The longest war. How long did the longest war in human history last and between which countries?

In the history of mankind there have been wars that lasted more than a century. Maps were redrawn, political interests were defended, people died. We remember the most protracted military conflicts.

Punic War (118 years)

By the middle of the 3rd century BC. The Romans almost completely subjugated Italy, set their sights on the entire Mediterranean and wanted Sicily first. But the mighty Carthage also laid claim to this rich island. Their claims unleashed 3 wars that lasted (with interruptions) from 264 to 146. BC. and received their name from the Latin name of the Phoenicians-Carthaginians (Punians).

The first (264-241) is 23 years old (it started because of Sicily). The second (218-201) - 17 years (after the capture of the Spanish city of Sagunta by Hannibal). The last one (149-146) – 3 years. It was then that the famous phrase “Carthage must be destroyed!” was born.
Pure military action took 43 years. The conflict totals 118 years.
Results: Besieged Carthage fell. Rome won.

Hundred Years' War (116 years)

It went in 4 stages. With pauses for truces (the longest - 10 years) and the fight against plague (1348) from 1337 to 1453.
Opponents: England and France.
Causes: France wanted to oust England from the southwestern lands of Aquitaine and complete the unification of the country. England - to strengthen influence in the province of Guienne and regain those lost under John the Landless - Normandy, Maine, Anjou.
Complication: Flanders - formally was under the auspices of the French crown, in fact it was free, but depended on English wool for clothmaking.
Reason: claims English king Edward III of the Plantagenet-Angevin dynasty (maternal grandson of the French king Philip IV the Fair of the Capetian family) to the Gallic throne.
Allies: England - German feudal lords and Flanders. France - Scotland and the Pope.
Army: English - hired. Under the command of the king. The basis is infantry (archers) and knightly units. French - knightly militia, under the leadership of royal vassals.
Fracture: after the execution of Joan of Arc in 1431 and the Battle of Normandy, the national liberation war of the French people began with the tactics of guerrilla raids.
Results: On October 19, 1453, the English army capitulated in Bordeaux. Having lost everything on the continent except the port of Calais (remained English for another 100 years). France switched to a regular army, abandoned knightly cavalry, gave preference to infantry, and the first firearms appeared.

Greco-Persian War (50 years)

Trigger: Ionian revolt. The battle of the Spartans at Thermopylae has become legendary. The Battle of Salamis was a turning point. “Kalliev Mir” put an end to it.
Results: Persia lost the Aegean Sea, the coasts of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. Recognized the freedoms of the cities of Asia Minor. The civilization of the ancient Greeks entered a time of greatest prosperity, establishing a culture that, thousands of years later, the world looked up to.

Guatemalan War (36 years)

Civil. It occurred in outbreaks from 1960 to 1996. Provocative decision made American President Eisenhower in 1954, initiated a coup.

Cause: the fight against the “communist infection”.
Opponents: The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity bloc and the military junta.
Victims: almost 6 thousand murders were committed annually, in the 80s alone - 669 massacres, more than 200 thousand dead (83% of them were Mayan Indians), over 150 thousand went missing.
Results: Signing of the “Treaty of Lasting and Lasting Peace,” which protected the rights of 23 Native American groups.

War of the Roses (33 years)

Confrontation between the English nobility - supporters of two family branches of the Plantagenet dynasty - Lancaster and York. Lasted from 1455 to 1485.
Prerequisites: “bastard feudalism” - the privilege of the English nobility to buy off military service the lord, in whose hands large funds were concentrated, with which he paid for an army of mercenaries, which became more powerful than the royal one.

Cause: the defeat of England in the Hundred Years' War, the impoverishment of the feudal lords, their rejection of the political course of the wife of the feeble-minded King Henry IV, hatred of her favorites.
Opposition: Duke Richard of York - considered the Lancastrian right to rule illegitimate, became regent under an incompetent monarch, became king in 1483, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.
Results: Disturbed the balance of political forces in Europe. Led to the collapse of the Plantagenets. She placed the Welsh Tudors on the throne, who ruled England for 117 years. Cost the lives of hundreds of English aristocrats.

