Hero: The Qin Army 260 B.C.

A small video clip from the famous Arrow Scene Taken from the film "Hero".
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"By the 260's BC, all other states of China realized the full magnitude of the Qin reforms to the very nature of warfare. All vestiges of aristocratic pleasantry had vanished in favor of raw efficiency. Starting 265 BC Qin launched a massive invasion against Han. By 262 BC Qin was again bullying Han to give up its Shangdang area. Han, not willing to benefit Qin, turned to Zhao and offered Shangdang to Zhao, which lead to a standoff between Qin and Zhao for the control of Shangdang, and, in a larger stage, the dominance of northern China. The two states engaged in a three years long Battle of Changping, followed by another three years long siege of Handan, which saw not just war in the field but also full involvement in both home fronts campaigning for supplies and political plots. The type of warring scheme in Changping was a show-down of overall state strength stretched to its maximum by the two sides. Qin, despite its stacked resources and vast manpower, had to enlist every man above the age of 15 to be on war related duties, from front line service to logistics to agriculture, and saw King Zhaoxiang himself directing the army supply lines. The extent of mobilization and the resulting exhaustion in the aftermath was never be seen in world history for another 2,000 years until this concept of total war was back on stage again during WWI. At the end, it was diplomatic corruption plots by Qin within the Zhao court which resulted in a change in the Zhao general staff that led Qin to her ultimate victory in battle in 260 BC. Afterwards, Qin general Bai Qi sent a dreadfully staggering message to the whole known world of Qin's mighty indisputable authority by ordering the execution of some 400,000 POWs from the surrendered Zhao army. In total, Zhao lost almost 450,000 troops. It was the beginning of the end of Zhao."

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_%28state%29

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Qin
• Army
• Military
• Ancient
• China

[DumbHonkie1]

@korggg123 You made a good point regarding the gladius. The ancient Chinese troops also had gladius-like daggers in addition to long double-edged swords. I truly don't think Romans made their gladius short on purpose. Romans couldn't make longer -unbending swords, because they didn't have the technology to melt the iron ore( making the cast iron) and blowing air into it and make superior steel which could be used in making long unbending swords as the ancient Chinese.did.

[korggg123]

@DumbHonkie1 I generally agree with your several points on Chinese military/technological superiorities. But I just want to point out that the gladius was 'purposely' made short to enhance the fighting abilities in close combat. Short, double-edged gladius was proven much useful than barbarian long swords because 1. long sword requires a (fair amount of) space to strike/attack. The ancient push of pike style warfare did not provide soldiers enough area to slash their weapons freely.

[BM309K58SMERCH]

Chinese. Spamming units and blocking out the sun since 778 BC.

This is the best part in the whole movie, besides where Qin Shihuang finds out that Unknown is lying and tells the actual story, orders his execution, then proceeds to unify China....All under one.

[RomanLegioXx]

"I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion."

- Alexander the Great

I guess this shows my opinion about the Chinese, and of the Romans!

[GRENTHSNOOB]

@gueropalma1990 Who wants to guess you made up those facts?

[funhoo]

Google “A Roman Legion in China”

this is the truth

[DumbHonkie1]

@gueropalma1990 Europe could not melt iron ore untill the 14th century. That means the Romans could only produce a very limited amount of poor quality steel by banging the wroght iron.. Don't take my word for it, look it up about cast iron and Bessemer method. Qin had been fighting for 500 years by 260 BC. It had a superb fighing force, pepared for a total war. Universal concription is sometimes better than having a professional army. Just look at the all-coscripted superb Israli army.

[DumbHonkie1]

@gueropalma1990 . The Roman gladius was about 25-30 inch long, on the other hand the Han steel JIN was about 40-56 inch long. The Romans couldn't produce longer swords because their steel was inferior, if the gladius had been any longer than that, it would have bent. Now, you don't want to have a bent sword in the middle of a close-quater combat, do you? Have a wild guess who had the advantage, a Han with a lot longer steel JIN or a Roman witth a lot shorter gladius. I know who.

[DumbHonkie1]

@gueropalma1990 Nobody knows exactly how much iron was produced in Han Dynasty or Roman empire. there are very few records to go by. All these figures are nothing but guesses. Just using our common sense we can have a reasonable guess that Han China produced better and MORE iron and steel than the Roman empire because Han could melt iron ore in huge amounts and converting it into large amounts of steel using Besemer method. The Romans didn't have all these advanced technologies.

[DumbHonkie1]

@gueropalma1990 The figures you mentioned about the iron production in the Han Dynasty and the Roman empire is useless..The numbers were originally from a book by David Sim and Isabela Ridge. What they did was ESTIMATING an amount of iron production from certain parts in Britain then applying it to the rest of the empire. Britain was one of the largest iron producing areas in the Roman empire. The authors admitted It was all guess work, had no literary evidence to back up the figures.