Alexander VS Qin dynasty

Infra_Man99 said:

Under Batu Khan and Subotei using pretty much the same soldiers in Europe:

(1) Mongol Invasion of Rus: 20,000 Mongos vs 80,000 Russians

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since you like wiki and I doubt you have a copy of the devils horsemen.

1226- 35,000 Mongols and 40,000 turks vs unknown Russians who numbered 80,000 in 1223 but suffered huge losses.

(2) Mongol Invasion of Poland: 10K vs 10K to 30K

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The mongol records say 2 tumen that is 20,000 men

(3) Mongol Invasion of Hungary: 70K vs 80K (Mongols lost 1,000 men and the Europeans lost 40,000 men)

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I didn't think that was ever in debate excpet by you who claimed the Mongols were always vastly outnumbered.

Notice how the same group of Mongol soldiers fighting on distant lands easily defeated many, different European soldiers on European turf. The Mongols broke apart and coalesced as necessary to defeat various, different European armies, but they belonged to same group under Batu and Subotei. The Mongols had minimal casualties while the Europeans suffered devastating losses. The East Europeans won a few small battles, but not enough to stop the Mongol onslaught. The Mongols preferred to and mostly fought from a range. All from wikipedia, which is sourced to books.

The Mongols used bow and crossbow technology similar to that found in the Qin and Han Dynasty.

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You really need to look past the bows. If you want to know the secret to Mongol success it was command and control along with a huge herd of remounts. This let the Mongols dictate the terms of the fight in most cases. The Europeans suffered the same fate as the Chinese

From wikipedia to history books, ancient Romans were NOT known for using their mobile ranged weapons (i.e., bows, crossbows, and mobile artillery) as an effective or primary weapon when battling against Parthia. Parthia was known for their ranged weapons, which historian descriptions indicated the Parthian bow probably had inferior draw weights to Qin and Han dynasties' ranged weapons (70 lb vs at least 90 lb).

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The parthian bows decend from the same technology as all recurves and Turkish examples have an average draw weight of 111lbs.

Wikipedia continues to claim that good iron weapons eventually replaced good bronze weapons by civilizations throughout Europe to the Middle East to Asia. Cherry pick your excuses, but this happened.

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You continue to ignore the why.

Cherry pick all you want, but historical reality is against you. The Qin and Han Dynasties had the best bows, crossbows, and mobile artillery of their time, and were capable of effectively penetrating European armor.

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Logical fallacy, as already demonstrated- during the mongol period the big killer was not the bow, but the inability to fight at the Mongols pace. The knights in chain mail had to be run to exhaustion and then finished off.

Well of course, the armor is better than nothing, but it's not weight efficient against missiles. If you are specifically fighting missile armed opponents you are better off wearing cloth to gain more mobility.

zraver said:

And I will re-point out that the garrison that was overwhelmed might or might not have been Roman, might or might not have been legionnaires or mkght have been auxilla, might or might not have kept their defensive equipment (any artifacts recovered), might or might not have had their own officers, might or might not have been grossly outnumbered, and might or might not have felt like fighting for Persians who enslaved them.

We do know the Persians did not make pilums, scutums, or gladius swords. Any equipment not recovered from the battlefield would have to be repalced with local equipment.

1. show me the artifacts that prove it was a Roman legion, fighting in the Roman manner, with Roman equipment at fair odds. Anything else is speculation.

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Now you are just resorting to claiming any evidence against you isn't convincing enough for you, well two can play at that game.

zraver said:

Within 60 years of the Mongols unifying- China fell. China proved it could deal with the isolated tribe by force and by playing one tribe against the other. However once those tribes united- force failed.

The war in China was interrupted by the Khwarazim Empire's gross greed and stupidity.

1206- The tribes are unfied
1209 Western Xia acknowledge Mongol over lordship= 1 Chinese empire down in 3 years.

1211-13 First part of the war v the Jin. Mongols seize everything north/West of the Great Wall.
1213-15 Took Northern China and captured the Jin capitol of Yanjing (Bejing).

1218- Secodn war v the Xia- Xia sue for peace

1225- Ghengis Khan's last campign- Xia overrun.

1234- Jin finally extinquished

1253-56 Yunnan overrun

1235-70 Conquest of the Song.

You'll notice it was not one continual war, with periods of peace and other periods where the Mongols were fighting multiple wars.

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What you fail to realize is that the longer time span and intermittent periods of peace is actually advantageous for the Mongols.

Mongols are a normadic people, they have next to none stationary assets, Song was the complete opposite. Mongols went over the border killing and looting, they devastate the lands and the people, which takes a long time to heal. The task of rebuilding, recultivating, and repopulating areas takes a tremendous amount of effort, the resource and people were slowly exhausted all through that period.

The end result is that there was no way for Song to take the offensive to the Mongols, so Song could never win, they will lose their assets slowly but surely.

LostWraith said:

Well of course, the armor is better than nothing, but it's not weight efficient against missiles. If you are specifically fighting missile armed opponents you are better off wearing cloth to gain more mobility.

