Looking at the illustrations and descriptions of Chinese soldiers in the osprey books (which are not entirely accurate) It seems the majority of infantry were unarmoured. Is this typical of Chinese armies? did it vary between dynasties? or are the books simply wrong?

Thanks in advance.

It's hard to give good answers, many people here can give what specific information there is.

By and large, most Chinese armies through history included infantry. Many of these wore armour (proportions varied widely). It's worth remembering that most large armies included vast numbers of pioneers, drivers, grooms, servants etc... In many cases these were issued with simple weapons (shield and spear is a favorite for this) and lined up at the back to make the army look more impressive.

rgds.
Tom..

Actually, the majority of infantry in early and middle imperial China had at least a piece of lamellar armour for the chest, for example:



Tomb figurines show that in the Western Jin and Age of Fragmentation, tongxiu and liangdang armour was also widely worn by infantry:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...opic=3224&st=15

Heavy infantry in the Age of Fragmentation, Sui and Tang would also be dressed in mingguang armour: http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=3845

Archers and crossbowmen would also often have a helmet and chest protection. However, there are also figurines of Eastern Jin soldiers with no other protection than a small shield. These were probably private serf-troops (buqu) who served as skirmishers and auxiliaries. I have a source that states that 60% of Tang troops were armoured, and 80% had helmets.

In the Song, the usual image of a infantryman is of an unarmoured mercenary wearing a hat (not even a helmet), but actually large amounts of paper armour were worn:
http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=2616

Heavy Song infantry were also equipped with the Buren (foot-soldier) armour illustrated in the Wujing Zongyao - a suit of iron lamellar that protected everything except the lower arms and lower legs, and also had an iron lamellar helmet. According to a court regulation of 1134, it was made up of 1825 iron scales and weighed up to 29kg. Later (from 1168), there were 32-35kg versions for spearmen, 28-33kg versions for archers, and 22-27kg versions for crossbowmen.

In the Yuan and Ming, brigandine armour was worn by many infantry units, and paper armour was also worn by Ming infantry on the southern coast. Brigandine armour was still being used by infantry in the early Qing. From the 18th century onwards, armour was phased out in the Qing army because of the effect of firearms (except for the ceremonial brigandine without real metal plates worn by Banner cavalry).

A lot more info on this (much more than the Osprey books provide) can be found in Yang Hong's "Weapons in Ancient China".

Thanks guys....

I'm curious about what type of armour Ming commanders would wear, It seems that ShanWenKia is frequently depicted in statues from the Ming. The reason I ask this is that Stephen Turnbull states in his book Warriors of Medieval Japan...

During the Korean campaign high-ranking Chinese or Korean officers stood out because of the quality of their armour and became prime targets for glory seeking samurai.

Did they also stand out due to more decorated helmets? Y'know, with the wings and feathers.

Some aspects of the Osprey illustrations could be dubious or speculative...but the Han infantry are the most reasonable of all. They are taken literally from West Han tomb gaurdians even the colour and cut of uniforms and head gear.
compare;
http://s8.invisionfree.com/Bronze_Age_Cent...hp?showtopic=42
The weapons are accurate for the period, even how it comments the ring hilt sword is bronze.(I hope to find one of those one day as they are distinctive to Han. I have a bronze Ji halberd of that style I am considering buying, but it isnt cheap.)
Peers also comments that complex iron armour was rare and he has it on a nobleman. This is quite reasonable both based on the warriors in ceramics and the amount of iron suits recovered. He even comments that swords were not common comparitively despite the great effectiveness the sword had even in the Warrign States era of long pole arms...he attribute this the the size of Han armies and equipping them.
Suggestions of the problems of scale I had raised before. 10 hollow spear heads might be made for one sword.
The fact that Han armies varied in social status (proffesionals/conscripts/voluteers/convicts/nobilty) suggest to me, again as I proposed earlier, that armour and lack of armour in infantry may be due not to different roles but different status and access to equipment.
Also my ealrier suggestion that armour wasn't standard in even simple infantry units (i.e 'light' or 'heavy' infantry role distinctions shouldnt be made based on a vest alone when troops seem to be the same type) was met with some disbelief, but I note Peers comments that of 7 different armour types in QIn all are found in single units mixed and that armour did not seem to be standardised within even the same troop types. I would suspect status as much as role for these differences
The truth remains that most armour was partial, and in some cases none at all.
The proportion of warriors from a West Han army that were armoured with iron scale were small, but scale helmets and long shirts similar to the QIn stone armour style were represented at JingDIs tomb on some warriors. Most seem to have been clothed in cloth alone however and no trace remains and uniforms much like those on the above link are most likely. Here is one example;

Also an example of good West Han iron scale;

