I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars.

But I don’t just have a top ten. As usual for my top tens, I have a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions – where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – which I suppose would usually make each top ten a top thirty. My special mentions are also where I tend to have some fun with the subject category and splash out with some wilder entries.

 

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

 

(1) DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

 

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire – that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world”.

I don’t think it is overstating it to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as the PTSD of western civilization. Europeans looked to the Roman Empire as their state or imperial model, with kingdoms or states purporting to succeed or revive it in one form or another thereafter.

Even now, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire informs much modern discourse about state failure – from Edward Gibbon onwards, “we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears”.

I would rank it in my top ten wars but for the lack of a definitive war – although my top ten entry for the Hunnic Wars comes closest – or that it is many wars, hence the special mention albeit in god-tier. Also as decline and fall, it involved the former as much as the latter. The Romans were consistently their own worst enemies – not just in their relentless civil wars but also in aspects of internal decline that were observed even as early as the second century – at its peak! – by contemporaries such as the historian Cassius Dio, who lamented the decline “from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron”.

But our interest here is its external fall or military defeats, most notoriously at the hands of barbarians at the gates – the Germanic tribes that swept over the empire in what history calls the Barbarian Invasions or Migration Period.

The empire was shocked to its core with the sack of Rome itself – twice, firstly by the Visigoths in 410, and secondly by the Vandals, who thereafter lent their name to wanton destruction, in 455. These sacks of Rome were still shocking even though the imperial capital had been moved to Ravenna in 402, such that the Roman Empire might more accurately be styled as the Ravennan Empire instead.

And there’s something about the Romans desperately trying to hold one line after another in that “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” that resonates with me. Indeed, any last stand or waning force often invokes the fall of the Roman Empire, both in history, and as we shall see, in fantasy or science fiction.

And there’s certainly plenty to choose from with the fall of the Roman Empire in the century from the disastrous defeat in the battle of Adrianople against the Goths in 378, which opened the floodgates to barbarians invading and setting up kingdoms within the Empire itself, varying between alliance with and opposition to the Empire, until the Germanic leader Odoacer decided it would be easier not to have a puppet emperor and deposed him instead in 476.

Of course, what history tends to forget is that the proverbial decline and fall of the Roman Empire was of the western Roman Empire – the eastern Roman Empire survived and even thrived for another millennium after the fall of the western empire. It even had a damn good shot at recovering the western half of the empire under Justinian and his legendary general Belisarius, before receding again. It then ebbed and flowed, until its final decline over two centuries before its conquest by the rising Ottoman Empire in 1453. So there’s plenty to choose from there as well.

Indeed, the decline and fall of both western and eastern Roman Empires was invoked by Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings with Gondor – the eastern half of the Numenorean states that survived the fall of the western half Arnor. Of course, that would make Gondor correspond to the Byzantine Empire, increasingly focused on its capital city Minas Tirith corresponding to Constantinople making its last stand against Sauron – who would correspond to, ah, the Ottoman Turks?!

Anyway, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire – and the Great Migrations or Barbarian Invasions – might be considered to be on the scale of a world war, but is a little too piecemeal in space or time.

And one can argue we are still living in the decline of the Roman Empire. Or on our Third or Fourth Rome (or more), going by all the countries that have claimed the succession to the Roman Empire. Or the Empire never fell…according to P.K. Dick. Or something like that.

 

 

 

(2) CRUSADES

 

The Crusades – giving religious warfare a bad name for a millennium!

But seriously, the Crusades had everything – not surprisingly, as they took place at the crossroads (heh) of history, three continents and three major world faiths (with almost every variant of sect and some other faiths thrown in).

There’s the Crusades themselves, from which there are a number to choose. Eight or nine of them, counting the more formal crusades identified as such in the Middle East (by subsequent historians), but not counting all the pseudo-crusades or quasi-crusades in the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as weird and generally disastrous spinoffs such as the People’s Crusade or the Children’s Crusade. If you throw in things like the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula, Northern Crusades, crusades against heretics like the Albigensian or Cathar Crusade – “kill them all and let God sort them out” – and the crusading rhetoric of the Ottoman Wars, then you could easily compile a Top 10 Crusades.

There’s the wider theme of religious warfare, beyond the crusades to other wars, exemplified by wars fought by, between or within monotheistic religions, such as the wars fought as part of the Protestant Reformation. That theme arguably also extends to wars of modern political ideology or moral causes, including religious or ideological terrorism. It’s not without reason Eisenhower called his memoirs of the Second World War “Crusade in Europe”.

And there’s the metaphorical use of crusade – as well as analogous forms of crusading movements – for ideological, moral or social movements, and the paradigm of crusading as a metaphor for military or political campaigns fought for a belief or ideal.

Back to the more formal Crusades in the Middle East, on the European or ‘Western’ side, you have the Roman Empire coming together, in both its major western and eastern successors – the Catholic Church represented by the Pope in Rome answering the call for aid of the eastern Roman empire, which history disguises as the Byzantine Empire but I’ll use here for convenience of nomenclature.

And answer the call they did, most famously with the knights of military orders – with my favorite the Templars or Knights Templar, which became rich and powerful, but ultimately ran afoul of the French monarchy and the Pope. Also worshipping Baphomet if you believe the medieval gossip.

Of course, the Crusaders were styled more as the Holy Roman Empire, or the founders of that empire, the Franks (despite the Franks increasingly being, you know, French) – and indeed Europeans in general continue to be called some derivative of the term Frank throughout Asia even today.

There were also Vikings or rather their adventurous successors, the Normans. And you can throw in those scheming Venetians, who ultimately succeeded in diverting the Fourth Crusade to attack their rival, the Byzantine Empire itself (whose claims to the Holy Land were conveniently forgotten by the Crusaders).

That was to prove one of the most short-sighted schemes of history, fatally wounding the empire that had long stood as the southern bulwark of Europe against Islamic invasion. Do you want Ottomans besieging Vienna? Because that’s how you get Ottomans besieging Vienna. Twice.

And on the ‘Eastern’ side, you have a whole host of Islamic combatants, kicked off by the Seljuk Turks taking most of what is now known as Turkey from the Byzantine Empire (leading to that call for aid that started the whole Crusades), but most famously personified by Saladin (albeit he was of Kurdish ethnicity).

My favorite in the whole Crusades remains the Order of Assassins, who derived their name from the hashish with which their founder Hassan al-Sabbah doped them up and who in turn lent their name to our term for assassins.

Lacking the force for more conventional military campaigns, the Assassins focused on – you guessed it – targeted assassination as they infiltrated everyone, Muslim or Christian, until they were defeated by an enemy that came from too far away to have been infiltrated, the Mongols.

That’s right, the Mongols pop up in the Crusades, as they popped up virtually everywhere at that time. Even more interestingly, the Crusaders and Byzantines sought out the Mongols as allies against the Muslims.

This lent itself to the legend of Prester John, a mysterious Christian sovereign whose kingdom moved about Asia and Africa, much like the land of the Phantom – playing its part, as the Crusades did in general, in subsequent European maritime exploration and empire.

 

 

 

(3) AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR & AMERICAN CIVIL WAR (1775-1783 & 1861-1865)

 

That’s right – two wars for the price of one in this special mention, the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and the American Civil War (1861-1865). Also two wars that could be described as the commencement of modern history – and certainly of the predominant superpower of modern history, the United States.

These two wars earn their special entry mention for a number of reasons – firstly as representative of those categories of war that deserve (and will get) their own top ten (and special mentions), revolutions and civil wars.

Of course, those two categories tend to be overlapping, as revolutions tend to evolve (or devolve) into civil wars – that is, if they don’t start out that way. For that matter, we often forget the American revolution was itself a civil war between British subjects – loyalists and revolutionaries.

And the American Civil War has also been seen as the unfinished business of the American Revolutionary War, with the victor of the American Revolution effectively as the South (or what Gore Vidal called the Virginian junta). Indeed, some have seen both as part of series of Anglo-American civil wars back to the English civil war. Not to mention the American Revolutionary War’s loose sequel, the War of 1812.

However, both are more than representative – each earn top entry in those categories. In large part that’s due to their iconic predominance in American history and therefore in the American popular culture that is to a large extent global popular culture.

But more so because I categorize the American Revolution as the best revolution – firstly, because it succeeded, and secondly that it did not collapse into despotism like other revolutions. Pro tip – revolutions are best when they are limited. The more radical the revolution’s goals – the more it seeks to overturn and upend – the more likely it is to fail, or worse, succeed as despotism. Also – shout-out to the American Revolution’s good fortune in its quality of leadership, particularly Washington (with his only rival in popular American reverence being its Civil War president Lincoln).

Secondly, these two wars also earn their special mention in another category of wars that will get their own Top 10 – American wars. Although in that case I do cheekily profess to rank them by their art of war – and the American Revolutionary War ranks up there with the best American wars in art of war.

In large part, that is because it is almost unique among American wars as the Americans fought it as underdogs, against the largest and most powerful maritime empire in history (of course, that is, apart from their own subsequent modern maritime empire)

And they won it through the tried and true art of war for states weaker than their adversaries (as well as Americans generally in their bigger wars) – having others do the fighting for you. In particular, the French – but also the Spanish and Dutch in what was effectively a world war against Britain.