Thirty Years' War (30 years)

The first military conflict on a pan-European scale. Lasted from 1618 to 1648.
Opponents: two coalitions. The first is the union of the Holy Roman Empire (in fact, the Austrian Empire) with Spain and the Catholic principalities of Germany. Second - German states, where power was in the hands of Protestant princes. They were supported by the armies of reformist Sweden and Denmark and Catholic France.

Cause: The Catholic League was afraid of the spread of the ideas of the Reformation in Europe, the Protestant Evangelical Union strived for this.
Trigger: uprising of Czech Protestants against Austrian rule.
Results: Germany's population has dropped by a third. The French army lost 80 thousand. Austria and Spain - more than 120. After the Peace Treaty of Munster in 1648, a new independent state - the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Holland) - was finally established on the map of Europe.

Peloponnesian War (27 years)

There are two of them. The first is the Lesser Peloponnesian (460-445 BC). The second (431-404 BC) is the largest in the history of Ancient Hellas after the first Persian invasion of the territory of Balkan Greece. (492-490 BC).
Opponents: Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and First Marine (Delian) under the auspices of Athens.

Causes: The desire for hegemony in the Greek world of Athens and the rejection of their claims by Sparta and Corinthus.
Controversies: Athens was ruled by an oligarchy. Sparta is a military aristocracy. Ethnically, the Athenians were Ionians, the Spartans were Dorians.
In the second, 2 periods are distinguished. The first is "Archidam's War". The Spartans made land invasions of Attica. Athenians - sea raids on the Peloponnesian coast. Ended in 421 with the signing of the Treaty of Nikiaev. 6 years later it was violated by the Athenian side, which was defeated in the Battle of Syracuse. The final phase went down in history under the name Dekelei or Ionian. With the support of Persia, Sparta built a fleet and destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami.
Results: After imprisonment in April 404 BC. Feramenov's world Athens lost its fleet, tore down the Long Walls, lost all its colonies and joined the Spartan Union.

Vietnam War (18 years old)

The Second Indochina War between Vietnam and the United States and one of the most destructive of the second half of the 20th century. Lasted from 1957 to 1975. 3 periods: partisan South Vietnamese (1957-1964), from 1965 to 1973 - full-scale fighting USA, 1973-1975 - after the withdrawal of American troops from Viet Cong territories.
Opponents: South and North Vietnam. On the side of the South are the United States and the military bloc SEATO (Treaty Organization South-East Asia). Northern - China and the USSR.

Cause: When the communists came to power in China and Ho Chi Minh became the leader of South Vietnam, the White House administration was afraid of the communist “domino effect.” After Kennedy's assassination, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche to use military force with the Tonkin Resolution. And already in March 1965, two battalions left for Vietnam fur seals US Army. So the United States became part of the Vietnamese Civil War. They used a “search and destroy” strategy, burned out the jungle with napalm - the Vietnamese went underground and responded with guerrilla warfare.

Who benefits?: American arms corporations.
US losses: 58 thousand in combat (64% under 21 years of age) and about 150 thousand suicides of American military veterans.
Vietnamese casualties: over 1 million combatants and more than 2 civilians, in South Vietnam alone - 83 thousand amputees, 30 thousand blind, 10 thousand deaf, after Operation Ranch Hand (chemical destruction of the jungle) - congenital genetic mutations.
Results: The Tribunal of May 10, 1967 qualified US actions in Vietnam as a crime against humanity (Article 6 of the Nuremberg Statute) and prohibited the use of CBU thermite bombs as weapons of mass destruction.

In the history of mankind there have been wars that lasted more than a century. Maps were redrawn, political interests were defended, people died. We remember the most protracted military conflicts.

