Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
Betcha that back in the day it also seemed inevitable the Ottomans, who had even better logistics and adminstration nevermind the best damn siege train in the world at the time, would've overrun at the very least Central Europe and prolly quite a bit more too.
They didn't though. The logistical leash simply ran out. It's a pain and a half to enact lasting conquests once you get past certain distance from your actual power centers, nevermind now over rather uncooperative geography. That's what ultimately stumped all empires until the Europeans went and changed the paradigm half by accident in the Early Modern period, and even then they only got really going (with the exception of America) in the 1800s. Think of the way the Romans never made permanent inroads into Germania proper and had trouble holding even parts of Central Europe, or how the ancient Mesopotamian empires could never rid themselves of the pesky barbarians of the highlands to the north. Pretty much the same issues, far as I can tell.
I've no doubt the Mongols could have sent serious attack wedges all the way to the Atlantic if they really wanted, but I also suspect that's have gotten dreadfully expensive in men and materials (chiefly horses) for relatively little gain, a real pain in the ass to do given the fortress-field nature if the subcontinent, and unlikely to accomplish much else than to cause some major mayhem and spread some appropriate fear of their betters around on a liberal basis.
But taking, holding and consolidating territory, especially in conditions as were the norm in medieval Europe, with an army ultimately revolving around steppe-based nomad troops, is a whole different beast entirely from laying waste to the land with large-scale chevauchees. Put this way: assuming they conquered everything in Poland and Germany and Hungary, what'd they use to replace the inevitable campaign-attrition and siege-assault casualties nevermind the steady inevitable trickle of dead men from even victorious battles ? And garrison their conquests with ? Subjugated Europeans perhaps ? Or where'd they get enough remounts to maintain their military backbone, or for that matter even keep all those horses they needed fed outside the grazing-grounds of the steppe ? Or push further with ? I'm pretty sure a steppe army simply could not be maintained in fighting shape in Europe proper for an extended period due to sheer ecology (at its most basic, not enough pasture for all the horses - there's good reasons why cavalry were so few in number in the local armies after all), so they'd have to be largely withdrawn to the steppe proper during the necessary consolidation phases. Even if they tried to take care of the whole thing in one swoop (probably impossible if only given the amount of siege warfare involved), they'd still run into the very real problem the nomadic army would be operating far beyond the limits of its logistical leash, with seriously stretched lines of communications to their "home bases" and reinforcement recruiting grounds on the distant plains.
All of which would only be getting worse the further westwards they went. In essence if they really wanted to "take and hold" the subcontinent they'd sooner or later have had to convert to more sedentary forms of warfare out of the sheer ecological impossibility in keeping a steppe army operational there over the long term - and they'd also have to deal with nearly every damn baron and other lordling who now happened to have some forts and armed men to his name more or less separately, which gets sort of frustrating right quick.
Throw the Khanate's little domestic troubles into the mix (and such considerations as the no doubt rather dubious loyalty of for example the various Russian vassal states), and I can actually quite well see why they decided they didn't actually want even Hungary. Not Worth The Trouble, and quite possibly deemed borderline impossible.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Originally Posted by Reenk Roink
And yet the army of the Sultan faced equally difficult conditions themselves. They were also an exhausted bunch and also not very well equipped. Not only that, but the army of Khwarizm was hated by the populous and had questionable loyalty. And yet Jalaladin was able to repel the Mongols after a one day battle. My point is, had he been able to do it again at the Indus, where Genghis was brilliantly able to seperate the army from the refugees and slaughter both, this would greatly affected future expeditions by the Mongols. Would there be more? Most probably, but then again, Jalaladin could also make preparations.
Please explain how conditions were equally bad for an army that marches to a valley from its homeland, while the other army has just crossed mountain passes of 13,000ft and almost frozen and starved to death.
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I find it odd how you try to downplay Jalaladin as an "irritable foe" when Genghis himself had such respect for the man that he prohibited his archers from shooting him while he fled.
Downplay? An irritable foe he was indeed and a capable commander also. Why did you not use my quote that depicts this?
