Could the Mongols have conquered Europe?

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

An excellent link, screwtype! Bookmarked, for future reference!

I have to agree with you and Lord of Hosts - to me, it seems, that the Mongols were reaching their limit, both internally and externally. I also think that the territorial difficulties they would have faced are being underestimated in this thread, but what do I know? I'm no scholar, and I wasn't there.

And the Mongols would have had to be very, very good to win 100% of the time against the might of the West - and they still would have had a rough time subduing the conquered area even if they mystically cut swathes through kingdom after kingdom.

[Orda Khan]

I also recently read something about the Mamluks being created as a counter to the Mongolian warriors and being able to defeat them in close combat.

A huge number of them had already been defeated by the Mongols as they mopped up the steppes and Russia. At one stage the number of Turkic prisoners were almost equal in size to their captors. They were sold into slavery, many of them ending up in Egypt. After the execution of the Caliph of Baghdad, there were hostilities between Berke of the Golden Horde and Hulegu and what became the Ilkhanate. These hostilities between cousins and the fact that Berke had allied with the Mamluks, prevented any further expansion by Hulegu and the subsequent Ilkhans. Many Golden Horde troops serving in Mamluk ranks never returned. The Mamluk position thrived on its security. Later they were utterly crushed by Timur

........Orda

[A.Saturnus]

This thread is still in the wrong forum.

To me it seems the main points presented here are 1)the decentralized nature of European authority 2) the number of fortifications and 3) the lack of pasture.

The decentralized hierarchy is not an advantage in itself. The Mongols were good at conquering by a settlement by settlement strategy and they wouldn't have required to decapitate other hierarchies since they were the stronger. It may even have ment a disadvantage as Europe had by far not the same logistical capacities as the Mongols. The Mongols could send a messanger from Kharakorum to Poland in 6 days. The same message would probably have taken longer just through Germany.

Lack of pasture would require that the Mongols were not adaptive to their environment. Europe has some of the most fertile regions in the world and the Mongols excelled in much more barren territories, I can't believe they couldn't have managed gathering food.

The castles of Europe would have been the main problem. It would have slowed down the advance for sure but wouldn't stop it as the Mongols would have been able to await the fall of every fortress. They came to stay after all.

[Kagemusha]

I think this thread is pure speculation.We know that the edges the Mongols had over their opponents were:The Mongol Bow,The horse army tactics and last but not least the iron dicipline of the Mongol army in battle.If infact these would have been effective in Western and Central Europe.How long it would have taken from Europeans to adopt the mongol way of warfare?
The Timurids in Middle east were a fine example of the results when others adopted The mongol way of warfare and used it also against the mongols themselves.

[econ21]

This thread is still in the wrong forum.

Well, much as I love historical discussion and welcome it in this forum (where relevant to M2TW), I have to agree. The Monastery is a more suitable location for this topic.

[Orda Khan]

Kagemusha,
I posted that account because it is the one that goes into greatest detail regarding the tribes, however it is quantified in most of the literature (if not all) that covers the rise of the Mongol empire under Chingis. It is to Jochi's credit that he managed this while only in his twenties

Jochi had proved himself to be a very able general, later he figured prominently during the invasion of Khwarazm, where he was given the most difficult objective. He was more compassionate than his father or brothers and during the mass destruction and killings that followed in Khwarazm, carried out by his father and Tolui in particular, he took his troops north to his Ulus (the land he had been granted) in open defiance; he had been vociferous over what he felt was unnecessary brutality and had argued with his brother, Chagadai.
He had learnt his skills as a commander under the guidance of Jebe and he knew the wisdom of negotiation. The forest people had been subjugated without warfare, through skillful diplomacy and it was this in particular that Chingis Khan commended him for

.......Orda

[The Wizard]

If you do not see the difference between a proper Mongol soldier and those soldiers that defended the territories of the successor ulus then you possess a fundamental misunderstanding of the Mongol army -- if not the nation -- as a whole.

What I see here is people trying to compare a typical Mongol who served under Chingis, Jochi, Subedei and the other generals prior to the withdrawal from Europe following Ögedei's death, with a typical Turkic tribal levy and/or mercenary ghulam.

This is fundamentally flawed. The Mongol state, and then particularly its army, was far more advanced than any of its foes. It needed to be -- the population of the tribes Chingis had brought under his control by the time of the khuriltai acclaiming his title is estimated at about a million souls. From these was drawn a professional army of a hundred thousand men, all Mongols. This entire levy system was ordained by law, and turned the Mongol state from a collection of disparate nomad clans and tribes into a nation ready for an assault on the world. This was the first professional army integrated into the state since the legions of Rome, and the entire institution was even closer to the state than the Roman one. What we are talking about here is one of those very few examples that comes close to the Spartan example, the way the state was the army and the army was the state (the truth is more complex, indeed, but this comment best embodies the character of the Mongol army and state in a few words).

This entire political structure differed hugely from the states surrounding it -- especially its nomad neighbors. Oh, sure, they used approximately the same tactics, but they were nothing compared to the Mongols strategically. In discipline and morale, the Mongol ruled supreme. No force on the face of the earth at the time shared the ferocity, esprit de corps, determination, not to mention leadership that the Mongol army possessed. No other state was as much a state as the Mongol one, not even the Chinese dynasties. No-one had the same logistical abilities and way of securing an effective manpower pool.

Simply put: there was not an army in sight which was on par with the Mongol army as we see it thundering across Central Asia and into Iran and India. Even when Batu and Subedei invaded Europe -- with the large amount of Chinese and Muslim support personnel involved -- the Mongol army was incomparable to its contemporaries, the less sedentary the less comparable.

The entire power of this force is collaborated by the way we see the state decline as time goes by. Once the distance to the Mongolian heartland became too great to be able to directly administer (or more importantly, back up) the policy in the conquered territories, Mongol rulers there were forced to rely on the weaker systems that had been employed there for centuries already. They did not have the flair nor intelligence -- not to forget the platform nor the situation -- to create the institutions that had catapulted Chingis Khan from Beijing to Kaffa. Once again, they had become the equals rather than the betters of their neighbors, and their military endeavors show the results of that change.

[Watchman]

It sounds to me like you're saying the Mongols weren't able to properly integrate the subjugated nomad peoples into their military system. This would frankly be a rather severe demerit, as being able to effectively integrate your new aquisitions is damn near what becoming a succesful empire is all about. All the more so as replacing campaign attrition and combat casualties in the armies goes.

The Romans managed it. Pretty darn well too.

In any case, if we accept the argument that the re-trained nomads picked up along the way weren't the equals of the original Mongols (which I'm a bit sceptical about, but anyway), it raises the question if, ineed, the Khanate had genuinely reached its logistical breaking point by the time it started bothering the Europeans and butting heads with the Mamluks, Byzantines and Anatolian Turks. Besides the inevitable attrition of campaigning and fighting, the simple fact the Khanate had swollen to such a vast size in such a short time would have reduced the Mongols proper to an uncomfortably thin crust in the officer corps and, presumably, some elite units (presumably also somewhat depleted). The rank-and-file would be newer non-Mongol recruits, and if the system wasn't able to get enough oomph out of them to maintain its momentum past a certain point...

Well, all premodern empires had their "natural furthest borders", in the majority of cases dicated by ecology and their particular internal circumstances. Most had to find them out the hard way, too, and a persistent denial of the fact (usually expressed in exepnsive and largely futile continued exansion attempts) seems to have been rather typical.

[Orda Khan]

It sounds to me like you're saying the Mongols weren't able to properly integrate the subjugated nomad peoples into their military system.

Not quite. Throughout this thread and other threads before it that have covered the same question, I have continually tried to paint a picture of the Mongol empire so that people can discount the factors, like Ain Jalut and take them for what they were which was not a defeat of THE Mongols.
The Mongol incursions into eastern Europe after those of Batu can not be regarded in the same way as his invasion. Up until 1241, regardless of some unrest, the Mongols were at least united, this was not the case after the death of Ogodei and it became less and less so. As you know, the 'Golden Horde' was more Turkic than Mongol and even during Batu's invasion the Mongol tumens probably contained more Turks than Mongols. They were still successful but let us not forget, they had been defeated by Mongol tumens before they were conscripted. When Ogedei died the vast majority, with the exception of Batu's personal army, of these Mongol tumens returned east. After this point and with time, the Golden Horde obviously became less Mongol and this can be seen with Mongol being replaced by Turkic on coins and the spoken language and eventually culture and names.
Hulegu suffered in a similar way, only this time a Civil War broke out between Qubilai and Ariq Bukha, he also had to consider hostilities from both the Golden Horde and Qaidu, so his position was probably worse than that which Batu had experienced.
Wizard and myself have been trying to make people forget the facts after 1241 and only consider what might have happened had Ogodei's death not changed things because after that event, Mongol minds were preoccupied with 'turf wars' and the empire was no longer a whole, but quite segmented. Even attempts by Bayan of the White Horde, to bring about a coalition and so end disputes failed.
Had Ogodei not died I have no doubt that within Subedei's projected 18 years, Europe would have fallen

........Orda

[KrooK]

Despite Leignitz and Kalka it was impossible. Mongols wouldn't manage to hold Western Europe because there were no steppe. Mongols could hold steppe countries (or sandy deserts) but not forests. Look at Vietnam - 100.000 Mongols entered the country, left it 20.000. Guerilla killed them. Similar thing would happen into Poland and Germany. Furthermore Mongols wouldn't easy capture Alps and Italy.

[anti_strunt]

A more important consideration would be what implications such a conquest would have had. Nomad empires are, after all, notoriously lacking in stability and tend to fall apart as quickly as they rise, and then completely vanish from history, very much unlike sedentary polities.

What effects would a Mongol conquest have had on the long-term development of Europe, besides some Mongol genomes and perhaps some fancy fur-hats?

[Watchman]

Probably the introduction of some neat Chinese inventions sooner than actually happened. Although I've read the Persians point blank refused to accept the paper money their new overlords tried to introduce, despite death threats, so that's not a given...

The Medieval European fortification system was a pretty damn frustrating one by what I've read, and I strongly suspect the Horde would've ran out of horses through sheer starvation owing to the lack of decent pasture while being bogged down in endless sieges of mutually supporting forts from the ground up planned to make life miserable for anyone sitting around them. Not all that much grasslands to go around in Germany for example.

And once they started running short of ponies I suspect the nomad cavalry would've suddenly started getting rather vulnerable to the kinds of shock raids that were SOP for European troops to carry out against armies besieging their fortifications. When you think about it, they were really designed more for that kind of warfare anyway than set-piece battles, or in any case tended to have way more practical experience with the former than with the latter...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think the Mongols could have conquered Europe but they definately couldn't have held it. In the first instance the lack of strong central power would have meant the Mongols would either have had to adapt and keep the Barons or exterminate the nobility. Neither is very practical as the first will eventually lead to insurrection and the aecond will need a total re-structuring.

As to pastureland, well yes Europe was very fertile but things like crop rotation and fallow pasture were what kept it that way. It would be impossible to convert farmland into pasture on a sufficiant scale. Remember the general population of Europe is already badly under nourished, hence quite short.

As to actually fighting the Mongols, all the Europeans needed was dicipline and they had dicipline in their infantry, that battle between 26,000 Knights and 20,000 Mongols was just that, add in heavily armoured infantry, crossbows, longbows, those fancy new halbards and it doesn't look quite so good for the Mongols.

What would be needed would be a dedicated Alliance, which is possible given the infidel horde and a Papal edict for a Crusade, and someone smart enough to work out glory charges don't work. Admitedly neither are garrentied

[Subedei]

Don't wanna cause more confusion, but: does anybody remember Hülegu's conquest of the Assassinis's fortresses, a couple of them were classified as invincible? Don't forget the fact they had Chinese engineers.

The logistic problem is a very good point.

Anyhow, Venice had a secret contract with the Mongols. They informed them about geography, weather & any major changes in power constellations, army sizes, wars, treaties etc... in Europe (goes back to the first encounter on the Crimea). Why would the Mongols wanna have that info, if not for conquering. And they were adaptable....in their Empire were enough folks, trained in infantry warfare & siege (e.g. the Sung...) and as everybody knows: the Mongols liked auxiliary forces.

The keeping of Europe would have been harder, that is for sure. It's always the same with those unresty nomads...isn't it? But who could blame 'em....

By the way: i love to ask myself "What if" questions, because they make you rethink your history knowledge and U can play around with it. But facts are still the most important thing, please don't get me wrong.

[The Wizard]

I have only briefly skimmed this article, and I have already detected several errors and misrepresentations. Stuff like the overpimping of European fortifications, the lack of knowledge on Mongolian military organization (he seems to forget that Russia, even with "six million inhabitants," was still six times as big in that aspect than Mongolia at the time, according to modern estimates), ignorance of the characteristics of the steppe pony that carried the tumens wherever they wanted, too much concentration upon the Blue Horde as opposed to the Mongol Empire -- it all already adds up to me raising my two eyebrows and wondering. But, I won't make up an opinion yet, having failed to read all.

My own opinion -- conquest would have been a breeze. European armies, even if well-led and well-organized by the standards of the time (something that they weren't) still stood before the mammoth task of trying to defeat a force which had been on a world war for twenty years without failure. A force which had made extensive intelligence breaches into the European kingdoms, playing on their weaknesses and comparative division, as they had done with the Russians. No, it would have been very hard indeed for European armies to defeat the Mongols, as shown at Kalka, Legnica and Mohi; had they unified into one large force, their differences and inner division would have cracked the relatively weak façade of feudalism quite readily -- see what the Duke of Austria did in regards of the Cumans and the King of Hungary.

Fortifications? Please. European castles were privately built affairs. They did not follow geographical or political (i.e. border) lines, but simply what the local ruler saw as the best location. A direct result of this was that European fortifications ran pretty haphazardly through the landscape, making it easy to bypass each; this in comparison to the fortifications built in less feudal states, such as those protecting the main trade arteries of Central Asia and China.

Forests? Come on. Did that stop them in Russia -- a nation which still has much deeper and larger forests than Western Europe, even today? I'd surmise they'd use them to their advantage, as they tried to do with everything.

Conquest -- a comparative breeze. Consolidation? Nah. But that is so far ahead of the death of Ögedei and the events that followed that that would turn into pure speculation and fantasizing, as opposed to the discussion surrounding the mere possibility of conquest. I, for one, will steer well clear of the former.

[Reenk Roink]

Here's a little tidbit about the Mongols, Mamluks, and Syria:

For sixty years, commencing in AD 1260, the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria were involved in a more or less constant struggle with the ilkhanid Mongols of Persia. During this period, the Mongols made several concerted efforts to invade Syria: in AD 1260, 1281, 1299, 1300, 1303 and 1312. With one exception, all the Mongol expeditions were failures. Even the one Mongol victory on the field, at WadJ al-Khaznadar in AD 1299, did not lead to the permanent Mongol occupation of Syria and the ultimate defeat of the Mamluks, as the Mongols evacuated Syria after an occupation lasting only a few months. Between these major campaigns, the war generally continued in a form which in modern parlance might be described as a "cold war": raids over both sides of the border, diplomatic maneuvers, espionage and other types of subterfuge, propaganda and ideological posturing, psychological warfare, use of satellite states, and attempts to build large-scale alliances against the enemy. Here, as in the major battles, the Mamluks usually maintained the upper hand. Yet, in spite of a conspicuous lack of success on the part of the Mongols, they continued to pursue their goals of conquering Syria and subjecting the Mamluks, until their efforts began to peter out towards the end of the second decade of the fourteenth century. It was only then that the Mongols initiated negotiations which led to a formal conclusion of a peace agreement in AD 1323.

Quite a good read so far, The Mamluk-Ilkhanid War...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/052...Fencoding=UTF8

[The Wizard]

Might I please add the slight nuance that we are speaking of real Mongol tumens, that is to say composed of Mongols from Mongolia -- and not the Mongol successor states, ruled by a Mongol nobility but defended by locals?

These states were constructed upon a fragile equilibrium, namely that of the locals accepting the Mongols on the basis that the Mongols kept supplying goods and prosperity over the Silk Road. Once that Silk Road is crippled by the advancing Black Death, you see that the different Mongol states collapse quick succession, the less Mongol the locals the faster the process takes place.

In no way can one compare, for instance, the forces of the Il-Khanate and the forces of the Mongol Empire proper, as they invaded Europe.

[Orda Khan]

Hey Wiz, not seen you around for a while.

In no way can one compare, for instance, the forces of the Il-Khanate and the forces of the Mongol Empire proper, as they invaded Europe.

Precisely!
The majority who rejuvenate this discussion do not fully understand the nature of Mongol culture or its empire and the political implications of this period in Mongol history. As you have pointed out, the battles and armies mentioned are anything but 'Mongol' and they had ceased to be such since at least 1241 (one could justifiably argue 1236) Since the Ilkhanate was as much at war with the Golden Horde and Qaidu (Mongols), considering the Golden Horde were allied with the Mamluks and the White Horde also had a score to settle with the Ilkhanate after at least two of its princes had 'disappeared' whilst serving with the Ilkhanate, is there any wonder that further expansion would be anything but long lived?

.......Orda

[Reenk Roink]

Might I please add the slight nuance that we are speaking of real Mongol tumens, that is to say composed of Mongols from Mongolia -- and not the Mongol successor states, ruled by a Mongol nobility but defended by locals?

These states were constructed upon a fragile equilibrium, namely that of the locals accepting the Mongols on the basis that the Mongols kept supplying goods and prosperity over the Silk Road. Once that Silk Road is crippled by the advancing Black Death, you see that the different Mongol states collapse quick succession, the less Mongol the locals the faster the process takes place.

In no way can one compare, for instance, the forces of the Il-Khanate and the forces of the Mongol Empire proper, as they invaded Europe.

Yet one can assume that the Ilkhanate probably used the same Mongolian tactics, and was composed of related Turkic tribes. I fail to see a great difference. The Mamluks essentially defeated the Mongols using their tactics. What I am pointing out here is that the Mongolian battle tactics could be used to defeat the Mongols themselves.

[Watchman]

I must also say I don't really see the difference between an "ethnic" Mongol soldier in the Mongol military system and a, for off-the-top-of-head example, Iranian Turkish soldier in the Mongol military system. The two - steppe nomad warriors organized to fight under the same methods - ought to be about the exact same thing in just about all practical respects.

European castles were privately built affairs. They did not follow geographical or political (i.e. border) lines, but simply what the local ruler saw as the best location. A direct result of this was that European fortifications ran pretty haphazardly through the landscape, making it easy to bypass each;

And that "best location" just so tended to happen to be the best location for defying incursions and raiders. European feudalism to a large degree developed to defeat mobile raiders (the Moors, Hungarian-Magyars and Vikings originally), and its later internal wars primarily consisted of laying waste each others' holdings (as taking fortified places tended to be a bit of a challenge); the fortress networks were quite good indeed for checking enemy movements and supporting each other as needed. You could say that "area control" in more ways than one was what they were all about.

The only "haphazard" about them was where a lord was able to build them in the face of his competitors and within the limits of his territory; they were certainly expensive and important enough that they weren't just scattered about randomly.

Forests? Come on. Did that stop them in Russia -- a nation which still has much deeper and larger forests than Western Europe, even today?

Uh... you know, I don't think the Mongols ever ventured too far into the coniferous forest belt, save for raids. No nomads who'd been inhabiting the region since before they learned to ride horses ever tended to, either.

Due to the simple fact they didn't need to, nor want to because especially after they went on horseback they'd have been at quite the disadvantage there.

The Mongols, like all the nomad empires before them, took over the steppe part of Russia. The forested bit was largely left alone, or in any case not actually conquered and at best adminstered by local vassal lords under the threat of punitive expeditions.

Actually when you look at it, China - which was half plains anyway, and could be conquered relatively easily by taking control of the strategic nerve centers - and Korea were about the exact only places where Mongol dominion actually went well past the limits of the Great Eurasian Steppe Belt. They kind of seemed to hit a wall (à la Vietnam, Java, Japan and Egypt/Asia Minor for some), or just give up and leave (à la Hungary and Poland), almost everywhere else.

I'd say the pattern is a bit too pronounced to be coincidential.