Not so much the American Civil War of course, which was fought entirely between themselves without foreign allies or intervention – and remains, not coincidentally, the American war with the highest American casualties.

Thirdly and finally, these two wars earn their special mention for their own significant impact in history, military or otherwise.

The American Revolution looms larger here, inspiring as it did the Haitian and Latin American revolutions. And it not only inspired the French revolution, but directly led to it as the French monarchy had bankrupted itself fighting the American revolution – literally two revolutions for the price of one.

The American Revolution also not only saw the United States gain independence from the British maritime empire, but ultimately supplanting it as world power, fuelled by their territorial expansion across the continent that also originated with the American Revolution.

And perhaps Europeans – particularly Germans, who were unified under Bismarck at about the same time – might have paid more attention to the American Civil War as more indicative of the attrition, industrial mobilization and general slog-fest of modern warfare, as opposed to, say outliers like the Franco-Prussian War.

Lest we do too much cheerleading for the American revolution, let’s remember its losers, apart from the British (as well as French and Spanish) monarchy. British loyalists – many of whom fled to Canada or elsewhere. Those native Americans allied with the British or who otherwise sought to thwart the growing United States. And of course slaves and women, as the new American republic deprived both of liberty or representation, uncannily echoing classical Athenian democracy.

 

 

 

(4) FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY & NAPOLEONIC WARS (1789-1815)

 

Cue the La Marseillaise!

The wars that made the modern world – and the modern world wars. Indeed, I’ve seen it persuasively argued that the Napoleonic Wars should outrank the First World War as the more genuinely global conflict. And the French Revolution – along with its subsequent wars – are generally regarded as the landmark of modern political history, hence the god-tier special mention entry.

Napoleon needs little introduction – the Corsican artillery officer who commandeered the French Revolution and crowned himself Emperor of France to dominate Europe.

Napoleon distinguished himself as one of the most brilliant military commanders of history. Under his leadership, the French armies repeatedly defeated numerically superior Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies – outfighting coalition after coalition led and financed by Britain.

The French in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were not the cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the modern joke – a somewhat unhistorical slur in any event given France’s military history, although the Book of Lists did rank France among its Top 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History – but the armies that forged a French empire across Europe from Spain to Russia and from Italy to Denmark.

But in the end Napoleon lost his Napoleonic wars – his empire dismantled, France completely defeated (once and for all in a battle subsequently commemorated by Abba) and Napoleon himself exiled to progressively more pathetic islands.

Despite his strategic and tactical brilliance, Napoleon was undermined by his own flaws. One basic flaw was his nepotism in handing out kingdoms or nations as prizes to his relatives – most critically in giving the kingdom of Spain to his brother Joseph, which prompted Spain to rise up against France in the Peninsular War, the running sore or “Spanish Ulcer” of Napoleon’s empire

Of course, it didn’t help that Napoleon was relentlessly opposed by the British, who were unparalleled in magnificent bastardry – with their most cunning aspect to pose as being nice, as if they were just going about playing cricket rather than taking out almost every country on earth in the name of empire.

In fighting the world’s greatest maritime power, Napoleon was handicapped by his lack of understanding of naval strategy (or his navy’s lack of ability) as well as geopolitics. It was trying to fight outside Europe (and on the seas) that Napoleon met with his earliest (and most consistent) defeats.

For all his romping around Europe, he effectively was bottled up in Europe by the British navy, unable to project his power into the world. All his victories in Europe did not change the basic fact that true world power had moved from the center of Europe to its edges – to the maritime empire of Britain and the continent-spanning empire of Russia, which ultimately crushed him between them. And in the end, all Napoleon’s wars achieved was handing world empire over not to himself, but to two successive Anglo-Saxon powers, Britain and the United States (the latter not least through the Louisiana Purchase) – the real winners of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Napoleonic Wars also initiated the rise of Germany under Prussia – with Prussia reforming itself militarily, and then, as part of the Congress of Vienna seeking to beef it up for a better balance of power, acquiring industrial regions in Germany that transformed agrarian Prussia into an industrial leader in the nineteenth century.

Of course, Germany was to have the same fatal flaw as that of Napoleon before them, bottled up between Britain and Russia as well as misjudging the extent to which world power had moved beyond Europe. Actually, their situation was even worse, as world power to their west had moved across the Atlantic to the United States, well beyond their reach. Indeed, only twenty years after Waterloo, another Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville predicted Russia and the United States as the two global powers – a process that visibly took shape during the Napoleonic Wars.

The French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars saw the transformation of Europe and the world – spreading revolutionary principles over much of Europe (then identified as liberal with the same distaste as a subsequent era was to identify socialist or communist).

Those principles saw the transformation of formerly aristocratic armies into the beginnings of modern warfare, not least the levee en masse or mass conscription of armies – which saw the French revolutionary army achieve objectives that had eluded the French monarchy for centuries

It also saw the beginnings of total war – with the dawn of industrial warfare (with the Industrial Revolution lending Britain the ability to punch above its demographic weight) and the dawn of ideological warfare, as well as the emergence of nationalism (or “people’s wars”) and militarism in the culture of war

“The wars had profound consequences on global history, including the spread of nationalism and liberalism, the rise of Britain as the world’s foremost naval and economic power, the appearance of independence movements in Latin America and subsequent decline of the Spanish Empire and Portuguese Empire, the fundamental reorganization of German and Italian territories into larger states, and the introduction of radically new methods of conducting warfare.”

To which might have been added other things, such as the relative peace in continental Europe during the nineteenth century, and the territorial expansion of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase. And my own pet theory that the destruction of indigenous nations or peoples in the Americas and Australasia can be traced to Napoleon. Not directly, of course, but indirectly through the Louisiana Purchase, consolidation of British “settlement” in Australia and Latin American revolution or independence, which accelerated the impending destruction of indigenous peoples or nations.

 

 

 

(5) FIRST WORLD WAR (1914-1918)

 

Before it was known as the First World War, it was the Great War – “the biggest, bloodiest, most expensive, most disruptive, most damaging and most traumatizing war the world had ever seen up to that point”.

It also tends to be seen in almost entirely negative terms, as one of the most unpopular and pointless wars in history, particularly when compared to its successor.

In the words of the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, “both World Wars were tragic, but World War I was remembered as an unmitigated tragedy, a grinding apocalyptic process whose outcome was always foreseeable, even though some of the details (like the USA’s entry into the conflict) might have been unexpected at the time”.

“World War II, on the other hand, has been remembered as a melodrama, full of strange and uncanny ups and downs, with terrifying new weapons galore, feats of derring-do on a daily basis, and protagonists who were not only monsters in real life but also, in fictional terms, highly effective icons of villainy”.

It does not help that the First World War was hailed at one point as “the war to end all wars” – an epithet doomed to fail and be replaced by the jaded cynicism that has seen the international agreement that brought it to an end dubbed as “the peace to end all peace”.

A slur for which, as a Treaty of Versailles fan, I will not stand! Well, perhaps fan is overstating it, but I do think the Treaty of Versailles is unjustly maligned, a topic worthy of its own top ten. To put it simply, the Treaty of Versailles was not that bad – while Germany should have spent a lot more time sucking it up and a lot less time bitching about it.

Much the same goes for the First World War itself, particularly in comparison to the Second World War – albeit the former is not so much unjustly maligned, as it earns much of its claim to futility and pointlessness. And much of that is of course the Western Front, the relentless slogging match that remained largely static despite millions of casualties.

Even that, however, is somewhat unfair to the Western Front, which finally showed some dynamism in 1918, although one might observe that took long enough.

More fundamentally, it is the Western Front that provides the enduring imagery of the war, and for that matter of modern war itself, of total war and trench warfare. Its battles, as costly and futile as they were, still read like a roll call of modern military history – with perhaps Verdun and the Somme as the most definitive. Not to mention much of the definitive technology of modern war had its debut or development in the Western Front – notably tanks and aircraft.

There is also the cultural impact of the Western Front – not least on modern literary fantasy (hence the Encyclopedia of Fantasy entry), notably through J.R.R. Tolkien. Such is the cultural impact that it might be summed up by the title of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory.

And speaking of modern memory, it is the First World War that looms larger in national commemorations honoring the day of its armistice – not to mention, nations such as Australia, for whom their national identity was essentially shaped in battle, even in defeat, during the war at Gallipoli, commemorated by Anzac Day.

The static stalemate of the Western Front obscures the war’s more dynamic nature elsewhere – on the Eastern Front (including the Russian Revolution), in the Balkans, in the Middle East (including the Arab Revolt), at sea, in the air, and my favorite as well as the most impressive military achievement through the entire war, the German guerilla warfare led by von Lettow-Vorbeck in Africa.

Arguably, the Germans fought better in the First World War than they did in the Second, despite succeeding in 1940 where they had failed in 1914 – while the Americans also arguably waged a better war, despite failing to do what they should have done in the peace after the First what they did after the Second. Japan and Italy also chose the better side in the First than in the Second, although that might be attributed more to failures in the interwar years.

But I stand by the First World War being unfairly contrasted with the Second World War – usually in terms of the comparison of casualty rates, with the former seen as pointlessly higher without the greater mobility or movement of the latter to show for it.

Firstly, that is not quite true. In blunt terms, the Western Front was just as static for most of the Second World War – it’s just that the trench was bigger, in the form of the English Channel. And also that the Western allies effectively outsourced their casualties to the Eastern Front, where casualty rates could be very high indeed. Even on the Western front from Normany onwards, casualty rates at the sharp end could also be high enough to compare to the First World War.

