Every armed conflict is either international or non-international in character (see infra 71). Non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) – often called internal armed conflicts or, in the past, civil wars – are an older phenomenon than the modern nation-State. The Roman Republic was subverted and ultimately destroyed by enervating civil strife. The late Roman Empire was shaken to its foundations by near-constant bruising fights between rivals who wished to assume the purple. The Islamic Caliphate went through the turmoil of fitna; and in the long history of the Chinese Empire regimes and dynasties often succumbed to aggressive warlords. Throughout medieval and early modern Europe, internal conflicts between barons and kings, interspersed by many a jacquerie and fronde, were commonplace. In a multitude of countries, the animosities and fervour of such ruptures (exemplified by the War of the Roses in England) brewed for long periods of time. In more recent times, NIACs like the American Civil War (1861–5), the Russian Civil War (1917–22) or the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) left scars of self-inflicted wounds not healed for generations.