Islamic direction.
