Originally posted by Mithridates
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Eventually the Mongols figured out how to build better siege equipment and ships with the help of their Arab subjects and the Yangtze defenses collapsed, with many Chinese commanders defecting to the other side at which point the chicken came home to roost.
The whole thing took about 50 years, longer if you count the Jurchen period before that. It was not a cake walk for the Mongols, but the Song was certainly complicit in their own defeat. The responsibility for the defeat, however, cannot be blamed on individual corrupt officials or inept emperors. The entire society was complicit.
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