tell them they will live a life of extreme luxury in heaven with the Lᴏʀᴅ if they die honorably

i think a lot of it was kind of a 'go stab these guys or im gonna stab you' kinda deal.

that and like. convince them the people to be stabbed are evil af or something. idk.

a part of war that doesn't get talked about a lot is that soldier would just like fuck off a lot. if a war party got to wherever they were going with like half of the men still there that was a success

bored

Brett Devereaux has written about this a bunch at his blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, here's the best summation I could find on a quick search:

On the other hand cohesion is the force that holds a specific unit together through the power of the bonds holding the individual combatants to each other and/or to their (generally junior or non-commissioned) officers. There are a lot of ways to build that cohesion: people are generally unwilling to abandon neighbors, close friends and relatives, for one. They are also reluctant to expose themselves to shame at home for having done so; shame is one of the few things people fear as much, if not more than, death. For armies that can’t rely on that sort of organic cohesion, it can be built by reconstructing the soldier’s unit as his primary social group. Drill can do this: it creates an experience of shared suffering and achievement which bonds the soldiers together creating strong ‘artificial’ cohesion.

https://acoup.blog/2022/07/01/collections-total-generalship-commanding-pre-modern-armies-part-iiic-morale-and-cohesion/

sorry my mom said i couldnt go to war today :\

get stabbed at by a dude on the battlefield, get beheaded by a lord at home. not much of a choice tbh

It's also traditionally been a path for social mobility. The Romans promised land and citizenship to soldiers who served long enough. The whole deal of Knights under feudalism was that they traded military service for social standing and land. Just like how today the US military will pay for your college if you sign up. I imagine a lot of folks went in with the idea that they'd just try to survive their service and if so, they'd reap the rewards.

Additionally, once it got to an actual pitched battle, one of the roles of the formation of a block of men was to make it hard for people to run away. You were packed so tightly with everyone else that it was difficult to do anything but move with the flow, and retreating as an individual was pretty tricky. Once you make contact with the enemy, the choice essentially comes down to fight or die, which for most people is a pretty easy choice.

actually ignore my last reply i have a better one

how do they even get people to get jobs in capitalism times?

I can't say much because I don't know much, but I do remember hearing something to the effect of some of the bloodiest battles tended to be sieges on account of the fact that people would fight really hard to defend their homes and such. That doesn't explain the go out and kill someone kind of shit but yeah.