Military and Warfare Tropes - Television Tropes & Idioms

"It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it."

— Robert E. Lee

“War is the father of us all, King of all. Some it makes gods, some it makes men, some it makes slaves, some free.”

— Heraclitus

War stories are not quite as convention-laden as The Western or commedia dell'arte, but it is a near thing. And The Army is frequently featured in such stories for some reason... Here are some things you may rely on.

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Historical Wars

The Trojan War (approx. 1194-1184 BC)
Greco Persian Wars (499-450 BC)
Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC)
Macedonian Succession Wars (323BC-275BC)
Punic Wars (264-146 BC)
Maccabean Revolt (166BC-129BC)
Jewish Revolts (66-117)
The Crusades (1095-1291)
Turkish-European Wars (1071-1683)*
Starting with Manzikert, when the Turks started to really threaten the Byzantines, and ending with the Second Siege of Vienna, after which the Turks stopped being a real threat.
- Ottoman Rise(Early Ottoman conquests in late middle ages)
- Fall Of Constantinople(1453)
- Battle Of Lepanto(1571)
- Siege Of Vienna (1683)
- European Reconquest(Austria&Russia vs Ottomans Seventeenth-Nineteenth centuries)
Hundred Years War (1337-1453)
Wars of the Roses (1455-1485)
Italian Wars (1494-1559)
Eighty Years War (1568-1648)
Dutch Portuguese War (1602-1640)
Thirty Years' War (1618-1648)
English Civil War (1642-1649), a part of the Three Kingdoms Wars (1639-1653)
Hanover Stuart Wars (Seventeenth and Eighteenth century).
Anglo Dutch Wars (1652-1781)
Great Northern War (1700-1721)
War Of The Spanish Succession (1701-1714)
War Of The Austrian Succession (1740-1748)
Seven Years War (1754-1763)
The American Revolution (1775-1783)
Napoleonic Wars (1789-1815)
War Of 1812 (1812-1815)
War Of The Confederation (1836-1839)
Mexican-American War (1846-1848)
Wars Of Italian Independence (1848-1866)
Crimean War (1853-56)
Sepoy Rebellion (1857)
The American Civil War (1861-1865)
Chincha Islands War (1864-1866)
War Of The Triple Alliance (1864-1870)
Austro Prussian War (1866)
Franco Prussian War (1870-1871)
Anglo Zulu War (January-July 1879)
War Of The Pacific (1879-1883)
First Sino Japanese War (1894-1895)
The River War (1881-1898)
Second Boer War (1899-1902)
Russo Japanese War (1904-1905)
Mexican Revolution (1910-1921)
World War One (1914-1918)
- The Poppy
Russian Civil War (1917-1922)
- Polish Soviet War (1919-1921)
Irish Revolution (War of Independence 1919-1921, Civil War 1922-1923)
Chinese Civil War (Initial campaigns 1927-1936, intermittent fighting 1941-1945, full-scale war 1946-1949.)
Chaco War (1932-1935)
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 - 1945)
World War II (1939-1945)
The Cold War: (c.1945-c.1991. Historians disagree on the precise date it started)
- The Korean War (1950-1953 for the main fighting, although technically still ongoing and best described as a high tension Cold War in East Asia)
- The Indochina Wars (1946-1975)
  - The Vietnam War (1959-1975)
- Bay Of Pigs Invasion (April 17-April 19 1961)
- Operation Urgent Fury (October-December 1983)
- Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan (1979-1989)
Arab Israeli Conflict (1948-)
The Troubles (1968-1998)
The Football War (July 1969)
Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), also known as the Gulf War.
The Falklands War (or Malvinas War, to some) (2 April-20 June 1982)
Sri Lankan Civil War (1983-2009)
First Gulf War (1990-1991) also known as the Second Gulf War
The Yugoslav Wars (1991-2001)
Congo Wars (1996-2003)
The War on Terror (2001-, includes Afghanistan and Iraq wars)

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