If Alexander came to China, he would have come from the West.
Suppose his entire force made it through the Taklamakam deserts.
Then he would have run into the state of Qin, the most babarian and militarily strongest of the 7 Chinese warring states.
The Qin was a brutal meritocracy that promoted its nobles by the amount of enemies they killed. Every peasant, refugee, or stray in Qin can become a noble, by collecting severed heads of the enemy.
Qin was famous for its mechanical crossbows, which predated the Western equipment by almost 2 millenium, and had a maximum range of 600–700 meters, or some 2000 feet, and were accurate and penetrated armor and hide at the range of 70–80 meters, or some 250 feet.
The Qin crossbows made every untrained peasant lethal. As it relied on mechanical holding and aiming, instead of training and personal skills, to make use of the weapon.
When Alexander wages war on the Persians, he led some 50 thousand men.
Qin burried 200 thousand prisoners alive during its one of its biggest battles against the state of Zhao.
So… I guess that Qin China would have found Alexander’s army quite formidable, as a scouting force.
We can make an assumption that if Alexander’s army had solved the problem of long-distance marching and supply and successfully reached China, according to the political structure of China at that time, he would first encounter the Qin army.
What kind of weapons and equipment did the Qin army use at that time? I looked for some photos of unearthed cultural relics.
When I tried to find out if there were any relics of Alexander’s army, the answer was no, there were only some pictures and films based on fantasy.
So I don’t understand, Alexander’s army, their armor is so fragile, the weapons don’t look sophisticated, even the use of bows and crossbows is very rudimentary, and they don’t even have an advantage in numbers, how could they defeat the Qin army?
Don’t forget that at that time there were at least five countries stronger than Qin.
