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It's hard to compare Mongols to Europeans. The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid

It's hard to compare Mongols to Europeans. The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates. Also, light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe, specially when you don't have huge, flat battlefields that allow light cavalry to circle any target. In other words, Mongol warfare was perfect for the environment they were created for: vast empty dry lands with few geographical features and settlements which are far from each other.

wwwong 11y ago
Re: "light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe" Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands. Also, despite Europe's fortifications, a scouting party led by Subutai of 20,000 horse archers, widely wiped out a much more significant force of Central Europe soldiers, greatly outnumbering the Mongols. Fortified cities may cause trouble, but by this time, Mongol dominance had incorporated Chinese siege technology that fortified central european cities had not seen.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  Fortified european cities caused a lot of troubled. Most Mongol siege victories in Europe where Pyrrhic, with massive losses that couldn't be replaced that far from their homeland. They ended up controlling most of the Hungarian countryside, but almost none of the key fortified cities, the same in Croatia and other areas, rendering their gains useless, since forces could march out at any time from the multiple forces and strike them.
  - vkazanov 11y ago
    I don't know much about Mongols in Central Europe, so probably true: they were far away from the steppes, probably lacked siege machines, etc. Also, in the lands of Rus' stone fortifications were a very rare thing - there's almost no suitable stone for contstruction, so most castles and fortresses were wooden, so they did burn. None of the stone fortresses in the north, where there are suitable materials, were plundered, AFAIK, so you must be right.
  - caoilte 11y ago
    or Europe got lucky and Ogodei died just as Subutai was about to roll over the entire continent (we may never know for sure). The Hardcore History podcast did a nice series on it. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-43-wrath-of-the-khans-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-43-wrath-o...
- jernfrost 11y ago
  I read a long discussion about this on Quora. What I could gather from that was there were far more castles in Europe than China. Also Europe has too little plains to be able to support a mongol army very long. They each had something like 5 horses. There isn't enough grass for a large mongol army like that. One the debaters claimed e.g. that European castles were very well supplied for long sieges and would run out of food much later than an occupying mongol force which would be vulnerable to counter attacks. European heavy cavalry was not useless against mongols. It is just that they were seldom effective when mongols could just run away from the battle field. Easy to do when they were much lighter armoured. But if Mongols maintained a siege they had to stay in position which would have made them vulnerable to European nights which were probably superior to mongol soldiers if they could not perform hit and run tactics. Apparently the mongols beat the Hungarians initially but when they came back and the Hungarians had built lots of castles, they were soundly beaten. The sieges dragged on and they would get harassed by Hungarian forces which could always retreat back to castles while mongols starved. My understanding is that the Mongols managed to conquer the more hilly southern China by using conscripted Chinese soldiers. So they were not really using standard Mongolian tactics there. Duplicating this in Europe would have been difficult because unlike China Europe did not have the same kind of central government which would have allow the conquest of a few cities to gain huge tracts of land and extra manpower. They would have had to conquer huge numbers of castles which would have dragged out in time. In fact Machiavelli talks about this in the Prince. The Ottomans, Roman Empire, China etc were far more centrally controlled which made them one strong unit but once you conquered the central city of government you would control the whole country. The Feudalistic European countries however might not as easily marshal huge combined forces but they were extremely difficult to conquer because you had to conquer every little vassal state one by one. Considering that every one had a castle this was no easy task. One should not completely discount the effectiveness of European military. During the crusades, the muslim forces would usually use Mongol like tactics to wear them out. But whenever the crusaders managed to corner a muslim army they crushed it with their heavily armoured knights.
  - geggam 11y ago
    5 horses is quite a bit of food to feed the army... the more the army eats the more grass you have left for the horses... so when the castle is running out of food you have 1 good well fed horse and 1 good well fed soldier who has to win or he doesnt have enough horses to go home i think that wins
- stult 11y ago
  "Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands." That's a bit of an oversimplification. China was much closer to the Mongols' logistical base. By the 1240s, as the Horde pushed into Central Europe, they were experiencing rebellions in Asia that threatened their supply lines. So extended sieges were not feasible. It's telling that the limit of their incursions pretty closely adheres to the boundary of stone fortification diffusion in Central Europe at that time. Polish and Russian nobles still favored wood fortifications, though Western Europeans had brought back defensive masonry techniques from the Crusades and rapidly developed stone castle infrastructure in their home regions. Stone fortifications increased the time required for a siege and increased the cost in men and material, even with the Mongols' relatively effective siege tactics. The Mongols could not afford to conduct such sieges so far from their logistical base on the steppes, especially not while maintaining control of their often fractious conquests in Central Asia and Russia. So it's a confluence of factors that limited the Mongol advance, including the relatively challenging terrain of Central European mountains and forests and the increasing frequency of heavily fortified stone-walled fortifications as they pushed farther west. That said, outside the particular example of the 13th century Mongols, the effectiveness of steppe light cavalry against fortified European cities is at best questionable. The Avars and Hungarians were defeated by western nations once they attempted to push into fortified territory, despite the lack of stone fortifications in 9th and 10th century Europe. And, as you say, it was the incorporation of Chinese siege tactics that permitted the Mongols to succeed against fortified cities, not their prowess as light cavalry archers.
