Comparison between Roman and Han Empires on Wikipedia!

[Teeninvestor]

They've used NOTHING SO FAR in this thread.

Oh ya, and why is there 3 people debating? Oh well, it adds to the fun.

The sources I've used so far?

Let me see... a history from a well-known publisher, 8 books published by academics, a comprehensive history, high-level academic essays, two encyclopedias. Very ill-sourced am I.

Where did you come from? I happened to have had a 93% average in school and the highest mark in history where I came from, thank you very much. I'm sure you had a 100% average, didn't you?

If you're referring to my posts on the thread I'd think for a thread it would be excellent.

 

[negZero]

They've used NOTHING SO FAR in this thread.

I've seen Dachs cite his sources once and they were very respectable. Sharwood knows his stuff beyond what you would gain from an internet sites and am sure he will cite them.

Let me see... a history from a well-known publisher,

First publishers don't write books, they print them, second A Million Little Pieces by James Frey.

8 books published by academics, a comprehensive history, high-level academic essays

Dachs covered all these from what I remember

two encyclopedias.Very ill-sourced am I.

Dachs didn't you use to help out with Wikipedia?

Where did you come from? I happened to have had a 93% average in school and the highest mark in history where I came from, thank you very much. I'm sure you had a 100% average, didn't you?

You would've failed every class I had back in frigging HIGH SCHOOL just because of source citing alone. Right now am planning on writing nice large post on the factual errors(which would cause you to fail in my grade 10 history class(there was no grade 9 class)) you've made and will make in this thread.

 

[Teeninvestor]

Don't steal my idea!

I've already made a list of the errors all three of you have made.

It's hilarious. Maybe it deserves an article on wikipedia.

Besides namecalling, you've yet to cite one source that fails. Guess thats all you guys can do.

Moderator Action: Infraction for trolling. - KD
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Yui108]

1. Man, no one's angry at you. Just a history debate, no need to feel like your in a corner

Awesome, Sharwood.

Ya, I'm sure you would have gotten HIGH marks in school, sourcing like this.

"Cambridge history of China is a terrible source."[/quote]

Why? How? When? because their version of facts are better then your biased and useless junk?

Also, taking my comments out of context.

The full statement was [/quote]"if you can't tell the difference between Crossbow and catapault, you have no knowledge of military history."[/quote]

For battle of Chibi, there was 300,000+ participants.

For the battle of Mayi and other battles, there are 300,000+ troops
Addon - That's exactly what everyone said. 300k participants. That would seem to mean there are 150,000 troops on each side. Not exactly out of the range of the Romans
And you call me a noob. You have no sense of history whatsoever, it seems all you are good at is namecalling

Look at your misstatements-
[/quote]"Ottomans weren't even around then."[/quote]

Then who did TIMUR conquer then?
Wikipedia:
[/quote]"Before the end of 1399, Timur started a war with Bayezid I, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and the Mamluk sultan of Egypt. Bayezid began annexing the territory of Turkmen and Muslim rulers in Anatolia. As Timur claimed sovereignty over the Turkmen rulers, they took refuge behind him. Timur invaded Syria, sacked Aleppo and captured Damascus after defeating the Mamluk army. The city's inhabitants were massacred, except for the artisans, who were deported to Samarkand. This led to Timur's being publicly declared an enemy of Islam."[/quote]

Seriously, I laugh at your education system. Whichever country's education system brought you up needs some serious reform.
Timur does not equal the mongols, #1. Not at all. Also, Timur didn't even really invade the Ottoman empire. He just kicked their ass on their outer borders a few times . So even if Timur was a mongol, which he wasn't he didn't come close to conquering the Ottomans. Oh, and you really should stop using Wikipedia as an infallible source. It really isn't
Another one of your statements
[/quote]"And canals allow for better transport and supply than a frigging inland sea? "[/quote]

Ya, I'm sure Mediterrenean is such a good place to transport armies UP THE RHINE.
Who said anything about the Rhine? Oh and the Furor Teutonicus was one of the biggest fluke wins of the Classical Era. The Romans losing a single battle due to a very incompetent general does not make them a weak empire
[/quote]"Because supply in 2,000 miles of desert is well beyond the capabilities of either empire."[/quote]

Proof? Evidence? Then HOW DID HAN win this little war, if they couldn't even push into the Xiongnu heartland?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Xiongnu_War
Article is extremely inconclusive
[/quote]"What? The country that had to import horses had a larger cavalry component?"[/quote]

WOW. I'm not even going to talk. You are aware that the Han controlled Dzungaria and Mongolia, which had some of the best horses in the world.....

[/quote]"Rome advanced very far into Iran several times. And the Romans had this little thing called Parthia stopping them. The third greatest empire in the world at the time. Not that it provided much of a fight when the Romans forced the issue."[/quote]

BS. Parthian cavalry could trample over Rome's legions any day. Please actually read some Roman history. Crassus, Julian, the list goes on. Not to mention Parthia's population was like a third of Rome's.
1. Julian the Apostate never invaded Parthia. 2. Crassus is a legitmate defeat, but again incompetent general. 3. Did the Parthians ever take Rome? 4. TRAJAN
[/quote]"The ballista is a giant goddamn crossbow. Look at the frigging thing. And crossbows and catapults are based on the same relative principle. So are snare traps. I wanted to single this out for greatness:"[/quote]

THATS EXACTLY WHY IT IS USELESS. The whole point of the crossbow is to provide rapid fire to the infantrymen individually. It takes 2 minutes to turn the damn ballista around to fire- not exactly the greatest thing against a fast-moving horseman.

Also, wikipedia and any other source discredits you eh?
[/quote]"The ballista is not a crossbow because it is based on the TORSION principle, and is not a tension weapon"[/quote]
Also, its rate of fire is nowhere near the repeating crossbow.

[/quote]"Jesus, you're just making yourself look stupider and stupider. He never said Alexander fielded a 500,000 man army. NEITHER DID EFFING ATTILA THE HUN GODDAMMIT!!! This argument needs to see the Wizard to ask him for a brain. I know someone who should make the trip with it. And it aint Dachs."[/quote]

I was responding to a joke. It's called hypothetical situation, your mind is obviously incapable of understanding it. Xiongnu did field 200,000-300,000 cavalry; check any chinese history and you will see.

