Don’t sleep on solving your internet problems while travelling and go to Saily.com/sandrhoman and use the code sandrhoman to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase.
Fun extra fact: after the first siege concluded, a few dozen cossacks were captured and brought to the Chinese emperor's court. They were offered lucrative bonuses to join the Chinese army ranks (for propaganda reasons mostly). Some declined the offer and returned home, but most of them agreed, giving the birth to the "Albazinians", one of the first Orthodox Christian communities in China. They assimilated a few generations later, but preserved their faith, and a lot of them martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. I believe that to this day, there are people in China who claim to be the descendants of the defenders of Albazin!
Agree, In Europe walls was thin so cannons was very effective. As walls got thicker cannons become larger and larger. In China walls started thick so cannons was not effective against them so cannons remained smaller. Yes its likely other factors like naval cannons.
@@magnemoe1You don't even have to go to very different cultures to see it. You can just look at the various WW2 navies to see how all the different needs and available technologies influenced how each individual navy setup it's combat doctrine. And in that war, most of the naval powers were all European!
@@mohamedelhaddade6371 Summarizing the main point relevant to the original post may be a bit superfluous, but it shows appreciation for both the video and the comment. Your comment only serves to aggrandize yourself at the expense of someone else. It is not only more superfluous, but it's also uselessly disagreeable. Waste of time. And yes, this particular comment is mainly an intellectual exercise on my part. I don't mind admitting it, but it's also because I dislike your comment more than the slightly superfluous summarization.
3:30 In case you didn't know. The word "town" in english stems from the germanic language tree and has the same root as the german word "Zaun" meaning fence. By definition a town is a fenced/walled off village. What I am saying here is that it isn't just the chinese using walls to denominate cities.
Just like the word for city/town in Russian - город (gorod) (archaic form is град (grad)). Word ограда (ograda) - something that is fenced (or огород (ogorod), but this word is used to describe a garden of vegetables that is fenced)
So is the Dutch word Haag - as in Den Haag (The Hague) - which comes from "hedge" for a place enclosed by a hedge as a sort of pseudo wall. Interestingly as well, the German word "Stadt" (meaning "city/town") originally comes from a word for "shooting range" lol.
Yea but becouse of such resiliance negotiations could be wery different from capitulation-like style such as for example was the end of Russian-Japaneese war.
@@deeznoots6241 Not really the same method though? His trenches appear to have been to blockade (a use that surely goes all the way to the prehistoric era), not as a way to advance artillery under cover such that it's close enough to the walls to cause serious damage. Not that I'm saying that detracts from Langtan; you can hardly expect anyone to reinvent 300 years of tactics in an afternoon.
@@deeznoots6241 They just went with the oldest tactic in the book in terms of sieges because they had the advantages to do so. I would not say the adapted exaxly.
"Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake?" Anyone can make an error. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
Yeah but that massive border is not really that interesting for either of them. Ignoring the mountain (yeah small detail i know) that part of Russia is almost empty and development in the steppe isn't really possible. So while they do have a massive border they aren't very connected, Russia's geopolitical interest has always been west.
Eastern style fortifications proved useful in several 20th century conflicts like WWII, the Chinese Civil War and The First Indochina War. Obviously at this point much heavier artillery existed that could easily demolish them but that was rarely available in these conflicts so the troops often only had light field artillery and mortars, meanwhile the fortifications were basically everywhere and local troops were familiar with them.
@@hedgehog3180 same in Europe, many castles were utilised as small scale fortifications and/or for anti air purposes, I’m thinking for example of castle Dover or castle Itter
The government of a monarchy is the monarch themself. No one claimed peter was personally doing any negotiations. It was still his court, his government, and his regent appointed ambassador that did it.
@@sumelar The problem is that his brother Ivan the fifth ruled de jure at that time. And his sister regent, Sofia, ruled de facto. It's a difficult time really. Like the War of the Roses, only faster and in Russia (The struggle of the Naryshkins in the person of Peter and the Miloslavskys in the person of Sofia)
This campaign is also quite important in Korean history since it was the first time for Koreans to experience the western tactics. About 200 of muskeeters participated in this campaign in response to the request for assistance from Qing, and there are some records of Joseon (Korean) officiers about the battles against Russians. Through this campaign, Joseon, who had been using only matchlock musket, experienced flint lock musket of russians, for the first time. Furthermore, it is known that there are some records about how Joseon officiers were interested in volley fire tactics of Russians, which was significantly different from that of Joseon. After this campaign, Joseon tried self-production of flint-lock musket, but failed due to several reasons (cost, lack of industry and technology etc). Tragically, Joseon used matchlock musket until 20th century.
Joseon Koreans learned about the matchlock from Japanese invaders during the Imjin War. Thousands of Japanese matchlocks were captured, and the Joseon Koreans made improvements on the design while copying them. Joseon Korean firearms tactics were adapted from Japanese firearms tactics. Joseon Korea did have flintlock muskets, but they were more expensive and perhaps only elite units were equipped with them. Common soldiers on the other hand were equipped with matchlock muskets. Compared to flintlocks, matchlocks were much simpler, more economical and were easier to be maintained. Joseon Korea was not the only one. There were many other countries in Asia and Africa where common soldiers were equipped with matchlocks until the early 20th Century.
@@gorilladisco9108 Even today there are matchlocks still being used but as hunting weapons. In Tibet, some nomads still use the matchlocks to hunt prey and predatory animals.
@@gorilladisco9108 yes, but I could probably manufacture a matchlock musket with only a handful of materials and almost no technical knowledge of gunsmithing.
That's how you do comparative history well! None of the nonsense like _"Who would win in 20,000 ninjas vs 50,000 vikings?"_ that pollutes so much of the web. Just grounded comparisons highlighting the differences, where the differences likely come from, and the impact they had.
comments like this just reveal the brainrot of the commenter if you didn't watch the "ninjas vs vikings" type videos you wouldn't see them recommended, as i don't
@@DevinDTV And replies like that just how limited the experience is of the commenter. I wasn't just talking about vikings vs ninja literally, and not just about TH-cam, but also history forums and reddit and the like. And also in the comments of videos that are themselves much better. Go read some of the the comments in older SandRhoman videos and you'll see the like often enough (often mixed in with plain old nationalism / racism too).
Castles were unique to (Medieval) Europe because of the decentralized nobility. This was for the most part not possible in China with its centralized government as setting up your own castle independent of the emperor would just be incredibly suspicious. Same reason they did not arise in Roman times even though the technology made it possible. That being said, there was a phenomenon of small fortified manors similar to castles during the end of the Han dynasty. These were called "wu bi". Keep in mind though that these would've arisen in a time of increasing instability.
Actually the signee of the 1689 agreement was not Tzar Peter, he was still too young. The actual ruler of Russia was his sister Sofia and her lover/Prime Minister of Russia Golitsin who was the actual master mind of all the Siberian politics
There’s a novel “The Deer and the Couldron” by Jin Yong about this Chinese-Russian war. In the novel, the protagonist Wei Xiao-Bao was a lover of princess Sofia and helped her in a coup to get into power. He also led the Qing military force to fight against the Russian.
China built thicker walls than Europe because of tectonic plates. Walls are useless if they get destroyed by your run of the mill earthquake, and Japan and China had more Earthquakes than Europe because of their geological position. The Forbidden Palace was specifically designed to be earthquake resistant, and it makes sense to transfer that logic to the defensive walls of the region, where it caught on elsewhere as the norm.
Interesting... I hadn't heard that before. I lived in China for three years and never felt an earthquake. In my one year in Korea, I felt one shake, but it turned out it was because Kim was testing a nuke umderground
@@fusion9619 It depends on which specific region of China, don't forget China is as large as the entire Europe, some places do experience frequent earthquakes and some places do not :)
A building like the Royal Palace, which costs a lot, has to take into account the availability over hundreds of years. These seismic properties are not intended for a person's life scale, and it is normal that they never come in handy during someone's lifetime
How neat! I didn't know that Chinese siege warfare wasn't as well studied. I would love to know how Japanese, Korean, and Chinese siege tactics developed separately.
Not an expert, but I believe it is fairly well studied in China and in _Chinese._ But translation is hard, so it might not have filtered through to "Western" scholars deeply.
Like many things, Europeans and Americans don't really learn about or study many historical subjects that aren't European or American, unless someone is personally interested in a subject.
@@patrickdix772I mean the same thing could be said for eastern historians. I don’t know why you’re acting like this is an issue that only western historians suffer from
@@bobskywalker2707 Because he/she has a bias against Europeans and Americans and want to spin a basic assumption regarding all humans (Studying things they are interested in? How weird) to somehow be isolated to Europeans or Americans.
The idea of the defenders in a siege actually coming outside the walls to counterattack when an assault failed is novel to me. Just never thought about it.
You could have mentioned that China never cared about Siberia until the Qing arrived to power. However, the Russians, by this point, had conquered much of Siberia and were looking southward. Hence the siege.
@@OhioDan Partly Manchuria had something to do with it. Manchuria was the heartland of the Jurchens aka Manchus. It didn't surprise me if they were more afraid of what to come with this piece of land. A key reason why the Qing occupied Sakhalin island at the time.
@@OhioDan Because before the Qing Dynasty, the greatest threat to northern China was the nomadic peoples, and by the Qing Dynasty the Mongolia had submitted to Qing rule. After that, for the first time, the biggest threat north of the Mongolian plateau became Russia from Europe. Before the Industrial Revolution, China was a very traditional agricultural country, and all aspects of Chinese society depended on the development of agriculture. The harsh climate in Siberia was very unfavorable for agriculture. The Chinese emperor was unwilling to spend a lot of money to occupy a piece of land that was worthless in his eyes. But in the 17th century, the Russia gradually penetrated into Siberia, and even sent troops to attack Manchuria, which aroused the alarm of the Chinese emperor, and only then did the Qing Dynasty begin to pay attention to Siberia.
One thing to point out, Tsar is the Slavic variant of Caesar, so much like the German Kaiser it means emperor, so by saying Tsarist empire, you are just saying Emperor's empire.
Yeah, but even though the term “Tsar” was widely used all around, it wasn’t correct, since the official title was, in fact, “Emperor”. These titles became obsolete starting with the rule of Peter the Great, when he shifted the country from Tsardom to Empire.
@@fsdds1488 This type remained in service for around 150~ years into the Qing, only after muskets were common standard issue were they replaced by caps. You could find this helmet still illustrated on the "Da Qing Hui Dian - Jia Zhou Pian", or Great Qing statutes - armor.
Actually, there is a very good book called The Gunpowder Age by Tonio Andrade that exactly answers the question: Chinese technology in Medieval times was the best, yet in 150 years Britain in 1849 was able to completely defeat China in the Opium War. How? So the book goes over gunpowder technology and tactics in Western Europe, then in Asia, then the final chapter explains 4 reasons why the West could overwhelm the East, and it is NOT "the Chinese were too conservative and could not adapt." One of the reasons was Theoretical Physics. Another was the design of these Star forts mentioned in this video. An excellent book. You will understand both Europe and Asian musket and cannon tactics and technology.
