Triple C

Putting a a painful hole on the legionaire's arm, yes. It wouldn't break it, though, and I won't count on it to take my enemy out of the field. The thousands of arrorows the Parthians had to use to have the paralysing effect is telling.


Are you sure about that? The Parthians had infantry. Not good ones compared to the Romans, but nobody's were. The Rommans did successfully intergrate the Numidians into their formations, and a good deal of Sipio's convincing was done at the tip of the sword. I think a lot of those Chinese mounter archers were stepp mercenaries.

I am not so sure about the Gauls. Ceasar's honor guards was heavy Gallic cavalry, and so were that of Vespesian and Titus. It is also clear that Gallic auxilliary cavalry was deployed as shock cavalry on the field. While the Romans depended on their heavy infantry to win their battles they were far from deprived in their selection of cavalry troops.

That was, if I am not mistaken, after Ventidius wiped out two Parthian field armies with classic defensive infantry tactics against cavalry. Anthony lost most of his men to exposure and disease than battle after having his own line of logistics cut. Again, I don't see either empire as having a clear tactical advantage against the other.

Terrain forced the Persians to give up a measure of their superiority in numbers. Yet they still lost every head-on battle against the Greeks; their missile fire and cavalry charges failed to bring the Greeks to heel. All this says is that a light cavalry and infantry army can take a pure heavy infantry force in terrain favorable to cavalry movement and has long fields of fire. Which is IMHO not a lot.

Alexander was a military genius in that he defeated an empire a league above the Greeks in wealth and power in record time with inferior numbers and limited resources. It was never in doubt that the Greeks could lick the Persians in any tactical battle when they could muster a force large enough to ensure that the Persians could not defeat them by movement alone. Xenophon cut his way out of Persia with 10,000 Spartans and Athenians--a number totally inadequate to hold any permanent ground and no supplies out of what they could obtain by waste and pillage--against what the empire could throw at them. The fact that they made it out suggest that the Persian military system was seriously flawed. Btw Alexander's infantry had only lost one straight up fight againts the Persians and that was his left wing in Guagamela. Without his elite cavalry Alexander would have been forced to take more casualities thus limiting the scope and range of his conquests but he probably would not have lost.

__________________
What benefits the body is called medicine; what benefits the soul, discipline.
-Augustine of Hippo

IDonT

If you have a crossbow bolt sticking out of your forearm, you cannot weild your sword or sheild effectively. If it hits your leg, calves, or feet, walking let alone fighting is difficult. If one of your men is hit like that, he is out of the fight. My point is that a crossbow bolt does not need to kill to take a legionaire out of the fight.

Think how the crossbow changed warfare in Europe in the middle-ages. How devastating it was to armored knights that even the Pope banned their use. Similar changes in warfare occured in China when the crossbow was introduced in the Warring States period.

As for the others, I think we got off topic. I would gladly discuss them with you if you open a Rome/Greek vs Persia topic.

IDonT

This is from a post on the ChinaHistory Forum. It describes the battle between a Xiongnu Warlord and the Han Army circa 36 BC. This is the the battle where the rumored Roman prisoners from Carrhae fought the Chinese. I bolded the relevant passages.


First of all, the relevant text is the "Han Shu" (History of the Han Dynasty) and not the "Hou Han Shu" (History of the Later Han Dynasty) as the article mistakenly claims. The passage is in the biography of Chen Tang, one of the two Han generals who led the battle against the Xiongnu Chanyu (king) Zhizhi. [Zhizhi Chanyu was his title, like "Chinggis Khan" - his real name (transliterated into Chinese) was Luanti Hutuwusi]

This is the passage describing the battle (Chinese characters in GB encoding):

The next day, the Han army advanced to Zhizhi's fort on the bank of the Talas River, and set up camp three li (about 1.5 kilometres) from the fort.


They saw five-coloured banners flying from the Chanyu's fort, and several hundred men in armour defending its ramparts. More than a hundred cavalry rode back and forth in front of the fort, and more than a hundred infantry performed drills at its gates in fish-scale formation.

The Xiongnu defending the fort taunted the Han army, shouting, "Come and fight!"

The Xiongnu cavalry charged the Han camp, but all the Han crossbowmen had their weapons loaded and aimed, so the cavalry backed off.

The Han crossbowmen then moved in several times and shot volleys at the Xiongu cavalry and infantry at the gate of the fort, forcing them to withdraw into the fort.

