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Mongols did have a primitive form of artillery which they used on the Song. Most large cities were well fortified back at that time, none of that stopped the

• Joker_vD 6y ago
  And after Chinese conquest was done, Mongols had fancy new-fangled Chinese siege weapons to use for themselves.
• jeffreyrogers 6y ago
  Except that they did invade Europe and while they were initially successful eventually failed. In part because the Europeans (if we can call them that at the time) improved their fortifications and had cavalry as well.
  • dragontamer 6y ago
    The Mongols successfully invading Europe would have been as impressive as the Romans invading China. (Didn't happen, but really, think about the logistics). That's a lot of land to cover. I think the long-range logistics of supporting an army thousands of miles away from your civilization centers was just too much to handle for Iron Age / Dark age civilizations. Even if one leader (Genghis Khan) could successfully lead such an expedition, it was clear that his successors were unable to. As such, once Genghis Khan died, the Mongol Empire could only sustain itself for a short time before collapsing. First into the four Khanites, then total collapse a few decades later. That's just too large a land-area, without any decent form of large-scale transportation (ie: boats) that could assist travel. ---------- The Roman Empire's expansion was primarily driven by the Mediterranean Sea. Going over the land-route through the Silk Road between Europe and Asia is... hard. Very hard. Another part of the Roman Empire was that they were a bureaucracy: they spread their ways and very carefully organized their empire as it expanded. You didn't need once-in-a-thousand year leaders like Genghis Khan to do things, your standard Roman Magistrates were effectively trained to do the task. Even when Rome itself collapsed, the Byzantine empire (Eastern-half) continued to run itself for nearly a thousand years later, under largely Roman-inspired principles.
    • allemagne 6y ago
      If the Romans had conquered all of Persia, Bactria, and Xinjiang, and were sending periodic raids down into the Gansu corridor then your analogy might make sense. You're right that it's difficult to imagine the logistics of Roman legions accomplishing that kind of feat. On the other hand, the Mongols were already in Europe and had already conquered their way into Russia and Asia Minor. There's really no reason to think long-range logistics should be the limiting factor in, say, Poland, the Hungarian plain, or Vienna when it wasn't for Baghdad or Kyiv. Long-range invasions over thousands of miles aren't easy, but they have been done since the Achaemenids, done over the silk road well into Central Asia since the Han, and done several times by nomadic confederations who appear suddenly from the mongolian steppe and dominate settled peoples. The Mongols were just the latest and the best at it, and Genghis wasn't even alive during the western conquests that could have taken Europe.
  • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    Wat. The mongols failed the invasion due to succession crisis. The Mongols were flattening Europe and were pretty much considered a punishment from God.
    • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
      There's lots of disagreement about why the mongols failed. Not at all clear that it was just a succession crisis. And the Europeans were eventually able to counter mongol tactics.
      • NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        Whatever reason for their withdrawal, the Mongols literally left Europe, and Europe being any good at resisting militarily was precisely none of those reasons
        • jeffreyrogers 6y ago
          The Mongols started losing battles, so you're putting a bit too strongly.