[/quote]"The Germanic tribes did conquer Europe. How'd the Mongols go at that? The Huns? You don't know anything about the subjects you're disussing. The Mongols certainly didn't have "hundreds of thousands of horsemen" just running around ready to invade at a moment's notice, and the Huns largest army was 50,000, including "Germans."[/quote]

Pure speculation. If the Mongols didn't have "hundreds of thousands of horsemen" on the go, how did they form the Mongol Empire? Not only China(Song) deploy over 500,000 troops, but Islam could also deploy hundreds of thousands of cavalry. I don't see a Mongol Empire based on fifty thousand horse archers....
Revolutionary officer and combined arms tactics, that's how. Islam? Since when was Islam a country?
Of course, the Huns did overrun Europe with 50,000 horse archers+ Germanic infantry. The whole point is that Germanic infantry were pretty ill-equipped and not up to the standard, especially compared with Roman army at their height.

[/quote]"As for being "low-endurance unarmoured infantry," it'd be pretty hilarious if "low-endurance unarmoured infantry" toppled Rome, the largest empire West of China."[/quote]

I'm not a descendant of these Germans. Go ask your ancestors how they did. History is history.
Low endurance? check(little cavalry, mostly infantry. Barely advanced past borderlands.)

[/quote]"Ten thousand crossbowmen could decimate a lot of things. And the composite bow is a lot more effective than the crossbow, especially for offence. Crossbows are a defensive weapon. And the Huns and Mongols - stop comparing the two, it's like comparing the respective power of Rwanda and the US - gained their power largely from cavalry."[/quote]

Composite bow more effective than the crossbow???? What are you smoking my friend, do you have any idea what's the rate of fire on these things.
By the way, by Huns I mean the Xiongnu. Xiongnu at one point fielded 200,000-300,000 horsemen.
This is why you guys all need a crash history lesson. You have no knowledge of these basic things whatsoever!

[/quote]"They didn't use them as defensive barriers, the barbarians on the other sides of said rivers used the lay of the land on their side to defend themselves from Rome. Most of Germania was pretty heavily forested at the time, good luck maintaining unit cohesion marching through a forest."[/quote]

Really, they didn't use them as defensive barriers. THATS WHY THEY BUILT 50 FORTS ON EACH RIVER. BRILLIANT.
Exactly, they needed the forts to form a semi-defensible barrier. Whcih as we all know didn't work out too well
By the way, the battle of Changping proves my point. If each kingdom out of seven in China could field a standing army of over 100,000 men each, I'm pretty sure an Empire with THREE times the population could field 300,000 troops in one battle... and a little fact that not half the Han population were slaves...
Source, other than Wikipedia? And also, it was only a quarter of the Roman population
Anyways, the ignorance displayed by you and dachs is simply amazing. Do you guys actually read any history? Ladies and gentlemen, you have just seen before yourself two examples of the stupidity people display when they try to preserve their ignorance. Not to mention they haven't mentioned a single source.

I have only one message: Before trying to accuse others of being something, check yourself, or else its called HYPOCRISY.[/QUOTE]

 

[carmen510]

Don't steal my idea!

I've already made a list of the errors all three of you have made.

It's hilarious. Maybe it deserves an article on wikipedia.

Besides namecalling, you've yet to cite one source that fails. Guess thats all you guys can do.

You know what I hate? Arrogant pricks, particularly those having a huge ego because the think they're smarter than everyone else. (Although admittedly, I've hated Symphony D. and Dachs at some point)

This has gone more into idiotic flaming now, so I shall cease.

 

[Masada]

Why? How? When? because their version of facts are better then your biased and useless junk?

Cambridge histories are a synthesis of existing scholarship, they're great for a general overview and they tend to be useful as a quick reference (I love my Cambridge History of Southeast Asia for that) but they are seldom current with scholarship. They also suffer from a propensity to be too general to be of much use. The "Cambridge" title is by no means a seal of quality, it really depends on the quality of the authors.

1. "Mongols didn't devastate the Ottoman Empire"- What is TIMUR then, my friend.

Timur was of Turkic-Mongol descent, he spoke Persian and Chagatai a Turkic language, dressed like a Turk, was Muslim and the majority of his troops were Turkic in origin or in custom and mannerisms. He was "Mongolian" more than Mongolian.

Ya, I'm sure Mediterrenean is such a good place to transport armies UP THE RHINE.

What pray is the distance from Italy to the Rhine? And how much of the Empire was near the Mediterranean? Now a quick comparison; what is the distance from Beijing to the frontier [you choose the period] to the frontier in the North? And how much of the Chinese state was on the Sea or was in a direct link say via a river to the frontier?

3. "Germans have excellent cavalry"- Excellence indeed my friend. Try keeping 200,000 horses alive in forest sometime.

Try and stop being ignorant. The Germanic tribes did not only fight on foot and some of them used cavalry extensively it would help if you had bothered to look up some of the names that Dachs provided.

4. "Rivers are terrible defensive barriers"- Right. That's why every empire relies on them for defence at one point, and all campaigns stop when they reach them.

They are a terrible defensive barriers, you can't defend the length of them... the Great Wall suffered from similar issues. Do some basic math for the number of soldiers per meter you could put on the Rhine and Great Wall and you will see the problem. The enemy has the benefit of attacking in force at a point of their choosing and all you can really do is try and catch them in force before they get to far away.

Proof? Evidence? Then HOW DID HAN win this little war, if they couldn't even push into the Xiongnu heartland?

A soldier requires a minimum of about 3 pounds of rations per day to maintain his strength and health. A soldier can carry about 80 pounds of equipment and supplies for an extended period, so ten days' rations is a reasonable maximum, assuming 50 pounds for arms and armor and other equipment. Infantry in large bodies can march about 12 miles a day, so infantry alone with supply wagons or packhorses might be able to cover 120 miles before running out of supplies.

A stall-fed packhorse might consume 10 pounds of grass and 10 pounds of grain (barley or oats) each day and carry a burden of 250 pounds. A stall-fed warhorse might carry a greater burden but would require a proportionately greater amount of fodder. Assuming that grass is readily available for grazing, a horse might consume as much grain as it can carry in twenty-five days. Of course, if a packhorse consumes its entire load then there is not much point in bringing it along.

