Some food for thought
Something from Marco:
The moral principles of modern civilisation seem to prescribe that the leaders of a nation defeated in war shall be put to death by the victors. This will certainly stir them to fight to the bitter end in any future war, and no matter how many lives are needlessly sacrificed it costs them no more. It is the masses of the people who have so little to say about the starting or ending of wars who pay the additional cost. The Romans followed the opposite principle, and their conquests were due almost as much to their clemency as to their prowess.
— Winston S. Churchill