  - vkazanov 11y ago
    Just a note: there was no such state as "Russia" back then. The whole region was a number a big and small duchies left after the fall of the older feudal state, Kievan Rus'. Later, by the end of the 15-th century, most of them were reunited under the rule of either the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Grand Duchy of Vladimir and Moscow (which would, two centuries later, become what we know today as Russian Empire, or Russia). Anyway, Mongols had no problems crashing both quite a few times between 13-16 centuries. :-) Every state there was in the region back then had to paid the Horde.
vkazanov 11y ago
"Huge, flat battlefieds" were a norm everywhere. Medieval battles were ONLY possible on flat surfaces, as the main force of the time - heavy cavalry - requires that. Besides, Mongols completely plundered Rus' and the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, and most of those lands were and are forests/lakes/swamps. For example, they used rivers in winters to travel through the countryside. Also, after conquering China they also had military engineers, and could build assault machines.
- ucaetano 11y ago
  Agincourt wasn't fought in a huge, flat battlefield. Neither was Tours, Hastings, Crecy, Poitiers, Patay, etc. European wars were fought in a very diverse range of battlefields, and most commanders, specially the outnumbered ones, would try as much as possible to use the battlefield in their advantage.
  - mcv 11y ago
    And that was at least as much the key to the English victories as the longbow was: good defensive terrain that was unsuitable for the French cavalry charge. When the French did have room to charge, England lost. The longbow was only a single factor in a much bigger system.
    - ucaetano 11y ago
      Indeed, in Agincourt, the mud was probably a much more decisive factor than the longbow.
- jernfrost 11y ago
  From what I've read European wars didn't feature much large scale battles of the type done of plains in central asia. Siege warfare, skirmishes, harassment etc dominated. Anyway the mongols used huge number of horses which would need a lot of grass. It is my understanding that that was simply not available to them in most of Europe.
  - 11y ago
justin66 11y ago
The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates What kind of glue bound the layers of wood together on a longbow?
- kqr 11y ago
  Don't know if you're sarcastic, but a longbow doesn't have layers of wood to glue together. That's the difference between a simple bow and a composite bow.
  - justin66 11y ago
    No sarcasm, I wasn't aware that they avoided lamination entirely.
  - Someone 11y ago
    Not quite. As the article explains, the longbow is composite, but made from a single piece of wood: "Figure 1 illustrates a yew trunk cross section and how a longbow stave was carved out of the tree to incorporate both its sapwood and heartwood components. The former was used on the bow’s back, which faced away from the archer, taking advantage of the fact that flexible sapwood performs well under tension. The latter was used on the bow’s belly, which faced the archer, taking advantage of the fact that hard heartwood performs well under compression. Together the two types of wood created a natural composite bow that, when made from a long and thick stave, was remarkably powerful." So, nature glued the parts together.
- Moto7451 11y ago
  The English longbow was constructed from a single piece of wood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbow#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbow#Design_and_constructio...
jorgecurio 11y ago
> In other words, Mongol warfare was perfect for the environment they were created for: vast empty dry lands with few geographical features and settlements which are far from each other. hardly an accurate terrain description of Mongol Empire at it's peak.
Symmetry 11y ago
Their light cavalry was also fairly effective in forested places like Hungary or Manchuria. Genghis was far from the best Mongol general but he personally achieved some impressive victories by attacking from the rear of his opponent after going over mountains or by luring his opponents up onto mountains after him. But really both light and heavy cavalry were important parts of the regular Mongol forces as well as the hordes of arrow-fodder they would levy from captured cities. And while the Mongols didn't start out with much in the way of a siege train they had the world's best siege engineers by the time they finally finished off the Jin dynasty. The hot, wet environment of India was a big barrier to their expansion as was their navel weakness. But Europe benefited mostly by being so far away and from the fact that the Mongols hadn't finished off the Song by the time the empire started to fragment. Sources: A number of things over the years but I recently finished Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy.
- sirtrollalot 11y ago
  History has also shown that France gave up their bow technology to the Germans, hampering their bow tech progression (and ultimately harming fellow neighbors to boot).
mcv 11y ago
Castles and cities weren't the problem: the Mongols were also good at siege warfare. Their main obstacle blocking westward expansion was the simple fact that steppe nomads are primarily good at the steppe, and not so good in the forests and mountains of central Europe.