And in the air for that matter – it’s ironic that Bomber Harris saw the bombing campaign as a way of avoiding the high casualty rates of the Western Front in the First World War, only for the allies to replicate those rates during the bombing campaign.

Secondly, this comparison belies that, if anything, it was the Second World War that was anomalous, while the First World War was more truly characteristic of twentieth century wars as static wars of attrition – as reflected by my favorite historian, H.P. Willmott, when he quipped, seemingly as a paradox, that WW2 might be regarded as the last war of the nineteenth century and WW1 as the first war of the twentieth century. Partly this is that for a brief shining moment, the technology and technique of offensive mobility won out over defensive firepower, but as Willmott observed, it started swinging back as defensive firepower rebounded from 1942 onwards.

The Encyclopedia of Fantasy continues that “despite the attempts of propagandists on both sides, no wholly evil figure emerges from World War I to occupy the world’s imagination, no one of a viciousness so unmitigated that it seems almost supernatural; Hitler, on the other hand, has all the lineaments of a Dark Lord, and the Reich he hoped to found was a parody of the true Land”.

But it’s the Germans as bad guys – I’m a fan of the Fischer thesis.

 

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(6) BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

 

Styled as World War Zero by some historians.

The Bronze Age Collapse – or more precisely Late Bronze Age Collapse – was the widespread societal collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilization in the 12th century BC, argued to be worse than the collapse of the western Roman Empire or even the worst case of societal collapse in human history.

Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece – the Greeks of the Trojan War – were among the most famous casualties, ushering in the Greek Dark Ages for a few centuries.

However, they are among about a dozen ancient civilizations that collapsed or declined – foremost among them the Hittite Empire that collapsed in Anatolia, while Egypt’s New Kingdom and the Assyrians clung on by the skin of their teeth, in decline or weakened. “Almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again.”

I don’t know much about the finer details of the Bronze Age Collapse, but then neither does anyone else ultimately, as it remains the subject of argument and theory.

However, war is often cited as the main culprit, typically at the hands of the mysterious and to some extent still hypothetical “Sea Peoples”, seaborne raiders to rival the more usual horse blitzkrieg of nomadic herding tribes in civilization-crushing effect.

I certainly think war played a major part, hence this special mention, although am less clear whether it was the cause of the collapse or an effect – with the latter involving the Sea Peoples and others effectively moving into the void left by collapsing civilizations.

Interestingly, the Sea Peoples are proposed to include a number of ethnic groups – one of which is identified as the ancestors of the Philistines faced by the Israelites in the Bible. The Israelites themselves rose in the vaccuum left behind by the retreat or collapse of Hittites, Egyptians and Assyrians – so that the Bible itself has origins in the Bronze Age Collapse, as does that other landmark of western culture, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Apart from Sea Peoples and war, other causes are proposed for the collapse – political fragmentation or rebellion within societies, drought or famine, natural disasters such as earthquakes or volcanic eruption, plagues, and the collapse of trade for manufacture of bronze (or the emergence of iron among adversaries).

Or a combination of all of these – “the civilizations could have endured any one disaster, but not multiple at the same time, especially not when they were feeding into one another”.

 

 

 

(7) PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404 BC)

 

Greek against Greek – Athens vs Sparta.

There was a point when I cracked during the film 300. It was when Leonidas spoke about the necessity of Sparta fighting Persia because even “those boy-loving philosophers” in Athens were fighting Persia. “Screw you, Leonidas”, I yelled “the Peloponnesian War isn’t over!” And after the ushers bounced me from the cinema, I ruminated on this slur on the Athenians. There was of course the fact that they were the true Greek heroes of the Persian Wars.

But there was also, you know, the Peloponnesian War of Athens against Sparta (or Peloponnesian Wars, as there was first and second war with a brief peace between them).

And we’re still fighting it, in that the war between democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta underlies the grand ideological conflict in Western civilization. Few things may actually have an ideal Platonic form, but Sparta did – Plato’s Republic, with its philosopher-kings or guardians who perceive the Forms of the true reality, trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical and moral regimen) and bound by stricter rules than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, as Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta, although he and his ideas didn’t do too well when put into practice with attempts at a philosopher-king in Syracuse.

And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s mystical fascism or totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the Fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism, and so on.

Of course, I know this is mostly my projection. I’m not sure if Western political ideology has actually been influenced by Sparta or even Plato and his Republic to that extent (or how much Sparta and Plato influenced each other for that matter). But I’m not the only one to see such parallels and I’m sticking with it – it has a certain mythic resonance. Hence its god-tier special mention entry second to the Trojan War, which might otherwise seem extravagant for a war between Greek city-states.

And what about, you know, the historical Peloponnesian War, you ask? To paraphrase Martin Prince’s sneer from The Simpsons, I’m aware of its work – namely, that Sparta won, with a little help from their Persian friends, albeit to be humbled later by Thebes, before the Macedonians and Romans swept over all the Greek city states.

And that Athenian political ideas didn’t work too well in Syracuse either, with the disastrous Athenian Syracuse Expedition sometimes likened to the American experience in Vietnam, only a lot worse for the ultimate defeat of Athens in their not so cold war against Sparta.

As I said previously, Plato’s ideas – and Plato himself – didn’t fare too well in Syracuse, when he came closest to implementing his Republic and its philosopher-kings in practical reality through Syracuse and its tyrant. Closest that is, as in not at all, founding the time-honored tradition of how intellectuals fare when courting people in power or political tyranny – running afoul of tyrants and narrowly avoiding execution or literal slavery and imprisonment.

Of course, history is a lot messier than our black and white projections of it. Lest we think of the Spartans too much as the bad guys, while their allies wanted Athens destroyed and its population enslaved after its defeat, it was the Spartans with their warrior code of honor who declined to do so – particularly as they regarded that all of Greece owed Athens a debt of honor for its role in the Persian War. And screw you, Thebes and Corinth! I’ve got a letter for the Corinthians and this time there’s no love in it. I’m an Athenian fan.

And for that matter, even the Spartanism or mystical fascism of Plato in my projection may be more nuanced than that, given it has a recurring appeal to or arguments for it. Even I’m a fan of one of the many pop culture versions of Plato’s Republic – Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One. Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. Judge Dredd – he is the Forms!

 

 

 

(8) CRISIS OF THE THIRD CENTURY (235 – 284 AD)

 

Before the Fall came the Crisis…

With the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire deserving first special mention, is it any surprise that the Crisis of the Third Century, that dress rehearsal of the fall, is far behind?

The Crisis of the Third Century – also known as the Military Anarchy or Imperial Crisis – had much the same scope as the decline and fall. Indeed, the Crisis of the Third Century was part of the decline, even if the empire narrowly forestalled its fall for another two centuries. Many of the fundamental problems of the empire from the Crisis endured to the fall, even when in muted form.

Narrowly forestalled its fall, that is, as in the empire “nearly collapsed under the combined pressure of repeated foreign invasions, civil wars, and economic disintegration” – “at the height of the crisis, the Roman state had split into three distinct and competing polities”, the so-called Gallic Empire and Palmyrene Empire vying with the central Roman Empire in its western and eastern provinces respectively.

Indeed, had it collapsed – or fragmented – it is hard to imagine the eastern half of the empire enduring in quite the same durable form as it did two centuries later. For one thing, the empire was divided into thirds rather than halves – with what was to become the eastern empire, that is, apart from the Palmyrene Empire, more resembling a quarter than half, albeit not unlike the eastern empire after it had rebounded from Arab conquests. It also lacked the capital founded by Constantine – Constantinople, with its nigh impenetrable defenses against all but the most overwhelming siege – or indeed the seat of imperial government founded as its own distinctive new Roman empire.

Although mind you, the eastern empire pulled off its own near miraculous recovery from crises – note that plural, crises – to rival that of the third century, like it looked back at the classical empire’s direst crisis and said hold my beer.

Two things saved the classical empire in the Crisis of the Third Century, even if it went from classical to late empire.

The first was that, as fearsome as the foreign invasions were, they lacked the ability or even intent to conquer territory or form their own states within the empire, rather than raiding it for plunder albeit on a larger scale than ever before. Even the Sassanid Persian Empire – the closest adversary the Roman Empire had to a rival peer state – for all its successes only raided Roman provinces and moved its border slightly away from its capital.

The second was a series of soldier emperors or barracks emperors – mostly the so-called Illyrian emperors originating from that region as the then heartland of the Roman army – who managed to hold the line and turn the tide to restore the empire, “an accomplishment many historians regard as about as unlikely and impressive as any of Rome’s Golden Age achievements in building the empire in the first place”.

Foremost among them of course was Aurelian – Restitutor Orbis or Restorer of the World, who reunited the empire by defeating the rival Palmyrene and Gallic Empires – but he built on the achievements of the emperors who came before him, Claudius Gothicus and arguably also Gallienus, and had successors who consolidated his achievements, notably Probus and the emperor who is credited with finally ending the Crisis, Diocletian.

At the core of the Crisis was the political instability of imperial succession (and usurpation) suggested by the other names used for the Crisis (Military Anarchy and Imperial Crisis).

