Reference? Or just figures from the air? Plus... what the hell is your point in your post? Stop coming in with vague single line claims that actually goes nowhere.
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Alexander VS Qin dynasty
- Thread starter handifei880210
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Reference? Or just figures from the air? Plus... what the hell is your point in your post? Stop coming in with vague single line claims that actually goes nowhere.
Possibly you have the highest army member to population ratio during warring states period and three kingdoms period where chinese were fighting each other instead of outsiders (napoleonic wars involved some large battles too). The people basically do two main things - fight and eat. When not fighting they farm and stock up for and prepare for war.
Three kingdom mentioned that at certain stage one out of every ten person (including women, old and young) were part of an army.
In one bitter campaign between Qin and Zhao, Qin Shi Huang ordered all available males 15 years and over to take part in the war effort. During such times women are expected to take over field work.
Chinese agriculture is quite systematic. For example crops were growns in rows, a process not adopted in europe until much later.
In campaigns against nomads you are most likely to see a expeditionary force around 10000 ~30000 (han dynasty and tang dynasty) and hardly over 100000. (The sui korean campaign is messed up. Qin launched one that is 300000 strong but they ventured only for about 300-400km north of great wall). Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) for example had a professional standing army of half a million at their height (not recruits). This is for all of china and actually something like 200000 is situated near the northern border, and most of rest in western region.
Another thing that differs from the west is that china had its equivalent of police force since very early on.
Three kingdom mentioned that at certain stage one out of every ten person (including women, old and young) were part of an army.
In one bitter campaign between Qin and Zhao, Qin Shi Huang ordered all available males 15 years and over to take part in the war effort. During such times women are expected to take over field work.
Chinese agriculture is quite systematic. For example crops were growns in rows, a process not adopted in europe until much later.
In campaigns against nomads you are most likely to see a expeditionary force around 10000 ~30000 (han dynasty and tang dynasty) and hardly over 100000. (The sui korean campaign is messed up. Qin launched one that is 300000 strong but they ventured only for about 300-400km north of great wall). Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) for example had a professional standing army of half a million at their height (not recruits). This is for all of china and actually something like 200000 is situated near the northern border, and most of rest in western region.
Another thing that differs from the west is that china had its equivalent of police force since very early on.
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Actually the west also adopted police forces in their empire in ancient time. Although not as establish as the ancient Chinese.
(Source from Wikepedia: )
And other than the above. As mentioned in another wikipedia passage (), there are two units that are doing police work for ancient Roman empire.
1) Cohortes urbanae - a police unit of urban Rome and sometime counterbalance to the power of the praetorian guard.
2) Vigiles - the firefighters and police of Ancient Rome
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I believe the first part was during Liubei's reckless campaign where he reportedly raised an army of 730,000 from his single province of Sichuan, the event also marked his downfall because he crippled his land and people.
Qin Shi Huang did not conscript all males in his country, only in a single city.
The reason why Qin Shi Huang didn't conscript all males from his country might be because of many reasons.
1) The most arguable was that since he had already unify China, there really is no need to conscript more forces because there are no external threat at that time.
2) Qin dynasty was not a popular one and people often treat the rulers as tyrannical (many songs and records depicted that too) and so it is really difficult to conscript the people as their loyalty is questionable so it is kind of dangerous to conscript these people, provide them with some training (however minimal) and arm them. If they revolt, it will be very difficult to put them down.
On the subject of ancient and early medieval Chinese army sizes, I'd just like to point out that scholars have cast a lot of doubt on the sizes most frequently reported in contemporary sources. There's a lot of evidence out there that the numbers were not actually that big. Certainly they could and often did reach into the 100s of thousands but 700,000 for one campaign sounds way too high.
What you said might be true. The historians often had this habit of exaggerating the number of troops to make their defeats more significant. Plus one of the tactics commonly used by the ancient Chinese forces are to boast of a greater number of troops that they actually have, this might be to subdue their opposition into surrendering.
I think the question of languages questionable. is Cantonese just a dialect to Mandarin or Hokien or Fujanise or Shanghainese? each have its own sayings, stories and history. Just like Tang Chinese is more similar to Cantonese in speach while Mandarin is supposingly more Wei. There are some words in Cantonese which does not exist in Mandarin - especially the swear words. Is Japanese and Korean a seperate language of Chinese? both uses Chinese characters and understands Chinese concepts and phrases. I am not qualified to draw the line.
I do not think that supply is that much of a hinderence. for example, during the Napoleonic wars, the french army was huge and lived off the land. in both the peninsula war in spain and in Russia, the french army is starved to death by scorched earth policies. The British under wellington was well supplied and had high morale, where the ill supplied french was more worried about being fed or not. hungry soldiers does not make good soldiers.
and Mao's army living entirely off the land is partly propaganda. The final campaigns of the civil war saw massive mobilization of the civilian population to supply and to maintain the standing army. the HuaiHai campaigne saw the mobilization of 5.4 million civilians to support the 500,000 men red army.
Yes. However in ideal cases whereby a well supplied force that had no worries about their backline supplies are more likely to defeat a force that had to live off the land and had no back supply in whatever they need (food, weapons, clothings, etc). However if the well supplied force whose backline was being cut off and they have no supply or whatsoever from their country, then they would either go into disarray or had to be forced to retreat.
However if a force that had the skills to live of the land, even with minimal support from their backline or homeland, they are still likely to last longer.
As seen in the Yuan Shao's example. His force is so much larger and might be equipped as to the same standards as Cao Cao's forces. But his troops went into disarray once his supply was burnt by Cao Cao and thus enabling Cao Cao to defeat him decisively.
If Yuan Shao's forces have the skill to live off the land, then even as their supplies are destroyed, they could still managed to hold on for a longer time and maybe allowing a safe retreat back to their territory.