Re: [HIST] Japanese Culture shock

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002 08:08:17 -0700 (PDT), John Atkinson
<johnmatkinson@yahoo.com> wrote:

>Put 150 French Gendarmes, Polish Knights, Military
>Order Brother Knights, or even Italians on a flat
>level field with 150 Samurai on the other end of the
>field and every Samurai would be either dead or
>fleeing the field at a high rate of speed.

Are the samurai mounted, or dismounted? Samurai were primarily mounted
for a
good portion of their history, fighting dismounted only for one-on-one
battles. They could, and did, fight in a Mongol style of mounted archer,
but
with a bow that was bigger than the smaller bows usually used by horse
archers.

I debate the "fleeing at high rate of speed". I had a short discussion
on this
with Stephen Turnbull, the noted samurai scholar. I observed, and he
agreed,
that samurai tended to break about as easily as any other force,
particularly
when encountering a superior foe, but would rally far, far quicker than
any
other force. There's a belief that they would fight stupidly, but they
did
not. It was not considered dishonourable, for instance, for a samurai to
run
away from two or more samurai. At the same time, samurai armies could
take
horribly high rates of casualties, far greater than equivalent European
armies. One battle saw the loser take 74% casualties. This isn't unheard
of in
a European battle of the same period (15th century), often because of
losses
after the battle with the losers being pursued by the victors. However
in this
case, the victors had over 67% casualties. The battle ended with both
sides
withdrawing from the field in a draw.

So, a European army would have to deal with a foe that had no
compunction
about not giving battle if it felt it was at a distinct disadvantage,
but
which would fight far longer and harder than most of the opponents the
European armies typically saw.

But... having said all that... I agree with you. As horse archers
(though by
the Sengoku Jidai they were mostly mounted spearmen), they would have
trouble
with the afforementioned mounted troops.

Also, Samurai massed battle tactics, in a word, sucked. Until the
Sengoku
Jidai, massed combat was usually just a series of one-on-one battles.
Even
afterward, when gun powder weapons were used along side archers, various
types
of foot soldiers, and cavalry, there was little in the way of proper
combined
arms fighting.

>Another amusing question would be to see the Samurai
>trying to go up against the English
>longbow/billman/dismounted men-at-arms combination.
>I'm pretty sure that there isn't a horse archer on the
>planet that can handle dismounted longbowmen or
>crossbowmen if they are properly protected by heavy
>infantry.  His firing platform just ain't stable
>enough.

Samurai, though, would also go dismounted and would then be a dismounted
archer with swordfighting ability. 

The English longbow would be superior to the samurai longbow, but in
terms of
ability the samurai was pretty close to the English longbowman in
ability. The
difference is that the samurai was better armoured and could also fight
in
hand to hand combat. Again, depending on the period (let's say we're
looking
at the 15th century, for instance) samurai armour was specifically
designed
for hand to hand fighting and for use with the bow. For much of the 11th
through 15th centuries the right arm was less well armoured (it still
had the
lamellar plates but didn't have the leather sleeve, just a cloth sleeve)
to
aid in firing the bow. I think here the samurai would have a distinct
advantage, particularly. 

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

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