Thank you for the book, I'll read it. I'll also recommend "Why Did Europe Conquer The World?" by Philip T. Hoffman, where he also said gunpowder was the reason of Europe emergence. In it, he pointed some circumstances that prevent China from innovating the technology fast enough to catch up with Europe, i.e. being a hegemon of their part of continent made them rarely had to deal in gunpowder warfare, most of their enemies were consisted of nomads on horseback which could be dealt more effectively with archery (early gunpowder weapons were too slow), and their taxation system "wasn't harsh enough" (European lords could raise taxes up to 30% from taxable subjects without riots, compared to less than 5% in China). All of those slowed down their innovations in gunpowder weaponry.
@@gorilladisco9108 Thanks for dropping your reading suggestion too. It's truly a fascinating topic in no small part because theories keep having to be revised, and we'll probably never know the full answers behind the Great Divergence. The strange thing is, the Qing did actually wage several offensive wars during the 18th century at the same time as the very intense early Modern European wars, so old stereotypes about them being an "idyllic hegemon" are definitively false. But because they were always attacking far smaller opponents, the Qing never had a good incentive to really change their tactics and strategy. They were certainly aware of European innovations on at least some level too, it was just little more than a novelty to them. Of course, an alternate perspective I've seen brought up is that it's less that China (or other regions of the world) failed to keep up with Europe, and more that Europe cracked the code and suddenly found itself way ahead of everyone else.
The Renaissance made Europe develop so fast that the rest of the world couldn't keep up. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, China's gunpowder had begun to lag behind that of Europe, and in the late Ming Dynasty, it even needed European artillery technology to deal with the Manchus.
The Qing Dynasty itself was a dynasty in which a few foreign races ruled the majority of local races. They are more focused on maintaining their dominance than technological progress
Another great video on something I had never heard about. I always appreciate this channel putting historiography first, because a lot of big "history" channels prioritize narrative and a good story and it always irks me.
I don't know if my comment will help your channel or not, but still I want to tell you. Your channel and others like it take me to places I will never see, and every one is a pleasure to watch. What you do is important. These history lessons have helped me keep my sanity in insane times. Thank you very much.
I always getvexcited and happy when I browse TH-cam and see that a SandRhoman video just came out! Original art work, detailed, accurate information == Highly Underrated Channel, especially considering you don't find many videos covering tike pike and shot era.
China underestimated what Russian penetration of Siberia meant. The first treaty China ever signed on equal terms , instead of one with an acknowledged vassal, was with Russia. Many of the early leaders in Russian employ in Siberia were not Russians but were Poles, Germans, or Scandinavians. Russia knew that it could hire a foreign exploration and administration talent pool to lay a foundation for later Russian inertial rule. China could not.
14:15 The Treaty of Nerchinsk was drafted in Manchu, Russian and Latin. The Latin version was the authoritative version, and it was negotiated by Jesuit priests in Qing service, and Polish officers on the Russian side. Tellingly, some Chinese participants accused the Jesuits of conspiring with the Russians, and the Qing would never again allow Jesuits to occupy such a crucial role, but the Latin version also deflected some Russian attempts at word play on place names.
Nations appeared only in the 19th century (as far as I remember). Therefore, such reasoning is not correct. In those days, people were divided not by nations, but by service to the overlord and, to a lesser extent, by religion. The last Russian Tsar had only 1/128 Slavic blood. He was the cousin of the German Kaiser. And he spoke French better than Russian.
@@andreywonttell4016 The Russian Empire never officially acknowledged China as an overlord unlike the rest of China’s neighbors so OP’s post holds true under your logic
@@andreywonttell4016 This is wrong. Nation in the sense of the modern state is a new concept, but the notion of belonging to a specific people has existed for a long time, despite of the lord that they were serving. The Germanic tribes in the late classical period are a great example of this, where multiple different leaders clearly had a sense of unity and brotherhood between themselves that they didn't with others, which is backed by numerous historical documents. Even the Proto-Indo-Europeans had words for nation and foreigners in the early bronze age.
@@andreywonttell4016 this was actually very common for all of the european rulers because of the morganatic laws, which proibited future kings from marrying anyone except other royals under a threat of losing claims to the throne. This effectively made impossible for the Russian emperor to marry a Russian, British king to marry a Brit, or Spanish king to marry a Spaniard, so all these dynasties had little to no of local blood in them. It can actually be seen even in a modern era. Elizabeth II was the first British monarch to have a majority of British blood since 18th century. Her father, George VI, was a son of a Swabian(Lower German) Princess and George V, who was a son of a Dutch Princess and Edward VII, who was a son of a Saxon Prince and Queen Victoria, who was again a daughter of a Saxon Princess and so on for many more generations. Basically, because Germany was disunited and had so many Principalities and Kingdoms, it always had the largest selection of heirs to choose from, and thats why virtually every European dynasty were overwhelmingly German by blood.
Your depiction of Chinese Ming Dynasty soldiers is very accurate and typical, and is an image that the Chinese are very familiar with. Thank you. But judging from what you said, Chinese soldiers should probably wear Qing Dynasty-style armor instead of Ming Dynasty style. The style of the Qing Dynasty was similar to that of the Ming Dynasty. It inherited the development of the upper and lower parts of the cotton armor in the late Ming Dynasty, and canceled the steel arm armor and changed it to a ring-arm cotton armor. 編輯：首先我要說，影片中選擇的中國軍隊形象有問題，應該選用清軍形象，而非影片中的典型明軍造型。第二，我想說的是我真不清楚明清這種甲在英文該如何翻譯，如果使用了你們不習慣的名稱，希望不要介意，大概能知道我說的是什麼就好了。 我是中國人，同時也是中國的一名古代軍備愛好者，還是個明清時代遊戲的MODDer。清代最常見的甲胄被稱為“布面甲”，民間習慣稱為“棉（綿）甲”。這種甲在中國最早是由蒙古人使用，明代大量裝備。明末是氣象史上著名的小冰河期，尤其是在遼東地區更是極其寒冷，因此外續棉花、內鉚鋼片的棉甲在防衛的同時，還能保暖，深得邊軍士兵以及軍官的喜愛。 清朝起源於建州女真，在起兵反明之前，長期作為明朝的內藩，文化、技術上都受到明朝巨大影響，盔甲也不例外。因此後金時期直到清早期的清軍棉甲，除花紋以外，幾乎和明代一模一樣。大家可以搜索努爾哈赤和皇太極兩代清朝（後金）皇帝的甲胄，凡熟悉明代甲胄者，一眼就能看出幾乎是一模一樣。二者最大的差別是頭盔，因為漢人束髮，因此頭盔外凸，滿人剃髮，因此頭盔內凹。 明代軍備除棉甲外，也會因應不同地理區域，裝備不同的甲胄。有一個非常典型的裝備叫“環臂甲”，主要是精銳士兵以及軍官使用。是獨立的，可以搭配各種盔甲。因此影片中的軍官形象對於明代來說是合宜的。但是從時代來看，又是不合適的。 明代棉甲在末期發展出了上襖、下裙的分體形式，這種形式配合相對於環臂甲來說更新潮的環臂棉甲，在後來成為了清代甲胄的最主要形式，在中國也被稱為“八旗甲”。 在清代中後期，人們拆掉了棉甲內部的鋼片，保留了鉚釘作為裝飾，又加上了襠部的裝飾，成為清代後期高級軍官的禮儀性服裝。 另外，“剃頭易服”並不涉及甲胄，這種東西是防護用品，保命用的，而且明末邊軍甲連滿洲人自己用的都是這個玩意兒，如果棉甲不允許穿，他們是要自己殺自己嗎？ 但是視頻中的士兵甲胄依然是不准確的，首先清代的棉甲繼承的是明代末期發展出的是上襖下裙的分體形式，其次不會使用環臂鋼甲，第三不會使用勇字盔，第四，正如評論區一般人都能意識到的，髮型問題。 最後，影片中的士兵形象是明代非常底階的士兵，只有一件棉甲衣（內部鉚了鋼片），沒有環臂甲，也沒有正式的頭盔，而是廉價的“勇”字盔，這種在歷史上都是非常低級的“衛所兵”的裝備。將領的私兵被稱為“家丁”，會在這身裝備基礎上，配上護心鏡、臂甲、脛甲、護喉以及能夠完整保護頸部的頭盔。 （Computer translation: Editor: First of all, I want to say that there is a problem with the image of the Chinese army chosen in the film. The image of the Qing army should be chosen instead of the typical Ming army in the film. Second, what I want to say is that I really don’t know how to translate the most common armor in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in English. If I use a name that you are not used to, I hope you don’t mind. You will probably know what I am talking about. I am Chinese, and I am also a fan of ancient Chinese armaments, and a MODDer of games from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The most common armor in the Qing Dynasty was called "cloth armor", and folk custom called it "cotton (cotton) armor". This kind of armor was first used by the Mongols in China and was heavily equipped in the Ming Dynasty. The late Ming Dynasty was the famous Little Ice Age in meteorological history, especially in the Liaodong area, which was extremely cold. Therefore, the cotton armor with cotton on the outside and riveted steel sheets on the inside could not only protect but also keep warm. It was deeply loved by the soldiers and officers of the border army. favorite. The Qing Dynasty originated from the Jurchens in Jianzhou. Before they rebelled against the Ming Dynasty, they had been a vassal of the Ming Dynasty for a long time. Their culture and technology were greatly influenced by the Ming Dynasty, and armor was no exception. Therefore, the cotton armor of the Qing army from the Late Jin period to the early Qing Dynasty was almost identical to that of the Ming Dynasty except for the pattern. You can search for the armor of Nurhaci and Huang Taiji, the two emperors of the Qing Dynasty (Later Jin Dynasty). Anyone who is familiar with the armor of the Ming Dynasty can tell at a glance that they are almost identical. The biggest difference between the two is the helmet. Because the Han people tie their hair, their helmets are convex, while the Manchus shave their hair, so their helmets are concave. In addition to cotton-padded armor, the Ming Dynasty's military equipment would also be equipped with different armors according to different geographical areas. There is a very typical piece of equipment called "arm armor", which is mainly used by elite soldiers and officers. It is independent and can be matched with various armors. Therefore, the image of military officers in the film is appropriate for the Ming Dynasty. But from the perspective of the times, it is inappropriate. In the late Ming Dynasty, the cotton armor developed into a separate form with an upper coat and a lower skirt. This form, combined with the more fashionable ring-arm cotton armor compared to the ring-arm armor, later became the main form of armor in the Qing Dynasty. China is also known as the "Eight Banners armor". In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, people removed the steel sheets inside the cotton armor, retained the rivets as decoration, and added crotch decoration, which became the ceremonial clothing of senior officers in the late Qing Dynasty. In addition, "shaving one's head and changing clothes" does not involve armor. This kind of thing is protective equipment and is used to save lives. In addition, in the late Ming Dynasty, even the Manchus themselves used this thing. If cotton armor is not allowed to be worn, they are Do you want to kill yourself? However, the soldiers' armor in the video is still inaccurate. First of all, the cotton armor of the Qing Dynasty inherited the split form of the upper coat and lower skirt developed in the late Ming Dynasty. Secondly, they did not use ring-arm steel armor. Thirdly, they did not Will use a helmet with the word "Yong". Fourth, as most people in the comment area can realize, there is a hair issue. Finally, the image of the soldier in the film is that of a very low-level soldier in the Ming Dynasty. He only has a cotton-padded armor (with steel sheets riveted inside), no arm armor, and no formal helmet, but a cheap helmet with the word "Yong" in it. This kind of equipment has historically been very low-level "guard soldier" equipment. The general's private soldiers are called "housekeepers". Based on this equipment, they will be equipped with goggles, arm armor, greaves, gorget and a helmet that can completely protect the neck.）
What? That was supposed to be Qing dynasty. Also, I disagree that the video's visual depiction of Chinese soliders is accurate, especially of the Chinese commander. The Chinese is dressed more like Western soliders, but re-skinned.
