Wars by Era
2 major conflicts, 15 battles, and an estimated 1,635,000 dead.
The year 1066 is the most famous date in English history. The death of the childless Edward the Confessor triggered a three-way struggle for the throne between Harold Godwinson of England, Harald Hardrada of Norway, and Duke William of Normandy. In a single autumn Harold destroyed the Norwegians at Stamford Bridge, then marched south and was himself killed by William's cavalry and archers at Hastings. William's coronation, the brutal 'Harrying of the North,' and the suppression of revolt at Ely completed a conquest that replaced England's ruling class wholesale, rewired its language, law, and landholding, and bound the English kingdom much more tightly to the politics and culture of continental Europe.
7 battles · 135,000 dead
Two centuries of holy war for control of the Holy Land. Summoned by Pope Urban II in 1095, the armies of Latin Christendom marched east, stormed Jerusalem in 1099, and carved out the Crusader States along the Levantine coast. Saladin's crushing victory at Hattin in 1187 retook Jerusalem and drew the legendary Third Crusade of Richard the Lionheart; the Fourth Crusade infamously sacked Christian Constantinople instead; and a succession of later expeditions failed against the Ayyubids and the rising Mamluk sultanate. When the Mamluks stormed Acre in 1291, the last Crusader foothold in the Holy Land was gone — but the religious, cultural, and political reverberations of the Crusades echo to this day.
8 battles · 1,500,000 dead