The Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were a relatively critical period in China's history, and it was also in this era when a hundred flowers bloomed and a hundred schools of thought contended, which eventually produced a feudal dynasty that influenced future generations for more than two thousand years.
During this period, the originally designated well field system was no longer able to meet people's production needs, and the dominance of the Zhou royal family in this period also fell to a freezing point, and only seven relatively large countries remained in the perennial struggle for hegemony in the Warring States period. We can sum up this sentence: Ida collapses, princes rise, and finally the seven heroes compete for world domination.
Time came to the middle and late period of the Warring States, whether it was the "Battle of Changping", "The Battle of Maling", "The Battle of Handan", etc., the troops invested were basically hundreds of thousands.
This phenomenon was not the case in the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it is reasonable to say that the various systems and equipment of the state from the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period to the Ming and Qing Dynasties were not many times better than those of the Spring and Autumn Warring States Period, and both in terms of population and land area were more advantageous than before. So why was it that during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the so-called "even if hundreds of thousands of troops had to rely on each other" during the war?
Why was the country's combat mobilization power and other aspects in the Ming and Qing dynasties so much worse than that of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period?
In fact, the soldiers in these two periods are not the same, why do you say so? With the development of the times, the country's army is no longer about quantity, but on "refinement", and in the Ming and Qing dynasties more than two thousand years later, the combat capability of the army is incomparable to that of the army in the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period.
It is precisely because of "fine" that the ruler's investment in the army is also relatively large, and as the cost of training increases, the country can only produce so much value throughout the year. That is, value is dead, and the army is alive. This was followed by a reduction in the number of troops. In addition, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, China's territory was also very large, so that the odd number of national armies was very large, but the number of troops that could be used was also small. In addition to ensuring the support of the basic army, the ruler of the country also supports a part of the military expenditure to support the development of mobile troops.
In this way, the financial expenditure on the army alone is also a considerable amount. Moreover, the rulers of the Ming and Qing dynasties also paid more attention to the comprehensive quality and ability of individual soldiers, and put a large part of their money into the training of individual soldiers. Therefore, at this time, the number of troops has become smaller, but relatively speaking, the overall combat effectiveness is not low.
During the Warring States period, basically all the princely states were in a state where all the people were soldiers. Let's take the "Battle of Changping", but the total population of the Qin State is about 3 million, including the old, the young, the sick and the disabled, and there is not much young labor force at all. However, King Zhaoxiang of Qin gave 500,000 young laborers to the State of Baiqi. At this time, there was no shortage of soldiers who we now seem to be dolls, which showed that the war environment at that time was still very cruel.
During the Warring States period, this basic strategy of all people being soldiers led to men over the age of fifteen having to serve in the military for two years or more, and most of these people who served in the military had difficulty returning to the homes where they were born and raised, and most of them died in foreign countries.
At that time, the so-called "all the people are soldiers" to tell the truth, and lifelong military service is almost the same. They were always waiting for the king's orders, ready to send troops into battle.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, after thousands of years of evolution. Soldiers in the Ming and Qing dynasties no longer had to fight but also engage in farming like the soldiers of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. In contrast, the soldiers of the Ming and Qing dynasties were a kind of professional soldiers who were out of production, which means that the country was no longer worried about military food at that time. The main task of the boys who joined the army was to defend the country and to engage in training.
In this way, the soldiers of the Ming and Qing dynasties were obviously many times stronger than the individual combat capabilities of the Spring and Autumn And Warring States periods.
In addition, the state political system of these two periods is also different, the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were a period of transition like feudal society, and its essence still continued the essence of the slave society of the Zhou Dynasty, as long as the monarch issued an army ready to go out.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, after a long period of development, the military system was also more clear, and basically all military discipline and military laws were revised, which was more standardized and institutionalized than before.
In addition, the economic development of the Ming and Qing dynasties was also very rapid, taking the Ming Dynasty as an example, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, there were scenes of collusion between merchants and officials, and the result was that ordinary people were squeezed very miserable.
Therefore, although the Ming Dynasty seemed to be powerful, its mobilization ability was really not very good, otherwise wouldn't it be a matter of words to mobilize hundreds of thousands of soldiers according to the population at that time?
The Qing Dynasty need not say more, their core strength is only the Eight Banner Soldiers, counting down only a hundred thousand people, while the other barracks such as the Green Camp are basically not trusted by the rulers. The Han people were not trusted during the Qing Dynasty, and the strength of the Eight Banners was only so much, so it was...