@@KenoticMuse I mentioned the issue of the armor in the video not matching the background. However, looking at the Ming Dynasty alone, this image is very typical and accurate. Regardless of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the dress of Chinese military officers was very different from that of Western officers of the same period. They would all wear well-made armor on the battlefield. As depicted in the video, Ming Dynasty officers would wear cotton armor with steel arm armor, or wear scale armor; early military commanders in the Qing Dynasty might wear something similar to Ming Dynasty officers. Cotton armor with steel arm armor, such as Nurhachi's imperial armor and Huang Taiji's imperial armor now collected in the Palace Museum; later military generals of the Qing Dynasty would wear cotton armor decorated with patterns, paired with arm armor; even later Generals of the Qing Dynasty may wear official uniforms directly, or may not put any armor pieces on them, but simply wear cotton armor decorated with rivets and complex patterns that loses any defensive significance.
Putting a very distinctly Ming illustration to portray Qing shows the author of the vid having little understanding of non euro history. That's even worse than images of Romans in segmented armor to illustrate the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Dressing Ming outfits in the Qing period would definitely got you killed unless you’re a Korean or Vietnamese ambassador so yeah those Ming clothes bs doesn’t work here
"In Chinese, the word for city and the word for wall is the same" - as is in most other languages. The Greek *polis* and the Slavic *grad* are all words for some type of wall, as is the Germanic *burg*.
Using my slavic language, hrad means castle, and hradba means a fortified wall, so grad could have similar origins as wall and castle russian word for village, derevna comes from word for wood, derevo, russia used ti have many snaller foetifications with wooden walls
Xi'an has the largest surviving intact city wall in China. I've been on it, people set up shops and you could rent bicycles to ride along it, thing is wide enough to play football on. It's quite a thing to behold, I recommend visiting.
The thickest one were the Beijing's city wall. It was able to withstand Japan's modern artillery shells and aerial bombs. It was scrapped in 1950s though to make place for city planning. The other competitor was Nanjing's city wall. It is a pity that most of the length could not survive the time. When it was built in Ming dynasty, it was designed to be able to protect a million citizens, and enough farmland to withstand a siege for indefinite time.
@@henrywang3977 I know there had been plans in Xi'an to demolish the walls to built a transit system or something, luckily they didn't. Shame about the Beijing ones, they even had some recent history, as you said.
One thing that is not really emphasized, is that the Chinese used their earthen walls also as a way to protect against flooding, which is a much greater concern in China than in central Germany or France.
3:54 Interesting. 10 or even 20 meters thick earth ramparts were actually quite common in Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The most impressive ramparts/walls of this style were built in Arkona a double-layered rampart over 20 meters thick and at least 20 meters tall. Maybe this calls for a video about the siege of Arkona 1168?
@@morriganmhor5078 True that. I just referred to the Slavic gords because they remained much longer up to the XII century or even longer in some cases like in Ruthenia.
There is a noticeable difference between earlier earth works and later ramparts used in artillery forts, mainly that in artillery forts the Earth was stabilized with outer stoneworks and this meant you could have a much steeper wall and it made the earth works themselves stronger. We still use similar techniques when doing earth work today for civil engineering projects.
@@hedgehog3180 Yes, I do realize. However, one note is that Czechs stabilized their ramparts with outer stoneworks even in the early Middle Ages. Secondly, not all ramparts in the Early Modern Era were stabilized with stoneworks, across Eastern Europe due to lack of stone they either used bricks or wood.
I have waited for a video of this topic to come out for a long time. This siege was mentioned briefly in a book I read and I have searched for more information on it since but never found much. Tank you very much!
I loved the innovation by Sebastian Le Preste in 2:40 "If you cant penetrate the wall, dig and dig till you can fire it at almost point blank." Its simple, requires a lot of effort and patience, but its also the perfect combination of cunning and use of brute force.
But are you using your 10 minutes old outdated version of the Lex Imperialis as a structural support beam (thereby breaking at least 200 different laws in it)?
Well don't want to spoil your party, we'll actually I do, but uncle Putin is about to shut down TH-cam in russia. So enjoy it while you can, in two months youtube may be gone for you.
i think the author is reading too much into the results here. per wikipedia, the battle here only involved 3,000 soldiers from the attacking side, lasting 3 to 4 months. by contrast, the siege of Diaoyu Fortress lasted 20 years and it never fell to the attackers, despite not being a star fortress. and its not like the Russian Tsar was defending this place like it was Stalingrad either. results of the battle would have been inconsequential to both the Russians and the Chinese.
@@liquidh5226 in bulgarian its "град" That can also mean the weather event of raining ice (forgot how it was called in english) Edit: hail In bulgarian its short for "градушка"
Its excellent to learn more about Chinese martial history. I love to see content like this gaining appreciation in the western world
4 หลายเดือนก่อน +1
Perhaps the most interesting video you've ever made on sieges and military engineering; I like it because it confirms the assumptions I've always had as an architect and military history fan about the robustness of Chinese walls, but adds an obvious confirmation of the effectiveness of the European bastion model. It would be great if you could make a video comparing the similarities, benefits and drawbacks of Chinese, Japanese and Korean fortifications; I'm sure it's a topic everyone would love to see (especially if you break down the siege methods that this military architecture led to).
@@MaviAntwerp because earthen ramparts we’re made to defend against floods, this was the reason why it was invented in China thousands of years ago being good defenses are just a side effect
Slavic walled towns had wood and earth proto-ramparts since the early medieval times. Mostly because wood was a lot easier to obtain in the area than stone.
Star fortresses were so good, that Napoleon basically chose to skip the recently built Russian Imperial fortress of Dunaburg/Daugavpils after one attempt at taking it. And we know Napoleon was a Genius of warfare and strategy, so you really can't outthink a well-built, supplied and manned fortress.
You beat it by doing what he did. Not fighting where the enemy is strongest. Probably took that nugget from the likes of Caesar, a master at patience and striking when the time was right. Being bold, not mindlessly aggressive.
Funfact: I live in the Frederikbastion street in Maastricht. our whole neighborhood is called after bastions and one of our streets is called the Vaubanstreet: It was sieged in 1673 by the sunking Louis XIV of France. After he conquered the city Vauban made the city stronger with Ravelins, Bastions and kazematten. The musketeer d'Artagnan was the commander of the musketeers during this siege and was killed by a musketbullet i the neck when trying to enter the city when the wall was breached. Two centuries later his name was used by Dumas when he wrote the novel about the three musketeers.
Call me a dumbass. but It NEVER crossed my mind that people would seige forts with cannons. AND that cannon technology was so much better than slinging a rock that we had to change our defensive strategies. In my head I always imagined us using catapults/Trebuchets for all sieges. It's not even like this is unbelievable to me, I just had NEVER thought about it. Not even while playing civVI and LITERALLY seiging towns with cannons. Great video.
Cool video, a bit confused on why you called Russia "the Tsarist Empire" a few times considering that essentially means "the imperialist empire" which is like, yeah, duh.
As a Russian, I immediately noticed a number of inaccuracies: 1. Why is the Dutch Musketeer depicted on the screensaver. and not the Russian Sagittarius? Technically it's the same thing, but the clothes were completely different. 2. Why the Russian commander was depicted on maps in a tailcoat and a cocked hat, there were still 15 years left before the reforms of Peter the Great... Russian men in those years, for religious reasons, could not shave their faces clean (especially in Siberia), they simply could not, where the vast majority professed the old church rite, especially in those years when the church split had just occurred. 3. This fortress, most likely, was not a classic star fort, according to the archaeological data that I just found, the basis of this fortress was a rampart, which was poured on top of oak log cabins, in turn, log cabins were placed on top of each other, stones were poured inside (if there were), and most often just uprooted stumps. That is, the technology used to build fortresses in Russia since the 10th century, since stones were in great short supply, since most of the land was covered with forest, and the area is a continuous plain. 4. Why was a person with a purely Russian name a foreigner? Perhaps his father or grandfather was a foreigner, but not himself. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich hired many foreigners abroad, there was no exoticism in this.
@@yurylyandres6900 очень странно, тогда если меняли своё имя, то фамилия оставалась в той или иной форме иностранная, могло только поменяться окончание произношения фамилии на русский манер, например : Предком поэта Лермонтова, был шотландский наёмник, который перешёл на службу к царю после взятия одной из крепостей во время войны с Польшей, фамилия была его Лермонт, а его потомок уже носил фамилию переделанную на русский манер - Лермонтов, но всё равно технически это одна и та же фамилия, или например татарские предки дворян Шереметьевых носили фамилию или прозвище-Шеремет, после принятия православия они стали- Шереметевы, ну то есть человек принимал русское имя , но фамилию сохранял в том или ином виде.
@@СергейТурутин-ч6г в фамилии Байтон (Бейтон) нет ничего русского 🙂 Или вы про Толбузина говорили? Он погиб незадолго до описанной в видео контратаки, дальше всю осаду 10 месяцев командовал пруссак.
That's because there weren't any global treaties or MAD doctrines existing at the time that would prop them up. Most of the modern states today are less than 100 years old in every sense of the word, so prior to World War 1 the map stayed basically the same for centuries.
@@fus132Not really, most of the big states were just barely over 30 years old by the time of WW1. In Europe Germany, Italy, had finished unifying in 1871. Outside of Europe, more or less at that time the period of European rapid expansion in Asia came to an end, mostly because the few nations left indipendent weren't of interest, or were the Qing or Japanese, respectively too massive and too modernised to easily subjugate. The various African polities as well, were only subjected to the Scramble for Africa after the 1880s. WW1 wasn't even the peak of massive states consolidating across the world. By that time the Ottomans and Russia were already losing pieces, as had Sweden Things are less fluid and more frozen today, because MAD and Bloc Policy works both ways. Small states can't just be annexed by invasion without reaction from the members of the opposite bloc. But the same applies to supporting separatism, since in the past they weren't shy of outright military intervention against an opposing Great Power. Today that would mean nukes flying.
These maps are also _very_ simplified. In Europe, for instance, they show the HRE and Habsburg possessions outside of it as one big blob, which is fine in a video about East Asia but does contribute to the impression. More importantly, though, the modern state with clearly defined borders was just developing and inexistent in most of the world. That big area labelled "Mongols", for instance, is actually an area controlled by various Mongol tribes and confederations with varying influences from China, Russia, and others. It isn't a single centralised state, the regions of control have no fixed and agreed-upon bordersand are shifting frequently. Like almost all pre-modern "countries", it is a power structure that is very unkind to mapping it because territory is not the main point.
