Editor's note: During the Han Dynasty, the Han army was famous for being powerful, and it was able to fight the Wusun people in the same way as the Huns. Being able to attack the crowd with few, shows that the farming nation can also have strong soldiers. However, in Central Asia, several farming countries were evaluated as "weak soldiers" by the Han Dynasty, including the famous Parthian Empire. Why are the same farming nations so different?
▲Parthian Empire, Han Dynasty, Rome, and Guishuang are collectively called the four empires
《Historical Records·Dawan Biography》 ": Dawan, Daxia, and Anxi are all big countries, many strange things, aboriginals, quite similar to China, but the soldiers are weak, and the wealth of the Han Dynasty is weak; in the north, there are the Dayue family and Kangju family, and the soldiers are strong.
▲Sima Qian
As a farming country, the Han Dynasty is a strong soldier, but in Central Asia, nomads are a strong force. It is a very strange thing. And decades after Zhang Qian’s return, the Parthian Empire killed Crassou, one of the top three giants in Rome, and annihilated 40,000 Roman legions in the Battle of Calle. The siege of Daiya caused a disastrous defeat. Although the Roman Empire was able to counterattack Parthia many times with a stronger national power, it could not be subdued after all. Such a performance cannot be called weak in any way. This is related to the population distribution of the Western Regions and Central Asia. In fact, in Central Asia around AD, there were even more nomadic populations than agricultural populations. Central Asia is dominated by grasslands and deserts, and farming settlements are scattered in narrow river valleys and oasis.
In terms of the population of the countries in the Western Regions, in the Western Han Dynasty, the population of Gumo was 24,500, Wensu was 8,400, Wulei, Quli With only a thousand mouths and 81,317 mouths, Qiuci is already a superpower in the Tarim Basin. However, Wusun, a nomadic country in the Yili River and Qihe River Basin, has 120,000 households and a population of 630,000. Kangju in the Aral Sea also has a population of 600,000.
The farming city-states in the Western Regions and Central Asia are all militia systems due to their sparse population, but their city-states are very weak. Even the Great Xia established by Greek immigrants (that is, the kingdom of Bactria, Zhang Qian should have been seized by the Scythians when he was envoy to the Western Regions but still retains Hellenistic features). This is because unlike many people’s imagination, all the people cannot guarantee the combat effectiveness of soldiers. A truly powerful army is a full-time army. The good fighting of ancient Greek city-state soldiers originated from the support of a large number of slaves. In the Western Han dynasty, which practiced classical militarism, the combat effectiveness of the prefecture soldiers recruited through voluntary recruitment was still poor. During the Wenjing era, they were often beaten by the intrusion of the Huns. Otherwise, Li Guang, who was able to defend the frontier, would not be called a fly. General (Li Guang performed poorly when he later attacked the Xiongnu).
After two to three years of military service without departing from agricultural production, those with outstanding performance will be selected into the regular army. In other words, the powerful combat power of the Han army's "one Han as five Hus" was also the result of the selection of the population base of the farming empire. In addition, the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty also recruited on a large scale civil warriors and recruited soldiers. After all, the hunting and grazing activities of the nomads themselves have the attributes of military training, and the harsh living environment makes only the stronger people survive. Compared with farming peoples who need to devote a lot of time to agricultural activities, they must have more time for martial arts and military practice. Therefore, the proportion of nomads who can mobilize combat-capable soldiers is undoubtedly higher than that of farming nations.
So located in BakertAlthough Daxia in the Ria Basin is a large country with a population of more than one million, because of the barrenness of Central Asia, the farming areas are scattered and the internal cohesion is poor. The city-states were loosely united, so they were conquered by the Yue people with "100,000 households and 400,000 mouths" and established the Guishuang Kingdom.
▲Parthian Empire's heyday
Just rest, which is the Parthian Empire, we need to pay attention to rest The weak army is the intelligence brought back by Zhang Qian, not the intelligence brought back by the envoy of the Han envoy who was greeted by 20,000 cavalry to the capital of Hetompillos during the pre-rest period when he was sent to rest in 105 BC.
▲Parthian dynasty soldiers
Parthian empire was also established by nomads, but it was already highly agriculturalized and deeply cultivated at the time The Scythians in Central Asia infested. At that time, the territory of the Parthian Empire in Central Asia was mainly the Khorasan region in northeastern Iran. This area was not very populated, and it was separated from the Persian mainland of Parthia by towering mountains. Although the Khorasan region of the Parthian Empire was under militarized management, agriculture still squeezed the people’s military training time. In combat, local militias often lost ground to the nomadic army who had assembled a huge force through their superior number of horses. Therefore, Zhang Qian ranked An Xi together with Dawan and Daxia into the ranks of weak soldiers based on the evaluation he got from the hearsay.
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The Parthian Empire in the mid-Western Han Dynasty did not reach its peak. At this time, the army of the Parthian Empire was in a difficult transition period. After annexing large tracts of the Seleucid dynasty, the Mesopotamia and the vast territory of Syria need to be comforted and digested. In 124 BC, after Aldaban I pushed back from the Seleucid dynasty’s counterattack, he immediately went to the east to fight the Scythians, who had become restless due to the westward migration of the Otsuki Clan. As a result, he was turned away by the Greek mercenaries. Died in battle. After that, after the efforts of Mithridates II, the Parthian Empire completed its reforms and established a well-known armored cavalry force, but even in the later peak era, the number of armored cavalry in the country was only a few thousand.
When the envoy of the Han Dynasty rested in 105 BC, the envoy of the Han Dynasty was able to dispatch 20,000 cavalry to greet him. Ten cities, people belong to a lot of" positive comments. However, the transformation has not yet been fully completed at this time, and even in the battle of Kalai a few decades later, the heavy cavalry led by Suleiner was only one or two thousand. Most of the 20,000 cavalry sent by the Parthian Empire at this time were light cavalry and servants with extremely simple equipment. However, although the Parthian army in this period was not enough to fight against the Romans, it was already capable of retreating the Scythians and the Yueshi.
Finally, we must point out that the high mobilization rate of nomads does not mean high military virtues. Except for the special arid and barren areas of Central Asia and the Mongolian Plateau, most areas can feed far more people than nomads. The militia of the farming nation is certainly not an opponent of the nomadic army, but it is normal for the professional army to crush the nomads with less victory and more.
▲Moloj Battle, the Tatar defeated
And not to mention the high-light achievements of Hantang For example, the Russians who are good at growing wheat and rice are examples of fighting nations. In the Battle of Moloj in 1572, Tsarist Russia, whose main force was deeply trapped in the Livonian War, faced the 60,000 Crimean Tartars who came to steal the city with 25,000 divisions. Tatar army, forty thousand Tatars were beheaded, the prince of Tatar Khan was killed. Since then, the Crimean Khanate, which ravaged Eastern Europe, fell into disrepair and became a loyal dog of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. It has long been hindered by weak combat power in Turkish foreign wars. For example, in the Battle of Vienna, it was only touched by Polish winged cavalry. The army collapsed. The so-called belief that the wolf totem has combat effectiveness is nothing more than the traditional routine of a liar to fool a fool.
This article is the original manuscript of the Cold Weapon Research Institute. The original profile of the editor-in-chief and the author Leng Weapon Research Institute, any media or public account shall not be reprinted without written authorization. Violators will be held liable.
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