"The Mongols were over rated"

[Razgovory]

So the Mongols didn't encounter castles with garrisons in any of the places they conquered? Were they a unique feature of the European military landscape?

Actually, yes.  It's also worth remembering that the Mongols mostly fought either other tribes on the vast steppe, or centralized empires.  It's the irony of your friend's statement that it's not good organization that protects Western Europe, but the lack thereof.  It was lack of central authority and the endemic warfare that resulted in every guy with some peasants building his own personal castle and small army.  A well organized state wouldn't stand for that kind of thing.  In fact, as European states became better organized the government would often tear down those annoying castles.

[Neil]

Would the Angevins rise to caring if the peasants got slaughtered?

Depends on how hungry they got.

[Hansmeister]

What would the mongols have fed their tens of thousands of horses with once they got to France?  IMHO, the mongols couldn't have sustained their operations beyond
North Germany due to a lack of feed for their horse armies.

[Solmyr]

It depends on location.  If Mongols manage to take the battle to the open fields, then Mongols would win decisively, since their open field tactics had no counter at the time.  In the woods, I would definitely bet on the English.

They won in the woods against the Rus, who at the time had as good forces as western Europeans. Heck, they won against German knights at Liegnitz.

[Grey Fox]

Fuck that question.

How many m50 wielding soldiers would it take to destroy the Mongols horde?

[Faeelin]

The Mongols didn't vanish after 1241; they maintained a significant presence in Eastern Europe, invading Hungary in the 1280s, the Balkans in the 1290s, and invading Lithuania  on a couple of other occasions.

And they lost quite a few of those battles, frankly. This should caution us against fearing the invincible Tatar.

[Gups]

Recently read a book on the Albigensian Crusades which is around the same period.  There were a lot of sieges.  What I found interesting is that even where castles were strongly defensible, a lot of them fell surprisingly quickly - usually because the guy in charge lost hope and sought terms or simply ran away.  It seemed that where the besiegers has a clear numerical superiority, a castle would only hold out if there was strong, determined leadership and an experienced garrison - which was often not the case.  And even where it was unexpected problems arise - like one defiant castle that replenished its cisterns with rainwater, only to have the commander and large swaths of the garrison die off from a nasty case of dysentary.

Jonathan Sumption's?

[Martinus]

The Mongols didn't vanish after 1241; they maintained a significant presence in Eastern Europe, invading Hungary in the 1280s, the Balkans in the 1290s, and invading Lithuania  on a couple of other occasions.

And they lost quite a few of those battles, frankly. This should caution us against fearing the invincible Tatar.

I wouldn't call medieval Hungary "Eastern Europe". Both geographically and culturally they were Central Europe.

[Martinus]

It depends on location.  If Mongols manage to take the battle to the open fields, then Mongols would win decisively, since their open field tactics had no counter at the time.  In the woods, I would definitely bet on the English.

They won in the woods against the Rus, who at the time had as good forces as western Europeans. Heck, they won against German knights at Liegnitz.

Silesian knights. At at Legnica.

[Neil]

It depends on location.  If Mongols manage to take the battle to the open fields, then Mongols would win decisively, since their open field tactics had no counter at the time.  In the woods, I would definitely bet on the English.

They won in the woods against the Rus, who at the time had as good forces as western Europeans. Heck, they won against German knights at Liegnitz.

Silesian knights. At at Legnica.

Stop trying to spread your filthy language all over the place.  Liegnitz is the correct name.

I swear, between this and that disgusting map of European youth unemployment, you really come off as retarded.

[Malthus]

AFAIK what really hampered the Mongols more in their European campaign was terrain rather than fortifications. For instance, after the battle of Legnica the king of hungary escaped to Croatia, with the Mongols hot in his trail, and even if they got to burn Zagreb down they got really bogged down in Dalmatia with its rugged terrain and being harassed by the local troops at all times, so they ultimately abandoned that part of their campaign. The Mongol tactics worked great in the great plains and in pitched battles, which was to what they were geared for, but once they got into cavalry-unfriendly terrain things got more difficult for them.

There is some truth to this, but it can easily be overstated. The Mongols campaigned successfully in many cavalry-unfriendly places, such as when they overcame the Sung in southern China.

One of the achievements of the Mongol empire at its height was its willingness to incorporate non-Mongol elements into its war machine to make it more balanced. It is a mistake to think of it as a horde of steppe nomads and nothing else. For example, the conquest of the Sung could not have happened without the incorporation of northern Chinese siege engineers - the Sung defences easily dwarfed the relatively primitive defences of Europe (I've seen the walls of Xi'an, which were rebuilt at a slightly later date by the Ming but on the basis of a wall that existed in Sung times - and that sucker is seriously huge)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Xi'an

They were also quite willing to move foreign experts around - for example, Hungary was first accurately mapped by Chinese engineers working for the Mongols.