I can understand why, you wouldn’t want to make a map with a million small states when referring to a specific historical situation. This comes from a cartographer, there’s a time and place for everything.
There is a huge load of historical wisdom buried under widely-known facts most people always bringing up here and there. Good thing channels like this exist, to popularize true history.
There is a difference between “heavy siege artillery” and cannon (a type of artillery). Cannon fired low trajectory (a.k.a. Usually well below 45° elevation), whereas mortars were specifically high angle (a.k.a. Above 45°) and used specifically for sieges as they could lob shells over walls of any height. Howitzers combined the trajectory of both, and are used in almost every modern army in the world. Yes, CANNON would have been useless against Chinese walls, but no wall can defend against MORTARS or HOWITZERS. In the film “Last of the Mohicans” the French forces are besieging the British at Fort William Henry, whilst the British and French artillery are having a gunnery duel whilst French sappers are digging trenches. The British commander states that once the French Commander gets within a certain distance he’ll “…bring up his heavy mortars, lob explosive shells over these walls and pound us to dust.”
Qing people had queue hairstyle by this point in time. You were thinking of Ming, but Ming didn’t fight with Russia. Ming dynasty knew about star forts but didn’t really utilize it. Qing dynasty didn’t have that knowledge.
Not quite. It is as if, after the Rorke's Drift, the British discovered that the Zulus were vassals of a developed yet unknown empire that had a land border with them.
Fantastic vid as usual! I find the topic of warfare between different civilizations absolutely fascinating. Would be great if you covered the Chinese-Ducth war over Taiwan at some point!
About Vauban, French king Louis XIV once said: "fortress defended by Vauban, impregnable fortress. Fortress besieged by Vauban, fortress taken".Vauban was the absolute genius of fortifications. Visit Luxembourg City and admire the Vauban improvements of the ancient castle city.
This is a super cool video with a super unique aesthetic (it looks like you’re using something like dungeon painter studio, which gives a very retro civilization type game feel) hope to see you blow up in popularity!
Another big reason is because China rarely had to face external threats who had siege capabilities. It was either the Nomads of the Steppe or the less developed jungle areas of Laos Myanmar and Vietnam. To the north east they had Vietnam who were similar to them in culture but often behind in technology relying on the terrain to keep the Han at bay. Then theres the Samurai of Japan who often came as pirates rarely going too deep into the mainland and with no siege weapons. The Japanese invasions often went begging because they couldnt siege down towns fast enough and by the time the Han managed to respond they would just overwhelm the Japanese in field battles. Chinese artillery were mainly for supoort on the field rather than breaking city walls. They relied on sabotage and inside men to get them into the city. Naturally such approaches would never work against a clearly foreign race
12:00 ”came up with a new weapon: starvation” I very much dislike the use of this kind of falseful and misleading language especially in historical documentaries. There is nothing new that he needed to ”come up” with, starvation tactics in sieges are known throughout the ages in every culture as one of the if not the most basic tactic of conquering a fortified position. I’m sure Mr SandRhoman knows this very well. Time consuming, you pit your troops supply infrastructure and morale against the defenders rations to take the fort before possible enemy reinforcements arrive or being forced to abandon the siege for various reasons. So much of understanding history is understanding the context of the period, what is common, what is known and so on, otherwise it’s impossible to understand the intentions and motives that lead to the actions of the people living in that period. The wording gives the completely wrong impression of this tactic being something innovative rather than last obvious resort since nothing else worked.
The concept of cutting starving out those in a fortified position was nothing new. Rather it is the fundamental concept and primary tactic of a siege. For thousands of years, it was common for a siege to last from several months to over a year. Early siege weapons where constructed after the siege was already layed. And the majority of successful seiges never physically breached the walls. Bribery of someone inside the walls or capitulation due to prolonged deprivation were the common cause of success fully entering the fortification.
@@samsonsoturian6013 hahahhaha, Alaska is close to katchatka. While china and manjuria is basicly a sub tropic climate. If there wastn cold water flow it would be a jungle.
@@georgiykireev9678 Nice try. There's a reason the tigers in this region are called Siberian Tigers. Siberian Tigers are adapted to Taiga forests. Are you confused them with Bengal Tigers?
@@robertnomok9750 That's a ridiculous claim. Look up the climate near Mohe City, China. Low temperature during January has a MEAN value of -30 Celsius, colder than a lot of places in Alaska. You must have very different definition for "sub tropic climate" from anyone else
12:06 this is a very old siege tactic frequently used by the Chinese, because walled cities in China were very well-developed early on, which made starvation preferable over a direct assault as long as you had the conditions for it
*In Europe, the kind of men used to dig "z" shaped trenches towards the walls of a fortress, sometimes digging undreground tunnel to place explosive charges (Travail de "Sape" ou "Sabotage") Were named Sapeurs-Pompiers in France.* *This is the former name for modern FireFighters.* De Vauban improves seriouly theese kind of "star-like" fortifications, but they originaly came from Italy, during the XVth century. _Vauban just perfectionned them, as in "Neuf-Brisach" Fortified town._ Make some web research on it, beautiful ! Cheers from France !
Interestingly, there is at least one star fortress in East Asia, albeit in Japan: Fort Goryokaku. They built it after studying European fortresses. The last battle of the Boshin War took place there, though the defenders surrendered the fort pretty quickly after being surrounded and losing a nearby naval battle.
Imagine watching hundreds of your men slowly die of starvation and disease defending the fortress only to be told that your king has decided to give it to the enemy after just talking to them (as they should have in the first place before sending people to kill each other). War is hell.
I just want to appreciate this channel for the decision at 9:33 to not draw the video out by narrating the repeated assaults conducted in this section of the video. It would have been extremely easy to do, but you focused on condensing the information down to be more comprehensible for youtube viewing. Thank you.
how long did the siege last to build all that? 12:45 Was it that hard to starve them out? Cutting off any routes to get food? - A fortress under a siege (cut off) needs reinforcements from deeper inside the borders, no? - That's what I lived under the impression of. - If they did occupy ways to clean water, that's barely any time left...
Don’t sleep on solving your internet problems while travelling and go to Saily.com/sandrhoman and use the code sandrhoman to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase.
Although poliorcetics is fascinating and the narrative excellent more contemporary woodcut print visuals would be great
12:40
That is a Dutch drawing isn't it
Kind of i teresting how both seige techniques wouldnt work on the other fort
edit for you : Eastern vs Western Siegecraft: When the Chinese Besieged a Muscovite Star Fortress in 1686
Odd i was force unsubscribed from you.
Fun extra fact: after the first siege concluded, a few dozen cossacks were captured and brought to the Chinese emperor's court. They were offered lucrative bonuses to join the Chinese army ranks (for propaganda reasons mostly). Some declined the offer and returned home, but most of them agreed, giving the birth to the "Albazinians", one of the first Orthodox Christian communities in China. They assimilated a few generations later, but preserved their faith, and a lot of them martyred during the Boxer Rebellion. I believe that to this day, there are people in China who claim to be the descendants of the defenders of Albazin!
wow, thas some new knowledge
I actually genuinely agree with you. @@Alfaspring
not out loud or too proudly if they dont want their social credit to go down, I imagine
@@TheHippyProductions social credit don't exist
@@dexorne9753 Sometimes it seems that Europeans are as ignorant about China today than they were back in the premodern days.
Interesting to think how asymmetrical development can lead to both sides struggling with the other's fortifications.
Agree, In Europe walls was thin so cannons was very effective. As walls got thicker cannons become larger and larger.
In China walls started thick so cannons was not effective against them so cannons remained smaller.
Yes its likely other factors like naval cannons.
@@magnemoe1You don't even have to go to very different cultures to see it. You can just look at the various WW2 navies to see how all the different needs and available technologies influenced how each individual navy setup it's combat doctrine. And in that war, most of the naval powers were all European!
@@magnemoe1 thank you for repeating what the video said..very informative 😂
and then the aerial combat was introduced
@@mohamedelhaddade6371 Summarizing the main point relevant to the original post may be a bit superfluous, but it shows appreciation for both the video and the comment.
Your comment only serves to aggrandize yourself at the expense of someone else. It is not only more superfluous, but it's also uselessly disagreeable. Waste of time.
And yes, this particular comment is mainly an intellectual exercise on my part. I don't mind admitting it, but it's also because I dislike your comment more than the slightly superfluous summarization.
3:30
In case you didn't know. The word "town" in english stems from the germanic language tree and has the same root as the german word "Zaun" meaning fence. By definition a town is a fenced/walled off village.
What I am saying here is that it isn't just the chinese using walls to denominate cities.
Just like the word for city/town in Russian - город (gorod) (archaic form is град (grad)). Word ограда (ograda) - something that is fenced (or огород (ogorod), but this word is used to describe a garden of vegetables that is fenced)
traditional chinese has a quirk of always preserving the origin of the word with pictogram of that thing
Would that be the origin of Dutch "tuin", meaning garden?
I believe the “-burg” suffix in many German cities also refers to castles/fortresses, so it seems to be a somewhat common trend around the world
So is the Dutch word Haag - as in Den Haag (The Hague) - which comes from "hedge" for a place enclosed by a hedge as a sort of pseudo wall. Interestingly as well, the German word "Stadt" (meaning "city/town") originally comes from a word for "shooting range" lol.
Imagine going through all of this as a soldier, just to hear your leaders call it a tie.
That's how it feels in a game of chess that ends in a draw.
Many such cases.
Call it a tie AND giving them the bastion they couldnt take
A tie as defender is still a win.
Yea but becouse of such resiliance negotiations could be wery different from capitulation-like style such as for example was the end of Russian-Japaneese war.
One little correction: Tolbuzin was killed in action on the second week of the siege and his command was taken by Beiton.
"little"
Prob to Langtan though the dude adapted to his mistake rather quickly, rather than sticking with traditional method that went nowhere.
Yeah if anything this video showed European methods were developed by the Chinese independently very quickly when faced with the same challenges
@@deeznoots6241 Not really the same method though? His trenches appear to have been to blockade (a use that surely goes all the way to the prehistoric era), not as a way to advance artillery under cover such that it's close enough to the walls to cause serious damage. Not that I'm saying that detracts from Langtan; you can hardly expect anyone to reinvent 300 years of tactics in an afternoon.
@@deeznoots6241 They just went with the oldest tactic in the book in terms of sieges because they had the advantages to do so. I would not say the adapted exaxly.
"Do you know the difference between an error and a mistake?" Anyone can make an error. But that error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it."
@@deeznoots6241 almost like we were pretty good at problem solving as a specie :)
It's sometimes easy to forget that Russia and China are both massive nations, that actually have a very long border together.
massive countries. Population of China outnumbers Russians several times, in fact there are fewer Russians than the inhabitants of Bangladesh
@@robertwisniewski2029 roughly 10 to 1. I like those odds
Yeah but that massive border is not really that interesting for either of them.
Ignoring the mountain (yeah small detail i know) that part of Russia is almost empty and development in the steppe isn't really possible.
So while they do have a massive border they aren't very connected, Russia's geopolitical interest has always been west.
