I have a book here with me that goes through a lot of the military stuff of ancient china... basically it focus more on the equipments (weapon, armor, chariots, HORSES etc...)

Anyway I read through the part on the calvary.. it seems that there are a few different phases it went through.....(brieft recollection... might have some flaws)

1.Warring states to first half of Han dynasty: basically light calvary, men and horse both ware little to nor armor (espically the horse... ) saddles were eventrually used during this period but not stirrups, the main weapon was the common infantry polearm Ji (L shaped basically good for hooking and poking) but is beginnign to change. the calvary squads were also often armoed with ranged firepower (bows and crossbows)

2.Later half of the Han dynasty till the beginning of the age of fragmentation: Calvary start to wear more armor, espically the men are now mostly armored quiet well usually their torso armors are on par with the infantry but due to horse riding they have less armor below the belt. the Ji is still the most common weapon but now it's hooking capabiltiy is being steadily taken away in favor of more strait thrust ability. and a whole new line of lances (called Shio in chinese) which only have the strait thrust ability begin to appear... horse armor is also begining to appear but is still rather rare.....

3.The majority of the age of fragmentation until the Tang dynasty: The age of the Chinese heavy calvary, during this age stirrups became widespread and both the rider and the horse are clad in full armors, the Ji was replaced by the Shio as the main weapon and the long Daos were also a common calvary weapon.

4.The Tang era till the later half of the 5 dynasty period: The Tang forsaken the heavy calvary approach for a lighter calvary again, man are still clad in a lot of armor usually but horse usually dont' ware any armor, the weapons remain basically the same but apparently the tatics seem to have changed dramitically durign this period.

5.Beinging from the Song: I'm really not quiet suer after this as the book I have didn't seem to give much detail... it does seem that the Song went back to the heavy calvary apporach but the Yuan brougth back the mostly light calvary apporach... Ming/Qing was also mostly light calvary espically since the invention of more gunpowder weapons.

My main question is for those who have more in depth knowledge on this area.... why was there such a transition during the age of fragmentation to the Tang to the Song again.... I am puzzled by why the Tang seem to totally abandon the heavy calvaries which according to the descriptions I'm reading were definately on par or even more scary than the earlier medieval knights ... but why did the tang abadon such a approach so completely? the Song seem to have gone back due to the lack of enough quality access to horses but the switch during the Tang seems puzzling....

Rolling Wave, could you give the title of your book? It sounds interesting! I've been researching Chinese military history for a long time myself, especially with regard to the Age of Fragmentation, and these are my views. I'm still refining and researching them, and I can't give you any views on the Song period because I haven't read enough about it. But my guess is that the Song went back to heavy horse armour because the Jurchen (Jin) were already using it so effectively. Also, the Mongols started with light cavalry but heavy cavalry became increasinly important to them too.

1. To counter the horse archery of nomadic enemies like the Xiongnu, which was devastating against infantry formations, Warring States, Qin and Han armies developed massed crossbow fire and cavalry of their own. In the Three Kingdoms period, armoured cavalrymen and some rudimentary horse armour began to appear on the battlefield.

2. After the Three Kingdoms period, crossbowman and cavalry units deteriorated under the Western Jin dynasty, which became increasingly dependent for its cavalry on nomad groups who had submitted to Chinese authority.

3. When some of these nomad groups rebelled in the early 4th century, they had already adopted full armour for both rider and horse, to protect them against crossbow bolts and arrows. The armoured horse archer, with his combination of mobility, firepower and protection, simply could not be stopped by the military technology available to the Jin armies. The stirrup was also invented (or adopted) by the nomads at about this time, providing a more stable platform for horse archery and heavier armour. For close-quarter use by cavalry, the simple but efficient ring-pommeled straight sabre (dao) came to supersede the traditional Chinese double-edged sword (jian) on the battlefield - a change that had already begun gradually in the Eastern Han.

4. After the Jin dynasty retreated southwards, it gradually developed new tactics for surviving and repelling a horse archer attack. Armoured cavalry with lances (shuo) would make massed charges against horse archers (and soon, against other lancers as well). Infantry shields became larger to protect the whole body from arrows fired at any angle, and infantrymen fought in close formation to avoid being scattered and picked off individually by cavalry. These were significant moves away from the more skirmish-oriented infantry and cavalry of the Han period.

