Anti-piracy chapter, updated in an hour

After 5,000 years of China, the military culture is broad and profound, but it is not expected that today, it is still no match for the European Middle Ages, the Japanese Warring States and other carving insect skills are popular among netizens, it is really a great shame! The purpose of writing this article is to show the advanced military culture of China in the form of a longitudinal discussion, and to prove the greatness of the Chinese military family with ironclad facts!

It's easy to say, but it's never easy to do. Due to the dereliction of duty of Chinese historians www.biquge.info most of the relevant materials that can be found are copies of ancient books, a list of various weapons, or the introduction of archaeological relics. To this end, the author not only has to consult a large number of relevant materials, but also has to collect useful information from many irrelevant materials, after analysis, induction, to the writing of the text, intermittently lasted nearly 2 months, which really took a lot of time.

Fortunately, the hard work paid off, and the talk was finally completed. Although there are still contents such as firearms, miscellaneous weapons, and field tactics that have not been covered for the time being, the author can confidently say that this is the most systematic, most referential, and most concise popular book on ancient Chinese weapons introduced on the Internet so far. It's hard to beat it even in books! Hehe, this is not a boast, but due to the fact that I have consulted a lot of information, coupled with the author's careful research and analysis, there is really no reason why it cannot reach this level.

Well, if you brag about it any longer, you're going to get rotten eggs. The author has one last word, I hope that after reading this article, you can have more admiration and pride in our own military culture, and a little more calm comparison with the so-called Japanese Warring States culture in the European Middle Ages, especially in small Japan, which is the author's biggest original intention.

Chapter 1: Knives and Swords

Think deeply about it, history can be so circuitous. The sword was not invented in the Central Plains, and the knife was the authentic origin, but from the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the early Western Han Dynasty, the knife was once abandoned, and the long knife was depressed for a longer time. The length of the bronze knife in the Shang Dynasty was very short, and the elder was only comparable to the Roman short sword, at best it was a watermelon knife. Perhaps it was precisely because the weight of the short knife was heavier and the flexibility was not as good as the short sword, that the Western Zhou Dynasty was influenced by the northern nomads to scrap the sword and use the sword.

The second appearance of the short knife is already in the Western Han Dynasty after 8 or 900 years. The Western Han Dynasty was the age of iron, and the booming steelmaking industry made the Han army a rare steel hero of that era. Steel provided the weapon with a tougher bone, giving rise to a 1-meter-long ring-headed sword. In the eyes of the cavalry, who did not yet have a saddle and a horse's pedals, the rough and delicate straight and narrow blade contained an unprecedented murderous aura, and the thick back of the sword would easily withstand the stress of the fierce slash, turning them into a rushing falcon. The complete replacement of the long sword by the Huanshou sword was in the late Eastern Han Dynasty, after which it would become a classic and legend across 300 years to the Sui and Tang dynasties. However, it is worth mentioning that the short knife was split in the Eastern Jin Dynasty, resulting in the parallel development of two knife styles, one is the straight and narrow style, and the other is the common wide-body style in modern times. But the ancients were always extremely cautious about the innovation of things, just as they had a sword scabbard pinned to their waists for more than a thousand years, and only under the influence of the Persian double ring, they hung their swords on their waists with ropes, and the wide-bodied knives had to endure hundreds of years of loneliness.

The improvement of the ring-head knife is to increase the handguard and cancel the ring at the end of the handle, which was changed from the beginning of the Wei and Jin dynasties to the maturity of the Tang Dynasty, but this has made the ring-head knife can no longer be called the ringhead. There are three types of improved knives, among which the combat knives are called horizontal knives. Although the ring head knife will be completely extinct in China in the future, it is likely that the 'Tang-like broadsword' created the Japanese Taidao to some extent, and returned to its hometown during the Ming Dynasty.

The age of great turmoil arrived, one of the darkest periods of the Empire, filled with murderous tyrants, and wars spurred the development of weapons technology. The Song Dynasty, which pacified the turmoil, was not only the era of the return of the sword, but also the era of the development of the sword.