Tacitus had observed that the ‘secret of the empire’ had been exposed with the succession crisis after Nero in the first century – “that emperors could be made elsewhere than in Rome”, a secret that excited “all the legions and their generals”.

Despite this observation, those legions and their generals had mostly followed the various imperial dynastic successions for the first two and a half centuries of empire – its founding Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Flavian dynasty, the adoptive succession of the Five Good Emperors, and the Severan dynasty.

In the Crisis, however, the legions and their generals had become very excited indeed – as one so-called barracks emperor succeeded another, usually by usurpation. And that’s just the line of imperial succession generally regarded as legitimate – beyond that there were literally countless usurpers, some of which we are still discovering through archaeology or coins.

Indeed, it often seems from the Crisis that where even the most minor commanders of a legion or legions had even the barest degree of military success (or were just left outside or stranded by the ebbing tide of imperial authority), they would proclaim themselves as emperor – or their legions would.

Not surprisingly, with Roman commanders and their legions marching either to advance their own imperial claims or against those of others, that saw them abandon the defense of the empire’s borders.

That was compounded by drain on population by the Cyprian Plague that raged through the empire, and which struck military barracks or manpower particularly hard – indeed the capture of Emperor Valerian by the Persians, the first time an emperor was captured by foreign forces, was attributed to his army being laid waste by plague.

The population decline of the empire also compounded its economic instability, characterized by the collapse of its currency and trade.

Through the gaping holes left in the imperial borders poured the empire’s recurring foreign enemies to raid it – further compounding the empire’s economic decline as the empire’s problems became an intense feedback loop as each problem cranked up the others.

Foremost in notoriety as the empire’s recurring enemies were the German barbarian tribes – who had grown in military capability (and relative population) through two centuries of contact with the empire, although they were not yet as capable as they were when they brought about the fall (and mostly replaced those Roman commanders and their legions vying within the empire).

The capabilities of the Germans were increased by forming new tribal coalitions or confederations – particularly the Franks, who raided across the Rhine through Gaul as far as Spain, and the Alemanni, who raided through the Alps into Italy, even threatening the city of Rome itself (the first external threat the city had faced for centuries) and giving Aurelian himself pause, inflicting his only defeat before he rallied to victory against them.

And across the Danube came the Germans who were ultimately to do more than anyone else to bring about the fall of the empire – the Goths, raiding as far as Greece and even Asia Minor because they managed to get themselves a fleet and there’s nothing worse than barbarians with boats.

All these German raiders paled in comparison to the Sassanid Persians – which as I noted was the only state on Rome’s borders that came close to being Rome’s peer – as they raided deep into Rome’s eastern provinces, particularly Syria.

As was typically the case, Rome’s worst enemy was itself as it fractured into three rival empires fighting among themselves. The core empire remained around Italy, fortunately including the Illyrian military heartland of the empire and its breadbasket in north Africa – but it lost its western provinces to the Gallic Empire led by usurpers, and its eastern provinces to the Palmyrene Empire, essentially a client state that had loyally led the defense against the Sassanid Persians but had gone rogue under its queen Zenobia.

Fortunately, along came Aurelian – breathing two centuries of life into the empire before the fall.

 

 

(9) ROMAN-PERSIAN WARS

 

The first world war, fought intermittently on the frontier between successive Roman and Persian polities over almost seven centuries.

No, seriously. Well, half seriously.

The Roman-Persian Wars were a world war, or war between two different worlds – that might have been fought on the frontier between them, a little like the Western Front writ large (and long) but had ramifications or repercussions throughout both empires that extended across Eurasia from Britain to India.

And that comparison to the First World War’s Western Front writ large and long stands. Despite seven slugging centuries of grinding war, the Roman-Persian border remained remarkably stable.

“One has the impression that the blood spilled in the warfare between the two states brought as little real gain to one side or the other as the few meters of land gained at terrible cost in the trench warfare of the First World War.”

That is, until the last dramatic phase of the wars, the Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 – which might be compared to the similarly abrupt and dramatic reversals of fortune in 1917-1918 that ultimately saw the end of the First World War. However, even that last war of the Roman-Persian Wars effectively ended with the restoration of the status quo (and border) between the two empires.

The Roman-Persian Wars are an interesting contrast to those other Persian Wars of antiquity, the Greek-Persian Wars, in lacking the same existential stakes or outcomes – with the Greek city-states desperately defending themselves from outright conquest by the Achaemenid Persian Empire in the classical Greek-Persian Wars, and Alexander the Great conquering that same empire outright in his Macedonian-Persian Wars.

The latter always struck me as incredible in contrast to the failure of the Romans, more powerful and commanding more resources than either Alexander or their own Persian adversaries, to achieve anything like Alexander’s decisive defeat and conquest of Persia. That is despite the Romans, at least emperors Caracalla and Julian, expressly seeking to emulate Alexander. The reality seems to have been that for the most part neither side did little more than essentially raid each other over the frontier, with the Romans famously sacking the Persian capital Ctesiphon numerous times.

The Roman-Persian Wars might be classified into four phases, corresponding to three successive Roman polities and two Persian ones – not to mention Armenia bouncing back and forth between the two empires as client state or protectorate.

First, there was Roman Republic against the Parthians – initiated by the invasion of Mesopotamia by Roman general Crassus, which saw one of the Republic’s most crushing defeats at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC. However, the Parthians did nothing to exploit this defeat or the subsequent civil wars of the Republic with one notable exception, as they generally sought to remain on peaceful terms with the Romans. That notable exception was their support of the so-called Liberators – the assassins of Julius Caesar – and invasion of the Roman eastern provinces after the Liberators’ defeat. The Romans defeated the Parthian invasion, but the Parthians then defeated the retributive campaign by Mark Antony against them.

Second, there was the Roman Empire against the Parthians, which saw five major wars between them, mostly to the defeat of the Parthians with their capital Ctesiphon sacked three times and four Roman emperors claiming the title of Persicus Maximus. Those wars were the Roman-Parthian War of 58-63 AD (with the Roman campaign led by the general Corbulo under emperor Nero), Trajan’s campaign into Parthia, the Roman-Parthian War of 161-166 AD under Roman emperor Lucius Verus (the co-emperor of Marcus Aurelius), the campaign of Roman emperor Septimius Severus in 195-197 AD, and finally the Parthian War of Caracalla in 216-217 AD.

Third, there was the Roman Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians, successors to the Parthians. The Sassanids were very different to the Parthians in hostile character towards Rome – in the words of Youtuber Tominus Maximus, “Sassanid Persia was like Parthia…on cocaine and mixed with crystal meth”. Most famously, there were the Sassanid incursions deep into the Roman eastern provinces during the Crisis of the Third Century, after fighting between them during the reign of Roman emperor Severus Alexander.

However, the Romans subsequently defeated the Sassanids, sacking Ctesiphon a further two times in campaigns led by Roman emperors Carus in 283 AD and Galerius (with Diocletian holding his hand) in 298 AD. The latter was the most decisive Roman victory against the Sassanids, enduring for decades until hostilities resumed in the Perso-Roman Wars of 337-361 AD under Roman emperor Constantius III and the ill-fated expedition by Roman emperor Julian.

Surprisingly, the Sassanids mellowed in the fifth century, remaining mostly peaceful with the Roman Empire while the latter’s western half fell to barbarian invasions. In part that was due to the Sassanids facing off their own barbarian threats, but it was instrumental in the survival of the eastern Roman Empire. Which brings me to…

Fourth, there was the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire against the Sassanids or Sasanians. While the Persians were only peer state the Romans had as adversary, the classical empire had the advantage in population and resources, albeit that advantage was diluted by more far-flung commitments. After the fall of the western empire, the eastern empire and the Sassanids were much more closely matched.

Not surprisingly then, this saw the most dramatic and mobile phase of the Roman-Persian Wars from the preceding centuries of effective stalemate – with the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 602-628. First the Sassanids almost decisively defeated and conquered the eastern empire, even besieging Constantinople, but were then decisively defeated in turn by a near miraculous eastern Roman recovery under emperor Heraclius – albeit the eastern Roman empire was too weakened to exploit its victory other than regaining its lost territory and effectively restoring the status quo between them.

The ultimate futility of the Roman-Persian Wars came in their aftermath with the event that decisively ended them altogether – the Arab conquests, achieved in large part from both empires being so weakened fighting each other that they were unable to resist their new adversary, with one being completely conquered and the other barely surviving defeat as well as the loss of much of its former territory.

 

 

 

(10) ARAB CONQUESTS (622 – 751 AD)

 

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) on three continents in a little over a century, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

 “In speed and extent, the first Arab conquests were matched only by those of Alexander the Great, and they were more lasting.”

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

The Rashidun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting to break out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab conquests reached their greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel.

Eastwards, the Umayyads also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids in 750 AD and the Abbasids then formed the third great Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad. The surviving Umayyad dynasty fled into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain, continuing their Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al-Andalus of Spain.

Although the Abbasids made some more territorial gains – notably Sicily and Crete – their Caliphate saw an end to the rapid Arab conquests, albeit with victory against Tang China in the Battle of Talas in 751 AD as a postscript:

“Muslim armies had come against a combination of natural barriers and powerful states that impeded any further military progress. The wars produced diminishing returns … The priorities of the rulers also shifted from conquest of new lands to administration of the acquired empire … the period of rapid centralized expansion would now give way to an era when further spread of Islam would be slow and accomplished through the efforts of local dynasties, missionaries, and traders.”