A cavalrymen with 50 or 75 pounds of equipment might weigh nearly as much as a horse could reasonably carry. A second horse might carry ten days' food and fodder (250 pounds, with the rider and two horses consuming 23 pounds each day) plus serve as a spare mount in case the first horses was injured. Large bodies of cavalry could travel somewhere between 19 and 30 miles a day, depending on the likelihood of meeting the enemy and the degree of catuion required, or between 180 and 300 miles on ten days' supplies.

So, assuming that grass and water are readily available, an army could carry enough food and fodder for about ten days without much of a supply train at all. This is a rough estimate but a reasonable one... [bit about living of the land in heavily populated agricultural areas].

On the steppe, such an army woulds starve after ten days. It would have to turn back after five.

In the desert, the assumption that grass and water are readily available no longer holds, and the range of such an army drops precipitously. For each day in the desert, an additional 10 pounds of fodder would have to be carried for each horse, plus 80 pounds of water per horse and 5 pounds of water per person. This is why armies could not travel through the desert except along rivers or for very short periods of time. Infantry would have to turn back after just two days in the desert; cavalry, after just a single day.

Supply trains provide no simple solution. The men and horses in the supply train have to eat too. Pack horses consume 10 pounds each day and carry 250 pounds of supplies, or twenty-five their daily consumption. Porters who consume 3 pounds each day and carry 75 pounds of supplies would be equally efficient. Supply wagons are better; the driver and two horses would consume 23 pounds each day but the wagon might hold 1,400 pounds of supplies, or sixty times their daily consumption, depending on the efficiency of the harness and other factors. Supply wagons were restricted to relatively flat terrain, however. Ships and boats were far more efficient than even supply wagons, but they were more restricted in where they could operate.

Imagine a platoon of thirty infantrymen marching out onto the steepe with one large supply wagon. After ten days, they exhaust their rations and turn to the supply wagon for more. They will find that the driver and the horses have consumed 230 pounds of the load, and that another 230 pounds have be set aside for the driver and horses on the return trip. The remaining 940 pounds is just enough for each of the thirty infantrymen to fill his knapsack with the 30 pounds he can carry, and that in turn will last him just long enough to march back to where he started from.

Increasing the number of wagons quickly runs into the law of diminishing returns. One wagon will double the range of infantrymen from 120 miles to 240 miles, or rather 200 miles with one day of rest in six for the horses. (Horses become permanently incapacitated without periodic rest.) To double it again to 400 miles requires not two wagons, but actually six - one wagon for every five infantrymen, already the maximum likely to be found in practice. The number of wagons will reach thirty - one wagon, one driver and two horses for every infantrymen - before the range will double again.

So if there is one wagon for every five infantrymen, and enough grass and water along the march, then infantry can make a 400 mile round trip (i.e 200 miles in each direction). Take away the grass and water, and its range drops to one fifth of that. Natrually, these umbers are only rough estimates but they suggest and order of magnitude. To put them in perspective, Russian armies faceda 600-mile round trip from Kiev to the Crimea and back, and Chinese armies faced a 1,600 mile round trip from Beijing to Outer Mongolia and back.

[There are solutions, including Supply Depots and Auxiliaries I can type those out if you care to read them]

Reading the Wikipedia article... it looks like he 'drove them off' which with nomads tends to mean they moved. It's also unlikely that they moved over 2000 miles of 'desert' given the constraints listed above (which are actually worse given that the calculations are applied for a period a 1000 years in the future with the correspondingly better bred horses) it would be unlikely in the extreme if not impossible to have managed a 2000 mile advance up and back in 'desert' for anyone (it's probably beyond a similarly sized modern Chinese army to do the same now).

Of course, the Huns did overrun Europe with 50,000 horse archers+ Germanic infantry. The whole point is that Germanic infantry were pretty ill-equipped and not up to the standard, especially compared with Roman army at their height.

The Roman military was not at its height... Aetius last of the true Romans strike a cord? The Germans had converged in military tech and strategy. After all many of them had served in the Roman military and they had hundreds of years of exposure to Roman military technology.

I'm not a descendant of these Germans. Go ask your ancestors how they did. History is history.
Low endurance? check(little cavalry, mostly infantry. Barely advanced past borderlands.)

They did advance past the borderlands...

Composite bow more effective than the crossbow???? What are you smoking my friend, do you have any idea what's the rate of fire on these things.

A good foot archer could fire 12 well aimed shots in a minute at 300 paces with a 110 pound war bow (anything below 80 is useless in war). I'm going to ignore those rapid firing Chinese crossbows for the following reasons I've bolded:

The weapon was extremely easy to manufacture and use, and, in the hands of a trained soldier, could easily launch ten bolts in fifteen seconds. In comparison, an arbalest could only deliver about two bolts a minute. The chu-ko-nu however, had neither the power nor the accuracy of an arbalest. This gave it a shorter range, compensated for by using lightweight bolts instead of the heavy bolts of single-shot crossbows. Thus, the chu-ko-nu was not very useful against more heavily armored troops unless poison was smeared on bolts, in which case even a small wound may prove fatal. Since a chu-ko-nu was shot from the hip, accuracy was poor, but the aim could be adjusted very swiftly since the next shot was only a second or two away. To get past these limits often large numbers of men would use it on the battlefield, allowing for large numbers of bolts to be fired.

Would you face of against horse archers with composite bows? You can't even reach them and the limitations on the things are fairly worrying. I will grant they were handy during the Three Kingdoms period... but against bloody infantry or charge cavalry not against nomadic horse archers.

By the way, by Huns I mean the Xiongnu. Xiongnu at one point fielded 200,000-300,000 horsemen.

Full scale war broke out in autumn 129 BC, when 40,000 Chinese cavalry made a surprise attack on the Xiongnu at the border markets [logistics]. In 127 BC, the Han general Wei Qing retook the Ordos. In 121 BC, the Xiongnu suffered another setback when Huo Qubing led a force of light cavalry westward out of Longxi and within six days fought [logistics] his way through five Xiongnu kingdoms [light cavalry logistics]. The Xiongnu Hunye king was forced to surrender with 40,000 men. In 119 BC both Huo and Wei, each leading 50,000 cavalrymen and 100,000 footsoldiers, and advancing along different routes [logistics], forced the shanyu and his court to flee north of the Gobi Desert.[35] Major logistical difficulties limited the duration and long-term continuation of these campaigns [logistics]. According the analysis of Yan You (嚴&#23588, the difficulties were twofold. Firstly there was the problem of supplying food across long distances. Secondly, the weather in the northern Xiongnu lands was difficult for Han soldiers, who could never carry enough fuel [logistics].[36] According to official reports, the Xiongnu lost 80,000 to 90,000 men. And out of the 140,000 horses the Han forces had brought into the desert, fewer than 30,000 returned to China [logistics].