Punic War (118 years)

Hundred Years' War (116 years)

It went in 4 stages. With pauses for truces (the longest - 10 years) and the fight against plague (1348) from 1337 to 1453.
Opponents: England and France.
Causes: France wanted to oust England from the southwestern lands of Aquitaine and complete the unification of the country. England - to strengthen influence in the province of Guienne and regain those lost under John the Landless - Normandy, Maine, Anjou.
Complication: Flanders - formally was under the auspices of the French crown, in fact it was free, but depended on English wool for clothmaking.
Reason: the claims of the English king Edward III of the Plantagenet-Angevin dynasty (maternal grandson of the French king Philip IV the Fair of the Capetian family) to the Gallic throne.
Allies: England - German feudal lords and Flanders. France - Scotland and the Pope.
Army: English - hired. Under the command of the king. The basis is infantry (archers) and knightly units. French - knightly militia, under the leadership of royal vassals.
Fracture: after the execution of Joan of Arc in 1431 and the Battle of Normandy, the national liberation war of the French people began with the tactics of guerrilla raids.
Results: On October 19, 1453, the English army capitulated in Bordeaux. Having lost everything on the continent except the port of Calais (remained English for another 100 years). France switched to a regular army, abandoned knightly cavalry, gave preference to infantry, and the first firearms appeared.

Greco-Persian War (50 years)

Guatemalan War (36 years)

Civil. It occurred in outbreaks from 1960 to 1996. A provocative decision made by American President Eisenhower in 1954 initiated a coup.

War of the Roses (33 years)

Confrontation between the English nobility - supporters of two family branches of the Plantagenet dynasty - Lancaster and York. Lasted from 1455 to 1485.
Prerequisites: “bastard feudalism” is the privilege of the English nobility to buy off military service from the lord, in whose hands large funds were concentrated, with which he paid for an army of mercenaries, which became more powerful than the royal one.

Thirty Years' War (30 years)

The first military conflict on a pan-European scale. Lasted from 1618 to 1648.
Opponents: two coalitions. The first is the union of the Holy Roman Empire (in fact, the Austrian Empire) with Spain and the Catholic principalities of Germany. The second is the German states, where power was in the hands of Protestant princes. They were supported by the armies of reformist Sweden and Denmark and Catholic France.

Peloponnesian War (27 years)

Vietnam War (18 years old)

The Second Indochina War between Vietnam and the United States and one of the most destructive of the second half of the 20th century. Lasted from 1957 to 1975. 3 periods: South Vietnamese guerrilla (1957-1964), from 1965 to 1973 - full-scale US military operations, 1973-1975. - after the withdrawal of American troops from Viet Cong territories.
Opponents: South and North Vietnam. On the side of the South are the United States and the military bloc SEATO (South-East Asia Treaty Organization). Northern - China and the USSR.

Cause: When the communists came to power in China and Ho Chi Minh became the leader of South Vietnam, the White House administration was afraid of the communist “domino effect.” After Kennedy's assassination, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche to use military force with the Tonkin Resolution. And already in March 1965, two battalions of US Navy SEALs left for Vietnam. So the United States became part of the Vietnamese Civil War. They used a “search and destroy” strategy, burned out the jungle with napalm - the Vietnamese went underground and responded with guerrilla warfare.

War has always been a difficult test for any people. Everyone is looking forward to the moment when peace will finally come. But sometimes the war lasts too long - hundreds of years, during which dozens of generations replace each other. And people no longer remember that once their state was not in a state of war. In this article you will learn about the five longest wars in human history.

Byzantine-Seljuk War (260 years)

The conflict between the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) and the nomadic tribes of the Seljuk Turks had been brewing since the end of the first millennium AD. The Seljuks, gradually conquering new territories, strengthened their army, becoming formidable opponents even for such powerful powers as the Byzantine Empire. The frequency of armed skirmishes on the borders between the Byzantines and Seljuks increased, and by 1048 AD. they escalated into a full-fledged war, which the Second Rome (this is what Constantinople, the capital, is often called Byzantine Empire, as a successor to the traditions of the Roman Empire) at first successfully won. However, a series of crushing defeats followed, and the Greeks lost almost all of their territories in Asia Minor, allowing the Turks to gain a foothold in strategic fortresses and beaches Mediterranean Sea, who formed the Iconian Sultanate, continuing endless skirmishes with the Byzantines. By 1308, due to the Mongol invasion, the Iconian Sultanate had broken up into small regions, one of which would later become the Great Ottoman Empire, with which Byzantium also fought for quite a long time (214 years) and as a result ceased to exist.