5. In response to the danger of being charged by massed armoured lancers, infantry discarded the ji (halberd/dagger-axe) polearm, which had to be swung for maximum effect, for the spear (mao/qiang). There was a transitional phase when the L-crossblade of the ji was increasingly bent forward into the shape of a fork, before being phased out altogether. Disciplined massed spearmen had a good chance of holding off both harassing horse archers and charging lancers. This chance was enhanced by the presence of anti-cavalry defenses, including specialised spiked barricades and improvised wagon laagers.

6. Another weapon that evolved to counter cavalry charges was the horse-chopping blade (zhanmajian). The zhanmajian was (according to one theory) a large single-edged blade with a shaft as long as the blade itself, similar to the Japanese nagamaki, and was probably wielded by specialised elite units. In the Tang dynasty it came to be known as the modao, and in the Song dynasty it was revived in a modified form known as the zhanmadao. I have found that in 10th-century Byzantine Empire armies (around the same time as the beginning of the Song dynasty), a similar formation evolved to counter armoured cavalry: "troops wielding thick-stocked, long-necked javelins or pikes, whose task it was to face and turn back enemy heavy cavalry attacks." 10% of a Byzantine infantry unit (100 out of 1,000) would consist of such troops, with the other 90% comprising 400 ordinary spearmen, 300 archers, and 200 light infantry.

7. These anti-cavalry tactics were so successful that by the 6th century, lancers generally preferred to engage each other rather than charge at infantry spearmen. The expensive horse armour became increasingly redundant, since speed and maneuverability were of greater importance in battles between cavalry. By the time of the Tang dynasty, most cavalry units had reverted to unarmoured horses, and lightly-armoured or unarmoured horse archers were again common. Another frequently-cited explanation is that the Tujue (Turk) cavalry whom the Tang armies had to fight were mostly light horse archers, but this idea has been challenged by archaeological evidence that the Turks had heavy cavalry too.

That is very interesting what is the book's title?

I seem to recall reading that Cao Cao was an avid proponent of cavalry. Did he have any great influence in its development?

Well I live in Taiwan and apparently this book is a national publication :blink:
(it's published by the state runed national publishing) the title is "兵器史話" (history talks on weapons) it's acturally part of a complete history series of a wooping 50 books on all sorts of history topics from the common to the odd....(like... from history talks on philosaphy to history talks on furnitures :blink: ) the whole series is called "中華文明史話叢書" (The chinese cultural history series)

I'm pretty suer you can find this series in any major book store in Taiwan but I have doubts of you being able to find it outside of Taiwan :(

I see Yun, that's a good answer to the Tang calvary question... so they eventrually realized that if the infantries already broke formation than they probably be able to beat them armor or not while if they are still in formation they will lose and horse armor only help you lose a bit less harder?

But you talked about the heavy horseman charging calvary archers.... wouldn't the lightly armored calvary archers be able to out run them in most cases???

And another question in general is.... just how sophisticaed were these armors during this time? I read the description and see the pictures and it looks pretty decent.... how does it match up against the armors of say the romans or the various medieval era armors???

Good question! Remember that at this time, the horse archers would still be armoured in about the same way as the lancers - i.e. with horse armour and all. Which is why by the last century of the Age of Fragmentation, we see horse archers without horse armour in artistic depictions alongside lancers with horse armour. The light/heavy distinction only became clear at this stage; before that, lancers would also carry bows and function as archers at long range. Now, there were specialised lancers and specialised archers, and the archers lost their horse armour in order to survive through speed. So it became harder for lancers both to break infantry formations and to catch horse archers (either speed or armour would have to be sacrificed), and the class of heavily armoured lancers became less and less useful. That's the fascinating thing about how military technology and tactics interact.



The armour used at this time was mostly lamellar. A simple leather lamellar cuirass was common for infantry, often with iron plates added on the chest in the pattern of a brassiere :huh: For cavalry, either leather or iron lamellar could be worn, including a full suit for the horse and an apron and shoulder guards for the rider. The horse would also often have an iron chanfron (face protection). The cavalry armour, especially the iron type, was very effective protection against both swords and arrows, and was only vulnerable to a hard spear/lance thrust or a stroke of the zhanmajian to the horse's unprotected legs.