The straight and narrow blades have a single ridge that allows the same width of the blade to withstand greater stress and break the nail and bone, but it lacks the smooth arc that makes the blade disembowel. The curved blade is just the opposite, more flexible than stiff. But this is only a conundrum for Europe and West Asia, and China has combined the two with a heavy, wide-body sword, a perfect combination that can only be broken by the agility and sharpness of the Japanese Taito. The Taidao is coming, and the micro-arc blade made of high-carbon steel is extremely fast, which makes the Ming army and the weapons are shoddy. Shiyi's long skills did not dare to be, because the Ming army lacked the barbarism of the Japanese invaders, but the study of weapon styles was quite sincere. As a result, the short knife sequence of the Ming army became a water Japanese style, from a 1-meter-long one-handed knife to a 2-meter-long two-handed knife, and even the cavalry could not get out of this column.

Unfortunately, the armed forces were powerless to prevent the political corruption and rebellion of the Ming court, and the pedantry of the Qing court eventually ruined the foundation of China. When European guns exploded on Chinese soil, the only use for both the delicate military attache knife and the wide soldier knife was to take an oath.

The last stage of the short knife was the War of Resistance Against Japan, but the purpose was only to capture the guns, of course, maybe the cavalry continued to use it for a while, in short, the knife declined.

There are three elements of a sword, one is length, the second is flexibility, and the third is structural strength. Length is good for preemptive strikes and extended protection, flexibility is good for offensive and defensive strain, and structural strength determines the bend of the sword. The short sword was more flexible than the length was insufficient, so at the turn of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when the infantry appeared in large numbers and established the status of the sword, the length of the sword was gradually extended. The extension was done by improving the profile of the sword, and perhaps by casting the back and blade with copper water with different tin, all of which helped to increase the strength of the sword and make the sword more slender. As a result, the Warring States period had a bronze sword 6 or 70 centimeters long, and in the Western Han Dynasty, which reached its peak, this record exceeded 1.1 meters.

The straight and delicate sword is one of the symbols of Chinese martial arts, but in fact this symbol has only been celebrated for less than 1,000 years, and the time of the highly respected sword is even shorter. As the sword continues to lengthen, the problem arises, although the length can enhance the sword's attack advantage, but it reduces the original close-range stabbing function, and instead requires more slashing, and the growing cavalry is in urgent need of professional slashing weapons. As a result, the ring head knife came into being, with a thick back that is less difficult to bend than a sword, and the manufacturing process is simpler. As for the stabbing function, the spearman, who works perfectly with the short knife hand, will be the only expert.

The sword once put the sword at the end of the road, but when the technology is improved, the sword is in turn the sword in a desperate situation. The sword lost its practical function, and became more and more decorative, transitioning to elegance and lightness, and after entering the Sui and Tang dynasties, even officials rarely wore swords. However, when the decoration develops to a certain stage, the aesthetic needs will cover up the functional defects, as evidenced by the short swords of the Song Dynasty military attachés, not to mention the ornately decorated dagger swords of modern and even contemporary times.

When people nowadays talk about those martial arts swords that are slender and soft, or angular and blunt, have they ever thought of the sadness of the sword?

At the same time as the feud between the swords ended, the long knife also appeared again. Because the decline of the long knife is hundreds of years later than that of the short knife, it is fair to count the principle of sharing weal and woe by hundreds of years. In addition to the flat blade and narrower body, the original long knife is really not much different from the axe, but the revival of the long knife is due to the development of the wide-body short knife, which can be seen from the appearance of the wide-body short knife that can be equipped with a long handle in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. However, the official appearance of the wide-body long knife was not so early, and the accidental innovation of the Eastern Jin Dynasty may only be an explosion of passion in the era of cavalry warfare, just as the individual 1.6-meter-long ring-headed knife of the Northern and Southern Dynasties did not represent its regular length. (To be continued.) )