@@francesco8000very reductive and the reason why little is known about the history of this area
@@AnneFrankthe2ndgo cry about it.
fun fact, some Chinese walls are so thick that it still been used against the Japanese in WWII
There was a famous battle alongside the great wall between Chinese and Japanese during the WWII
Chinese has fortress low think wall
Russian fortress have angle wall
And still standing today
Eastern style fortifications proved useful in several 20th century conflicts like WWII, the Chinese Civil War and The First Indochina War. Obviously at this point much heavier artillery existed that could easily demolish them but that was rarely available in these conflicts so the troops often only had light field artillery and mortars, meanwhile the fortifications were basically everywhere and local troops were familiar with them.
@@hedgehog3180 same in Europe, many castles were utilised as small scale fortifications and/or for anti air purposes, I’m thinking for example of castle Dover or castle Itter
Peter the Great was 14 years old at that time, so he could not engage in any negotiations. His elder sister Sophia was a regent and ruler in 1686.
The government of a monarchy is the monarch themself. No one claimed peter was personally doing any negotiations. It was still his court, his government, and his regent appointed ambassador that did it.
@@sumelar The problem is that his brother Ivan the fifth ruled de jure at that time. And his sister regent, Sofia, ruled de facto. It's a difficult time really. Like the War of the Roses, only faster and in Russia (The struggle of the Naryshkins in the person of Peter and the Miloslavskys in the person of Sofia)
This campaign is also quite important in Korean history since it was the first time for Koreans to experience the western tactics. About 200 of muskeeters participated in this campaign in response to the request for assistance from Qing, and there are some records of Joseon (Korean) officiers about the battles against Russians. Through this campaign, Joseon, who had been using only matchlock musket, experienced flint lock musket of russians, for the first time. Furthermore, it is known that there are some records about how Joseon officiers were interested in volley fire tactics of Russians, which was significantly different from that of Joseon. After this campaign, Joseon tried self-production of flint-lock musket, but failed due to several reasons (cost, lack of industry and technology etc). Tragically, Joseon used matchlock musket until 20th century.
Joseon Koreans learned about the matchlock from Japanese invaders during the Imjin War. Thousands of Japanese matchlocks were captured, and the Joseon Koreans made improvements on the design while copying them. Joseon Korean firearms tactics were adapted from Japanese firearms tactics. Joseon Korea did have flintlock muskets, but they were more expensive and perhaps only elite units were equipped with them. Common soldiers on the other hand were equipped with matchlock muskets. Compared to flintlocks, matchlocks were much simpler, more economical and were easier to be maintained. Joseon Korea was not the only one. There were many other countries in Asia and Africa where common soldiers were equipped with matchlocks until the early 20th Century.
@@MrLantean Matchlock in 20th century? It was not just obsolete. Even the obsolete was already obsolete.
😅
@@gorilladisco9108 Even today there are matchlocks still being used but as hunting weapons. In Tibet, some nomads still use the matchlocks to hunt prey and predatory animals.
@@gorilladisco9108 yes, but I could probably manufacture a matchlock musket with only a handful of materials and almost no technical knowledge of gunsmithing.
Very interesting comment.
That's how you do comparative history well! None of the nonsense like _"Who would win in 20,000 ninjas vs 50,000 vikings?"_ that pollutes so much of the web. Just grounded comparisons highlighting the differences, where the differences likely come from, and the impact they had.
LMAO, so true.
I haven't seen that shit in at least 10 years. Algorithm shows you more of what you watch so stop watching garbage
comments like this just reveal the brainrot of the commenter
if you didn't watch the "ninjas vs vikings" type videos you wouldn't see them recommended, as i don't
Ye well but the answer is vikings
@@DevinDTV And replies like that just how limited the experience is of the commenter. I wasn't just talking about vikings vs ninja literally, and not just about TH-cam, but also history forums and reddit and the like. And also in the comments of videos that are themselves much better. Go read some of the the comments in older SandRhoman videos and you'll see the like often enough (often mixed in with plain old nationalism / racism too).
Apparently earthquakes are more common in China, so thin wall construction and European castle design was never a real option.
Earthquakes are a thing in southern Europe but pretty much
Castles were unique to (Medieval) Europe because of the decentralized nobility. This was for the most part not possible in China with its centralized government as setting up your own castle independent of the emperor would just be incredibly suspicious. Same reason they did not arise in Roman times even though the technology made it possible.
That being said, there was a phenomenon of small fortified manors similar to castles during the end of the Han dynasty. These were called "wu bi". Keep in mind though that these would've arisen in a time of increasing instability.
The concept of living in a literal fortress seems so cool. Meanwhile in the US everything is drywall
Space andd budget must play a role too
@@caralho5237 And wood.
Actually the signee of the 1689 agreement was not Tzar Peter, he was still too young. The actual ruler of Russia was his sister Sofia and her lover/Prime Minister of Russia Golitsin who was the actual master mind of all the Siberian politics
There’s a novel “The Deer and the Couldron” by Jin Yong about this Chinese-Russian war. In the novel, the protagonist Wei Xiao-Bao was a lover of princess Sofia and helped her in a coup to get into power. He also led the Qing military force to fight against the Russian.
@@einsam_aber_freichinese has no culture
@@einsam_aber_frei The author should have named this character Mar Tie Stiu.
@@f-14btomcat for?
@@thedisastricartist5075 It stands for Marty Sue, the male version of the term Mary Sue.
Nice video, very well made, keep it going!
China built thicker walls than Europe because of tectonic plates. Walls are useless if they get destroyed by your run of the mill earthquake, and Japan and China had more Earthquakes than Europe because of their geological position. The Forbidden Palace was specifically designed to be earthquake resistant, and it makes sense to transfer that logic to the defensive walls of the region, where it caught on elsewhere as the norm.
thats why Chinese structures are usually made of interlocked wood with the base being stone or a combo of stone and packed earth
Interesting... I hadn't heard that before. I lived in China for three years and never felt an earthquake. In my one year in Korea, I felt one shake, but it turned out it was because Kim was testing a nuke umderground
You are crazy
@@fusion9619 It depends on which specific region of China, don't forget China is as large as the entire Europe, some places do experience frequent earthquakes and some places do not :)
A building like the Royal Palace, which costs a lot, has to take into account the availability over hundreds of years. These seismic properties are not intended for a person's life scale, and it is normal that they never come in handy during someone's lifetime
How neat! I didn't know that Chinese siege warfare wasn't as well studied. I would love to know how Japanese, Korean, and Chinese siege tactics developed separately.
Not an expert, but I believe it is fairly well studied in China and in _Chinese._ But translation is hard, so it might not have filtered through to "Western" scholars deeply.
Like many things, Europeans and Americans don't really learn about or study many historical subjects that aren't European or American, unless someone is personally interested in a subject.
@@patrickdix772Sorry we still haven’t developed a way to learn about everything that happened everywhere in history
@@patrickdix772I mean the same thing could be said for eastern historians. I don’t know why you’re acting like this is an issue that only western historians suffer from
@@bobskywalker2707 Because he/she has a bias against Europeans and Americans and want to spin a basic assumption regarding all humans (Studying things they are interested in? How weird) to somehow be isolated to Europeans or Americans.
The idea of the defenders in a siege actually coming outside the walls to counterattack when an assault failed is novel to me. Just never thought about it.
famous one in LOTR when moridor has Gondor under seige. but it's standard tactics
Sorties have been a part of defending fortresses for thousands of years.
@@kokofan50 It's really something never shown in most media, they usually just have the defenders turtleing
Most media has the attackers trying to storm the walls then leaving when it doesnt work.@@mmfe116
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortie
The song of the Volga boatmen tune playing in the background :D I almost couldn't hear it.
Oh, good ear! I would have missed it if not for your comment!
I think it’s civ 4’s Stalin theme of it aswell
Good ear indeed! Just a tiny correction: Volga pile workers, not boatmen. But still a 'river shanty', kind of...
@@YuriIdrisov Yeah, that's just how it's named on youtube in English
It's about the same as if the affairs of the British monarchy were being discussed and an Irish pub tune was playing in the background.
You could have mentioned that China never cared about Siberia until the Qing arrived to power. However, the Russians, by this point, had conquered much of Siberia and were looking southward. Hence the siege.
Any reason why the Qing were more interested in that territory than previous dynasties?
@@OhioDan Partly Manchuria had something to do with it. Manchuria was the heartland of the Jurchens aka Manchus. It didn't surprise me if they were more afraid of what to come with this piece of land. A key reason why the Qing occupied Sakhalin island at the time.
@@OhioDan Because before the Qing Dynasty, the greatest threat to northern China was the nomadic peoples, and by the Qing Dynasty the Mongolia had submitted to Qing rule. After that, for the first time, the biggest threat north of the Mongolian plateau became Russia from Europe.
Before the Industrial Revolution, China was a very traditional agricultural country, and all aspects of Chinese society depended on the development of agriculture. The harsh climate in Siberia was very unfavorable for agriculture. The Chinese emperor was unwilling to spend a lot of money to occupy a piece of land that was worthless in his eyes. But in the 17th century, the Russia gradually penetrated into Siberia, and even sent troops to attack Manchuria, which aroused the alarm of the Chinese emperor, and only then did the Qing Dynasty begin to pay attention to Siberia.
“饮马瀚海，封狼居胥”, I hope you just search them and find where are these two places……
@@ArrivalheRe The Manchurian territory was far bigger than what it currently has now. It was only by 1860 that it was partitioned.
One thing to point out, Tsar is the Slavic variant of Caesar, so much like the German Kaiser it means emperor, so by saying Tsarist empire, you are just saying Emperor's empire.
This is chai tea all over again
Saying Tsar's Tsardom would be saying Emperor's Empire.
Exactly
Yeah, but even though the term “Tsar” was widely used all around, it wasn’t correct, since the official title was, in fact, “Emperor”. These titles became obsolete starting with the rule of Peter the Great, when he shifted the country from Tsardom to Empire.
@@lordium1848 Peter declared himself an emperor only in 1721. Before that he was a tsar.
I love the helmets that the Qing Musketeers were wearing. Very practical but still stylish.
That was actually a Ming era militia helmet, Qing troops mostly wore caps instead.
@@fsdds1488 This type remained in service for around 150~ years into the Qing, only after muskets were common standard issue were they replaced by caps. You could find this helmet still illustrated on the "Da Qing Hui Dian - Jia Zhou Pian", or Great Qing statutes - armor.
@@fsdds1488 Qing troops were a rattan helmet, they look like caps but they are really hard.
What if I tell you they used it totally wrong......
@@yuuki4560the Qing most certainly didn’t use勇字盔, many armors depicted in this video are Ming era armors, there are subtle differences
Actually, there is a very good book called The Gunpowder Age by Tonio Andrade that exactly answers the question: Chinese technology in Medieval times was the best, yet in 150 years Britain in 1849 was able to completely defeat China in the Opium War. How? So the book goes over gunpowder technology and tactics in Western Europe, then in Asia, then the final chapter explains 4 reasons why the West could overwhelm the East, and it is NOT "the Chinese were too conservative and could not adapt." One of the reasons was Theoretical Physics. Another was the design of these Star forts mentioned in this video. An excellent book. You will understand both Europe and Asian musket and cannon tactics and technology.
Thank you for the book, I'll read it. I'll also recommend "Why Did Europe Conquer The World?" by Philip T. Hoffman, where he also said gunpowder was the reason of Europe emergence.