You can read more about lamellar armour in this article by a historical re-enactor: http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/lamellar_templarbob

He took cavalry tactics from Lu Bu (a hun) but unlike Lu Bu, who used frontal charges, he used their manuverability. Cao Cao probably influenced military strategy more than anyone in history. He came up with spliting strategists and generals, he concentrated authority, he used prisinors effectivly, and he used manuverability and concentration

Hi everyone,Im new to this forum.
I have read "Sang guo yan yi"since I was very young,and still have the series which my grand mother gave me till this day.
But I dont recall reading that Lu Bu 吕布 was a Hun/Xiong nu?
Where did you read that from Deathdoom?Just curious.

Yes, I didn't know that either. I have wacthed the Taiwanese series on television, but I didn't know any mandarin because I was barely 7 then. I've never read it, so I am not as familiar to it then most of you experts. :lol:

I have heard of Lu Bu but I didn't know he was a Hun. Anyone explain to me?

And welcome HuoChuBin! :D

I don't know if Lu Bu is Hun. But Sang guo yan yi is a "yan yi", so some of the events in the story are not really accurate.

Thanks.Its great to be here!

Yeah,but the thing is I dont even recall it being mentioned in the "Yan yi".

Chinese cavalry is most powerful in the north where there's plains for the horses to graze on and a real need for horses. In the south, where rivers form interweaving complex networks, it is more realistic to have boats and canals. Horses are one of the most expensive animals to keep at that time, and at the same time useful as a farm animal. Militarily, it is also the most useful. Horses are so prized that even Wang An Shi had a reform policy designed to increase the number of horses the Song dynasty can keep.

The horseback empires of the north relied on hit and run tactics, and when it comes to great battles, to rely on envelopement and destroy (Jian Mie Zhan). Wars between horseback empirs are extremely decisive. One or two battles would ensure complete dominance. Shi Le used such tactic to a great effect with 30000 horseback archers, destroying a Jin army (and refugees) of 100000 to the last human.

Sephodwyrm, where did you get the figure of 30,000 for Shi Le's army? I don't seem to have it here.

Anyway, the battle (or rather massacre) that Sephodwyrm mentioned is the one at Ningping in 311, which broke the back of the Western Jin and allowed the Xiongnu to take Luoyang. The Jin army was marching to bring Sima Yue's body back to his fief at Donghai (in Shandong) for burial (a totally idiotic decision since the countryside was dominated by raiding horse archers at the time), and Shi Le intercepted it. The Jin had no competent commanders or crossbows, and mostly trampled each other to death rather than being killed by arrows. Not all of them were killed - the princes and ministers were mostly taken alive, but some were then executed by Shi Le.

It was to avoid another disaster like Ningping that the Eastern Jin started developing the anti-cavalry tactics that I've already mentioned above.

Actually, it isn't true that there was no horse armour in the Warring States period - suits of horse armour have been excavated in a Chu tomb and near the tomb of Qin Shihuang. They may have been used by both chariots and cavalry. This was already brought up by Warhead in a previous thread: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/...topic=100&st=15

However, for some reason horse armour fell out of use during the Han, and only revived from the Three Kingdoms onwards.

For instance, in the Three Kingdoms period, the Ma clan was well known for its cavalry.

Also, I can say with great certainty that Lu Bu was not a Hun. Anyway, where did you see that Lu Bu had gotten ideas or tactics from him? Fengxian was rather mediocre as a general(though he was said to have been a great fighter).

From 1998 to 1999, archeologists digged out stone armors near the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, there was a set of horse armor, suggesting that horse armors were already used during Warring States period. The stone armors were not meant to be used in battle, but they were replicas of real armors.

Also, Spears and Pikes were very ancient weapons, I've heard a theory that during Shang, Zhou and Spring Autum periods, the Ge (some kind of dagger-axe) were used by chariots while spears were used by infantry.

Yes, it's definitely true that the spear is one of the oldest weapons used by man. Spring-Autumn and Warring States troops did use the mao, which are a longer-bladed form of spear. But for some reason, they generally preferred the ge or ji dagger-axe halberds, which are a weapon unique to China. The usual theory is that these were more useful for hooking people off chariots (many ge or ji even had more than one hook), and chariots were the most feared unit on the battlefield.

Even after the chariot was displaced by cavalry, the ji was still effective in unhorsing a lightly-armoured cavalryman without stirrups. It was only after the rise of armoured cavalry with stirrups that ji became less useful than spears for infantry. And it was also this development that caused cavalrymen to switch from the ji to the lance (shuo) for engaging both infantry and other cavalry.

