OgreBattle wrote:FatR, you seem like someone who's really proud of the history of your people, and quick to defend it.
You don't even know what my people is. Опрометчиво судишь, как мне кажется.
OgreBattle wrote:You've probably had your feelings hurt in the past by people who disparaged medieval european martial arts as crude and so on,
Of course not. Given that in actual battles European martial arts rocked the eastern world from 16th century to 19th (after which it borrowed the European military tradition) so it was never a question of whether Europeans fight better, but whether they fight better enough to conquer and enforce demands, or just to take over naval trade and kick local competition from outlying islands, and given that no enlightened Chinese martial art sage ever showed up to dominate MMA... how attempts to run away from reality can hurt my feeling? You'll have to excuse me for considering the whole talk about speshul and spiritual Eastern martial arts to be to a very large extent rooted in desperate Eastern attempts to believe in something awesome about themselves. Like the whole folded-ten-thousand-times katana mythos (while saying that it only really took wing around and after encountering European weapons and armor during the Sengoku period might have been an exaggeration on my part; its revival in 20th century - long after the creators of the new Japanese army firmly agreed that katana was much less practical sidearm compared to European-style cavalry saber - certainly was purely the matter of nationalistic delusion).
I do, however, sometimes suffer from the urge to correct people who are wrong on the Internet.
OgreBattle wrote:But that's really no reason to be a westaboo yourself and reflexively malign everything that offends your worldview.
Maybe you should look at yourself before engaging in Internet telepathy.
OgreBattle wrote:Say the Mongols, the Ming dynasty overthrew the Yuan nearly two centuries before the Golden Horde was overthrown in Europe,
The Ming dynasty took over in 1368. The inheritors of Golden Horde, lost power over Russia de-jure in 1480 (de-facto arguably in 1389, but whatever). Still not "two centuries".
OgreBattle wrote:but that feat can be handwaved by an "anti-Asian" side with an excuse like "well, the Mongols only beat the BAD Europeans".
That's not an excuse but a solid fact. Russia, the only part of Europe that the Mongols subjugated for a significant length of time, was very noticeably militarily inferior even to its immediate neighbours, never mind the European heartland. No stone fortifications, arts of siege and withstanding siege almost unknown, crossbows almost unknown, infantry of any sort practically nonexistent.
Besides, once again, the Chinese problem was not being beaten by Mongols of Ghenghis Khan's times, which definitely were an outlier, it was getting their whole civilization nuked by nomads not once but three times (if you count Jurchen and Mongol conquests as one episode) never mind many lesser military humiliations whenever facing people that weren't too strongly influenced by the Chinese system of statecraft. One failure can be an accident, two raise questions, three indicate a recurring problem. Which to be fair was not limited to military matters. But the military part of which was significant.
OgreBattle wrote:The example of the Zhentong emperor being captured by Mongols can be brought up to go "see, these guys are weak because", but the example of the Yongle Emperor's successful campaigns against the Mongols is then conspicuously left out.
See, let's compare again to Russia, which faced constant pressure from the Mongol successor states. While it had its share of miserable failures against the Crimeans (particularly in 1521), no tsar was ever captured, and even burning of Moscow in 1571 was immediately followed by a resounding victory at Molodi in 1572 (speaking of army sizes - the Wikipedia article for that battle inflates them two-to-threefold). And of course there was nothing approaching the Qing conquest there. And inbefore you try to say that the Ming China was weakened by internal strife or climatic changes allowing Qing to roll in, in late 16th to early 17th century Russia suffered an utter catastrophe due to misrule, overpopulation, the Little Ice Age and civil war that reduced its population to one-fourth of what it was, and yet survived even if diminished despite the massive external pressure, so authors that shift the blame for the Ming collapse from its government and military to the forces of nature or pure accidents of internal politics are simply fucking wrong.
OgreBattle wrote:Nevermind that the Mongols on either end of the steppes after Genghis Khan were under different rulers and developed pretty differently through the centuries.
Proof that the Mongol successors in the east were so much stronger is needed.
OgreBattle wrote:With the capture of a leader, if I wanted to be abrasive I could say King John II being captured in the 1350's means the French super sucked throughout the whole 100 years war and bring that up any time somebody talks about the French military.
The thing is, the French indeed sucked thoughout most of the Hundred Years' War - not all of it, else they would not have won - and English enjoyed a marked superiority in troop quality that allowed them to win time and and again against odds and be on offensive against a country several times their population for decades. The French simply adapted to the fact that English could not be defeated in the open field during the first phase of the war, and eventually improved their organization and equipment to the point of being of being able to match them during the second.
However, Valois would only have been a proper comparison to Ming had they been actually overrun by barbarians - say, the Swiss - at some point.
