There was once a war so lame that even its combatants forgot it was happening.
Or what about the embarrassing declaration of war that pitched an army of thousands against
an army of…
Eight?
And the miniature American Civil War where the only casualties were the homes of a few
innocent honey bees?
While we typically associate war with violence and bloodshed, in the history of recorded
human conflict, there have actually been a handful of battles that have been resolved
without a single casualty.
This is the bizarre and fascinating world of Bloodless Wars, and we’re going to tell
you about all of the craziest examples - from their earliest days to the most shockingly
recent.
It began all the way back on March 30, 1651.
Or did it?
The strangest thing about this first war is that even though we know for a fact it ended,
we’re not technically sure if it ever actually began.
We are, of course, talking about the Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Year War, which may
have been fought between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly.
But historians are split on whether this alleged multi-century conflict was a bonafide war
or a kind of incredibly elaborate running gag with one hell of a lead-up to its punchline.
We know for a fact that this possibly fake, bloodless war was started by a very real and
very bloody one - that resulted in the king of one of the most powerful nations in the
world being deposed and executed.
This was the English Civil War, which was fought between the Royalists, supporting the
rule of King Charles I, and the Parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell.
Over 200,000 soldiers and civilians were killed from 1642 to 1651, and as the war drew to
a close, the battered remnants of the Royalist Navy, led by John Granville, took refuge on
the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of the British mainland.
By 1651, the United Provinces of the Netherlands still had a bone to pick with the Royalists
running the show on the Isles of Scilly.
Because the Dutch had aligned with the Parliamentarians during the Civil War, the Royalist Navy had
previously done a fair bit of damage to their forces, and Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Harpertszoon
Tromp - who was Dutch, in case the aggressively Dutch name didn’t give it away - wanted
some reparations.
However, when he traveled to the Isles of Scilly to ask for these reparations, he was
rebuffed by the Royalists.
This is where things get a little sticky.
According to the account of English Parliamentarian Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke - man, these names
are something else - “Tromp came to Pendennis and related that he had been to Scilly to
demand reparation for the Dutch ships and goods taken by them; and receiving no satisfactory
answer, he had, according to his Commission, declared war on them.”
But there was a complication - not long after this contested declaration of war, the Royalists
officially surrendered to the Parliamentarians, and the English Civil War came to an end.
The Dutch Navy left for home, having never signed an official peace treaty with the Isles
of Scilly - and it remained this way for 335 years.
Over the centuries, it became a kind of tongue-in-cheek local joke on the Isles that they were still
at war with the Dutch - even though, technically speaking, Lieutenant-Admiral Tromp had never
actually had the authority to declare war on behalf of his nation.
But even if the war never really started, it did actually end in 1986, when Scillonian
historian and councilman Roy Duncan realized that a peace treaty still hadn’t been signed
between Scilly and the Netherlands.
He invited Dutch ambassador Jonkheer Rein Huydecoper to visit the Isles and bring their
conflict to an end.
In April of that year, Huydecoper took Duncan up on the offer, visiting as an unofficial
peace convoy and declaring a permanent ceasefire between the two nations - which is strange
given that the firing never actually started.
Huydecoper joked that it must have been horrible for the Scillonians to live in fear all this
time, knowing the Dutch fleet could have attacked them at any moment over the last 335 years.
The Dutch have a strange habit of getting into bloodless wars.
Just over a century after the start of the Three Hundred and Thirty-Five Year War, in
1784, the Dutch went to war with the Holy Roman Empire in the River Scheldt.
This conflict would later be known as the Kettle War for a beautifully stupid reason
you’ll find out about very soon.
So, what context brought these two heavy hitters into a weird little conflict where nobody
died?
The Spanish Netherlands was backed by the Holy Roman Empire, and the Southern Netherlands,
then known as the Republic of the Seven Netherlands, didn’t get along great with them.
An important point of contention among them was the aforementioned River Scheldt, an important
trade route that the Dutch provinces had barred the Spanish Netherlands from accessing - leading
to a resentment that bubbled over for centuries.
In 1648, the Spanish Hapsburgs, well-known money and inbreeding enthusiasts, tried to
secure the River Scheldt as part of the Treaty of Westphalia - and failed.
Later on, in 1714, after the War of the Spanish Succession, the Austrian branch of the Hapsburg
family tried to get access to the River Scheldt.
But the war had been expensive, and after their requests were denied, they didn’t
have much economic leverage to force the Dutch’s hands.
So, after all this frustration, in 1784, Emperor Joseph II tried to do what none of his forebears
had ever done before: Charge in and take the River Scheldt by force.
He sent his flagship, Le Louis, and two others into the Scheldt as an act of provocation
against their Dutch foes.
And the response was seemingly underwhelming: A single Dutch ship, De Dolfijn.
The outcome of the battle seemed obvious - De Dolfijn was outmanned and outgunned compared
to Le Louis and her support ships.
But what happened next shocked everyone involved.
De Dolfijn fired a single shot at Le Louis, not even injuring or killing anyone on board,
and Le Louis immediately surrendered.
We’re not kidding.
Nobody really knows why the surrender was so quick, given that on paper, the Holy Roman
Empire had a clear advantage here.
But in any case, the battle was over before it even began, and the Holy Roman Empire was
humiliated.
The fighting, or lack thereof, would come to an end officially a year later, in 1785,
with the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which left the contested river closed to shipping in
exchange for compensation.
So, why was this conflict called the Kettle War?
Because the one casualty of this conflict was a kettle on board the Le Louis that was
destroyed by De Dolfijn’s single, non-lethal shot.
The horror.
Let’s fast forward from one period of bloodless combat to another, from 1784 to 1809.
This is the Huéscar-Danish War, and you may be thinking, “I’ve never heard of the
nation of Huéscar,” and that’s because Huéscar isn’t a nation - it’s a relatively
small municipality in the province of Granada, Spain.
So, how did this place end up saber rattling with the Danes in the early 1800s, you ask?
It started as the Napoleonic Wars were coming to a close in 1809.
After Napoleon’s defeat, stability was returning to Western Europe.
Ferdinand VIII had taken the throne, and a peace treaty was signed between Spain and
Denmark.
Except for, of course, the municipality of Huéscar, which decided that maybe it would
be the force to bring the country that gave us the Vikings to its knees.
They may not have had the forces - specifically, the municipality had only eight guards to
its name - but they had the fighting spirit to bring home the victory for king and country.
Except, there was never actually any fighting.
The war was lost not on the battlefield but in the pages of history itself.
This went on for 172 years until an employee of Granada’s regional government found the
dusty old declaration of war.
They got in contact with the Danish government and began brokering another tongue-in-cheek
peace deal in 1981.
But both the people of Huéscar and the Danes had some fun with this one.
Danish Ambassador Mogens Wandel-Petersen traveled to Huéscar on April 11 of that year with
a delegation of friends dressed as Vikings, carrying shields with the words “Danish
Hispanic Friends” written on them.
But the citizens of Huéscar gave it as good as they got it, putting up large posters in
the city limits that jokingly warned their Viking visitors that they were now entering
enemy territory.
It was a whole event, with everyone being given the day off in Huéscar to take part
in the merriment.
During the party, the Danes and the people of Huéscar traded regional food and drink,
and once the festivities were over, Ambassador Wandel-Petersen and the mayor of Huéscar,
Ossos Jose Pablo Serrano, signed a peace treaty.
It was probably the chillest war of all time, even by the standards of unusually gentlemanly
bloodless wars.
But our next war is the sweetest on name alone - we’re traveling stateside to take a look
at the Honey War.
We were kidding about the sweet part, by the way, this one is actually really strange.
This aborted skirmish took place between the state militias of Iowa and Missouri back in
1839 over a series of confusions and disputes about the border between the two states.
Due to unclear wording in a few land treaties made with the indigenous people in the area
and the sloppy surveying work of one John C. Sullivan in 1816, ambiguity about the exact
nature of the border was created.
In 1837, this left the door open for Missouri to sponsor a new survey of the border, which
would allow them to essentially take almost 3000 miles of land from Iowa.
The federal government tried to step in and mediate the dispute as tensions began to rise,
but Missouri wasn’t happy.
The arrangement for the new border that the government proposed still benefited Iowa at
their expense.
Much like Le Louis barging into the River Scheldt to flex its power, Missouri retaliated
against what they perceived as unfair treatment by sending a tax collector into disputed territory
to collect taxes from the residents.
And seeing as nobody is ever grateful to see a tax collector roll up to their door, this
marked an escalation in tensions.
