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McBeefâ„¢ · **04-10-2015, 06:08 PM**

(04-10-2015, 04:32 PM)Hammersmith Wrote:
(04-10-2015, 03:02 PM)Manasas Reed Wrote: Not so much a question on weapons or tactics, but a question I've always loved to ask in these type of topics.

Genghis Khan vs Alexander III?

Obviously if we were to consider the 1,000 year or so span between them, the odds are without a doubt in Khan's favor.

But if these two met on the battlefield on equal terms, with equal technology on both sides, who would the better tactician be, and who would win the battle?

I know that this can be a loaded question that gets dragged into a million debates so I promise I will not turn it into that.

Just curious to see your opinion!

I'm going to weigh in here because Khan is my thing and my jam.

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Because this isn't my thread and thus you don't need to read thisKhan wins, by a mile. Â The main draw of the Khanate's millitary was that it was VERY good at destroying an organized military on the field. Â The Parthian shot and other tactics used by the mongol hordes were absolutely lethal to pursuing organized forces. Â Alexander was said to have known when not to extend a fight, but the mongols were amazing at baiting forces into ambushes, pincers, and worse. It's why lightly armored horsemen slaughtered so many large, organize, heavily armored forces, like Alexander's main host and scores of Arab armies.

The Khan's army was an insane affair of lethal use of captive conscripts as cannon fodder and skilled captives who were put to work. Â The Khans KEPT people who had skills, and used them to amazing effective, from making siege engines to chemical engineering and medicine. Those who were basic and expendable were literally thrown into a meat grinder to make the Mongol forces harder to get at, and their maneuvers more lethal. It's why small forces for the mongols swelled into large, horrifyingly dangerous forces so quickly, and the deflated again almost as quickly. They also killed all those captives after they didn't need cannon fodder anymore, so that they wouldn't consume vital resources or make a supply train, but that's a story for another time.

Alexander's conquering habits were one part because he was better equipped, and one part training. Â He was sneaky, and good, but his army was also very good and very heavily armed compared to what he was fighting. Â He had inertia, from the work his father had done before him (Alexander's conquering was a continuation of his father's work)

The Khan's conquering habits were one part vastly superior tactics, one part being USED to fighting wildly superior forces and one part being very, very self sufficient. Â

Batu, the servant of the Khan who commanded the incursion into Europe, alone slaughtered entire orders of knights, hundreds of miles away from resupply and reinforcements, and killed off roughly half of Hungary in the process in about one to two years (I think he got as far as poland, if not further out from the Carpathians). Â If the Grand Khan hadn't of died and forced his recall and stalled the Mongol advance, most of Europe would have been butchered and subjugated as part of the Mongol Empire or returned to the state of barbarism that existed before the fall of the roman empire because the euro civilization would have been gutted and left to rot. I have no doubt of this.

The Khan forces would have won, given equal tech and equipment. They were winning against better armored and armed forces during their time already. Equal equipment really does not favor Alexander.

Because the Khan fought dirty and with tactics that Alexander had never seen, much less made a counter for. Â Their brutality and use of resources was much, much higher and much more efficient and all the more terrifyingly evil in a very objective sense of the word because of it. Â Alexander was a good leader, but the Mongols were a literal war machine.

And yes the Mongolians would destroy Alexander, as Hammersmith most eloquently explains. Until the advent of firearms, Horse archers were basically an invincible force on the battlefield. The only way to beat them was more horse archers, walls, or living someplace that didn't have good grazing.

Europe's foresty and mountainy terrain and fortified keeps kept the Mongolians out. Mostly it was the land though. What's the point of land you can't graze horses on?!

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