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
Jalal ad Din saw the folly of this and wanted an immediate strike against the Mongols
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My point exactly. The Mongols were always able to follow up their defeats with victories (until Ain Jalut), due to their brilliant leadership, unmatched organization, and their unquestionable battle prowess.
They did not win a victory after Ain Jalut? I think you will find that they actually managed to take Syria after Ain Jalut.
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It was the internal difficulties withing the Mongol Empire itself that prevented an full scale invasion of Europe.
No. Initially it was the news of Ogodei's death.
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The biggest problem, however, was that the Mongol borders were too overextended, and such an ambitious campaign as to conquer Europe would require many men, resources, and time. Subotai predicted that it would take 18 years to complete. In short, it was simply too difficult for the Mongols to invade and control Europe without jeapordizing their previous holdings.
They were not over extended at that time and at that time the empire was a united one.
.......Orda
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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No. Initially it was the news of Ogodei's death.
Even if the leader needs to go away for a while (and I've read he never bothered going past his Russian power base - no doubt full well aware that he was altogether too far away to be able to have any effect on the outcome), that doesn't explain the complete pull-out from Hungary (where, I've read, the Mongols had already started minting their own coinage by that point) and total abandonement of further major invasions into the subcontinent.
Frankly, something doesn't add up here. We're talking about a world-empire which had pretty much gotten started by taking over China (albeit one in yet another period of internal strife) and rolled over the whole damn Great Eurasian Steppe Belt, and by what I've read of it had in place a pretty serious case of imperial expansionist ideology ("manifest destiny" to take over the world, as it were). And when they hit the edges of that great stretch of plains and grasslands, their procession suddenly came to a screeching halt. Not only was there a marked absence of any meaningful further expansion where it was seriously attempted - the Ilkhanids being stymied in Syria, the Yuan failing their overseas adventures - the different segments of the great empire under different and to a large degree competing potentates were already coming to loggerheads in mid-1200s, and by what I've read pretty much in open hostilities by the end of 1260s (which looks suspiciously like them turning inwards to savage each other in absence of real opportunities to expand outwards).
All this smacks of them hitting their "point of maximum expansion", an ephemereal thing all empires possess; sooner or later they simply run out of the resources and/or opportunities to expand further, and in practice have to settle down to rule and defend what they have aquired thus far (although further developements may allow succesful conquest to be taken up again later on; this is what happened to the Europeans). Every single empire in history, particularly the premodern ones, hit this point sooner or later; and there is nothing so special about the Mongols as to make them immune to this conspiracy of ecology, logistics and politics.
And against this mountain of evidence of their blunt loss of momentum - blatant inability to enact further conquests of any note and falling to internal squabbling - we are to believe that they could have completed a project as time-consuming as actually conquering and consolidating the vaporous fortress-field of Europe "with ease", or that their patent inability to overpower the Mamluks resulted from lack of "proper Mongol" troops ?
No offense but bollocks, in my humble opinion. That, or what I tend to unkindly term fanboy apologism - the phenomenom where the ultimate failure of a well-liked actor, in this case the Mongol Empire, is attempted to cover up and/or explain away by such cheap excuses due to a basic unwillingness to admit they, as all men and things, were and are not perfect or infallible or unbeatable or whatever.
I occasionally find myself falling guilty of the same fault, if that helps. :shame:
Nonetheless, besides the Romans, Spartans (particularly the bunch at Thermopylae), the Samurai and the English longbowmen (and umpteen national-romanticist fantasies I prefer to not touch with an eleven-foot pole), the Mongols seem to firmly sit in the Fanboy Top Ten as far as the premodern period goes. And I daresay I'm finding altogether too many clues of this principle here.
That aside, it's linky time. I've been seeing some pretty curious claims from time to time, which curiously don't seem to quite add up with somewhat more thorough and deeper-going accounts of the same things I've read. Here are some highly interesting and quite varied articles on the topic - De Re Militaris is a pretty good site from what I can tell, and tends to turn up nice and well-researched stuff most of the time. Of particular interest to the topic at hand would be Mamluks and Mongols: an overview, which IMHO puts forth some pretty sensible theories as to why the Ilkhans failed in Syria but nonetheless kept trying for half a century.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
Please explain how conditions were equally bad for an army that marches to a valley from its homeland, while the other army has just crossed mountain passes of 13,000ft and almost frozen and starved to death.
