China military history

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Not forgetting that the county of Flanders was part of the kingdom of France till 1380, after which it passed over to Burgundy....

 

Of course. However, were these cities much affected by the Hundred Years' War? Most of the 14th century campaigns were fought on the west coast or in central France IIRC.

 

You are right of course.
I am not avare of any actual figthing in Flanders during the 100 yeras war.

Actually the county of Flanders, and especially the bourgeoisie of the rich cities of Gant and Brugges had been in nearely constant rebellion against France for decades before the 100 years war started.

 

at the time of around al rashid caliphate 800 AD , the franks , the west
were famous for their mechanical skills ,
they left the rest of the world behind in architecture in the 11th century
their shipbuilding was creative and dynamic
mathematics was superior to any other country by the 13th century
the monasteries were an active center of critical discutions with no
distinction between theology and natural science , the debates involved
basic thinking concept and was very free ranging often extending over
centuries on one subject. the nature of physical impulse and the rotation
of the earth being two examples
the emergence of the west as the motor of human progress did not came
about by random chance , though the borrowing was extensive,
the achievement where geniure .

 

Western superiority over the rest of the world is highly debated these days. The general consensus has shifted a lot and now most historians agree that Europe did not have any notable advantage over China in any field until the late eighteenth century. As to the specific fields you're talking about, as you may have noticed they are very specific and do not point to some form of general superiority or insular European progress vs global stagnation.

 

most historians are wrong , from the 16th century , the only way to resist
the europeen was to adopt their technics and organisation .
it has been a constant of history since than as europe reach extended
it's technical impact was walking in step .
this in no way dismiss other cultures , but is a fact ,
to keep one's culture alive one had to embrace the western one or perish
this contradiction is examplified at the higgest degree by japan
who suceeded the earliest and within a life time went from feudalism
to challenging the greatest western power of them all ,
it was crazy but what a trip !!

 

From the 16th Century, yes. But earlier than that, if you were wounded in battle and wanted to survive, you would be best going to an Arab doctor (just as one example).

 

This is not true, particularly when considering China. This culture stayed alive throughout the period of Western Imperialism. The example of Japan is very good; Japan's great leap only occured after 1867, when European dominance over the world was an undeniable fact, but very shortly after the Europeans had first decided to interfere with the country at all. After the rise of Japan and certain other events one might see the dominance of Europe as a challenged state all over the world.

The Ottoman Empire remained a very serious threat to Europe throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Chinese economic and technological development was ahead of Europe until the Industrial Revolution. Ideologically and theologically, India was the place to be, definitely not the self-indulgent monasteries of Europe.

 

there is no doubt of the culture of japan being thorougly japannese .
even today , I got more culture shock in modern , well mannered and
friendly Kyoto than in rude , pushy , kerala !

I would say than to protect one's culture the non western people had to
absorb it's mindscape and it's technology , it started at the margin of
europe , berber , turkey , russia , sweden . each country had to reform
itself under military pressure , usually under great rulers .

 

The 1st Emperor of Unified China Qin Wu Huang Di conquered north China ending hundreds of years of Warring states( where the Sun Zi ART OF WAR was being writtten). These happen even before Roman Empire started.

Chinese han History has always been threatened by foreign invader, like Northern Huns, threaten Zhao & Yan of warring states and only be to neutralised by Qin Emperor. The Huns rises again during Hans Dynasty and were to be driven and destroy almost completely by Hans Wu Di, the 4th Emperor of Han Dynasty. The Hans were spilt into 2 part, Southern Han pledge their allegiance to Hans Dynasty therafter and were subsequently absorbed into Hans culture, thus "Han-ised". The north Hun remain as small threat until Tang Dynasty. the rest of defeated Huns retreated and found their way across Ural and cross into Europe, thus starting to threaten the Roman Empire under Attila who unfied the European HUNs.

Western China on the other hand are threaten by Tartar and Tibetan. To the south are the Yue Tribes and not to forget the Eastern "Yi" (developed into Japan).

China were conquered or messed up 4 times by minorities outsider namely the HUNS at 256 BC and 385 - 444 AD, Manchus Qing 1075AD and 1626AD and MONGOLS 1127AD. The HANS chinese Emperor has been practising centralise control of Army and at most time, negelected maintainance and modernisation of Army. This act more or less restrict the growth and improvment of Hans Chinese (esp during SONG, MING and late QING era), thus the Hans Chinese were mostly on Defensive mode since Song Dynasty. Twice being swept away by MONGOL and MANCHUS calvary.

The Gunpowder age comes, Chinese did not catch in in Industrialisation and modernsation. It is until late Qing Dynasty that they woke out and attempt to build 10 modernised army Infantry Div and north-eastern Fleet navy. However, Japan had already been doing this and when war broke out, the Chinese were brushed aside.

It is until Communist Chinese that Mordern weapon started to poured into china, esp when Soviet supplied MASSIVE modern equipt to Red Chinese for Korean Conflict. Chinese Literally Copy and re-produce the weapon and later improve them.

Fighting, defending and losing war/ battles for hundred of years, the Chinese are at last learning fast. They have performed well in Korea, Border war with Soviet and India. They only had limited success with Vietnam.

At such rate, i say the Chinese Military will be a force to be reckon with in next 10 - 20 years. Provided they had total control of the massive population and country. They gotta to it their style instead of following the US style od democrary.

