Jeff Yu said:
Well, the Mongols tended to avoid sieges and bypass fortifications UNTIL they had destroyed the armies out in the open field. As with elsewhere in the world, it's highly unlikely they would have had to siege and storm every last European fortress and stronghold. The Mongols made the promise to slaughter, sack, and annihilate the inhabitants of anything they sieged unless they surrendered. They only need demonstrate a few times.
I don't think you are following the basic idea behind castles. Siege was the centrepiece of sedentary warfare, and the reduction of castles and cities took months and sometimes years of strategic attrition. High walls, safety, lots of food. You have your people in there, with protection and stores and you can last a long time. Most castles were routinely prepared for sieges to last awhile--meaning that the local lord and his men and some of the populace can wait there for a long time. They'd gather all the food from the region beforehand and lock themselves in. Meanwhile, the Mongols outside are the ones whose horses are dying from lack of fodder. And I seriously doubt the Europeans would captulate after a few mere demonstrations. Europeans showed that they were willing to sit outside/inside tiny castles in the rained and mud for months. As for the Mongols, small forts that didn't fall immediately were bypassed and major cities taken, which always meant the risks of exposing your rear if you relied on a supply train, and severing your communications. When the city fell in the Orient, the forts--manned by men loyal only to the potentate--surrendered. In Europe, the men in the little forts were loyal to the man in the fort. What happens to the city is of secondary importance--because the aim is to defend the lord--who just so happens to be sitting within the walls just like the men-at-arms.
As this point in time, campaigning seasons rarely lasted more than a few seasons before retainers and peasants had to return to their fields. Typical sieges during this time started with negotiations where if relief armies didn't arrive in the specified amount of time, the castle would surrender, with the implicit understanding that all inhabitants would be slaughtered mercilessly otherwise.
Beseiging a castles could last months, not a few mere seasons. Sudden assualts, helped by surprise, overwhelming humbers, and treachery sometimes suceeded, but beseigin a castle was usually a matter of starving out the defender into surrender. But why would a castle, with considerable amount of stores and heavily fortified and well-defended need to negociate a surrender? If this was the case, then the defender can choose to hold out until his supplies were exhausted. So it all comes down to a matter of attrition, and which side starved first. And you must remember the Mongols brought their own food with them -- large herds of meat-on-the-hoof, that were driven together with their armies (which is why they moved so fast). But that also only added to the forage problem & added to the water problem. Mongol armies were built to move, not sit around sieges. That they would learn to take fortified castles on campaign is rather speculative, to put it mildly; Batu certainly didn't bring a siege train with him into Hungary, and the mongol sieges in the east, the best examples becuase they were contested, as opposed to, for example, Baghdad, were long, drawn-out affairs. Plus, the main population would not hole up in the castles (there are plenty of woods and high mountains west and north of the Hungarian plain to hide in), castles are military strongpoints. And besides, most European fortresses beseiged didn't rely on relief armies. Once established, these castles could hold out indefinately without the need of long costly relief expeditions.
And there were never a lack of traitors who would open the gates, nor minor lords or nobles willing to surrender for suitable compensation, titles, or estates.
Collaborating with the enemy, especially a foreign one, was extremely rare in feudal Europe. And when lords did collaborate with the enemy, it was usually for personal ambition, nothing of a serious military matter. ake for instance the Crusades; allying oneself with a local Saracen ruler was never a particulary popular move with Europeans because it was invariably seen as a shameful act. There were noblemen who broke that rule for personal gain, but never for a cause that could openly threaten the existence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.France surely wouldn't have wanted to replace one great opponent - the German empire - with an even more dangerous one - a Mongol empire stretching from southern Russia to the Rhine. It is in strategic interests of any nation to choose the lesser evil. Only a few states ever broke that rule and those that did usually soon regretted their decision. The Lombards for instance, who initially signed a treaty with the Avars, were in for a nasty surprise when the Avars, after having defeated their common enemies, turned against the former allies. Besides, how would you expect Christians to collabortate with Mongols. There was much hatred in Europe back then against infidels, particularly the aggressive ones. The Mongols had quickly acquired a terrible reputation even in Western Europe, which never experienced the effects of their raid. So I see any chance of open collaboration extremely unlikely.
No siege in Europe lasted for 10 years. Even hundreds of years laters, with considerable advances in logistics, warefare, and siege technology, the sieges of Constantinople didn't last more than a year.
Okay, how do you expect a armies to subsist in constant besiegement for 10 years. Although beseiging a catsle was a long affair, it would be logistically impossible at that periods to do such a thing, unless you have the advantage of friendly territory and a unlimited amount of provisions to keep your army in the field, which would have been impossible for the Mongols to do. And Constantinople isn't a good example to choose, since the Ottomans had artillery (something the Mongols could not have aqquired in Europe).
The Kypchak Tartars were hardly the same armies as those of Genghis and Subutai. The key of Mongol success lay not in their technology or quality of their troops: they basically had the same as the Huns, the Avars, Turks, Jurchens, Scythians, Cumans, Bulgars, and so on before them. What allowed them to succeed were their strategic, tactical, organizational, and logistical innovations, which sadly didn't outlast Genghis's sons'.
No one is saying the Mongols were
exactly the same, but they do share several similiarities, and basic tactics (feignts, ect.). And despite what others may have you believe, the decimal organization of the Mongols was in fact the traditonal organization for pratically all nomad armies of the time. The only true differences was the Monogls superior discipline, and as you mentioned, leaders; other than that, their tactics, methods, customs, ect. were the same as other nomadic armies.
