Europe and asia

The spiritual leader of Europe, the Pope, doesn't call just anyone "Hammer of God"

He only says that sort of thing when an apocalyptic, unstoppable force of unfathomable terror and power is sweeping across the land like an unholy plague of arrow shooting locust, toppling kingdom after kingdom.

It also seems a bit implausable that the Mongols could transport such a huge number of people right into foreign territory across a continent into another so quickly. There were not that many Mongols in existence. True, they had auxillaries and mercenaries (even an English knight fought for them) but were made up largely of the original steppe dwellers from Central Asia.

"Hammer of God" !

There were samurai within the wako ranks, as well as skilled fighting men from China--certainly "real soldiers" in the practical sense.  It's even known that many of their Chinese members trained in kenjutsu.

And they were very well-equipped.  When Lim-Ah-Hong attacked Manilla in 1574, he had 4,000 warriors in 62 armed junks, and the Spanish initially thought they were being assaulted by a Portuguese fleet--not bad for folks who supposedly weren't "real soldiers".

Peace,

David

Degredado,

Yes, I'm aware of Portuguese exploits in the Far East, but the fact remains that, despite putting up a tremendous fight, Pessoa was ultimately defeated and killed.

Formerly the governor of Macau, Pessoa commanded the carrack Nossa Senhora De Graca, when she was assaulted by samurai in 1610.  Pessoa killed some samurai himself, but he was described as fighting with a sword and shield--common equipment for a European officer at that time, actually.  So, esgrima was probably on par with kenjutsu at that time.

I also didn't mention the incident involving the English galleon Tiger, commanded by Sir Edward Michelbourne, and a wako junk, in 1605.  A fight broke out on the Tiger, during what was assumed to be a friendly meeting.  The English were ambushed, but recovered quickly and used pikes to drive the wako into the forward cabin, where they were then finished off with artillery.

Peace,

David

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go to hell you are an cheap asian jerk

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I say that this djdjdj racist-spammer should be banned.

The topic is absurd.... Dosn't djdjdj even know that there are hundreds of Asian cultures and hundreds of European cultures?

This djdj guy is fuming about how Mongols were conquering Eastern Europe... - Are you one of those so called "White Pride" people?  By the way, Mongols were no Asian-Supremeists (they killed whole lot of Asians too!), so no reason to fume about losing in your "race wars"!

The 1574 attack on Manilla is actually just fine as an "indication"--as I already pointed out, Lim-Ah-Hong had some 4,000 men, all well armed.  Considering the fairly small numbers of Spanish present in the Philippines at that time, the victory of Juan de Salcedo was no small accomplishment (though the Spanish were backed by Pampangan mercs).  Also, the wako lack of cavalry wasn't an issue, since we don't hear too much about cavalry use in general in the Philippines at this time anyway.  As for the Ming Chinese defeating the wako "pretty easily", it's interesting to note that Ch'i Chi-Kuang implemented Army Reforms (like the establishment of the "Mandarin Duck" squad formation) in direct response to the wako threat, so the military capabilities of the latter could not have been negligable. 

So?

Perhaps you could elaborate on these three points?

The luxury of historical hindsight can be distorting, leading some of us to make claims of victories achieved with "relative ease", that may or may not reflect the reality of the situations being discussed.

Peace,

David

"The 1574 attack on Manilla is actually just fine as an "indication"--as I already pointed out, Lim-Ah-Hong had some 4,000 men, all well armed.  Considering the fairly small numbers of Spanish present in the Philippines at that time, the victory of Juan de Salcedo was no small accomplishment (though the Spanish were backed by Pampangan mercs).  Also, the wako lack of cavalry wasn't an issue, since we don't hear too much about cavalry use in general in the Philippines at this time anyway. "

The point is wako isn't a regular army of imperial Japan and far from the quality of that of Toyotomi's army that displayed its fighting prowess in the Korean wars. It lack key element of organization, cavalry and artillery which is not difficult to beat head on.

