Alexander VS Qin dynasty

zraver said:

Alexander's Phalanx relied on shoving men with long pikes into the bodies of other men. Getting close is what he did. While not a mad dash human wave like a barbarian rush, the advanc eof the Phalanx is like the tide coming in.

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Yes... Alexander got his phalanx close by sending in his skirmishers to die first.

The Lobsterbacks fixed bayonets turning their muskets into spears, and the muskets fired by the colonist had abut the same RoF as the crossbow.

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I see you just love to twist facts to suit whatever your claim is. Here's what

On June 13, the leaders of the colonial forces besieging Boston learned that the British generals were planning to send troops out from the city to occupy the unoccupied hills surrounding the city. In response to this intelligence, 1,200 colonial troops under the command of William Prescott stealthily occupied Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill, constructed an earthen redoubt on Breed's Hill, and built lightly fortified lines across most of the Charlestown Peninsula.

When the British were alerted to the presence of the new position the next day, they mounted an attack against them. After two assaults on the colonial lines were repulsed with significant British casualties, the British finally captured the positions on the third assault, after the defenders in the redoubt ran out of ammunition. The colonial forces retreated to Cambridge over Bunker Hill, suffering their most significant losses on Bunker Hill.

While the result was a victory for the British, they suffered a large amount of losses: over 800 wounded and 226 killed, including a notably large number of officers. The battle is seen as an example of a Pyrrhic victory, as while their immediate objective (the capture of Bunker Hill) was achieved, the loss of nearly a third of their forces did not significantly alter the state of siege. Meanwhile, colonial forces were able to retreat and regroup in good order having suffered few casualties.

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So in short, 1200 colonial troops caused over 1000 British casualties while suffering few of their own. They only retreated after running out of ammo.

Seems like more of an argument supporting the effectiveness of the Qin crossbows.

Wow, your sticking to that claim....

Assuming you can get off your kick for a minute, a child bow can send an arrow 100m. A war bow can have a draw weight in the hundreds of pounds. That the Persian bows might not have been effective past 100m is a testament to the strength of their armor and shields, not the weakness of the Persian bow which was based on the Scythian models which serve as the core for re curve bows from Italy to China.

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So what? We're not discussing the power of the Chinese bow, we're talking about the power of the Qin crossbow. The persian crossbow only has a killing range of 100m while the Qin crossbow has a killing range of over twice that distance. So your claim that Alexander's archers can shoot Qin crossbowmen from 300 yards is utter bogus, while the Qin can probably start killing Alexander's troops from 200 yards away, or even further if they're lightly armored skirmishers.

Your words, your claim, "On the other hand, history has shown that infantry without enough cavalry support tend to get massacred by powerful ranged troops. (i.e. English vs Scots)

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And how does a bunch of knights stuck in mud getting mowed down by archers invalidate that?

In academia claims require sources that book with claims cite them, that book doesn't thus its fanboi.

I have provided multiple sources through out this thread.

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Yeah, Youtube is such an academic source. This statement is so ridiculous that it only shows how tenuous a position you are in.

vesicles said:

My feeling is that every type of battle formation has its advantages and weaknesses. It's up the commanders of the opposing army to avoid the advantage of his enemy and exploit the weaknesses.

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Very true, but debating the strategic and tactical abilities of Alexander vs Qin generals is going to be an even more nebulous argument.

zraver said:

Also Thermopylae was not a waste, those 300 Spartans bought time for the rest of the allied time to retreat into the Greek interior, war and also allowed the evacuation of Athens to the Island of Salamis. The battle saved the Peloponnesus and thus all of Greece when the allied armies defeated the Persians a year later.

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Now you need to stop getting your information from that stupid movie.
There were at least 300 Spartans, but they had several thousands of other Greek troops who fought and died with them.

The battle saved nothing, Persia never tried to destroy Greece, Ahasuerus merely wanted to rule Greece in name.
In fact, history has it that Ahasuerus destroyed many corrupted rulers, and brought democracy and freedom to many oppressed people.

