Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
I think I may have to leave this one alone. What I thought I would find was situations where the people, being the actual "power" behind the government, would not surrender until they were personally compelled to by an occupying force. No political leader could compel them to give in. No king could hand over the territory with its serfs to another lord. They would only surrender where they saw no advantage in pressing the fight on a very personal level. This meant that it would take a larger occupying force willing to commit atrocities to be able to compel the people that survival was more important than liberty. Perhaps this willingness to fight for your own liberty only exists in the situations where there is a real possibility of pressing the fight to the end. Survival takes precedence over liberty - Patrick Henry be damned. Perhaps there is no difference at all.
Survival may take precedence over liberty in most cases, but strong religious convictions may trump survival at times. Besides this scene from The Life of Brian, two examples come to mind. But, neither fits the original proposition as I understood it. The two examples are the Jewish Revolt against Rome by the Zealots, and others, (66-70 AD) with the famous last stand at Masada, and the subsequent revolt led by Bar Kochba (132-135 AD). Perhaps some of the 7th-12th Century campaigning by the native population against Byzantines, Moslems and Mongols of various varieties that occurred in the historical lands of what is now NE Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan might also count as a refusal to quit regardless of what the central authority did. However, again, this does not really fit the original scenario. The fighting was conducted by monarchies or aristocracies, and, as with the Jewish Revolts, the reasons for fighting tended to be related to religious differences or to oppressive taxation by a conqueror.