And bringing the Hundred Years' War whenever someone talks about the French military would have been apt had events like it repeated themselves several times in the France's history. But they did not.
OgreBattle wrote:If we want to talk about the quality of European troops I can be very selective and pick up on instances of poorly trained, cowardly, poorly managed troops too:
So, was England, which accidentally too had aggressive barbarians right over the north border, overran by those barbarians as the result of having such poor troops and plenty of civil strife during 16th and 17th centuries as well? Was any of the kings captured by foreigners or London stormed and sacked? Had it foreigners from the other hemisphere taking over islands near its shores? I believe not.
The results simply cannot be argued. The Chinese military system failed in the way not unlike that of the Western, and, to an extent, Eastern Roman Empires. Except repeatedly. It was not alone in this tendency - the Islamic world after being created by conquest was swept by two more waves of barbarian conquerors (Seljuks and Osmans), not even counting half of it getting razed by Mongols. Meanwhile, the European civilization was the only one whose core territories remained unconquered by foreigners since Charlemagne (even though several iterations Muslims, Hungarians, and, until christianised, Normans made pretty significant efforts, never mind that various barbaric and warlike peoples within Europe, like Swiss or Scots that might have played a different role in a different circumstances). With the Mongols that may have been luck, but against everything else? Someone clearly had been doing things right. Or at least righter than everyone else. Well, the fact that the European military system swept the world, so absolutely everyone had to adopt it or be crushed by it also might count for something. And no, technological superiority was not the only and possibly not even the biggest factor. Else Qing troops would not be failing so very miserably in everything - including and even particularly in close quarters - against Europeans. And given Qing's illustious story of military successes during the conquest of China and against China's neighbors, it can be fairly safely concluded that their troops, if anything, deviated for the better from the average. It's not the matter whether the Chinese military tradition had failed, but why the fuck it had failed repeatedly despite being backed up by a rich and populous country that was the world leader in many areas of invention until well into second millenium AD.
Let's examine the causes of that using the Ming military as an example, given that the great works of Chinese literature which are so influential to this day are primarily informed by the realities of Ming period when their authors lived.
First, it should be noted that ever since Zhu Di later known as Emperor Yongle decided "fuck the order of succession, I have an experienced army" the Ming rulers, starting with his son and successor and their Confucian scholar advisors, who were removed from power under Yongle's militaristic government, mistrusted the military, tried to reduce its importance and financing, soon cutting its numbers near in half, and argued against a return to Yongle's active external policies. It's no wonder that within mere 25 years from his death the string of successes against the Mongols turned to a disastrous defeat, and Mongol raids became a constant scourge.
Well, you might say, even after reduction of the army it still numbered over a million, so how could it not be sufficient in absence of neighbors of comparable size and strength?
But second, that million was only on paper, and its fighting strength was not proportional to its numbers. A Ming army consisted of a tiny number of military functionaries and a vast number of hereditary soldiers, who were peasants obligated to both work earth and provide one man per family to military service. Not only this obligation soon became loathed in general, as its very nature dictated, military functionaries, like all Ming government functionaries, were thoroughly corrupt habitually robbed and mistreated peasants in their power, including "soldier" peasants. How common people of Ming saw their government you can deduct from the River Margins' status as a classic - while I doubt in the real life they considered cannibalistic bandits to be better than government officials, there is no doubt that the book portraying cannibalistic bandits as better than government officials became massively popular. So when the officers saw their service as an opportunity to enrich themselves by expoiting lowly peasants under them (at the direct expense of military readiness - people who work like slaves for an official cannot well prepare for war) and soldiers saw officers as oppressors and their duty as a burdensome obligation forced upon them by sheer coercion. So morale and motivation usually did not exist, besides the fact, that endemic corruption simply made actual forces much smaller and worse equipped than they were on paper - going a bit forwards, Qing's government misplaced confidence on the eve of the Opium Wars was partially due to the fact that the imperial court was systematically misinformed about the true state of their military assets in the threatened provinces. A comparable same state of affairs existed back under the Ming, from which Qing pretty much copied their administration - garrison comanders rarely sent accurate reports on the actual number of soldiers under their command (particularly as it often was reduced by their own rapacity, including stealing governmental support that soon had to be provided because military settlements proved to be not self-sufficient, and taking bribes for allowing soldiers to leave their garrison and seek work elsewhere).
