Why were the mongols so dominant?
How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Why were the mongols so dominant? How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Why were the mongols so dominant?
How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Steppe people have certain military advantages over the settled ones, they repeatedly invaded them, but their numbers are limited. The mongols had the unique situation of being able to unite a lot of them under one banner and institute some really good practices (army organization, inclusion of foreign specialists). So they snowballed by subjugating more steppe people, then chinese, etc. etc.
>How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Poorly, from what we can tell of their campaigns in poland and hungary. Western europe with its stone fortifications, armor and crossbows was sufficiently equipped to fight back effectively for a while. Europe was too culturally and religiously different to be subjugated politically like they did the chinese - for example, they tried to make the hungarian king turn traitor and he flat out refused. And the distance from the mongol homeland in the steppes to western europe was too big for an effective attack. They failed to conquer egypt for a similar reason. If you magically transported them all, it might be different, but even then, the mongols weren't actually that many compared to the settled populations of europe, so they might have bled out eventually.
>Why were the mongols so dominant?
Because they cared a lot about the operational/strategical level
>How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Poorly
Like said, heavy armored knights, crossbows, stone castles/fortifications, would have caused them a lot of problems
>heavy armored knights, crossbows, stone castles/fortifications
The Chinese had better armor, weaponry, and forts than Europe.They fell just the same as the Persians and Iraq. Europe never dealt with the full brunt of the Horde and were already getting swept by a raiding party of 20-40k for an entire region. Meanwhile they were sending 100k to siege a single city in China.
>The Chinese had better armor, weaponry, and forts than Europe
>The Chinese had better armor, weaponry, and forts than Europe
Hell no, especially in armor and forts
China was conquered mostly by chinese turncloaks. Persia and Iraq surrendered or were broken after their capitals fell (which were poorly fortified cities, not castles or fortresses). There's a single persian fortress that held out 17 years against the mongols - imagine if they had all fought like that. Persia was less densely populated than europe as well.
> were already getting swept by a raiding party of 20-40k for an entire region
Most of europe never saw a mongol. They made it to poland and hungary, with 20k each. These countries were less populated and poorer than the more western regions, with fewer stone castles, crossbows or heavy armour - it was noted that these specifically dealt well with the mongols, and several bastions managed to hold out until the mongols departed.
>The Chinese had better armor, weaponry, and forts than Europe
Well I guess that means the Europeans are just unstoppable badasses then because the Euros won and the Chinese lost.
Anon, it was specifically Western/Middle Eastern (they were sort of equal in this area) trebuchets that utterly raped Chinese forts
That's the difference between a region that had been in a hundreds years arms race between fortification and siege technology, and a region that had known internal stability shaken up by fast revolts
China was hopelessly outdated when it came to siege warfare
>Why were the mongols so dominant?
Because they weren't "mongols" but a conglomerate of dozens significant steppe tribes that were united under one banner by Genghis. This new unity allowed them to mix and match various tribes to form new units/corps/tulmen to enforce their style of "mobile" warfare which most armies are unable to replicate. Also most of them were competent horse archers which was basically the peak of military tech at the time. Basically a combination or numbers, military organization, and a bit of luck.
>How would they have fared against the Western Europeans?
Worse than China as they weren't particularly adapted to the steppenaggers way of fighting in general and were largely spared of any further expansion because Mongke died during his campaign in China.
When half of your empire is empty dessert you can roll in with your horses. When they saw the baltics covered in trees they didn't even try to invade. Then yuannaggers thought they were chinese enough to invade vietnam and got their asses kicked so hard. Central eourope would've been the death of mongols and ghebgis knew it
Horse archery was literally the Maxim gun of pre-gunpowder warfare. Nobody could beat that shit.
The most reddit historylet post of all time
Horse archery exist since 3000 years, when the age of mongols came, it was already 2000 years that it existed and there is countless battles where horse archers got BTFO and the mongols werent dominant because of the horse archers, they got dominant by multiple factors
Horse archer cultures made it to europe several times - huns, avars, hungarians. Each time, they were beaten back,. The hungarians are an especially interesting case - they raided big parts of europe, lost a battle against east francia (germany), got most of their warriors killed... and henceforth became normal europeans. You'd think if horse archery was such a trump card, people doing it would have taken over, or the residents would have adopted the practice, but that didn't happen, in fact the opposite happened - they abandoned it.
Also everybody used horse archers
Late romans and eastern romans had their own native units of horse archers
Why couldn't they conquer the Song?
Is it a coincidence that the indo europeans that came to dominate Europe also came from steppes? Is there something OP about the steppe lifestyle?
They abandoned quicky their steppe lifestyle, unless those who lived in the steppe
Also Corded Ware spreaded IE and they were more like forest peoples
Good part of their effectiveness was the being a nomad part. Instead of just army, they moved around whole populations.
Europe was sort of uniquely a pain for Mongols to conquer and raid and wasn't wealthy enough to be worth the effort
Not because of european superiority or anything like that, but mostly because Europe was aggressively decentralized and littered with forts
Meaning that all the produce would be locked up in forts that were simply too small to be worth sieging for an army with multiple horses per rider
Mongols weren't idiots, they were great at scouting out places and they decided pretty well in advance that Europe wouldn't be their target
>Mongols weren't idiots, they were great at scouting out places and they decided pretty well in advance that Europe wouldn't be their target
This, finally someone brought mongol spies
When mongols tought a place was too strong, they didnt attacked it
it also meant that generally they were well aware of the political realities of a place they wished to invade
part of the reason why the mongols aggressively pushed into China was because it was politically weak
Half the time when history goes "oh and they the mongols by miracle showed up at the best possible time" that wasn't a miracle, that was the Mongols being great at intelligence gathering
Exactly
A lot of peoples think mongols success is due to of their tactical abilities but in reality their tactical abilities were normal and a lot of peoples were far stronger in tactical abilities
What made mongols so strong is their excellent strategical and operational abilities
tactical level they were great too though, combination of morale, training and good leadership is what allowed them to consistently pull of a feigned retreat
I do not see any european army pulling that off, maybe a small group of knights could do it, but the main european infantry would guaranteed break and run during the feigned retreat turning it into a genuine rout
it's a whole package with them, they weren't superhuman, but the were great at all aspects of war, which meant they almost never fought a battle they couldn't win, never pursued a goal that did not have a reasonable chance of success and rarely messed up the execution