Otter's Rock

I doubt you'd giggle much if you read the books; although not particularly graphic, they are pretty realistic about what happens in war on a world with large conscript armies from primitive cultures without any hint of a Geneva Conventions. Conquering a city means rape, looting, and general destruction. And the barbarians are the worst. But it is funny whenever the barbarians break out into pidgin French.

(That's one reason I like the Belisarius books better; they're still fairly realistic about that sort of thing, but it's handled better--in the General books, there's violence, violence, violence, token reaction by Our Hero about how vile this is, reassurance that it's all necessary to get history back on track, and more violence. The other reason is that the General series--the Raj Whitehall books of it, at any rate--are fairly repetitive. He goes out to conquer one enemy. He defeats them. He gets politically stabbed in the back. He's about to be recalled in disgrace, but another enemy attacks and needs to be conquered. Lather, rinse, repeat.)