I took this down:
- In William Shakespeare's Henry V, the hero-king threatens the citizens of Harfleur with some pretty grisly consequences for trying to defend themselves ("In a moment look to see the blind and bloody soldier with foul hand defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters", etc.
). He goes on, at Agincourt, to order his soldiers to slaughter all their prisoners (the text of the play actually has him doing this twice, which is a little weird). In the next scene this is explained by Captain Gower as retribution for the killing of the boys looking after the baggage (and many readers of the play are inclined to take his word for it), but the first of these orders is given before anyone on the English side learns of it, in response to the French regrouping.
- The Harfleur sequence is a case of Values Dissonance. In medieval warfare it was the norm that a besieged town would surrender after the walls were breached. If the garrison did not surrender but continued to fight, that would be a sign of 'no quarter' and followed up by the attackers with a total sack of the town.
- The prisoners were presumably against it, but it must also have been a very unpopular order among his own army. Many of them had captured French knights that would otherwise have paid hefty ransoms (Henry's kill-em-all order is the reason that his old drinking buddy Pistol looks forward to a future as a pimp and thief: he could have retired comfortably on the ransom his prisoner M. Fer would have brought him).
- In Real Life, the English archers did the slaughtering of prisoners. Being merely commoners, they would not have expected good treatment if they were captured, and they'd have seen none of the ransom money if the French were ransomed back after capture. Also, the order for the slaughter wasn't a form of Disproportionate Retribution, but rather to prevent the French knights from rearming themselves and attacking the English behind their palings. Even the French sources at the time don't call him out on it.
It's a giant wall of natter, and I'm not sure if it even counts at all since the sub-bullets seem to be saying it's not an example.
This trope needs to be a lot more careful about being used. Yes, it's a Trope, and thus, doesn't strictly follow the rules of war as to what is, and what is not an *actual* war crime.
But it does seem to be referenced a bit too much as just "something crappy happened in war - must be a war crime by someone"
The quote from The West Wing in the "Quotes" tab is an example: that's not even CLOSE to being a war crime, and was a horrible abuse of the term by Sorkin that removed any actual point being made.
The following example was deleted from Fan Fic because it was an aversion in an non-Omnipresent Trope.
- Averted in Ace Combat: The Equestrian War: All of the heroes' missions revolve around either defending their home turf, or attacking purely military installations.
Shouldn't the new description make a nod (self deprecating or not) to how the previous "Obligatory War Crime Scene" name failed to emphasize that this is about the shock of characters who should have been heroes committing all-out war crimes and hence the rename? Now the current description feels too, uh, lifeless as it is.
Edited by manhandled I got my political views from reddit and that's bad