This is of course not a unique characteristic of the Mongols - for example, it is well known that the Turks took Constantiople with the help of Hungarian cannon experts.

What changed with the passing of the united Mongol empire is that the resultant bits reverted to being once more a steppe horde without as much access to foreign experts and engineers - with a consequent degredation on their ability to besige fortifications.

[Valmy]

Stop trying to spread your filthy language all over the place.  Liegnitz is the correct name.

Who would have thought putting in a 'z' would make something less Polish?

[Razgovory]

AFAIK what really hampered the Mongols more in their European campaign was terrain rather than fortifications. For instance, after the battle of Legnica the king of hungary escaped to Croatia, with the Mongols hot in his trail, and even if they got to burn Zagreb down they got really bogged down in Dalmatia with its rugged terrain and being harassed by the local troops at all times, so they ultimately abandoned that part of their campaign. The Mongol tactics worked great in the great plains and in pitched battles, which was to what they were geared for, but once they got into cavalry-unfriendly terrain things got more difficult for them.

There is some truth to this, but it can easily be overstated. The Mongols campaigned successfully in many cavalry-unfriendly places, such as when they overcame the Sung in southern China.

One of the achievements of the Mongol empire at its height was its willingness to incorporate non-Mongol elements into its war machine to make it more balanced. It is a mistake to think of it as a horde of steppe nomads and nothing else. For example, the conquest of the Sung could not have happened without the incorporation of northern Chinese siege engineers - the Sung defences easily dwarfed the relatively primitive defences of Europe (I've seen the walls of Xi'an, which were rebuilt at a slightly later date by the Ming but on the basis of a wall that existed in Sung times - and that sucker is seriously huge)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Xi'an

They were also quite willing to move foreign experts around - for example, Hungary was first accurately mapped by Chinese engineers working for the Mongols.

This is of course not a unique characteristic of the Mongols - for example, it is well known that the Turks took Constantiople with the help of Hungarian cannon experts.

What changed with the passing of the united Mongol empire is that the resultant bits reverted to being once more a steppe horde without as much access to foreign experts and engineers - with a consequent degredation on their ability to besige fortifications.

You are missing the point about fortifications.  It's not the quality of the fortifications, it's the quantity.  That and the lack of any real gain from taking a castle.  Most the castles were
still probably wood in the 13th century (though stone ones were increasingly common).  The Mongols can't bypass the castles without risking their foragers being attacked.  They are to many
to take all of them and the castles themselves have no intrinsic worth.  The fortification around the city of Xi'an are protecting something valuable.  Castles protect money poor but mean spirited
guys with with metal clothes and pointy bits of steel.  The Mongols were likely badly outnumbered in Europe, so they really can't risk sieges or assaults on petty castles.  One outbreak of disease will
devastate them.  They need to move quickly to prevent spread of disease and running out of food in any given area.  When they siege something it needs to be worth the
risk.  A fat target like a major city.

[The Minsky Moment]

There was a certain code about the sieges then.  You would hold out for so long, to satisfy certain obligations, and then could surrender.  If you surrendered before certain periods of time they couldn't execute you or hold you for ransom.  I don't know the specifics about these codes, but Mongols would not likely observe them, (and probably wouldn't be able to communicate their demands very effectively).  After word gets out of a few massacres I imagine resolve would stiffen fairly quickly.

The Albi crusade actually started out with a horrific massacre that took out the entire fortified city of Beziers.  The immediate impact was not to stiffen resolve - rather a bunch of fortified places were abandoned in panic and some of those that remained surrendered quickly.

It's also worth noting that the Albigensian Crusades lasted a long time.  Like a couple of decades over a fairly small bit of territory. 

it covered most of the South of France.  The entire thing went for a while but there were a lot of sudden reversals.  Montfort subdued much of the region in a few years.  And because the main crusader army disbanded within months, he managed to do it with only a few hundred soldiers at any given time.  At the battle of Muret - one of the biggest he fought - he only had about 1000-2000 men.  The wars lasted longer because there was a massive rebellion in 1215, Montfort was killed and the region descended into endemic warfare for a couple more decades.  But the reality was that a fairly minor player like Montfort with limited resources was able to take down dozens of fortified castles in a pretty quick time frame by medieval standards.

[The Minsky Moment]

Jonathan Sumption's?

Mark Gregory Penn.
Odd little book but has its points.