Pikes are longer spears that are at least twice the height of a man, and became very important in Europe as an anti-cavalry weapon to protect archers or arquebusiers. I don't think they were ever used in China, but some of the armies in Sengoku Japan (notably Oda Nobunaga's) used spears (yari) that were essentially pikes.

There was a documentary about terracotta army, it said that they found a spear with almost 7m long.
Here is a link: link (in chinese)

In one of the passage:

It says: Since the discovery of terracotta army in 1974, archeological works never stopped. Near this speahead, archeologists found the trace of a spear shaft with 6.3 m long, combine with the spearhead, the complete spear will be near 7m long.

Hmm, that's very interesting! Oda Nobunaga's army had the longest spears in any Sengoku Jidai army, and they were only 5.6m long.

Such a long and unwieldy spear would only be useful in defending against a head-on cavalry charge, and I don't think such charges were common in the Qin period. Is it possible that the spear was for a ceremonial purpose only, like some of the really large two-handed swords in Europe?

It's interesting to read all these posts. I'm glad to see many expert contribution.. :P

Pikes were used in China. The famous saying of the Qin army is bows and crossbows at fore, pikes and spears at rear. Pikes were far easier to make and uses less metal. It would make a lot of sense for the state which has limited metal mines and metal resources.

Actually, I recall that the Ma army was better known for its long spears (which may have been used like pikes). This was mentioned in the Sanguo Zhi.



I don't quite understand... why would a pike use less metal than a spear? The spearhead is essentially the same, while the shaft is far longer and thus uses up more wood.

Here's an interesting case of an unconventional use of spears in anti-cavalry combat:

In 416 AD, Liu Yu (the military strongman of the Eastern Jin) led a northern expedition to destroy the declining Later Qin state (ruled by the Qiang people) in the Chang'an region. When his ships entered the Yellow River through a canal from the Huai River and prepared to sail westwards to Chang'an, the Tuoba Xianbei of the Northern Wei state sent an army to stop them. The Wei had allied itself with the Later Qin, and had threatened to attack the Jin expedition if it passed through their territory. It was the first time that Jin and Wei troops had met in battle, and they faced each other on opposite banks of the Yellow River.

The Wei were strong in cavalry, while the Jin troops were mainly infantry travelling in ships and ox-drawn wagons. Liu Yu sent a unit of 700 men with 100 wagons to establish a beachhead on the northern bank. They arrayed themselves in a "half-moon" formation 100 paces from the river bank, with seven men on each wagon. The formation was a defensive semi-circle, its flanks pulled back towards the water's edge to prevent flanking by the Wei cavalry - essentially half a wagon laager. Once the formation had formed up, a long white feather was raised up as a signal to the Jin main body on the southern bank.

The Wei cavalry was confused by the formation and signal feather, and made no move. But Jin general Zhu Chaoshi was ready with 2,000 men on the southern bank, and upon seeing the signal he led them across the river. They carried 100 large crossbows, and 20 men with one crossbow mounted each wagon. They also set up a pavise (large shield) at the front shafts of each wagon.

The Wei now realised what was happening, and surrounded the formation. Zhu Chaoshi first ordered his men to shoot at them with weaker bows and smaller arrows, leading them to underestimate the strength of the Jin forces and press forward to attack (rather than shower the Jin formation with arrows, which would have been more dangerous). Sure enough, the Wei dispatched another 30,000 lancers to charge the Jin half-moon.

At this point, the 100 crossbows loosed their bolts simultaneously, while specially-picked expert archers showered the Wei cavalry with arrows. But the Wei force was so large that even the crossbows could not repel it. Zhu Chaoshi now improvised a new tactic. He had brought many large hammers and more than a thousand cavalry lances (shuo) with him. He ordered each lance to be broken into a length of 3 to 4 chi (about 1m to 1.3m), and one man would hold each lance while another rammed it into a Wei cavalryman with the hammer. Such was the force of the hammered thrust that a lance could impale three or four Wei cavalrymen. The 30,000 Wei cavalry broke and fled - from 2,700 Jin infantry!

Zhu Chaoshi pursued the Wei, but the Wei regrouped and surrounded them again, and were only driven off again after a full day of hard fighting in which thousands of Wei cavalry were killed. However, at another location on the northern bank a Jin army of 5,000 men under Xu Yizi (they had crossed the river after Zhu Chaoshi's victory) was also surrounded by Wei cavalry and had to defend itself with long ji halberds, showing that the old anti-cavalry tactics using the ji were still in much use. They would very likely have been wiped out, if Zhu Chaoshi had not rushed his exhausted army over to support them. The Wei were so in fear of Zhu's hammered spears that they withdrew before he even reached the scene.