I also wonder about the defeating the Kingdoms bit? Does that mean he simply dislocated subject peoples from the Xiongnu because I'm willing to bet that was the case. I also doubt the Xiongnu could have called up all their theoretical troops for any single battle (given that they were a confederation of tribes some of which were newly incorporated... how loyal were their vassals?). And your telling me that the Han later could muster and fodder all extra troops? When they won the battle, and came back with 110,000 horses less? Don't know what that tells you... but it tells me that the terrain was hard and unforgiving on horses... it also tells me that there was no way they could have fielded 400,000 troops with only 100,000 horses [40,000 of which are attested as light cavalry] for supplies.

Ban Chao, Protector General (都護; Duhu) of the Han Dynasty embarked with an army of 70,000 men in a campaign against the Xiongnu insurgents who were harassing the trade route we now know as the Silk Road. His successful military campaign saw the subjugation of one Xiongnu tribe after another. Ban Chao also sent an envoy named Gan Ying to Daqin (Rome). Ban Chao was created the Marquess of Dingyuan (定遠侯, i.e., "the Marquess who stabilized faraway places") for his services to the Han Empire and returned to the capital Loyang at the age of 70 years old and died there in the year 102. Following his death, the power of the Xiongnu in the Western Regions increased again, and the emperors of subsequent dynasties were never again able to reach so far to the west.

I'm gathering by Silk Route he advanced from Oasis to Oasis and settled center to settled center? I'm also guessing that his troops were largely cavalry. The use of insurgents is also interesting... might it be because it wasn't sanctioned by the Xiongnu proper?

Really, they didn't use them as defensive barriers. THATS WHY THEY BUILT 50 FORTS ON EACH RIVER. BRILLIANT.

They used it as a barrier, but it didn't stop a determined and large enemy from crossing... it certainly helped with checking small advances by raiding parties. The whole nature of the Roman military with its border troops (foederati) and the actual armies (comitatus) who did the bulk of the fighting toe to toe with large enemy forces might have escaped you? Besides at this stage the Roman army was not the Republican Army or even the Army of the Early Emperors it had well and truly changed.

So far none of you have presented a single credible argument, besides the fact that supposedly one thousand years' records + the verification of modern historians are supposedly "unreliable" and supposedly all court historians are evil and kept the records falsified for over one thousand years....

Court historians are seldom reliable... I don't know because their boss is the guy their writing about? It looks good if you add an extra 100,000 troops to the enemies side that your Monarch just defeated. Chinese scholarship (in English at least) is not quite as old or as well pursued as Classical European History.

6. "Jesus, you're just making yourself look stupider and stupider." Man, the ad hominem piles on and on. Jesus isn't gonna to save you, and he sure didn't save the christians after the Germans overran the Roman Empire.

All those Arianised and Christianed Germanic tribesman totally overthrew the Empire and killed all the Christians. The collapse of the Western Empire was just a touch more complex than what Gibbon said i.e 'Roman' civil and economic affairs continued on in many of the Germanic kingdoms unmolested because I don't know they made money?

I love this forum. It's definitely a posterchild to why we need some basic history education.

You should really ask Dachs and Sharwood what their level of educational attainment is...

 

[Dachs]

Why? How? When? because their version of facts are better then your biased and useless junk?

As has been pointed out, Cambridge Histories of given areas are usually not up to date on modern scholarship, and don't bother to inject historiographic analysis. Now, I haven't had particular experience with this version, but the ones that I have read - Germany, Warfare, Greece and the Hellenistic World - have been rather behind with respect to most stuff. Cambridge Histories aren't written to keep people up to date, they are for basic overviews, rather like you wouldn't mention anything about the Successors of Alexandros or Maurits van Nassau in middle school. (Unless you're Dutch, I guess. )

The full statement was

"if you can't tell the difference between Crossbow and catapault, you have no knowledge of military history."

That's nice, totally untrue (for what would one need to know of crossbows or catapults if one were an expert on early modern warfare), and has nothing to do with anything I said. Ballistas ain't catapults.

For battle of Chibi, there was 300,000+ participants.

Source it. Is that based off of anything other than the notoriously unreliable Romance of the Three Kingdoms? Or is it based on a critical analysis of the text?

For the battle of Mayi and other battles, there are 300,000+ troops

Mayi didn't actually result in an engagement, IIRC, and the supply problems of bringing 300,000 men into an campaign in Xiongnu regions has already been noted.

And you call me a noob. You have no sense of history whatsoever, it seems all you are good at is namecalling

I haven't been name-calling, and you should probably stop the mild flames.

Seriously, I laugh at your education system.

I laugh at my country of residence's education system, too.

Proof? Evidence? Then HOW DID HAN win this little war, if they couldn't even push into the Xiongnu heartland?

Using less men? That usually works.

BS. Parthian cavalry could trample over Rome's legions any day. Please actually read some Roman history. Crassus, Julian, the list goes on. Not to mention Parthia's population was like a third of Rome's.

How about Publius Ventidius Bassus, Septimius Severus, Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius, Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, and, of course, Marcus Ulpius Traianus?

THATS EXACTLY WHY IT IS USELESS. The whole point of the crossbow is to provide rapid fire to the infantrymen individually. It takes 2 minutes to turn the damn ballista around to fire- not exactly the greatest thing against a fast-moving horseman.

Also, wikipedia and any other source discredits you eh?

Also, its rate of fire is nowhere near the repeating crossbow.

I have Arrian and Plutarch to attest the use of personal crossbows in Alexandrine times, in addition to the aforementioned Xanten find. Oh, and how about this picture from a German museum?

I was responding to a joke. It's called hypothetical situation, your mind is obviously incapable of understanding it.

Flaming: because it's impossible to get a point across without it.

Pure speculation. If the Mongols didn't have "hundreds of thousands of horsemen" on the go, how did they form the Mongol Empire?