Now you might say, that European commanders of the same age also weren't on the best terms with common soldiers too. Indeed, even the Grand Duke of Alba, well-known for promoting common soldiers based on merit, maligned his mercenaries as the lowest sort of villains in his private correspondense, and screwing your soldiers over by deliberately hiring more than you could reliably pay in an attempt to gain a military advantage was the rule, rather than an exception throughout 16th century (until the Dutch proved that you can get better results by promising less, but keeping your promises and paying in good time). However, the important difference lies in the fact, that the European system, for all its faults, was based on incentives (soldiers hoped to get paid, for nobility forming the command ranks wars often were profitable, and even when they weren't, a sword granted more prestige than a pen, while in China the situation was the opposite), while the Chinese system was based, again, solely on coercion, and the only major incentive for anyone to actually go to war was the hope to plunder the defeated. Or civilians on their own side, when opportunities arose.
So, while certain commanders bucked the tradition and achieved decent level of military readiness exactly because of that (notice how your own examples mention success owed to rather tiny forces?), an average army consisted of soldiers that moved forward in battle mostly to avoid getting killed by their own officers, and officers who, while individually well-trained, were often spread thin through the mass of worthless soldiers. And when they were concentrated in generals' retinues - again, in violation of what an army was supposed to be - well, then we got tiny but relatively successful forces mentioned above. For example, in the Imjin War generals' cavalry retinues were a distinct and better part of the army, and its early parts featured several bold (though that time ultimately unsuccessful) actions by small cavalry forces. You can clearly see where the roots of the "heroes - usually mounted heroes - rule, masses of footmen scum drool" attitude so very observable in historical fiction of the period are.
Then third there was the problem of logistics and financing needed to convert a million soldiers on paper into any significant number of soldiers in the field. Speaking of the Imjin War, the Ming forces never numbered more than 100 thousands at most - in total, and quite possibly on paper, the biggest armies ever gathered in one place were 43 and 36 thousands, and the biggest field battle involved only 8 to 9 thousands of Chinese. Speaking of the War of The Roses, over a century before, campaigs were decided by battles estimated to involve 17-45 or even 55-65 thousands of combatants in one place (on both sides, but well, that's the civil war for you). And these combatants were rather... different average quality. And the war, despite involving only two years of major campaigns which required big Ming armies, was said to be ruinously difficult on Chinese finances already. Unsurprisingly, Ming troops did not fare too well at all against the Japanese. Just one major engagement on land, counting field battles and sieges (most were sieges and related action, just like in Europe) could be considered a Chinese victory - the siege and assault on Pyongyang as the very beginning, and even then the Japanese garrizon managed to slip through the enemy lines and get away. The comparison to the Hundred Years War, if you mentioned it, might be apt here, particularly to its 14th century part - while in both cases the continental side, enjoying a massive resource superiority, eventually repelled the island invaders, at a great cost and after much devastation, outcomes of individual battles give the winners little cause for pride. Had Japanese been led with more strategic direction and massacred the civilian population with less enthusiasm so their own army would not be so hard to provision in the resulting wasteland, they would have rolled into China before the Manchu did, even after all the Japanese disasters in naval battles. By the way, numbers on the Japanese side of the war also are instructive - while totals amounted to near the ming-boggling 160 thousands, closer examinations of survivng muster rolls suggest that 2/3 of those were unarmed laborers and boatmen.
And the fourth problem was largely inadequate equipment. The Imjin War is once again demonstrative here. Whatever the Chinese generals and chroniclers boasted, the artillery on the Chinese sides was no less pathetic than on the Japanese, and in sieges it didn't seem to play any greater role than accidentally killing a few enemy soldiers. To take walls that were defended too strongly to be taken with mere scaling ladders and covering fire, both sides relied on tricks and contraptions that would have made ancient Romans roll their eyes, including dismantling walls by hand under the cover of moving sheds, trying to bring down parapets with hooks and muscle power, and making larger ladders moved on wheels. As about personal weapons, at the age when the shittiest European reiter knew that without at least a pistol you might as well not show up on the battlefield (and non-shitty ones wore three-quarters plate armor - buying such an armor was apparently what allowed Honda Tadakatsu to gain the reputation for invulnerability which lived right to the video games of today), cavalry on both sides seemed to mostly use just swords, and while the Japanese at least had decently organized arquebuse squads, otherwise infantry on both sides seemed to fight with swords and short spears, without much indication of proper formations, though given the absence of what one probably imagines a proper battle as - with masses of troops clashing head-on in the open field - throughout the war, this might be undestandable.
As about my sources, much of them are not in English, but as about books covering overall history of the period, I've read Ming China, 1368-1644: A Concise History of a Resilient Empire by John Dardess and the appropriate volumes of The Cambridge History of China, and then Samurai Invasion - Japan's Korean War 1592-1598 by Stephen Turnbull and The Imjin War: Japan's Sixteenth-Century Invasion of Korea and Attempt to Conquer China by Samuel Hawley (better to be read together) were a pretty good illustration of what that history led to from the purely military standpoint.