Oh boy... So we're still where we started?
You're skipping quite a bit of timeline here. Did you really think that as soon as Mohi was over, the Mongols just sat down for several months while doing nothing? They were busy consolidating their holdings and sieging the fortresses that they earlier bypassed. They certainly weren't doing nothing during that period of time, they captured the fortified cities of Pest and Gran, for example, and consolidated their holdings east of the Danube. 100,000 Hungarians died defending at Pest, and Kaidan won no less than three decisive engagements against Hungarian forces during this time period as well. Remember that 1/3 to 1/2 the population of Hungary was wiped out during this period of time. That certainly wouldn't happen if the campaign was a mere raid that won a battle and then just left. You'll also note that unlike the European style of warfare, the Mongols prepared during the summer and falls to launch winter campaigns. They fattened their horses during the summer and launched their invasions winter. The first invasion of Hungary, for example, was launched during a February. Consolidating their position and then preparing for a winter campaign fits exactly what you describe. Had they took too many casualties and required a withdrawal, they would have returned to their Ukrainian holdings instead of staying in the country for so long. But instead, they prepared for another winter invasion, and crossed the Danube river that winter, at the start of a new campaign the scouting parties reaching as far as Venice, at the beginning of a new campaign, when news of Ogedai's death came.
No, I haven't overlooked that at all - what bothers me is that the conclusions which you've drawn from that statement are highly self-contradictory. On the one hand, you're trying to convince me that Batu's raid was a consolidation effort trying to secure a base of operations for further expeditions; yet on the other hand you state that the Mongols were not intrested at all in conquering Europe. Either way, you've failed to present a single believable explanation for that 8-month delay in Hungary. Now, you may disagree with me on all points, but I think you'll concur that such missions on such a scale are best done quickly. The Mongols certainly kept to that strategy for the first 40 days. They covered a lot of ground in Eastern Europe, fought several important battles and sacked a few cities. However, I don't think anyone could negate that the Mongol advance ground to a halt after Liegnitz and Mohi - and very abrupty, actually. This is not in accordance with any reasonable strategy. You're apparently of opinion that the resistance encountered by the Mongols did not hinder them to any significant extent. Now I'd be ready to accept any other sensible argument - perhaps a sudden spread of religious pacifism from the Buddhist areas or maybe mass abuse of cannabis and opium imported from Indochina and the Middle East.
But seriously, that the death of a khan who ruled eastern Asia stopped the advance of the Golden Horde (which was, for the umpteenth time, an independent military entity) without having the slightest effect on the other Mongol groups (which were at the time happily thrashing their enemies in China and the Middle East) is just a little too much to swallow. In any case, Batu did not sink in permanent inactivity after Ogadai's death. He returned to Volga after his failed raid and established his seat there, subduing the local Russian rulers and occasionally leading military expeditions against the disobedient. This doesn't sound like an urgent return to Mongolia to me. To further prove my argument, let me quote Denis Sinor:
"According to John of Plano Carpini the death of Ogedei prompted the Mongols' withdrawal from Hungary. Valuable though the Friar's account may be, it does contain many mistakes, of which this explanation is a prime example. Unfortunately, the mistake has been perpetuated by generations of historians (including the present writer), who, for a long time, never pondered on the inherent weakness of this theory. Ogedei died on December 11, 1241, and it had been argued that when the news reached him, Batu, who might have had personal, imperial ambitions, decided either to return to Mongolia or, at least, to move closer to it. The fact is that Batu showed no signs of any desire to travel to Mongolia, but after the evacuation of Hungary remained on the South Russian steppe, still very far from the center of power. Whether Batu ever harbored ambitions to become the Great Khan is a moot question, but his behavior certainly did not reveal anything of the sort. Available evidence suggests that he was content to be the de facto ruler of the western part of the Mongol empire, and that he showed great loyalty to Ogedey's successor, Guyuk. The reason for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary must be sought elsewhere; it was caused by logistical imperatives" So what we have here tells us the Mongols were still conquering neigbouring territories throughout the 13th c. wherever opportunity persisted. Only the Golden Horde was stuck in southern Russia after the raid of 1240/1. Why on Earth would they have satisfied themselves with the comparatively poor regions of Eastern Europe when much wealthier areas of Western Europe were within their range? If Europe was indeed so weak and militarily inferior, why didn't Batu - or any other Mongol leader, there were many - resume the offensive? Whenever the Mongols encountered weak opposition on their raids, they made their best to exploit the enemy's weaknesses. Why didn't they do the same with the feeble Europeans? The Golden Horde ruled southern Russia well into the 15th century, yet it never dared invade Europe again. Given that the rich regions of Western, Central and South Europe were virtually at their doorstep, the temptation must have been hard for the Mongols to raid there. But they didn't. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that Western Europe was too well defended to permit any further easy victories, and that the casualties they faced at Mohi and Leingnitz (as well as their logistical limitations) must have played a key factor in dissuading them.