 

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tradditionnal chinese military thinking was , how to keep backward
barbarians and pissed off peasants from overtopping the imperial
administration .

the discovery than it is a bigger world out there, came as a rude shock to
the mandarinate and took the usual steps of denial , anger , soul searching and absorbtion .
It took roughly one hundred years , from the 1850 ~ 1950
, or the full lifespan of anyone who would have living memories of the past
for the proccess to be achieved .
the PLA is an unknown quality , it is evolving at breathtaking space from the
old mass army , the essential tasks of keeping the peasants wise is of
course still on , defending the borders against neighboors had a somewhat
more patchy results , however the chinese state has on the whole followed
historical practice of being wary of war outside the traditional tribute area

this thinking was valid as long as the middle kingdom was self suficient
new needs will create new problems of supply and shipping lane security ,
and is dragging china into the vortex of the world resources game .
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the huns and the mongols seem to be much alike...fast moveing light cavalry armed with powerful compound bows and lances ...did the huns and mongols ever clash in battle or is it that the mongols are the decendants of a hun tribe ?..

 

The huns were chassed by the chinese from their homeland around
the first century AD , they spreaded west along the steppe , creating
a giant chain collision of people . it all came to an end near Chalon at the
battle of the catalonic ( ? ) fields , three days of butchery to get a draw !

They settled in the hungarian plain , their camp located at buda , future
budapest , the hungarians with a large dose of wishful thinking ,hold them
to be amongst their ancestors .
They were supposedly slaughtered to a man around the 800 AD horizon
by one of the new slave kingdom , the new kids on the block .

except in the broader racial sense there doesn't seems to be any direct
descendance with the mongol ,

the sky mongols were an motivational invention of gengis khan who
created a new nation to unifie the various tribes than he had defeated ,
subjugated , assimilated and led to an unending string of victories

they fought with the same tactics because they had the same technology ,
geography and economy , on the steppe the fighting is more like sea
fighting , holding a position doesn't have any merit , it's all about
hit and run or hit and smash .
mobility and coordination is at a premium







.

 

what slavic kingdom slaughtered them and how..were the huns of the buda river of 800ad no longer the swift horsemen of old? had they become farmers and turned into ordinary infantry?..the mongols of 1200 were cast of the same hun mold and were also like the horse huns hard to beat...also were the huns an asiatic people or more caucasian ,do we know?

 

the huns were suposedly of the finno-ungrian familly , rather asians though
the eurasian plain was peopled by either white , yellow or turkik
herders, the areas changing back and forth to the tune of succesful warfare

From carolingians sources, the lasts of the huns were supposedly killed by
the newly created kingdom of "esclavonia " centered on bohemian lands
this kingdom did not last and disapeared rapidly
I don't knows how they did it , but others wiped out nation of horsemen
by hitting their camps and flocks , herders cannot compete with the birthrate
of farmers , one big loss of men and the strenght ratio collapse , then the
only option is flight or slaughter ,
the hungarian plain was too small for flight .

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Asiatic nomadic ways of war relied on large open spaces to use the mobility of all-cavalry armies to their best advantage. This is one of the reasons why the Mongols stopped their victorious rampage not far west of Kiev instead of trampling all of Europe; the geography did not allow them to deploy as they wished.

The Russians pride themselves in having defeated the Mongols somewhere in the fifteenth century; this was because they forced their enemy to give battle on a field limited on each side by a river and narrowing towards the Russian lines.

 

Of the top of my head , battle of leichfeld , the germans princes trap the
hungarians against a river ,
the chinese of the first century did it by constant raiding against the
huns flocks and camps ,
so did the U.S. cavalry with the red indians

the mongol under the generals subotai and djebe oinon did push as far as
hungary, trashed the locals and stopped when receiving the news of gengis
death .
subotai an old man of fifty is supposed to have ridden straight back
to karakorum non-stop ..four thousand kliks in one month leaving behind a
trail of dead horses and exhausted bodyguards !!

the russians under dimitri donskoi beat the tatars ( mongols ) of the golden
horde at the battle of koulikovo , a straight bashfeast then , under ivan
the terrible took kazzan in a siege

the cossacks of the don used the classic light cavalry tactics ,
if you have mobility , it's possible to circle your heavy
footed opponent , an in fact surround him with inferior forces ,

the same tactics reapeared in northern chad 20 years ago during the
"Toyota wars" . utes ( pick-up trucks for the trans-atlanticists ) loaded with
RPG armed squads were running circle around the lybians armored
columns , it need balls, reckless driving and a rather stupid opponent

on occasion the mongols stormed cities on foot , or stood their ground in
sluggfest , but the ability to withdraw at will make tackling large hairy foes
so much more fun


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were the huns, as an entity pretty much wiped from the planet at leichfeld ? ...was this the end of the huns as a historic force?

 

majorwoody , I did a bit of digging so here is the best so far

from norman Davies outstanding book " Europe, a history "

"The fearsome Magyars rode onto the stage at the end of the ninth century
Though not related to the huns, the magyars lived by the same predatory
habits and settled on the same plain of "Hungaria " for sixty years their
annual raiding parties stormed through the former carolingian empire .
They were every bit as murderous as the vikings and far fleeter
by the 940 they felt free to roam at will - to apulia , , to aragon , to
aquitaine
They finaly met their match when the germans princes united to challenge
the latest invasion of bavaria in 955 . there on the lechfeld near augsburg
on 10-12 august , Otto of saxony led the germans to a great victory after
three days of slaughter , the magyars were tamed , the remnants
straggled back to tend their herds and plowing the plain "

Otto is supposed to have been raised on a shield and taken around the
army , crowded by his extatic army the first german emperor

The huns are only mentionned late 800th to record their demise
so the sequence for the raiders from the steppe is
Huns , magyars , mongols ..all with the same equipment , strategy and
tactics

To this day hungarian folklore maintain than the huns and magyars were
blood brothers , Attila is suposed to be a good name for boys !!
most non hungarian dismiss the direct link , but hey... who knows






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