Well... from reading through the last couple of posts in this thread... I basically find the debate to center on whether Alexandra troops could get close enough to the Qin Army, with their palanx, and gut the Qin Army.

Zaver claimed that the armour, shield and helmet of Alexandra's troop could withstand crossbow bolt to up to a couple of hundreds of yards. And the low rate of the crossbow fire would not be enough for the Qin to do substantial damage to Alexandra's troop before being slaughter. While Solaz said the opposite.

Well... no way for us to know now... and as claimed by many others previously (including myself), it is quite useless to look and imagine what would happen when Qin vs Alexandra... no one would know for sure the outcome until they really fight against each other.

And as I have time and again claimed, Qin do not just have crossbow, they have composite bow too... and seige engines and tight battle formation. And I believe some had even pointed out that they do have palanx too.

But Alexandra's forces also had most of the abovementioned... thus by just looking at the casaulty rate of Alexandra forces against Persian, Indians, and whatever, is not a good indicative of their combat prowess... it might just be showing that the others are weaker than Alexandra's forces.

Plus Alexandra forces are among the first in old world to make use of professional soldiers instead of conscript and so they have the chance to get themselves drilled and trained harder and so could execute more difficult tactics and strategies that other armies couldn't.

That is not the case for Qin... Qin had been fighting a war for 200 years... basically every men in the nation had seen battles, trained and are consider professional soldiers. Plus, the Qin Army didn't fight the Persian, Indians and other nations that Alexandra had fought so there is no indication of how well or how badly Qin would fare.

But Qin fought other Chinese states and even the Xiong Nu... while Alexandra didn't (so no one would also know how well Alexandra would fare against these armies too).

And we can stay here arguing, insulting and whatever with each other till the cows come home, and still wouldn't get a real answer out of it. So my suggestion is... to leave whoever's believes to himself and that is it.

solarz said:

Yes... Alexander got his phalanx close by sending in his skirmishers to die first.

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Look at the losses he suffered....

I see you just love to twist facts to suit whatever your claim is.



So in short, 1200 colonial troops caused over 1000 British casualties while suffering few of their own. They only retreated after running out of ammo.

Seems like more of an argument supporting the effectiveness of the Qin crossbows.

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bad reading comprehension + time compression= bad

You claimed the crossbow would and I quote, " mow them down". That claim is bullshit. Breeds Hills is an almsot text example of the defense having every advantage and the loss rate per advance was less than 1 in 4. 4 or 5 of them merely wounded not dead. This is with completely unarmored troops advancing uphill against slow firing firearms and they didn't get mowed down. If you add body armor, helms and shields that cuts the effective range of the missiles significantly your going to have even fewer losses. Make the terrain somewhat fair so the infantry can advance faster and the loses will also be less.

So what? We're not discussing the power of the Chinese bow, we're talking about the power of the Qin crossbow. The persian crossbow only has a killing range of 100m while the Qin crossbow has a killing range of over twice that distance. So your claim that Alexander's archers can shoot Qin crossbowmen from 300 yards is utter bogus, while the Qin can probably start killing Alexander's troops from 200 yards away, or even further if they're lightly armored skirmishers.

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Your not very good with facts are you?

And how does a bunch of knights stuck in mud getting mowed down by archers invalidate that?

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You made the claim, I refuted it.

Yeah, Youtube is such an academic source. This statement is so ridiculous that it only shows how tenuous a position you are in.

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Ya those guys were tryign to fire as slow as they could..... Those videos show a wide range of period crossbows giving a good physical example of crossbows in general.


xywdx

Now you need to stop getting your information from that stupid movie.
There were at least 300 Spartans, but they had several thousands of other Greek troops who fought and died with them.

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Those other Greeks were sent home. The final stage of the battle had those 300 Spartans plugging the advance of the Persian army.

The battle saved nothing, Persia never tried to destroy Greece, Ahasuerus merely wanted to rule Greece in name.

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Really, then explain why Persia spent the better part of a year 480/79 BC destroying Athens. Destruction backed by archeological evidence and ancient sources.

