Princess Twilight had her plan hours before she saw the Lotus Blossom tree. The tree simply crystalised her thoughts, turned them from protean mires of hope and worry and what-ifs into a granite-paved path ahead. Before the tree, she knew what she had to do. After the tree, she believed it.
Twilight was in the Oxfjord Library again. She had burned through all essential princess-related activities before lunchtime, refused further visitors and delayed her appointments, left Ponyville just after midday, and arrived in Canterlot via Twilyport shortly after three. She would stay in the library until 2am, return to Ponyville by 4am, sleep for four hours and do the whole thing again tomorrow. Everything else—sleep, friends, food that wasn’t vending machine ramen—could wait until she knew the solution to Big Problem No. 1.
The problem was more widely known as the Brewing Equestrian Civil War, but the term Big Problem No. 1 caused less involuntary twitching and shame spirals whenever Twilight thought about it (which was currently dozens of times per minute), so she preferred the latter designation. Or better yet, BPN1.
Twilight was here to re-read, to re-think and to re-search. Equestria hadn’t had a true civil war in a millenium. ‘Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it’ was a truth that had laid low leaders of far grander domains than her own. Twilight vowed that if she failed, it would not be born of sloth or ignorance.
Besides, the books, notes and self-imposed exile let her temporarily forget the business with Rainbow Dash and Golden Retriever, which, to her tremendous guilt, seemed to weigh on Twilight’s mind as heavily as BPN1.
Twilight could remember most of the names and dates, but knew this was far too important to trust to old memories. Still, she chose to read about the Battle of Pasty Post in 198 OE first, because it was the best-case scenario for an active civil war and it added levity to a place where there was very little levity to be found. The night before the battle, the opposing armies of House Daisybutter and House Twinklestar steeled themselves for the coming battle by getting really, really drunk. On the morn, House Daisybutter woke up an hour late and marched the the battlefield without taking their armor; House Twinklestar marched in the wrong direction entirely and nearly invaded an alehouse. By the time they had found their armor and the right battlefield respectively, a wild storm came from Griffhala, and after being thoroughly soaked and chilled they gave up, went home, and negotiated a peace treaty. They then did the exact same thing the next year, except their battle was prevented by a stampede of hormone-crazed bunny rabbits. This was taken as an omen of sorts, and the second peace treaty stuck.
As the bovine philosopher Maisey-Boo the Perverse once said, ‘History repeats itself, first as farce, and then as even bigger farce.’
Twilight read an account of the Hoofington Strife of 1344 OE, and that had no such humor inherent. The Hoofington Strife was neither particularly vicious nor particularly grand, not thunder or hail but a dreary, overcast time that stretched on longer than it had any real right to. Two demesnes had erupted into war over the rights to a river between them. A few pitched battles exploded between them and produced a dull, horrible stream of wounded soldiers and cold bodies, but most of the war stayed as skirmishes, riots in border towns, raids that were more robbery than assault. Neither party dared to cease all industry, conscript the peasantry and ride to war, so the tension simmered year after year until there was so much anger, such bitterness, such hate between the opposing villages and townships that a strange cold crept in long before wintertime and twisted shapes wrapped themselves around the clouds above and the two sides very hastily beat their spears into hoes, sent offerings of good tidings and arranged a few dozen intermarriages a day until the strange creatures left for the aether.
Depressingly, she could have switched ‘Hoofington Strife of 1344OE’ for any number of conflicts and the description would have been identical. Bloody battles, full of brutalities muted only by the long passage of time and the dull footnote they were given in the historical parchments, quickly waning into a series of skirmishes and petty banditry, only fading away when outside circumstances forced unity. Windigoes once or twice—usually after court wizards had meddled with mind-magic to whip their own forces into a frenzy—but it could have been dragon raids, or bandit encroachment, or a national war, or a third demesne reuniting them via conquest, or Discord’s molten bunny-jackals, or sudden mountains.
Twilight took a piece of parchment, and under the heading ‘Category One Conflicts,’ wrote down the names and dates of the important ones, listed their pertinent characteristics, noted their resolutions, and referenced academic papers that examined them in greater depth and explored how they might have been prevented or ended sooner.
She stopped a moment before filing that piece of parchment away, and under the heading wrote a subtitle: ‘Second-best case outcome in event of BPN1.’
The next set of conflicts were less like a sudden forest fire and more like a snowball rolling down a hill. The warring factions never had the time or resources to mount a full assault, or the ruler could not unite all of his nobles in time, or the attacks were only ever meant to be retaliation for some offence, real or imagined, by the opposing party.
