Again, many people know about Attila the Hun. Yes, the Huns had been victorious against the Goths and the vandaals(I think they defeated Vandaals too). Anyway, they were successful vs the Eastern Franks. And it is true that the Visogoths defeated the Western Roman empire. However, the Western Romans empire was far from the power house that the former Roman empire was. I'm guessing the Roman military strength probably peaked at around the time of Octavius and was still strong enough to expand up to about 100 AD. Back at that time, no one around the Romans actually gave the Romans problem. You have to remember, there was significant change to the discipline of the Roman army after 100AD. The home grown Italians were no longer enlisting in the army, so they started to enlist soldiers from the countries they conquered. You can imagine what kind of quality of soldiers you get out of that. Back in its prime, Rome was able to fight wars continuously on multiple fronts and win most of them. Han pretty much just fought against the Huns and local rebellions. After they defeated the Huns, which wasn't as convincing as you might think, they were pretty much peaceful for the next 100 years.aiguo said:
As for the Romans vs different types of Hans army, I don't think it will be as a big problem as people have suggested. You have to remember the different types of soldiers the Romans faced in its existence. It had to fight against the elephant army of Hannibal. Even earlier, Pyrrhus of Epirus also brought elephants with him against the Romans. In the beginning, it lost, but then it slowly learnt how to fight against elephants. If you can fight against elephants, you can fight against anything back in those days. Hannibal and Pyrrhus of Epirus are considered two of the great generals in the ancient times and even they cannot beat the Romans in its younger days. If you are wondering, Pyrrhus of Epirus also brought archers and calvary with him. The greeks picked up quite a bit of things following the Persians and Egyptians.
The reason behind all that is the discpline of the Roman soldiers and the strategies they employ. They are not as stiff as some of you have suggested. They can adapt to fight different types of wars. Heck, even Napoleon used the the battle formation of one row by one row of soldiers and he is considered the top 2 or 3 greatest general of all times. To say that the Romans can't defeat Han dynasty just because of crossbows would be inapproriate. After all, didn't Romans defeat the Egyptians and the Babylonians?
We are not talking about the Tang dynasty or the romance of the 3 kingdoms. Maybe you should read a little on the Roman history.
