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A History of the Han-Xiongnu Wars

Deadguy2001

Deadguy2001

oWo
This is a two part essay about the Han-Xiongnu (Mongol ancestors) wars I found. Some pretty crazy shit went down during the 80 year long total war.

The essays are decently well written and the author has dozens of citations to reputable journals and history books. It's a terrifying 30 minute read on what a centralized pre-modern state can do if its populace unites around a campaign of total genocide.

I personally found the fact that the Han dynasty completely restructured its army from a mass peasant infantry levy to professional cavalry army within a generation to be the most impressive part of this. What do you find most terrifying or impressive about this war?

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-edward-luttwak-doesnt-know-about.html

http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2014/09/what-edward-luttwak-doesnt-know-about_6.html
 
Deadguy2001 said:
What do you find most terrifying or impressive about this war?
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"The general of swift cavalry Huo Qubing has led forth the trips and personally commanded a force of barbarians captured in previous campaigns, carrying with him only light provisions and crossing the great dessert. Fording the Huozhangqu, he executed the enemy leader Bijuqi and then turned to strike at the enemy general of the left, cutting down his pennants and seizing his war drums. He crossed over Mt. Lihou, forded the Gonglu, captured the Tuntou king, the Han king, and one other, as well as eighty generals, ministers, household administrators, and chief commandments of the enemy… He seized a great multitude of the enemy, taking 70,443 captives while only three tenths of his own men were lost in the campaign."

Quite the scoreboard there, especially with his troops being foreign.
 
Those numbers go past impressive and into flat out ridiculous. The strategy is similar to the US in the Plains Wars, but with the numbers magnified by a thousand.
 
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Gaius Marius said:
Those numbers go past impressive and into flat out ridiculous.
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I would take them with a grain of salt, yeah. Same way we wouldn't take Herodotus' account of "millions of Persians" for granted; a lot of ancient histories are written as literature/propaganda for the current rulers instead of scientific analysis. The total army sizes were probably around the low hundred thousands (p 123), which is still quite large for Antiquity.

This Luttwak fellow's approach sounds like the old pop-history standby of "take current geo-political fears, clumsily apply them to history, make money". "The Chinese are holding our economy hostage, daggers behind their smiles" and all that. Anyway, what struck me the most was the huge amount of crossover between the supposed barbarians and the Han dynasty itself. As the article says, a lot of their recruits and probably a fair share of officers were originally nomads. It makes sense. Take foreigners who're already masters of the terrain, add better horses, weapons, and organization, stir for 3 years and Presto! you have victory. Get barbarian auxiliaries today!

Just hope they don't rebel against you later or try the same trick on you. The Western Romans tried their luck, Eastern Rome kinda did with the Crusaders, and a cartload of Chinese dynasties tried it. Sometimes things backfire.
 
Bran the Blessed said:
This Luttwak fellow's approach sounds like the old pop-history standby of "take current geo-political fears, clumsily apply them to history, make money".
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Luttwak's day job was as a Cold War era Think Tank - one of no small fame - who was personally on the scene of many of the period's important moments. He is a ferociously intelligent and worldly individual, but he is notorious in historical circles precisely for taking the approach you have noted to pre-modern history. In fairness he is relatively honest about his refraction of sources through the perspective of his experiences as an analyst during the Cold War, nevertheless the result is still very problematic history.

He can be incisive when discussing small episodes, but his synthesis of these analysis into a cohesive conclusion serve best as an antagonistic method of developing one's understanding of a period. I do not regret reading either of his publications on the Roman Empire (The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire and The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire) as they are thought provoking in that light, but their inherent issues should be obvious simply from their title alone. However, I would not recommend them to anyone without a number of stiff warnings.

I will note that on the subject of this thread Luttwak has some strong opinions about Chinese history and culture which are, shall we say, gnarly. For example he is of the belief that historically and in the present China has never developed the concept of diplomacy as we conceive it, a dialogue between equal powers.
 
Gaius Marius said:
Those numbers go past impressive and into flat out ridiculous. The strategy is similar to the US in the Plains Wars, but with the numbers magnified by a thousand.
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I don't have any specific reason to doubt those numbers, beyond the typical over claiming, since I'm assuming the underlying narrative is true. Capturing kings, generals and especially "ministers and household administrators" implies that force did successfully overrun several encampments, possibly by surprise, allowing them to essentially capture tribes wholesale.

Taking an eye to conduct of such campaigns in different places and eras while also looking at the previous narrative - where the general's army was actively seeking to denude the landscape - its possible that Huo Qubing also practiced a sort of roving scorched earth to impede the mobility of some of fleeing nomad tribes. One advantage of a cavalry army is that the swath of denuded terrain can be incredibly broad as well as deep, thereby preventing passage across by another force. Think of a Tron light-cycle, blocking off an opponent's path, for an appropriate analogy. In that manner, he could possibly starve them out, force them into field battle under incredibly poor conditions, etc.

