Long time lurker here, I’ll start!

Simon V (or IV if you like being wrong) de Montfort was an outstanding commander and zealot from the 13th century. He was the motive force behind the Albigensian Crusade (fighting non-conformist Christians in the south of France). During his campaign, he violently sacked large parts of the L’Occitan and burned many supposed heretics. Of particular note was his sack of Minerve, where he burnt 140 suspects alive. The interesting part? Later on in the campaign, during its height at the siege of Toulouse, Simon was killed by a stone thrown by catapult. Supposedly, it operated by those the wives and daughters of those he had killed in Minerve.

Source:

G.E.M Lippiatt, Simon V de Montfort and baronial government, 1195 - 1218. OUP, Oxford, UK, (2017)

I'm reading Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking and she used some great comparisons for the number of casualties.

260,000-350,000

More than at Carthage, more than the Spanish Inquisition, more than some of Timur Lenk's atrocities. Even the worst air attacks of WWII had less casualties. Worse than the original estimate for the Dresden raids and firestorm. Yes, even the atomic bombings and the Tokyo air raids, combined, had fewer casualties than what the Japanese caused in Nanking.

Hitler and Stalin killed millions, but over a few years. The killing in Nanking was concentrated in 7 weeks.

Perhaps surprisingly, most of the French casualties at Agincourt weren't actually killed in combat. Longbows have been found to be relatively inefficient against XVth century heavy armor except at close range (horses or less armored soldiers were still at risk, though), and therefore the "storm of arrows" wasn't that deadly.

Close combat was another thing altogether but heavy armor proved once more to be... well, heavy armor, and quite good at keeping you alive. What played an even greater role was the fact that killing a knight meant to let go of a potentially hefty ransom. Best capture it, keep his armor, his horse, and pocket good money, and thus French men-at-arms surrendered in the chaos and were captured en masse.

When Henry V's camp was attacked, however, he believed he was flanked and feared that the prisonners, freed by the flanking force, would join the fight once more. He therefore ordered them to be killed on the spot and was begrudgingly obeyed, sparing only the highest an most important lords. Thousands of prisonners were executed, some of them alledgedly locked into barns which were put on fire.

Tragically, Antoine de Brabant, brother of the duke of Burgundy John the Fearless was late for the battle. When hearing and seeing it was already underway at his arrival, he used a banner as a makeshift coat of arms and, without waiting for his armor, charged into the melee. He was unhorsed and, lacking any distinctive token of his status (such as, say, his armor and coat of arms), he was killed with the other prisonners.

Sources :

Bertrand Schnerb, L'État bourguignon : 1363-1477, Paris, Perrin, 1999.

Rémy Ambühl, « Le sort des prisonniers d'Azincourt (1415) », Revue du Nord, Université Lille-3, t. 89, no 372 « Varia »,‎ octobre-décembre 2007.

As for English sources on the subject, I must admit it has been some time since I read them but I can confidently point you toward Anne Curry. I suppose Anne Curry, Malcolm Mercer, The Battle of Agincourt, Yale University Press, 2015, would be a good start!

One of my favourite historical casualties is Joshua Chamberlain, who was hit by shrapnel during the American civil war. It’s really exemplary of the progress of modern medicine.

This shrapnel nicked his urethra, bladder and fractured his pelvis. What’s amazing to me is that he was treated for this even though in all likelihood this injury should have been fatal just due to infection.

He was given a metal catheter and the whole surgery was probably done with tools and conditions that were not sterile at all. So it’s a miracle he survived.

He went back to combat after a month of receiving this injury and promptly got shot though the chest again, which he also survived.

He lived for a long time with chronic bladder infections due to his injuries. At one point surgery done to attempt to repair some damage, which did not provide much relief.

His later years were spent bedridden and requiring full time care and he died due to complications from his injuries. In total he lived 50 years with what really should have been a fatal injury given the state of medicine at the time.

source

Edit: I just remember this history subreddit post about this injury

When admiring the monumental structures and jewelry of ancient Egypt, one should pause to consider the people – most of whom were unwilling conscripts – who gave their lives to procure the raw materials for these works of art.

For example, there was an expedition to Wadi Hammamat (a major quarrying region) in the 3rd year of the reign of Ramesses IV. 900 of the 8368 members of the expedition died, a mortality rate of about 11%.

Conditions were the worst for those who worked in the gold mines. According to the Kuban stela of Ramesses II, it was not uncommon for half (!) of the personnel and donkeys of gold mining expeditions to die from mining accidents or thirst.

For these figures and more information, see "Work and the Organisation of Work in the New Kingdom" by Christopher Eyre in Labor in the Ancient Near East edited by Marvin Powell.

Let's talk about Harry. Harry inspired me to choose the topic for my bachelor thesis, so I have to thank him for that. Harry was the first of his kind to arrive in Australia but died just six years after arrival, shot on the order of John Ainsworth Horrocks .