One is spoilt for choice for wars in the century and more of Arab conquests, but if one were to choose the wars that best encapsulate them as a whole, it would be the Arab-Byzantine wars from 629 AD to 718 AD.

The Byzantine or eastern Roman empire was the first state of substance that the Arabs faced when breaking out from their peninsula. It seemed incredible that the Arabs could defeat such a firmly established state, even when that state was weakened from recent war with Persia, yet they did – routing it back to Anatolia as they conquered its other territory in Asia and Africa, which then became their springboard for further conquests.

Ironically, it then seemed incredible that the Byzantines could hold the line or withstand complete defeat or conquest by the Arabs as the latter went from one victory to another – yet they did, from Arab attacks by land and by sea, even as the Arabs besieged Constantinople twice, in 674-678 AD and in 717-718 AD. Among other things, the Byzantine superweapon Greek fire was instrumental in their success.

The frontiers of Arab conquest finally stabilized between them in Anatolia, as it did elsewhere under the Abbasid caliphate at about this time, until from about 863 AD when the Byzantines – incredibly again – were able to regain both the initiative and some of their former territory, in wars usually reversed in name to the Byzantine-Arab wars to signify Byzantine ascendance.

 

 

 

 

 

(11) VIKING EXPANSION (793 – 1066)

 

A historical explosion like the Arab conquests, in far-flung scale if not territorial conquest – a longboat blitzkrieg across four continents, albeit if only on the peripheries of three of them.

Europe was the focus of Viking expansion, not surprisingly given its Scandinavian origin – Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In turn, the Viking expansion might be classified broadly as westwards or eastwards, the former with a focus on the British Isles and France, the latter with a focus on Russia.

The British Isles set the archetype of Viking expansion – raids followed by conquest and settlement – as well as the timeline I’ve used in this entry.

That timeline – often dubbed the Viking Age – typically starts with the first Viking raids in England and ends with the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Ironically, the better event in 1066 for it is the failed invasion of England by the Norwegian king, defeated at the Battle of Samford Bridge by the Saxon king Harold Godwinson, who then went on to be defeated by the Normans in the more famous Battle of Hastings.

However, one might argue for a longer Viking Age extending to the fifteenth century, as the king of Norway retained fiefdoms in Scottish islands such as Shetland or Orkney until that century. However, the tendency among historians is to identify that the various Viking polities, particularly the Scandinavian monarchies, were no longer Vikings once they became Christian.

Probably the most famous part of the Viking expansion in the British Isles or at least England was the Danish conquest or settlement in England known as the Danelaw, particularly under King Canute or Cnut – you don’t want to mix up the letters in the latter.

In Ireland, the most famous part were the Viking kingdoms – strikingly including that in Dublin although many of Ireland’s first large towns were Viking conquests or settlements – and their defeat by the Irish High King Brian Boru, particularly in the Battle of Clontarf

Otherwise, the Vikings pretty much raided the entire Atlantic coastline of western Europe – with the most famous part here being the Viking settlement under their leader Rollo that became Normandy within the Frankish kingdom in France. The Normans went on to their own Norman Conquests that were almost as expansive as the Viking Expansion from which they originated – but is best considered as distinct from it since they rapidly became Christian as well as acculturated or intermixed with the French population.

The Vikings didn’t stop at the Atlantic coastline of Western Europe, raiding – and trading – in the Mediterranean as well, certainly in the Iberian peninsula but possibly also as far as Italy, north Africa, Egypt and the Byzantine Empire. There’s Africa as one of the four continents of Viking expansion by the way – I told you the other three continents were only on their periphery. However, the Norman conquests were to prove more notable in the Mediterranean – notably actually conquering territory in northern Africa.

So that’s the westward Viking expansion in Europe – the eastward expansion extended along the Baltic coastline and rivers in Russia, where they were known as Varangians. The focus and most famous part of this eastward expansion was their kingdom known as Kievan Rus’ and their contacts with the Byzantine Empire, which saw Viking expansion to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. There’s Asia as another continent of Viking expansion, albeit again on the periphery.

The fourth continent was North America, albeit by exploration and settlement via Iceland and Greenland which extended at its very furthest fringe to Newfoundland, known as Vinland.

What is particularly intriguing are the various theories of what drove the Viking expansion. Some of the usual suspects have been proposed but not confirmed – demographic (population or youth bulge), economic (growing trade and urbanization for targets), ideological (paganism vs Christianity), political (the “pull” of weak, decentralized states in Europe against the “push” of stronger centralized states in Scandinavia), technological (Viking shipbuilding), and even climate (favorable conditions for sailing).

However, my personal favorite theory is that they were horny – and not on their helmets (which I understand may be something of a historical myth in any event). That is, the s€xual theory of Viking Expansion – it was to seek out or capture women due to a shortage of available women in Scandinavia for young men.

 

 

 

(12) OTTOMAN CONQUESTS (1299 – 1699)

 

The rise and conquests of the empire that conquered Constantinople and besieged Vienna – twice, although the second time was their highwater mark of conquest.

One can draw parallels with the conquests of other empires, some more ironic than others. Perhaps the least ironic is the rise of the Ottoman Empire rivalling the conquests by the Arab caliphates it ultimately replaced in predominance in the Middle East – and indeed replayed much of the same history over the same territory. The Ottoman Empire may have lacked the range and speed of the Arab conquests, being slower and more methodical than the blitzkrieg pace of the latter but made up for it in the extent to which it invaded and conquered within Europe.

On that last point, one might draw some parallel with the Mongol conquests, aptly enough for the Turkic steppe nomadic origins of the Ottomans – as the most substantial invasion of Europe since and to rival the Mongols.

One might even draw a parallel with the Romans – aptly enough as the power that finally conquered (and saw itself as inheriting) the last of the Roman Empire. Firstly, in the rise of the Ottomans from one of numerous non-descript warring tribes on a peninsula, albeit the Anatolian rather than Italian peninsula (although as further irony, the Romans traced themselves from that peninsula as well, with their mythic origin from Troy). And secondly, in the methodical and almost inexorable nature of its conquests – as well as its tenacity in decline, although this entry is concerned with the former.

It is also intriguing how much of the origins of modern history might be traced to the looming presence of the Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Mediterranean – such as the discovery of the New World from seeking to find alternate trade routes to Asia and so on.

Again, one might see the parallel with the Arab conquests, with the Ottoman conquests shaping modern history similarly to the Arab conquests shaping medieval history. And like the Arabs, one of the first obstacles the Ottomans faced on their path to conquest was the eastern Roman empire, albeit much declined from its days of defending against the Arabs. Still, the Ottoman siege(s) and capture of Constantinople were an epic end to the eastern Roman empire – and springboard for further Ottoman conquests.

With its conquest of the Byzantine Empire as well as Constantinople as its newly conquered capital and its control of the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was a transcontinental empire at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa for almost half a millennium, albeit half of that again in decline.

Egypt was of course the jewel in the crown of their African empire – but it extended westwards from Libya to Morocco (and briefly into the Atlantic with the Canary Islands), becoming the basis of the fabled Barbary corsairs or pirates which even fought the United States, although these were only nominally under Ottoman control. The Ottomans also extended southwards to the Horn of Africa – and into naval wars in the Indian Ocean.

In Asia, they inherited the caliphate and its predominance in the Middle East, extending south through the Arabian peninsula, although held at bay by a resurgent Persia under their own Turkic Safavid dynasty.

However, it was in Europe that they had their conquests that define this entry – they conquered the Balkans, extending to Crimea with the Crimean Khanate or Tatars, successors to the Mongol Golden Horde, as their vassal state, and also reached to the heart of Europe to besiege Vienna. Although apart from its defeats when besieging Vienna, it encountered significant holdouts or resistance elsewhere – Croatia, Dracula or Vlad the Impaler, Venice, and the naval Battle of Lepanto.

If I were to pick one war from among these conquests to encapsulate them, it would be the war that saw their second siege of Vienna, particularly famed for the charging Polish cavalry or winged hussars that broke the Ottoman siege – the Great Turkish War or Wars of the Holy League from 1683 to 1699.

The Great Turkish War was fought between the Ottoman Empire on one side and the Holy League on the other – the Holy Roman Empire, the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, Hungary and Venice.

And following from that defeat in the Battle of Vienna, the Great Turkish War ended with Turkish defeat – and defeat that was to prove the highwater mark of their conquests in Europe, losing substantial territory in Hungary and elsewhere.

Thereafter the Ottomans steadily lost their conquests in the Balkans even as it was propped up by Britain against Russia, resulting in it being styled as the “sick man of Europe” in the nineteenth century – somewhat overconfidently, as the Allies were to find out in WW1, although ultimately it collapsed in that war.

 

 

 

 

(13) TIMURID CONQUESTS & INVASIONS (1370-1405)

 

The wars of the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur or Tamurlane were the last of the great horse blitzkriegs – “the last of the major nomadic conquerors of the Eurasian Steppe” mauling other states of such formidable reputation as the Golden Horde, Mamluk Sultanate, the Ottomans, and Delhi Sultanate. He was even eyeing off Ming China before his death.

