Does anyone know what the plank roads looked like during the Three Kingdoms era? I'm trying to wrap my head around the logistics of Shu-Han invading Cao-Wei.
>>1154301
Like planks every few feet to a few meters to make sure soldiers and carts had a foothold
As for Liu Bei invading they would have marched even if jungle was in their way. They where driven by divine fervor.
Even then the roads werent in horrible disrepair, if you can overrun checkpoints and blow through forts on the road. From Jing it only took 5 days to Xuchang. And its a large country even back then.
The only time you saw a road fully planked was... never. The most you saw where steplike planks only half a foot apart.
t. Han military manuals
>>1154314
Is it possible to move horses across non fully planked roads?
>>1154350
As long as the wet season iant happening its like normal roads
They planned battle around the weather
>>1154301
Why'd he chuck the baby?
>>1154594
But wouldn't that basically be the same as a cattle grid?
>>1154889
Benevolence
>>1154889
autism
>played DW games as a kid
>always thought Liu Bei was some sort of badass
>watch this show
>Liu Bei's just crying like a bitch every other episode
Although I have to admit, the show is pretty good.
>>1154889
Liu Cry-beiby's child goes MIA behind enemy lines.
Zhao Snowflake-Yun goes rambo and saves the kid.
Liu just chucks the baby and shouts: "For the sake of some replacable brat I almost lost my greatest general!"
>>1154301
Here they are in the Tang Dynasty (on the left).
>>1154889
Because the novel on which the television series is based was written after the tumultuous times of Song and Yuan, which left a huge imprint on the collective social psyche so that late Yuan/early Ming literature is full of stories of people sacrificing family members for some "greater good" ideal.
If this were Shuihu Zhuan (attributed to the same author as Sanguo Yanyi) we'd have probably gotten a scene of the commander killing his son to feed the flesh to his starving subordinates or some shit.
Granted, Sanguo Yanyi DOES have a story of cannibalism, just not this one.
>>1154350
It's basically the same concept as pouring sand on the road in winter. You want a hard frictional surface to gain traction on.
>>1157736
He is correct that the young are replaceable. In nature, the young are most heavily predated, which allows the middle aged to continue breeding. Letting the small ones go is a filthy western perversion. More lamb, less ram, etc.
However more recent readings would interpret this scene as shaken baby syndrome and attribute it to the young ruler's retardation. It actually makes complete sense.
>>1157736
Should probably point out that this is NOT based on any actual historical event.
For some reason people always seem to assume "historical until proven fictional" with regards to events in the novel/tv series, which is quite frankly a retarded way to approach any work of historical fiction.
>>1158173
It's meant to be taken as historical as a form of didactic.
>>1158072
That's not what a plank road is.
>>1158091
>He is correct that the young are replaceable.
No he isn't.
He literally gets a young virile wife and in unable to sire another son because he's old and homo, and he ends up with retarded dropped-on-the-head-as-a-baby Adou ruining his kingdom
>>1158328
Liu Shan dindu nuffin wrong. All the power was in the hands of Zhuge Liang, Fei Yi & co, he didn't put his nose into public business. Kongming and Jiang Wei's self-aggrandizing jingoism did more to destroy Shu than Gongsi could ever hope to. And when you think about it, he was an angel compared to demential old man Sun Quan and his heirs.
>>1157736
>when you find out its a baby girl
>>1158319
goddamn
>>1158384
Not all of them are like that.That's a particularly shitty one to get up to a remote mountain temple or something.
This is a concrete reconstruction of a blank road, but probably closer to what a plank road looked like.
>>1158384
This looks like it's aiming to look like historical reconstruction, but it's not as clear to see how it is build into the mountain sides
>>1158319
Jesus Christ, how many accidents a year?
>>1158384
Here you can see the wooden construction being built into the cliff side
>>1158384
They're replacing the plank road with a modernized version here, but you can see the holes chiseled out of the mountain side. They would stick cantilevered wooden beams in there
So you can kind of see why maintenance and crossing mountains was a logistics nightmare. It's not just a road through a mountain pass paved with some planks on the ground. They were still considerably faster than trying to cross the mountains on ground level roads looking for a mountain pass or going around a river, since many of the rivers were like canyons with steep cliffs on both sides.
>>1158449
Jesus, and I thought suspension bridges were scary. Imagine being in a marching column with an army's worth of gear, food and people on that shit.
>>1158491
That's actually just a scaffolding for them to do work on the road. The road would normally be build on top of the beams that stick out from the holes. Still, it's almost like making a bridge across the side of a mountain range.
There were definitely logistical problems marching through the mountainous terrain. Zhuge Liang had to give up several of his northern campaigns due to running out of supplies. When Cao Zhen attempted to invade Shu-Han, he experienced similar difficulty when it rained. Even when Wei actually did conquer Shu-Han, there were deep concerns regarding supplies. The Wei general Zhong Hui, for example, almost gave up the entire venture after being hard-pressed.
Rain seemed to fuck over both Wei and Shu-Han alternatively when it came to campaigning against each other.