Well, I believe that the 7m long spear was used in actual combat, we have a good example of Macedonian phalanx. the Macedonians used long pikes (sarissa) in phalanx extensively against infantry. The phalanx was originaly created to fight a infantry warfare, since the cavalry was less developed in ancient Greece. A Roman general once said that facing the charge of a macedonian phalanx was a frightening thing. Yes, I think cavalry charges were not commun during those times, so the 7m pike of Qin was designed mainly to counter infantry rather than cavalry.

Yes, that would be a big difference. The Greek/Macedonian phalanx was a purely offensive formation, using the momentum of a wedge of closely packed hoplites charging with their spears to ram its way into enemy infantry. That's the complete opposite of European pike drill or the usual Chinese use of spears, which is to protect the infantry from cavalry. So the question now would be whether the Warring States armies ever used something like the phalanx charge?

These spears(mao) are generally 4.3-6.7 long (including the wooden shaft) with Bronze spear-tips measured 15.3cm to 23.5cm long and were about 3.5cm in diameter. They were found in the pits near the chariot remains. They are only used by chariot-mounted warriors or infantry escorting the chariots not by common infantry men. So there is no such thing as Macedonian phalanx style in the Warring state formation, the spear phalanx of the Warring state troops are only there to protect the archers from horse and chariot. The archers are the primary weapons.

I don't knwo, it's like Sephodwyrm said: bows and crossbows at fore, pikes and spears at rear. I think the pikes had a defensive proporse, rather than offensive.


It's hard to believe that chariot-mounted warriors could use a pike. Pike and spears were mainly infantry weapons during those times. A chariot-mounted warrior would have difficulty using a spear or pike, a Ji or Ge would be more appropriate.
The terracotta army were plundered by peasants so it's weapons were lost or removed from their original place, so, their actual position might not be the original position.

I thought Zhang Fei used a Mao. :rolleyes:

yes.. it's a Mao (spear)

Zhang Fei used a simple mao spear 矛 - not the snake-shaped mao 蛇矛 that the Romance of the Three Kingdoms has him using. The snake-shaped mao did not exist at the time.

I've done some further research on the weapons unearthed in the Qin Shihuang terracotta army, and I think I've found the equivalent of the pike in Warring States China - it's called the pi 铍 http://202.102.202.102/qt/newpage1.htm. Basically, it's the bronze blade of a jian (double-edged sword) mounted on a 3m long wooden shaft, so that it can be used for both stabbing and slashing infantry and charioteers at a distance. In the Western Han, it fell out of use, to the extent that no one knew what it looked like until pi blades were discovered in the terracotta army in the 1970s. The reason for the decline of the pi is probably the increased mobility of cavalry, against which the cumbersome length of the pi made it ineffective.

The same trend is seen in the mao - during the late Tang, as close-range fighting between infantry again became the norm (instead of cavalry battles and cavalry-infantry clashes), the mao became shorter and this shortened form was called the qiang 枪 (which is the Chinese spear now used in martial arts).

Tang and Song dynasty cavalry also developed new forms of polearms other than the lance - most notably, the pole-axe and glaive (da dao 大刀) that were made famous by Xu Huang and Guan Yu in the RTK. Was this for closer range cavalry combat in loose formations, or for closer-range use against infantry? I'd like to hear your views.

The pi is actually mentioned in the link that Thirdgumi provided. Here's the passage:

Translation: The third kind of pole-arm (after the 7m mao and the ji) that the archaeologists discovered was called the pi. It was like a short jian fitted onto a long shaft, and its length was between that of the ji and the 7m mao, around 3.5m. Soldiers wielding the pi might possibly also have charged at the enemy in some sort of formation.

Here's another passage about the 7m long spears, that gives more food for thought:



Translation: Such a long thrusting weapon takes lots of strength just to hold horizontally, so how did the Qin soldiers use it to fight?

If used for individual combat, the 7m spear could not be wielded effectively at all. But in ancient Greece, Alexander's army was famous for its 7.2m long spears, and won victory after victory with its spear-armed phalanx. Experts speculate that there should have been a similar spear-armed phalanx in the Qin army, because the long spear's power lay in being used en masse.