If I were to pick which of the four major successor states to the Mongol Empire were to rival its reputation in conquest, I would have picked any of the other three – the Golden Horde, the Yuan Dynasty in China, or the Ilkhanate in Persia – before the runt of the litter, the Chagatai Khanate in Central Asia. Of course, by the time of Timur, the Ilkhanate had disintegrated into fragmentation, and the Yuan had fallen to the new Ming Dynasty, but even then I would have gone with the Golden Horde.

I certainly wouldn’t have picked the Chagatai Khanate to defeat the Golden Horde – nor to defeat the Mamluks who had defeated the OG Mongol Empire or the Ottomans who had just started to steamroller their way up the Balkans, but then I hadn’t reckoned on the Timurnator (heh)

“The Timurid conquests and invasions started in the late 14th century with Timur’s control over the Chagatai Khanate and ended at the start of the 15th century with the death of Timur. Due to the sheer scale of Timur’s wars, and due to the fact that he was generally undefeated in battle, he has been regarded as one of the most successful military commanders of all time. These wars resulted in Timur’s supremacy over Central Asia, Persia, the Caucasus, the Levant, and parts of South Asia and eastern Europe, and they also resulted in the formation of the short-lived Timurid Empire”.

Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate (in Transoxiana) but because he was not descended from Genghis Khan, he ruled under the title of Amir through a puppet Khan, although he was to marry a descendant of Genghis (the widow of his defeated opponent) and style himself as the son-in-law of Genghis Khan. He also styled himself as the Sword of Islam, although ironically his major opponents were the other major Islamic states of Eurasia.

As the Sword of Islam and in the Mongol family tradition, he unleashed all hell across Eurasia, with casualties estimated in the millions. Timur gained control of the western Chagatai Khanate in 1370 and for the next thirty five years he conquered the remnants of the Ilkhanate in Persia and “led a series of military campaigns defeating the Khans of the Golden Horde, the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, as well as the Delhi Sultanate in the Indian subcontinent…these conquests led to the creation of the Timurid Empire, which fragmented shortly after his death.”

Shortly before his death, Timur “had even attempted to restore the Yuan dynasty” in China.

The Golden Horde never recovered from Timur, disintegrating into smaller khanates that were ultimately swallowed up by the Russian state. While the Ottomans were defeated by him – giving the Byzantine Empire some small respite before its death – they bounced back to bigger and better things.

As for the Delhi Sultanate, “Delhi’s conquest was one of the greatest victories of Timur, arguably surpassing Cyrus the Great, Darius the Great, Alexander the Great, and Genghis Khan, because of the harsh conditions of the journey and the achievement of taking down the richest city of the world at the time. Delhi suffered a great loss due to this and took a century to recover.”

Even after that century, Timur still conquered India from beyond the grave – or more precisely through one of his descendants, his great-great-grandson Babur, who conquered India to forge arguably the most powerful imperial state in the subcontinent prior to the British, the Mughal Empire, which survived even in decline to the nineteenth century.

 

 

(14) CHINESE CIVIL WARS – TAIPING & BOXER REBELLIONS
(1850-1864 & 1899-1901)

 

China has such a long history of wars within itself that one really could do a Top 10 list merely for Chinese civil wars or rebellions. Indeed, one could round up a Top 10 for rebellions in Qing China alone. Few things were as spectacular in modern history – or loom as large in the hindsight of a Chinese revolutionary regime succeeding it – as the decline and fall of the Qing Empire, fighting endless rebellions within itself, until it was ultimately overwhelmed by the final one.

And by spectacular, I mean on a scale of international wars for casualties, or even world wars in the case of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion might well be styled China’s world war, in the same way that the Second Congo War is styled as Africa’s world war. It was effectively a world war fought within China – on a scale of casualties exceeding the First World War, or even matching the Second World War by some estimates. Although characteristically of Chinese wars, the overwhelming majority of casualties was not from actual violence in war, but from the famine and disease that invariably accompanied the disruption of the delicate balance or supply chains of Chinese peasant agriculture.

I’ve heard it said that the Qing Empire literally faced a peasant rebellion an average of every hour or so. I don’t know the truth of that assertion, which probably tallies up the hours in the numerous historical rebellions against the Qing, although I also suspect that many or most rebellions were too limited or localised to have any serious consequence.

 

 

Not so the Taiping Rebellion. I’ve always been fascinated by millennialist or messianic movements – and it fascinates me that Qing China, formerly one of the most powerful imperial states in the world, if not the most imperial state, would find itself struggling and slogging it out for over a decade (or two if you count holdouts until 1871) with…a cult.

That’s right – a cult, one with a leader who proclaimed himself the younger brother of Jesus and declared his own Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. A cult which one would not anticipate to be particularly convincing or credible, but obviously tapped into popular unrest against the Qing.

It’s also amusing that this cult leader was effectively the equivalent of a university dropout, failing the examination for the imperial state bureaucracy. Declaring yourself the messianic leader of a heavenly kingdom and waging war against the state that failed you sounds totally like an admirable career goal in those circumstances. Why don’t more guidance counsellors recommend it?

The Taiping Rebellion marked the inexorable decline of Qing China, which was to prove terminal within half a century – and helped inspire the revolution that terminated it.

 

 

I also find the Boxer Rebellion almost as interesting as the Taiping Rebellion, because it fascinates me that Qing China could again find itself thrown into turmoil by…a secret society of mystical martial artists, generally known in English as the Boxers, but known in Chinese by the even more awesome name of the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists.

It’s like that mysterious secret organization under crime lord Han in the Bruce Lee film Enter the Dragon – which seemed to spend all its time pointlessly drilling in martial arts to take over the world, rather than, you know, training with guns or something, existed in historical real life.

Or perhaps the Jedi in Star Wars, as like the Jedi, the Boxers claimed magical force or supernatural power, particularly invulnerability to bullets (much like the Jedi deflecting lasers)

Unlike the Taiping Rebellion which pitted itself against the Qing state and was inspired by foreign influences, particularly Christian missionaries, the Boxer Rebellion declared its slogan of supporting the Qing state and exterminating foreigners, particularly Christian missionaries.

One might consider the Boxing Rebellion as essentially the Chinese version of its near contemporary by eerie coincidence, the Ghost Dance (although the Taiping Rebellion could also be argued to be a Chinese Ghost Dance).

The Qing state found itself on the horns of a dilemma, but with those Righteous and Harmonious Fists stroking its ego, sided with the Boxers – at least by the decree of the Imperial Dowager. The Chinese imperial officialdom and military were more split, some supporting the decree and others opposing it.

The Boxer Rebellion and the Qing imperial state that supported it did as well as might be expected for combatants who placed their faith in their invulnerability to bullets. That is to say, they lost – handily defeated by the Eight Nation Alliance of Britain, France, Russia, the United States, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan, who found rare solidarity with each other in curb stomping the Qing Empire and the Boxers.

My friends and I had a joke that it’s ironic that China, the nation of Sun Tzu and The Art of War, should have such a consistent lack of military competence (similar to Italy, the nation of Machiavelli and The Prince, with its consistent lack of political competence).

Like most jokes, it’s an overstatement – but China did top The Book of Lists’ 10 Most Defeated Nations in Modern History, and about half of its entry was Qing China. So not surprisingly its wars against rebellions were slogging matches.

 

 

 

(15) BRITISH COLONIAL WARS –
ANGLO-ZULU & ANGLO-ZANZIBAR WARS (1879 & 1896)

 

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift.

That’s it – that’s the entry. Well that and the 1964 film Zulu which depicted it.

Also not quite, as British colonial wars are the archetypal wars fought by European maritime empires as they carved up the world, with the British Empire coming out in the top spot. Don’t worry – we’ll get back to Rorke’s Drift, but Britain fought numerous colonial wars.

Arguably, the most decisive colonial war or wars fought by Britain were the Napoleonic Wars. For one thing, with all the focus on their European theaters, we forget how much of the Napoleonic Wars were fought beyond Europe – and just how much of those were in essence colonial wars, with Britain coming out on top. For another, Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars laid the foundations for its naval supremacy, Pax Britannica and what is sometimes called the second British Empire (to distinguish it from the first British empire until American independence).

Although its naval supremacy was the primary instrument of its empire, Britain was surprisingly versatile with a colonial army that tended to punch above its weight in numbers, which were surprisingly small, in part of course due to superior firepower (and plain old firing drill) over its colonial adversaries.

In the words of Hillaire Belloc –
“Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim gun, and they have not”

So which of Britain’s prolific colonial wars to pick for this entry? As you can see, I’ve gone with the Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Zanzibar Wars, firstly because I like the alliterative effect, but also because they are aptly representative of Britain’s colonial wars.

The Anglo-Zanzibar War is, however, the archetypal British colonial victory through superior firepower. Not coincidentally, it also holds the title of the shortest war in history – 38 minutes to 45 minutes, depending on which record you go by.

It was proverbial gunboat diplomacy – bonus points for involving actual gunboats, two craft with that designation, among the five British ships. Essentially, the wrong sultan succeeded to the Zanzibar Sultanate. Wrong, that is, from the perspective of the British, who preferred another one – so they simply rolled up in their ships and shelled the palace until they got the right one. Yes – they also stormed the palace with a contingent of marines or sailors and pro-British Zanzibaris. The British suffered one casualty – a wounded sailor – to about 500 Zanzibari casualties.