In fact, history has it that Ahasuerus destroyed many corrupted rulers, and brought democracy and freedom to many oppressed people.

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Sadly that is not the first time I've seen someone claim that an imposed imperial government where high office is almost universally restricted to 1 extended family is freedom and democracy....

solarz said:

Very true, but debating the strategic and tactical abilities of Alexander vs Qin generals is going to be an even more nebulous argument.

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Agreed. That's why I suggested arguing about Alexander vs. Qin is useless. There is an old saying "Guan Gong fighting Qin Qiong", which is usually used to describe an effort to compare two figures that had never faced each other and the comparison is useless. Guan Gong was a general in Han dynasty while Qin Qiong lived in the Tang dynasty. Alexander vs. Qin fits this old saying exactly... They never faced each other and no one and absolutely no one knows what would happen IF they met each other.

As I mentioned in my early post, many times it was only a spurt of moment when some commander comes up with an ingenious strategy that defeated his enemy. No one knows which side would come up with that key strategy. Many times it was coincidence. A good example would be the battle of red cliff. It just so happened that there was southeastern wind for a couple days that allowed the fire attack strategy of Zhou Yu to succeed. The battle took place in the winter when most of time the wind comes from north and northwest. The camp of Wu navy was located in the southeast. So under the normal circumstances, any fire would turn around the burn the Wu navy themselves. So thinking under normal logic, the fire would never work. The southeat wind was pure coincident and accident (Let's not talking Zhuge Liang MAGICALLY begged the southeast wind), which became instrumental to the victory of Wu. How do we NOW know which side (Alexander or Qin) would come up with something like that, which very well could be the key to winning???

So again, it's useless to argue about Alexander vs. Qin...

EVEN if we want to compare, let's also not assume "what would happen IF they had a face-to-face and simply slam into each other?" It seems that most of the posters want to compare each side's strength, assuming a scenario where strength vs. strength. No sane commander would choose to attack his enemy at their strongest. We all know that the key in fighting is to avoid the enemy's strength and attack at its weakness. So instead of comparing Alexander's strength vs. Qin's strength, we should compare their weaknesses and see whose weakness is weaker when faced with his enemy's strength. Let's face it, each side is trying to do this: use our own strength to attack enemy's weakness.

zraver said:

xywdx

Those other Greeks were sent home. The final stage of the battle had those 300 Spartans plugging the advance of the Persian army.

Really, then explain why Persia spent the better part of a year 480/79 BC destroying Athens. Destruction backed by archeological evidence and ancient sources.

Sadly that is not the first time I've seen someone claim that an imposed imperial government where high office is almost universally restricted to 1 extended family is freedom and democracy....

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You are still getting your sources from that stupid movie!
I actually took classical studies, they sent the bigger portion of their troops home but they still had 2000-3000(depending on the sources) men who stayed with them.
You don't honestly believe 300 men held against the army of Persia do you?

Better part of a year destroying a single city?
Do you listen to yourself?
In any case they torched Athens as a punishment for the razing of Sardis, an eye for an eye, destroying Greece was not the goal.
After that he had better things to do, for example governing a country way larger than Greece, or overseeing the construction of some of the greatest architectures of the ancient world.

You need to read up on how Ahasuerus governed the lands he controlled, he usually gave the people what they wanted, but this is off topic.

xywdx said:

You are still getting your sources from that stupid movie!
I actually took classical studies, they sent the bigger portion of their troops home but they still had 2000-3000(depending on the sources) men who stayed with them.
You don't honestly believe 300 men held against the army of Persia do you?

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More puzzling for the tourist who arrives at the site with his Herodotus in his hand is what lies to the south of the hills, beyond the modern roadside monument: a broad expanse of scrubby ground stretching out for about four miles to the sea. It looks today like no pass at all. The reason for this is no mystery. Due to what geologists call "alluvial fans", a process by which rivers deposit silt (travertine and other sediments), the coastline of the Gulf of Malea has advanced from 3-5 miles over the last 2500 years (Kraft et al., Journal of Field Archaeology 14 (1987) 181-197). Kraft and his team calculated the sea level in 480 using a mathematical formula known as the "eustatic curve". Together with the results of radiocarbon dating on the deposits and stratographic interpretation of the layers of the new land, they were able to account for the fact that travelers of only a few centuries ago reported the pass to be much narrower than we would expect if the process of buildup were proceeding at a steady rate. Rather, according to Kraft :

Fluctuations in the width of the pass at Thermopylae [have been] common, as expected in an unstable structural configuration along the flank of a major graben (i.e. a rapidly subsiding block of the earth's crust). (187)

Kraft concluded that the pass was not more than 20-30 meters wide in 480. That was too wide for Pritchett, who attacked the findings in volume VI of his Studies in Greek Topography (Herodotus says that the pass at Thermopylae was narrower than that at Alpeni, which he puts at half a plethron or roughly 15 meters wide).

Better part of a year destroying a single city?
Do you listen to yourself?
In any case they torched Athens as a punishment for the razing of Sardis, an eye for an eye, destroying Greece was not the goal.

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It didn't look like that to the Greeks. He razed Athens and his ancestors had not been particularly kind to the Greek cities in Asia Minor.

After that he had better things to do, for example governing a country way larger than Greece, or overseeing the construction of some of the greatest architectures of the ancient world.

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More like finishing projects started by his father.

You need to read up on how Ahasuerus governed the lands he controlled, he usually gave the people what they wanted, but this is off topic.

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Yet his father faced rebellions in Ionia, Assyira, Elam and Babalyonia. Xerxes faced a revolt in Babylon... The Persians were not soft and cuddly.

zraver said:

More puzzling for the tourist who arrives at the site with his Herodotus in his hand is what lies to the south of the hills, beyond the modern roadside monument: a broad expanse of scrubby ground stretching out for about four miles to the sea. It looks today like no pass at all. The reason for this is no mystery. Due to what geologists call "alluvial fans", a process by which rivers deposit silt (travertine and other sediments), the coastline of the Gulf of Malea has advanced from 3-5 miles over the last 2500 years (Kraft et al., Journal of Field Archaeology 14 (1987) 181-197). Kraft and his team calculated the sea level in 480 using a mathematical formula known as the "eustatic curve". Together with the results of radiocarbon dating on the deposits and stratographic interpretation of the layers of the new land, they were able to account for the fact that travelers of only a few centuries ago reported the pass to be much narrower than we would expect if the process of buildup were proceeding at a steady rate. Rather, according to Kraft :

Fluctuations in the width of the pass at Thermopylae [have been] common, as expected in an unstable structural configuration along the flank of a major graben (i.e. a rapidly subsiding block of the earth's crust). (187)

Kraft concluded that the pass was not more than 20-30 meters wide in 480. That was too wide for Pritchett, who attacked the findings in volume VI of his Studies in Greek Topography (Herodotus says that the pass at Thermopylae was narrower than that at Alpeni, which he puts at half a plethron or roughly 15 meters wide).



It didn't look like that to the Greeks. He razed Athens and his ancestors had not been particularly kind to the Greek cities in Asia Minor.



More like finishing projects started by his father.



Yet his father faced rebellions in Ionia, Assyira, Elam and Babalyonia. Xerxes faced a revolt in Babylon... The Persians were not soft and cuddly.

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And what does that prove? The path is narrow we all know that, that is the reason how 7000 Greeks(3000 at the end) managed to hold it for nearly 3 days.

The Greeks didn't think of it that way because it's their city, they had no problems sacking and pillaging other cities, in fact they were proud of it.

Frankly he and his father just had better things to do, they weren't able to solve the Ionian problem in a timely fashion.
They installed a local Ionian official for the Ionians, who was not well liked and who knew he will be removed once word gets to Darius.
Therefore in order to save himself from the wrath of Persia he used extreme measure to incite the Ionians to revolt, thus making himself look innocent.

Finishing something is just as important as starting it, the fact is he was occupied, what's your point?

By the way, I would like to mention that once the 3000 Greeks were trapped in the path they got mowed down by arrows. This lends support to the idea that the phalanx isn't nearly as effective once it is attacked from more than one direction.

xywdx said:

And what does that prove? The path is narrow we all know that, that is the reason how 7000 Greeks(3000 at the end) managed to hold it for nearly 3 days.

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300 not 3000, the rest of the allied contingent was sent home by Leonidas. your not going to stuff 3000 men onto a path 15-30m wide. The Spartans on that type of terrain were an almost ideal force. No one else in world, possibly ever in the world was as well trained, highly motivated and innurred to hardship. The youngest a Sparten warrior could have been would be 20 as that was the minimum age to get into a mess. By this time he has been drilling with weapons for at least 8 years. However most were probably between 20-and 29. Men at their physical peak but not yet old enough to marry since there is evidence the Spartan's considered it a suicide mission.

The Greeks didn't think of it that way because it's their city, they had no problems sacking and pillaging other cities, in fact they were proud of it.

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What about all the other cities that the Persians sacked, and all the other peoples that rebelled?

Frankly he and his father just had better things to do, they weren't able to solve the Ionian problem in a timely fashion.
They installed a local Ionian official for the Ionians, who was not well liked and who knew he will be removed once word gets to Darius.
Therefore in order to save himself from the wrath of Persia he used extreme measure to incite the Ionians to revolt, thus making himself look innocent.

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If the Ionians didn't want to be free at some level it would not have worked. Those Ionian cities were Greek in language, culture and religion. Greece (the Greek world) was a large area- parts of the black sea coast, parts of Thrace, the Ionian Coast, the Aegean Islands, parts of Dalmatia, Sicily, Southern Italy, a city in Egypt and several major Mediterranean islands.

Darius and Xerxes would both have been quite content to destroy Greece if it gave them control of the trade flowing back and forth between the Black Sea and Med, and removed the Greek competition for trade with Carthage and Africa.

Finishing something is just as important as starting it, the fact is he was occupied, what's your point?

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You claimed he was a great builder when in fact he was more of a finisher.

By the way, I would like to mention that once the 3000 Greeks were trapped in the path they got mowed down by arrows. This lends support to the idea that the phalanx isn't nearly as effective once it is attacked from more than one direction.

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300 killed over the course of 3 days is not mowed down.

zraver said:

300 not 3000, the rest of the allied contingent was sent home by Leonidas. your not going to stuff 3000 men onto a path 15-30m wide. The Spartans on that type of terrain were an almost ideal force. No one else in world, possibly ever in the world was as well trained, highly motivated and innurred to hardship. The youngest a Sparten warrior could have been would be 20 as that was the minimum age to get into a mess. By this time he has been drilling with weapons for at least 8 years. However most were probably between 20-and 29. Men at their physical peak but not yet old enough to marry since there is evidence the Spartan's considered it a suicide mission.



What about all the other cities that the Persians sacked, and all the other peoples that rebelled?



If the Ionians didn't want to be free at some level it would not have worked. Those Ionian cities were Greek in language, culture and religion. Greece (the Greek world) was a large area- parts of the black sea coast, parts of Thrace, the Ionian Coast, the Aegean Islands, parts of Dalmatia, Sicily, Southern Italy, a city in Egypt and several major Mediterranean islands.

Darius and Xerxes would both have been quite content to destroy Greece if it gave them control of the trade flowing back and forth between the Black Sea and Med, and removed the Greek competition for trade with Carthage and Africa.



You claimed he was a great builder when in fact he was more of a finisher.



300 killed over the course of 3 days is not mowed down.

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From multiple sources (I will only list two here), the Spartan under King Leonidas did defend against the Persian Army for 3 days. However it is not just 300 spartans... there are other Greek army too... even until the very last day, whereby the Persian managed to flank the Spartan forces.

So it is not just three hundred, but a couple of thousands.

References:

1)
2)

The movie that actually depicts the war is very bias and leaning to one side (not without political influences that I do not want to discuss here, but 1 hint - Ancient Persia = Modern day Iran).