I know the answer to this one! Military genius and technical-level advantages that translated into operational and strategic ones, combined with a highly favorable global political situation! The only campaign the Mongols massed anywhere near a hundred thousand men was, IIRC, the conquest of the Khwarezm empire, before they started calling themselves 'Yuan'. And even during that campaign, not all of the Mongols' troops were amassed in the same area, and they all didn't participate in the same engagement.

Not only China(Song) deploy over 500,000 troops, but Islam could also deploy hundreds of thousands of cavalry.

Ladies and gentlemen, here we have an irrelevant comparison. Look at it carefully, that you might not make one again. The Sung were around a thousand years after the time period we're talking about. (So were the Mongols, FWIW. )

Of course, the Huns did overrun Europe with 50,000 horse archers+ Germanic infantry.

Actually, the number of horse-archers is significantly lower than that by all modern estimates. We're talking 50,000 total at the Catalaunian Fields. And the Huns provided infantry as well as cavalry, while the 'Germans' had cavalry contingents.

The whole point is that Germanic infantry were pretty ill-equipped and not up to the standard, especially compared with Roman army at their height.

Which is not true at all. Read Peter Heather, he's put that myth to rest rather conclusively.

I'm not a descendant of these Germans. Go ask your ancestors how they did. History is history.

Ah, the plot thickens!

Low endurance? check(little cavalry, mostly infantry. Barely advanced past borderlands.)

Barely advanced past borderlands eh? What do you call the Vandali? Or the journey of the Visigothi? Movements of large numbers of people over distances in excess of a thousand, two thousand miles?

Composite bow more effective than the crossbow???? What are you smoking my friend, do you have any idea what's the rate of fire on these things.

Rate of fire isn't the only relevant factor. Look at range, too, and penetration power.

Really, they didn't use them as defensive barriers. THATS WHY THEY BUILT 50 FORTS ON EACH RIVER. BRILLIANT.

I'd like to comment here that use of a cordon defense does not prove that it is the correct idea, or that it was a particularly useful thing to do. Read Luttwak's description of Roman Imperial grand strategy for more on this issue.

By the way, the battle of Changping proves my point. If each kingdom out of seven in China could field a standing army of over 100,000 men each, I'm pretty sure an Empire with THREE times the population could field 300,000 troops in one battle... and a little fact that not half the Han population were slaves...

Actually, no. My objection to armies of such size is one of logistics, which has absolutely nothing to do with demographics. You simply can't keep that many dudes in the same place without exhausting your resources, and an engagement involving all of them at the same time would require a long and drawn out procedure of getting them out of their cantonments, which by necessity would be spread apart over a very large area, during which time one side or the other, if they have any sort of intelligence at all, has already launched an attack on the enemy forces which are marshaling against them, to gain the advantages of time and surprise, and to disorganize the enemy. Which in turn kind of means that not everybody is fighting at the same time...

What I'm doing right now is drawing from stuff that happened around the same time. For instance, I happen to have a rather intimate understanding of the campaigns of Eumenes and Antigonos against each other in Iran. Prior to the engagement of Gabiene, Eumenes had with him between 30,000 and 40,000 men, including some 6,000 cavalry and over a hundred elephants, and was resident in the rich territory around Gabai, which is asserted to have been rather good for fodder. During the course of several weeks, the Gabiene district was nearly totally emptied of supplies by Eumenes' forces, which were, as Diodoros notes, spread widely apart (a point driven home by the difficulty Eumenes had in combining his forces when Antigonos made his surprise march across the adjacent desert and sought battle).

Now, a direct comparison is obviously invalid. Eumenes had far fewer men than the Chinese or the Xiongnu are attested to have amassed, but partially made up for that with the elephant contingent under Eudamos. Gabiene, as one of the agriculturally richest regions of Iran in those days - the desirability is stressed by Diodoros, who also notes that Mesopotamia is comparatively bereft of supply - is at the very least equivalent to land in the territories contested between the Xiongnu and the Chinese, and I daresay perhaps more productive. Now, since a very rich territory was unable to support a dispersed, smaller force for a period of several weeks, I strongly object to the assertion that 'hundreds of thousands' of men were able to remain fed, watered, and otherwise supplied in closer quarters in China.

3. "Germans have excellent cavalry"- Excellence indeed my friend. Try keeping 200,000 horses alive in forest sometime.

I don't see how numbers and quality have a direct correlation. I also disagree that 'Germans', as you put it, lived solely in forests.

4. "Rivers are terrible defensive barriers"- Right. That's why every empire relies on them for defence at one point, and all campaigns stop when they reach them.

Please, read von Clausewitz. If you survive, it will be elucidating. In short: since defense of a river is inherently a cordon defense, which prevents maximum concentration, and since initiative in crossing lies with the attacker, it is not the crossing of a river that tends to be the most difficult for an attacking force, but rather transport of supplies across said river when the crossing has been completed and the army is on the other side. Take, for instance, the example of

5. "Torsion crossbows"- OH MAN, this one got me . You guys aren't too great at history, but you sure are good at oxymorons!

Repeating something over and over again with no regard to an argument against it doesn't make it true.

I have on my desk right now a child's toy, a little crossbow that shoots soft-headed projectiles, with which my young brother once played, which operates via the use of a crank to reload. That, unless I'm mistaken - and I very well might be, for I have scant knowledge of engineering and am not clear on the difference between torsion and tension - a torsion crossbow. It works just fine. Please explain to me why a Roman couldn't have used a larger version with an arrowhead on the end, and why you claim that the historiographically evaluated texts that attest torsion crossbows' use in the classical Mediterranean, backed up by archaeological finds are apparently incorrect.

Jesus isn't gonna to save you, and he sure didn't save the christians after the Germans overran the Roman Empire.

Yeah, those Arian Christians sure did a number on those Chalcedonians. There aren't any left alive today!

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_and_Han_Empires Which I wrote, by the way) and look at the ballista please. DO YOU THINK THAT THING IS PORTABLE AND YOU CAN SWING IT AROUND. THE ANSWER IS NO.

I would tend to argue that Wikipedia is not a viable source.

Anyway, I think we're getting off topic here. The whole point of this thread was to see the above article anyways. What do you guys think?

