Rome vs Han China

Actually the French knights at Agincourt had excellent protection against longbow fire. Only at certain spots were arrows able to penetrate(or find unprotected holes in) their armor.

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very true, there was this show called 'battlefield investagators' had a look into longbow againest armor in the battle of Agincourt. They used a pressing machine to simulate the force of the longbow in 90yrds or something, and at the bottom of the machine they placed a piece of the equvilent of the french plate armor. The result. The bodkin arrow did nothing to the armor, didnt even dent it.

Just to clarify a few things:

The Roman army that was defeated in Parthia wore Lorica Hamata, the loose chainmail, not the later plate armor (lorica segmentata)

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Lorica Segmentata is NOT plate armour! Not in the strict sense anyway. Its name means segmented armour and is composed of leather internals and strips of iron on the outside.

And the Roman shield is not as strong and thick as you think. 5mm-6mm at best.

if strictist sense, Lorica Segmentata is Segmentated armor, but considering the size of plates, it is the closest thing to plate armor for a thousand years.

The Scutum may be thin, but the shape and the method it is made ensured it to be very strong. The Scutum is made out of many strips of plywood.

Still it is penetratable, especially right between the joints. Metal bolt from a 160lbs to 300lbs draw strength is much stronger than the lowbows. And that is in addition to Han composite recurved bows.

all in all, don't try to make excuses that an infantry mainly armored melee army is going to win over a combined joint cavalry-infantry army that has a clear superiority in ranged weaponry. Range and hitting power is always a universal advantage in warfare right down to the modern age. You don't make excuses against it.

crobato said:

Still it is penetratable, especially right between the joints. Metal bolt from a 160lbs to 300lbs draw strength is much stronger than the lowbows. And that is in addition to Han composite recurved bows.

all in all, don't try to make excuses that an infantry mainly armored melee army is going to win over a combined joint cavalry-infantry army that has a clear superiority in ranged weaponry. Range and hitting power is always a universal advantage in warfare right down to the modern age. You don't make excuses against it.

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You dont quite grasp how the Roman Army works, Romans specialize, Romans do what they do best and for thing they are not good at, they outsource.

For every roman soldier there is a foreign soldier. For example, if there is 5000 Legionnary then there is 5000 foreign soldiers.

Roman army consists of people from all over the empire. There are Slingers from Rhodes, Archers from Crete or Syria, Cavalry from Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Gaul, Nubia, Germany and later the Sarmatians. Light Infactry from Gaul, Germany, Spain, Persia (Selecuids), Elephants from Egypt, Kataphracts from Armenia, it is a quite diverse force depending on where the Legion is located.


People tend to only concentrate on the Legionnarys themselves.

Legionnaires are the most well-equipped troops. Fact is, if Han missile weapons can penetrate Legionnaires' shield and armour, it'll be pegging soldiers with little to no-armour, such as Gauls and Nubians.

Even with these Auxilia from different peoples, what good will it do? At best the Auxilia wore Lorica Hamata, which is inferior to the Segmentata. The point is, these auxilia missile troops, cavalry and light infantry are not up to par with the Roman legionnaires, and certain not up to par with their Han counterparts.

Slingers from Rhodes: very short ranged and evidence suggests that Han crossbowmen usually had a line of infantry infront of them with giant shields for protection.

Archers from Crete or Syria: inferior bows

Cavalry from various regions: mostly light cavalry which are nowhere near as advanced as Han cavalry. Take the Nubians for example. No armour at all and skirmished with javelins. They'd get pegged real bad by crossbows.

Light infantry from Gaul, etc: wore little or no armour. Incomparable.

Elephants from Egypt: Let's face it, they have very little actual battlefield worth. Psychological warfare is the main reason they're on the field. Han 300lb siege crossbows will make short work of them.

Cataphracts: the only kind of Auxilia troop that will pose somewhat of a threat to the Han Army, however present in too few numbers. If the war is to happen in Parthia there is the additional problem of heat for heavily armoured troops.

No offence people, but what's up with this superiority contest? So far there are soooo many inaccuracies on both sides it's funny. We should concentrate on why the Legionaire's tactics evolved into the way it is, and why the Han army's tactics evolved into the way it is, mostly through a geographic sense. This superiority contest would only digress into racism as it already did(Chinese people smarter, Romans taller, etc... WTF? Retards) before once people run out of stuff to talk about when it comes to technology(not to mention most are wrongly informed in their information).

silverster said:

You dont quite grasp how the Roman Army works, Romans specialize, Romans do what they do best and for thing they are not good at, they outsource.

For every roman soldier there is a foreign soldier. For example, if there is 5000 Legionnary then there is 5000 foreign soldiers.

Roman army consists of people from all over the empire. There are Slingers from Rhodes, Archers from Crete or Syria, Cavalry from Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, Gaul, Nubia, Germany and later the Sarmatians. Light Infactry from Gaul, Germany, Spain, Persia (Selecuids), Elephants from Egypt, Kataphracts from Armenia, it is a quite diverse force depending on where the Legion is located.


People tend to only concentrate on the Legionnarys themselves.

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These people are less likely to be as well armored as the regular Legionnaire, won't it.

The Han also employed Steepe peoples, Turks/Hunnic tribes, and proto-Mongols. Suffice to say, these were undoubtedly the best archers and cavalry of their day, and perhaps, for a millenia till their Mongol descendants who inherited their legacies of archery and horseback riding. That's the kind of allies I would prefer to have than all of what you have mentioned combined.

