(04-11-2015, 09:28 AM)Hammersmith Wrote: This is (mostly) wrong. ÂWell, seems you've put me in my place. Good stuff!Â
Show ContentA Lot of Words. Like. A lot.There's actually accounts from the times of the Mongols where the Mongols sacked, burned, and raised some of the most fortified cities of China at the time. Â The mongols knew how to tear cities down and break gates on a large scale of force. Â Siege-work was not their first language, but they learned it QUICKLY, especially from the Chinese who they brought into the empire and subjugated.
Literal piles of corpses, disease, and death lining the roads and nothing alive or not On Fire for miles around. Â A literal charnel pit formed whenever the Mongols hit a fortified city (Their terms of surrender were "Do it or we kill everyone", no/few exceptions). Â
And that was before they hit the Arabian Caliphates.  The Caliphate wasn't a unified thing, there were a lot of large movers, shakers, and Sultans who's jobs were based around being large War Mongering assholes who had fortified cities.  Those burned too.  They knew how to tear down cities way before they hit the Arabian states.
And the Mongols didn't just hit "Far off" parts with easy horse grazing. Â They invaded into the hearts of empires and sacked, burned, and fucked off. Â They took the supplies from whatever they mowed down and ran as far as they could stretch those supplies, then fuck off again or Claim it in the Name of Khan. Â (Remember what I said about good use of resources? That was a thing)
If you want an example of the Mongols destroying an ancient, well established, well fortified City in Arabia I refer you to: The siege and sack of Motherfucking Baghdad
I burn your city, I drink your milkshake, fuck your walls.
You're absolutely right that, if unified, a united Arabian state/caliphate might have not eaten so many DEVASTATING destructive raids. (And during the crusades the stuff the Khan was doing to the Arabian kingdoms was spun into being the work by a Mythical Christian Crusader King/Saint known as "Praester John". Â Boy were they in for a surprise...) Â
However that's just how the world was at the time. Â Politics kept things divided, a LOT of politics often were used to the effect of "You're between us and these monogol horse assholes" that later turned into "...you're now part of the mongol horse asshole's empire and right next door, shit, we fucked up shit shit shit" (Or worse yet: "Didn't we used to have a neighbor between us and them?")
Horse archers being useless anywhere but an open field?   No, no no no no. Horse archers were nasty, evil, highly mobile guerrilla fighters. The attack and Europe was a surprise, but it was a planned attack that came from the mountains (The Carpathians) They did PLAN around their horses, and the main mongol artery through Europe followed a plains/steppe similar to Mongolia's own terrain. Â
They also used the local forests and the like to fuck up mounted knights and formations. Â The mongols used terrain to screw with their enemies. Â Aggressively so. Â Like I said: very good at ambushes, Pincers, and formation breaking. Â The fact that the Euro nobility lead forces often lacked a decent general meant that local pride/glory mongering/For the Glory of God stuff got them butchered when they overextended or tried to follow up.
And marched right into a Parthian Shot and flanking forces.
They were trotting into City/states/kingdoms that hadn't yet pledged all their knights over to the crusades. Â Most of these kingdoms still had their entire fancy pants Armored military and Knights around to defend with. Â It just didn't mean shit against the Mongols because Horse Archers Owned Everything during that time, and the Mongols had no intent of sticking around long term. Â They just wanted your stuff. Â
If you ran? If they said "yes, you can go"? Â Most of the time Batu (The guy who raided Europe) would horse-mow down those people he'd just said could run away and kill them in cold blood. (One account has Batu's forces building a deck over captives using their still-living bodies as the supports, and then putting tables, chairs and a feast over this huge sprawl of bodies covered in planks and HAVING DINNER ON IT while the weight of the Mongol army eating crushed them to death)
None of this was a single, isolated incident. Â This happened everywhere, repeatedly. Â It stopped being a surprise. Â Even the pope eventually learned these guys were around and causing trouble. Â The Mongols had DETAILED maps of Europe and the like from encountering Venetian traders around the Mediterranean states and/or the black sea. Â They knew what they were getting into and where to hit
As for surprise attacks: The Mongol Empire lasted for about 150 years, maybe longer, and was fucking huge. Â This wasn't "Woops we got you with your pants down". Â This was calculated invasions, annexations, and demands of Join Or Die (And if you didn't join, the word genocide doesn't begin to describe what the Khans did to you and your people)
Here's a picture of how the Mongol empire looked, with the red being Invasions/expansion, and the final picture being the empire's sections, colour coded with the sons/Grandsons of Ghengis being a Khan over a respective territory, ruled by the Grand Khan back home in the capital.
90 years of aggressive expansion and mass murder stops being a surprise attack and starts being a Century of Unceasing Bloodshed and Conquering.
IT KEEPS HAPPENING
I warned you bro. I warned you about Mongols
Note that India's Severely Mountainous border and sweltering heat protects it from getting Mongoled.
The Mongols started as literal tribal raiders. Â Ghengis took them from that into war-gods that no one had ever expected or seen. Â There's a reason there's a statue of him out there.
And why him and his kin (Emphasis on his kin. Â Ghengis's kids did a LOT of the work on that map above. Â Dad got the boulder rolling though) are responsible for killing about 40 million people (about 10% of the entire PLANET's population). Â Make no mistake. Â The empire worked because Genocide and mass killings were common if you pissed off the Mongols in any way shape or form.Â
Step out of line and you were fucking dead.
Calling them a "woops" in history is a kind of historical downplay/erasure that is a very, very bad idea. Â They conquered most of the civilized land mass of Europe and Asia, with only the extremes of the map and HEAVILY fortified civilizations not getting completely anihilated. Â Europe was boned. Â The Western front of Arabs would have been as boned if the Khanate hadn't devolved into what always happens when War Leaders end up in charge of an empire: You stop being conquerors and you end up being leaders squabbling over an empire. Â
The only part of the "Civilized" as we know it that didn't get owned by the Wrath of Khan was India, and that's because the place was hot, sweaty, bad for horses and invading forces, and had near impassible mountains on all it's northern borders, making one way incursions from the flanks or through large fucking rocks near impossible. Â
And that's where you're KIND of right about the mongols and needing horse environment. Â They didn't go Very Far South, either to India or Southern Asia, because the climate was BAD for people used to living that far north with large animals always in tow. Â The mongol forces melted and died in damp heat and dense jungle, which is why they could take Baghdad and Southern China without problem, but not south Asia or India. Â Mountains alone didn't stop them. Â As mentioned: They got into Europe through the Carpathian range. Â If they'd wanted over or around the Indian ranges, they'd have gone. Â Ghengis DID go over the ranges a few times, actually, but cited the heat and poor grazing area compared to what could be gained (I think they cite that the area would only Assimilate/kill them, since it would force them to do Non-Mongol things to survive, like not use horses. Â not being a mongol was obviously not something the Mongols wanted) Disease and damp and culture definitely helped work with Mountains to keep them out.
Politics stopped the Khans, ultimately. Â That is the ONLY thing that could stop them, other than nature. Â Thank fuck for succession politics or the map would be a very weird place today in the modern age.
![[Image: FKJHjaw.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/FKJHjaw.jpg)
![[Image: 250px-Mongol_Empire_map.gif]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Mongol_Empire_map.gif/250px-Mongol_Empire_map.gif)
I honestly can't figure out why they decided to be such assholes to everyone they conquered. Sure, the fear-factor probably helped a good bit with their aggressive land-grabbing, but "Don't be a jackass to the people you're trying to rule" is kind of Maintaining Your Empire 101. Given what you've described, it sounds like they practiced everything Machiavelli specifically said *not* to do.