Araucanian War (290 years)

Araucanian warrior Galvarino - a hero of the Indian people who fought against the Spaniards with his hands cut off

The Araucanian War was a conflict between the indigenous Mapuche Indian people (also called Araucanas), who lived on the territory of modern Chile, and the Spanish Empire with allied Indian tribes. Indian tribes The Araucanians offered the most fierce and prolonged resistance to the Europeans among all other Indian peoples.

The war, which lasted almost 3 centuries, starting in 1536, exhausted the forces of the rivals, but the unyielding Indians still achieved their goal - recognition of the independence of Chile.

Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years' War (335 years)

The Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years' War between the Netherlands and the Scilly Archipelago is very different from other wars. At least because in all 335 years the enemies have never even shot at each other. However, it didn’t all start out so peacefully: during the Second English War civil war Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell defeated the army of his opponents - the royalists. Fleeing mainland England, the Royalists boarded a fleet and retreated to a group of Isles of Scilly, which belonged to one of the prominent Royalists. At this time, the Netherlands, observing the conflict from the sidelines, decided to join the winning parliamentarians and sent part of their fleet against the royalist fleet, hoping to win an easy victory. However, the losing side was able to gather its forces into a fist and inflict a crushing defeat on the Dutch. A few days later, the main forces of the Netherlands arrived at the islands, demanding compensation from the royalists for lost ships and cargo. Having received a refusal, the Netherlands declared war on the Isles of Scilly on March 30, 1651 and... set sail. Three months later, the Parliamentarians persuaded the Royalists to surrender, but the Netherlands never concluded a peace treaty with the Scillys due to uncertainty about who was to conclude it with, since the Scillys had already joined the Parliamentarians with whom the Netherlands were not at war. The strange “war” only ended in 1985, when Scilly Council Chairman Roy Duncan discovered that the island was technically still at war with the Netherlands. On April 17, 1986, the Dutch ambassador who arrived on the islands finally settled the misunderstanding by signing a peace agreement.

Roman-Persian Wars (721)

Mariusz Kozik | source http://www.lacedemon.info/

The Roman-Persian Wars were a series of military conflicts between the Greco-Roman civilization and the Iranian state entities. These military clashes can easily be combined into one long war, since during the cessation of hostilities no one concluded peace treaties, and the new dynasties of rulers took the continuation of the war between the two states as a given.

The conflict between the Parthian Empire and the Roman Republic began in 53 BC, when the Roman commander Marcus Licinius Crassus, who owned the Roman province of Syria, invaded Parthia with a large army. The Romans suffered a crushing defeat, and within a few years the Parthians invaded the territories under the protectorate of Rome. All subsequent policy between the two powers boiled down to mutual tricks, armed conflicts and the desire to weaken each other as much as possible even in moments of temporary calm. In 226 AD place in history instead of the Parthian Empire was taken by the Sassanid state, which still continued to fight with the Roman Empire. 250 years later, when the Roman Empire ceased to exist, the Sassanids continued to fight with its successor, the Eastern Roman Empire. Bloody skirmishes and fierce battles did not lead to the fact that both states were weakened, as a result of which Iran was captured in the first half Arab Caliphate, and the long era of Roman-Persian wars came to an end.

Reconquista (770 years)

The Reconquista was a long period of wars in the Iberian Peninsula between the Muslim Moorish Emirates and the Christian Portuguese and Spanish, which lasted from 770 AD when the Arabs conquered most Iberian Peninsula, until 1492 AD, when Christians captured the city of Granada, the capital of the Emirate of Granada, making the peninsula completely Christian.

For hundreds of years, the Iberian Peninsula resembled a giant anthill, when dozens of Christian principalities, often at war with each other, waged an ongoing sluggish war with the Arab rulers, sometimes undertaking major military campaigns.

Ultimately, the Muslim forces were completely exhausted and they were driven back from Spain, and with the end of the Reconquista - the longest military conflict in recorded human history - the Age of Discovery began.

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Various wars occupy a huge place in the history of mankind.
They redrew maps, gave birth to empires, and destroyed peoples and nations. The earth remembers wars that lasted more than a century. We remember the most protracted military conflicts in human history.