Under any circumstances, these soldiers would have to advance with spears pointing forward, and when one rank was killed, the next would take its place and maintain the formation. One can imagine the rigorous training it took to transform several thousand or tens of thousands of men into an unbreakable wall of spears.

Judging by the nature of this weapon, the long spear must have been the most deadly of infantry weapons - a forest of spears bristling from a mountain of men would have been unstoppable once it began to move forward.

Note: According to my sources, the length of the pi was 3.59-3.82m. Do take note that in Thirdgumi's cited article, the spear shaft itself was not found (since it had long rotted away), only the 6.3m-long mark it left on the ground.

Do you agree with this article's theory about the use of the 7m mao and the pi in a phalanx-style attack? Warhead doesn't, and neither do I.

"It's hard to believe that chariot-mounted warriors could use a pike. "

Its mainly those that escort it, but couldn't the mounted charioteer charge with a pike?





I really don't think this formation would be useful in warring states warfare, the Greek phalanx also had shields that could couple with the pikes, unless the Qin army has that too, it would be a slaughter for the phalanx against a crossbow assault along with cavalry attacks. It might be that the Qin army used small portion of this phalanx like Hannible did but certainly not the major unit of the army. Afterall no military mannual written during the warring states describe this formation.

More to add is that Alexander's phalanx is not the major offensive weapon, its the cavalry charge that opens the way for the phalanx attack, the phalanx is extremely slow and is quite vulnerable to heavy arrow assaults, thats why the cavalry are there to do the work of getting rid of the archers and disrupt the opponent's infantry for a final phalanx assault. I don't believe that Qin has this type of tactic, Qin's cavalry although could be somewhat heavy would still be disastrous if charging directly at crossbow fires. And Qin's major cavalry is light ones.

not to meantion the greek phalanx generally did not face oppenet who had such powerful ranged firepower......

I have serious doubts about the Qin using that kinda weapon myself... espically if you look at the way the trends of war went during the warring states.... the whole reason for the change from Chariot to infantry/calvary combo WAS the fact that wars are now fought everywhere instead of the limited open plains ...... why then would they create a infantry tactic that could basically only be used..... on open plains .....

Although I guess it was possible that it was used by Charioteers... then again it seems sacrificing even more speed for a longer reach is not exactly a bright idea.... if you hit their rear with anything you probably still win... but even with a 7m pike you'll have a hard time charging strait into a infantry formation......

Good points, everyone!

How about turning to address this question that I brought up:

The curved sowrds or Dao, were first developed as a cavalry weapon during Han dynasty, it was used to slash any opponent that appeared on their way. Da Dao, I believe was created to add more anti-armor capability. I believe Da Dao were mainly used by infantry while cavalry used a lighter one.
One of the battle that general Yue Fei fought, he put his infantry armed with Da Dao to cut the legs of the Jin horsemen. One of the may usage of Da Dao.


Chariots didn't favoured spears, chariot warriors had difficulties to thrust forward because there were horse on the front pulling the chariot. The chariot warriors favoured Ge for the same reason, because Ge was used to slash rather than thrust. When a chariot was charging, the warrior on the right side of the chariot just stick the Ge out of the right side of the chariot pointing the axe head to the front and swingging and cutting people all the way.


Certainly the long pike were not the main weapon of Qin army, if we look at the pole armes found, the 7 m long pike, the 3.5-3.8 m long Pi and 3.5 m long Ji, we can see 3 different types of weapons with 3 reaches and consequently 3 distinct jobs. I believe the long pike, the Pi and Ji were used in coordination and to different situations. If one could defende with long pikes, it was a step away from using them on offensive.
Note that the Qin also got a screen of strong skirmishers who could keep the enemy skirmishers busy.


Dr. Aryeh Nusbacher, senior lecture in War Studies of Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, resumed Alexander's tactics as "fix them with infantry and strike them with cavalry", it was to tackle the enemy army with infantry (the phalanx) and kept them busy while the cavalry attacked the flanks and consequently routing the enemy.

Also note that Guan Yu didn't used Da Dao, it was all the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms doing.
Zhang Fei's "She Mao" was said to be "Shuo" (the cavalry lance), "Shuo" and "She" are simmillar in pronounciation.

The weapon used was probably not the dadao, but rather the zhanmadao 斩马刀 (horse-killing sword or horse-chopping sword) that I mentioned earlier in this thread. Thomas Chen and I have been discussing what this weapon looked like, and our theory is that in the Age of Fragmentation and the Tang, it was a 3m-long two-handed single-edged sword with a shaft as long as the blade (each about 1.5m), and called a modao 陌刀, changdao 长刀 or zhanmajian 斩马剑 in different periods. Though extremely important in the Tang, it then fell out of use until 1072, when the Northern Song reconstructed it for use against the Khitan. But the Northern Song version, called a zhanmadao, was different in being about two-thirds blade and one third shaft.

This theory differs from the usual one about the zhanmadao or modao, which has it as a pole-arm looking quite similar to the Song dynasty three-pointed double-edged glaive 三尖两刃刀. Another theory is that the modao was the ancestor of the miaodao 苗刀, which is a Chinese two-handed sabre that resembles the Japanese sword but is straighter.

More info can be found on Thomas Chen's website: http://thomaschen.freewebspace.com/index.html

And in these Chinese articles: http://xiangyata.net/data/articles/a01/396.html
http://www.dreambeauty.net/miaodaozhiyuan.htm
http://www.cmiaodao.com/lishi01.htm
http://www.swordman.org/2003/article_view.asp?id=11

Of particular note is this passage:


Translation:
After the revival of the glaive (changdao), its earliest representative was the double-edged modao. No artifacts of the modao have yet been found, but judging from its descendant, the Song dynasty zhaodao (oar-shaped glaive), one can theorise its distinctive three-pointed, double-edged appearance. The modao can be called the longest of all the dao, because excessive length makes a weapon slow and clumsy to wield. 2m to 3m and below is the normal length for a glaive, and the modao reached to the maximum of 3m. The modao was once a prominent mainstay of Tang armies, advancing in close formation at the fore of the infantry and killing or wounding several of the enemy with each sweep. But perhaps because the double-edged blade made it rather extraneous as a slashing weapon, the modao disappeared from records after the Tang, and was replaced as a leading weapon by the single-edged glaive (i.e. the dadao and it relatives).

A final note: many Chinese historians now dismiss the story of the Jurchen 'six-legged horse' (guaizi ma) 拐子马 as a fiction invented by Yue Fei's grandson and entered into the Song histories as fact. The very idea of tying two horses together by the legs for added charging power is so impractical for cavalry warfare that it doesn't take a brilliant general like Yue Fei to release that chopping the legs of one of the horses with a zhanmadao automatically puts both horses (and their riders) out of action.

Against the Persians in Issus, alexander certainly charged first over a hail of arrows while the infantry stayed on the far side, only after the cavalry charge successfully disrupted the enemy did the infantry urge forward for the ultimate blow, the other way also worked on different circumstances.

I saw a documentary about the battle of Issus, it said that the Persian right (cavalry) charged and met Alexander's left (cavalry) and the same time Alexander charged on the right and meet Persian left while his centre was advancing to meet Persian centre. It was a coordinate attack, the infantry played an important role to keep enemy centre busy. The philosophy behind was the same: fix them with infantry and strike them with cavalry.

Yes, Guai Zi Ma (拐子马) might be a fiction, but cutting the horse legs wasn't a new tactic.

That's definitely true, since the zhanmajian and modao were already used for chopping horses' legs in the Age of Fragmentation and the Tang. The only vulnerable part of a charging armoured horse is, after all, its legs. However, it takes a very counter-intuitive kind of cool courage to stoop down before a charging lancer and sweep your weapon at his horse, which is why modao troops were the elite of the Tang infantry.

The first mention of the zhanmajian in Chinese historical records:


Translation: [From the biography of Zhu Yun in the Han Shu] In the reign of Han Chengdi (32 BC - 7 BC), the Prime Minister and Marquis of Anchang Zhang Yu enjoyed great prestige by virtue of having been the emperor's tutor. Zhu Yun said to the emperor, "... Your Majesty's subject requests that he be granted a zhanmajian by the imperial palace, so as to behead a corrupt minister as a warning to the others." The emperor asked who that minister was, and Zhu replied, "The Marquis of Anchang, Zhang Yu."

Annotation by Yan Shigu of the Tang dynasty: ... the zhanmajian is sharp enough to kill a horse, hence its name.

I read another book yesterday that claims that modao were mainly used to chop at the shoulders of cavalrymen, and that this explains the heavier shoulder armour among Tang cavalry. Such a claim, however, is not supported by the sources.