Jalaladin had many disadvantages going into Parwan, especially concerning his forces. Remember, the soldiers of the Khwarizm Empire were recruited Turks who were unloyal and hated by the populous. Contrast that with the soldiers of the Great Khan. Also, By the time of the battle, they were an exhausted bunch, on top of not being well equipped.
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
Downplay? An irritable foe he was indeed and a capable commander also. Why did you not use my quote that depicts this?
"Irritable foe" stands out as the only direct characterization of Jalaladin you make. If I read you wrong, forgive me; it happens constantly in message boards where there is no voice tone/body language to aid the communication.
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
They did not win a victory after Ain Jalut? I think you will find that they actually managed to take Syria after Ain Jalut.
I was not stating that they did not win a victory after Ain Jalut. I was stating that Ain Jalut was the first time they were not able to follow up a defeat with a decisive victory. If you believe the successful invasion in 1299 (after which they were repelled again shortly) was a decisive victory, consider the fact that the Il-Khanate invaded again in 1300. The Il-Khanate invasions Syria were also repelled in 1281, 1303, and 1312...
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
No. Initially it was the news of Ogodei's death.
Hence the beginning of internal difficulties...
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
Someone remind me, who became the Head Honcho after Ogedei and how did the selection process work out de facto ?
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Someone remind me, who became the Head Honcho after Ogedei and how did the selection process work out de facto ?
His son, Guyuk. The same son who had been so outspoken during a heated argument during the campaign in Russia; the son who could not stomach the fact that Batu, merely his cousin, was commander of this campaign. Knowing this, Batu chose not to return for the Quriltai (justifiably he realised that if he had, he would lose everything including, probably, his life)
Guyuk did not become Khan until 1246 and from 1241 until that time, Batu did everything he could to prevent the outcome. Ogodei had favoured his grandson Siremun whose father was Kochu. Kochu had been Ogodei's first choice but he died in 1236. Kadan was his son by one of his concubines, Guyuk was eldest son of his wife Toregene who was left as regent and was making sure her son won the position. Is it a little more apparent now why he chose to secure his position by withdrawing from Hungary? Do you not agree that to push on into Europe, with the loss of the backbone of his army thanks to the Mongol tumens returning, would have been complete folly? Even by the time news arrived of Ogodei's death, Kadan had secured the subjection of Bulgaria.
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Jalaladin had many disadvantages going into Parwan, especially concerning his forces. Remember, the soldiers of the Khwarizm Empire were recruited Turks who were unloyal and hated by the populous. Contrast that with the soldiers of the Great Khan. Also, By the time of the battle, they were an exhausted bunch, on top of not being well equipped.
The Khwarazmian armies were not as well equipped as the armies of Mongolia? I dispute that. They belonged to the richest empire in Islam and had been maintained both in size and weaponry by Shah Muhammad. They were hated by the populace for their plundering activities and the fact that they were Turkish, however this does not alter the fact that they were amply equipped and had been for a long time.
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"Irritable foe" stands out as the only direct characterization of Jalaladin you make. If I read you wrong, forgive me; it happens constantly in message boards where there is no voice tone/body language to aid the communication.
Again this is another quote by myself.....
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Originally Posted by Orda Khan
Jalal ad Din saw the folly of this and wanted an immediate strike against the Mongols
Therefore meaning he could see how a 500 mile front had no area of concerted strength and that a direct strike was the best course of action.
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Hence the beginning of internal difficulties...
Which is what I have said all along. The question of taking Europe has to be aimed at the time the campaign was underway and therefore, before Ogodei died. After that point, frankly, the question is pointless. It was Ogodei's death that halted the advance, not internal disputes or difficulties. One such dispute was settled before the advance on Hungary, that of Guyuk and Buri.
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Even if the leader needs to go away for a while (and I've read he never bothered going past his Russian power base - no doubt full well aware that he was altogether too far away to be able to have any effect on the outcome), that doesn't explain the complete pull-out from Hungary (where, I've read, the Mongols had already started minting their own coinage by that point) and total abandonement of further major invasions into the subcontinent.