The tax collector in question, Missouri Sheriff Uriah Gregory, was told to leave or the Iowans
would use force.
In retaliation, Missourians cut down four trees used by local bee colonies to store
honey - hence the conflict’s name, The Honey War.
The next time Sheriff Gregory entered the disputed area, the Iowans had him arrested.
When news spread of the Sheriff’s incarceration, Missouri’s governor sent out a militia to
reclaim him.
Meanwhile, when they heard that the Missouri militia was on its way, Iowa created its own
impromptu militia - armed with rusty revolutionary weapons and old farm tools.
The governor of Iowa donated five barrels of beer to the troops, which would surely
improve their military focus and coordination.
To underscore just how middle school this entire conflict was, the Iowan militia marched
under the rallying cry of “Death to the invading pukes!”
But despite all these forces being marshaled, an actual battle never took place.
This is because the invading Missouri militia got tired of being expected to risk their
lives in a battle with the Iowans without the promise of pay.
So, they shot a deer and ripped the carcass in half, then tied up the two halves of the
carcass to trees, claiming they represented the Missouri and Iowa governors.
They then proceeded to shoot at the two carcass halves before burying them with military honors
and gun salutes.
Yeah, we don’t know why they thought that would help, either.
But strangely, it did.
The governors realized how weird things were getting and decided to call off the battle,
agreeing to mediate the border with the federal government until the dispute was eventually
settled by the Supreme Court.
Not a single human life was taken - just a deer, some trees, and some bees.
Speaking of animals in bloodless war - well, not so bloodless for the animals in question,
at least - probably one of the most famous of all is The Pig War, which took place on
San Juan Island in 1859.
The island, famed for its fertile soil and bountiful natural resources, became contested
by the United States and the Hudson’s Bay Company, a proxy for British interests.
The British considered the Americans on the island to be squatters, whereas the Americans
expected the US Government to back up their own claim.
The powder keg was formed, and a pig would be the lit match.
On June 15, 1859, the American Lyman Cutler set everything off by shooting a company pig
that’d wandered onto his land and allegedly ate his potatoes.
The death of this porcine Archduke Ferdinand could have resulted in a major conflict, as
Cutler sought the defense of anti-British American Brigadier General William S. Harney.
Both parties sent forces to the island to support their claims, stoking fears that this
whole thing would end in bloodshed.
As the saber-rattling escalated and more troops occupied San Juan Island, President Buchanan
became concerned and dispatched General Winfield Scott to stop this conflict from escalating
into violence.
Joint military occupation was proposed as a stopgap until a proper agreement could be
reached - and it remained that way for twelve entire years until the signing of the Treaty
of Washington.
Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany acted as the mediator on the issue of San Juan Island, deciding
to give it to the United States.
This marked the last border divide between the US and Canada.
But the Pig War is still only second to the strangest Bloodless War of all time: The Lobster
War, which took place between France and Brazil between 1961 and 1963 and is also, in our
opinion, one of the most strangely pedantic wars of all time.
It started with a group of French fishermen trawling for lobster across the coast of Africa.
After a disappointing take, they decided to push West until they reached the warm waters
of South America.
They happened upon a huge population of spiny lobsters, which they started fishing in massive
quantities.
Naturally, the local fisherman didn’t take kindly to this, and soon enough, the Brazilian
Navy was descending upon the fisherman to intimidate them out of the waters.
The sailors argued that because the lobsters were moving on the floor of the South American
Coast, the lobsters were Brazilian by right.
The fishermen argued that because the lobsters could swim from place to place, they were
open for international fishing.
This argument was unconvincing, so the Brazilians called in the rest of their fleet.
France’s president, Charles De Gaulle, took this as an insult and sent in a Destroyer
from the French fleet, which was repelled by the Brazilian Navy.
The French were given 48 hours to withdraw, but those 48 hours stretched into a three-year,
lobster-inspired Cold War.
In the end, the issue needed to be settled in the international courts, and a group of
scientists worked to litigate whether lobsters walked along the ground or swam through the
sea.
In the end, the conflict was settled, and the scientists found that the lobsters walked,
not swam.
If there was some kind of award for the dumbest ways a war could ever conclude, we definitely
think that’s in the running.
Now watch “Weird Weapons of War That Totally Failed.”
Or check out this instead!