I think that such an article is inherently unencyclopedic in nature. I think that stuff like this is why I stopped making articles for Wikipedia.

Let me see... a history from a well-known publisher, 8 books published by academics, a comprehensive history, high-level academic essays, two encyclopedias. Very ill-sourced am I.

You cited those in the Wikipedia article you created, but I don't think you cited them all here.

 

[LightFang]

Dachs, I don't think the poor kid knows what a historiography is!

 

[BananaLee]

Just to let you guys into some background knowledge of Chinese economy in the Ming and Qing dynasties, I have an essay here.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=310279

And you guys bandying about terms like nation and Industrial Revolution should look into the definitions and significance of such terms before throwing them about.
Also, Wikipedia is a useless source for any academic argument.

 

[Teeninvestor]

WOW! the bandwaggoning is amazing.

You guys still haven't addressed my point though:

119 BC both Huo and Wei, each leading 50,000 cavalrymen and 100,000 footsoldiers

.

That's 300,000, if I recall, which proves my point quite conclusively.

2. A crossbow, by definition, is a TENSION weapon. Not a TORSION weapon. That's like saying assault rifles and grenade launchers work on the same principle. READ the DEFINITION. Also, the whole point of the crossbow is the RATE OF FIRE which far exceeds the ballista. RATE OF FIRE. As in 10,000 crossbowmen at 1 bolt a second, 600,000 bolts a minute. Ballista anyone? Also I doubted Romans deployed ballistas to anywhere near the amount crossbows were deployed by Chinese.

3. Han Empire had built up a huge granary system. Go to "Comparison between Roman and Han Empires" and there is an account of their huge granary system. They stored up a LOT of food, k. Also, 500k porters aren't idling. The point is the war also consumed all their food...

 

[Yui108]

source for the 300,000?

 

[Masada]

WOW! the bandwaggoning is amazing.

Your inability to reply to legitimate arguments is the amazing bit. Dachs, Yui and myself have posted legitimate questions and response for which you have not bothered to reply. We had the graciousness to respond to your points and you should have the same regard for ours.

You guys still haven't addressed my point though:

119 BC both Huo and Wei, each leading 50,000 cavalrymen and 100,000 footsoldiers

That's 300,000, if I recall, which proves my point quite conclusively.

I missed one! Oh golly gosh. What point was that I missed it in the face of your misrepresentations and general ignorance of the aforementioned and answered questions.

2. A crossbow, by definition, is a TENSION weapon. Not a TORSION weapon. That's like saying assault rifles and grenade launchers work on the same principle. READ the DEFINITION.

A simple system of gears can make a crossbow into a torsion crossbow... its not hard. Dachs has provided an example with a nifty picture to prove it. Nevertheless with a one minute Wikipedia search I came up with the following:

The ballista has torsion springs replacing the elastic prod of the oxybeles, but later also developed into smaller versions.

With a reference to this: Connell, Robert L. (1989). Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-1950-5359-1, p. 65. It's an Oxford book, it must be better than Cambridge :rollseyes:

The earliest date for the crossbow in the European world is from the 5th century BC,[12] from the Greek world. The historian Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC), described the invention of a mechanical arrow firing catapult (katapeltikon) by a Greek task force in 399 BC.[13][14] The weapon was soon after employed against Motya (397 BC), a key Carthaginian stronghold in Sicily.[15][16] Diodorus is assumed to have drawn his description from the highly rated[17] history of Philistus, a contemporary of the events then. The date of the introduction of crossbows, however, can be dated further back: According to the inventor Hero of Alexandria (fl. 1st c. AD), who referred to the now lost works of the 3rd century BC engineer Ctesibius, this weapon was inspired by an earlier hand-held crossbow, called the gastraphetes (belly shooter), which could store more energy than the Greek bows. A detailed description of the gastraphetes, along with a drawing, is found in Heron's technical treatise Belopoeica.[18][19] A third Greek author, Biton (fl. 2nd c. BC), whose reliability has been positively reevaluated by recent scholarship,[14][20] described two advanced forms of the gastraphetes, which he credits to Zopyros, an engineer from southern Italy. Zopyrus has been plausibly equated with a Pythagorean of that name who seems to have flourished in the late 5th century BC.[21][22] He probably designed his bow-machines on the occasion of the sieges of Cumae and Milet between 421 BC and 401 BC.[23][24] The bows of these machines already featured a winched pull back system and could apparently throw two missile at once.[16]

All obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossbow

Please provide an academic definition of a crossbow, and I'm sure I can find one to the contrary. Academic terminology in non-sciences is seldom specific or uniform.

Also, the whole point of the crossbow is the RATE OF FIRE which far exceeds the ballista. RATE OF FIRE. As in 10,000 crossbowmen at 1 bolt a second, 600,000 bolts a minute. Ballista anyone? Also I doubted Romans deployed ballistas to anywhere near the amount crossbows were deployed by Chinese.

Who cares about the rate of fire, its just one aspect of a weapons killing power. You also overstate the rate of fire, given that there is no way you could hold 60 bolts in a crossbow and not have to reload, not to mention I severely doubt you would under any circumstances fire 1 round a second, simply for efficacy of ammunition and the decline in accuracy.

In addition Dachs has at not time denied that China deployed more crossbows... he's certainly questioned the effectiveness of them [if they were indeed like machine guns why didn't the Han overrun Oikoumene?]. But you haven't seemed to quite get that fact...

 

[Sharwood]

You should really ask Dachs and Sharwood what their level of educational attainment is...

I was the dux (valedictorian) of both my primary and high schools. And I dropped out of high school, yet still made dux. I came in the top 1% of students in the state at TAFE when I did the TPC (Tertiary Preparation Certificate) there, scoring a perfect 100% in History. I currently maintain a 7.0 grade point average at university. The maximum is 8.0, and one needs 4.0 to pass.

In other words, I'm much, much smarter and more educated than the OP of this thread. And I'm not even the brightest historian in it: Dachs is.

I'd continue to argue points in this thread, but frankly I can't think of anything that hasn't already been said several times.

I hereby declare this thread the second best I've ever seen. It is superior to the "Why did the US really invade Iraq" thread, which posited some sort of Iranian secret alliance with the US, and the "Moon Landing Hoax" thread, which is my personal favourite. It does not however reach the awesomeness of "Race Traitor."