In it, he pointed some circumstances that prevent China from innovating the technology fast enough to catch up with Europe, i.e. being a hegemon of their part of continent made them rarely had to deal in gunpowder warfare, most of their enemies were consisted of nomads on horseback which could be dealt more effectively with archery (early gunpowder weapons were too slow), and their taxation system "wasn't harsh enough" (European lords could raise taxes up to 30% from taxable subjects without riots, compared to less than 5% in China). All of those slowed down their innovations in gunpowder weaponry.
@@gorilladisco9108 Thanks for dropping your reading suggestion too. It's truly a fascinating topic in no small part because theories keep having to be revised, and we'll probably never know the full answers behind the Great Divergence. The strange thing is, the Qing did actually wage several offensive wars during the 18th century at the same time as the very intense early Modern European wars, so old stereotypes about them being an "idyllic hegemon" are definitively false. But because they were always attacking far smaller opponents, the Qing never had a good incentive to really change their tactics and strategy. They were certainly aware of European innovations on at least some level too, it was just little more than a novelty to them.
Of course, an alternate perspective I've seen brought up is that it's less that China (or other regions of the world) failed to keep up with Europe, and more that Europe cracked the code and suddenly found itself way ahead of everyone else.
he namedrops it in the video
The Renaissance made Europe develop so fast that the rest of the world couldn't keep up.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, China's gunpowder had begun to lag behind that of Europe, and in the late Ming Dynasty, it even needed European artillery technology to deal with the Manchus.
The Qing Dynasty itself was a dynasty in which a few foreign races ruled the majority of local races.
They are more focused on maintaining their dominance than technological progress
Another great video on something I had never heard about. I always appreciate this channel putting historiography first, because a lot of big "history" channels prioritize narrative and a good story and it always irks me.
Then don't watch it if it's irks you
@@Timelapse_584 Presumably that's what they're doing. What was the point of this
History without narrative is worthless.
I don't know if my comment will help your channel or not, but still I want to tell you. Your channel and others like it take me to places I will never see, and every one is a pleasure to watch. What you do is important. These history lessons have helped me keep my sanity in insane times. Thank you very much.
here first
I always getvexcited and happy when I browse TH-cam and see that a SandRhoman video just came out! Original art work, detailed, accurate information == Highly Underrated Channel, especially considering you don't find many videos covering tike pike and shot era.
first
China underestimated what Russian penetration of Siberia meant. The first treaty China ever signed on equal terms , instead of one with an acknowledged vassal, was with Russia.
Many of the early leaders in Russian employ in Siberia were not Russians but were Poles, Germans, or Scandinavians. Russia knew that it could hire a foreign exploration and administration talent pool to lay a foundation for later Russian inertial rule. China could not.
14:15 The Treaty of Nerchinsk was drafted in Manchu, Russian and Latin. The Latin version was the authoritative version, and it was negotiated by Jesuit priests in Qing service, and Polish officers on the Russian side. Tellingly, some Chinese participants accused the Jesuits of conspiring with the Russians, and the Qing would never again allow Jesuits to occupy such a crucial role, but the Latin version also deflected some Russian attempts at word play on place names.
Nations appeared only in the 19th century (as far as I remember). Therefore, such reasoning is not correct. In those days, people were divided not by nations, but by service to the overlord and, to a lesser extent, by religion.
The last Russian Tsar had only 1/128 Slavic blood. He was the cousin of the German Kaiser. And he spoke French better than Russian.
@@andreywonttell4016 The Russian Empire never officially acknowledged China as an overlord unlike the rest of China’s neighbors so OP’s post holds true under your logic
@@andreywonttell4016 This is wrong.
Nation in the sense of the modern state is a new concept, but the notion of belonging to a specific people has existed for a long time, despite of the lord that they were serving. The Germanic tribes in the late classical period are a great example of this, where multiple different leaders clearly had a sense of unity and brotherhood between themselves that they didn't with others, which is backed by numerous historical documents.
Even the Proto-Indo-Europeans had words for nation and foreigners in the early bronze age.
@@andreywonttell4016 this was actually very common for all of the european rulers because of the morganatic laws, which proibited future kings from marrying anyone except other royals under a threat of losing claims to the throne. This effectively made impossible for the Russian emperor to marry a Russian, British king to marry a Brit, or Spanish king to marry a Spaniard, so all these dynasties had little to no of local blood in them. It can actually be seen even in a modern era. Elizabeth II was the first British monarch to have a majority of British blood since 18th century. Her father, George VI, was a son of a Swabian(Lower German) Princess and George V, who was a son of a Dutch Princess and Edward VII, who was a son of a Saxon Prince and Queen Victoria, who was again a daughter of a Saxon Princess and so on for many more generations. Basically, because Germany was disunited and had so many Principalities and Kingdoms, it always had the largest selection of heirs to choose from, and thats why virtually every European dynasty were overwhelmingly German by blood.
You got to give props to both sides. Such a mad contest, neither side giving in.
first
Your depiction of Chinese Ming Dynasty soldiers is very accurate and typical, and is an image that the Chinese are very familiar with. Thank you.
But judging from what you said, Chinese soldiers should probably wear Qing Dynasty-style armor instead of Ming Dynasty style. The style of the Qing Dynasty was similar to that of the Ming Dynasty. It inherited the development of the upper and lower parts of the cotton armor in the late Ming Dynasty, and canceled the steel arm armor and changed it to a ring-arm cotton armor.
編輯：首先我要說，影片中選擇的中國軍隊形象有問題，應該選用清軍形象，而非影片中的典型明軍造型。第二，我想說的是我真不清楚明清這種甲在英文該如何翻譯，如果使用了你們不習慣的名稱，希望不要介意，大概能知道我說的是什麼就好了。
我是中國人，同時也是中國的一名古代軍備愛好者，還是個明清時代遊戲的MODDer。清代最常見的甲胄被稱為“布面甲”，民間習慣稱為“棉（綿）甲”。這種甲在中國最早是由蒙古人使用，明代大量裝備。明末是氣象史上著名的小冰河期，尤其是在遼東地區更是極其寒冷，因此外續棉花、內鉚鋼片的棉甲在防衛的同時，還能保暖，深得邊軍士兵以及軍官的喜愛。
清朝起源於建州女真，在起兵反明之前，長期作為明朝的內藩，文化、技術上都受到明朝巨大影響，盔甲也不例外。因此後金時期直到清早期的清軍棉甲，除花紋以外，幾乎和明代一模一樣。大家可以搜索努爾哈赤和皇太極兩代清朝（後金）皇帝的甲胄，凡熟悉明代甲胄者，一眼就能看出幾乎是一模一樣。二者最大的差別是頭盔，因為漢人束髮，因此頭盔外凸，滿人剃髮，因此頭盔內凹。
明代軍備除棉甲外，也會因應不同地理區域，裝備不同的甲胄。有一個非常典型的裝備叫“環臂甲”，主要是精銳士兵以及軍官使用。是獨立的，可以搭配各種盔甲。因此影片中的軍官形象對於明代來說是合宜的。但是從時代來看，又是不合適的。
明代棉甲在末期發展出了上襖、下裙的分體形式，這種形式配合相對於環臂甲來說更新潮的環臂棉甲，在後來成為了清代甲胄的最主要形式，在中國也被稱為“八旗甲”。
在清代中後期，人們拆掉了棉甲內部的鋼片，保留了鉚釘作為裝飾，又加上了襠部的裝飾，成為清代後期高級軍官的禮儀性服裝。
另外，“剃頭易服”並不涉及甲胄，這種東西是防護用品，保命用的，而且明末邊軍甲連滿洲人自己用的都是這個玩意兒，如果棉甲不允許穿，他們是要自己殺自己嗎？
但是視頻中的士兵甲胄依然是不准確的，首先清代的棉甲繼承的是明代末期發展出的是上襖下裙的分體形式，其次不會使用環臂鋼甲，第三不會使用勇字盔，第四，正如評論區一般人都能意識到的，髮型問題。
最後，影片中的士兵形象是明代非常底階的士兵，只有一件棉甲衣（內部鉚了鋼片），沒有環臂甲，也沒有正式的頭盔，而是廉價的“勇”字盔，這種在歷史上都是非常低級的“衛所兵”的裝備。將領的私兵被稱為“家丁”，會在這身裝備基礎上，配上護心鏡、臂甲、脛甲、護喉以及能夠完整保護頸部的頭盔。
（Computer translation:
Editor: First of all, I want to say that there is a problem with the image of the Chinese army chosen in the film. The image of the Qing army should be chosen instead of the typical Ming army in the film. Second, what I want to say is that I really don’t know how to translate the most common armor in the Ming and Qing Dynasties in English. If I use a name that you are not used to, I hope you don’t mind. You will probably know what I am talking about.
I am Chinese, and I am also a fan of ancient Chinese armaments, and a MODDer of games from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The most common armor in the Qing Dynasty was called "cloth armor", and folk custom called it "cotton (cotton) armor". This kind of armor was first used by the Mongols in China and was heavily equipped in the Ming Dynasty. The late Ming Dynasty was the famous Little Ice Age in meteorological history, especially in the Liaodong area, which was extremely cold. Therefore, the cotton armor with cotton on the outside and riveted steel sheets on the inside could not only protect but also keep warm. It was deeply loved by the soldiers and officers of the border army. favorite.
The Qing Dynasty originated from the Jurchens in Jianzhou. Before they rebelled against the Ming Dynasty, they had been a vassal of the Ming Dynasty for a long time. Their culture and technology were greatly influenced by the Ming Dynasty, and armor was no exception. Therefore, the cotton armor of the Qing army from the Late Jin period to the early Qing Dynasty was almost identical to that of the Ming Dynasty except for the pattern. You can search for the armor of Nurhaci and Huang Taiji, the two emperors of the Qing Dynasty (Later Jin Dynasty). Anyone who is familiar with the armor of the Ming Dynasty can tell at a glance that they are almost identical. The biggest difference between the two is the helmet. Because the Han people tie their hair, their helmets are convex, while the Manchus shave their hair, so their helmets are concave.
In addition to cotton-padded armor, the Ming Dynasty's military equipment would also be equipped with different armors according to different geographical areas. There is a very typical piece of equipment called "arm armor", which is mainly used by elite soldiers and officers. It is independent and can be matched with various armors. Therefore, the image of military officers in the film is appropriate for the Ming Dynasty. But from the perspective of the times, it is inappropriate.
In the late Ming Dynasty, the cotton armor developed into a separate form with an upper coat and a lower skirt. This form, combined with the more fashionable ring-arm cotton armor compared to the ring-arm armor, later became the main form of armor in the Qing Dynasty. China is also known as the "Eight Banners armor".
In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, people removed the steel sheets inside the cotton armor, retained the rivets as decoration, and added crotch decoration, which became the ceremonial clothing of senior officers in the late Qing Dynasty.
In addition, "shaving one's head and changing clothes" does not involve armor. This kind of thing is protective equipment and is used to save lives. In addition, in the late Ming Dynasty, even the Manchus themselves used this thing. If cotton armor is not allowed to be worn, they are Do you want to kill yourself?
