Feasibility of the size of ancient Chinese armies according to sources

I've come to notice that a lot of battles in Chinese history seems to have involved over hundreds of thousands of soldiers.Some battles in the Three Kingdoms period supposedly had over three hundred thousand soldiers when the size of the opposing armies are combined,and the kingdoms actually had more soldiers than what was actually committed in those battles.Cao Cao's supposed army of 800,000 in particular sounds ASB as hell.I then noticed that the population of China at the start of the Western Jin dynasty was only around 16 million.The Romans for example had tremendous difficulty just maintaining 400,000 soldiers in their empire despite having a population around 50 million at it's height and the battles generally involved less than 100,000 for both sides.So how feasible are the Chinese numbers?
 
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If we are going to scrutinize every army that is over 80,000 in the ancient world in Europe, then I really don't buy anywhere close to those numbers for China.
 
So how feasible are the Chinese numbers?


I recall you reading David Graff's Medieval Chinese Warfare, so you must recall that he states that Chinese army estimates could be reduced up to a factor of 10 and still be considered realistic.

I’m on the lower end of the reducation scale. While numbers like 600,000 to attack Koguryo and 800,000 at Chibi are probably unrealistic, I think logistically it’s not so difficult to see 300,000 on good ground such as Henan. Napoleon managed 600,000 in pre-industrial Europe, after all.


China’s conscription system also meant that it’s not unreasonable to see dynasties rasing large number of troops for war. The Western Han had a mandatory conscription/reservist system for men aged between 17 and 56. The Western Jin assigned entire households to perpetual military service. The Western Wei and Tang had a fubing system that essentially meant a yearly rotation of conscripts and an even larger pool of farmer-soldiers. So I don’t see why Chinese armies would necessarily be that wild off the mark, especially as these numbers are seen during periods of intense militarization.

Such numbers are also reasonable given the consequences of Chinese battle. Medieval Chinese warfare was conducted between a few dominant parties and a whole load of fence-sitters who cared first and foremost about being on the winning side. One single battle could bring down an entire empire as the fence-sitters defected en masse to the victor – the battle of Guandu, the Jin conquest of Wu, the battle of Fei River and Northern Wei’s conquest of Northern Qi bear this out. Given this, why wouldn’t anybody literally bring as much they can to the decisive fight?

As for the population/army mismatch, that’s easily explained by the dominance of landed elites during the Jin – Song period (and in subsequent periods of chaos), which allowed the wealthy to shield their tenants from census and therefore tax. I really don’t think 50% of Chinese died off during the course of the Three Kingdoms, nor do I think the An Shi Rebellion killed more people than WWI.


[EDIT: sorry for the weird formatting.]
 
We simply do not know, it can go both ways.

The thing is that when classical historians like Sima Qian and Ban Gu wrote down a number, we do not have any idea of the sources they referred to.

I'd like to draw comparison to some more recent battles, like the Battle of Sarhu, when we know how sources varied about the number of Ming troops. Yang Gao's letter to Nurhaci claimed to have 470 000 troops which we know was a bluff. Neither was the Manchu number of 200 000 Ming troops reliable, as they might have exaggerated the enemy numbers to make their victory seemed even grander. The Minister of Rites Fang Congzhe suggested to Emperor Wanli that Ming only had slightly more than 70 000 troops on the battlefield. So we have three numbers for the Ming troops in Sarhu now: 470 000, 200 000, and 70 000. There are a variety of surviving Chinese, Manchu and Korean sources that could be used to calculate the numbers. So when the Qing's official History of Ming cites a number (470 000), we know where it comes from.

As for older official histories, we simply do not know what kind of primary source the authors used. Maybe Sima Qian was citing a romantic poem when he said 400 000 Zhao soldiers had been massacred at Changping, or maybe it was genuine military document carefully preserved and passed down to him by some Qin genenral's descendent. Sadly, we are not able to examine those primary documents.

I think we should depend more on archaeological evidences for ancient troop numbers. Maybe somewhere near Shuihudi Qin bamboo text, we will be able to unearth a set of contemporary bamboo military documents in a tomb of some Qin military officer?
 
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