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Again that depends, if your tactics depend on delivering a short thrust into the enemies guts then you can move much faster than a double time anyway and the armor won't slow you down then. Plus its protection from plunging fire.

if your infantry is not as valuable ie conscripts and levy's whose only job is to get close and push/stab with spears and real organized maneuver is less important ten your point makes perfect sense.

zraver said:

Again that depends, if your tactics depend on delivering a short thrust into the enemies guts then you can move much faster than a double time anyway and the armor won't slow you down then. Plus its protection from plunging fire.

if your infantry is not as valuable ie conscripts and levy's whose only job is to get close and push/stab with spears and real organized maneuver is less important ten your point makes perfect sense.

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That is not all what I was trying to say. Mobility isn't just the ability to thrust a sword or to lift a shield. I'm talking about force marching and prolonged running during a battle, which is not possible with heavy armor. Lorica Segmenta isn't heavy armor considering that it's not particularly heavy, and Roman armor can't stop direct hits from most missile weapons, period. That wasn't a major issue for them, because most of their enemies didn't care to use missile weapons extensively. This is how their fighting culture developed. China's fighting culture revolves around ranged weapons and maneuver warfare, and heavy armor just doesn't make sense.

Cavalry is a different story. Horses provide the ability to carry the armor, so heavy cavalry existed in Mongolia and China for as long as they could get strong horses to run in them.

LostWraith said:

That is not all what I was trying to say. Mobility isn't just the ability to thrust a sword or to lift a shield. I'm talking about force marching and prolonged running during a battle, which is not possible with heavy armor. Lorica Segmenta isn't heavy armor considering that it's not particularly heavy, and Roman armor can't stop direct hits from most missile weapons, period. That wasn't a major issue for them, because most of their enemies didn't care to use missile weapons extensively. This is how their fighting culture developed. China's fighting culture revolves around ranged weapons and maneuver warfare, and heavy armor just doesn't make sense.

Cavalry is a different story. Horses provide the ability to carry the armor, so heavy cavalry existed in Mongolia and China for as long as they could get strong horses to run in them.

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A solider can carry half his weight indefinately and march 20 miles a day doing it so long as he gets the proper sleep, water and calorie intake his body needs. Its been done for thousands of years. Infantry can out march supply wagons so the usual limit for an army on foot is about 12 miles a day unless they want to leave the oxen and wagons behind. Infantry can do short forced marches of up to 100 miles in 3 days, but will suffer exhaustion losses along the way and be very much less than their peak in combat.

Long term, infantry can out march horses in civilized lands. Horses are fragile creatures and need a lot more rest than a man. I side of settled and the size of the remount herds was never large enough to allow civilized cavalry to match the barbarians who would ride a different horse each day of the week.
Grain can compensate for this somewhat, but history shows that the bigger the remount herd- the faster and longer a horse army can travel.

Note- besides his gear each Roman legionnaire had to carry a stake or caltrops for the nightly encampment, a spade or pick, 3 days rations, waterskin, bedroll, shelter/ground cover, cooking pot, eating utensils and his pack ( sarcina). His gear consisted of his armor, his helm, his cloak, his scutum, 2-3 pila, his kilt and belt, a puoch and probably a knife. Going over imperial roads they could and did routinely do 25 miles a day since they did not have to move at the pace of the baggage train. All told the gear was in excess of 80 pounds. 25 miles a day was in fact the expected requirement for the legions.

This has remained a constant through time. Ask any vet about pull pack road marches- I am sure its the same in any professional army. 20 miles a day with full kit with remarkably low attrition. The male human form in good athletic shape is remarkably durable and nearly immune to the rigors of the road so long as the three biggies are met- sleep, water and food. A solider in combat or on the march needs about 5000 calories a day or about 2 and half pounds of high density food for a rough rule of thumb.

Even earlier than the Romans, Greek units like the mercs who became immortalized by Xenophon did similar feats. Xenophon moved his command across the desert and then over mountains in full kit plus water ever could be carried once the baggage was abandoned. In the case of the Greeks this would be over 100 pounds and probably wrecked most of the men by the end as is recorded by Xenophon. But the march itself was hundreds of miles though forbidding terrain- yet they did it.

Back to Rome, over imperial roads where supply was not an issue the legions could walk-jog-walk and if absolutely needed do 50 miles a day according to Julius Caesar during the Guallish rebellion. Claudius Nero did 45 miles v Hasdrubal. Oh and a final note, an Athenian hoplite ran 26 miles in full kit to report on the victory at Marathon. It killed him (probably from dehydration) but he did it.

zraver said:

It is generally thicker, at leas tin European models.



Very true, but reports about it as well as images clearly state and show a laminated cloth/fiber based armor stiff enough to do duty in the spear pushing contests of the Greeks. We know for example that Alexander wore it at least part of the time and that it saved his life from both spear and arrow.

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Definitely didn't save him in India.

The bows are not pure bamboo, its the combination of the materials and the skill of the bowyer. Turkish bows made from roughly the same materials the Greeks and Romand had a thousand years earlier than the Turkish ones from the 1400's could exceed 400 yards.

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Asian bows use a bamboo core, which is an excellent, if unsurpassed material for its constant tension and strength, the basis of all bows from Mongol to Japan.

The earliest Chinese corssbow type weapons started as artillery as well.

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Totally incorrect. This statement is against historical data. The crossbow started as a hunting weapon among southern tribes in China, particularly at Yunnan, close enough to the Qin and middle Chinese kingdoms for the knowledge to be transmitted, then perfected using carefully crafted bronze triggers.

Mass production of the hand held crossbow only became possible when a state attains a semi-industrialized state, a military-industrial complex if you will, that has blast furnaces to manufacture the trigger mechanisms, along with the metal bolts.

I was well aware- just stating the concept was reach at two different ends of the earth at roughly the same time.

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Concept between the crossbow in Asia and in Mediterranean started quite differently, one as a hand held hunting weapon, the other as artillery.

Lots of things are documented by lots of ancient peoples- lets stick with whats known via evidence. What they are describing and what your reading might have two totally different meanings given the gulf of 2000+ years. Do any period images exist like for example images of the Linothorax?

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Please address the question directly.

Do you have any physical evidence of the composition and construction of the Linothorax?

precock it and you ruin the weapon. You can't keep constant drawn tension on a bow.

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It does not change the fact that it can be precocked before a battle.

Take your pick, the best evidence is the shield. From the time of Rome until the early crusades the most common sheild was a large and tall device. These kite shields descended from the scutum would cover a man from nose to knee. However as the mounted knight gained prominance in the European Armies the shield began a steady shrinking in size to the small much more compact heater type.

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Partly has to do with the decreased importance of the shield, which is difficult against a mounted rider and the larger, heavier two handed swords that became increasingly favored. Plywood shields can be hacked to pieces against battle axes and two handed swords.

1- I know what it means and its not linen in the chest in linen chest lino-thorax ie a breastplate of linen.

There are a number of efforts on going to recreate it from ancient listings from amateur to academic and the ancient references have given them enough to work with that serviceable linothorax armor has been created.

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Nonetheless it is a speculated recreation.

There are also recreations of the Han crossbow as well. In a History Channel episode, they demonstrated it having the projectile fly through a speed trap faster than the arrow of a bow, and showed it penetrating a board better than the arrow.

Take your pick what you want to believe.

The parthian bows decend from the same technology as all recurves and Turkish examples have an average draw weight of 111lbs.

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Mounted or stand up. The draw strength of a foot archer and a mounted archer is not the same. The bow of a mounted archer cannot be past a certain length before it interferes with the way he rides, whereas a foot archer can have a longer, and therefore stronger bow. Armies for the Qin for example has both mounted and foot archers and so should other sedentary armies.

If you would actually research the issue you will see that the use of Iron is nearly as old as bronze, but that the use of Iron did not gain widespread use until easily exploited tin and copper deposits were for the most part used up. Like most technology the biggest determinate is cost. Bronze is expensive, when and only when the price went up high enough did ancient cultures look for a replacement.

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Where did you get this? Steel was discovered nearly as soon as iron was. Simply the exposure of iron to carbon helped brought about steel, and with it, a superior material over bronze.

The ancient Chinese valued the production of steel, and developed a blast furnace industry for it. But their use of it was not at war but on farm implements, which allowed them to dig canals and plow the fields far more efficiently than any other ancient people. And the inevitable result was a population explosion that put China ahead in human population that stayed to this very day.

Bronze couldn't be as efficient as steel when used in farming. It also suffers from a corrosion problem that the ancient Chinese handled a solution for it, which then became forgotten and only rediscovered in Germany in 1932. That is, to apply Chromium to the bronze. No one else in the world figured that one out, until bronze weapons in the Terra Cotta army were discovered with trace elements of Chromium.

To gain strength, Chinese sword makers, or more particular somewhere in southern China, someone developed the method of Sanmai, which is to use different alloy compositions of precise chemically controlled amounts of tin, zinc and copper, and form them into different layers with different tensile strengths. The technique is later applied to steel in creating the Dao, which in turn passed on to Korea and Japan to became the basis of construction for Japanese swords.

Ancient peoples used Bronze because the ores were more abundant. But for people where iron ore is more abundant, they shifted to steel, e.g., China, Germanic peoples...

Advances in metallurgy is what drove swords to be longer. There is a direct proportion in sword length to the metallurgy. Why bronze swords, like in China, kept growing longer and longer as time passes, until a point it changed to steel, and from then on, kept growing longer and longer till they reach a zenith around the Ming Dynasty.

zraver, I'm not saying a soldier can't march with full pack and gear and extra logistical equipment. Exactly the point I'm trying to make is that equipping each soldier with 40-80 extra lbs of heavy metal armor isn't gonna help. They've already got enough on their hands that if a Roman legion had to walk long distances with all those things you describe AND a 100 lb medieval plate mail set then they might as well lie down and die when they get to the battle.

Would you think Asian armies didn't march around with extra gear? Certainly ancient Chinese or Mongolian soldiers would be responsible to carry whatever equipment the army needed. Just think of all the arrows that a Chinese army has to lug around all the time. That alone would be an enormous burden on every man.