Snippets- China

Here you will find small bits of info salvaged from the old site unfortunatly the authors were not recorded nor the original post names. hopefully you will find something to discuss here:

China snippets

Some contemporary historians have said that Guan Yu might not have used the Green Dragon. It is more likely that he used a cavalry lance instead, since the glaive was a more common weapon in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasty (and that's when the book of ROTK was written)...

But anyway, the real thing would be so hard to wield...I wonder how did they use weapons like that back then...

Heavy cavalry remained the most valued (though not the most numerous) part of T'ang forces. In many campaigns mercinary and/or allied contingents of steppe horsemen were used. Later in the Empire small contingents (almost always 4000) of elete steppe cavalry from the Uighir's became key to millitary sucess.

The T'ang put in place the militia system (including store houses, grainaries, arms depots, training etc) that produced good quality infantry. This system continued in use by sucessor empires and kingdoms.

A good book (if you can get it) is:

Karl Heinz Ranitzsch, "The Army of Tang China", 1995. ISBN 1_874101_04_3. (Plates by Angus McBride)

rgds. Tom..

In 647 The Chinese emperor sent an embassy to Harsha, the emperor of northern India. Before it arrived, Harsha died. One of his ministers, Arjuna, took control of the eastern parts of Harsha's empire, namely Bihar and Bengal. When the Chinese embassy arrived, under Wang Hsuan Tze, Arjuna attacked it. Wang was forced to withdraw to the north. In Nepal he gained the cooperation of the Kings of Nepal and Tibet (who were bound by treaty with China), who gave him an army composed of 7000 Nepalese and 1200 Tibetans. In 648 he marched back south to the Ganges, where he defeated and captured Arjuna, and carried him away in captivity back to China.