That the Mongols took too many casualties to sustain their European campaign is largely a Polish fiction. After the occupation of Hungary, they continued right on to invading Austria and Bohemia. They were within sights of the city of Vienna before they withdrew to Mongolia upon the death of Ogedai. You'll also have to remember that did this all with no more than 40,000 or so men. Polish accounts of 100,000 or more were almost certainly exaggerated.
What invasion, the Mongols that penetrated into Austria were scouting columns, that were eventually repulsed. Considering that no sources indicate anything other than minor foraging parties and a bit larger scouting force that withdrawn upon making contact with Duke Frederick of Austrias outriders (one of the reasons he disbanded his army, seemingly in the face of an invasion - perhaps it was for a reason?), claiming that they came to the gates of Vienna is rather contrafactual. As for the regarding casualites; it doesn't take any stretching of the facts to establish that this engagement was a definite Hungarian victory and that the Mongol contigent involved in the operation suffered heavy losses. Take for example, The battle of Mohi. While attempting to launch a preemptive night attack the Mongols were themselves outsmarted. The slaughter must have been great, so great in fact that the Hungarians were assured of victory. Had the battle on the bridge seemed less decisive the Hungarians would surely have left a far more substantial guard and there wouldn't have been much cause for celebration either. Since the sizeable Mongol detachment sent over the bridge was effectively wiped out, it can be extrapolated that the Mongol casualties were high. And this does not take into account the last phase of the fighting, which must have been brutal as well. Even if the Hungarians were ultimately defeated I'm sure many of them did not perish without a good fight. These facts considered, it's quite evident that the Mongol victory at Mohi was bought at a heavy price. This helps to explain the huge steppe cemetery which Carpini is talking about. The Hungarian army, while still relatively poorly equipped by Western standards and commited to battle under unfavorable conditions, inflicted very heavy casualties on the Mongols before collapsing. The Mongols seem to have won only because of their extreme determination and only at a very high cost. To stress this again: it was probably the losses suffered at Mohi that effectively hindered the Mongol expansion and reduced the power of the Golden Horde.
As for the Mongols considering western Europe to be a worthy target that they withdrew from only after heavy losses, I'd like to point out that the Mongols dedicated more men to sieging individual Chinese cities than they did upon the entire European campaign. China and Persia were considered far more worthy targets of conquest than Western Europe.
Then the notion that medieval Europe was so poor and backwaters that it wasn't worth seizing. This is an idea which I'm not buying. Medieval Europe may not have been as rich as
some parts of China and Persia. It was still much richer than many regions which steppe nomads conquered or sought to conquer, though. Moreover, the relative richness of a certain region is not the only reason for conquest. What about the natural resources and communications? Europe was by all means a desirable target. It was economically reasonably well off, it had rich ore deposits, advanced metalworking technologies (vital for arms production, possibly a major reason for the Mongol invasion of Persia!) and contained a reservoir of manpower that simply couldn't be ignored. There is obviously something badly wrong with the theory of "unworthy" Europe as presented by some forumites on this thread. Calmly considering all the facts I can only conclude that the actual military potential of the Mongols available for an invasion of Europe was grossly inadequate for any permanent conquest. Logistical considerations must also be taken into account. In a way, I agree that Europe was not worth the trouble from the Mongol point of view. Not because of any shortage of plunder but simply because it was militarily much too strong and unsuitable for steppe warfare.
Your logistics argument doesn't really hold. The Russian and Ukrainian steppes are far closer to western Europe than the Mongolian grasslands are to southern China. This distance from Karakorum to Beijing is farther than the distance from Moscow to Warsaw. Unlike in Europe, There was a huge Gobi desert lying between northern China and the Mongolian grasslands, while much of southern Poland and parts of Hungary are trasitional plains that allow armies to winter their horses in temporarily.
Russia is far. Like I said before, if they had any hope of conquering all of europe, they would pretty much have to do it all at once - meaning over the span of several weeks, or maximum 3 or 4 months. But more likely even faster than that because most if not all pasture lands in west europe would have been overgrazed very soon. They would then have to return their horses to the feeding grounds of central and eastern Europe and Russia right after, if the horses would indeed survive the long trip. And how many horses can the Mongols afford to lose to starvation? Yes that is an assumption, but it's a carefully thought out extrapolation based on the available facts. Then they would immediately have to assume administrative and leadership roles in European governments to make sure they maintain control, much like they did in China and Persia. Now I doubt they could do all that in the span of several weeks/few months. If anything, they would have accomplished partial conquerment and then leave to feed their horses and return next year. In the meantime the Europeans would have had time to regroup and offer better resistance. At best it would have been a stalemate. See, it is my belief that the Mongols foresaw this predicament and chose to avoid it.
The Mongols were able to launched an extended 30 year campaign into Song China, and as far south as Burma and Vietnam, thousands and thousands of miles away from the steppes. China itself is the about the size of western and eastern Europe combined, minus Scandinavia, yet the Mongols were able to efficiently handle their logistical needs through decades of extended warfare. The distance between Beijing and Guangzhou, for example, is roughly the same as that between Moscow and Paris.
Your only confirming my argument. If it took the Mongols more than 50 years to conquer China, how do you think they would fare in Europe. Do you think that the Mongols could have taken Europe in one sweeping offensive, which is what they needed to do in order to avoid having to refeed their animals? It seems highly unlikely. And running back to the steppes to resupply or refeed their animals would not be very time efficient. It would only give the Europeans the time they need to build up their defenses. If anything, after each campaign the Mongol offensive would become weaker and the European defense would strengthen. At least with China and Persia, the Mongols were surrounded by ideal grazing lands so they never had to go far to refeed their animals.