When I watched ancient war dramas as a child, the cruel scenes of corpses and swords flying across the field were really eye-catching. In the era of cold weapons, the two armies clashed, the white knife entered the red knife, and no matter whether it was the winner or the loser in the end, it was as if it had experienced a hellish dance of death. So, we can't help but think, even if the war is so terrible, why don't those soldiers choose to pretend to be dead? Humiliation is a bit of humiliation, and good villains can live.
But in fact, it is not, there is a saying that is very good: "Pretend to be dead on the battlefield, you are really dead." In fact, ancient soldiers can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the ideal soldier with the slogan of "died on the battlefield, ma ge shrouded body", and the other is the "zhuangding soldier" who did not want to be a soldier, but became a soldier by mistake. The former certainly would not think of pretending to be dead, while the latter would have to weigh it even if he wanted to.
First, pretending to be dead is extremely costly
There is a unit in the army called the Supervision Army, as the name suggests, they are specifically staring at whether the soldiers on the battlefield are concentrating on killing the enemy, whether they have fled, whether they have surrendered and rebelled, and of course, they will also stare at any soldier who wants to pretend to be dead. If the pretend death is discovered, or reported by other soldiers, the end is even more terrifying than the death in battle.
For example, in the last years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the imperial court law stipulated that if you pretend to die on the battlefield, you should be punished for the crime of desertion, not only the soldiers should be punished, but their wives, children, brothers and sisters would be arrested and tortured together. By the time of Cao Cao, it was even more intense, and all the soldiers who pretended to die and fled and their family members were all executed together. Therefore, instead of suffering humiliation and dying and involving the family, it is better to rush with a knife and gun, and nine deaths still have a lifetime, right?
Pretending to die is closer to death than fighting
Ancient wars are all about fighting in columns, the platoon is quite compact, everyone thinks, once you fall down and pretend to die, your comrades-in-arms will make up for it, so that people come and go, horses come and go, horses retreat, do not use the enemy army, can not survive at the feet of their own side have to put a question mark.
Moreover, whether ancient or modern, there is a tradition of using "dead" soldiers as a shield on the battlefield. Soldiers who pretend to be dead are likely to be picked up by their comrades or enemy troops as "shields" to use, in this case, do you expose and pretend to be dead and resist, or let others use you as cannon fodder?
After the battle, it is the biggest crisis
If you're lucky enough to pretend to be dead until the end of the battle, don't be too happy too soon, the real test of life and death has just arrived. At this stage, there are only two possibilities: victory on the own side or victory for the enemy. If their own troops are victorious, they will either be found dead by their comrades who cleaned the battlefield, or they will be lucky enough to escape the disaster. But you know, the general battlefield takes place in an uninhabited place, a person survives, neither can return to the army, nor can he go home, in the place where the birds do not, how long can it last?
But if the enemy wins, the dangers to be faced are much more direct. Usually the victorious side treats the corpses of the other side one by one to ensure that they are dead, or bury them on the spot, or burn them on fire, and in either case, the probability of the dead surviving is quite low, unless they are willing to be prisoners. But whether the captives will be killed is also unknown, and even if they are not killed on the spot, their status as prisoners is presumably not much better than death.
In fact, according to the cost performance, fighting to kill the enemy on the battlefield and spelling out a bloody road is definitely higher than pretending to be dead. Therefore, soldiers usually do not choose to pretend to die, pretending to die has a thousand ways to die, and bravely fighting, but it is possible to survive and rise to the rank of fortune, fame in the world, do the math, you know how to choose.