Sanguinemetaldawn said:
Hmm.
I really have to completely disagree with this.
The simple advent of the gunpowder empires would render the tactics of the Mongols obsolete. Especially the ability of the Seljuk Turk armies to move while firing (one rank fires, the rank behind reloads, the rank behind moves forward to take firing position, etc.)
Then of course there is 19th Century Prusso-German military, which the United States military was modelled on.
Really? That's great to know. I was wondering why the field marshall was having all the men in my local draft militia march and fire in large scale formation today.
I am sure Mongolian warfare is taught in war colleges today, but there is something to be learned from every battle throughout history, and recounts of Mongol battles don't strike me as particularly noteworthy.
I'd also be interested in what this "whole corps of nigh on revolutionary thinkers" actually thought of. To my knowledge, the Mongols contributed basically nothing. They passed over whole cultures and left little in their wake except animosity and resentment.
Well, your knowledge certainly is at the crux of this disagreement. What precisely have you read on Mongol battles? I can't account for your idea of noteworthy without a larger discussion of your tastes. Mostly I'm just impressed that you don't find the phenomenal success of what was essentially a Mongol exploratory expedition into Eastern Europe perfectly astonishing. Perhaps picking a particular Mongol campaign to analyze might provide a means of both elucidating the strengths of the Mongols in combat and illustrating any number of prior points on this board?
The Mongols were actually very good at preserving the domains they conquered, the disruption comes primarilly from the various episodes of reconquest. It is not the Mongols, for instance, who really spelled the doom of the Sufis so much as the Mamelukes who replaced them.
The lack of direct influence by the Mongols on the nature of warfare in the modern period is precisely why I think we've taken so long to catch up to them. If the European powers had been able to combine field artillery with Mongol principles of mobility and battlefield control the horrors of WWI ideas of tactics might have been countermanded.
A point by point breakdown of a Mongol campaign would be extremely helpful for this, but look at the tactics, organization, and strategy of a WWII army and ask yourself which they resemble more the Mongols or the Romans?
Much of the excellence of the Mongols is only now being felt as we begin the process of recovering their legacy and discovering the nature of world systems in general, but that doesn't make it any less revolutionary or incredible.
You've got some good points, but you're placing far too high a level of importance on legacy without considering the quality of the actual situations and technologies of the time. History is as much about calamity and recovery as it is any sort of gradual progression.