wwwong 11y ago

Re: "light cavalry armies are useless against castles and fortified cities as the ones found in most of Europe" Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands. Also, despite Europe's fortifications, a scouting party led by Subutai of 20,000 horse archers, widely wiped out a much more significant force of Central Europe soldiers, greatly outnumbering the Mongols. Fortified cities may cause trouble, but by this time, Mongol dominance had incorporated Chinese siege technology that fortified central european cities had not seen.

ucaetano 11y ago
Fortified european cities caused a lot of troubled. Most Mongol siege victories in Europe where Pyrrhic, with massive losses that couldn't be replaced that far from their homeland. They ended up controlling most of the Hungarian countryside, but almost none of the key fortified cities, the same in Croatia and other areas, rendering their gains useless, since forces could march out at any time from the multiple forces and strike them.
- vkazanov 11y ago
  I don't know much about Mongols in Central Europe, so probably true: they were far away from the steppes, probably lacked siege machines, etc. Also, in the lands of Rus' stone fortifications were a very rare thing - there's almost no suitable stone for contstruction, so most castles and fortresses were wooden, so they did burn. None of the stone fortresses in the north, where there are suitable materials, were plundered, AFAIK, so you must be right.
- caoilte 11y ago
  or Europe got lucky and Ogodei died just as Subutai was about to roll over the entire continent (we may never know for sure). The Hardcore History podcast did a nice series on it. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-43-wrath-of-the-khans-i/ http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-43-wrath-o...
jernfrost 11y ago
I read a long discussion about this on Quora. What I could gather from that was there were far more castles in Europe than China. Also Europe has too little plains to be able to support a mongol army very long. They each had something like 5 horses. There isn't enough grass for a large mongol army like that. One the debaters claimed e.g. that European castles were very well supplied for long sieges and would run out of food much later than an occupying mongol force which would be vulnerable to counter attacks. European heavy cavalry was not useless against mongols. It is just that they were seldom effective when mongols could just run away from the battle field. Easy to do when they were much lighter armoured. But if Mongols maintained a siege they had to stay in position which would have made them vulnerable to European nights which were probably superior to mongol soldiers if they could not perform hit and run tactics. Apparently the mongols beat the Hungarians initially but when they came back and the Hungarians had built lots of castles, they were soundly beaten. The sieges dragged on and they would get harassed by Hungarian forces which could always retreat back to castles while mongols starved. My understanding is that the Mongols managed to conquer the more hilly southern China by using conscripted Chinese soldiers. So they were not really using standard Mongolian tactics there. Duplicating this in Europe would have been difficult because unlike China Europe did not have the same kind of central government which would have allow the conquest of a few cities to gain huge tracts of land and extra manpower. They would have had to conquer huge numbers of castles which would have dragged out in time. In fact Machiavelli talks about this in the Prince. The Ottomans, Roman Empire, China etc were far more centrally controlled which made them one strong unit but once you conquered the central city of government you would control the whole country. The Feudalistic European countries however might not as easily marshal huge combined forces but they were extremely difficult to conquer because you had to conquer every little vassal state one by one. Considering that every one had a castle this was no easy task. One should not completely discount the effectiveness of European military. During the crusades, the muslim forces would usually use Mongol like tactics to wear them out. But whenever the crusaders managed to corner a muslim army they crushed it with their heavily armoured knights.
- geggam 11y ago
  5 horses is quite a bit of food to feed the army... the more the army eats the more grass you have left for the horses... so when the castle is running out of food you have 1 good well fed horse and 1 good well fed soldier who has to win or he doesnt have enough horses to go home i think that wins
stult 11y ago
"Not true, as the Chinese cities at the time were much more fortified than Europe. The Mongols were able to plunder the surrounding lands." That's a bit of an oversimplification. China was much closer to the Mongols' logistical base. By the 1240s, as the Horde pushed into Central Europe, they were experiencing rebellions in Asia that threatened their supply lines. So extended sieges were not feasible. It's telling that the limit of their incursions pretty closely adheres to the boundary of stone fortification diffusion in Central Europe at that time. Polish and Russian nobles still favored wood fortifications, though Western Europeans had brought back defensive masonry techniques from the Crusades and rapidly developed stone castle infrastructure in their home regions. Stone fortifications increased the time required for a siege and increased the cost in men and material, even with the Mongols' relatively effective siege tactics. The Mongols could not afford to conduct such sieges so far from their logistical base on the steppes, especially not while maintaining control of their often fractious conquests in Central Asia and Russia. So it's a confluence of factors that limited the Mongol advance, including the relatively challenging terrain of Central European mountains and forests and the increasing frequency of heavily fortified stone-walled fortifications as they pushed farther west. That said, outside the particular example of the 13th century Mongols, the effectiveness of steppe light cavalry against fortified European cities is at best questionable. The Avars and Hungarians were defeated by western nations once they attempted to push into fortified territory, despite the lack of stone fortifications in 9th and 10th century Europe. And, as you say, it was the incorporation of Chinese siege tactics that permitted the Mongols to succeed against fortified cities, not their prowess as light cavalry archers.
- vkazanov 11y ago
  Just a note: there was no such state as "Russia" back then. The whole region was a number a big and small duchies left after the fall of the older feudal state, Kievan Rus'. Later, by the end of the 15-th century, most of them were reunited under the rule of either the Grand Duchy of Lithuania or the Grand Duchy of Vladimir and Moscow (which would, two centuries later, become what we know today as Russian Empire, or Russia). Anyway, Mongols had no problems crashing both quite a few times between 13-16 centuries. :-) Every state there was in the region back then had to paid the Horde.

vkazanov 11y ago

"Huge, flat battlefieds" were a norm everywhere. Medieval battles were ONLY possible on flat surfaces, as the main force of the time - heavy cavalry - requires that. Besides, Mongols completely plundered Rus' and the Grand Dutchy of Lithuania, and most of those lands were and are forests/lakes/swamps. For example, they used rivers in winters to travel through the countryside. Also, after conquering China they also had military engineers, and could build assault machines.

ucaetano 11y ago
Agincourt wasn't fought in a huge, flat battlefield. Neither was Tours, Hastings, Crecy, Poitiers, Patay, etc. European wars were fought in a very diverse range of battlefields, and most commanders, specially the outnumbered ones, would try as much as possible to use the battlefield in their advantage.
- mcv 11y ago
  And that was at least as much the key to the English victories as the longbow was: good defensive terrain that was unsuitable for the French cavalry charge. When the French did have room to charge, England lost. The longbow was only a single factor in a much bigger system.
  - ucaetano 11y ago
    Indeed, in Agincourt, the mud was probably a much more decisive factor than the longbow.
jernfrost 11y ago
From what I've read European wars didn't feature much large scale battles of the type done of plains in central asia. Siege warfare, skirmishes, harassment etc dominated. Anyway the mongols used huge number of horses which would need a lot of grass. It is my understanding that that was simply not available to them in most of Europe.
- 11y ago

justin66 11y ago

The composite bows rely on animal-based adhesives, which are great in cold and dry climates, but fall apart in humid and warmer climates What kind of glue bound the layers of wood together on a longbow?

kqr 11y ago
Don't know if you're sarcastic, but a longbow doesn't have layers of wood to glue together. That's the difference between a simple bow and a composite bow.
- justin66 11y ago
  No sarcasm, I wasn't aware that they avoided lamination entirely.
- Someone 11y ago
  Not quite. As the article explains, the longbow is composite, but made from a single piece of wood: "Figure 1 illustrates a yew trunk cross section and how a longbow stave was carved out of the tree to incorporate both its sapwood and heartwood components. The former was used on the bow’s back, which faced away from the archer, taking advantage of the fact that flexible sapwood performs well under tension. The latter was used on the bow’s belly, which faced the archer, taking advantage of the fact that hard heartwood performs well under compression. Together the two types of wood created a natural composite bow that, when made from a long and thick stave, was remarkably powerful." So, nature glued the parts together.
Moto7451 11y ago
The English longbow was constructed from a single piece of wood. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbow#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longbow#Design_and_constructio...

jorgecurio 11y ago

> In other words, Mongol warfare was perfect for the environment they were created for: vast empty dry lands with few geographical features and settlements which are far from each other. hardly an accurate terrain description of Mongol Empire at it's peak.

Symmetry 11y ago

Their light cavalry was also fairly effective in forested places like Hungary or Manchuria. Genghis was far from the best Mongol general but he personally achieved some impressive victories by attacking from the rear of his opponent after going over mountains or by luring his opponents up onto mountains after him. But really both light and heavy cavalry were important parts of the regular Mongol forces as well as the hordes of arrow-fodder they would levy from captured cities. And while the Mongols didn't start out with much in the way of a siege train they had the world's best siege engineers by the time they finally finished off the Jin dynasty. The hot, wet environment of India was a big barrier to their expansion as was their navel weakness. But Europe benefited mostly by being so far away and from the fact that the Mongols hadn't finished off the Song by the time the empire started to fragment. Sources: A number of things over the years but I recently finished Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy.

sirtrollalot 11y ago
History has also shown that France gave up their bow technology to the Germans, hampering their bow tech progression (and ultimately harming fellow neighbors to boot).

mcv 11y ago

Castles and cities weren't the problem: the Mongols were also good at siege warfare. Their main obstacle blocking westward expansion was the simple fact that steppe nomads are primarily good at the steppe, and not so good in the forests and mountains of central Europe.