1. War without shots (335 years)

The longest and most curious of the wars is the war between the Netherlands and the Scilly Archipelago, part of Great Britain.

Due to the absence of a peace treaty, it formally lasted 335 years without firing a single shot, which makes it one of the longest and most curious wars in history, and also the war with the least losses.

Peace was officially declared in 1986.

2. Punic War (118 years)

Their claims unleashed 3 wars that lasted (with interruptions) from 264 to 146. BC. and received their name from the Latin name of the Phoenicians-Carthaginians (Punians).

The first (264-241) is 23 years old (it started because of Sicily).
The second (218-201) - 17 years (after the capture of the Spanish city of Sagunta by Hannibal).
The last one (149-146) - 3 years.
It was then that the famous phrase “Carthage must be destroyed!” was born. Pure military action took 43 years. The conflict totals 118 years.

Results: Besieged Carthage fell. Rome won.

3. Hundred Years' War (116 years)

It went in 4 stages. With pauses for truces (the longest - 10 years) and the fight against plague (1348) from 1337 to 1453.

Opponents: England and France.

Reasons: France wanted to oust England from the southwestern lands of Aquitaine and complete the unification of the country. England - to strengthen influence in the province of Guienne and regain those lost under John the Landless - Normandy, Maine, Anjou. Complication: Flanders - formally was under the auspices of the French crown, in fact it was free, but depended on English wool for clothmaking.

Reason: the claims of the English king Edward III of the Plantagenet-Angevin dynasty (maternal grandson of the French king Philip IV the Fair of the Capetian family) to the Gallic throne. Allies: England - German feudal lords and Flanders. France - Scotland and the Pope. Army: English - mercenary. Under the command of the king. The basis is infantry (archers) and knightly units. French - knightly militia, under the leadership of royal vassals.

Turning point: after the execution of Joan of Arc in 1431 and the Battle of Normandy, the national liberation war of the French people began with the tactics of guerrilla raids.

Results: On October 19, 1453, the English army capitulated in Bordeaux. Having lost everything on the continent except the port of Calais (remained English for another 100 years). France switched to a regular army, abandoned knightly cavalry, gave preference to infantry, and the first firearms appeared.

4. Greco-Persian War (50 years)

Collectively - wars. They dragged on with calm from 499 to 449. BC. They are divided into two (the first - 492-490, the second - 480-479) or three (the first - 492, the second - 490, the third - 480-479 (449). For the Greek city-states - battles for independence. For the Achaeminid Empire - aggressive.

Trigger: Ionian Revolt. The battle of the Spartans at Thermopylae has become legendary. The Battle of Salamis was a turning point. “Kalliev Mir” put an end to it.

Results: Persia lost the Aegean Sea, the coasts of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. Recognized the freedoms of the cities of Asia Minor. The civilization of the ancient Greeks entered a time of greatest prosperity, establishing a culture that, thousands of years later, the world looked up to.

4. Punic War. The battles lasted 43 years. They are divided into three stages of wars between Rome and Carthage. They fought for dominance in the Mediterranean. The Romans won the battle. Basetop.ru

5. Guatemalan War (36 years)

Civil. It occurred in outbreaks from 1960 to 1996. A provocative decision made by American President Eisenhower in 1954 initiated a coup.

Reason: the fight against the “communist infection”.

Opponents: Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity Bloc and the military junta.

Victims: almost 6 thousand murders were committed annually, in the 80s alone - 669 massacres, more than 200 thousand dead (83% of them Mayan Indians), over 150 thousand missing. Results: the signing of the “Treaty of Lasting and Lasting Peace,” which protected the rights of 23 Native American groups.

Results: the signing of the “Treaty of Lasting and Lasting Peace,” which protected the rights of 23 Native American groups.

6. War of the Roses (33 years)

Confrontation between the English nobility - supporters of two family branches of the Plantagenet dynasty - Lancaster and York. Lasted from 1455 to 1485.
Prerequisites: “bastard feudalism” is the privilege of the English nobility to buy off military service from the lord, in whose hands large funds were concentrated, with which he paid for an army of mercenaries, which became more powerful than the royal one.