But this is all conjecture on my part.
 
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Apocal said:
I don't have any specific reason to doubt those numbers, beyond the typical over claiming, since I'm assuming the underlying narrative is true.
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To add to that, while obviously we must take numbers with a grain of salt there is a large variety of evidence from the Qin Dynasty and onwards suggesting the existence and mobilization of very large, densely concentrated populations that could provide the manpower for the large armies of East Asian history. We have a great deal of surviving official documentation from these period. The survival of large, sophisticated public works and infrastructure projects such as China's extensive canal works offers immutable testimony to the underlying social structure for military mobilization. What struck me most however was how studying the description of the conduct of military campaigns and battles from contemporary sources substantiate the essential accuracy of the reported figures. They suggest a collective character to warfare following the reforms of the Qin kingdom in the Warring States period strongly paralleling many key aspects of the Napoleonic Wars:
  • Large expeditionary forces primarily of infantry converge at a central staging area, often the capital, where all final preparations are made before commencing the campaign. The march columns proceed along lines of communications with prepared strategic depots or easy access to the waterways.
  • As the expedition marches into battle, it essentially performs a Napoleonic style sweep of the territory across a very broad frontage with the intent of fixing the enemy. The march columns become independant camps operating on independent lines of maneuver - not unlike Napoleonic Corps d'Armee - which maintain strong links of communication with each other and particularly with the Central Camp, from which the commander in chief directs the operation, though separated by many dozens of li.
  • Not infrequently, armies will come into contact in such a way that a larger concentration of mass collapses on an individual camp or series of camps without the others being able to intervene, whether by being outmaneuvered or stymied by blocking forces.
While several battles are mentioned where all forces on both sides converge to contact on the same field, these are usually recorded as the period equivalents of Austerlitz, Eylau, Wagram, and Borodino. Extraordinary battles of spectacular violence.
 
100thlurker said:
To add to that, while obviously we must take numbers with a grain of salt there is a large variety of evidence from the Qin Dynasty and onwards suggesting the existence and mobilization of very large, densely concentrated populations that could provide the manpower for the large armies of East Asian history. We have a great deal of surviving official documentation from these period. The survival of large, sophisticated public works and infrastructure projects such as China's extensive canal works offers immutable testimony to the underlying social structure for military mobilization. What struck me most however was how studying the description of the conduct of military campaigns and battles from contemporary sources substantiate the essential accuracy of the reported figures. They suggest a collective character to warfare following the reforms of the Qin kingdom in the Warring States period strongly paralleling many key aspects of the Napoleonic Wars:
  • Large expeditionary forces primarily of infantry converge at a central staging area, often the capital, where all final preparations are made before commencing the campaign. The march columns proceed along lines of communications with prepared strategic depots or easy access to the waterways.
  • As the expedition marches into battle, it essentially performs a Napoleonic style sweep of the territory across a very broad frontage with the intent of fixing the enemy. The march columns become independant camps operating on independent lines of maneuver - not unlike Napoleonic Corps d'Armee - which maintain strong links of communication with each other and particularly with the Central Camp, from which the commander in chief directs the operation, though separated by many dozens of li.
  • Not infrequently, armies will come into contact in such a way that a larger concentration of mass collapses on an individual camp or series of camps without the others being able to intervene, whether by being outmaneuvered or stymied by blocking forces.
While several battles are mentioned where all forces on both sides converge to contact on the same field, these are usually recorded as the period equivalents of Austerlitz, Eylau, Wagram, and Borodino. Extraordinary battles of spectacular violence.
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On the other hand, I doubt the Xiongnu had an actual army of 140000 riders to pillage china with.
 
I wish ixjac could reply to this because he's the one who did the reading but the author may have oversimplified the portrayal of the Han campaign.

For one, the Chinese first and primary means of defence was reactive ,setting up warning beacons and military camps to intercept raiders. there's a classical story, about how the gGeneral responsible for creating the system sparked participation by promising a ludricous reward for any man who will knock down a pole in the marketplace, with the moral being how a just system of rewards will inspire loyalty and


It's... Wrong to describe the military here as a pure cavalry one or a professional army. The campaigns were still fought by infantry levies, however, the Chinese threw large numbers of cavalry troops and equipment into the war, including entire cavalry arms.

Still, to focus on them will ignore the contributions by the conscript soldiers, who being part of the fortified military region received more intense drilling and experience than before. Similarly, the mixed, combined armms formations were passed on down in history and formed the basis for anti cavalry tactics up to Yue Fei, who acknowledged this and the Song updated said tactics with gunpowder weapons.
 
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