The bottomline comes down to this.

One army has the superiority of ranged firepower, technology, numbers, and mobility. You cannot get around the fundamental and universal precepts of these qualities as they have continued to serve so successful to the present day.

Anthrophobia said:

No offence people, but what's up with this superiority contest? So far there are soooo many inaccuracies on both sides it's funny. We should concentrate on why the Legionaire's tactics evolved into the way it is, and why the Han army's tactics evolved into the way it is, mostly through a geographic sense. This superiority contest would only digress into racism as it already did(Chinese people smarter, Romans taller, etc... WTF? Retards) before once people run out of stuff to talk about when it comes to technology(not to mention most are wrongly informed in their information).

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Roman tactics evolved from fighting infantry base armies in the mediterranian world. The original Roman army was a Phalanx. Fighting with the Gauls, Carthage, Greeks, and Etruscans changed this into the the manipular warfare.

The next big reform came from Marius. Here the old Hastati, Principe, and Triari formation was abandoned for the classic legion. The state took the responsibility of arming the army.

The Han army evolved differently. It inherented an in placed beaurecracy from the Qin. It's main opponent were the Cavalry centric Xiongnu, both horse archers and heavy lancers. As a settled population, horses were very expensive, especially the Fergana horses imported from Central Asia.

The preferred weapon was the crossbow. The han replaced the heavy bolts, which have short range but high penetrating power of the Qin era, with a longer ranged and lighter bolts. They aim to out ranged the relatively lightly armored horse archers. Furthermore, the crossbow is excellent in breaking a heavy cavalry charge. Heavy infantry was also designed to fight an horsemen with a large portion of the army armed with L shaped halbeards, designed to unhorsed a rider.

Who would have won if these 2 forces fight? who knows? What I know is that if you replaced the Romans with Han troops in the battle of Carrhae, the results would have been different. A infantry square armed with long range crossbow, would wreck havoc on the Parthian Horse Archers.

Hi All,

I’m new here and hope to learn something about ancient Chinese armies.

For me a discussion about a battle between Han and Rome is more interesting than one about a war. Such a battle sees two highly professional armies that were very efficient in fighting in their own specific way. For each advantage of the one, you can find a counter from the other, so most probably the outcome would be a matter of luck after a long, drawn-out tug-of-war, one or both sides’ morale eventually collapsing.
The Han army was a more balanced army, with massive fire power, a mobile shock force and a steady, heavy momentum element. This combination has been used with great success thru-out history, from the days of ancient Egypt (and probably before). The Roman army was more specialized, but because of that potentially more dangerous in certain situations and less so in others.

What I would like to know – and I hope this forum has the answers:
1) How independent were Han sub commanders and how were sub commands (large groups of units) organized?
2) Once a Han units charged into melee, did its soldiers fight individually (Samurai like) or as a coordinated group (Phalanx like)?
3) Were Han units trained to exchange positions between front and second line during melee?
4) How dense was a Han heavy infantry front line and could such units change their density (or only re-deploy into different multi-unit formations)?
5) How did Han heavy cavalry charge: as a tight, close formation and thus relatively slow; or faster and thus more open; or maybe halting first to deliver a volley of some kind of distance weapon? Did they charge home against heavy infantry?
6) What was a Han crossbow unit’s capacity for sustained fire (say, number of bolts and their range over a period of time)?
7) How were Han crossbow units trained to shoot: individually or commander aimed? By salvo or at will?
8) And how was their shooting drill: staying put, going forward, going backward, etc?
9) What was the Han army’s main method of destroying its opponents morale? The Roman’s tended to be to focus on the heavy infantry battle, because those are the troops that at the end of the day would occupy the battlefield and the ones that you could most easily cut down in a pursuit. They would try to pin them and deny their frontlines the ability to exchange tired for fresh troops ... so far not unlike the pushing and shoving of a phalanx fight, but the Romans added the element of being able to introduce fresh troops into the front line and the element of bloodshed (stabbing instead of pushing), thereby sapping the will of the frontliners extra fast.

What I think I know:
Having a lot of crossbows does not mean that you just aim, shoot and kill thousands of opponents: there are only so many shooters per meter frontage that you can deploy against your opponent (and you have to save some space for your supporting troops as well). Then there is the issue of target and range finding and screening (the Roman army did have a lot of effective and aggressive screening troops, very much like Napoleonic skirmishers), which limits the effect of any knock-out volley tried. And last, a slow drain of casualties – as I suppose would be the result of sustained crossbow fire – almost never resulted in the flight of disciplined, drilled troops. So I doubt if the crossbow could be the Han’s battle winner.

Btw, slightly OT about Alexander: a pike phalanx is not the inflexible, immobile formation that sometimes is thought. Alexander (and the medieval Swiss etc) showed that a drilled, supported phalanx is a very maneuverable, tough, fast and deadly offensive weapon. The later, huge pike units had an incredible staying power, even when immobile, without shielding, completely surrounded and attacked from all sides by long range gun powder weapons (heavy and light calibers), crossbows and continual charges by armored knights.
Oh, and Alex’s best cavalry were probably the ex-Persian cataphract nobility, though his own (and thus higher status) Companions would be very dangerous as well.

Beejay