Han Generals Gan Yanshou and Chen Tang ordered the army to charge to the walls of the fort at the sounding of the drums and surround it on all four sides. Each unit would perform the task assigned to it: some digging tunnels under the walls, some blocking up the arrow ports in the walls. The pavises advanced in front, and the halberdiers and crossbowmen behind them. The crossbowmen laid down a supressing fire on the ramparts, driving the defenders off the walls.

But there were also two wooden stockades outside the fort, from which the Xiongnu shot arrows at the Han attackers, killing or wounding many of them.

The attackers then brought up torches and burned the stockades down.

That night, several hundred Xiongnu cavalry attempted to break out of the siege (and seek reinforcements), but were wiped out by the Han crossbows.

At first, the Chanyu had thought of fleeing to Kangju (a tributary state of the Xiongnu) upon hearing of the arrival of the Han army. But he then suspected that the king of Kangju would betray him to the Han as revenge for past grievances. He also heard that Wusun and all the other Central Asian states (that had once been dominated by the Xiongnu) had contributed troops to the Han expeditionary force, and realised that he had nowhere to run.

(Before the battle) Zhizhi Chanyu had already evacuated the fort, but then returned to it, saying, "Why not hold out? The Han army has travelled far, and its supplies cannot sustain a long siege."

The Chanyu then put on his armour and took his place on the walls, and even his queen and several tens of concubines took bows and shot at the besiegers.

One of the Han crossbowmen shot the Chanyu in the nose, and many of his concubines were also shot dead.

The Chanyu then came down from the walls and mounted his horse, directing the defense from his headquarters within the fort.

By midnight, the stockades had been destroyed, but the Xiongnu defenders came up onto the rammed-earth walls of the fort and yelled battle cries.

At this point, more than ten thousand Kangju cavalry arrived (the Kangju king had remained loyal to the Xiongnu after all) and deployed in more than ten places around the fort in support of the Xiongnu.

In the night, they attacked the Han camp several times, but were beaten back each time.

At dawn, fires were raised all around the fort, and the Han soldiers scaled the walls in high spirits and shouting their battle cries. The sound of bells and drums shook the earth.

The Kangju reinforcements disengaged and fled the scene.

The Han soldiers advanced behind pavises on all sides of the fort, and stormed it en masse.

The Chanyu, with more than a hundred men and women in his entourage, retreated into his headquarters.


The Han army set fire to the headquarters and then charged in. The Chanyu suffered severe wounds and died.

An officer named Du Xun cut off the Chanyu's head. Inside the headquarters, the Han soldiers found two captive Han envoys, as well as the letter that Gu Ji (a Han envoy whom Zhizhi Chanyu had executed, provoking the Han expedition against him) and his mission had presented to the Chanyu.

All the Han soldiers were allowed to keep whatever booty they found.

The Xiongnu queen, crown prince and aristocrats were all beheaded, about 1,518 people in all. 145 Xiongnu were captured in battle, and more than a thousand surrendered. These prisoners were bestowed upon the kings of the fifteen Central Asian kingdoms who had participated in the expedition.

Triple C

All that is good and well. I am merely pointing out the obvious that strong, determined individuals will fight with life threatening wounds. That heavy armor and shield mitigates the effect of missile fire, and that if not enough of the legionaires were dropped before contact, the light infantry force will have a serious fight at their hands.

So it is suspected that there were Romans in a battle with the Chinese. That is an interesting hypothesis but what relevance is it going to bear on the issue? That about a centuria of Romans were defeated at a fortified camp by how many Chinese troops?

I do not see what are you getting at, and my guess is that you mean to illustrate how Xiongu darts can penetrate certain types of Chinese armor. That does not say how well Chinese darts perform would against Roman armor or how strong is Roman defenses in general. I can also tell you that the British Royal Armoury performed a series of experiments with reproduction medieval plate armor and contemporary projectile missiles, supervised by both experts in the field and scientists from Vickers. None of the projectiles, save for heavy crossbow at very close range, succeeded in punching through. That, however, does not answer the question: what is the power of Chinese crossbows against Roman armor + shield, especially the new thickened designs the Rommans allegedly adopted after Carhae?

Too many factors unaccounted for in this hypothetical senario for me to be convinced.

IDonT

Triple C,

There are many people who hypothesized as to what happened to the Roman prisoners at Carrhae. One thought was that they were employed as mercenaries to a Xiongnu warlord called ZhiZhi. This warlord, along with the ex Roman soldiers, were later defeated in a siege by Han Chinese troops around 36 BC.

The two main arguments are the ones I highlighted.

1.) The troops employed the "fish scale formation" a formation that could be the testudo.

2.) The double wooden stockade, a common Roman field fortification.

As usual there is no way to prove it.