However, the soldiers' armor in the video is still inaccurate. First of all, the cotton armor of the Qing Dynasty inherited the split form of the upper coat and lower skirt developed in the late Ming Dynasty. Secondly, they did not use ring-arm steel armor. Thirdly, they did not Will use a helmet with the word "Yong". Fourth, as most people in the comment area can realize, there is a hair issue.
Finally, the image of the soldier in the film is that of a very low-level soldier in the Ming Dynasty. He only has a cotton-padded armor (with steel sheets riveted inside), no arm armor, and no formal helmet, but a cheap helmet with the word "Yong" in it. This kind of equipment has historically been very low-level "guard soldier" equipment. The general's private soldiers are called "housekeepers". Based on this equipment, they will be equipped with goggles, arm armor, greaves, gorget and a helmet that can completely protect the neck.）
What? That was supposed to be Qing dynasty. Also, I disagree that the video's visual depiction of Chinese soliders is accurate, especially of the Chinese commander. The Chinese is dressed more like Western soliders, but re-skinned.
@@KenoticMuse I mentioned the issue of the armor in the video not matching the background. However, looking at the Ming Dynasty alone, this image is very typical and accurate.
Regardless of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the dress of Chinese military officers was very different from that of Western officers of the same period. They would all wear well-made armor on the battlefield. As depicted in the video, Ming Dynasty officers would wear cotton armor with steel arm armor, or wear scale armor; early military commanders in the Qing Dynasty might wear something similar to Ming Dynasty officers. Cotton armor with steel arm armor, such as Nurhachi's imperial armor and Huang Taiji's imperial armor now collected in the Palace Museum; later military generals of the Qing Dynasty would wear cotton armor decorated with patterns, paired with arm armor; even later Generals of the Qing Dynasty may wear official uniforms directly, or may not put any armor pieces on them, but simply wear cotton armor decorated with rivets and complex patterns that loses any defensive significance.
Putting a very distinctly Ming illustration to portray Qing shows the author of the vid having little understanding of non euro history. That's even worse than images of Romans in segmented armor to illustrate the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
No lots of Han soldiers of this time were former Ming soldiers
Dressing Ming outfits in the Qing period would definitely got you killed unless you’re a Korean or Vietnamese ambassador so yeah those Ming clothes bs doesn’t work here
"In Chinese, the word for city and the word for wall is the same" - as is in most other languages. The Greek *polis* and the Slavic *grad* are all words for some type of wall, as is the Germanic *burg*.
Wow, thanks, I've never thought about that
Burg is not the name for city, it is just that many German cities are named after Burg. The German word for city is Stadt.
Using my slavic language,
hrad means castle, and hradba means a fortified wall, so grad could have similar origins as wall and castle
russian word for village, derevna comes from word for wood, derevo, russia used ti have many snaller foetifications with wooden walls
@@danielwordsworth1843do my eyes spy a fellow Czech?
@@kregy7509 if you squint your eyes a bit
southern neighbour greets you
Xi'an has the largest surviving intact city wall in China. I've been on it, people set up shops and you could rent bicycles to ride along it, thing is wide enough to play football on. It's quite a thing to behold, I recommend visiting.
I lived in Xi'an for 1 year, blessed city. Love from Colombia!
The thickest one were the Beijing's city wall. It was able to withstand Japan's modern artillery shells and aerial bombs. It was scrapped in 1950s though to make place for city planning.
The other competitor was Nanjing's city wall. It is a pity that most of the length could not survive the time. When it was built in Ming dynasty, it was designed to be able to protect a million citizens, and enough farmland to withstand a siege for indefinite time.
@@henrywang3977 I know there had been plans in Xi'an to demolish the walls to built a transit system or something, luckily they didn't.
Shame about the Beijing ones, they even had some recent history, as you said.
Thanks!
One thing that is not really emphasized, is that the Chinese used their earthen walls also as a way to protect against flooding, which is a much greater concern in China than in central Germany or France.
Ok there is one mistake at 3:34
city wall is written：城墙
兵临城下 means (adversary) troops is very close to the city.
3:54 Interesting. 10 or even 20 meters thick earth ramparts were actually quite common in Central and Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. The most impressive ramparts/walls of this style were built in Arkona a double-layered rampart over 20 meters thick and at least 20 meters tall.
Maybe this calls for a video about the siege of Arkona 1168?
The same with the "hill forts" of Britain or Gallia. Murus gallicum.
@@morriganmhor5078 True that. I just referred to the Slavic gords because they remained much longer up to the XII century or even longer in some cases like in Ruthenia.
@@Velesus101 true
There is a noticeable difference between earlier earth works and later ramparts used in artillery forts, mainly that in artillery forts the Earth was stabilized with outer stoneworks and this meant you could have a much steeper wall and it made the earth works themselves stronger. We still use similar techniques when doing earth work today for civil engineering projects.
@@hedgehog3180 Yes, I do realize. However, one note is that Czechs stabilized their ramparts with outer stoneworks even in the early Middle Ages.
Secondly, not all ramparts in the Early Modern Era were stabilized with stoneworks, across Eastern Europe due to lack of stone they either used bricks or wood.
I have waited for a video of this topic to come out for a long time. This siege was mentioned briefly in a book I read and I have searched for more information on it since but never found much. Tank you very much!
First
I loved the innovation by Sebastian Le Preste in 2:40
"If you cant penetrate the wall, dig and dig till you can fire it at almost point blank."
Its simple, requires a lot of effort and patience, but its also the perfect combination of cunning and use of brute force.
Very well produced, interesting and informative video, thank you.
8:01 "I am fortifying this position"
But are you using your 10 minutes old outdated version of the Lex Imperialis as a structural support beam (thereby breaking at least 200 different laws in it)?
It's been so long since I watched that, but I still heard the voice in my head perfectly.
Okay Rogal.
WHY?!?!
"No."
-Dadornable
This was an amazing video! Ahh! I love hearing about when different cultures meet and collide (not always in conflict!)
here first
I love this channel for bringing shit like this into my attention that I had never even heard about. And I'm from Russia.
Жалко конечно что наши политики и власти вечно обесценивали жертвы солдат, хотя крепость и не была взята её всё равно отдали китаю
Well don't want to spoil your party, we'll actually I do, but uncle Putin is about to shut down TH-cam in russia. So enjoy it while you can, in two months youtube may be gone for you.
@@TheBonecrusherz bruh this is some stupid propaganda that I've heard 2 years ago, all that has changed is that is ad is now gone
@@TheBonecrusherz I don't live in Russia
@@LoremasterLiberaster you just summoned a bunch of bots lmao
i think the author is reading too much into the results here.
per wikipedia, the battle here only involved 3,000 soldiers from the attacking side, lasting 3 to 4 months. by contrast, the siege of Diaoyu Fortress lasted 20 years and it never fell to the attackers, despite not being a star fortress. and its not like the Russian Tsar was defending this place like it was Stalingrad either. results of the battle would have been inconsequential to both the Russians and the Chinese.
No clue why this video explodes right now, but you deserve it man. Also this is one of your best imo.
In Russian language "City" is litterally means Walled 😂
Gorod?
@@liquidh5226 огорожен
@user-dx9rl5vm1i I thought city is Gorod in Russian.
@@liquidh5226 yes, Gorod is something that is "ogorozheno" - walled.
@@liquidh5226 in bulgarian its "град"
That can also mean the weather event of raining ice (forgot how it was called in english)
Edit: hail
In bulgarian its short for "градушка"
"Chinese emperor and the Tsar, Peter the Great, were engaged"
love wins
Its excellent to learn more about Chinese martial history. I love to see content like this gaining appreciation in the western world
Perhaps the most interesting video you've ever made on sieges and military engineering; I like it because it confirms the assumptions I've always had as an architect and military history fan about the robustness of Chinese walls, but adds an obvious confirmation of the effectiveness of the European bastion model.
It would be great if you could make a video comparing the similarities, benefits and drawbacks of Chinese, Japanese and Korean fortifications; I'm sure it's a topic everyone would love to see (especially if you break down the siege methods that this military architecture led to).
I don't know why this was recommended to me, but it was awesome. Many thanks
Same, one of the best recommendations Ive had in a bit
actual video begins at 7:07, earlier is just repetition to make more room for ad breaks
Antwerp Belgium during the middle ages had thick earthen ramparts instead of thin walls
Thin walls? Castle walls could be 2m thick.
@@blarfroer8066 yes, thin walls vs thick ramparts as shown in the video
@@MaviAntwerp because earthen ramparts we’re made to defend against floods, this was the reason why it was invented in China thousands of years ago being good defenses are just a side effect
@@blarfroer8066 It's not the size that matters, it's how you use it! **suspicious side eye**
Slavic walled towns had wood and earth proto-ramparts since the early medieval times. Mostly because wood was a lot easier to obtain in the area than stone.
Star fortresses were so good, that Napoleon basically chose to skip the recently built Russian Imperial fortress of Dunaburg/Daugavpils after one attempt at taking it. And we know Napoleon was a Genius of warfare and strategy, so you really can't outthink a well-built, supplied and manned fortress.
You beat it by doing what he did. Not fighting where the enemy is strongest. Probably took that nugget from the likes of Caesar, a master at patience and striking when the time was right. Being bold, not mindlessly aggressive.
Napoleon defeated Russia 7+ times, He wasnt interested in taking it. You cant change history to fit make yoruself feel better.
Funfact: I live in the Frederikbastion street in Maastricht. our whole neighborhood is called after bastions and one of our streets is called the Vaubanstreet:
It was sieged in 1673 by the sunking Louis XIV of France. After he conquered the city Vauban made the city stronger with Ravelins, Bastions and kazematten.
The musketeer d'Artagnan was the commander of the musketeers during this siege and was killed by a musketbullet i the neck when trying to enter the city when the wall was breached. Two centuries later his name was used by Dumas when he wrote the novel about the three musketeers.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but simply moving on with dignity despite that fear.
Those who are blessed with the most talent don't necessarily outperform everyone else. It's the people with follow-through who excel.
Very well-made video! Insightful and informative without stooping. Keep it up!
Call me a dumbass.
but It NEVER crossed my mind that people would seige forts with cannons.
AND that cannon technology was so much better than slinging a rock that we had to change our defensive strategies.
In my head I always imagined us using catapults/Trebuchets for all sieges.
It's not even like this is unbelievable to me, I just had NEVER thought about it.
Not even while playing civVI and LITERALLY seiging towns with cannons.
Great video.
Cool video, a bit confused on why you called Russia "the Tsarist Empire" a few times considering that essentially means "the imperialist empire" which is like, yeah, duh.
i loved this. this is like the first real Diplomatic effort of the European-Chinese Relationship. this is great thank you for informing me me!
Commenting to help with the algorithm! Thank You for the video. It was GREAT!!!
Why does the map in 1:05 show China owning Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan... and why are they missing Hainan???
Probably messed up designing the map. I think they Tried to replicate the qing borders but clicked on wrong buttons
Very nice presentation, useful graphics complementing the well-paced commentary. Thank you,, Gus.
Fun fact - between 1655 and 1669 Albazin was ruled by Polish runaway prisoner of war Nicefor Czernichowski as a sovereign microstate of Jaxa ;)
Great video
first
As a Russian, I immediately noticed a number of inaccuracies:
1. Why is the Dutch Musketeer depicted on the screensaver. and not the Russian Sagittarius? Technically it's the same thing, but the clothes were completely different.