Who are you talking about Ogodei or Batu? Ogodei never even went to Russia and I can assure you that Batu went much further, like Buda and Pest.
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No offense but bollocks, in my humble opinion. That, or what I tend to unkindly term fanboy apologism
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Mongols seem to firmly sit in the Fanboy Top Ten as far as the premodern period goes. And I daresay I'm finding altogether too many clues of this principle here.
Then there is no point debating this subject further. Throughout this thread I have pointed out misguided thoughts of Mongol invincibility, Mongol warfare and even Mongol culture. I still suggest that people do some research (and something more reliable than the net) into Mongol culture and politics of the day, maybe in that way the picture will become clearer. You obviously consider me a mere 'Mongol fanboy' thank you for that insult ... and just who would you be?
........Orda
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
Someone with an avid and universal loathing of all fanboyism, actually. Particular in historical contexts.
Anyway, thanks for the explanation on the internal tensions of the Khanate in the 1240s. While I've long been under the strong impression the whole thing was rapidly cracking up under its own sheer size and the fact its far-flung parts and potentates were running seriously short of reasons to keep listening to the nominal top of the hierarchy at an alarming rate, details are always nice.
However, even if Ogedei's death was the breach in the floodgate that let the torrent loose it remains a fact the deep divisions were already in place. Ogedei the Drunk doesn't exactly give off the air of a strong ruler of considerable authority, either. Which in practice makes one strongly suspect it was only a matter of time before the empire ruptured at the seams into splinter states, even had the Great Khan not managed to perish at the time.
Which, in turn, makes the Mongol ability to militarily take over Europe or lack therof largely irrelevant. Conquering and consolidating such a large tract of so unmanageable and uncooperative territory would have required the investement of considerable time and manpower in a frankly rather high-risk low-profit endeavor at a time when every sub-ruler worth the title not only was fast developing his own ideas of how to run his particular segment of the realm, but also knew it was merely a matter of time before the stuff hit the fan and everyone stopped pretending.
Which is not a time to have the better part of your decent troops mired in subduing unruly big-nosed Europeans in some worthless stretch of woods, especially given that AFAIK Batu's little slice of the empire shared border with a couple of other fairly major and not excessively trustworthy peers.
All those internal tensions and erosion of central unifying authority incidentally make your earlier statement "they were not over extended at that time and at that time the empire was a united one" look simply weird. Regional honchos starting to go their own way has always been a pretty sure sign of imperial overreach.
Batu probably had some intentions of staying in Hungary; he'd in any case ended up taking over much of it anyway during the whole "punish the Cumans and uppity Hungarians" thing, and extra tax base never hurt anyone. This doesn't mean too much by itself though - the Great Hungarian Plain is something every nomad conqueror wandering towards Europe seems to have made a point of taking over; those who stayed for any lenght of time, such as the Huns, this particular branch of Avars and the Hungarian-Magyars, also had to abandon nomadism for the simple reason the mountain-ringed plain simply didn't have enough pasture. This - the ecological impossibility of maintaining a strong nomad presence in the region - may actually well have been a contributing factor in Batu's decision to ditch it; it'd have caused some potentially quite serious trouble with garrisoning the place, and the year or thereabouts he occupied it would've been quite enough time to realize this logistical limitation.
Being the furthest Western tip of the Great Steppe Belt, it'd also have been a natural invasion route for his main forces based on the steppes proper further east in any campaign deeper into Europe. If it was incapable of supporting even a decent nomad population in residence, the logistical strain of campaigning beyond the damn place would presumably have been rather daunting and maintaining steppe armies that long away - ie. actually occupying and conquering land beyond it - essentially impossible.
Vassals and client rulers are another thing, but then that's sort of difficult to count as real "conquest" anyway and those have ever been notoriously unreliable anyway. Heck, the Horde was eventually taken down by a runaway Russian Grand Vassal... Plus any sustained operations past them would in practice have to be carried out by their troops, and/or Mongol armies reconfigured to operate in the local conditions - in practice settled down, and hence bereft of their greatest military advantages over the sedentary armies.
