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subodai was co-ordinating transnational strategy - no country commander had ever done that before, so the dynamics of the battleplanning was literally hundreds of years before any other commander achieved the same thing - the mongols were communicating battle changes far faster than anyone else had done before. their signalling and comms was the the mil equivalent of the pony express
2 days in contemp terms seems trivial - but even then messages went from the battlefield to home in months. tactically they were light years ahead of anyone else - it was a paradigmm shift. and Legnica was always meant to distract and bleed enemy forces so that the battle around Mohi was in as good as a position as possible
managing transnational armies hundreds of kms from each other to deliberately trigger an effect for the larger battle is not insignificant by any means as it goes towards the issue of tactical mindset and battle planning
bear in mind that the third army was prepared to be the sacrificial cow in the broader endgame
we'll just have to agree to have differing views on the chicken or the military egg conundrum :)
We are not in a disagreement, I was just looking at the bigger battle since that was the original question.
The game was set long before Legnica, which IMV was a side show. If this is where we split views, I am happy to disagree
Last edited by Doktor; 31 Jul 16,, 17:44.
Reason: Bloody autocorrect and thicky fingers
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To make mistakes is human. To blame someone else for your mistake, is strategic.
The original point was that the Mongols never met a first rate knight army. The Mongols smashed through modern day Russia, Ukraines, Georgia well enough.
prev, knights were the kings of the battlefield (before being displaced by more accurate canon and barrel, canon shell developments) - and typically it had been about blunt force dealing with blunt force
the mongols were an army based on manouvre/speed warfare long before any other country recognised it as a fighting tool that could be employed as day to day doctrine.
the mongols demonstrated at legnica a clear strategy in dealing with knights and heavies as they were not feared to the point where prev some countries exhibited tactical and strategic paralysis
sure knights had been suckered and often by accident (lured into swamps, forests where their own manouvre was compromised) but Legnica was a visceral display of delaminating their enemy in a controlled and planned combination of tactics, feint, fight, feigned flight, deception, kill box, envelopment etc....
IMO its the first clear demonstration of deliberate tactical preplanned intent rather than defeat of knights by tactical opportunity and not by blunt force heavy against heavy etc....
legnica and mohi also reinforced that the mongols were "everywhere" as they had a deliberate two front engagement plan, hundreds of km's separating the force de main and the third army
instead of prev behaviour of castle hopping, or country hopping as prev practiced, the mongols attacked on a broad front meaning that smaller towns and provinces were loathe to send of troops to fight elsewhere in case they were exposed. often or not they folded before fighting
its not the first time that knights are destroyed en masse but its the first time there is a converging of tactical and strategic paradigm shifting fighting philosophies co-ordinating multiple armies across multiple kingdoms and with a set piece strategic outcome in mind
sort of strange in that there were also plenty of times where the Mongols were beat pretty bad, even during the peak of their strength.
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sort of strange in that there were also plenty of times where the Mongols were beat pretty bad, even during the peak of their strength.
yep, but that's also consistent with history for other tier one armies. some days are a "WTF happened today?"' day... :)
edit:
(I think every superpower has had battleplans that derailed at an unfortunate point in time and where expectation management required a bit of a visit, lessons learnt applied, commanders replaced, planners revisit their assumptions and or troops are given extra training in a prosecution capability that was either deficient and/or poorly executed.)
In fairness to the European 'knight' who forms half of the topic under discussion the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century came at a time when Europe lacked any political structure capable of matching what was (by the standard of the day) the most superbly organized army in the world. Europe simply lacked any centralized national/imperial power capable of raising and organizing a force of knights and men-at-arms matching the Mongol invasion force in size. Certainly no kingdom in Europe at the time in question had 300,000 plus soldiers at it's disposal, let alone 300,000 expert horsemen. Not under the kind of highly centralized military authority the Mongols possessed.
As a result every Western Army they encountered was a hodgepodge of vassal lords and hastily arranged alliances between former enemies each of whom jealously guarded their own military prerogatives. In a modern context it would be kind of like expecting the Western European democracies to defeat a Soviet invasion in the 80's without the US or NATO as an origination. On paper they might have been able to raise the numbers and equipment necessary to do the job (perhaps) but they simply wouldn't be able to co-ordinate well enough to do the job.
I know it's been argued in another thread but what was needed at the time was an Imperial power like ancient Rome which was capable of massing and organizing large numbers of mounted knights and other supporting elements under one central authority - then the fight might have gone another way. After all when the Mongols did encounter large imperial powers capable of mustering and organizing armies on an equivalent scale (the Imperial Jin and Song) the ensuing campaigns were no walkover - both empires bled the Mongols before they finally won their victories.
In fairness to the European 'knight' who forms half of the topic under discussion the Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century came at a time when Europe lacked any political structure capable of matching what was (by the standard of the day) the most superbly organized army in the world.
The other half of this topic is the Samurai who were exactly what you just described and they've also got clobbered by the Mongols.
I raised the Mongol horseman, not to as much as to trump their military superiority but to shut this argument down. The knight and samurai were not the end-all, be-all of middle age warfare. The Mongol horseman was.
Originally posted by Officer of EngineersView Post
I raised the Mongol horseman, not to as much as to trump their military superiority but to shut this argument down. The knight and samurai were not the end-all, be-all of middle age warfare. The Mongol horseman was.
I don't think it was the Mongol mounted archer per se that was the issue so much as their superb organization and scale of operation. Mounted archery as a style of warfare could be and was defeated/countered on numerous occasions by armies deploying a combination of different weapons, troop types and tactics. But again this took planning and organization - exactly what the Mongols had.
I may well be wrong but I think by the time the attempted invasions started the Mongol ruling class of China had more or less been completely assimilated by the dominant (is it Han?) culture of northern China. Kublai Khan may have been linearly Mongol but the culture and language of his court was Chinese as were the bulk of his armies.
If you are emotionally invested in 'believing' something is true you have lost the ability to tell if it is true.
The official language is Mongolian since there's no one Chinese language. Some Yuan emperors learned Mandarin. Others didn't and Cantonese was the language of Southern China.
The language would still be Japanese... The Mongols though late to ancient empire game were the stereotype for invaders turned local in language, cultural and religion. Rome turned barbarians into Romans, barbarians turned mongols into locals.
Monash, IIRC, we had a thread Mongols vs Rome and I argued Rome's absolute command of the sea and road network would let them move legions and supplies in a way the Mongols simply could not counter. They could take the interior of the empire and dominate any coastal region where they were but could not take the big ports and risked being bottled up and trapped in any key area of the empire they invaded like the Levant, Italy, Spain, Greece or Dacia.
It was Rome's strategic mobility and supply lines that would prove the edge. Any other empire not having a giant mongol proof lake in the middle of it would be subject to the horse archers of doom. Though had the Mongols invaded a `100 years later and penetrated deeper into Central/Western Europe or had they gone to the Levant the massive crusader style castles would have stumped them.
A few thoughts. Rome never enjoyed the communications advantage of the Mongols. Thus, Rome never planned a multi-battle campaign where no one single battle could affect the outcome, Genghis fought a 100 mile campaign, luring his enemies into a trap over a 10 day period, That kind of thinking was absent during Roman height.
Hell, the Mongols were the first who thought a battle can last more than a day. That alone gave them a leg up on the Romans.
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