And with remarkably wry humor, the British billed Zanzibar for the shells the British used, among the other terms of surrender, because the British built their empire on a budget. With its puppet sultan, Zanzibar continued to be absorbed into the British Empire, and was subsequently merged with the former German colony of Tanganyika to become British Tanzania.

Now back to Rorke’s Drift, if you’re a fan of the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Lord of The Rings film (The Two Towers), then you’re a fan of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, as the former was filmed in a manner deliberately reminiscent of the film Zulu according to Jackson.

Indeed, Rorke’s Drift was seen at the time as the Helm’s Deep of the British Empire, a victory snatched from the jaws of the crushing defeat by the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana (as well as the seedy origins of the Anglo-Zulu War).

Even if contemporary observers might see Britain and its empire more as Mordor (or Isengard to America’s Mordor) rather than the Shire as Tolkien did.

If anything, Rorke’s Drift was even more epic than Helm’s Deep – as a small company of less than 150 soldiers attached to the Royal Engineers (including a substantial number of sick and wounded) fought off a force of about 3-4,000 Zulus.

Taking a step back, Rorke’s Drift was a small albeit highly celebrated part of the Anglo-Zulu War, with the British soldiers finding themselves in the path of a Zulu force in the aftermath of the opening Zulu victory at Isandlwana.

The Anglo-Zulu War itself might be seen as the last of a series of Zulu wars, from the foundation of the Zulu Kingdom as a formidable military power under Shaka. Unfortunately for his successors, the Zulu Kingdom found itself against a bigger and even more aggressive tribe – the Anglo tribe of the British Empire – and Isandlwana proved itself to be the Zulu high point of the war.

Back to Rorke’s Drift, I tend to default to its depiction in the film Zulu, which while generally accurate to the historical battle, does of course have inaccuracies (with perhaps the most egregious involving the depiction of Private Hook, a model soldier, as a rogue redeemed in the battle). The film may also be seen as somewhat problematic in these times given its celebration of British imperial victory – I don’t care.

Indeed the film tends to glamorize both sides in the battle – with the Zulus depicted as a brave, intelligent, capable, resourceful and ultimately honorable adversary. And if anyone can resist the stirring orchestral theme by John Barry, I don’t know what to say.

The British soldiers were led by Lieutenant Chard, portrayed by Stanley Baker, and his second in command Lieutenant Bromhead, portrayed by a young Michael Caine in his breakthrough film role. Deciding that retreat isn’t an option as they will move too slowly with their sick or wounded and the Zulus will catch them out in the open, they have no option but to stand and fight behind improvised barricade defenses.

Throughout the day and night (into the following day) after the Zulu force surrounds them, wave after wave of Zulu attackers are desperately and narrowly repelled by the British defenders. At one point, the Zulus succeed in setting fire to the field hospital, leading to tense scenes of the evacuation of patients under fierce attack by Zulu warriors – and British Surgeon-Major James Henry Reynolds calmly continues his surgery on a wounded soldier with fighting all around him. And yes – he got a Victoria Cross.

The British defenders retreat to the shortened lines of their inner barricades. One tactic you see through the film is the use of multiple ranks of soldiers to maintain a nearly continuous volley of fire with their bolt-action rifles. None more so than the climactic scene with three such ranks used (after falling back from desperate hand-to-hand combat at an outer barricade) to defend a massive assault by Zulu warriors. And as the camera pans back, you see the fallen Zulu warriors mere inches away from the front rank of breathless British soldiers – an impressive feat of holding the line.

That’s when you start to think from the preceding sense of overwhelming doom that hangs over the British soldiers – holy crap, they’re actually going to make it! And then – no, holy crap, they’re not…as the Zulu force masses on the hill overlooking Rorke’s Drift, seemingly barely diminished, while the British are exhausted and running low on ammunition. Lieutenant van den Burgh, their Afrikaaner advisor serving with the Natal Native Contingent, sinks to his knees and rebukes the British officers (and arguably their imperialism as well) – “Haven’t you had enough? We’re all dead!”

And then, holy crap again – as the Zulus chant, raising their spears. “They’re taunting us!” Michael Caine’s character exclaims. Van den Burgh laughs – “You couldn’t be more wrong – they’re saluting us as fellow braves!”. And then the Zulus slowly turn and walk away, still chanting, until a lone warrior is left, before he too turns and leaves.

Sadly, the historical battle ended in a more prosaic way, without the Zulus saluting the British (but more withdrawing from strategic sense and an advancing British relief column). I prefer to think it ended the way it did in the film.

11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders of Rorke’s Drift, with 17 killed and 11 wounded from their number in the battle – having inflicted 20 casualties for every one of theirs, with 351 confirmed killed from the Zulu forces (and about 500 wounded).

Britain’s colonial wars – and European colonial wars in general – exemplified the less gallant but undeniably effective side of the art of war, picking curb stomp battles, albeit usually through superior firepower rather than superior numbers. All nations would like wars like the Anglo side of the Anglo-Zanzibar War, whether or not they like to admit it – they just usually lack the means. And even if the British occasionally got stomped rather than doing the stomping, as in the Anglo-Zulu War (although they ultimately won that too).

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

(16) BARBARY WARS (1801-1805 & 1815)

 

Marines vs pirates – what’s not to love?

The Barbary Wars would be worthy of special mention if only as wars by the US Navy and Marines, newly created for this purpose, fighting the pirates of the Mediterranean – and not just any pirates, but the most famous and feared pirates in history or at least those with the coolest name, the Barbary Corsairs based in north Africa.

And if you were not entertained already, the Americans fought the Barbary Wars because they were simply done with the crap of paying tribute – to the tune of a fifth of its government budget – as a protection racket for piracy and slavery, all while European nations were stuffing around with a little thing called the Napoleonic Wars, except for Sweden and Sicily which joined the Americans as allies in the First Barbary War.

They are also precursors for American expeditionary warfare of subsequent history, particularly the distinctive American style of punitive expeditionary warfare, as well as the robust defense of American shipping or trade – even more notable as occurring at a time usually characterized as the zenith of American isolationism.

Of course, that American style of punitive expeditionary warfare tended (and tends) to be averse to boots on the ground – unless those boots are of Marines – albeit it has evolved from naval power or “gunboat diplomacy” to air power, bomber or drone diplomacy as it were.

And yet the Barbary Wars are up there with the American wars in history that are most overlooked, even perhaps among the so-called forgotten wars, at least in popular culture and imagination – despite being commemorated by the second line of the US Marines’ Hymn “to the shores of Tripoli” and by the Mameluke sword worn by Marine officers.

And despite, as I said, being the genesis of the US Navy and Marines. Yes, there had been a Continental Navy as well as Continental Marines during the American Revolution, but they had been disbanded. Not to mention three badass post-Revolutionary War American military heroes – US naval commander Stephen Decatur, ex-consul William Eaton, and Marine Corps Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon.

The First Barbary War was fought from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805 (albeit American ally Sweden had been fighting the corsairs since 1800). The Second Barbary War was classic gunboat diplomacy, lasting only three days and ending on 19 June 1815.

“The wars were largely a reaction to slavery by the Barbary states” – with slaves taken from raiding European coastal areas or captured ships from piracy, shifting to the latter as kidnapping for ransom over time. The Europeans tended to shrug it off and just cough up ransom or tribute to the Barbary states. The Americans under President Thomas Jefferson decided they were having none of that and went to war to enforce safe conduct or passage for American ships instead – “millions for defense but not once cent for tribute”.

Hence the First Barbary War, with its turning point as the Battle of Derna – in which Eaton promoted himself to general and led a small force of Marines under O’Bannon as well as foreign mercenaries on a march across the desert from Egypt to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. That gave American negotiators the leverage they needed for the release of American hostages and the end of the war, although they still wimped out by paying a reduced ransom for the captives – much to Eaton’s chagrin.

During the War of 1812, the Barbary corsairs resumed their attacks on American shipping, characteristically encouraged by the perfidious British. Hence the Second Barbary War, when the Americans (this time under President James Madison) once again rolled up in their navy, with Barbary War veteran Decatur returning as Commodore for a little gunboat diplomacy to persuade the Algerian corsairs to sue for peace – ending “the need for further tribute from the United States”, granting “the US full shipping rights in the Mediterranean”, and significantly reducing “incidents of piracy in the region”.

Of course, it didn’t entirely stamp out the piracy or slavery by Barbary corsairs, who tended to lay low until any opposing naval ships had sailed back over the horizon – that came with the French colonization of north Africa.

 

 

 

 

(17) OPIUM WARS (1839-1842 & 1859-1860)

 

Two wars in which China got pawned by European powers – the first Opium War in 1839-1842 saw China defeated by Britain (resulting in Hong Kong being ceded to Britain among other things) and the second Opium War in 1859-1860 was slightly less humiliating for China as at least it got defeated by Britain and France rather than a solo British effort.

The nineteenth century was…not a good century for China, as the commencement of what later became known as the Century of Humiliation by foreign powers. The Qing dynasty, formerly one of the most powerful states in the world and used to styling itself as the Middle Kingdom of the world, now became the punching bag of the new European world powers. Qing China was humbled and humiliated as it was easily defeated by European modern military technology and techniques. Ultimately that dealt the death knell to the Qing dynasty, which crumbled amidst a revolution and civil war that spanned decades.

