Are there major/well-known examples of nation's declaring wars without a valid casus belli in world history? I often see people using no-CB to jumpstart campaigns, but never do it myself because I haven't been able to rationalize the choice, so I'm wondering if anyone knows of situations where it happened.
Posted Feb 5, 2020, 11:25 PM UTC
The Japanese invasion of Korea under Toyotomi Hideyoshi was justified almost entirely by "we just united the country and now I have a bunch of experienced samurai who hate each other ready to make trouble". The game gives you claims nowadays but there wasn't really a justification other than "I want to go beat up a Chinese tributary to justify my military leadership."
The french revolutionary wars. No cause rly apart from "most of the french don't like the germans and austrians lets declare a war!" So there is that. Although you can see it as a humiliate rival-war... Actually quite a few wars had things like revenge or I'd like to expand here and there as justifications. The claims represented in the game are actually not that common as you might think. Especially in that time wars were mostly about gaining influence and weakening the rival and not so mich about territorial gains. That played a big role in the age of imperialism.
This. I'm no historian, but I feel like there are many "weak" CB wars, but very very few (if any) truly no CB wars.
Showing strength, improving legitimacy, and even wars over petty squabbles I'd put in The category of weak CB. The problem is most of those options don't exist in EU4 or they don't act the same.
IE-certain CB wars shouldn't call in defensive allies if the two contenders are relatively equal. Sometimes people just didn't care about their reason for war, even if they had pacts.
I’d say though that the no CB is going to at least be justified to the local populace with something even if it’s what you’d put in that petty squabble category.
In the first silesian war Friedrich the great attacked austria without a cb. He just decided that historians will justify his attack afterwards.
Its not unheard of for empires in decline to be picked apart by enemies who declare war upon them when they are weak, without clear reasons, or an ally to suddenly betray them for some type of gain.
Also you could argue that any colonial endeavor by Europeans is an example of no-cbing people since they have no actual right to any of the land except on the grounds they want it.
I wouldn't say colonial endeavors were no cb wars. They justification was "spread culture and religion". No matter how dumb it may sound, it was a legit reason then. I recommend reading the poem (and the context behind it) The White Man's Burden by Rudyard Kipling if anyone is interested more about this.
The fabrication of claims against natives went something like this in England:
Government: "Here's a colonial charter, it says this land belongs to you."
Colonists: "But there's already people living there."
Government or colonists, depending: loads musket "Shame."
Spain, meanwhile, just used their Holy War CB, and France just wanted trading posts.
Napolean yeeted himself into Egypt, attacking the Ottoman Empire for no legitimate reason out of the blue. Before then, both countries had mostly positive relations and were allied at times.
Edit: Spelling
Napoleon is the absolutely most famous example. That’s one of the main things that brought him infamy.
He even had military access to Spain when he attacked them. Napoleon don’t give a fudge about stab or bb.
And what did he get? Coalitions one after the other until he got exiled into an OPM in the middle of the ocean
Well, he played the game on the hardest difficulty on his first run and did quite well considering.