I also put forth the motion that this thread be moved from History to where it truly belongs: Humour and Jokes.

 

[flyingchicken]

I was the dux (valedictorian) of both my primary and high schools. And I dropped out of high school, yet still made dux. I came in the top 1% of students in the state at TAFE when I did the TPC (Tertiary Preparation Certificate) there, scoring a perfect 100% in History. I currently maintain a 7.0 grade point average at university. The maximum is 8.0, and one needs 4.0 to pass.

"Do you think I'm stupid? You have no proof and can't provide any. No, you're just some arrogant tweenager with a thesaurus behind that monitor who can't accept the fact that I'm right and you're wrong; you're obviously lying because you don't know anything about history! "

 

[Yeekim]

I feel compelled to point out that the gist of this argument appears to be totally lost in the middle of flaming and hair-splitting. What the hell is the principal question you folks are arguing about?

 

[Teeninvestor]

Ya, this conversation was quite civil at first until the flamers arrived.


"Your inability to reply to legitimate arguments"
I"ve been replying for three PAGES now, eh. Look whose side is the one flaming and saying virtually nothing worthful except "ottoman empire did not exist while Moguls did" and other memorable things.

MY inability to respond?

I've pointed out at least 8-10 times that the Han army was able to deploy large numbers of men into battle because of better agricultural methods, more horses, and the like. I also pointed out the reasons why ballista is not a crossbow.

Meanwhile, you guys responded with meaningful arguments such as:

Dachs, I don't think the poor kid knows what a historiography is!

I was the dux (valedictorian) of both my primary and high schools. And I dropped out of high school, yet still made dux.

Do you think I'm stupid? You have no proof and can't provide any. No, you're just some arrogant tweenager with a thesaurus behind that monitor who can't accept the fact that I'm right and you're wrong; you're obviously lying because you don't know anything about history

.

I doubt a "Dux" who scored "100%" in history does not know the fact the Mongols did attack the Ottomans and capture Bayuzid I, a sultan. Oh ya, and he also knows that the "rate of fire" of a weapon is not important.

The point of the argument was:

1. Could Han deploy 300,000 troops, rather routinely? Well, its been proven at several battles(Mayi, Mobei, and others) the army deployed is rather near that size. At chibi, the same(even after the devastation of the wars that followed the collapse of Han).

Also pointed out that before the Han, when China's population was smaller, armies of around 50,000- 100,000 could routinely be deployed the kingdoms who only had a fraction of the population.

Also, Han advances in agriculture, such as iron tools, wheelbarrows and a granary system, allowed food storage on a massive scale. They stored LOTS of food. as in LOTS.

Last but not least, Han army deployed cavalry on a large scale. Helps mobility.


2. Was the ballista a crossbow? SO FAR NONE OF YOU HAVE RESPONDED EXCEPT FLAMING. I seriously wonder at your "duxes" and "valendictorians". You DONT EVEN KNOW how to answer a freckin question. Ballista is not a crossbow- 3 reasons.

a) crossbow is a tension weapon. By definition ballista is not a crossbow.

b) ballista's rate of fire came nowhere close to that of a crossbow.

c) Ballista's weapons were semi-THROWN, as in an upward trajectory and then landing. Crossbow's trajectory was flat.

Just to tell the flamers, insulting the OP of this thread and claiming your non-existent "intelligence" shows the opposite; an empty head, and a motor mouth.

Also, I'm updating my stupidity list:
1. "Mongols didn't devastate the Ottoman Empire"- What is TIMUR then, my friend.

2. "Crossbow & catapault work on same principles" Please check your history, as well as your physics.

3. "Germans have excellent cavalry"- Excellence indeed my friend. Try keeping 200,000 horses alive in forest sometime.

4. "Rivers are terrible defensive barriers"- Right. That's why every empire relies on them for defence at one point, and all campaigns stop when they reach them.

5. "Torsion crossbows"- OH MAN, this one got me . You guys aren't too great at history, but you sure are good at oxymorons!

6. "Jesus, you're just making yourself look stupider and stupider." Man, the ad hominem piles on and on. Jesus isn't gonna to save you, and he sure didn't save the christians after the Germans overran the Roman Empire.

7. "What did the Romans do, build them on the spot and leave them when they were done? I might be willing to accept that Han crossbows had greater range, but that hardly means the Romans didn't have them. The Greeks had for Christ's sake, they pre-date Rome."

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_and_Han_Empires Which I wrote, by the way) and look at the ballista please. DO YOU THINK THAT THING IS PORTABLE AND YOU CAN SWING IT AROUND. THE ANSWER IS NO.

Then check the Han crossbow. You'll see what I'm talking about.

8. "Who cares about the rate of fire!" You would have made an excellent soldier in WWI.

Anyways, instead of flaming, here is my suggestion. Cite ANYTHING you guys have come up with and put the points and actually ANSWER my question, as in tell me a) What evidence do you have that the Han army could NOT put 100,000-300,000 troops into a battle(like Mobei, Battle took place in outer mongolia, Mobei meaning "North of Desert".) and b) How is the ballista a crossbow despite its upwards trajectory, low rate of fire, and torsion.

I also have another suggestion. Those who flame should leave, they don't contribute anything to the thread. I welcome a good debate with Dachs, Yui108, and some other contributors, but comments like the above I mentioned are just silly.

 

[Dachs]

That's 300,000, if I recall, which proves my point quite conclusively.

Not by one side. I still have a bit of difficulty believing that that 150,000 men could be amassed by any one side, but it's a great deal more reasonable than 300,000, and only slightly larger than some major Roman expeditionary forces. It's probably inflated, but not all that much.

3. Han Empire had built up a huge granary system. Go to "Comparison between Roman and Han Empires" and there is an account of their huge granary system. They stored up a LOT of food, k. Also, 500k porters aren't idling. The point is the war also consumed all their food...

That's a good point. And granaries certainly do help. But there are limitations. Are the sources for the campaigns you refer to specific enough to discuss the locations of these engagements, time spent in region, location of the nearest granaries, and so forth? The granaries may have implications for demographic statistics on a macro scale, but they might have as much relevance to the actual military campaigns as, say, me mentioning the amazing agricultural production of Egypt and North Africa and the mechanisms for storing that produce.