One thing CJ Peers suggests is that QIn had iron & bronze armour too, which is at odds which what other texts say. The problem is he bases it on pigment colours on the excavated terracotta warrors alone, and not on actual physical evidence so it isnt conclusive.
His comments on the lack of armour in even what seems to represent an elite formation again seems to suggest that armour was not common.
He does suggest that shields the warriors may have had were removed at the fall of Qin, and this os possible.
The illustrated reconstructions of Qin warriors I thought were poor however, with the type of ge they show not being a Qin type to my knowledge, and the swords given to the soldiers not of a type associated with the buried army either.
The crossbow given there is tiny, and even the mecahnsm alone in the stock was too small. The Osprey/Han pictures were much better (as Yun showed).

I find some of what CJ Peers says is sensible and thought provoking, and others seem open to debate or uncertain.
Yang Hong so far seems more reasonable that everything is referenced clearly in his text, but I am still reading his book so can give a better account of it later.
It does make a number of points that would have been useful to clarify or refute in the ill-concieved versus threads...but I will make my points about that under the ancient arsenal posts and leave the flights of fancy to those that enjoy them.

I'm suprised at the weight of these armours...35kg is about the same weight as a European full plate.

Odd, my sources said that spearmen armour weigh between 26.9 - 29.05kg, archers would be 24.1 - 27.5kg and crossbowmen would weigh 19-22.9kg

The question of armour is actually quite complex because different units had different forms of armour designed for their specific purpose. For example, the crossbowmen of the Song dynasty would have their tuiqun at the back so to not obstruct them as they draw. The requirements of an infantry were for it to be long to increase protection, cavalry was short to lighten the weight, and crossbowmen need their armour to be loose while spearmen need it to be tight.

in the book I have (weapons of Ancient China) they list it by catties

spearman's armor is around 53 to 58, archer is 47-55, crossbow is 37-45

I don't know if they're using modern or ancient catties though.

During the late Sung what kind of armour was used for troops who used the da fu or guan dao or zhan ma dao?

It is my understanding the Sung did not mix troop types, such as crossbow or bow with spearmen. Is that accurate?

Cheers

Chris

Actually heavier than most full plates, incl full articulatet, but it is much easier to make than full plate, and even fairly poor smiths and their apprentises could make the plates needed for the armour, the same could not be said about full plate as used in Europe, there th plate armour is hammerd out, NOT CAST.you can try to imagine the skill and time to make such a armour compare to the various lamellar armours.

Addendum: I just read yesterday that the same source states that only 40% of Han infantry were armoured. What do you think about this, Kenneth?

Considering each lamella used folded steel, and each being unique and having a specific position in the armour, puncturing, filing, covering using silk or cotton as well as lacing techniques, I would say it was actually slightly more difficuit to make a suit of lamella armour than it was making plate armour during the same era.

Let me guess, it's from Tang sources right(ignore me if I'm wrong )? We had this discussion in Han v Rome thread. Discussion didn't get far though. We just said it's reasonable that Han had many unarmoured infantry but 40% was only a "ruff estimate". That's pretty much as far as it went.

Looking back at old Song army pics they do appear that they're not armored. Wondered why I never noticed that before. They do dress like they were armored, but when you look closer, no armor. Never seen a lot of Han/Tang army pics before so...

I would like to say that Qin have more unarmored troops then the rest of the countries of the Warring States. I'm guessing Han modeled Qin more than the rest(hey, they were the ones that won, so why not copy the winner?), correct me if I'm wrong.

I really don't think it was anything but easier to make than plate.

well made lamellar, with each plate made specific to go in place, and laced together and all is good armor and takes some skill

but well made plate, where you have to hammer and do whatever to get each section of the plate the right thickness is also very hard to make, if not much harder.

Like... say you were whittling wood, would it be easier to whittle one big piece into the desired shape, or glue/bind a bunch of popsicle sticks together?

i'd be really interested in seeing how chinese armor evolved from say the han dynasty to the qing. or is it on this forum already? someone link me?

any thread with 'armor' in it really, snippets here and there.

I would like to know the '40%' quote in context as I haven't found it yet. It may be from a period document or statistical analysis of tomb buried armies and isn't unreasonable.
What the source bases this on would need explaining though, i.e how are the stats gained for instance? Is a shield alone or just a leather helmet called 'armoured?' or is a lamenar vest enough/mimimum? Is there a distinction between different forms of armour in this percentage?
Ideally it would need a breakdown of armour types within a total. 40% with body armour might be possible for some West Han armies, if it does mean body armour...but some troops have quite heavy armour, and others with no armour carry wooden shields.
Yang Hong asserts contrary to CJ Peers that the QIn armour is only leather...much more like other texts I have read...and he says iron armour was 'widepsread' by West Han. The only qualification this needs is he then studies helmets and long shirts of scale based on nobles tombs that provide good examples but the armour type for such tombs is skewed and not typical. The most commonly depicted armour is much more simple and like that shown on common soldiers to which I provided an earlier link. A sleeveless vest for example. Leather armour also continued to be used.