This also puts doubt to another of your claims. During this extended period of time, no one else in Europe came to Hungary's aid. Where were the armies of all the other countries who you claim would suddenly set aside their animosities and miraculously unite against the Mongols? The population of Hungary was busy being liquidated, and for months, what did the rest of Europe do? Nothing. Hell, Who came to Hungary and Poland's aid? No one. Hell, the Dukes of Pomerania and Bohemia were ASKED to come to Poland's aid, and they retreated instead and hid in their castle, even as the Mongols were putting parts of Moravia to the torch.
Most certainly, but how does that prove your argument? During the middle ages, Eastern Europe was a specific entity that differed in numerous respects from Western Europe. It's no surprise that Western Europe didn't feel obliged to assist the Poles and Hungarians. After all, Germany and Poland have never gone well together and Hungary was something of an oddity as well (memories of the Magyars can't have been too good for establishing particularly close relations). It was in nobody's interest to come to assistance. As long as the Mongols limited themselves to thrashing the Poles and Hungarians, their incursion had no ill effects on the German empire, even less Western Europe in general. For Austria, it was even a welcome coincidence. While the West was not particularly interested in tackling the Mongol raiders happily pillaging foreign territories, they made preparations to ensure any incursion on their soil could be met with force. Friedrich of Austria definitely had substantial forces ready at his disposal and was able to intervene if necessary. Batu's force was not particularly large at the start of the campaign and its number had definitely dwindled with the fighting (all fuss and disagreement aside, it cannot be disputed that the Mongols did take some losses during the campaign and those suffered at Mohi were substantial). As long as Friedrich had a strong army in the field and plenty of fortifications manned (most of them in terrain much more difficult than the Hungarian plain) he had nothing to worry about. So from the Western European perspective, the trouble in Eastern Europe was probably seen as a temporary setback and an internal affair. Besides, the Europe could do little to provide real military assistance to Hungary, which meant that only a few would respond to a call to crusade unless it directly threatened Europe. But as long as the Mongols didn't threaten him directly, there was no point in sending assistance.
What in the world makes you think that the Mongols ever carted in fodder for their horses? You're thinking of warfare in sedentary terms. The Mongols didn't resupply food for the horses, they simply resupplied horses themselves. They brought in a fresh herd of horses and led the old ones back to the steppe.
No; this is incorrect. Marco Polo observed strings of horses containing as many as eighteen remounts per man. We also need to take more than the pasture for the giant horse herds into account. Rotational grazing was the basis for nomadism and standard practice on the steppes, because there was much greater freedom of movement there than in the densely wooded and mountainous terrain of Middle Europe. And in case you haven't yet noticed, there was a lot more grass in Russia, and as weve seen, the Mongols dragged along their own sheep to eat as well. The Mongol troops were fed by great flocks of sheep which accompanied their armies. D. O. Morgan, for example, in
The Mongol Armies in Persia, Der Islam , cites a text from Iran assigning each campaigning Mongol 5 horses and 30 sheep, i.e. an ecological weight of 55 sheep equivalents (s.e.) per man.
And again, you seem to think that Mongolia is a lush green grassland when it could be farther from the truth. Mongolia is predominated by the Gobi desert, and during the winter, the place turns into a complete wasteland.
Do you never read whats been posted? Yes, a part of the Gobi desert is waterless and resembles a barren wasteland, but it is only a small part of the gobi desert, while the rest of the gobi desert provides three times more pasture lands than anything in Europe (excluding Hungary). Ttaken as a whole the Gobi Desert affords excellent pasture, the annual rainfall in the north-west averaging 10 to 20 inches. While far short of the 40 to 50 inches in Austria, when it comes to pasture quality, moisture often comes at the expense of nutritional content. To quote R. L. Dalrymple and C. A. Griffith:
Horses can be malnourished in deep, green forage. Extremely lush pastures containing over 85 percent water can be too wet and too low in fibre for good nutritional intake ... The horse simply has to intake too much water to get needed nutrition. Inane blather about a European buffet only shows the most appalling ignorance of logistics and basic horse needs, since the key issue wasnt the quality of grass, but quantity, and horses dont live by licking tree-bark.
And, as I've already pointed out, the Mongols have no shortage of grassland in their supply base. Most of Poland is a flat plain, and half of the country is covered with steppe. Hungary also has a fairly large plain that will allow the Mongols to support themselves over a campaign before the herd needs to be resupplied.