I feel compelled to point out that the gist of this argument appears to be totally lost in the middle of flaming and hair-splitting. What the hell is the principal question you folks are arguing about?

I honestly don't know. My few comments on the actual article seem to have been largely ignored. I think we're finally starting to talk about the point I've tried to raise, namely that I've always rather met the stated sizes of Chinese armies with some disbelief. The rest of it is mostly smoke and mirrors, rather useless argumentation on relatively minor points, in the course of which I'm mostly just attempting to point out the utterly wrong stuff.

 

[Teeninvestor]

not 300,000. But I think Chinese armies regularly fielded 100,000-250,000 troops in one battle. Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao deployed 220,000 men.

My whole point was that Chinese FIELD armies were usually much larger than Romans. Usually Roman armies at even major battles fail to exceed 50,000 men.

Also, the ballista's rate of fire is nowhere close to the crossbow. That was the whole point of the crossbow anyways, to provide a massive range of fire.

 

[Mirc]

This should be renamed "Dachs' history PWNAGE thread".

It's lovely how the most important argument of the OP is "it must be better because I say that they were more!!! More means better!"

Love this thread.

 

[Dachs]

1. Could Han deploy 300,000 troops, rather routinely? Well, its been proven at several battles(Mayi, Mobei, and others) the army deployed is rather near that size. At chibi, the same(even after the devastation of the wars that followed the collapse of Han).

It hasn't been proven. You've repeatedly claimed these numbers without backing them up or providing an evaluation. I would think that just because something is on Wikipedia doesn't mean it's true.

Also, Han advances in agriculture, such as iron tools, wheelbarrows and a granary system, allowed food storage on a massive scale. They stored LOTS of food. as in LOTS.

Demographics and logistics ain't the same thing, dude. Rome had a big population, too, and generally had a very large total army size. But they couldn't put it all in the same place.

Last but not least, Han army deployed cavalry on a large scale. Helps mobility.

And eats up supplies like a vacuum, making it even less likely that such forces were actually amassed.

2. Was the ballista a crossbow? SO FAR NONE OF YOU HAVE RESPONDED EXCEPT FLAMING.

Actually, I have. You haven't bothered to respond to what I've posted.

a) crossbow is a tension weapon. By definition ballista is not a crossbow.

Repeating it over and over again contrary to, you know, evidence doesn't make it true.

Just to tell the flamers, insulting the OP of this thread and claiming your non-existent "intelligence" shows the opposite; an empty head, and a motor mouth.

That in itself is a flame. I have not violated rules yet in this disaster of a thread (for whatever reason it became a disaster), but frankly I'm tired of everybody else doing it, so I'm going to start reporting people.

1. "Mongols didn't devastate the Ottoman Empire"- What is TIMUR then, my friend.

Not a Mongol. The Mongols subjugated the Seljuq Sultanate and made it their tributary, and in so doing weakened it sufficiently for it to fragment, out of which rose the Ottomans. Timur's ephemeral construct was more Turkic than Mongol, anyway. Are you going to claim that Bahadur Shah Zafar was a Mongol, too?

2. "Crossbow & catapault work on same principles" Please check your history, as well as your physics.

Back it up.

3. "Germans have excellent cavalry"- Excellence indeed my friend. Try keeping 200,000 horses alive in forest sometime.

Quantity does not imply quality. Try again.

4. "Rivers are terrible defensive barriers"- Right. That's why every empire relies on them for defence at one point, and all campaigns stop when they reach them.

Except they don't. Rivers are also highways. Did the Rhine stop Napoleon? Was the Po enough to shield the Exarchate of Ravenna, or Odoacer? Did the Indus protect the Sunga kingdom from Demetrios? Did the Danube stop the Russians in 1877? Totally contrary to a cited expert on the subject (the aforementioned Luttwak) and the preeminent Western military theorist ever (the aforementioned von Clausewitz), you're claiming that the Romans ought to have been able to resist the barbarians better because they had the Rhine and the Danube to hide behind. It has been rather convincingly argued that the rivers did not particularly help all that much, and that what killed invading barbarians was the comitatenses, not the poor limitanei sitting out on the river in their outposts.

Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_Roman_and_Han_Empires Which I wrote, by the way) and look at the ballista please. DO YOU THINK THAT THING IS PORTABLE AND YOU CAN SWING IT AROUND. THE ANSWER IS NO.

Then check the Han crossbow. You'll see what I'm talking about.

Let me make a comparison. This is akin to saying that the modern Chinese military does not have any small arms. No assault rifles, no pistols, no sniper rifles...and then, pointing to an artillery tube, claim that because that existed, which operates on totally dissimilar principles from small arms by the way, the PLA has no firearms.

But the Russians have small arms! Just look at those Kalashnikovs!

8. "Who cares about the rate of fire!" You would have made an excellent soldier in WWI.

I didn't say "who cares about the rate of fire"; that's called a strawman argument, and I've already advised you not to try to make use of them. I said that the rate of fire isn't the only relevant factor. Nowhere have I claimed that crossbows aren't useful, nor have I attempted to say that the Han army wasn't pretty good. I, however, object to claiming that because the Han had crossbows and the Romans didn't - which is wrong - the Han army was superior to the Roman - which is a crappy ground for claiming such anyway, because technical level advantages almost never translate into strategic superiority and war winnability. (See Luttwak, Strategy, revised edition, for an illuminating illustration on why that is.)

a) What evidence do you have that the Han army could NOT put 100,000-300,000 troops into a battle(like Mobei, Battle took place in outer mongolia, Mobei meaning "North of Desert".)

I have already provided my grounds for an argument against the massing of multiple hundreds of thousands of men into a tactical engagement. I have stated that I find this to be unlikely based on my knowledge of campaigns elsewhere. I believe the burden of proof is on you, no?

not 300,000. But I think Chinese armies regularly fielded 100,000-250,000 troops in one battle. Battle of Chibi, Cao Cao deployed 220,000 men.

Is that the number from the Romance or one of the other ancillary texts about the engagement?

My whole point was that Chinese FIELD armies were usually much larger than Romans. Usually Roman armies at even major battles fail to exceed 50,000 men.

Which is one of the reasons I have some trouble believing the whole thing. IIRC, the Roman and Han empires were of roughly equivalent population, no? (That's what Taagepera said anyway, and AFAIK most estimates have them about the same.)