The Comparative Study on the Cavalry of the Liao Dynasty and the Song Dynasty

Abstract

The war between the Liao Dynasty and the Song Dynasty symbolized a peak of the history of the Chinese heavy cavalry. At this time, because of the development of the foundry technique, both the weapons and the armors of the cavalry were of better quality than any other Chinese dynasties before. In order to get the advantage in the arms race, both Liao and Song devoted lots of resources to the army, especially to the construction of cavalry. The commanders tried every kind of new equipment on their cavalry. We can even say that the Chinese cavalry had the best equipment in the world in the 10 century. However, because of misleading propaganda, some incorrect stereotypes have taken root. Firstly, a large number of people don’t know whether heavy cavalry exists in the Song Dynasty, resulting the stereotype that the Song Dynasty lacks horses. Moreover, most people thought that the cavalry of the Song Dynasty was weak while the Khitan (The governing nationality of the Liao Dynasty, originated in the northeastern part of China. The name Khitan first appeared in Wei Shu [1]) cavalry was fighting, since they are misled by the view that Song was poor in the military. However, these points of view did not jibe with the facts. In history, the Song Dynasty owns not only heavy cavalry but also good military exploits. The cavalry of the Liao dynasty didn’t get tremendous advantages when facing their peers of the Song Dynasty. This paper will conduct a comparative study on the cavalry of these two dynasties and break the stereotype.