Roman Empire vs Han Empire

[Infinity Blade]

Roman Empire


Found from Pinterest.

5,000 strong Legionary
2,400 Auxilia infantrymen with sword, spear, and shield
1,100 Auxilia archers and slingers
1,500 Auxilia cavalrymen with spear and shield


Han Empire


Found from Quora.

4,000 infantry bowmen and crossbowmen
3,000 infantry spear, halberd, and swordsmen (with shields)
3,000 cavalry with bows and halberds

Military personnel numbers and compositions borrowed from Carnivora's version of the matchup (Fair Whisper, known here as mechafire, came up with them). If anyone wants to suggest alternative army compositions, by all means do so.

[Infinity Blade]

The impression I've gotten from reading the opinions of others online is that the Romans have really good heavy infantry, which makes sense with their legionaries (often decked in lorica segmentata, helmet, and of course, the massive scutum). Their tactics would be based more on close quarters combat and infantry. On the other hand, the Han relied a lot on cavalry and ranged weapons. Where the battlefield takes place could, of course, affect whether or not certain tactics are viable in this battle (i.e. cavalry works well in wide open terrain, but not so much in forested area).

The Han, of course, have their hand-held crossbows, something I don't believe the Romans have ever really faced the likes of. As someone who's more familiar with medieval European crossbows, I gotta say, the Han's crossbows really impress me. The thing about medieval European crossbows is that while they often had high draw weights, their short power strokes meant that the power they generated was much less than what you'd expect from their high draw weights. This means a medieval European crossbow with a 350 lb draw weight would be comparable to a 70-80 lb bow (at least, that's what Skallagrim says->).

However, Han crossbows seem to have been capable of far longer power strokes than their medieval European counterparts (i.e. the bowstring can be drawn back much farther, which helps with power). Just look at 'em.




Entry level crossbowmen had to be able to pull back a crossbow with a draw weight of 168 lbs (Loades, 2018). This is easily warbow (e.g. English longbow) territory. Couple this with their long draw lengths, and I think the crossbows could do some serious damage. This same source also says that a few elite troops could pull back crossbows with draw weights exceeding 750 lbs (I can just barely verify this using the source I cited, since the preview doesn't include that page); such crossbows must have been monstrous.

I wonder how well a Roman testudo, or Roman body armor for that matter, would fare against these.

I might compare melee weapons and armor later.

[creature386]

If generals are equally competent, the terrain is a non-factor, and both troops start out fully mobilized, weaponry and morale will be the decisive factors.

As for weapons, I'm pretty sure those crossbows are gonna do serious damage to Roman body armor (after all, isn't the whole point of crossbows to defeat armor?). The Romans are gonna be on the defensive. From what I know about testudos, they're rather clumsy and most useful for sieges. Not to mention that, should the Romans be forced to ever dissolve such a formation, the Han archers will have plenty of targets in close proximity to one another.

Morale is more difficult to evaluate. Someone on Quora thought the fact that the Han were more homogenous than the Romans could make them more cohesive, but I'm not sure to what extent this is an advantage.

Now, I'm not much of a history person, but from what I've read on the Carnivora and Quora threads, the Han might have the advantage here.

[Supercommunist]

As for weapons, I'm pretty sure those crossbows are gonna do serious damage to Roman body armor (after all, isn't the whole point of crossbows to defeat armor?).

That point is overstated. The advantage of a crossbow is that you can give any ordinary person a fairly powerful ranged weapon, whereas a traditional archer would have to be pretty jacked and strong to use a warbow. It isn't until firearms become a thing that we see armor start becoming less and less cost effective.


This youtube channel covers the efficiency of longer chinese powerstroke crossbows:

12:13 comparison of projectile speed between his recreation of 95 ib chinese crossbow compared to another another youtubers 960 european medieval crossbow. Don't know of any English tests of 300 IB chinese crossbows though.



Info from a book called knight in the blast furnace:

Amount of joules arrow needs to produce to pierce armor of various thickness:



Keep in mind that I believe Roman armor was made out of iron which is only offers half the protection of mild steel:


Edit: Also probably relevant:

Same youtuber uses his 240 ib longbow in a similar manner some foot crossbows were loaded and shot.

2:15. Penetrated three layers of wood.

[Infinity Blade]

Jesus Christ...

I knew a medieval European crossbow would need to have a draw weight of hundreds of pounds just to match the speed & power of its Han counterpart, but I didn't think it would need to be a literal order of magnitude higher. Now imagine a 168 lb Han crossbow...

Lorica segmentata was indeed closer to mild steel than to simple wrought iron. The plates were often case hardened with mild steel on the outside and softer iron on the inside.



From Lorica Segmentata Volume I: A Handbook of Articulated Roman Plate Armour.

[Infinity Blade]

I think before I go into melee weapons I'll go a bit into the ranged weapons the Romans had (because of course, it's not like they can't shoot back here).

The pilum was supposedly designed to penetrate armor (Chrissanthos, 2008, Head, 2012), or at least pierce a shield and continue on to injure the man behind it; the whole bending shaft thing is a possibility, but definitely not the intended function of the pilum as is often claimed (Bishop, 2017). The heavy shaft and thin iron shank seem to be conducive to the functions of piercing armor and injuring a shield user after piercing the shield; it can be thrown 50-70 feet away (Ermatinger, 2018).

The Roman writer Vegetius recommended legionaries to be trained to use wooden bows, which are thought to be self bows made similarly to the later medieval longbows. It's been claimed that a draw weight of 80-100 lbs for Roman "D-section" self bows (not sure if these are the same ones I just mentioned) is reasonable (link).

The auxiliary archers had composite bows. One surviving example (the Yrzi bow) was said to have a draw weight of 60-70 lbs, although a more recent estimate is 80 lbs (Travis & Travis, 2014).

[Supercommunist]

scholagladiatoria is planning on doing a destruction test of a modern recreation of a roman helmet.