The mongol hordes!

[DisruptorX]

Greetings, I figured this would be the proper forum to post in. I would like to ask about the composition of mongol armies. I have been surfing around the internet, and figured there would be some people here who are knowledgable about the subject.

A current project of mine is a mongol army for Warhammer. From what I've gathered so far, the mongols would have had large numbers of light archer cavalry with bows and sabres, light cavalry with lances and bows, as well as infantry.

What sort of equipment would mongol heavy infantry be armed with? Would they have bows and hand weapons, like in MTW 2, or would hand weapons and a shield be more accurate. I read that some would be armed with long spears, but that site mentioned that they used chinese mercenary spearmen, so I'm not sure if the mongols themselves used spear infantry.

I also read that foot archers were very, very rare in mongol armies.

Any information on mongol infantry and heavy infantry would be much appreciated!

[seireikhaan]

Well, from everything I've gathered, the Mongols didn't really have a 'heavy' infantry like might be seen in China or western europe. As a matter of fact, they had relatively little infantry at all, at least themselves. Now, this isn't taking into account mercenaries, which would have become more prevelant in use after the Empire became too large for just the Mongol and steppe cavalries to control. The mongols also used heavy cavalry, who wore cuirasses of either ox hide/leather or metal. They were generally armed with lances and scimitar. I'm sure if you got Orda in here, he could name a bunch of stuff I've missed and go into great detail to boot.

[DisruptorX]

Indeed, they had heavy cavalry. Those will be a nightmare to model and convert though, since I"m working with all metals.

Mainly, I've just been reading that the mongols did employ infantry in various conflicts. I'm curious as to how they would have looked, for the most part.

[Conradus]

Couldn't part of that infantry just be dismounted cavalry? Especially in sieges etc that seems an option to me.

[Peasant Phill]

Contact Orda Khan like greaterkhaan says. He's the Mongol expert here at the Org.

Orda member page

[The Wizard]

The Mongols had great numbers of horse archer cavalry. I'd say that the Mongol horse archer made up at least 90% of your average tumen, the Mongol division. That number was steeled by a small number of well-armed and armored nobles in full panoply (mail, lamellar, horse bard), though it should be noted that so-called "Mongol heavy cavalry" only rarely involved itself in melee combat and was most often to be found alongside the horse archers engaging the enemy at range.

Mongol light cavalry -- the horse archers -- could of course dismount, but AFAIK only sieges saw large numbers of Mongol soldiers fighting on foot.

Mongol armies, besides these two types of soldiers, were also supplemented by auxiliaries. These could range from the troops provided by vassal states on the Eurasian steppe belt -- the Cumans/Kipchaks, Kara-Khitai, etc. -- which were hardly distinguishable from their Mongol counterparts, to Chinese (and Iranian) engineers and physicians, Korean infantry levies, and, later on, Chinese infantry levies. A large number of the 100 000 or so men that Batu Khan and Subedei took with them when invading Europe was made up of such sedentary auxiliaries (which is logical -- Mongol regulars made up a number of approximately 100 000, 10% of the total population of Mongolia of one million at the time, and involving them all in a single campaign would be a gamble even by Mongol standards).