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Thats not entirely true Dragonlich. Enemy survivors would often be sent to slavery. Honestly though, it entirely depended on the situation.
Hannibal for instance at Cannae (i think?) with an army of 20,000 killed something like 70,000 Romans in a battle and captured 20,000 as prisoners - without a doubt most sent to slavery.
It depends on the situation honestly - when Rome defeated Carthage in the Punic Wars it slaughtered everyone and flattened Carthage - yes completely, all that was left was a desert with salt put on it as a sort of symbolic destruction / i forgot the reason.
There were different situations - for example, raider groups say... Vikings would not leave many alive but those who were often ended up as slaves, servants, but often they could also end up part of the group.
The Celtic rebellion against the Romans in England saw Roman survivors executed - but the same happened when Romans captured "barbarians." It was merely who they fought, the sort of respect, and what not.
I'd actually say that there was *more* honor going into the 1800's in battle. Battle was seen as a sort of gentleman's sport - hell the leaders on teh battle were often friends just on opposite sides... So in the end surrender and terms were almost always honored. Even bitter enemies at that.
The American Revolution because the Americans were deemed traitors were often hanged if captured. That would be true even to this day. But the Napoleonic Wars never really had any massacres of prisoners or what not - the sides respected the other side's words.
World War I was brutal - first technological advances, and second because it was truly a total war.
World War I cost twice as many lives as all the wars of the previous two centuries combined - including hte American Civil War, the Napoleonic wars, and hte wars of the french revolution.
World War II in turn cost nearly twice as many as World War I and in a sense symbolically ended with the Atomic Bombs - yes they were an ultimate symbol of how catastrophic that war was.
And I don't know at all how you can say old wars were more brutal - unless you consider wars of the old time as being a mere 60 years ago.
60 years ago this month - in just ten days of fighting nearly 200,000 soviet and 50,000 german casualties resulted at the Battle of Kursk - considered the largest land battle in the entire history of man.
In 1916 at the River Somme - 60,000 British casualties on a SINGLE DAY. Thats more casualties suffered in a day than the entire number of Americans killed in 10+ years in the Vietnam War. That was the worst day in the history of the British Army.
At Verdun over 1 million combined casualties between the Germans and French.
Wars have only gotten more catastrophic - total wars to say the least. The latest few wars have only made us think that wars are easy, a video game, one with few casualties. In a sense its true, the U.S. has not had to face a large nation.
But it is ironic that because wars have become so brutal that people no longer wish to wage them. As Einstein said, "I don't know what weapons will be used to fight with in World War 3, but I know that World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones" (not exact quote but most people know it anyways) - and because of that we humans have not fought one.
(BTW take a chart at the casualties of war over the history of man - the casualties rise exponentially until 1945 then suddenly the casualties per year drop considerably)
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