"As for the Ming Chinese defeating the wako "pretty easily", it's interesting to note that Ch'i Chi-Kuang implemented Army Reforms (like the establishment of the "Mandarin Duck" squad formation) in direct response to the wako threat, so the military capabilities of the latter could not have been negligable.  ""

The original Ming border squads were not imperial armies and their fighting capacity was very poor, even the imperial army at the time has denerated to such a level that mongols won frequent victories when raiding. Note that Wo Kou's attacks are raids not serious threats to ming border in any way. Qi Ji Guan is only a Cang Jun which is a small post and its quite possible that the emperor have never even herd of him until he defeated the Wo kou. And this is the Ming army of the mid 16 century, it will undergo a much increase in qualtity by the time of Zhang Ju Zheng.

"Perhaps you could elaborate on these three points?"

Certainly, The The major superiority of the Chinese crossbow over their western counterparts is its trigger mechanism, Dubs claimed the arrangement of the parts of this mechanism was almost as complicated as that of a modern rifle bolt, and could be reproduced only by very competent mechanics. Removal of the shafts allowed the the component pieces to drop out and although the mechanism was easy to reassemble, it may have taken more ingenuity than the huns possessed to reproduce the bronze casting. Later western devices were often unnecessarily complicated and with so many moving parts must have been prone to disorder. The Chinese lock, on the other hand, was fool proof in operation and it could not discharge itself because of water on the bearing surfaces,; its reliability was absolute, in fact the mechanism have litle changed since han times, many later dynasties in fact try to dig up lost mechanisms from the past and improve on them, in one instance, the Ming emperor, Zhong Yuan Zhang have duged up a Han crossbow and copied its mechanism. This along with better manufactured bolts aloowed the Eastern crossbow to outrange, outpierce, and less mistakes than the western counterparts.
While on the side of tactical formation, the early troops of the central plain had developed the volley rotation shooting formation which only the 18th century European flintlock shooters mastered. And the variety of the Crossbow of the Chinese version such as the repeater gave it far more variety and advantage. This is a passage from a song manual which states the point:
"The crossbow is the most efficient weapon of any, even at distances as small as five feet. The crossbowmen are mustered in separate companies, and when they shoot, nothing can stand in front of them, no [enemy] formation can keep its order. If attacked by cavalry, the crossbowmen will be as solid as a mountain, shooting off such volleys that nothing can remain alive before them. Although the charge my be impetuous it will not reach them. Therefore the barbarians [i.e. Khitan] fear [the crossbow]. For struggling around strategic points among mountains and rivers and defiles, overcoming men who do not lack bravery, the crossbow is indispensable.

Regarding the method of using the crossbow, it cannot be mixed up with hand-to-hand weapons, and it is beneficial when shot from high ground facing downwards. It only needs to be used so that the men within the formation are loading while the men in the front line of the formation are shooting. As they come forward they use shields to protect their flanks. Thus each in their turn they draw their crossbows and come up; then as soon as they have shot bolts they return again into their formation. Thus the sound of the crossbows is incessant and the enemy can hardly even flee. Therefore we have the following drill -

shooting rank
advancing rank
loading rank.

"The luxury of historical hindsight can be distorting, leading some of us to make claims of victories achieved with "relative ease", that may or may not reflect the reality of the situations being discussed."

There is nothing that I disagreed about this statement, so whats your point?

"China was hardly gained because Mongols hardly knew about siege at that time.  After they took some Chinese prisoners as siege mechanics did they manage to speed up siege processes(Normal siege took around 5~9 days I think after Chinese siege help).  If the mongols knew how to make siege weapons before their invasion of China, chances are that the two worlds would have fallen at relatively same time."

On the contrast, the Mongols well perfected their siege techniques when invading Song, and the siege of Xiang yang still took over 5 years causing the mongols to loose over 50,000 troops on the process.