What made the Mongols so good?

[DMH]

Feign retreat, lure pursuit, envelop and destroy.

It's like the Europeans were idiots! They fell for that over and over
(I recently read a book about the Crusades, and the Muslim forces used that tactic over and over... and the Christians kept falling for it)

Hannibal was the first recorded person to use that and in the largest battle he had aganist the Romans, he kill more than 30k in less than a day.

 

[Morgenstern]

The Mongols had some very effective technologies going for them. IIRC they made effective use of drums as a way of coordinating units once the battle was joined. And their bows were superb .

 

[Bryon_Soulweaver]

Spear of Destiny? Example: Constintine Empire, Joan of Arc, the Huns, Nazi-Germany, Mr. President himself.

 

[mmadsen]

The Mongols demonstrated amazing strategic mobility. Their entire force could move faster than the news that they were in the area. Remember, this is long before telegraph or radio -- and their foes had no palantiri.

Imagine getting attacked by thousands of horse-archers with zero warning.

(That also explains why some of their victims didn't seem to learn from past battles: the news hadn't reached them by the time the Mongols did.)

 

[Mad Mac]

U R TEH IDOIT!!!!1111 nINJAES R000L CUZ THEY HAVE L33T KATANAS!!!!!!11 TEYH PWNZ MONGELS AND SAMURAIS AND KNITES!!!!!1

Heh. Although if I recall right, the Japanese samurai didn't do all that badly. Well, at least by a "Mongols whipped everyone, so it's just a matter of how bad you got stomped on" standard. (And the Knights, as previously mentioned, were obviously brutal in the event they cornered anyone)

The Samurai were horse archers too, after all. The difference being that they tended to fight as individual combatants, and were reportedly baffled by the mass-firing and other group tatics of the mongols. In any event, they reputedly held the mongols back a few days before the freak typhoon came and smashed the mongol fleet, though they were pretty certain that their defeat was inevitible before then.

They put up a better fight the second time, when the samurai sailed out in small boats and ambushed the mongols before they could land. Come to think of it, getting attacked unexpectedly, while probably unarmored and poorly armed, in cramped quarters, by suicidal nutjobs flailing around with katanas would probably meet anyones standard of a really, really bad way to start your day.

Again though, they got saved by a sudden tsunami, at which point the Mongols decided they were soooooo not worth the effort of conquering. I'd hate to be the guy who had to report back to the head Kahn on that one, though. "Uh, yeah...Remember that one of a kind, never again in your lifetime, freak tsunami out of nowhere incident? It had a twin sister..."

On the Mongols themselves, I'll just agree with the above, while noting that they were unique in that they conquered virtually everything, but with no real ability to mantain their empire...they created nothing, and their military might was tied directly to a native culture that couldn't possibly sustain the number of troops needed to control the empire forever. Not to mention the need for a strong central leader.

 

[danbuter]

They had amazing supply. They knew how to keep the men fed and moving. Most armies at the time had to forage and hope they found food.

 

[Enkhidu]

How much of this also applied to the huns?

 

[snarfoogle]

The real question is: How many boards could the Mongol hordes hoard, if the Mongol hordes got bored? I'm thinking a LOT.

 

[shurai]

Samurai vs. Mongols

Actually the Japanese didn't do that bad against the Mongols, according to The Samurai, A Military History by S. R. Turnbull:

It is clear from the invasion preparations that Kublai greatly underestimated the fighting capacities of the Japanese, for his army was to consist of no more than 25,000 Mongols, in addition to the Koreans impressed into transport and fighting roles [Page 88].

When they made landfall in 1274, they had an easy time of it . . . at first. They rolled over Tsushima and Iki Islands with little trouble (by sheer weight of numbers; these are small islands with small fighting forces). They hit the mainland pretty hard, too, attacking the town of Hakata:

In spite of all their bravery the Japanese were forced to retreat to the safety of some ancient fortifications built six centuries before. Behind this defence-line of moats and embankments the samurai waited [Page 91].

And no wonder. They had several important social advantages: The Japanese hadn't fought seriously since the Gempei war almost a century past, and had never ever fought a foreign foe before. Conversely, the Mongols who invaded Japan had been fighting (as opposed to merely training) for their entire lives. In addition, technology was on the Mongols' side in several ways: They had artillery (some form of catapult or ballista), superior archery (at the time!), and better tactics.

So why did the Japanese win? Turnbull continues:

It would appear that the resistance put up by the Japanese had greatly surprised the Mongol leaders, who knew that reinforcements might reach the Japanese at any moment. They were also suffering from a shortage of arrows, for they had prepared only for a 'blitzkrieg' . . . They also feared a possible night attack . . . So the Mongols ordered a tactical withdrawal . . . [Page 91]

The Mongols & Koreans regrouped at sea, managing to get on their boats just in time for a huge storm to wreak havoc on the invading fleet. After that, the invaders basically went home. According to Turnbull:

Korean records tell us that 13,000 men lost their lives in this expedition, many by drowning [Page 91].

I contend that the Japanese would've won anyway: The Mongols couldn't use archery any longer (they were running out of arrows) and none of the reinforcements from elsewhere in Japan (particularly the sharpshooting Kantou Samurai) had arrived yet. The Mongols had been stalemated by the Kyuushuu forces alone.

The Japanese knew that the Mongols would probably be back, so they kept close watch on their activities and worked hard at planning their defence and fortifying their country. So, the second invasion, in 1281, did little better. From wikipedia:

In the spring of 1281, the Mongols' Chinese fleet was delayed by difficulties in provisioning and manning the large number of ships they had. Their Korean fleet set sail, suffered heavy losses at Tsushima, and turned back. In the summer, the combined Korean/Chinese fleet took Iki-shima, and moved on to Kyushu, landing at a number of separate positions. In a number of individual skirmishes, known collectively as the Battle of Kouan (弘安の役), or the Second Battle of Hakata Bay, the Mongol forces were driven back to their ships. The now-famous Kamikaze, a massive typhoon, assaulted the shores of Kyushu for two days straight, and destroyed much of the Mongol fleet.

It's worth noting that the Chinese army was over 100,000 strong, and it never did assault the mainland. However, the Japanese resistance was easily comparable in size (in fact it was nearly 400,000 strong nation-wide, though not all of them had arrived yet), and they were all professional warriors (I don't think peasants had been conscripted yet at that point). Likewise, they had been preparing and fortifying for a decade, they were fighting on their home turf, and they were willing to hurl themselves with their famous abandon into the fight. Thanks to recent religious changes they were unified and nationalistic. Though, they did have significant technological disadvantages, I think it would've gone just about the same way even if the Chinese had made landfall.

Yet for the Mongols themselves, they'd been trying to make a beachhead for over a week. Their ships were rotting, many of them were diseased, and the Japanese had been harrying the fleet by conducting repeated guerilla raids. They were destroyed by the Kamikaze because the Japanese had repeatedly beaten them, if you ask me.

-S

 

[Mad Mac]

It's worth mentioning, though, that the first Mongol invasion had huge political ramifications for the Japanese. The Samurai were professional fighters, and after calling up every availible warrior to fight the invaders, the current government was forced to admit their weakness, not being able to pay the vast army they had summoned.