Three most absurd reasons why nations have started wars
Most absurd reasons why nations have started wars (collage by RBC-Ukraine)
In the twenty-first century alone, there have been almost three dozen wars, and there have been thousands of them throughout human history. There are no sensible reasons for armed conflicts, but sometimes absolutely absurd things have become the pretext for military aggression.
War over an oak bucket between Italian cities
In 1325, a military conflict broke out in northern Italy between the city-states of Bologna and Modena.
A cavalryman from Bologna escaped to Modena and appropriated the state bucket. He fed his war horse from it. Representatives of Bologna said that they did not care about the deserter, but they would like to get the bucket back because it was municipal property. Modena ignored this demand, and as a result, a full-fledged war broke out between the cities.
This war lasted for 22 years and about two thousand people died. And Bologna never got its bucket back because it lost the war.
A copy of the bucket that started the war (photo: Wikipedia)
The war over the beard between the Ottoman Empire and Venice
In the sixteenth century, Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire asked the Venetian ambassador to pledge his friendship with a beard. But the Venetians did not wear beards at that time, so they could not swear with them. The sultan was very surprised by this and said that they looked like monkeys.
As a result, after the Venetians tried in vain to get an apology from the Sultan, they started a war, which they eventually lost.
Venetian Ambassador and Sultan Bayezid II
The war between France and Algeria over a three-year-old insult
In the nineteenth century, France was looking for a reason to attack Algeria for a long time. Then the French ambassador recalled how three years earlier he had demanded that the ruler of Algeria repay his loans with interest, but the latter had slapped him with a fan in response.
France took advantage of the diplomatic conflict and sent its troops to Algeria, and quickly occupied it. However, a guerrilla war broke out in the city of Constantine. As a result, the armed conflict lasted from 1830 to 1847, and France won.
The fall of Constantine (photo: Wikipedia)
Earlier, we wrote about 7 historical facts that seem too incredible to be true.
