On European Wars

I've noticed that the Bloodiest European conflicts fall into one of two categories:

1. Tyrant's wars (Napoleonic, World War 2)
In this, the leader of a single nation, through use of a revolutionary weapon or tactic expands rapidly across Europe, and forces the other powers into alliance against him. The “struggle of good vs. evil” is a common theme in art during these periods, where is in the offending nation, the theme of “imperial glory” is common.

2. Alliance Dominoes (World War One, Thirty Years War)
In this, a small local conflict is exaggerated to a continent spanning war through great power intervention, and a system of alliances drag other nations into the fray simply to avoid alienating the other powers. Unlike the Tyrant's wars, these lack a clear "good guy" and "bad guy". The "blind leading the blind" is a common theme in art during these periods.

AH writers should keep this in mind when writting ALT European conflicts.
 
Thirty year's War could be described as a Tyrant's War under your definitions. The Habsburgs controlled Austria and Spain and had enjoyed unparalleled success, riches and power since 1477. With all of Germany under their boot, they would pretty much be unstoppable. That was why the Ottomans, Dutch, French, Danes, Swedes and German princes formed various coalitions to fight them.
 
I would say that this kind of over-simplifying pattern comes logically from the nature of Europe as a balkanized continent without a clear hegemonial power for most of the time, combined with the restriction on "bloodiest wars".

As these "bloodiest wars" have to engulf most of Europe to qualify, a simple Franco-German War, the Spanish Civil War or a Polish uprising do not qualify. We need most or all major powers involved - this needs either a clash of several coalitions or a historical figure who antagonizes/attacks so many of his neighbours. This figure has to be successful at first (hence the revolutionary tactics), otherwise the ensuing conflict would be too limited and not qualify again.

A typical European war IMO though is a certain type of coalition warfare which centers around/is justified by the question of ruler's hereditary rights (War of the Spanish/Austrian/Polish/Bavarian succession, 100-Years-War, Przemysl vs Habsburg).
 
One can draw comparisons, but really, every historical circumstance is unique. What you have there is two comparisons which can be questioned but which I regard as pretty reasonable, although they serve to highlight as many differences as similarities; but two comparisons can't make up a grand scheme.
 

Typo

Banned
Yeah, it's being overly simplistic, you can make a similar case that the wars are nasty when ideologue (nationalism: ethnical or otherwise, religion etc) gets mixed in.
 
Yeah, it's being overly simplistic, you can make a similar case that the wars are nasty when ideologue (nationalism: ethnical or otherwise, religion etc) gets mixed in.

Well, I regard war as nasty through-and-through, but I understand what you mean. I'm not sure this is correct, however. Take the First Italian War. Unambiguously fought for ethnic nationalism, but it was pretty tame, like many 19th C wars.

My formula would be that wars get nastier the more the distincition between combatant and non-combatant fades. In the World Wars, total wars, everybody was a combattant, and there was blood. Looking at the 19th C, the worst wars by far were the Taiping Rebellion, which was of course a rebellion, followed distantly by the ACW, which was almost a proptypical total war in that, unlike contemporary Clausewitzian wars, one modern state was going at another modern state intending to destroy it utterly, and the war's conversion into local struggles got very nasty.

And the the French Revolutionary Wars started to get really bloody when the Allies claimed the power to go dispensing justice on revolutionaries, and became a lot cleaner under Napoleon when it became just armies marching around again, except of course in Spain. My formula is vague, but pretty universal.
 
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