Study with

Brutal War

Brutal War is a Spanish-language history channel dealing with war and the ancient world from an unusual angle: not that of kings and heroes, but of what war did to those who endured it. Its own statement of intent is blunt: what is told here is the hunger, the fear and the misery of humanity's darkest chapters. Its range is wide in both time and geography. There are episodes on ancient Rome and Domitian, on Troy, on the Kushite pharaoh who conquered Egypt; on the battle of Kosovo in 1389 and Nicopolis in 1396; on the generals of Genghis Khan, on Spanish shipwrecks and expeditions, on armies that vanished into the desert leaving no bodies behind. Others pause on episodes of unexpected nobility, such as Alexander's treatment of Porus after defeating him. Alongside the battle narratives runs a strand worth singling out: the revision of well-entrenched historical myths. One of its films is devoted precisely to showing that the most famous sniper duel in history probably never happened. What a newcomer finds is military history told with pace and narrative tension, attentive to the concrete experience of combatants and civilians, and carrying a healthy distrust of the heroic versions that posterity tends to manufacture. The tone is harsh and does not avoid the unpleasant; anyone looking for a consoling account of the past will not find it here, and that is precisely the channel's stated purpose.