These conflicts never had the grand battles, but their effects were more insidious still. Fear was ruled a substitute for conquest. Mercenary companies took the place of conscripted armies, and after the money ran dry they went to ground, looting farms for food and taking peasants for sport. There was no concept of ‘honor in warfare,’ the lines between scouting and banditry blurred, terror and bloodshed became ends rather than means. Outsiders were shunned, more than usual.
Such wars were blights, even after truces were drawn and concessions were made, the villages and the ponies and the noble families never really recovered. The loathing and anger remained, simmering beneath the surface, ever eager to find an outlet. There were parts of Southern Equestria that still hadn’t recovered from the Forty-Years War. When one side conquered another after a war, the results were truly horrific, and Twilight was glad for the distance that the old, dry narratives provided. Entire towns were erased from existence, and the winners seemed to take sadistic pleasure in such erasures.
These were ‘Category Two Conflicts.’
Category Three Conflicts came in two varieties: rolling conquests where a strongmare would take over weaker, neighboring states, absorb their wealth and armies, and continue to expand until they met an implacable foe, retreated to quell internal strife, or otherwise lost momentum. They were bloody from sheer size alone. The law of the land would be the strongpony’s spear. Only one such ‘empire’ would need to arise for modern Equestria to change forever. More than one noble had the land and funds to tempt such dreams. They could go from minor lords to controlling more land and ponies than the Royal Pony Sisters.
The second variety was well-known to the Northeastern Griffons: the Flustercluck. Four neighboring demesnes all trying to fight each other at once. Pitched battles over strategically-worthless breweries. Succession crises turning capital cities into wine-drenched assassination fests. One fiefdom conquering a demesne, only to be taken over by a different demesne. A bar-fight between nobles turning into a war and then into sixteen wars over twelve decades. Times when Equestria avoided foreign invasion simply because belligerent neighbors peered over the fences and thought they’d rather not get involved.
Whatever the exact variety, a Category Three Conflict would mean unpredictable, irrevocable, devastating change. Equestria would be unrecognisable.
A Category Four Conflict was currently a purely hypothetical concept. A wide-scale war that escalated indefinitely until it consumed all of Equestria. Massive magical weapons would start as threats, then tactical displays, and then full-scale strategic use. Modern communications and logistics would allow armies to travel further and faster than ever before, and prevent refugees from escaping. A modern army, equipped with mages and weaponry devised with natural philosophy in mind could attack a poorly-defended town at noon and leave everypony dead before dinner. Every mare, stallion and foal would be involved in the war effort. Every village would become a police state.
There was no good end to a Category Four Conflict. At the better end, a few scarred victors would rule a ruin. At the worse end, ash and dust.
As the hours turned to nights and Doctor Princess Twilight continued her schedule of reading, referencing, and meticulous note-taking, depressing patterns revealed themselves, ones she had not seen when she was first taught these histories.
Ponies turned insular in times of war, viciously distrustful of outsiders. Griffons and zebras experienced their share of xenophobia, but the donkeys had the worst of it: pogroms and witch hunts were distressingly common in old times. They would be blamed for anything, for bad crops, plagues, faulty intelligence. When a noble needed money and land to raise his army, the donkey landowners would be rounded up, driven off, and worse, the spoils divided among the pony gentry. When popular sentiment turned sour, the nobles would whip their subjects into a frenzy about poisoned wells and Asinine conspiracies. These attacks only began to fade away after Nighmare Moon’s banishment, and overt attacks disappeared less than a century ago. Three-hundred years ago the region of Arborlysium—where the Apple clan originally hailed from, among others—experienced such a brutal pogrom that donkeys referred to it even now as The Great Misery.
The effects on magic and science were equally unhappy. There was a popular theory among the educated, dinner-party classes that conflicts increased the rate of technological progress, that leaders gave engineers and thaumaturges their backing to give them any kind of edge, that the necessity of war became the mother of all sorts of inventions.
Twilight had long known this theory to be incorrect, but oh how it was incorrect! Applied sciences accelerated during warfare, this was true. After all, every researcher turned away from their esoteric hobby-horses and towards theories of not-getting-stabbed. The collected knowledge in their minds, in the minds of their apprentices, in the thousands of pages on their bookshelves were all deployed for practical purposes.
