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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 2378188" data-attributes="member: 6533">I'd say their five greatest assests were:The culture already mentioned which served as a good source of troops and technology.The geography.  The steppes had been a good staging ground for invaders before, but the Mongols were the only people to really take full advantage of their potential.  Steppes are steppes, it's true, but their Eurasian steppes make much better highways than the New World steppes, unless you count the initial Mammoth hunter migrations into the new world.  The steppes at that time were even better since the Mongols could move between a range of cultures with all sorts of interesting new technologies and lessons to pick up.The generals. A lot of conquerors had good generals, but by the time they got into full swing the Mongols had a whole corps of nigh on revolutionary thinkers at their disposal.  I wouldn't hesitate that the general state of military science only caught up to them around the time of WWII and we're still learning from them.  The politicians.  The things that most seperated the Mongols from other conquerors and nomads were an amazing set of laws and political leaders.  Other people have mentioned how they used everyone according to their ability.  But their laws also made them very good at occupation and their cultural tolerance made them masters of combined arms warfare.  Their generals were masters but their politicians and cultural leaders were master students.  Yeah even unto a Van Wilder sense.  In some sense this very enlightened view on the part of the Mongols was what made them so bad for the world.  They brain drained most of the cultures they came into contact with and the counter-conquering forces such as the Mamelukes were not very tolerant of the intellectuals they found courting Mogol favor.That last is really the key to how effectively they used the others.  The Huns, for instance, were not nearly as good at absorbing other cultures, which meant they had to push their way through the steppes instead of flowing over them and that they couldn't absorb other tribes as well to make larger and more diverse forces.</blockquote>

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