Reason: the defeat of England in the Hundred Years' War, the impoverishment of the feudal lords, their rejection of the political course of the wife of the feeble-minded King Henry IV, hatred of her favorites.

Opposition: Duke Richard of York - considered the Lancastrian right to rule illegitimate, became regent under an incompetent monarch, became king in 1483, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.

Results: It upset the balance of political forces in Europe. Led to the collapse of the Plantagenets. She placed the Welsh Tudors on the throne, who ruled England for 117 years. Cost the lives of hundreds of English aristocrats.

7. Thirty Years' War (30 years)

The first military conflict on a pan-European scale. Lasted from 1618 to 1648. Opponents: two coalitions. The first is the union of the Holy Roman Empire (in fact, the Austrian Empire) with Spain and the Catholic principalities of Germany. The second is the German states, where power was in the hands of Protestant princes. They were supported by the armies of reformist Sweden and Denmark and Catholic France.

Reason: The Catholic League was afraid of the spread of the ideas of the Reformation in Europe, the Protestant Evangelical Union strived for this.

Trigger: Czech Protestant uprising against Austrian rule.

Results: The population of Germany has decreased by a third. The French army lost 80 thousand. Austria and Spain - more than 120. After the Peace Treaty of Munster in 1648, a new independent state - the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Holland) - was finally established on the map of Europe.

8. Peloponnesian War (27 years)

Opponents: Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and First Marine (Delian) under the auspices of Athens.

Reasons: The desire for hegemony in the Greek world of Athens and the rejection of their claims by Sparta and Corinthus.

Controversies: Athens was ruled by an oligarchy. Sparta is a military aristocracy. Ethnically, the Athenians were Ionians, the Spartans were Dorians. In the second, 2 periods are distinguished.

The first is "Archidam's War". The Spartans made land invasions of Attica. Athenians - sea raids on the Peloponnesian coast. Ended in 421 with the signing of the Treaty of Nikiaev. 6 years later it was violated by the Athenian side, which was defeated in the Battle of Syracuse. The final phase went down in history under the name Dekelei or Ionian. With the support of Persia, Sparta built a fleet and destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami.

Results: After imprisonment in April 404 BC. Feramenov's world Athens lost its fleet, tore down the Long Walls, lost all its colonies and joined the Spartan Union.

9. Great Northern War (21 years)

The Northern War lasted for 21 years. It was between the northern states and Sweden (1700-1721), the confrontation between Peter I and Charles XII. Russia fought mostly on its own.

Reason: Possession of Baltic lands, control over the Baltic.

Results: With the end of the war, a new empire arose in Europe - the Russian one, with access to the Baltic Sea and possessing a powerful army and navy. The capital of the empire was St. Petersburg, located at the confluence of the Neva River and the Baltic Sea.

Sweden lost the war.

10. Vietnam War (18 years old)

The Second Indochina War between Vietnam and the United States and one of the most destructive of the second half of the 20th century. Lasted from 1957 to 1975. 3 periods: South Vietnamese guerrilla (1957-1964), from 1965 to 1973 - full-scale US military operations, 1973-1975. - after the withdrawal of American troops from Viet Cong territories. Opponents: South and North Vietnam. On the side of the South are the United States and the military bloc SEATO (South-East Asia Treaty Organization). Northern - China and the USSR.

The reason: when the communists came to power in China and Ho Chi Minh became the leader of South Vietnam, the White House administration was afraid of the communist “domino effect.” After Kennedy's assassination, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche to use military force with the Tonkin Resolution. And already in March 1965, two battalions of US Navy SEALs left for Vietnam. So the United States became part of the Vietnamese Civil War. They used a “search and destroy” strategy, burned out the jungle with napalm - the Vietnamese went underground and responded with guerrilla warfare.

Who benefits: American arms corporations. US losses: 58 thousand in combat (64% under 21 years of age) and about 150 thousand suicides of American military veterans.

Vietnamese casualties: over 1 million combatants and more than 2 civilians, in South Vietnam alone - 83 thousand amputees, 30 thousand blind, 10 thousand deaf, after Operation Ranch Hand (chemical destruction of the jungle) - congenital genetic mutations.