But they had not discovered a new method of farming knowledge, they were merely eating their seed corn. Applied technologies were constructed from their pool of knowledge, and those pools became stagnant. Basic research withered. Those ‘esoteric hobby-horses’ that their patrons chided them for pursuing and rewarded them for pursuing were the questions that made the current batch of technologies, both physical and thaumaturgical, possible.
In fact, under any reasonable estimate of scientific and philosophical progress—the Alfalfa-Oghma Continuum, Side Winder’s Backwards Space-Time Consideration Chart, Star Swirl’s Minor Slood Assemblage, Night Quill’s Implacably Advancing Guesstimate—learning slowed down immeasurably not just during war but for years afterwards. Intellectuals could no longer correspond with scholars in other states. Foals were taught how to fight, not how to read. Libraries and towers were pulled down and burned. All literature was checked for steganographic messages or subversive sentiments, and destroyed along with its authors if it didn’t pass muster.
Twilight now realised that many ‘dark ages’ and ‘dead centuries,’ said to be times of tragic backwardness after previously amazing progress, were simply lulls occurring after long periods of war had exhausted the basic research, and scholars struggled to rebuild the infrastructure of monasteries, libraries, and lairs. Likewise, ‘golden ages’ were times when relative peace had allowed trade, arts, and scientific progress to continue unmolested.
By the time that these considerations were rolling around inside Twilight’s mind, she was already working on the next set of problems. Diplomatic solutions. Potential aggressors. Probabilities of conflicts type one through four. Possible casualty totals. Evacuation routes. Blood pacts. Proportionate retribution schemes. Targeted dissuasion.
Nothing came of it, not yet. Every solution was too weak, and would risk total warfare, or too drastic, and involve deeds that made her stomach uneasy, and her chest ache for simpler times.
She flicked through Steel Thaumocracies: Long-Lasting Conflicts In Old Equestria by Happy Days, an account of the Forty-Years War she had already read. Not the worst conflict in Equestrian history, nor the cleanest. In the middle of the book, there were copies of engravings and drawings made at the time.
There was an engraving of a town called Lotus Blossom, a town allied with the Dragonlily Thanes, after it was conquered by the Earl of Foxglove’s forces. Many of the townsfolk were accused of banditry and espionage.
The engraving showed a tree, a grand, sprawling oak, more than two-hundred years old and tended to with love by generations of ponies. Thirty ponies dangled from the branches.
Eight of them had no cutie-marks.
Twilight made her mind up.
Later that night she returned to Ponyville with her folders of notes neatly in order and an oddly tranquil smile on her face. Ponyville looked a thousand miles from warfare. It bustled and buzzed with barter and building and carpentry and merchantry and all the trade that comes with interesting times and bags of money. The smell of lilacs and broom and the evening batch of bear-claws from Sugarcube Corner hung in the air, following Twilight even as she walked into the library. Spike’s giant, adolescent form lounged in a reading chair.
“Hey Twi,” he said, glancing up from a Daring Do book, “good day at the other library?”
“Yes, thanks,” she replied. “Very productive.”
“Good to hear. I was gonna make some dinner for me and Golden, see if I can still rule the kitchen when I’m seven-feet tall, you hungry?”
“Actually, Spike, don’t worry,” said Doctor Princess Twilight Sparkle, her oddly tranquil smile still lingering on her lips. “I’m going to order a take-out.”
I can foresee bad things happening to bad ponies, should be fun.
This suddenly turned rather somber.
Can't wait to see what Princess Doctor Sparkle does to prevent all this!
Ahh... the old, to stop you from being stupid I'm just going to go and take over the world with love, kindness, friendship, and kickassery.
Good for her.
Hmmm, is she thinking about manufacturing a crisis to get ponies to work together?
Could work, but I think of how the Sunni and Shia in Iraq talked about no longer seeing sects and working together. A couple years and a few bad actors later and a civil war simmers, no one mentions the temporary good relations, going so far to say it was all a lie. Or a few weeks back when Iraqis pushed Daesh insurgents back and almost immediately turned on some Chechen fighters who had helped then, leaving their corpses in the street. Not that Ponies have a mindset remotely like Iraqis of course. Careful Twily, underhanded tactic can go very wrong.
Or is she going to literally 'take out' someone? We'll find out soon if this rapid update schedule continues.
P.S. Daesh = ISIS, I refuse to call a bunch of religious extremists and bandits an "Islamic State," it gives them to much credit, and they said they would cut the tongue off of anyone who calls them Daesh (similar to an Arabic words for sowing discord), so I approve.
Spotted something for you.
I still don't understand why Twilight and the other Princesses can't simply kill all misbehaving nobles :-/
Yay for worldbuilding and devious Twi!
I'm guessing this isn't going to involve a ritual circle to put Equestria in a state of Mutually Assured Windigo.
i.imgur.com/vVW12p2.png
This seems relevant.
You know. I want to like this story. It's definitely good. But I just can't get passed the giant Alicorn in the room.
Being a lord makes one a vassal of the king (or in this case princess), which means that, at any time, the princess could come down and strip the lord of their title and holdings. Now, in a normal setting, this is tempered by the lord's actual control over the populace versus the princess'. In Equestria, however, with an immortal princess who raises the sun and moon, I just can't swallow the idea that the ponies would follow the lord over the princess.
I can't stop from seeing Celestia walking into the war-rooms of these upstart nobles and telling their generals (better yet, the scullery maid) to strip them of their vestments and throw them out.
Who would stop her? Who would disobey her? By legal right, all land is hers, the lord simply tends it for her. She isn't just a figure head; she is THE figure head. I just can't.
5235688
Because eventually, this leads to the nobles rightfully believing they're under a Sword of Damocles and the only way out it to kill their rulers, first.
And then things get truly horrific.
5235834 I believe Demense explained that the Princesses are actually just as dependant on the nobles as the nobles are on them (as the nobles keep the economy running or something I can't quite remember). Though, I can't help but agree with you a little: I like to think that Celestia has enough control over her ponies to keep things from coming to open war. This story (and Demense for that matter) is good enough though that I can overlook this minor point
5235688 Because there wouldn't be a story if that happened. Also, if you mean literally kill instead of using it as a metaphor for some way of otherwise deposing the lords, because the princesses are too kind to allow that to happen. Case in point: Twilight let Tirek take over the world to save her friends, looking at only the short term saving of lives.
Ah, yes — Slood. One of the necessities of any proper civilization...
Fight bravely, Twilight! Fight for everlasting peace!
Or, well, go hire some thugs and fight sneakily for everlasting peace. That works too.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Oh man. Speaking as someone who visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC inside the last couple of weeks, some parts of this chapter were soberingly familiar. That oak tree description, full body shiver.
On a completely separate note, I hope at some point we get to see Shining and Cadance kicking the absolute crap out of some idiot noble.
5234725
Interesting. so if you used a different spell to kick start the fire like freezing the heater coil/temperature sensor, and turn the heat way up (i.e. make the heater work really hard to try and raise the temperature that's lowered by the ice) and then tack some paper close the heat source that wouldn't be detectable?
Easy solution for Celestia, just publicly declare that they won't see sunrise until they cut it out.
5235667
...Are you talking about the sunni-shia peace in pre-2003 Iraq? Because in that case, it's a lot easier to maintain peace when everything isn't blown up and you don't have a disbanded, unemployed army roaming the streets.
5235686
Ah thanks! I'll go fixit.
5235727
Somepony would be dumb enough to cross it.
5236922
Or, if you are a noble, si vis bellum, para bellum.
5237617
Yup. Because it's not a direct heat-category spell, the physical heat from the fire would not excite the system.
5235688
5235834
5236115
5236159
5236281
5237738
All of these things are actually serious sticking points, and would completely break the story if they were not answered properly. The only reason I'm not explaining them right now in the comments is that I'm going to explain them all in the story in the next chapter, and I don't want to spoil it for you.
I'm loving this story so far.
Also, I think you missed a space in ‘Hoofington Strife of 1344OE’
5236115
That's not a bug, that's a feature! :-P
How? They can't kill her if they're dead, and aren't the princesses immortal? :-\
5238338
That is true, but I'm talking post invasion. I remember reading about the Al-Aaimmah bridge stampede in 05 (Shia worshipers fleeing a suspected bomber, getting trapped on a closed bridge and falling into the river), post incident there was quite a bit of talk about what happened and locals saying that despite being different sects they were brothers, Sunni who jumped into the river to save Shia were called heroes. Of course, I might just be remembering the good rather than the bad, cities are more accepting than the country. I don't claim expertise. I also really don't want to argue politics of the Iraq war, the whole thing was FUBAR from inception on.
5238716
Immortality is not invincibility- alicorns may live thousands of years, but they can still be hurt, and hence slain.
And trust me. Given enough tyranny, ponies (and other races) would do a very good job in figuring out "How do you kill an alicorn?". Survival and freedom are two powerful motivators.
