by Dave Vallance
With regard to the appearance of these armies, there is not much in the way of proven uniform colours etc, for my five DBA armies I've just painted them up as follows ;
Wei/Yueh : Red (the first Chinese Red Army!)
Chao, Land of Late-coming : Green
Chu. Land of the Immaculate : Yellow
Han : White (Virgin Soldiers)
The other two states were Yan, Land of Swallows (if to be done, likely in black) and Chi, the Land of the Devout.(not sure, probably brown)
For those wanting more detail, I'll offer a brief outline on the chronology up to this period
1500 BC - Bronze casting. The first recognised dynasty, the Shang, becomes established over a pre-existing people called the Hsia, but little is known about these folk. Shang introduce writing.
1300 BC - Chariot introduced
1027 BC - the people known as the Chou (pronounced Chew, or Jew...the 'ch' sounds like a 'j') rise up in revolt. They win, becoming the Western Chou, Shang becomes a minor state. The Chou set up 4 'duchies', namely Yen, Lu, Ch'i and Sung.
880 BC - Barbarians from the North West, the Jung, invade Chou, forcing them to move capital further east, becomes known as the Eastern Chou.
' Springs and Autumns' which is fairly settled, any warfare is described as being 'chivalrous' and 'aristocratic', and not all that bloody .However, our old pals, the Chin, who are far out to the west and were considered as being barbarians, are on the rise, and start to conquer other lands in there area, such as Shu, and Pa..
Bear in mind that the ancient China back then was not as huge as today's nation, and the Chin would roughly be in today's west centre of China. The Chin are pronounced as 'gin' as in 'gin and tonic'
From 479 BC onwards, this period is known as 'The Warring States' as previously mentioned above, with warfare become more and more aggressive, and with massive armies. There were seven main states, as mention above, the last being Ch'i which fell (whoopsadaisy) in 221 BC to the all conquering Chin.
The King of Chin, a man called Cheng, now called himself Emperor Shih Huang Ti, Lord of all Under Heaven. He ruled ruthlessly until dying in 210BC in his wagon, whilst out on a pilgrimage. It is said that his Chancellor, a devious cunning chap called Zhao Gao, disguised the whiff of the Emperors decaying corpse from the others in the entourage by having wagon loaded with fish follow the Emperor's one.
Zhao was well into power politics, and managed to get one the Emperor's youngest sons, (he had numerous kinds with numerous concubines, the randy git!) proclaimed as the Second Emperor.
However, once the Emperor's death was announced, revolts took place all over the Empire, some of the old states were re born. It got so bad that even a Chin general, had to stop the work on the Emperor's Tomb (this is where the Terracotta Warriors come in) and equip the labour force with weapons taken from the statues (which is why none have been found in their tomb) in order to fight off a revolt.
Eventually there were two main contenders, a southern aristocrat called Hsiang Yu with an army from Chu, and a Liu Pang, a man of lowly birth, who commanded contingents from Han, Shu, Pa, and former Chin soldiers.
In 202BC at the Battle of Kai-hsia, Liu Pang finally defeated Hsiang and Liu took the title of Han-Kao-ti, the start of the Han Dynasty which ruled China for 400 years.
I'l leave it there as it is not relevant to carry on with all the following Dynasties etc. surprised if you have kept up this far!
Some info for you
Armies fought in five divisions, or 'battles', if you will, all denoted by flags :
Vanguard - a Red Bird
Left Wing - a Green Dragon
Right Wing - a White Tiger
Rearguard/reserve - a Black Tortoise
C in C with bodyguard - Great Bear constellation
They also had varying rank names for their nobles, big cheeses etc, in comparison with their Western ones
Kung - Duke
Hou - Marquis
Po - Earl
Tzu - Viscount
Nan - Baron
Wang - King (!)
Chariots were the original shock weapon but were later supplanted by cavalry which was fairly rare at this time, except for the barbarian tribes on the borders who were mostly horse archers. By the Han dynasty, cavalry became more and more common, with some later examples being armoured up like cataphracts.