2. Why the Russian commander was depicted on maps in a tailcoat and a cocked hat, there were still 15 years left before the reforms of Peter the Great... Russian men in those years, for religious reasons, could not shave their faces clean (especially in Siberia), they simply could not, where the vast majority professed the old church rite, especially in those years when the church split had just occurred.
3. This fortress, most likely, was not a classic star fort, according to the archaeological data that I just found, the basis of this fortress was a rampart, which was poured on top of oak log cabins, in turn, log cabins were placed on top of each other, stones were poured inside (if there were), and most often just uprooted stumps. That is, the technology used to build fortresses in Russia since the 10th century, since stones were in great short supply, since most of the land was covered with forest, and the area is a continuous plain.
4. Why was a person with a purely Russian name a foreigner? Perhaps his father or grandfather was a foreigner, but not himself. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich hired many foreigners abroad, there was no exoticism in this.
4. He was baptised early during his service, about 20 years prior to the siege. His German name hasn't survived in the records.
@@yurylyandres6900 очень странно, тогда если меняли своё имя, то фамилия оставалась в той или иной форме иностранная, могло только поменяться окончание произношения фамилии на русский манер, например : Предком поэта Лермонтова, был шотландский наёмник, который перешёл на службу к царю после взятия одной из крепостей во время войны с Польшей, фамилия была его Лермонт, а его потомок уже носил фамилию переделанную на русский манер - Лермонтов, но всё равно технически это одна и та же фамилия, или например татарские предки дворян Шереметьевых носили фамилию или прозвище-Шеремет, после принятия православия они стали- Шереметевы, ну то есть человек принимал русское имя , но фамилию сохранял в том или ином виде.
@@СергейТурутин-ч6г в фамилии Байтон (Бейтон) нет ничего русского 🙂 Или вы про Толбузина говорили? Он погиб незадолго до описанной в видео контратаки, дальше всю осаду 10 месяцев командовал пруссак.
Because he thought that russian kingdom it was a west...
@yurylyandres6900 Zahar and David are typically on russia names now old man.
Odd how hundreds of years old interpretation of a map is less small-state dominated than today.
Some of these geopolitical maps conflict each other
That's because there weren't any global treaties or MAD doctrines existing at the time that would prop them up. Most of the modern states today are less than 100 years old in every sense of the word, so prior to World War 1 the map stayed basically the same for centuries.
@@fus132Not really, most of the big states were just barely over 30 years old by the time of WW1. In Europe Germany, Italy, had finished unifying in 1871. Outside of Europe, more or less at that time the period of European rapid expansion in Asia came to an end, mostly because the few nations left indipendent weren't of interest, or were the Qing or Japanese, respectively too massive and too modernised to easily subjugate. The various African polities as well, were only subjected to the Scramble for Africa after the 1880s.
WW1 wasn't even the peak of massive states consolidating across the world. By that time the Ottomans and Russia were already losing pieces, as had Sweden
Things are less fluid and more frozen today, because MAD and Bloc Policy works both ways. Small states can't just be annexed by invasion without reaction from the members of the opposite bloc. But the same applies to supporting separatism, since in the past they weren't shy of outright military intervention against an opposing Great Power. Today that would mean nukes flying.
These maps are also _very_ simplified. In Europe, for instance, they show the HRE and Habsburg possessions outside of it as one big blob, which is fine in a video about East Asia but does contribute to the impression. More importantly, though, the modern state with clearly defined borders was just developing and inexistent in most of the world. That big area labelled "Mongols", for instance, is actually an area controlled by various Mongol tribes and confederations with varying influences from China, Russia, and others. It isn't a single centralised state, the regions of control have no fixed and agreed-upon bordersand are shifting frequently. Like almost all pre-modern "countries", it is a power structure that is very unkind to mapping it because territory is not the main point.
I can understand why,
you wouldn’t want to make a map with a million small states when referring to a specific historical situation.
This comes from a cartographer, there’s a time and place for everything.
There is a huge load of historical wisdom buried under widely-known facts most people always bringing up here and there.
Good thing channels like this exist, to popularize true history.
musketeers chasing down retreating infantry and even taking prisoners is such a gigachad move, amazing
There is a difference between “heavy siege artillery” and cannon (a type of artillery). Cannon fired low trajectory (a.k.a. Usually well below 45° elevation), whereas mortars were specifically high angle (a.k.a. Above 45°) and used specifically for sieges as they could lob shells over walls of any height. Howitzers combined the trajectory of both, and are used in almost every modern army in the world. Yes, CANNON would have been useless against Chinese walls, but no wall can defend against MORTARS or HOWITZERS.
In the film “Last of the Mohicans” the French forces are besieging the British at Fort William Henry, whilst the British and French artillery are having a gunnery duel whilst French sappers are digging trenches. The British commander states that once the French Commander gets within a certain distance he’ll “…bring up his heavy mortars, lob explosive shells over these walls and pound us to dust.”
Qing people had queue hairstyle by this point in time. You were thinking of Ming, but Ming didn’t fight with Russia.
Ming dynasty knew about star forts but didn’t really utilize it. Qing dynasty didn’t have that knowledge.
6:48 They already had Duracell? Must be a laser rifle.
Why had I never heard of this battle before? It's like a Russian Rorkes' Drift!
Not quite. It is as if, after the Rorke's Drift, the British discovered that the Zulus were vassals of a developed yet unknown empire that had a land border with them.
Fantastic vid as usual! I find the topic of warfare between different civilizations absolutely fascinating. Would be great if you covered the Chinese-Ducth war over Taiwan at some point!
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
I really like how much eastern military methods are different than western.
About Vauban, French king Louis XIV once said: "fortress defended by Vauban, impregnable fortress. Fortress besieged by Vauban, fortress taken".Vauban was the absolute genius of fortifications. Visit Luxembourg City and admire the Vauban improvements of the ancient castle city.
Prussian Engineer raises Discipline 200%. XD
This is a super cool video with a super unique aesthetic (it looks like you’re using something like dungeon painter studio, which gives a very retro civilization type game feel) hope to see you blow up in popularity!
Another big reason is because China rarely had to face external threats who had siege capabilities. It was either the Nomads of the Steppe or the less developed jungle areas of Laos Myanmar and Vietnam. To the north east they had Vietnam who were similar to them in culture but often behind in technology relying on the terrain to keep the Han at bay. Then theres the Samurai of Japan who often came as pirates rarely going too deep into the mainland and with no siege weapons. The Japanese invasions often went begging because they couldnt siege down towns fast enough and by the time the Han managed to respond they would just overwhelm the Japanese in field battles.
Chinese artillery were mainly for supoort on the field rather than breaking city walls. They relied on sabotage and inside men to get them into the city.
Naturally such approaches would never work against a clearly foreign race
"An expert on all things [X] and gun powder" is a title I definitely want to have!
Fascinating video. Thank you!
12:00 ”came up with a new weapon: starvation” I very much dislike the use of this kind of falseful and misleading language especially in historical documentaries. There is nothing new that he needed to ”come up” with, starvation tactics in sieges are known throughout the ages in every culture as one of the if not the most basic tactic of conquering a fortified position. I’m sure Mr SandRhoman knows this very well. Time consuming, you pit your troops supply infrastructure and morale against the defenders rations to take the fort before possible enemy reinforcements arrive or being forced to abandon the siege for various reasons.
So much of understanding history is understanding the context of the period, what is common, what is known and so on, otherwise it’s impossible to understand the intentions and motives that lead to the actions of the people living in that period. The wording gives the completely wrong impression of this tactic being something innovative rather than last obvious resort since nothing else worked.
Chill out.
The concept of cutting starving out those in a fortified position was nothing new. Rather it is the fundamental concept and primary tactic of a siege. For thousands of years, it was common for a siege to last from several months to over a year. Early siege weapons where constructed after the siege was already layed. And the majority of successful seiges never physically breached the walls. Bribery of someone inside the walls or capitulation due to prolonged deprivation were the common cause of success fully entering the fortification.
Love seeing proper sourcing!
Very interesting topic, thank you!
fantastic video man !
1) it's not a sub arctic Siberia
2) you show 18th century russians, instead of 17th century russians
The climate is akin to the southern coast of Alaska, that's our definition of sub-arctic
@@samsonsoturian6013Since when does Alaska have temperate rainforests where tigers can live
@@samsonsoturian6013 hahahhaha, Alaska is close to katchatka. While china and manjuria is basicly a sub tropic climate. If there wastn cold water flow it would be a jungle.
@@georgiykireev9678 Nice try. There's a reason the tigers in this region are called Siberian Tigers. Siberian Tigers are adapted to Taiga forests. Are you confused them with Bengal Tigers?
@@robertnomok9750 That's a ridiculous claim. Look up the climate near Mohe City, China. Low temperature during January has a MEAN value of -30 Celsius, colder than a lot of places in Alaska. You must have very different definition for "sub tropic climate" from anyone else
Why Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is a part of China on this map 1:06?
Because Islam wasn't invented yet
12:06 this is a very old siege tactic frequently used by the Chinese, because walled cities in China were very well-developed early on, which made starvation preferable over a direct assault as long as you had the conditions for it
Got a notification for this. I immediately had to stop everything I was doing to see this. Love your videos.
*In Europe, the kind of men used to dig "z" shaped trenches towards the walls of a fortress, sometimes digging undreground tunnel to place explosive charges (Travail de "Sape" ou "Sabotage") Were named Sapeurs-Pompiers in France.*
*This is the former name for modern FireFighters.*
De Vauban improves seriouly theese kind of "star-like" fortifications, but they originaly came from Italy, during the XVth century.
_Vauban just perfectionned them, as in "Neuf-Brisach" Fortified town._ Make some web research on it, beautiful !
Cheers from France !
first
Dude ur videos are so good!
First
Interestingly, there is at least one star fortress in East Asia, albeit in Japan: Fort Goryokaku. They built it after studying European fortresses. The last battle of the Boshin War took place there, though the defenders surrendered the fort pretty quickly after being surrounded and losing a nearby naval battle.
I like the illustrations, nice high production values. I like to see the effort made!
Imagine watching hundreds of your men slowly die of starvation and disease defending the fortress only to be told that your king has decided to give it to the enemy after just talking to them (as they should have in the first place before sending people to kill each other). War is hell.
I just want to appreciate this channel for the decision at 9:33 to not draw the video out by narrating the repeated assaults conducted in this section of the video. It would have been extremely easy to do, but you focused on condensing the information down to be more comprehensible for youtube viewing. Thank you.
13:46 ..."the defenders sent them meat"? Possibly _human_ meat? 🤨
how long did the siege last to build all that? 12:45 Was it that hard to starve them out? Cutting off any routes to get food? - A fortress under a siege (cut off) needs reinforcements from deeper inside the borders, no? - That's what I lived under the impression of.
- If they did occupy ways to clean water, that's barely any time left...
This is exactly the kind of history lessons I love to listen to! Imma go in and see what else ya got
That's Manchurian dynasty, Emperor, and army, not Chinese. The pictures in the video are somehow are all Ming dynasty Chinese.
I would love a video about japanese forts/castles and their siege tactics.