page_title: Military history of the Three Kingdoms
section_title: Equipment
hierarchical_section_title: Military history of the Three Kingdoms / Equipment
caption_attribution_description: English: Three Kingdoms Iron Arrowheads
context_page_description: The military history of the Three Kingdoms period encompasses roughly a century's worth of prolonged warfare and disorder. After the assassination of General-in-chief He Jin in September 189, the administrative structures of the Han government became increasingly irrelevant. By the time of death of Cao Cao, the most successful warlord of North China, in 220, the Han empire was divided between the three rival states of Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu. Due to the ensuing turmoil, the competing powers of the Three Kingdoms era found no shortage of willing recruits for their armies, although press-ganging as well as forcible enlistment of prisoners from defeated armies still occurred. Following four centuries of rule under the Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms brought about a new era of conflict in China that shifted institutions in favor of a more permanent and selective system of military recruitment. This ultimately included the creation of a hereditary military class as well as increasing reliance on non-Chinese cavalry forces and the end of universal conscription.
context_section_description: Armies of the Three Kingdoms era used largely the same equipment as the Han dynasty since it directly follows the end of the Han. There were however some minor differences and developments such as the increasing prevalence of armoured cavalry. In one battle, the warlord Cao Cao boasted that with only ten sets of horse armour he had faced an enemy with three hundred sets. The horse armour may however have just been partial frontal barding. Mounting stirrups were already in use, possibly as early as the Han dynasty, but full riding stirrups would not appear until the 4th century. References to "dark armour" (xuan kai or xuan jia 玄鎧/玄甲) and "brilliant armour" also began to appear in the 3rd century. This is probably in reference to the association of high quality steel with black ferrous material.
  Weapons were largely the same as well, although there was more focus on idiosyncratic weapons wielded by particularly noteworthy individuals. For example, one man named Chen An apparently wielded a great sword over two meters in length and Sun Quan's wife had over a hundred female attendants armed with daos. Trends in warfare that had already been underway during the Eastern Han continued to gain momentum. By the end of the Three Kingdoms, the single edged dao, with its thicker and more durable dull side, had overtaken the straight double-edged jian as the primary close combat weapon. The more expensive, lighter, and less durable jian entered the domain of court dancers, officials, and expert warriors. While halberds were still used during the period, long spears and lances (similar to pikes) re-rose in prominence over halberds for infantry and cavalry forces. This was believed to have been the result of the long spear and lances' simpler construction, the adoption of long spears and lances by heavy cavalry to strike infantrymen, and the adoption of tighter infantry formations with less room for swinging and hooking [of halberds] in response to the greater threat by cavalry.  Soldiers in the northeast specialized in long spears. After the Han dynasty, the crossbow gradually faded in importance until it made a mild resurgence during the Tang dynasty, under which the ideal expeditionary army of 20,000 included 2,200 archers and 2,000 crossbowmen.
  References to "great shields" occur in their usage on the front line to protect spearmen and crossbowmen. Shields were also commonly paired with the single edged dao and used among cavalrymen. Descriptions of the Battle of Guandu mention that Cao Cao's soldiers employed shield cover above their heads each time they moved out into the open due to oppressive arrow fire from Yuan Shao's wooden towers.
  Although Zhuge Liang is often credited with the invention of the repeating crossbow, this is actually due to a mistranslation confusing it with the multiple bolt crossbow. The source actually says Zhuge invented a multiple bolt crossbow that could shoot ten iron bolts simultaneously, each 20 cm long.
caption: Three Kingdoms arrowheads
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 500D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2010:03:13 15:50:05", "Image Artist": "", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "2288", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "Image GPSInfo": "12438", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail YResolution": "1/96", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "12550", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4316", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/30", "EXIF FNumber": "5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "640", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:03:13 15:50:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:03:13 15:50:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "37/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "31", "EXIF SubSecTime": "66", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "66", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "66", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4752", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3168", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "12392", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "792000/149", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3168000/593", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Padding": "[]", "EXIF OffsetSchema": "4012"}