Inspired by the American Revolution What if? thread, I thought I’d bring up another scenario from this book: What If?
One of the most chilling chapters is what if the Mongols continued into Europe. They pretty much annihilated two of Europe’s largest armies. After that, the author contends, there were no other obstacles for the Mongols. Would Europe be able to recover, have the Renaissance, explore (and conquer), etc. after a Mongol invasion?
The author seems to think the Mongols would’ve destroyed the cities and returned Europe to a subsistence agriculture; no free time for discoveries, etc. Would such an invasion offset Europe’s advantages in Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel”?
IIRC China recovered from the Mongol invasions and eventually regained much of its former glory. Russia was also under the thumb of the Golden Horde at one time…and they too regained much of their former glory. I’d say that if the Europeans surrendered (which they probably would have after a few more major defeats) their cities would have remained generally intact. The Mongols only did the whole pile of skulls bit if you wacked their ambassadors or if you didn’t surrender when they clearly had you at a major disadvantage. If you surrendered and joined the empire you were fine…better even in some cases than you were in the old order.
Religion would probably have been very different in Europe as the Mongols were pretty tolerant of different religions in their empire. There would have been more trade and more flow of ideas (for as long as the Mongols lasted…lets not forget they pretty much fell apart within a few hundred years, again IIRC).
I think over all it wouldn’t have been such a great disaster for Europe to have been conquered by the Mongol empire. Though I must admit I’m not really too up on this period of history and this is more a ‘History Channel’ view of events.
I’m not convinced that the mongols could have taken Europe in any meaningful way. They never faced an organized opposition whom they did not outnumber considerably (IIRC) and even though they did defeat European armies in 2 occasions, they did not win without taking considerable losses. Also they were defeated by middle eastern forces, forces which the Europeans had enegaged and won against many times.
With some competent leadership European armies would have been plenty a match for the mongols, specially on European soil.
Leaving that aside for the moment, if they had succeeded, history might indeed have been quite different. I’m thinking the renaissance might have started in the middle east, or simply delayed a few hundred years.
I have both volumes of those books and while I find them entertaining, even thought provoking reading at time, their are several chapters I have problems with. That one is a prominent example.
Was any European power really in a good position to beat the Mongol imperial army on the battlefield? No. The odds would have varied from highly unlikely to not a chance, depending on the circujmstances. However I don’t believe the Mongols were capable of exercising anything like hegemonic control over Europe for any great length of time. Because:
Terrain mitigated against permanent conquest/occupation. Mongol tactics were not well-suited to Europe west of Poland/Hungary. For one thing good calvary forage on a mass scale ( for strings of hundreds of thousands of steppe ponies ) wasn’t available west of the Hungarian plain.
Conquering Sung ( i.e. central and southern ) China took decades, over a half century in fact, a great deal of tactical modification and the use of huge numbers of locally recruited Chinese infantry, artillerists and siege engineers. This Sung conquest was made possible because the Mongols controlled the resources of northern China ( better suited to nomad tactics ) and the central manpower reservoir of adjoining Mongolia. No such vastly wealthy resource would have been suitably in place in Europe.
The Mongols under Sudedei would have won most any large engagement, but after the core imperial army was withdrawn ( and it inevitably would have been - China was the big prize, once Batu’s primary ambition had been achieved and his house suitably set up ), it would have been difficult to project quite so devastating a force later.
Hungary had already been assigned as an appanage to one Shayban, younger brother of Batu. Given Batu’s own establishmentt of his capital at Sarai, far to the east, it is highly likely, probably inevitable, that these spheres of power would have diverged. Centralized authority may have been projected over the Balkans for a decade or three, as happened when the Golden Horde was de facto divided and one prince Nogai based himself in the west, but likely not for long.
The Khanate of Hungary would almost certainly have decayed quickly, barring a major demographic shift.
As alluded to western Europe was way almost certainly down on the list of the Great Khan’s goals and he had control of the great engine of the imperial army. It had been the inviting Russian steppe that had always been the main target. Sung China was infinitely more interesting.
Worst case scenario IMHO - Mongols ravage western and central Europe, setting up an at least temporarily solid forward base in Hungary and become a more centralized and disciplined version of the Magyar raiders of the 9th and 1oth centuries. Occasionally conducting punishing razzias in central and southern Europe and extracting tribute, but real control limited to the Balkans and probably even that incompletely. One not at all unlikely possibility - an eventual Turco-Magyar Christian kingdom in Hungary.
Damaging, yes. Devastating to the degree suggested by *What If? ? I don’t think so.
