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Climatic and environmental aspects of Mongol withdrawal from Hungary (2016)
- marosgrego 4y agoThe title is wrong, the withdrawal didn't happen in 1215.
- dang 4y agoWe've taken the year out of the title now. Thanks!
- sarchertech 4y agoThe title is a bit clickbaity and, as usual, makes a much stronger claim than the research suggests. Sure maybe it was the climate, or maybe it was just regression to the mean. There were roughly 100x as many Europeans as Mongolians in the 13th century. It seems unlikely they could have ever conquered all of Europe with supply lines stretching back to Asia. All while maintaining a grip on 100 million subjugated non-Mongolians who probably weren’t keen to send and supply troops across the world. Conquering they much territory is an extremely unusual event, it seems reasonable that the Mongols would just eventually run out of steam.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y agoThey needed supply chains? I thought mongols were wild horse people who rode around in hordes living off the plains and prairies.
- LarryMullins 4y agoMaybe the supply lines were for all the loot they were sending home.
- astrange 4y agoHunter-gathering only works as long as you know which local plants are good and which are poison, I'd assume.
- xyzzyz 4y agoYou can ask locals about that.
- the-printer 4y agoThe locals…of the territory you just conquered?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thereare5lights 4y agoYes. What are the locals going to do? Refuse? Ok, then they kill you. Lie? They force you to eat some.
- the-printer 4y agoA-ha.
- xyzzyz 4y agoDo you have actual argument here, or is contentless sneering the extent of your capabilities?
- the-printer 4y agoNo (thereare5lights made a good point, deflating my sneer) and no (this is self-evident).
- jrumbut 4y ago
- bobbylarrybobby 4y agoThe problem with that strategy is you can never stay too long in one place or you'll exhaust the food supply (for both your soldiers and your horses). If you're ever rebuffed and you don't have supply lines delivering you food, you just starve.
- qwytw 4y agoAlso you have to stick to grasslands which is supposedly one of the other reasons why the Mongols didn't venture to deep into Europe.
- twelve40 4y agoWikipedia on Ogedei: > he developed ortogh trading systems, instituted methods of tax collection, and established regional bureaucracies which controlled legal and economic affairs just collecting the taxes on such a huge territory sounds like a pretty big undertaking, let alone all these other things mentioned
- dmfay 4y agoSupply chains in the sense of a centralized (or multi-centralized) logistics no, supply chains in the sense of mobile pastoral groups supporting armies' further extension yes. These did not stretch all the way back to central Asia. Groups like the White and Blue hordes, which later combined into the Golden Horde, were basically autonomous within the territory allotted them by the Qaghan -- they mostly owed the central authority a share of spoils, support for the postal system (örtöö or yam), and their presence when convened on matters of state. Armies would bring limited supplies with them as they campaigned, replacement horses and some small livestock, while the main group continued to focus on caring for the bulk of their herds. While not actively expanding their borders, steppe nomads usually moved between relatively well-established seasonal camps rather than continuously roaming.
- steele 4y ago[flagged]
- likecarter 4y agoIs all of Europe now Western Europe? News to me.
- steele 4y ago[flagged]
- dang 4y agoMaybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN. If you know more than other people, that's great, and one option is to share some of what you know (in a neutral, respectful way) so the rest of us can learn. Another option is simply not to post. But please don't do putdowns or flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mannykannot 4y agoIs it out of the question that they could have done in Europe what they did in China? On the other hand, it seems likely that the resulting empire would fracture into a collection of Khanates, as that is what happened to the actual empire.
- qwytw 4y ago> There were roughly 100x as many Europeans as Mongolians in the 13th century Well by the time their armies arrived in Europe 'true' Mongols were a minority. Just like the Huns and other stepped empires they included many Turkish, Cuman, Finno-Ugric and other nomadic tribes. > Conquering they much territory is an extremely unusual event Steppe empires weren't that rare though we just don't have that much information on those preceding the Mongols. Obviously they were much more successful than their predecessors but not necessarily that exceptional.
- RandomWorker 4y agoCorrelation doesn’t imply causation. I’m not sure how more water seen in tree bark thickness quickly correlates to the Mongols not conquering Europe.. That horses don’t do well in watery land seems like a poor theory to me. Although that one movie that I saw where horses got stuck in the UK battle seems to collaborate that theory... Like all science it’s a theory offered and it’s to other historians to prove it wrong. I find it all fascinating.
- raydiatian 4y agoPlausibility != proof
- subroutine 4y agoUnseasonably warm weather stopped the Mongolian horde from conquering Europe. Hmm
- hangonhn 4y agoRight? The conclusion is quite suspect because the Mongols eventually did conquer southern China where it is perpetually warm and humid. What they ended up doing was solidifying their control of northern China and then adopting infantry based tactics and riverine warfare in addition to adopting trebuchets from the Middle East/Europeans. The Mongols were quite adaptable. I doubt warmer weather would be enough to stop them on its own.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- darkwater 4y agoWarm? The TFA says > This wooden chronicle revealed that a cold and wet period set in for years, leading "to reduced pastureland and decreased mobility, as well as hampering the military effectiveness of the Mongol cavalry", according to a press release.
- subroutine 4y agoThe way I read it was the early spring thaw was to blame. > The extra moisture and early spring thaw turned the Hungarian plains into marshes and swampland. As in, they expected frozen ground not marshland that time of year. But reading the abstract of the original source, it seems like it was a combo. > Documentary sources and tree-ring chronologies reveal warm and dry summers from 1238–1241, followed by cold and wet conditions in early-1242. Marshy terrain across the Hungarian plain most likely reduced pastureland and decreased mobility, as well as the military effectiveness of the Mongol cavalry
- banku_brougham 4y ago"Horde" - a term long used to deflect the sophisticated tactical, strategic, technological, and governmental methods of the Mongols. Their accomplishments are not lost on the war colleges of the west (at the the US for sure, especially the US Marines), but no one else seems to know this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- LarsDu88 4y agoThe English word horde is etymologically directly derived from the Mongolian/kipchak term Orda which is a divisional unit of the Mongol army. The negative connotations of a horde as being disorderly and cruel is a direct reflection of western European perceptions of "Tartar Barbarism"
- tekkk 4y agoWell wouldn't you agree though Mongols were quite cruel conquerors?
- Dalewyn 4y agoThe Silk Road was at its safest during Mongol rule.
- hef19898 4y agoThe only difference between them and anyone else was the sweeping success. That, and that the Mongols directly threatened Europe from the outside, all other European wars were internal affaires. Except the European conquests outside of Europe of course.
- notahacker 4y agoThe sweeping success was the cruelty though; whilst warfare was common in Europe despite relatively stable boundaries and low-level massacres of individual garrisons that refused to surrender were not uncommon (but also generally regarded as cruel), the murder of millions of people and deaths of tens of millions of people as a direct result of the targeting of their food supplies within a generation was unprecedented. It's not like we generally have positive views of comparable scale "sweeping successes" exported from Europe like the Conquistadors or transatlantic slave trade
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago[flagged]
- dang 4y agoPlease don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN. You may not owe Putin better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- l- 4y agoWhen Mongols Set Out to Conquer the World, There Was One Limiting Factor: Grass (154 points by benbreen 9 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30886110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30886110
- ETH_start 4y agoNone of the fortified towns in Hungary fell to the Mongols. This was a lesson not lost on King Bela, and he embarked on a massive fort construction project which made enough progress in time for the second Mongol invasion of Hungary, which the Hungarian kingdom much more thoroughly repulsed.
- twelve40 4y agothey still managed to kill a million people in hungary alone, crazy! that's like ww2-level loss of life...
- kneebonian 4y agoActually the Mongol conquests were estimated to have reduced the human population by 10% being the single largest man made population decrease in history.
- defrost 4y agoOne hundred and thirty years later the decade of the Black Death saw plague kill twice as many in absolute numbers as the Mongols. All up it was a fair sized dent in human numbers across that entire region from west to east.
- twelve40 4y agothe Black Death is understandable (although hard to imagine such scale) but it's a pandemic, it happens. But how do you kill 1,000,000 people in a couple of years visiting Hungary when you don't even have any real guns? How do you round up that many people from all over the countryside with primitive weapons and they don't try to escape or anything? Such a crazy thing to do...
- dan-robertson 4y agoIs the number from direct killings or just like, you turn up with a big army and raid food stores or interrupt agriculture in some way and then people starve because most are just scraping by as-is?
- realworldperson 4y ago[dead]
- fractallyte 4y agoI'm going to butt in here with an observation that might be 'uncool', but it needs to be voiced. Mongols didn't just 'withdraw' and leave Europe alone. The article mentions they brought Chinese gunpowder - so they left behind a valuable technological legacy. They killed one million Hungarians, but that was just one nation. The overall conquest(s) effected a vast death toll across Europe and near Asia. What else did they leave behind? Not mentioned: a genetic legacy. This was a living legacy as impactful as anything else, arguable even more so... And what's involved in that? Conquering armies tend to kill men and boys, and rape women and girls. (The most comprehensive recent record of similar events is from post-war Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_during_the_occupation_of_...) A significant proportion of those rapes resulted in pregnancies. In medieval Europe, we can assume that abortion was mostly unavailable. So actually, in one sense Mongols remained in Europe, spreading their genes through the most vile and traumatic acts inflicted on the hidden victims of conflict: women. Women are half of humanity. It's wrong to neglect that aspect of invasion.
- tarasglek 4y agoMost recent example is Russians https://theins.ru/confession/257790 https://theins.ru/confession/257790 https://theins.ru/en/confession/258330 https://theins.ru/en/confession/258330
- fractallyte 4y agoThe war in Ukraine is still in flux. Conversely, there are comprehensive (but still insufficient) records of the aftermath of atrocities committed in Germany against women: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Crimes+Unspoken:+The+Rape+of+German+Women+at+the+End+of+the+Second+World+War-p-9781509511204 https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Crimes+Unspoken:+The+Rape+of+Ger...
- Bayart 4y ago> The article mentions they brought Chinese gunpowder - so they left behind a valuable technological legacy. Looking at the history of artillery in Europe, and the fact that it first developed in the West, it's far more likely that gunpowder technology was introduced from the Islamic world in the context of the Crusades and the Latin Kingdoms.
- ddmma 4y agoIf only they had flying horses to go over Alps
- mickdeek86 4y agoHannibal's elephants managed. Well, some of them did
- mprime1 4y agoCurrently reading the Mongoliad book series (Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and star cast of other contemporary sci-fi writers). Recommended if this kind of history is interesting to you.