And it was all pretty sordid by the European powers as well, with the Opium Wars being fought by Britain for free trade – its free trade of opium to China, that is. The Opium Wars saw the first of the so-called Unequal Treaties between China and Western powers – as an impotent China was forced to concede territory, privileges, concessions and reparations to one European power after another in a form of de facto colonization.

De facto colonization, that is, because China was too big for actual colonization by any one European power, particularly as rival European powers were concerned with maintaining a balance between themselves in China. Indeed, the European powers were remarkably cooperative between themselves when it came to their common purpose of pawning China.

Ironically, it was a newly admitted Asian power to the European circle of world power that upset this balance and came closest to colonizing China in the twentieth century – Japan. Although of course this was the final straw of humiliation for China. It was one thing to be humbled by European powers with their new industrial and military technology. It was quite another to be humbled by an upstart smaller Asian neighbor, particularly a former tributary state.

The Opium Wars earn their special mention particularly for my fascination with the interconnection between drugs and war, also reflected in my slightly tongue-in-cheek special mention for pharmacological warfare for types of war. The Opium Wars are the closest thing to wars fought over drugs like the modern stereotype of wars fought for oil – in this case, wars fought over Britain smuggling opium into China.

Of course, modern drug smugglers or cartels tend not to have the force of the world’s largest maritime empire behind them, but often play a role in more low-level war or insurgency as in Colombia. And notoriously, drug smuggling – particularly in cocaine and opium – has often laid beneath the surface of larger modern conflicts.

 

 

 

 

(18) PARAGUAYAN WAR (1864-1870)

 

Ever since reading about it, I’ve been fascinated by the Paraguayan War – also known as the War of the Triple Alliance, although let’s face it, Brazil did the heavy lifting.

It’s a war that seems like a meme or something out of a cartoon, at least as traditionally attributed to the “mad dictator” of Paraguay, President Francisco Solano Lopez – “the infinite ambitions of a supposedly megalomaniac and bloodthirsty Solano López who had the intention to create the “Greater Paraguay” through the conquest of territories of the neighboring countries.”

By neighboring countries, that means Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. In fairness, he might have had a shot against one of them, even the larger and more populous Brazil – Paraguay was not styled as the Prussia of Latin America for nothing – but not all three at the same time.

I suppose that’s the part that appeals to me. It’s like Paraguay as the “Prussia of Latin America”, was having a dress rehearsal in the jungles of South America, for the same basic script of the actual Prussian state in Europe, Germany, for the world wars – and defeated by the same basic lack of understanding of war or understanding the limits of military and national power. In other words, encirclement and attrition by a coalition of enemies with superior resources – a coalition brought about by their own actions, “a foolish attempt to fight an unwinnable war that almost destroyed the nation”.

It’s almost like that adage by Karl Marx about history repeating itself except in reverse – with history happening first as farce and then as tragedy.

Although in the case of the Paraguayan War, it involved both farce and tragedy, the latter particularly for Paraguay itself, as it was ground down in attrition by its three opponents first in conventional warfare, then in its drawn-out guerilla resistance until Lopez was killed in action.

In the end, Paraguay was defeated and lost almost 40% of its territory, but it was Paraguay’s casualties and losses of population that are truly staggering. We don’t really know what they were because of a lack of reliable census figures before the war but they’re usually reckoned as at least half the population or even 60% or so, making it proportionately one of the most destructive wars in modern history – with the worst figures estimating the loss of 90% of the male population

Whatever the case, there was an 1871 census with about a 4:1 ratio for adult female population to adult male population – such that there was an informal acceptance, even by the Catholic Church, of polygamy afterwards to help repopulation.

 

 

 

(19) EMU WAR

 

The “war” the Australian army lost to flocks of flightless birds, since immortalised in meme. Although groups of emus are more commonly known as herds – or mobs.

The Australian army was the best in the world, man for man, as it had demonstrated in the First World War, and would demonstrate by stopping the German army at Tobruk and the Japanese army at Kokoda in the Second World War, but it lost to emus in 1932.

Of course, it wasn’t an actual war – the Emu War or Great Emu War was just the humorous tag given to it by the media – but a nuisance wildlife management military operation to curb the population of emus, apparently as many as 20,000, damaging farmland in Western Australia.

And there’s the rub, as the Australian army undertook a task it was not designed for, despite taking to it with machine guns – having seen their effectiveness in the First World War. Unfortunately, the emus didn’t charge at guns like the human soldiers of that war, but evaded or fled from fire.

Calling it a defeat, however, is unfair – the army did kill and wound a substantial number of emus, particularly as their skill at hunting them improved, such that by the end they were killing approximately 100 emus a week, ultimately killing almost 1,000 emus at the rate of ten rounds per confirmed kill, while also claiming 2,500 emus as wounded.

It just wasn’t economic – the emus were difficult to locate in substantial numbers and keep within range as well as scattering and evading pursuit. Even mounting a gun on a truck wasn’t effective – it wasn’t able to gain on fleeing emus and the roughness of ground prevented the gunner from firing.

And so the state and federal governments resisted further calls for military culls (in 1934, 1943 and 1948), resorting instead to the far more effective means of bounties to professional hunters.

So why the special mention amidst actual wars in history?

Well, because it does illustrate a number of themes, some of which are of note or interest for historical wars.

One is humanity’s hubris in waging war on nature, albeit more metaphorically rather than literally, not least in pest or nuisance wildlife management. Interestingly, Australia wasn’t the only nation to be “defeated” waging war against birds. Famously, China waged war against sparrows as part of its Four Pests Campaign to much more disastrous results – as the loss of crops to insects spared from sparrow predation was a contributing factor to the catastrophic famine of the Great Leap Forward.

Another is the military forces of humanity being humbled by the forces of nature in historical wars – most of all weather, which has swept away what have otherwise seemed overwhelming military forces, particularly in war at sea. It also applies to terrain – John Keegan in A History of Warfare notes how terrain (and climate) has been a limiting factor in wars throughout history, such that the majority of battles occur in surprisingly small or narrow territories on a global scale.

Occasionally, those forces of nature have included animals – with two of the most famous occurring in the Second World War, although unfortunately both are somewhat inflated and one almost so apocryphal as to be urban legend. The first involved sharks preying on the sailors from the cruiser Indianapolis when it was sunk by Japanese submarine in July 1945, made famous by iconic narration of it in the film Jaws.

The other involved crocodiles preying on Japanese soldiers trapped in mangroves by the British in the Battle of Ramree Island in Burma from January 1945 to February 1945. At one stage, they were reported to have killed all but twenty of a thousand Japanese soldiers, but sadly for fans of crocodile horror such as myself, this has been discounted to almost the reverse – at most they killed up to twenty soldiers, although they may also have scavenged on the bodies of Japanese soldiers killed by other causes.

Of course, the true unsung champions of animal destruction of human forces at war are insect vectors and the diseases they carry, which have been as effective as hostile weather in wiping out whole armies.

And then you have the theme of humanity’s use of animals in or for war or military operations. Of course, the horse is standout here, but war has seen a whole range of animals used in it – from more commonplace ones such as elephants, camels, donkeys or mules, oxen or cattle, dogs and pigeons, to more exotic animals such as pigs, moose, rats, dolphins, sea lions and others. And then you get to the truly bizarre, such as entomological warfare or animal-borne bombs – with my personal favorite as the American bat bomb project against the Japanese, taking my quip that the Americans fight wars like Batman to a literal extreme

To that you can add wars named for animals, of which there are a surprising number, albeit including similarly non-military conflicts such as the Cod Wars over fishing between the United Kingdom and Iceland, or border conflicts or near-war situations such as the Crab Wars or Pig War – with perhaps the Beaver Wars being the most intense actual wars named for animals.

And finally you have the military approximations from the Emu War itself, particularly for guerrilla war.

As one ornithologist observed, “The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month”

And the commander of the operation, Major Meredith, observed after their withdrawal – ” If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world … They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop”.

 

 

 

 

(20) STAR WARS

 

Space – the final front of war.

Yes, I’ve gone with this wilder entry in lieu of my usual kinky or kinkier entry for my final special mention. You might be surprised by what kinky entries I can squeeze out of a given subject, but wars are simply not a subject for such an entry.

And yes – I’ve chosen this as my final special mention entry partly because of the segue to my Top 10 Wars of Fantasy with that titular franchise, itself inspired by historical wars, primarily the Second World War.

I’ve also chosen it as a matching entry for space warfare as special mention for my top types of war – the historical and contemporary use of space for military purposes, strategy, or war, something which will probably loom larger with any active colonisation or development of space.

The Cold War had its most dramatic front in space – firstly with the ballistic missiles, descendants of V-2 missiles typically designed for sub-orbital space flight as the primary means of delivery for nuclear weapons, and secondly with the so-called space race to achieve technological targets first in their aerospace programs.

In the space race, the Soviets had an early lead, symbolized by Sputnik in 1957, but were overtaken by the Americans, as symbolized by the moon landing in 1969. Ironically, satellites ultimately had more significance than moon landings, albeit again more by the Americans, for military surveillance and communications.

Space warfare in the Cold War reached its height with the American Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed Star Wars after the cinematic franchise and as such the direct source for the title of this entry. It was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States against ballistic missile attack by deploying anti-missile weapons in space. Much of it was more theoretical possibility than practical reality, even now, but it was a matter of grave concern to the Soviet Union, perhaps contributing to its decline as well as the end of the Cold War, although other factors seem more direct and immediate.