The Mongol Horde - how and why were they so strong

[Myth]

Following the wonderful discsusion of WWII, I'm bringing the topic to a period i find more fascinating and I'm a bit more knowledgeble in. Here is a list of subtopics to bring to mind:

- The Mongol Horde of Temujin (Genghis Khan) was a major event that shook and almost shattered the "civilized" world of Europe, the middle east and Africa. Before they had their way with half of Europe, the Mongols also conquered China which is a most impressive feat on its own.

- How did the Mongol tribes gather so much population to reach a boiling point where they can field 200,000 horsemen? How does one feed so many people and beasts in the Mongolian steppe?

- How did they manage to crush China?

- Why was their style of war so effective and why did it leave their European enemies stumped and bewildered, despite not making use of European style mail and not having the dreaded west European destriers?

- How did they fare in sieges and siege assaults?

- Were central and western Europe spared only because of the trip back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan?

- Was the Tengri paganism relligion pivotal in Mongol success versus the "civilized" christian kingdoms and tsardoms of Europe?

- How were the Mongols able to crush both the Kievan Rus and the Turks/Arabs/Egyptians?

- How come their composite bows were equal in power and range to the English longbow and why were the Europeans not able to develop a similar weapon that can be used on horseback?

I think I know the answers to most of these questions but I think a discussion (and source stating even) would really help me learn more and be an interesting read for other patrons.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...How did the Mongol tribes gather so much population to reach a boiling point where they can field 200,000 horsemen? How does one feed so many people and beasts in the Mongolian steppe?

As the professionals suggest -- study the logistics.


Mongol society was heavily dependent upon pastoralism, notably of sheep and horses.

What limited evidence we have about past global climate concerns suggests that the period from roughly 750 CE through 1200 CE was a warm/humid period for the region of Asia including China, Japan, and likely Mongolia (limited records to say the least).

Europe is known to have experienced a substantial population increase throughout this time-frame despite the losses associated with internal strife and an over-reliance on grains as opposed to a mixed farming system. The warm period made it easier to grow more food and the population responded.

Mongolia likely experienced the same climate impact. On the Mongolian steppe however, this impact would have been even more greatly magnified. The carrying capacity of the land for grazing would have been substantially improved and a carrying capacity improvement of 10-20% in a region that might need 10 acres to support a cow/calf unit or its equivalent in sheep/horses would have a vastly higher direct impact that it would in a region where the cow-calf unit required only 1-2 acres prior to a shift in climate. With more food, more animals and animal products for trade, and slightly less harsh physical conditions, it is no wonder the Mongolian population increased dramatically.

And just as things started to revert to the mean in terms of climate, at around 1200, the Mongols would have found themselves with a population that was starting to surpass the carrying capacity of their land, but who were more numerous than ever before, better equipped, and under Temujin, better organized. Hard to see him not following "Alexander's Dream" under those circumstances.

[wudang_clown]

- How were the Mongols able to crush both the Kievan Rus and the Turks/Arabs/Egyptians?

What do you mean by "both"?

I think this is common misconception about the Muslim world of the era: that its rulers formed some kind of natural alliance because they were all Muslims. On the contrary. Islamic world was politically fragmented and each sultan's priority was his own ambition. This is noticeable when you read about Jalal al-Din Mingburnu's decade long struggle against the Mongols: no one wanted to join his cause. And after the Khwarezmian empire fell, there was not a tough guy in the region to oppose them, and apparently there was also no will of collaboration between the Muslims, so they were defeated one by one.

- Were central and western Europe spared only because of the trip back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan?

I think Europe was spared thanks to its geographical location. And then, the Mongols had more pressing things to attend to (like fighting the Mamlukes), than conquering some petty, backwater European states.

[Kralizec]

Is Orda Khan still around?

I believe that the Mongols' combination of their preferred troop type (horse archers and light cavalry, nuff said) as well as a strictly methodological approach to war won them a lot of battles. Or just as good, led them to avoid battles they know they couldn't win.
And of course their use of foreigners as siege engineers, otherwise the Chinese states could just have stalled them indefinitely with a Fabian strategy. I mention that not to discredit them; it made perfect sense - it would have been dumb not to make use of them.

What always puzzled me was their ability to persevere and think in the long term. That's not meant derogatory. Even if we disregard most of the numbers of the "mongol horde" as being hugely inflated it's remarkable that a relatively primitive people managed to unite and proceed to slowly conquer huge swathes of the "civilized" Eurasian societies over more than a century. Which is even more remarkable if you realize they did this by coopting numerous other tribes which were likewise nomadic but ethnically and culturally different.

I realize that the whole effort disintegrated into numerous khanates eventually, but it's surprising that it took so long.

[Tuuvi]

How come their composite bows were equal in power and range to the English longbow and why were the Europeans not able to develop a similar weapon that can be used on horseback?

The main indicator of how powerful a bow will be is the bow's draw weight. The harder the bow is to pull back, the more energy that is being put into the bow by the arm. The design and materials of the bow affect how much of this energy the bow will store, how efficient the bow will be at imparting that energy to the arrow, and what kind of draw weight can be achieved without breaking the bow.

English longbows and Mongolian composite bows both have designs with high energy storage and efficiency. Longer limbs are under less strain when being drawn and horn/sinew are strong, elastic materials, so both longbows and composite bows can be made with high draw weights.

What always puzzled me was their ability to persevere and think in the long term. That's not meant derogatory. Even if we disregard most of the numbers of the "mongol horde" as being hugely inflated it's remarkable that a relatively primitive people managed to unite and proceed to slowly conquer huge swathes of the "civilized" Eurasian societies over more than a century. Which is even more remarkable if you realize they did this by coopting numerous other tribes which were likewise nomadic but ethnically and culturally different.

I realize that the whole effort disintegrated into numerous khanates eventually, but it's surprising that it took so long.

I think one lesson we can take from history is not to under-estimate the ability of "primitive" people to organize effectively. Lately I've been reading about the Tarascan empire, which was a rival state to the Aztecs. The Tarascans migrated to Western Mexico only a few centuries before the Spanish conquest, conquered the surrounding chiefdoms, and then formed a government that was more centralized and better organized than the Aztec empire.

When the Tarascan empire was formed it was the first time a state-level society had been developed in that region. The Aztec empire (which was also a state-level society) followed the same patterns of political organization that had existed in Ancient Mexico for a millenia.

[Brandy Blue]

- Was the Tengri paganism relligion pivotal in Mongol success versus the "civilized" christian kingdoms and tsardoms of Europe?

Idon't know much about it but I think that Ghengis Khan did not really care what religion his subjects followed, so long as they were obedient and got on with their job of fighting, paying taxes, or whatever they were supposed to do to support his empire. A Catholic ruler (for example) might not have taken such a flexible view. Is that what you mean?

[Beskar]

I watched a film/quasi-documentary about the beginnings of Genghis Khan which was done by a Russian film company (I believe). edit: Mongol

In the film, there was a heavily reliance on the nature of his relationship with his wife and even the treatment of her children (which were from other fathers) and how he 'adopted' them as his own. It was the combination of love for his wife and principles in the formation of his Dignitas which ended up leading him to great victory over the cause of many hardships in his life.

It reviewed how Tengri was a god of fear, especially during a thunderstorm, Genghis Khan prayed heavily and Tengri delivered for him and he had a strong commitment to the tenets. As such, even when his great rival Khan who was killed by his bodyguard, he sentenced them to execution, saying that one must always respect and not betray their Khan. Choosing to leave your Khan is obviously different than stealing/betraying him.

So from my very limited knowledge based from a film, the screenwriters obviously felt the need to point out the importance of Tengri in the shaping of his life.

[AntiDamascus]

- How did they manage to crush China?

HAHA! My Asian degree is somewhat useful now!

There were several "Mongol" invasions of China throughout its history. Reading about China it almost becomes comical in how repetitive this is. A dynasty would take over and would be pushed south either by new hostiles or a desire for better crops and trade. Dynastic changes like that almost always came from the north. The invaders would come, take over parts of the north, win and then move south to solidify their gains and be more the Han Chinese in the south. Eventually a new northern aggressor would come. This wasn't all dynasty changes, but enough that when learning about it, it almost became a joke for me.

But onto the Mongols. The Mongol invasion actually took a very long time to complete. First the Mongols hit the Xia, who were in western Asia and more what is considered Mongolia now. They they actually worked with the Song of the south (AHA That's a fun reference!) to fight the Jurchen Jin in what is northern China today. When that was done, the Song, being incredibly stupid, attacked the Mongols and lost a long 50 year war with them.

That was a major problem with some of the Chinese dynasties. They would always think themselves way better than those uppity northern tribes and would be sooooo shocked when they rode down south and killed them. And then those groups would become the new southern dynasty and would look down on those northern tribes and the cycle would start anew.

The Mongols did lose their kingdom here eventually and it was when southern Han Chinese rose up to push off a northern aggressor. The Mongols in China were between a rock and a hard place. Other Mongol areas saw them as too Chinese and most Chinese still saw them as not true Han, which they weren't. Eventually the Ming Dynasty overthrew the Mongols and they went back to Mongolia and China went on as usual.

But to answer the question of how the Mongols could take on China. China has historically be taken over all the time. The irony of it all is the invaders or whatever want to be Han Chinese so where other invasions would see a culture change, most tried to emulate it. It's like when people become rich, they want to emulate the rich instead of change what rich is. The Chinese weren't actually that great, it's just one of those funny quirks of history of having a country be so large surrounded by and populated by so many people.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

How did they manage to crush China?

Despite the tendency of our local horse archer aficionados to view the Mongols as a sort of medieval blitzkrieg, the conquest of China took decades.

The basic recipe was as old as the hills -- divide and conquer. At the time, China was not all that different in terms of national unity than was Ireland facing the Normans.

In 1200, China (as we define it in terms of modern geography) was a collection six different kingdoms. The Mongols, more or less, took them one at a time. In fact, two of the Kingdoms conquered were of peoples much like the Mongols (the kin) who had preceded them into China. The Mongols absorbed them from behind. Troops from an already controlled civilization group could be used in subsequent campaigns in the West or against other portions of China.

Ireland after Boru, Scotland under the clans, the Tribes of North America, the Empire of the Aztecs. Since Phillip II first coined it, if not before, the recipe is always the same -- divide and conquer.

[El Barto]

- How did they fare in sieges and siege assaults?

Besides all the rocketry and such from the Chinese, they threw corpses into cities to spread disease -especially the corpses of those who'd died of contagious diseases themselves. Also, they took their time investing fortresses and starving them to death.

[Myth]

I've seen the movie Mongol but it takes a romanticized approach to the whole thing. It's not a historical documentary, not even a war movie. It explores the personal relationships and what makes people... people.

Regarding the Mongols, what I know is that they had a very organized way of waging war. They used a system of flags for instant communication and thus could be very coherent and organized in a seemingly hectic battlefield. Using companies of horse archers to draw out impetious Catholic knights and then rereat and surround them has been reported.

They also had no qualms about shooting the horse from under the charging rider. A less believable (but still plausible) story is that the silk shirts the Mongol warriors wore underneath their dublets/leather armour were not pierced by the enemy arrows and bolts, but rather went inside the wound cavity along with the tip of the projectile. Thus, extracting arrows (even nasty, flat arrow tip with barbs) was much easier than for those not wearing silk shirts en masse (read - the Europeans).

Tengri paganism was pivotal in that it is a warlike pagan religion (the proto Bulgarians of 600 AD also believed in Tengri so I know a bit about it), meaning it does not impose a moral code or any sort of restrictons on the society practicing it. One major drawback to Tengri paganism was that the Khan was directly favoured by Tengri. If he would get wounded in battle, that would mean that Tengri has withdrawn his favour frm that Khan and he is to be replaced. You can see how this can complicate matters.

The composite bows the Mongols used were IMO one of their biggest advantages. A contemporary European archer could not match the draw weight of such a bow unless he used a heavy crossbow or an English type warbow. So the mounted archers of the Mongols actually outranged most enemy archers. Siege warfare was not their bread and butter though. They were strongest in the field and they knew it.

The interesting thing is that they were mostly driven by the need of green pastures for their huge animal husbandry needs. When a scouting party of 10,000 warriors explored the lands of modern day Russia, they vieweed them very suitable for conquest primarily because of the lush green plains present there. The local Rus counts organized and barely, by the skin of their teeth, defeated that paltry scouting force. Come next spring, the main Horde came, numbering around 200,000 if we are to beleive these accounts, and Feudal Russia fell. The Mongols loved it so much (not just the land, but the people too) that they called it "The Golden Horde".

Going further west they met the Hungarian knights and some efforts by volinteer noble knights and Holy Orders such as the Teutonic Knights. They made it as far as the border of the Holy Roman Empire. Eruope was, as always, divided and waring in amonghst itself, so the Mongols never met with an organized Christian resistance resembling something like the First Crusade, though there was some.

From Wikipedia:

The advance into Europe continued with Mongol invasions of Poland and Hungary. When the western flank of the Mongols plundered Polish cities, a European alliance between the Poles, the Moravians, and the Christian military orders of the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights and the Templars assembled sufficient forces to halt, although briefly, the Mongol advance at Legnica. The Hungarian army, their Croatian allies and the Templar Knights were beaten by Mongols at the banks of Sajo River on April 11, 1241. After their victories over European Knights at Legnica and Muhi, Mongol armies quickly advanced across Bohemia, Serbia, Babenberg Austria and into the Holy Roman Empire.

Before Batu's forces could continue into Vienna and northern Albania, news of Ögedei's death in December 1241 brought a halt to the invasion. As was customary in Mongol military tradition, all princes of Genghis's line had to attend the kurultai to elect a successor. Batu and his western Mongol army withdrew from Central Europe the next year.

After this, the Hungarians had a few years, in which they built close to 500 castles and fortified settlements with which to slow down and repel the invaders, after learning that field battles would simply not work.

In regards to the Mamlukes, they never really faced the full might of the southern Mongol armies, let alone the undivided attention of the Horde. Their most famous victory is over peacekeeping troops, who weer left to secure Egypt as the main body of the army marched back to Mongolia for yet another Great Khan election.

Had the system of succession been more flexible and secure, Europe would have been hard pressed and probably forced to unite to survive.

[wudang_clown]

In regards to the Mamlukes, they never really faced the full might of the southern Mongol armies, let alone the undivided attention of the Horde. Their most famous victory is over peacekeeping troops, who weer left to secure Egypt as the main body of the army marched back to Mongolia for yet another Great Khan election.

What makes it the most famous? It was neither the only one nor the greatest of the Mamluk victories over the Mongols. Besides, Europe also didn't faced full scale invasion.

[El Barto]

Regarding the Mongols, what I know is that they had a very organized way of waging war. They used a system of flags for instant communication and thus could be very coherent and organized in a seemingly hectic battlefield. Using companies of horse archers to draw out impetious Catholic knights and then rereat and surround them has been reported.

The yam/örtöö system also proved fundamental, a messsenger could do two to three hundred kilometres a day with it. The Mongol armies had several horses per soldier and could also move very fast. I think that people believed there were so many of them because they were everywhere.

[Empire*Of*Media]

just add---------Mongols didnt crushed TURKS!! indeed TURKS are descendants of Mongols and they proud of it!!
now turks are mixture of Mongols, Tartars, Oghuris &.......
before mongols invasions to world the word TURKS did not exist!! but after them Turks - Tartars - Krgyzes - Kazakhs - Crimean &..... rised and they continued the way of slaughter and rape of chenghiz and placed themselves forcibley in Asia Minor - Iran - Kurdistan & Armenia (so called Turkey & Azerbaijan now) &........

[Conradus]

I'm glad to hear the Seljuk Turks didn't defeat the Byzantines at Manzikert since they didn't exist yet.

[Myth]

What makes it the most famous? It was neither the only one nor the greatest of the Mamluk victories over the Mongols. Besides, Europe also didn't faced full scale invasion.

Which one would you call their greatest victory?

[druzhina]

Besides all the rocketry and such from the Chinese, they threw corpses into cities to spread disease -especially the corpses of those who'd died of contagious diseases themselves. Also, they took their time investing fortresses and starving them to death.

One tactic used during the conquest of Persia was to force the captives from a previous city to assault the next city - to fill surrounding ditches with their bodies and to exhaust the defenders missile supply.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

[lars573]

Which one would you call their greatest victory?

Ain Jalut. Which happened before the garrison force in Syria was defeated by Baybars. It was the first time a Mongol invasion force was turned back in open battle. Yes is wasn't a full Mongol army. But both sides had even numbers (20,000 each). And in past battles Mongol forces would prevail with those kind of odds.

[wudang_clown]

Ain Jalut. Which happened before the garrison force in Syria was defeated by Baybars. It was the first time a Mongol invasion force was turned back in open battle. Yes is wasn't a full Mongol army. But both sides had even numbers (20,000 each). And in past battles Mongol forces would prevail with those kind of odds.

I don't think it was an invasion force. And it certainly wasn't the first time the Mongols had been defeated during their invasion, because Khwarezmians managed to do that at least twice before.

I think battle of Marj al-Saffar was more significant. Whole fame of Ain Jalut seems to be based on the assumption that it was first time ever when the Mongols suffered a serious defeat.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

...Why was their style of war so effective and why did it leave their European enemies stumped and bewildered, despite not making use of European style mail and not having the dreaded west European destriers?

Discipline.

Horse archers had been encountered before and European forces had encountered more mobile, largely horsed opponents on a number of occasions during the preceding century. Of themselves, those represented difficulties but not insurmountable threats. The key to the Mongol success was not just their use of those qualities, but their combination of those qualities with discipline to create a true weapons system. Nobody else in the world had an army with that degree of discipline at that moment of history.

They could feign retreats without actually losing control of their troops; they could travel divided and still coordinate efforts for the same combat; they could operate in detail with far less risk of defeat in detail because of their coordination and message system; they could conceptualize and execute strategic movements -- few if any of the European nations could operate beyond a purely tactical level and none of them had the across the board discipline level of the Mongol "hordes." Absent compelling terrain advantages, the European forces were outclassed.

[Pannonian]

But onto the Mongols. The Mongol invasion actually took a very long time to complete. First the Mongols hit the Xia, who were in western Asia and more what is considered Mongolia now. They they actually worked with the Song of the south (AHA That's a fun reference!) to fight the Jurchen Jin in what is northern China today. When that was done, the Song, being incredibly stupid, attacked the Mongols and lost a long 50 year war with them.

Could you expand on the story of the Song attacking the Mongols? I knew of the alliance between the Mongols and the Song against the Jin, but I didn't know about the Song attack.

[El Barto]

The Jin (at the times Liao's vassals) and the Song had allied against Liao, but the Jin afterwards turned on the Song and took a alrge part of their territory, this is why the Song are called, from then on, 'the Southern Song'. Eventually the Jin were defeated by the Mongols and the Song took advantage of this to retake some of the cities to the north… which would've been part of the Mongols' conquests.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

- How did they fare in sieges and siege assaults?

Unsurprisingly, for a nomadic people with no building tradition to speak of, this was the least well developed of the military arts for the Mongols. They were not skilled engineers, made mistakes and had assaults backfire on them. They handled it the way the USA handled the Space Program -- wallop somebody else and make their engineers work for you. The Mongols favored acquiring Chinese and Persian engineers for their siege work. Interestingly, they would usually transport the engineers and let them build from local materials rather than disassemble siege engines and move them in the baggage train as was European practice -- as usual, the Mongols favored mobility. In addition, the Mongols were brutal in a way that would have gladdened the hearts of Himmler's boys. If a town resisted past more than a token defense, then after they finally conquered it, the Mongols killed all but a few witnesses, who were left to flee with word of the massacre. One does not have to test one's siege skills much if the fortified city quits rather than endure siege and massacre. Alternatively, they would use town A's inhabitants as human shields when assaulting town B, even forcing the Town A folk to do the breaching work...and the Mongols were unstinting with their captive's lives.

In short: Steal the knowledge you need and take it with you, and use terror to minimize the need in the first place. Ugly, but effective.

[Kadagar_AV]

* First of all, FREE RELIGION. Religion was back then a very "real" thing. By allowing people to keep their religion, they didn't have to constantly come back to the same areas to kill rebelions.

* GREAT TACTICIANS, they used the same sign language and (often) methods they did to herd animals to herd the enemy around on the battlefield. Feigned retreats hasn't just "been reported", it was their standard practice.

* AWESOME LOGISTICS, a mongol soldier lived off of the land, basically they could take 10.000 men and just ride off from any and all camps for prolonged periods of time. Compare that to moving a force of 10.000 knights/archers/yadda yadda... This was of course combined with...

* FANTASTIC SCOUTING, the mongols fought when and where it suited them.

* OPEN TO NEW IDEAS, if some culture they overtook was great at something, they included their knowledge into their empire at once. As mentioned, they had no effin clue how to siege, but they accepted it and let mercs do it for them.

* COMMUNICATION, they were just great at it, on or off the battlefield. They invented the post system.

* KILLER CULTURE, let's face it... The average mongol was a borne and bred cavalryman. This ties in with their...

* PRACTICAL WHAT WORKS WORKS VIEW ON CONQUEST, they by no means killed for fun. But if city A, B, C, D, E, F aso resisted them, they would take the population from city A, herd them to city B, and see how long city B would resist when city A's inhabitants were used as human shields. If they did resist, citizens from city A and B would be herded to city C... After a while the erst of the alphabet get the message.

* INDIVIDUAL GENIUS, Genghis Khan was kind of Einsteinian...

[Myth]

His grandson and great grandson did pretty well too! If that whole "let's ride back to Karakorum in freaking Asia to elect the obvious choice for a new Great Khan" wasn't in place, I'm not sure even the HRE+Teutonic Order+France+England would have been able to stop them.

Perhaps the heavy forested terrain would have been an issue however.

[El Barto]

It would, as well as all those mountains in Europe.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Were central and western Europe spared only because of the trip back to Mongolia to elect a new Great Khan?

This has always been the central “what if” question regarding medieval combat.

On side argues that the Mongols were better disciplined, better strategists, usually better tacticians, far more mobile, and flexible enough to adopt new variations when encountering obstacles. This, according to the “Mongols are da bomb” view, means that the Mongols would have been slowed by European terrain conditions, but would have been able to adapt and overcome. This view has the Mongols (with a khan election in the field), taking all of Continental Europe over the course of a few years. Scandinavia and The UK would have fared better as the Mongols never did very well with blue-water operations.

The other side argues that the mountains and forests of Europe would have neutered Mongol mobility and the heavier armors of the Europeans soldiery could have matched the Mongols absent the Mongols' superior mobility. This view takes the position that the Mongols could have raided and ravaged a lot of Europe, but not conquered very much of it West of the Vistula.

Of these two positions, I tend to favor the latter result, but not quite for the reasons mentioned. Cavalry was a key military arm throughout Western Europe – albeit not with the ubiquity the Mongols practiced – and we have a rich history that shows cavalry were vital to European medieval warfare. This suggests that the Mongols could easily have used their horses to good effect in Western Europe. Moreover, the Mongols would fight on foot when necessary and/or employ mercenaries or vassal forces to take this role for them. Terrain, of itself, could not have saved Europe.

What would have saved Europe was the very thing that prevented Europe from forming a cohesive power that could face the Mongols in open field battle – feudalism. England alone had more than 9000 manors, most with their small semi-fortified manor house. Motte and Bailey castles and fortresses, along with stone keeps, fully fortified manor houses and even some of the earlier concentric castles, littered the European landscape. Each one designed to be a huge force multiplier to the defense, and most with their own sources of potable water and stockpiles of food and missiles. The Mongols could have bested any of these defenses of course, but there were thousands upon thousands of them – usually on the high ground and usually dominating what little road transportation network existed. The attrition affect would have been mind numbing – and for the Mongols, ultimately Pyrrhic.

Europe’s feudal system with its web of petty alliances – and rivalries – left most of the nobility with a need to be able to defend themselves. Petty fortifications were legion and the crossbow, the spear, and the sword and board were all excellent components of a castle defense not to mention all of the other refinements many sported. Feudalism was far from perfect and Europe had to discard it, ultimately, to create the great Nation states that (with luck, gunpowder, and nobody issuing “destroy all of out boats and technology” orders) dominated the globe a by the 16th century. Yet the very “divided and at-odds with itself” character of feudalism that engendered so many castles and manors and keeps would have created a “not worth winning” scenario for the great Mongol army. They’d have stripped it bare, and even periodically rode in to cull the locals and protect their Western border perhaps, but as a whole project Europe would have been too much gristle and bone chips to make a good “meal” for the Mongolian “barbecue.”

[Kadagar_AV]

Seamus, your theory fall if those petty obstacles you mention didn't dare to fight.

Why on earth would any and every little obstacle sacrifice their own lives? The idea of community wasn't strong nation wide, and most people just wanted to be left alone.

The small obstacles let them be left alone in the small petty feuds under the feudal system, but against the Golden Horde? Seriously?

And it's not like the Mongols weren't know for being... Persuasive... No?

[El Barto]

Not feuds, fiefs.

[Ethelred Unread]

I think after it had become known that if you resisted the Mongols there were dire consequences, but if you surrendered and paid tribute you'd be relatively OK then I'd think you'd see a lot if people exchanging one ruler for another.

Whilst the Mongols are Ace argument is a bit extreme, let's not forget they conquered China which had larger armies, cities and a more cohesive society than anything in Europe at the time.

As for terrain, if the Gobi desert didn't stop them then how would forests?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk