What made the Mongols so good?

[Heretic Apostate]

I believe that was the name. My Clan Wolf sourcebook managed to disappear sometime about 5-7 years ago, though.
Brad

Huh. My Wolf Clan sourcebook disappeared when ThomasBJJ stopped answering his email... Oh well. (Or rather, he disappeared with about 70% of my collection--a collection that ran into about 1100 items.)

Have you tried going to the Classic BattleTech webpage? I'm pretty sure that the Wolf and Jade Falcon Clan books are available for free download, along with another half dozen items.

 

[Emperor Valerian]

The Mongols can be summed up best by this -

They knew how to fight to maximize what they had available.

Simple as that. That meant they organized themselves far better than their rivals, allowing them tactical and strategic flexibility their rivals couldn't match. They developed tactics that made the best use of their composite bows and fast ponies, avoiding battles where they were at a disadvantage, and maximizing their advantages (through good generalship, ruses, and co-opting of superior technology) when they did fight.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

The Europeans were really weak at the time, the Arabs had been hamstrung by the crusades and China was in decline. It was the perfect opportunity for warriors such as the Mongols to rise.

Most of their opponents were at pretty high strength. I couldn't say about China given the vast variance in the empire's level of military might, but the Turks were insanely powerful and well organized, the Europeans were in a period of active military expansion, and the Arabs were military innovators with developing professional armies.

The Crusades were primarilly a political problem for the Arab powers I doubt very much they had any sort of 'hamstringing' effect, if anything they allowed the Arab powers to keep more powerful militaries for longer periods of time.

The Mongols were a number of things, but aside from certain favorable ecological factors I really don't think I would call them conquerors by opportunity.

 

[med stud]

The Muscovite Empire (based on Moscow) was founded by a Viking tribe called the Rus, I believe. Perhaps that's the Vikings SHARK is talking about? And by this time, they were Greek (or maybe Russian?) Orthodox, no longer pagan.
But they were still descendants of the Vikings.

Well yes but so was the rulers of England in that case (the Normands were a bunch of Vikings that got Normandy in exchange for not sacking Paris all the time (if my sources are correct of course)). Unless they were Vikings at the time I'm not sure it counts. Otherwise I would be a Viking (as a descendant) which would be cool but not really correct . Anyway the Rus/founding of Russia theory is pretty solid but it has some opponents.

Oh, and the Vikings went there because they were trading with and mercenaries of Byzantium. Apparently, on their way there, they decided to conquer themselves a little kingdom.

Edit: They're different than the other Russians, the ones based around Kiev. I believe the Muscovites got wiped out, while the Ukrainians became vassals for centuries.

Yeah that was the route of the Swedish Vikings. The Norwegian and Danish Vikings mostly plundered in Western Europe while the Swedes went East, plundering and trading.

The Vikings are actually pretty interesting here considering that they were in many ways similiar to the Huns and Mongols; they had lots of good warriors (the Viking infighting was much greater than the fighting against Europeans; Europe was the "Dungeon" of the Vikings so to say, where they got gold and stuff), very effective weapons (the Mongols had the mounted archers, the Vikings had very good ships) and a lack of a strong culture. Both the Vikings and the Mongols were assimilated very fast into the cultures they conquered. About three generations after getting Normandy the Normands were talking French and had French names. The same thing really went for the Russians; when the ass kicking was over the Vikings didn't really have much to offer and instead took the culture of the natives.

Note: Everything above might of course be wrong, I have read most of it only in one source per piece of information. I don't think it's wrong, though, or I wouldn't have written it

 

[med stud]

Most of their opponents were at pretty high strength. I couldn't say about China given the vast variance in the empire's level of military might, but the Turks were insanely powerful and well organized, the Europeans were in a period of active military expansion, and the Arabs were military innovators with developing professional armies.

The Crusades were primarilly a political problem for the Arab powers I doubt very much they had any sort of 'hamstringing' effect, if anything they allowed the Arab powers to keep more powerful militaries for longer periods of time.

The Mongols were a number of things, but aside from certain favorable ecological factors I really don't think I would call them conquerors by opportunity.

Europe was disorganized at the time and the Crusades had deprived the Arabs of many trading cities and wars are very expensive to wage no matter what.

Opportunity was probably not the only part of the conquest but I think it did a lot for the explosive growth of the Mongol empire.

 

[Barak]

Something I haven't seen mentioned so far in here was also that Mr Khan rarely, if ever, attacked without at the very least attempting to gather as much information as possible about the target, either by using spies or prisoners. That seems pretty obvious, but it wasn't necessarly a given at the time, at least not for invading forces.

 

[3catcircus]

The Mongols had sound tactics and were united under a single leader. Of course, if you have a general disregard for human life - your own or anyone else's - that helps too.

 

[med stud]

Something I haven't seen mentioned so far in here was also that Mr Khan rarely, if ever, attacked without at the very least attempting to gather as much information as possible about the target, either by using spies or prisoners. That seems pretty obvious, but it wasn't necessarly a given at the time, at least not for invading forces.

Yeah defenitly. The Mongol spies were absolute world class for their time.

 

[Galethorn]

Right! They were good at conquering flat, wide-open spaces. Conquering China, India, and the rest of Asia was just dumb luck.

No, certainly not dumb luck. It was force of numbers; they had gotten so much economic and military power from the places they easily conquered that they could just plow through the less optimal land by outnumbering defenders 20-to-1.

But, that's just what I've gathered from what I've read and seen. I'm sure part of it was using the more varied types of troops that resulted from conscripting soldiers from conquered areas; I doubt that all of the mongolian army at any given time, especially later, consisted of horse archers.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

No, certainly not dumb luck. It was force of numbers; they had gotten so much economic and military power from the places they easily conquered that they could just plow through the less optimal land by outnumbering defenders 20-to-1.

But, that's just what I've gathered from what I've read and seen. I'm sure part of it was using the more varied types of troops that resulted from conscripting soldiers from conquered areas; I doubt that all of the mongolian army at any given time, especially later, consisted of horse archers.

Current scholarship seems to indicate that they were nearly always heavilly outnumbered, but they moved so quickly that enemy scouts could never give accurate accounts of the size of their armies.