China's military system has been examined, and the earliest records begin with the Shang Zhou Dynasty. At that time, the state was not a unified state, but a large tribal alliance, with stronger tribes establishing authority and surrounding tribes submitting to powerful tribes. Powerful tribes maintain small standing armies in peacetime and temporarily recruit armies to fight in wartime. This form of army is known as the "conscription system", which is a compulsory conscription system, and although it can mobilize a large army in wartime, the combat effectiveness of the army is a problem.
Therefore, during the Western Wei Dynasty, a new conscription system that took into account the number of soldiers and the quality of soldiers appeared, that is, the prefectural military system. This system emphasizes the combination of soldiers and peasants, while ensuring the number of troops, but also ensuring the quality of the army, similar to the modern reserve system, this system reached its peak during the Tang Dynasty, and became the main source of soldiers for the border guards and the Twelve Guards (expanded into the Sixteen Guards during the Gaozong Period).
And what about the Turks, the tang dynasty's greatest enemy at that time? What is the nature of their army? In fact, this has been shown in the classic TV series "Detective Di Renjie", the Turkic army adopted a very strange form, divided into three levels, namely the tiger division, the leopard division, the eagle division and other three-level combat troops, the total strength of the troops reached about 600,000 (there may be discrepancies)
The so-called tiger division, which is the standing soldier of the Turkic Khan, is composed of warriors selected from various tribes that support the Turkic Khan, a total of three tiger divisions, the staffing, weapons, and war materials are first-class, each tiger division has 20,000 people, stationed near the Khan's tooth tent, protecting the Khan, and is also the Khan's main counterinsurgency force during the period of civil unrest.
The composition of the leopard division is more complicated. At that time, the Turks were not a unified dynasty, but also a tribal confederation, and lived in a very scattered area. In order to facilitate the conscription of the army, the Turk khan divided the various tribes into several administrative districts, similar to the current military districts, each with its own troop number. In wartime, all the tribes in the military district had to send young adults to the ranks to form a semi-conventional army, which was the Leopard Division.
In order to maintain their troops, the Turks adopted an ancient fixed system of military service, that is, military policy. Some families were included in the military policy, and when the war came, the family had to send at least one person to join the army and fight with them. This system is expressed in the Mulan Ci, which largely maintains the number of Turkic mobile troops.
However, the leopard division was a temporary patchwork after all, and there was no comparison with the combat effectiveness of the standing tiger division. However, the leopard division was the main force of the Turkic army, and the leopard division in previous wars with the Tang Dynasty was the backbone. Although nominally the Leopard Division was formed and mobilized by the Khan, the majority of certain tribes in a particular Leopard Division allowed them to effectively control the force, which became one of the scourges of Turkic civil unrest.
Finally, there is the eagle division, which is the first term we think of after hearing the Turks. The Eagle Division was a unit formed by the various Tribes of the Turks, which was actually subordinate to the tribe, and the Turkic Khan could not mobilize the Eagle Division without the consent of the tribal leader.
The numbers of these eagle divisions are also relatively mixed, the military flag is the totem of various tribes, and the weapons and equipment are also uneven, some are good and some are bad, the number is not very fixed, some are only thousands of people, some can exceed 10,000, although they claim to have 32 eagle divisions, more than the tiger division and the leopard division combined, but the combat effectiveness is really slaggy, and the Tang army has almost never won a battle.
Whether it is the previous conscription system, or the later prefectural military system, the conscription system, or the Turkic tribal military service system, they are all part of China's military history, have certain research value, and have left a strong mark in history. Dear readers, what do you think?