Okay, let's look at the statistics AGAIN!!. For the 1241 campaign into Hungary and Poland, Batu ordu of probably six tümens (of the original twelve minimum with which he had invaded Russia) implies a nominal raiding force of 60,000 mounted troops and at least 300,000 horses. Grazing such an army herd would have required a pasturage of some 32,732 square miles. The Alföld in Hungary, which was the largest unbroken pasture on the continent of Europe, in fact the only one of any extent, currently has an area of 16,366 square miles. Poland is slightly harder to estimate since the deforestation rate is unclear, but its modern territory includes 15,695 square miles of permanent pasture. To these expanses might be added the Moravian plains, the better part of the Czechian pasture resources of 3,568 square miles, and to their east, the pastures of the Little Afold, the eastern Slovakian lowland and the Zahorska plain, covering 3,151 square miles. Altogether these come to 38,780 square miles of grassland (which, by Asiatic standards, is a postage stamp; just 4 percent of the pasture available in Mongolia) barely enough to temporarily graze 355,430 horses; a good match for Batus probable numbers. So the fact that sufficient forage was available for Batu to sustain his campaign in Eastern Europe is statistically demonstrable, whereas we can only reach the opposite conclusion for the West. Just think about it, weve already established that theres ten times as much pasture in China than Western Europe, and that the pasture of the Alföld, though as vast as it was, was just
barely large enough in itself to sustain a herd of 150,000 horses. So in theory, by accepting that five-horse limit, which still enabled 65,000 Mongols to spread their terror through the deserts of the Middle East, the Mongols could only have maintined three tüman or 30,000 troops, (half the number that he had brought with him on his initial foray into Poland and Hungary, and only a fifth of the number with which he had crossed the Volga) against an active Western military reservoir of millions. Since there wasnt much available in the first place, and what little was there was inaccessible to a vast cavalry army trying to fodder up to a million horses (probably more than doubling the entire horse population of Europe overnight, and in a single localised concentration!) and still hoping to keep itself together. It would either have to retreat or break up and be destroyed in detail. To make matters worse, any foragers would have to disperse to such an extent that they would be easily overpowered by the tens of millions already using them to graze their own livestock, since grasslands in Western Europe are few, small and widely scattered. So the suggestion that Europe (especially Western Europe) was a pastorial buffet is ridiculous. Just think about this. The Mongols evacuated Hungary the next year after thoroughly overgrazing the available pastures in Hungary and left for the steppes of West Asia. Why did they leave? Because they couldn't sustain their horses on Magyar soil anymore, nor could they sustain anymore casualties, which is why the Mongolist John Masson Smith considers Hungary
probably indefensible by a nomad-based garrison.
The Mongolian horses, native to Siberia, are well-adapted to being able to eat pretty much anything to survive during those winter months. This includes digging through ice to eat scraps of lichen, and foraging when they have to. Mongolian horses are able to eat tree leaves if they have to, in order to survive. Guess what most of Europe is? Forest, with plenty of pasture and river valleys in between. Now obviously they're not going to gain any weight doing it, but remember, the Mongols fattened up their horses all summer long by grazing, and typically launched their campaign season during winter. Their horses certainly aren't going to eat the land bare or starve to death.
Yes they were smaller and to some degree more durible, but also more specifically predisposed to eating only grass. Today's modern breeds (non-Mongolian horses) often eat hay and other specialized feed, but the Mongolians rode a very specialized type of horse that only feeds on grass. And like any small horse or pony, it still would have cropped grass more closely and exhausted the habitat at a faster rate than its heavier European counterpart. The Mongol horse of the thirteenth century was between 13 and 14 hands high, rather larger than the 12 hands of the wild Przhevalsky, and therefore also requiring a heavier dietary intake than the Przhevalsky. A typical Przewalskis horse averages 12 hands, weighs 772 lb, and has to consume over 15 lb of forage or feed per day on a dry-weight basis, which adds up to almost 3 short tons of dry matter per year, which is still three-quarters of the intake of the larger and more powerful European horse, so even had the calculation been based on European forage management the implication would be the same, and the objection is moot.
If all your lords and nobles simply sit in their castles, there's not going to be much of a country leff when they come back out. Because simply put, yes, the Mongols DID want to rule over a depopulated area, and they DID kill everyone. Their notion of wealth wasn't land, people, or cities. They just looted whatever they wanted from the cities, and then killed everyone, and turned former farms and cities into grassland, because to them, wealth was herds of horses and animals, and pretty trinkets you loot from people.
Let me quote Baldwin of Hainault, in 1184, holed up in his castle and seeing his fields burned and his subjects massacred by invaders:
"They can' take the land with them" No-one left him at that time. A later example of this exact behavior is when Edward III invaded France with his goal the capture of Reims (for a coronation). He expected to be able to loot his way there. The French in a rare display of common sense (until then they would have mustered an army to meet the enemy and get crushed by their lousy commanders) emptied the countryside and focused on defending the walled cities and castles. By evading pitched battles and constantly staying near the English army, the French were able to defeat the
chevauchee strategy (a large-scale raid, which you imply what the Mongols would do) in a very economical manner. Consequently, the English offensives soon ran out of steam due to logistical problems and low morale. Sure, Edward still possessed an army in the field, but the French kept him from gaining a real foothold as long as he didnt invest the time to siege. Thus, Edward got nowhere and had to return. So the fact is, small-raiding parties simply cannot hold territory without taking castles! Also, the Mongols, despite their cruelty, weren't some sort of all-consuming zombie horde; even in the most devastated territories most of the population survived; the plans for depopulating northern china (which might have been a later Chinese invention intended to demonstrate the guile of Genghiss Chinese advisors against their barbaric overlord) involved forcing the peasants to move southwards (similar to Shaka Zulus
Mfecane), not a complete massacre of all Chinese civilians, which would have been practically impossible.
. I tire of repeating the same facts that others have already repeated. 