5239392
Tiranny, yes. Considering the act would be done to prevent a civil war that would leave a chunk of Equestrian population dead, whether it is an act of tiranny is debatable.
Plus, nothing stops them from instituting a peasant parliament to keep themselves in check afterwards, as opposed to a body whose entrance is determined by lineage alone.
5240018
I actually agree with you here. If Celestia (and also Luna) could strip away titles without bloodshed, that'd be the way to go. Unfortunately in this story, they spent several centuries making things more complicated than that...
5239392
Yes.
At the same time, war is literally a guaranteed annihilation of all life in Equestria when it brings back the windengos. Which begs the question as to why hasn't Celestia just said 'The nobles who start wars of conquest shall be killed immediately, with no hope of parole or reprieve'?
5240067
Windigoes are quite hard to bring back without significant magical event-horizon crossing.
The (only mildly spoilery) reason that Celestia can't just knock off all the nobles to prevent a war is that doing so would spark a bunch of even bigger wars.
5240030
This intrigues me*, and I can easily see how it'd realistically played out: Luna and Celestia wanting to unite the three tribes under their leadership, but the nobles accepting it only if they can be shielded from their overt magical or military attacks (considering the sisters have ridiculous amounts of the first and would subsequently have the majority of the second).
Actually, now that I think about, I've found a second-order theoretical objection: like 5239392 said, populations tend to rebel when oppressed, and being drafted into a fighting force to kill their neighbors just so the local princeling can expand his holdings and fill his coffers is textbook oppression.
On the other, other hand, it'd be very easy for Gilda to stage an assassination and blame it on rebels, or for Dust and al. to infiltrate an actual rebel organization and provide training and equipment.
I eagerly await the next chapter; this story has just jumped in quality (for me) by comments alone! :-P :-D
*And I think Mr Numbers hinted at it in the Demesne? I don't remember clearly.
5236281
...that is a horrible, horrible justification, and it makes me sick to think about.
I don't actually have anything against you, and for all I know you're a swell guy; but I've seen...a lot of stories, in media, that use that excuse in order to prop themselves up, and...it makes for shit stories*.
And I trust Chuckfinley too much to think he'd make such an obvious mistake, and I prefer reading good stories to reading shit, so...
*More specifically, it undercuts all emotional tension and antagonizes the audience towards the main characters: one of the reasons the second film of the Star Wars prequels is bad, is that Anakin could have checked in with his mother at any time while he was growing up, but only did so when...I don't remember, either Obi-Wan reminds him he has a mother or he has a Force dream.
But anyway, when he rescues his mother from the sand mutants and then finds out she already died while in captivity, his grief and subsequent berseker rage left everybody cold. Because really, you couldn't be bothered to even write a letter in ten years, but now you want us to think her death affected you so much? Pull the other one, it has bells on.
5240110
Most of what you said will be explored in the next chapter, but as for the drafting issue: there's a few factors at play. Partly, they're not being drafted at this stage, they're being paid and paid damn well, enough to lure young mares and stallions away from secure family trades or well-paying jobs.
Also, they're being recruited as defenders against aggressors from neighboring areas. They're not 'attacking' smaller neighbors, they're 'occupying' them to keep them safe from marauders from the outlying, stronger demesnes. Plus, they're ponies, bloodshed comes later. It starts with intimidation and less-lethal attacks.
Also too, Equestria has a quite dark 'othering' streak both in this canon and in the show proper. Ponies talk shit about donkeys with donkeys standing right next to them. Zecora was shunned for being a hermit. Pegasi have literally isolated their cities from ground contact. Convincing ponies to band together against those other assholes is, unfortunately, not as difficult as it should be.
5240134
Ugh, ick ick ick. No, I would not do that to you guys. Have no fear.
5240159
thumb9.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/66756/125830982/stock-photo-a-woman-laughing-hysterically-while-holding-a-fresh-apple-125830982.jpg
5240018
This is the sorta thing that in the real world led to such institutions as the Magna Carta, and yes when that was flouted civil wars and the eventual formation of the constitutional monarchy we have today, rather than a tyrant ruler. History rarely shows a line of benevolent tyrants, something Celestia avoids only by being the first and only of an immortal line and even her sister failed to manage in becoming Nightmare Moon (even though she got better).
