Wars by Era
3 major conflicts, 33 battles, and an estimated 13,400,000 dead.
A devastating civil war and a decisive rupture in Tang political history. At the height of the Tang golden age, the frontier general An Lushan turned his armies against the empire he served, seized both imperial capitals, and proclaimed his own dynasty. The eight-year civil war that followed — with its epic sieges, massacres, and famines — broke the Tang state's fiscal and military system. A famous census collapse cannot be read directly as a death toll.
11 battles · 12,750,000 dead
In nearly half a century of almost ceaseless war, the Frankish king Charlemagne forged the largest European empire since Rome. He conquered the Lombards of Italy, waged a thirty-year war of conquest and forced conversion against the pagan Saxons, destroyed the Avar khaganate, and pushed the frontier of Christendom outward on every side. On Christmas Day 800, the Pope crowned him Emperor — reviving the Roman imperial title in the West and laying the foundations of medieval Europe.
10 battles · 250,000 dead
For nearly three centuries, Norse warriors erupted from Scandinavia and remade the known world. They sacked Paris, discovered America, founded Normandy, ruled England, and opened the rivers of Russia to trade. The Viking Age began with a raid on a monastery and ended with a battle that launched the Norman Conquest.
12 battles · 400,000 dead