Now what's special about Harry is him being the first camel in Australia. Harry was brought into the country from Afghanistan and participated in Horrocks expedition. being described as "temperamental", he didn't take too well to other animals or humans but was quite useful in the environment of South Australia.

During the expedition however, Harry was held to be responsible for the eventual death of Horrocks. Whilst reloading a shotgun, Harry moved and the gun was discharged, hitting Horrocks in his hand and jaw, leading to his eventual death. His last wish was for Harry to be shot.

Whilst as historian one is asked to refrain from passing judgement on people, when I read the story this felt unjust to me. Harry might have been temperamental and maybe he was a danger to others - I don't know. But Horrocks, like all good colonizers it seems, was so self-assured that he didn't considered camels being different than horses and accordingly acting differently - in a way that he had no idea about - nor did he apparently consider bringing in people who would have known how to handle camels. Cameleers were only brought in later on, after colonizers and colonial authorities recognized the need to apply specialist knowledge in areas in which they had no expertise.

So all in all, to me Harry is kind of a symbol for european self-righteousness and unwillingness to even consider that one might not know everything at the time and ultimately another victim of these attitudes.

But, the story stuck and now I'm writing my thesis on Camels in German South West Africa, so thank you Harry.

For fun I study 18th century medicine, and did a stint as a surgeon in living history events on the east coast. A couple of my favorite stories:

1- The death of Jumonville: The Indigenous guide of Washington, Half King, hated Jumonville. and during the battle in the glen, when Jumonville was killed, he opened Jumonville's skull and "bathed in his brains."

Source: https://www.nps.gov/people/joseph-coulon-de-jumonville.htm

2- John Hunter, the father of the scientific method in surgery, injected himself with both Gonorrhea and Syphilis to determine if they were different or the same virus. Unfortunately, he surmised they were the same- later research and microscopic evaluation would prove they were completely different. But the Syphilis is supposed to be the cause of his heart issues, which ultimately killed him while he was giving a speech to the Royal College of Surgeons.

Source: The Knife Man

3- Third year medical students at UVA are given a packet of letters between a doctor and his patient. The patient describes symptoms as he writes of an illness, to which the doctor responds with treatment. These 3rd year students are then asked to diagnose the patient. What they only find out later is that the doctor is Benjamin Rush, and the patient is Thomas Jefferson. The diagnosis is either colon or bladder cancer. What's amazing about that is that Jefferson rode his horse every day until 2 weeks before his death.

Source: Thomas Jefferson interpreter Bill Barker, who has been Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg and now Monticello for ages. His first person interpretation is why I got into living history and he's an inspiration. (And he told me this story when I told him this while doing my surgeon's impression at an event in Pennsylvania.)

Due to higher levels of conflicts, civil wars, dangerous jobs, etc, is there a rough estimate of the ratio of adult males to adult females in various medieval societies? I heard from one theologian that the gender gap was sometimes as wide as 1 male to 3 females.

OK, you want trivia? Here's one that is somewhat related to war casualties and comes with an interesting history kicker...

Maurice Ravel wrote a piece called his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which is exactly what it sounds like. You only need one hand to play it, and it was written specifically for a pianist who had lost his right arm in World War One. He had had a somewhat promising early career before the war, but had been conscripted into the Austrian army and ended up a wounded POW of the Russians. While only having the one arm is a definite disadvantage to being a concert pianist, that didn't stop him. It helped that his father was a rich industrialist, giving him plenty of money to commission pieces from top composers written specifically for a one-armed pianist. Alongside Ravel, he commissioned music from Sergei Prokofiev, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and many others, although Ravel's piece is the best-known of the works written for him.

So, what's the interesting trivia kicker? That pianist's name was Paul Wittgenstein, also known as Ludwig's older brother.

This isn't specifically war related, but what would treatment have looked like in a medieval hospital? I've read a little about the Hotel Dieu in Paris, which I believe still operates. I'm curious about what kind of ailments would've been treated there in the 14th century.

I find it interesting that a significant number of princes/kings of england who are upheld as standards of chivalry, honour and that warrior king ideal also had quite significant black marks against their names for their actions in warfare.

Richard the lion-heart caused the massacre at acre for instance, or as another poster put, the casualties at Agincourt being mostly from when Henry ordered the prisoner’s executed. Can’t remember which town it was but even the black prince had one where he murdered a ton of people that had already surrendered (something along those lines).

It’s also fascinating to see how the culture of casualties changes from the hundred year war (and earlier) to the wars of the roses. Whilst you’d expect to be ransomed during the HYW, by the time of the wars of the roses that’s gone out the window and the revenge killings start. Look at Edmund, Earl of Rutland. 17 years old when caught at Wakefield and executed whilst on his knees pleading for his life. All because the lords opposite him didn’t like his father.