I'm under the impression neither the Avars nor the Hungarian-Magyars - or even the Huns, despite having settled down - actually even tried serious expansion either. They seemed to be content with raiding, meddling in neighbours' internal affairs (the Magyars made a killing as mercenaries too) and sheer tribute extortion. Indeed, aside from Hungary (which was really an ecological trap for pastoralists) and parts of Poland Europe (here not counting southern Russia, which is high steppe) seems to have been historically essentially "ecologically proof" against nomad conquests - the pastoralists seem to have been bluntly incapable of sustaining operations far from their home turf for any longer amount of time.
Which actually makes one suspect Batu and Co. would just have done the usual number of reducing the immediately nearest realms into one degree of client/tributary degree or another by sheer intimidation if possible and punitive expeditions (which are far less affected by the logistical/ecological issues, being of short term and temporary presence) if necessary, and not bothered wasting resources in futile expansion attempts into territory they quite possibly frankly didn't even want (as the idea of settling down - as happened in China, and would have been necessary in Europe - may well have been genuinely repugnant to most of the nomads; all the more so as they were in an excellent position to observe what it had done to the Hungarians). The Ilkhanids took that approach in Asia Minor, it had been taken with the nomads of the Caucasus, the Horde took it with the Russian principalities - because it worked and saved them inordinate amounts of potentially quite embarassing trouble.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Originally Posted by Watchman
Nonetheless, besides the Romans, Spartans (particularly the bunch at Thermopylae), the Samurai and the English longbowmen (and umpteen national-romanticist fantasies I prefer to not touch with an eleven-foot pole), the Mongols seem to firmly sit in the Fanboy Top Ten as far as the premodern period goes.
It is true, yes, I'm convinced most history buffs will second that statement. However, no matter how many fanboys the Mongols might have, this doesn't mean the conclusions reached about their superiority through empirical reasoning is any less correct. And Orda Khan knows his stuff, I would say he is more educated on this subject than anyone else on the forum, before arguing with him I'd first do some serious research.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
The entire discussion on conquest, and then specifically consolidation of said conquest is quite useless, in my opinion.
You see, such speculation is so far from what we know that we cannot use coherent arguments, complemented by facts and research, to defend our points of view. It is speculation, in its purest form. We simply don't know what would have happened. As such, discussing that is like trying to hold a debate over tastes in music, art or clothing: it's a trading of opinions rather than a debate of arguments. It is not commanded by logic, but by feeling, and such a debate can never end well.
In contrast, debating about the simple topic of "could the Mongols have finished what they started" can be debated using facts. Why? It wasn't a long shot from the Mongol positions on the eve of Ögedei's death to the walls of Paris, Carcassone, London and Toledo. What was a long shot is the question if the Mongols could have held on to what they would have taken from the European feudal nobility. Fact is: I don't know. And I'm not about to go venturing into those murky waters either.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Originally Posted by Spartakus
It is true, yes, I'm convinced most history buffs will second that statement. However, no matter how many fanboys the Mongols might have, this doesn't mean the conclusions reached about their superiority through empirical reasoning is any less correct. And Orda Khan knows his stuff, I would say he is more educated on this subject than anyone else on the forum, before arguing with him I'd first do some serious research.
Oh, I'll freely admit I really should go read up a bit more on the topic and am perfectly willing to bow down to his knowledge on the details. But that's not the point here. The issue isn't Mongol ability to out-general and out-fight the Europeans; frankly, almost anyone in Eurasia at the time would've been able to do it, including the Crusader Kingdoms. One thing the European-pattern feudalism wasn't good for was producing reliably capable leadership, or cohesive and maneuverable field armies.
The point is whether they could have mounted succesful campaigns of conquest and keep hold of their gains in the, for all nomads, very uncooperative ecology of the subcontinent and its at the time unbelievably messy, fractious, unmanageable, opportunistic morass of ambitious little lordlings who all had their little two-bit wanna-be kingdoms fortified to Hell and back and had ample practical experience in the rough art of completely frustrating serious attempts at seizing their territories.
Frankly, around that time most European armies were crap for large-scale field battles and serious grand strategy (although they were also quick learners - it didn't take long for the First Crusade to adapt to horse-archers for one example, and the Teutonic Order acclimated right quick to the peculiar conditions of Lithuania). They weren't really even meant for that kind of thing, and the warfare pattern made major open battles rather rare anyway.
What they were good for, however, was specifically the sort of siege and raid and counter-raid and skirmish and devastation and so on essentially rather small-scale, small-unit warfare struggles over territory that were how these territory things actually were sorted out, whatever the court poets might claim and the warrior nobility wish. And aside from whoever lordling the Mongols could bully, bribe or entice to fold on terms, there's simply no way they could have taken over the region without getting stuck in that kind of vicious, frustrating attrition campaigning over endless little forts, towers and castles. Kick over the king, and his barons will probably shrug and you'll still have to deal with them more or less one by one as they never really paid the guy too much heed anyway. Get the king to submit, and the damn barons will still thumb their noses at you if they fell like it (and for that matter at their monarch - getting trounced by a bunch of smelly steppe barbarians doesn't really do much to anyone's prestige and credibility amongst his subjects), as the royal hold of them is tenuous at the best of times. Leave a vassal in charge, and the bugger will turn on you the second he thinks he can get away with it and you'll have to do all of it all over again - assuming you can spare the manpower from other more pressing matters. Heck, even the damn peasants just might decide they dislike those smelly bowlegged archers on ponies enough (or will die anyway, and might as well go down swinging - most peasant revolts actually had this kind of creepily fatalistic undertone) to start playing a round of Contra, and in the right terrain those scythe wielding rustics could make a truly incredible pain in the arse out of themselves. However good soldiers, archers and horsemen the Mongols and their dragooned nomad auxiliaries might be, that doesn't really help all that much when small groups of them get jumped on godforsaken forest paths by gangs of ragged peasants or get their throats cut in their sleep and the bodies surreptiously dumped down some hole. Armies much more formidable than the Horde every now and then found themselves virtually besieged in their strongholds by such uprisings, when travel on the countryside was virtual suicide outside large armed convoys.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
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Someone with an avid and universal loathing of all fanboyism, actually.
For every Mongol Fanboy there is a Mongol-phobe also I guess.
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Ogedei the Drunk doesn't exactly give off the air of a strong ruler of considerable authority, either.
On the contrary, and in particular his treatment of two princes Buri and his own son Guyuk after their outburst at a victory banquet shows that he was totally impartial. He spelled out in no uncertain terms, that Guyuk was dispensible. During the confrontation between princes, Harqasun (no royal blood) had joined in the insults and Ogodei was quick to point out that his punishment for such forwardness was death. He raged that sparing Guyuk would show partiality and only the intervention of council saved Guyuk. Matters of the steppe were decided on the steppe so Ogodei agreed to put the matter in the hands of Batu who could easily have had them executed. He chose to forget the matter and concentrate on the campaign. Later during the purge that followed Mangku's election, Batu finally had his revenge when Buri was sent before him to answer for his part in the plot to assassinate the new Khan.
Many of the reforms and the consolidation attributed to Mangku were begun by Ogodei and where excessive drinking is thought to be the cause of his death, there is more than a hint of suspicion that he was actually poisoned. The actions of Guyuk after his coronation appear to somewhat confirm this.
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All those internal tensions and erosion of central unifying authority incidentally make your earlier statement "they were not over extended at that time and at that time the empire was a united one" look simply weird. Regional honchos starting to go their own way has always been a pretty sure sign of imperial overreach.
How? As I explained, the empire was a united one under Ogodei. The confrontation between the princes was settled and did nothing to jeopardise the move into Europe, even if the smouldering embers would be rekindled later. The fact still remains that there were no autonomous regions or rulers within the empire while Ogodei was alive.
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Heck, even the damn peasants just might decide they dislike those smelly bowlegged archers on ponies enough (or will die anyway, and might as well go down swinging - most peasant revolts actually had this kind of creepily fatalistic undertone) to start playing a round of Contra, and in the right terrain those scythe wielding rustics could make a truly incredible pain in the arse out of themselves.
No rustic had had proved much of a pain up until then and I am certain that if they did indeed decide to try there would have been a way to deal with it. When news filtered through to the 'rustics with a cause' that the last lot who tried brought about the extermination of massive numbers, these scythe wielders would have soiled their breeches and left the 'smelly bowlegged archers' positively fragrant by comparison
.........Orda
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
I'm not sure your positions are all that far apart.
In any case, it is quite romantic to say that Europe was saved by an untimely death, but we do have to recognize that a Mongol conquest of Europe would have been difficult (not impossible, but difficult), due to the terrain and the heavy fortification of Europe (mostly since the 'feudal revolution' or 'evolution' of c. 1000 CE). Few of us would doubt that in a pitched battle on open terrain the Mongols would most likely have inflicted heavy, if not crushing defeats on European armies. In a forest or mountain pass, however, the Mongols would have had a tougher time, and even tougher the further they got from their supply lines in Pannonia/Hungary.
The best strategy for the Mongols would be for a lighting assault that crushed European field armies and sowed terror amongst the defenders. Once the initial shock wore off and the Europeans could prepare for an assault, however, the Mongols would have had more difficulty. Remember that in the previous century, Frederick Barbarossa, Richard I and Philip Augustus had collectively fielded three major armies with over 100,000 troops, and this for a combined-arms campaign in far-away Asia; for the defense of Europe itself against a pagan invasion, far more troops could have been raised and armed for battle. The Pope would have been distributing crusade indulgences like candy.
One also has to consider that the Europeans would have had virtual dominance of the seas, at least in the Baltic/North Sea and western mediterranean, which meant armies from Scandinavia, Britain, France, Aragon, Sicily, etc. could strike at soft points in the Mongol empire with virtual impunity. It would have taken the Mongols some time to build up their sea power in the Mediterranean, whether they took coastal areas and built ships there or sailed some from south/east asia or the Black Sea. This would have given the Europeans some time to prepare, and also have been very costly for the Mongols.
In sum, I think it is likely the Mongols could have inflicted severe casualties on European armies and taken large areas of Europe for a short time. Within a few years, however, the Mongols would have quickly realized that the costs of sustaining their effort far outweighed the gains they were making, and that there were more pressing quarrels to attend to back in Asia. I think the Mongols would have soon withdrawn.
Might a Mongol invasion have resurrected the Holy Roman Empire and set Europe on the path to unity? Interesting thought.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
European armies just happened to have the pesky tendency of entrenching into their fortress networks once they realized they were facing overwhelming odds. They did it with each other all the time, and it wouldn't take them too long to figure they had better not try to take the Mongols on in the open.
Which response would get the Mongols rapidly stuck in the snail-paced siege-and-skirmish pattern of warfare the Europeans were so familiar with. Although they'd have the advantage their soldiers weren't serving on a feudal obligation for limited period, the fact that their horses would be starving en masse alone ought to more than make up for it. Starvation was often an acute problem even for the native armies, and they did not have all those gazillion ponies to feed...
Of course they could "live off the land", ie. pillage foodstuffs from the peasants. That's what everyone did. But if that is to be carried out to any effect, ie. effectively enough for the foraging to help stave off starvation of the main army, that would require the dispersion of rather large numbers of troops away from the main force, which in turn would bring them under constant harassement from the garrisons of all those little support forts and towers and suchlike the landscape was rotten with; they existed almost specifically for that purpose (harassing foragers and distrupting lines of communication), after all. Given the tendency of the Mongols to treat the peasantry with a degree of brutality midly unusual even for steppe nomads (although the competition was fierce...), guerilla warfare by desperate peasants probably quite realistically convinced they'd be going to die anyway (if only out of starvation, given how much horses eat) would also have been a real possibility and a further source of attrition for those foraging bands. Brutal reprisals against the peasantry would incidentally also create other problems, discussed later.
