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Throught the course of human history, people have fought against

and killed one other for some pretty stupid reasons.

At least, it may seem that way

from our sophisticated way of viewing things from the 21st century.

There was the time that El Salvador invaded Honduras

after a controversial football game.

The time that the Austrian Army fought a battle with itself while drunk

and countless times when one guy thought that his religion

or way of ruling was better than anybody else's.

Most wars in fact could probably be argued

were fought for stupid reasons

But in all of my personal reading

I have never come across one as silly sounding

as the War Of The Bucket

which, yeah was an entire war

where thousands of people

died fighting over essentially

a wooden bucket.

The setting was Northern Italy

during the late Middle Ages.

Italy at the time was divided into various

different city states

and Northern Italy, in particular

was part of the Holy Roman Empire

and so the states here were mostly independent

but technically

under the legions of the Holy Roman Emperor

back in Germany.

And since people like arguing about literally

anything,

a conflict arose in Northern Italian states

between who had more authority.

the Holy Roman Emperor

or the Pope.

In 1176,

the Holy Roman Emperor invaded Italy

and was defeated by a bunch of city states

brought together by the Pope.

Over the next couple centuries

different states shifted around allegiances

but by the 14th century

Modena was with team Roman Emperor

and

Bologna was with Team Pope.

In 1296 Bologna invaded

a couple of territories from Modena

which their buddy at the Papacy

confirmed to be legitimate.