> Just look at all the beautiful castles and churches in Europe. They were mostly built on the backs of peasants.

That's not accurate. Skilled workers built those.

> Or all the generals we revere who sent thousands or hundreds of thousands of people who had not much to gain from the war to their deaths.

Who exactly? That does not sound representative.

That's true in pre-European contact Peru as well. The amazing architecture was produced by skilled craftsman as a community effort. They didn't/couldn't build anything of quality once they were enslaved by the Spanish. (I'm not an expert, but I visited Peru a couple years ago)

"That's not accurate. Skilled workers built those."

The skilled workers did the difficult parts. Getting the materials to the construction site and other (often dangerous) tasks were done either by children or peasants that had either been forced or attracted by false promises. In addition the churches and kings often didn't pay the promised money. Just read some history books. The top guys always wanted to keep as much to themselves as they could. No difference to now. They could be even greedier back then because the little guy had no rights.

How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia