Holding Europe would be far harder. It was common in Asia for one victory to extend Mongol control for a hundred miles. In Europe, it’d be closer to a hundred feet. It gave European monarches fits, with large siege trains and far more convenient logistics.
Yes. I meant it in the same sense - it’s often said, but it may be an exaggeration.
The Mamluks are often cited as an example of a group that was particularly well-suited to engaging the Mongols. The Mongols superior strategic mobility was partially negated by the limited approaches to Syria. As long as the Mamluks stayed on the strategic defensive and used scorched earth tactics ( which they did ) to funnel Mongol offensives and deny them remounts, they could largely dictate the general area of engagement or at least limit their mobility. And once battle was joined the Mamluks, mounted archers themselves and highly disciplined as an elite “mercenary” force, could stand off and engage at range on an equal footing with the Mongols. Or, more heavily armored and on their larger, stronger, probably faster grain-fed horses, they could charge and engage in melee to greater effectiveness. Granted there were other issues at play including the multiple fronts they forced to engage on, but in all the tense decades of conflict between the two powers the Il-Khans were only ever able to score any significant success against the Mamluks in 1299, when they reportedly had a large numerical superiority ( and the Il-Khans ended up being defeated fairly decisively in 1303 and had to retreat again ).
However I’d say one real difference is that the Mamluks were the only significant independent Muslim power left at that point and they had a rough enough time at Ayn Jalut against a skeleton rear-guard ( albeit a significant one ). Sheer numbers alone might have told against them if the imperial army under Hulegu had hit them full force. Given the precarious social standing of the Mamluks in Egypt as a completely imported military regime, one or two heavy blows might have broken the state. Hard to say at a distance, but the Mamluks appear to have been paradoxically both a more formidable opponent than any individual European power, but also more vulnerable to defeat.
Which is what nomads entering western Europe invariably did, as I noted. Cluster at areas of pasturage that was afforded them. But it did make them more predictable and prone to ambush ( which repeatedly happened to the Magyars ).
Just as an addendum, I’m not a horsey guy, but I’m assuming that like most critters switching diets that radically would cause all sorts of intestinal upset, leading to at least short-term loss of combat effectiveness. Can a life-long grass-fed pony quickly adjust to suddenly switching to fodder under campaign situations? I have no idea myself.
Honestly the Mongol empire was very much like that all over. It was an extractive, parasitic economy on an imperial scale. While some of the later Yuan emperors may have developed different ideas, even China was generally treated as a source of well-organized loot. Remember one debate in the early Mongol state was whether to ethnically cleanse northern China and transform it into pasturage. Luckily some semblance of reason prevailed.
Over-zealous revisionism? Perhaps - I probably tend towards being revisionist friendly in many things. But I’ll at least agree with “saved Europe much grief” point. Whatever else may have happened, the Mongols still had plenty of fight left in them in 1242.
Well, Attila didn’t seem to have much issues and he went as far west as Paris (then Lutecia).
I do remember reading the glues that held Hunnic (and Mongol) compound bows together tended to suffer and eventually disintegrate in humid climes though, so going further north into Scandinavia, England or even Flanders could have been problematic on that front assuming that information is correct.
Only partly true. Attila had a great deal of trouble and could never make any victory amount to much. Moreover, the land was far more open in those days, with lots of wildlands, no fortresses, and often no angry locals whatsoever..
Amongst the problems the Mongols may have faced was that western Europeans were culturally, ethnically, and linguistically different people than the steppe dwelling Turkic-Mongols. Defeating someone in battle, and then incorporating them into an empire are two different things. It’s easy to focus on military victories as the main driver of Mongol success, but they were just as adept at integrating conquered people into their empire. The Romans faced similar problems as they got away from the Mediterranean.
European heavy cavalry had trouble on open plains, but in narrow valleys lightly armored Mongols would have had real trouble with the shock combat the armored knights preferred. Without mobility the Mongols might have been crushed. They would also have been troubled by archers firing from protected positions in forests and atop hills.
They were, but so were the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Persians, and the Mongols managed to rule them well enough.
And the Germans were culturally, etc., different from the Romans. They still managed to conquer and hold the Western Empire.
But, why would the Mongol ponies have to be grass-fed? Every country in Europe was growing (and still grows) cereal crops. The Mongols could simply, everywhere they conquered, demand their tribute in the form of wheat or oats or barley.
Think the Star Trek: TOS episode “Mirror, Mirror.” That kind of empire. Bandits/pirates/mobsters as kings. The Terran Empire was willing to exterminate the Halkans for resisting its demands – the Mongol Empire had a similar policy.
How extensive was European agriculture? (I don’t actually know the answer.) Unless it was substantially better than subsistence level, demanding crops as payment would have simply meant that everyone, European and Mongol, would have starved by the Spring following the conquest.
If European agriculture was sufficient to sustain social classes of agriculturally non-productive European warrior-nobles and churchmen, which it was, it would have been sufficient to sustain the Mongol cavalry after the Mongols cut off the heads of the European warrior-nobles and churchmen.
This, of course, presumes that the number of invading Mongols and their horses would have been fewer than the number of nobles slain.
Depriving the Mongols of mobility would have been quite an impressive feat. Mongol Tumen regularly covered 100 miles a day during the invasion of Hungary; modern mechanized armies can’t match maintaining that sustained pace of movement. European heavy cavalry did not fare well against the Mongols; the Mongols would simply use their vastly superior mobility to pick away at the heavy cavalry from a distance that the heavier cavalry could not close. Even if the arrows wouldn’t kill the knights from that distance, it would kill their mounts leaving heavily armored knights on foot that were then easy pickings for the Mongols own shock charge. A Tumen was only 60% horse archers, the other 40% were lancers.
Why did such a big empire fall apart and disintegrate to modern day Mongolia when so many other lands they took rebuilt and expanded their influence? Why isn’t modern day China, Russia, and parts of the middle east all part of New Mongolia? Was there such a gap between Ogedei and his rule and the rule of every other Mongol king that none were able to replicate even a fraction of the former’s success?
Probably because there was no idea behind Mongol rule. They simply conquered and taxed. They did not try to make their subjects adopt Mongol language or culture or religion, and that probably would have failed to take if they had, most of their subjects had richer and more advanced cultures and knew it. Nor did the Mongols themselves assimilate to Chinese culture the way the Manchus did later. They remained simply foreigners to the Chinese, the Russians, etc., and it was psychologically easy for the Chinese, etc., to shake them off.
It didn’t realy disintegrate to just ‘modern Mongolia’ (and there are plenty of Mongol homelands outside Mongolia- in Chinese Inner Mongolia and in various Russian subjects like Buryatia and Tuva. )
We call itt the Mongol empire, but my understanding is that by later in the game, their armies included as many ethnic Turkic soldiers as actual Mongols. And there are plenty of Turkic populations scattered across central Asia and eastern Europe, some of which have their own countries or self-governing areas. The Mughal Empire, which ruled most of South Asia until it gradually fell apart in the early 18th century, was run by a dynasty of Turkic-Mongol descent which at least purportedly claimed to be the successors of Gengis Khan.
My understanding is that horses don’t do very well on grain (except maybe oats) and that grass is better for them.
There wasn’t really a good method of succession for the “Empire” as such - when it was personally under the control of Genghis it worked fine, and the first transition to Ogedei worked since it was still Genghis’ orders being followed, but then there were serious tensions in the transition to Guyuk. Then the start of Mongke’s reign included reprisals against Guyuk’s family and supporters, and then after Mongke’s death there was open civil war to choose the next leader. Kublai won the Khanate, but won the support of some powerful factions basically on the condition that he not ask them to actually do anything, which he was okay with since his attention was primarily on China.
Basically the empire had already fragmented into various fiefdoms controlled by princes who weren’t powerful enough to control all the “Mongol Empire” but likewise were strong enough to not have to obey central authority.