His info on Tang period armour does have 60% of a 12,500 man forces recorded in Tai Bai Yin Jing as having an armour 'suit' and 40% having an armour 'battle gown'. That could be 100% of troops armoured unless both armour type is worn in conjunction.
I would expect the battle gown is the simply a longer version but I haven't got an explantion yet...I am still working through the book and only got through the Zhou!.
It has numbers of equipment so that 20% could be equiped with shields and this also corresponds to 20% of the force that could be equiped with with cavalry weapons...so it may be shields for cavalry, although 20% of the force could be equiped with with crossbows also so who has shields issued as part of their kit isn't explained.
It does show a fairly high amount of armour in this example of a Tang army unit, but whether the unit in this example is considered 'typical' is not stated either.

The 60% figure for Tang armies and 40% figure for Han armies are both from the Tongdian, an encyclopedic work from the Tang dynasty by Du You.

Do those percetages include the non-battle staff, the guys tending the supplies and such?
I hope my meaning comes across, as I'm not sure exactly how to word it.

Just call it logistical support, the meaning is the same wether ancient or modern, east or west.

BTW, shurite7 has provided an attachment on another thread of the Wujing Zongyao picture of Song dynasty heavy infantry armour (buren jia):

This website is an excellent source for pictures of Chinese weapons and armour. (text is Japanese though)

Their are quite a few armours very similar to the one Yun posted.

In the tang dynasty, an averge long production took 265 days, medium production took 220 and a quick one took 192 days. During the Song dynasty, the Beicang and the Nancang divided the operation of armour construction into 51 different procedures.

I would say it was pretty complex.

But I wouldn't say it's more complex than plate armor, or better.

in Europe, with the advent of plate, brigandine armor was the cheaper variety for less affluent fighters, that at least tells me brigandine is cheaper to produce than plate. Brigandine is more or less a form of lamellar the way I see it.

It's not really that cheap or easy to make either, but relatively to plate, it seems to be easier to make.

The majority of a european army were equipped with munitions plate, an affordable armour that was quick to produce, this was probably faster and easier to make than a typical lamellar harness. Good plate however, had to be custom fitted to it's owner, in addition it would leave no part of the body unprotected. This type of plate was probably much harder to make than lamellar.

Wujiang,

Could you elaborate on the construction procedures for the Song Dynasty.

Cheers

It would help if you gave some data rather than guesswork. We can all think and hope and make alot of 'probable' speculations. But on a history forum, these are neither credible nor accepted as facts.

It's pretty obvious that good plate would be harder to make than any lamellar...you want reasons?

1.Plate has to be custom fitted to it's owner(chest, legs, arms etc) lamellar does not.

2.Plate was thickened in specific places that are more likely to take damage.

3.Plate was not made from simple cut squares like lamellar, every single part had to be individually shaped to fit specific parts of the body.

From the observations above, it's clear that plate was both harder to make and more protective that lamellar. The fact that brigandine was worn by the poorest men on the European battlefield reinforces this.

Several years ago (88) in the magazine Millitary Technology, a german magazine in english they had calculatet that a knight in price and manhours to make compare to those available, at his height cost just a much as the most expensive MBT's today, so in more ways than one they really were the tanks of the day.

PS. by the way the most expensive tanks in $ is in fact the JSDF own battle tanks, they are hugely overpriced in my estimation compared to abillities.

Incorrect. Most armour for the common soldiers were mass-produced. Only those of the highest quality made for nobles were custom made.

Different lamellas from different areas were differently shaped.


You have failed to make comparisons between western and eastern production techniques. All you do is to make a list of western strengths while showing a clear lack of knowledge of the east. This is just as bad proof as "Romans were the best army in Europe. Therefore they were the best in the world".

Well, Wujiang, It seems you have not read my post, as I clearly stated that I knew this...



See?



Does that change the fact that shaping plate is harder than shaping small pieces of iron?



Nope. It's just your lack of knowledge of the west.