I was woundering, what was the function of the 2 bladed 3 pointed Dao? Why it had the distinctive shape od 2 blades and 3 points?

logically the da dao could be used against both infantry and calvary...... espically against infantry the weight and the force of the charge carrying down would really make the blow very deadly.... against other calvaries probably spears would be more effective in a direct charge obviously but the da dao would be considerablly more useful in a melee....

(and whatever ur using ur not going to charge into a wall of infantry spear head on anyway :P thus da dao would probably more more overall useful.... as it would allow the cavalry to stay in melee much more effectively than teh unwieldly long spears......)

The 3-pointed 2-bladed dao was designed to combine the functions of a lance and a double-edged sword, and thus could be used for both thrusting and slashing. One could thus call it the improved version of the Warring States/Qin pi. It was probably the most versatile Chinese pole-arm of all, but was extremely heavy and took great strength to wield. The forging of the blade also required much skill.

This weapon was also known as the Erlang Dao, because the Chinese three-eyed god Erlang is always depicted as wielding it. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, it is wielded by Yuan Shu's general Ji Ling, which is an anachronism because the weapon was not invented until the Song dynasty at the earliest.

Thanks Yun.

The discussion of cavalry tactics in the Age of Fragmentation has branched out into another thread in this forum: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/...owtopic=74&st=0

However, I would encourage you guys to direct your comments on the topic to this thread, in order to keep the discussion focused and easy to follow.

I've just checked a source that says that the standard weight of a 3-pointed 2-edged dao was 9kg, while its usual length was 3m (although shorter 2m versions also existed). Compared to this, the dadao (glaive) had the same length but was usually 18-24kg, and could be as heavy as 54kg! So it certainly took even greater strength to wield a dadao, and the cutting power of the blade lay as much in its weight as in its sharpness (similar to the European broadswords and claymores).

I've also recently bought a book on the wars between the Song and the Jin (Jurchen), and it states that Yue Fei's famous decisive battle against the Jin heavy cavalry was in 1140 (a year before his framing and death), at Yancheng 郾城 in today's Henan province. His troops were instructed to slash at the legs of the Jin horses with pole-axes and a weapon called the Mazhadao 麻扎刀. Thomas Chen and I are still unsure about whether the Mazhadao was the zhanmadao or the dadao.

The strength of the Jin cavalry lay in the Iron Buddha 铁浮图, a heavy cavalryman dressed in two layers of iron lamellar armour. On the flanks of the Iron Buddhas would ride the Guaizima 拐子马, which as I've pointed out in a previous post were probably not two or three horses tied together as is commonly believed. The term Guaizima had already appeared in the Northern Song military manual "Wujing Zongyao" 武经总要, written in 1043, and referred simply to lighter-armoured and faster cavalry on the flanks of the main body, used for flanking and envelopment.

Well, Ma Zha Dao could be argued as a blade tied to a pole by Ma (hemp) ropes. It is an extremely effective polearm to be used against the cavalries of the Jurchens. Yue Fei purportedly dug his troops in and ordered his troops to lope off the legs of the Jurchen cavalry horses and not attack the rider. The Ma Zha Dao is a parallel or maybe the progenitor of the Japanese naginata.

Yun I have some questino about ur theory on the switch of tactics though....

In medieval europe the introduction of crossbows/arbalest was the begining of the end for the age of knights... it's well known that those things could go through even the full plate armor knights wear... and even great kings such as Richard the Lionhearted fell to a simple crossbow wielded by a peasent....

Why was it that however in the age of fragmentaion the seemingly exact opposite happend? while I'm sure the armor they used were of great quality surely they couldn't have been vastly superior to the full plates of europe 500 years later.... did that mean that the Chinese crossbows at that time were vastly inferior to the onces later used in Europe??? (would seem unlikely.... seeing how the basic technology remained the same and almost all the metal smithing tech were already there....)

Thx for answering my knowledge lackign questions XD (and excuse the probably mass spelling error as it is really late or should i say early here :P my brain's not workign right)

Rolling Wave: The short answer to your question is that the crossbow did not really end the dominance of the plate-armoured knights in Europe. It was much more effective against mail armour than against plate armour. In fact, the crossbow proved tactically inferior to the English/Welsh longbow in the 14th century and lost its popularity. But even the longbow did not doom the medieval knight to extinction - that had to wait for the rise of firearms.

For the long answer, I'll have to scan a useful article from the August 2003 issue of Military Heritage magazine, because it's not available online. It'll be too big to attach on this forum too, so if you give me your e-mail address by PM, I can send it to you.