Results: The Tribunal of May 10, 1967 qualified US actions in Vietnam as a crime against humanity (Article 6 of the Nuremberg Statute) and prohibited the use of CBU thermite bombs as weapons of mass destruction.

(WITH) different places Internet

In the history of mankind there have been wars that lasted more than a century. Maps were redrawn, political interests were defended, people died. We remember the most protracted military conflicts.

1. Punic War (118 years)

By the middle of the 3rd century BC. The Romans almost completely subjugated Italy, set their sights on the entire Mediterranean and wanted Sicily first. But the mighty Carthage also laid claim to this rich island. Their claims unleashed 3 wars that lasted (with interruptions) from 264 to 146. BC. and received their name from the Latin name of the Phoenicians-Carthaginians (Punians). The first (264-241) is 23 years old (it started because of Sicily). The second (218-201) - 17 years (after the capture of the Spanish city of Sagunta by Hannibal). The last one (149-146) – 3 years. It was then that the famous phrase “Carthage must be destroyed!” was born. Pure military action took 43 years. The conflict totals 118 years.

Results: Besieged Carthage fell. Rome won.

2. Hundred Years' War (116 years)

It went in 4 stages. With pauses for truces (the longest - 10 years) and the fight against plague (1348) from 1337 to 1453.

Opponents: England and France.

Causes: France wanted to oust England from the southwestern lands of Aquitaine and complete the unification of the country. England - to strengthen influence in the province of Guienne and regain those lost under John the Landless - Normandy, Maine, Anjou. Complication: Flanders - formally was under the auspices of the French crown, in fact it was free, but depended on English wool for clothmaking.

Occasion: the claims of the English king Edward III of the Plantagenet-Angevin dynasty (maternal grandson of the French king Philip IV the Fair of the Capetian family) to the Gallic throne. Allies: England - German feudal lords and Flanders. France - Scotland and the Pope. Army: English - mercenary. Under the command of the king. The basis is infantry (archers) and knightly units. French - knightly militia, under the leadership of royal vassals.

Fracture: after the execution of Joan of Arc in 1431 and the Battle of Normandy, the national liberation war of the French people began with the tactics of guerrilla raids.

Results: On October 19, 1453, the English army capitulated in Bordeaux. Having lost everything on the continent except the port of Calais (remained English for another 100 years). France switched to a regular army, abandoned knightly cavalry, gave preference to infantry, and the first firearms appeared.

3. Greco-Persian War (50 years)

Collectively - wars. They dragged on with calm from 499 to 449. BC. They are divided into two (the first - 492-490, the second - 480-479) or three (the first - 492, the second - 490, the third - 480-479 (449). For the Greek city-states - battles for independence. For the Achaeminid Empire - aggressive.

Trigger: Ionian revolt. The battle of the Spartans at Thermopylae has become legendary. The Battle of Salamis was a turning point. “Kalliev Mir” put an end to it.

Results: Persia lost the Aegean Sea, the coasts of the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. Recognized the freedoms of the cities of Asia Minor. The civilization of the ancient Greeks entered a time of greatest prosperity, establishing a culture that, thousands of years later, the world looked up to.

4. Guatemalan War (36 years)

Civil. It occurred in outbreaks from 1960 to 1996. A provocative decision made by American President Eisenhower in 1954 initiated a coup.

Cause: the fight against the “communist infection”.

Opponents: The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity bloc and the military junta.

Victims: almost 6 thousand murders were committed annually, in the 80s alone - 669 massacres, more than 200 thousand dead (83% of them were Mayan Indians), over 150 thousand went missing. Results: the signing of the “Treaty of Lasting and Lasting Peace,” which protected the rights of 23 Native American groups.

Results: Signing of the “Treaty of Lasting and Lasting Peace,” which protected the rights of 23 Native American groups.

5. War of the Roses (33 years)

Confrontation between the English nobility - supporters of two family branches of the Plantagenet dynasty - Lancaster and York. Lasted from 1455 to 1485.
Prerequisites: “bastard feudalism” is the privilege of the English nobility to buy off military service from the lord, in whose hands large funds were concentrated, with which he paid for an army of mercenaries, which became more powerful than the royal one.

