In the winter of 1718, 10,000 soldiers set out from a Swedish border city on a mission to conquer Norway.

However, what followed would result in one of the single largest losses of life in Swedish history since the bubonic plague.

But surprisingly, this wasn't due to the people they encountered.

This is the story of the Corollian death March, and as always, viewer discretion is advised.

Back in the early 1700s, most countries were suffering growing pains of all kinds.

The Enlightenment and the first

uses of science and medicine, which somewhat resembled the modern day, were only just beginning,

and the Industrial Revolution was just a few decades away. But some of the first signs of it

were beginning to show and would change the lives of millions of people for better or for worse.

One of those was the very foundation of how armies were put

together and how they worked. Before, in more feudal centuries, it wasn't unusual for

people conscripted into the military service to be expected to provide their own equipment.

Now this wasn't always the case, and especially since we're generalizing a large amount

of time, but for the most part it didn't really matter if two or even 200 people

in an army had spears that weren't exactly the same length. As long as they were close enough

and could do the same job, it was fine, but the same could not be said in the age of gunpowder.

Before, to reach out and attack an enemy, kingdoms need to do things like mandate weekly longbow

practice for their citizenry, as the English did, or to

craft and assemble complicated siege engines like trabuschets to hurl stones into and over walls,

but more and more it became apparent just how much potential there was in firearms.

The sheer power a cannon could hit a castle with was enough to make old designs obsolete

already, yet they were also smaller, more portable,

...