Collaboration of the teacher of History, Guillermo .
In my opinion , these are the four wars that have the dubious honor of being considered the longest in history:
– Occupying the fourth position (despite being the one that appears in the Guinness Book of Records) is the Hundred Years War , which lasted more than a century, specifically 116 years.
He faced England and France between the years 1337 and 1453 and there were two triggering causes:The first, the dispute over the French Crown between Philip IV of France and the English sovereign Edward III. The second cause was the feudal interests, in the form of large territories and possessions, that the English kings had in France, which they were not willing to give up.
There were many great battles that were fought, some with English victory such as those of Poitiers, Agincourt or Crécy, in the latter the English archers shot more than 72,000 arrows and it is estimated that more than one in three would have hit French men or horses, and others with important successes for the French, such as the liberation of the siege of Orléans, in which Joan of Arc participated. , or the last and decisive battle of Castillón in July 1453.
– The third place it would be occupied by the Arauco War , which pitted Spaniards and Creoles from Chile (belonging to the Spanish Empire) against the Mapuche inhabitants of the south of the country for almost 300 years , that is, from the Battle of Quilacura in 1546, with Pedro de Valdivia, until the independence of Chile (1818)
The conflict had different degrees of intensity and was a failure for Spain, which was ultimately unable to occupy Mapuche territory.
– The second place of this «ranking» would be for the curious and peaceful Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Years War (1651-1986), who faced the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly (in the south-west of the United Kingdom). It was 335 years without firing a single shot.
Its origins lie in the Second English Civil War, fought between Royalists and Parliamentarians between 1642 and 1652. The Royalist Navy was forced to retreat to the Isles of Scilly. In April 1651 the Low Countries (United Netherlands Provinces) declared war on the Royalists, but as most of England was already in the hands of the Parliamentarians, war was declared specifically on the Isles of Scilly.
Very shortly after the declaration of war, Parliamentarian forces forced the royalist fleet to surrender. The Dutch fleet, no longer under any threat, withdrew without firing a shot. Due to the ignorance of a declaration of war by one nation against a small part of another, the Dutch forgot to officially declare peace.
Over time, the declaration of war was considered a myth, until in 1985 the historian Roy Duncan, Chairman as well as the Isles of Scilly Council, wrote to the Embassy of the Netherlands in London remembering what happened more than 300 years before. Members of the embassy found the myth to be true and peace was declared on April 17, 1986.
– And in first place war is on my particular list. of the Reconquest in the Iberian Peninsula , almost 800 years old , from the rebellion of D. Pelayo and the Battle of Covadonga (722) to the end of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada in 1492.
A war that had no respite for almost eight centuries, with an uncertain, shifting border, and with a slow but persistent advance towards the south.
What do you think? 