When reading about ancient history it always seems to me that fighting for ones ruler/god/country is the most glorious thing achievable. The great men were those that excelled in it. (Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon)
I realize that it was a messy hell for those involved, but it seems to me that the public perception of it had some level of 'glory'.
In the last century war seems to have lost that feature.
Is it because of industrialization and the sheer level of destruction? Or because we're more 'civilized', whatever that may mean.
Or am I just plain wrong in assuming that it once was glorious at all.
A large part of the demystifying of war in the modern period was the experiences of the Napoleonic Wars and WWI. The Napoleonic wars reintroduced the concept of a nation of arms. Whole swaths of the population that had not been exposed to war before were now forced into it. Levies en masse hugely swelled the armed forces and gave the French a huge advantage. Soon, other nations had to resort to similar tactics. This culminated in WWI, with almost every nation in the war using some sort of conscription system. The number of combatants was astounding. The horrors of war were now common experiences.