Opposition: Duke Richard of York - considered the Lancastrian right to rule illegitimate, became regent under an incompetent monarch, became king in 1483, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth.

Results: Disturbed the balance of political forces in Europe. Led to the collapse of the Plantagenets. She placed the Welsh Tudors on the throne, who ruled England for 117 years. Cost the lives of hundreds of English aristocrats.

6. Thirty Years' War (30 years)

The first military conflict on a pan-European scale. Lasted from 1618 to 1648. Opponents: two coalitions. The first is the union of the Holy Roman Empire (in fact, the Austrian Empire) with Spain and the Catholic principalities of Germany. The second is the German states, where power was in the hands of Protestant princes. They were supported by the armies of reformist Sweden and Denmark and Catholic France.

Cause: The Catholic League was afraid of the spread of the ideas of the Reformation in Europe, the Protestant Evangelical Union strived for this.

Trigger: uprising of Czech Protestants against Austrian rule.

Results: Germany's population has dropped by a third. The French army lost 80 thousand. Austria and Spain - more than 120. After the Peace Treaty of Munster in 1648, a new independent state - the Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (Holland) - was finally established on the map of Europe.

7. Peloponnesian War (27 years)

There are two of them. The first is the Lesser Peloponnesian (460-445 BC). The second (431-404 BC) is the largest in the history of Ancient Hellas after the first Persian invasion of the territory of Balkan Greece. (492-490 BC).

Opponents: Peloponnesian League led by Sparta and First Marine (Delian) under the auspices of Athens.

Causes: The desire for hegemony in the Greek world of Athens and the rejection of their claims by Sparta and Corinthus.

Controversies: Athens was ruled by an oligarchy. Sparta is a military aristocracy. Ethnically, the Athenians were Ionians, the Spartans were Dorians. In the second, 2 periods are distinguished.

First- “Archidam’s War.” The Spartans made land invasions of Attica. Athenians - sea raids on the Peloponnesian coast. Ended in 421 with the signing of the Treaty of Nikiaev. 6 years later it was violated by the Athenian side, which was defeated in the Battle of Syracuse. The final phase went down in history under the name Dekelei or Ionian. With Persian support, Sparta built and destroyed Athenian at Aegospotami.

Results: After imprisonment in April 404 BC. Feramenov's world Athens lost its fleet, tore down the Long Walls, lost all its colonies and joined the Spartan Union.

8. Vietnam War (18 years old)

The Second Indochina War between Vietnam and the United States and one of the most destructive of the second half of the 20th century. Lasted from 1957 to 1975. 3 periods: South Vietnamese guerrilla (1957-1964), from 1965 to 1973 - full-scale US military operations, 1973-1975. - after the withdrawal of American troops from Viet Cong territories. Opponents: South and North Vietnam. On the side of the South are the United States and the military bloc SEATO (South-East Asia Treaty Organization). Northern - China and the USSR.

Cause: When the communists came to power in China and Ho Chi Minh became the leader of South Vietnam, the White House administration was afraid of the communist “domino effect.” After Kennedy's assassination, Congress gave President Lyndon Johnson carte blanche to use military force with the Tonkin Resolution. And already in March 1965, two battalions of US Navy SEALs left for Vietnam. So the United States became part of the Vietnamese Civil War. They used a “search and destroy” strategy, burned out the jungle with napalm - the Vietnamese went underground and responded with guerrilla warfare.

Who benefits? about: American arms corporations. US losses: 58 thousand in combat (64% under 21 years of age) and about 150 thousand suicides of American military veterans.

Vietnamese casualties: over 1 million combatants and more than 2 civilians, in South Vietnam alone - 83 thousand amputees, 30 thousand blind, 10 thousand deaf, after Operation Ranch Hand (chemical destruction of the jungle) - congenital genetic mutations.

Results: The Tribunal of May 10, 1967 qualified US actions in Vietnam as a crime against humanity (Article 6 of the Nuremberg Statute) and prohibited the use of CBU thermite bombs as weapons of mass destruction.