It should also be noted the Ilkhanids seemed to have real problems maintaining forces as large as they'd have liked in Syria, which at least is ecologically capable of maintaining pastoralism (seeing as how Semic nomads had been dwelling there from a very long time ago, and Turkish ones from more recently). Europe, geographically virtually "nomad proof", would have been infinitely worse - much later even much better organized armies tapping much higher developed agricultural infrastructures would have real trouble feeding their soldiers, nevermind now the poor horses, if they had to stay in one region for any longer amount of time.
Devastating the countryside and slaughtering the peasantry (even if only as a side effect of "living off the land") would also have the effect of creating a "scorched earth" area - this would of course undermine the economic base of whoever held the afflicted reagion, which is why the Europeans did it a whole lot too to undermine each other's position. The problem this would cause the Mongols, however, is that the ability of the area to produce supplies for them if and when they managed to take it over, and/or sought to operate beyond it. And in a subcontinent of functionally zero pasture as far as large horse herds are concerned (there's good reasons why pastoralism never spread beyond Bulgaria, western Russia and Hungary - and had trouble even in the last one) the only source of fodder for the (for steppe-type armies all-important) horses is the agricultural base. And if the peasants are dead, well, who grows the crops ?
Moreover, even given the limitations imposed by the feudal system, the Europeans in fact all the tactical "building blocks" they'd ever need to face nomadic forces. They'd just have needed to develop the techniques - somehting sufficiently dire straits always seemed to make a lot easier, if only because the hidebound traditionalists would tend to die off. Look at the Crusader Kingdoms; they had already during the First Crusade figured out how to fight nomad armies (and the Turkish ones were ultimately none too different from the Mongols, whose real advantages lay in organization particularly at the state level) with a combination of spearmen, crossbowmen and heavy cavalry, and did a quite fine job holding off Turkish incursion despite the fact the region was fairly well suited to the sort of high-mobility warfare both the nomads and the native Arabs excelled in (and for which large areas of Europe were much less accommodating). Necessity is the mother of invention, and one suspects the warlords would've gotten the idea pretty soon.
The Italians ought to have been particularly troublesome. Not only were they decidedly more tactically competent than was the average for the continent, they could close the Alpine passages if necessary (and several times held off quite large armies that way; the local mountain folk also occasionally demonstrated the ability to badly maul armies passing through that they didn't like) and had developed a very effective pattern of cooperation between heavy spearmen and crossbowmen. European heavy cavalry, which was specialized in shock breakthrough, commonly broke against these communal militias; and as proven in the Levant the crossbow, when properly employed, was quite capable of taking on archers or at least keeping the nomadic skirmish tactics at bay. How the Mongols, chiefly light horse archers, could have dealt with the northern Italian communal militias on their heavily-fortified home grounds at least without incurring excessive casualties is a bit beyond me. Amphibious invasions would have been Right Out - taken as a whole the Italians practically owned the nearby seas, and one suspects the Byzantines would not have been too cooperative either.
Re: Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?
It may sound romantic that Ogodei's death saved Europe, I agree, it does. However the fact still remains that upon news of his death, the Mongol princes (there were 10 of them present) and the Imperial tumens returned for the Quriltai, with the exception of Batu and his personal army and his newly acquired conscripts. You really must try to understand Mongol culture and customs, Batu was livid about the untimely death, was well aware of the wrangling going on back home. He knew that Guyuk's position as successor had been secured and he knew the implications, which is why he made excuse after excuse for not returning. He held up proceedings for almost five years. War between himself and Guyuk was only avoided thanks to Guyuk's timely/untimely death as he marched to enforce his position over Batu.
A bit about the Mongol system that most are unaware, is that the Qaghan was not the all powerful ruler that has been assumed. It was Ogodei that made some inroads to change this or at least secure the Qol or central administration as the overall authority. He nor any future ruler had the arms to dictate this and his administrational efforts made sure that taxes were shared between nominal powers and those of the Qaghan. Any of the other princes had the means, intitially, to ignore his authority since their personal armies, especially those of Tolui were greater than those of Ogodei. It was these reforms by Ogodei that began to swell the Mongol coffers, booty had until then, received little if any administration. That he had a penchant for wine is true, as did most Mongols but had he lived another twenty years, the Mongol empire would have benefited immensely and ( dare I say ) in my opinion, expanded even further than it did
......Orda