Tyrants breed bloodshed, and it is a tide that is difficult to stop once it starts until it burns out (or in Equestria's case, likely freezes out) from exhaustion. It is quite likely that Celestia's gentle hoof is actually what's stopped a second Equestrian Ice Age from ever occurring, rather than putting it down to crush truly bad ponies. Banishment, definitely. Executions literally create enough bad blood in a noble house to lead to cascading troubles later on- the sort of thing that in history has led to royal lines being drowned in it.
As far as ponies in their little demenses going at it with their neighbors?
All too easy. Ponies are herd animals, and two competing herds of horses can be nasty, nasty creatures towards each other if someone is horrible enough to convince them it's a matter of survival (or even a considerable loss of resources).
Civilization just increases the odds of mass barbarity and the speed in which it has it's effects. Twilight's noticed that already, as it only takes a bit of war to focus progress into a self-cannibalizing process that fosters it's own destruction and plunges the survivors into a social and technological decline that only extended periods of peace can truly cure.
5238716
Leaving aside the question of what sort of immortality the princesses have, the attempts could get very ugly.
5239392 To be scrupulously correct, immortality is invincibility - the common usage of 'immortal' to mean somebody who cannot die but can be killed, is incorrect. There is a subset, referred to as 'biological immortality' that is simply the absence of aging, but without that caveat, immortality is simply defined as being unable to die, whatever the cause.
Your point, however, stands: It's an open question whether alicorns are immortal or simply unaging.
Yikes. And to think, this is the powder keg Luna set alight with a simple, well-meaning gift.
This isn't how I normally see Equestria. It's certainly not how I write Equestria. But it's a fascinating interpretation, and it makes sense. While the map may be shaped like North America, the millennia of history make the place closer to Europe, with all the aggregated bloodshed that that implies.
I wonder if an information campaign would work. Spread awareness of the consequences of warring states for the common pony, show them how badly it could go, foment an uprising. Modern transportation and communications wouldn't just make it easier to disseminate the facts, they would shrink the world, creating a deeper sense of national unity. What if there were a war and all the soldiers said "no"?
(Of course, the answer wouldn't be at all pretty, no matter how it went. Still, that's where my mind went.)
In any case, great job showing the stakes. I look forward to more.
5244059
Actually, that's pretty much exactly what the princesses are planning. They have the resources and they have the charisma to make that work; alongside political reforms they could make civil war impossible within six months, tops.
Problem is, they don't have six months tops. Some of the bigger/better positioned demesnes are a conquest or two from being able to form a viable, politically independent state. Then the toothpaste would be right out of the tube.
I scanned the comment section, but everyone's busy with theoretical politics and warfare. It looks like no one's said it yet.
Hey, this is a pretty good fic!
5247717
Much appreciated
This was quite good; I really enjoyed seeing the larger history of Equestria's conflicts here and it made this story feel like part of a larger, active world for the first time. I hope we get more of these sorts of scenes to lend a greater context to the more individual actions of Gilda & crew.
Definitely a good fic. Forgot to fave this after the first chapter, but I've corrected that mistake now!
Also, I believe this is very relevant to this chapter:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/The_Hanging_by_Jacques_Callot.jpg
I saw what you did there.:)
Fuuuuuuuuuuck that's hella dark. I like to think ponies (though not necisarily other species/monsters) are more adverse to bloodshed than humans (consider that while they have spears, their artillery products are all pastries.), due to the fact that they are herbivores and (out of story) this is a kids show. I hope you address how things got so dark.
5261165
Yes. I recall seeing that from a reading of the Thirty Years' War. Germany didn't fully recover from that unpleasant brouhaha until Bismarck.
5377680 That was at least in part because the Germanies were a miserable patchwork of massively overtaxed micro-despotates where an untenable percentage of the workforce were recruited into deadloss standing armies, often sent abroad into irrelevant conflicts as mercenaries to offset the crippling costs
I like the idea of warfare being a net loss to innovation, but the evidence such as it exists is ambiguous at best. The clearest case - the big fade between 1930 and 1946 - *can* be viewed as a delayed reaction from the Great War, but there's a better case for some combination of the great English realignment of the sciences exacerbated by comprehensive regime uncertainty due to the dominance of anti-capitalist politicians in the Thirties.
That is, the collapse of the non-English research traditions and the eventual rise of a generation of English-reading scientists created the communications gap you're talking about, but it wasn't caused directly by war, but rather a cultural collapse in the German and French spheres, and the conversion of a somewhat provincial English sphere into a global one. As it was, a good deal of Thirties era tech developments were shelved until decades later. Like I said, regime uncertainty is bad for business, especially innovative business.