Hammering part you are correct as one big plate does take more time and care to construct. But the reason why Chinese lamellar armour is so complicated is because it isn't just about the lamellar production. But also the things that were done to them
for example, the top half of lamellas were wrapped with cloth or silk since the Sui dynasty as a means to reduce the friction between them. No European brigandine ever had this process. In addition, the number of lamellas involved. Almost 2000 for the body and the 1000 for the shoulders. Much higher in number than those in Europe

You might like to consider giving sources about objective facts. Such as the time of production of one suit or number of people involved. It took 120 armourers in the Song dynasty for a single suit.
Please use primary sources.
Information from Songshu, Songshi, Wubien, Wujing-zongyao

I suspet that you should abandon this discussion. You are both getting very confused about timelines and terminology (understandable though it is). Also, different kinds of armour were normally used in different situations and for different purposes.

nb. Suits of lamellar armour with smaller lamellae are bulkier, heavier, more prone ot getting lacing cut etc.. but....... they are much, much prettier which is quite probably the main reason they went that way. Also, Scythian armours og 5thC BCE also had silk between lamellae (again it's to make them pretty, nothing to do with "reducing friction).

never underestimate the importance to soldiers of having better looking equipment.

rgds.
Tom..

In terms of weight, Song documents stated that no armour was allowed to be over 25kg although generally the weight often goes as high as 30kg. Still this weight was comparible to the European armour of the time.
Chinese armour was more vulnerable to melee attacks due to the over all design of them have a number of intrinsic weakesses such as the armpits and lacing being exposed. At the same time, they were allowed better movement. Because of the overlapping nature of the lamellas, they were actually better at resisting arrows.


Tang dynasty records clearly showed that the reduction of friction was the prime reason for the silk. While I would think that being pretty was a factor, it was certianly not the key reason.

I don't mean to nitpick, as your post was very sensible, but I do have to disagree about lamelar being better at resisting arrows than plate. It does not for two main reasons.

Firstly, lamelar's overlaping nature, assuming the plates are laced together instead of riveted to a leather backing, allows for lots of little things for arrows and thrusts to catch on. This allows the arrows to push directly against the individual plates. Plate does not suffer from this as much, as the plates were designed to deflect blows away instead of stopping them cold.

The second is related, though it affects melee thrusts a bit more than arrows. Lamelar's ability to bend, while really nice to move in, means that arrows are even less able to deflect, but rather get funneled in. The real trouble here is that it bends at the seams, to the natural funnel is towards a gap in the metal.

Now, granted these are not huge problems, but they are definitely problems that make lamelar inferior in stopping piercing weapons than plate.

This problem was solved shortly after the 3kingdom period with the use of imbrication of the lamellas moving outwards. This means that the whole piece would then act is as deflecting structure. The bending effect of armour is actually negligible as the funneled area is often less than the size of one lemalla. In addition, th lamellas themselves were also curved either in an S or C shape. This further allowed arrows to slide off the armour rather than actaully blocking it.

The key weakness of Chinese armour was its inability to stop bashing type weapons. Because of the bending nature of lamella armour, the force of a weapon would normally be able to travel though the body even if the weapon itself doesn't penetrate the outside. I highly doubt it was a coinciendence that just as the Song dynasty armour came into service, massive heavy weapons came into favour of the military.

Nice infos here, please go on.
BTW, is Yang Hong's "Weapons in Ancient China" in Chinese or English? (either one is fine for me) And where can I get one?

I got mine from www.amazon.com
in english.

Amazon.com is about the best place to obtain the book in English. I've tried other book stores such as Barnes and Noble as well as Half Price Books and neither carry it.

Cheers

Silk was also valuable because missile weapons (arrows) tended to take the silk into the wound, making the arrow head easier to pull out without tearing the flesh. According to some books they say if Richard 1 had a silk shirt under his armour he would have survived the shot from the crossbow bolt. So they say....
Nonetheless, the Mongols made extensive use of silk for protection against arrows.

Chris

Could you elaborate on what 'imbrication' means?

Regular overlapping pattern. Like fish scales.

I means the overlapping patterns. For example, the most common form of imbrication for scales would be downwards. If the right lamella overlaps the left one, it would be moveing leftwards, and so on.

Do you have the reference ? I'd be interested to see this (in English would be best if possible).

rgds.

Tom..

This is perhaps a little off topic...

Are their two editions of this book? Amazon lists the book as having 298 pages, yet this website lists 317 pages...

It has 298 of text and several pages of colour plates at the end. Thats will be the variation.
I note some chapters in it have no proof reading and the spelling and even the position of full stops in mid sentence seem to get worse as the book goes on.
Excellent book though. It is good for a Chinese academic to do such a work.
He could have let me have a read of his draft copy first though!

I've just ordered the last available copy of this book from amazon...I hope it's worth the $130 total price I paid....

Anyway, since you seem to know much more than me about the earlier Chinese dynasties. Would you happen to know how common scale armour was compared to lamellar during the Han?

Thanks in advance.

Sorry. If I have time, I would dig for you. But right now, I have other work at hand