page_title: Military of the Han dynasty
section_title: Chariots and horses
hierarchical_section_title: Military of the Han dynasty / Chariots and horses
caption_attribution_description: An assortment of bronze figurines excavated from a Chinese Eastern Han tomb, dated 1st or 2nd century AD, depicting military cavalry and spoke-wheeled chariots.
context_page_description: The military of the Han dynasty was the military apparatus of China from 202 BC to 220 AD, with a brief interregnum by the reign of Wang Mang and his Xin dynasty from 9 AD to 23 AD, followed by two years of civil war before the refounding of the Han.
context_section_description: Although the chariot started losing prominence around the late Warring States period, it remained in use into the Han era until the Xiongnu war of 133 BC when they proved too slow to catch up to an all cavalry force. However chariots were still used as defensive pieces several decades later.
  The Han's cavalry forces were fairly limited at the beginning of the dynasty. Their only large scale horse breeding programs existed in cities along northwest China: Tianshui, Longxi, Anding, Beidi, Shang, and Xihe. Emperor Wen of Han (r. 180–157 BC) decreed that three men of age could be exempted from military service for each horse sent by the family to the government. Emperor Jing of Han (r. 157–141 BC) set up 36 government pastures in the northwest to breed horses for military use and sent 30,000 slaves to care for them. By the time Emperor Wu of Han (r. 9 March 141 BC – 29 March 87 BC) came to power, the Han government had control over herds of roughly 300,000 horses, which increased to over 450,000 under Emperor Wu's reign. On paper, the Han dynasty at its height was capable of fielding up to 300,000 horsemen, but was probably constrained by their immense upkeep. A cavalryman on average cost 87,000 cash, not including rations, while a regular soldier only 10,000 cash. The total expenditure of a 300,000 strong cavalry force would therefore have been around 2.18 times the entire government's annual revenue.
  Single mounting stirrups were used, but full double stirrups didn't appear until the later Jin dynasty (266–420).
caption: Han cavalry and chariots
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