I believe they were heavily outnumbered at Legnica ( at least in terms of potentially engaged troops ), even more substantially on the Kalka River ( a much earlier victory against combined Russian and Cuman forces ) and had no great numerical superiority, probably a inferiority on the Sajo River.
A skeleton force, beaten by the full strength of the new Mameluke state. If the full imperial army had been present at Ayn Jalut, the Mamelukes would have almost certainly been squashed like grapes.
Against Batu’s Kipchak Khanate? Possibly. Against a genius like Subedei, commanding the flower of the Mongol imperial army? I sincerely doubt it.
But otherwise I agree a longterm conquest would have been unlikely, as above :).
The candle that burns half as long, burns twice as bright :D.
Oh and just a little self-corrective - the conquest of northern ( Jin ) China was completed over 23 years, from 1211-1234 ( with numerous pauses ), Sung China took maybe 44 years ( again with frequent pauses ), from 1235-1279 , though the real campaign that wore them down was waged 1268-1279. So it didn’t take quite a half century to conquer the Sung, but it did take ~68 years to take all of China.
I think the Mongols would have had trouble getting to Spain due to the mountain bottleneck, and Ireland and Britain due to the intervening sea. However, a Mongol attack on Spain from the north might have caused enough damage to let the Moors retake significant territory.
I doubt it. It likely wouldn’t have accelerated the Renaissance in western Europe anymore than it did in Russia, because although the Mongols universal empire did allow for safer long-distance trade, western Europe would have almost certainly have been ruled indirectly like most of Russia. Hence only limited benefit from improved trading and the far more onerous burden of occasional punitive raids and heavy vassal tributes that would have worked to weaken rather than strengthen European economies. The Mongol economic system was not terribly rational ( from the long-term settled POV - it made perfect sense to a semi-nomadic raider ) and leaned towards the heavily extractive.
As for European exceptionalism - I would categorize that as a much later phenomena anyway. I don’t think many were convinced of anything other than a religious superiority over the peoples of the Near and Far East, who if anything were regarded as considerably wealthier and more sophisticated.
Again I rather doubt an actual large-scale Mongol razzia into Iberia.
But even assuming such occurred, it probably wouldn’t happen before, oh, say, 1245 ( going by the Mongols rate of advance up to that point ). By then Valencia and the Balearics had already fallen to Aragorn ( which had more or less taken its final form in Spain ), while Murcia and Cordoba had been taken by Castile. Seville, Jaen and the Algarve hadn’t gone under quite yet, but they had little prospect for continued survival, especially as the Almohades ( also plagued by some internal struggles for the throne ) and the rising Marinid dynasty were then locked in a see-sawing death struggle in Morocco. Neither of those powers would have been in any shape to launch an expedition to save the Iberian provinces in the near-term, which is one of the reasons they went down in the first place ( the Marinids did contribute to Granada’s survival in later years by launching expeditions into Iberia after they definitively expelled the Almohades from the west ).
So it may have had an impact, but I’m not sure it would have been a large one.
Celtic Christianity, centered in Ireland, would have dominated the Faith.
The monestary/universities in that island county were sending missionaries to still-pagan parts of northern Europe, & I see no reason for this to change.
The Mongols were not a seafaring people, in particular, & were unlikely to go after the British Isles.
Mountain-girded Scandinavia is also unlikely as a target. But the Vikings were likely to visit the Mongols.
Uh, no. Barring the fact that the Mongols were extremely unlikely to suppress Roman Christianity in any way, Celtic Christianity had already mostly disappeared and absorbed into Roman by the time of the Mongol invasion of Europe anyway.
I’m sure it would have. But not to an extent that would have influenced mainland Europe in any major way. In fact, it would likely not have influenced even the British Isles in any major way since England had been completely integrated into the Roman Church by the 7th century.
It didn’t disappear completely, as there are always holdouts in some areas, but its influence was pretty much gone.
50 years after their religion had been incorporated in Ireland itself? Over 150 years since it had been abolished in Britain? Over 400 years since Celtic monasteries had been completely replaced by Benedictine in mainland Europe?
The Celtic Church was completely on the retreat at the time and hadn’t been an evangelizing force for several hundred years by the time of the Mongol invasion. The idea that the Mongol invasion would have completely rejuvenated the Celtic tradition to an extent that they would have dominated western Christianity at a time when they didn’t even dominate the British Isles is pretty farfetched. More likely that they would simply influenced Christianity in Ireland for a years longer than they did before fading away completely.
