How the Mongols Defeated their Enemies

For millennia, the nomadic horse archers of the  great Eurasian steppe were among the most fearsome foes an army could face in open battle - and the  thirteenth century Mongols were no exception. In the previous episode, the link to  which you can find in the description, we talked about the structure of the Mongol army.  In this video, we will examine the tactics of pitched battle that made the Mongols the dominant  military power of the world for a century.

The strength of the Mongol army rested on  the same skill sets of all steppe nomads: mobility and deadly long-range fire power.  Doctrine for all horse archers was simple: to maximize damage to the enemy from as far away  as possible for as long as possible, only closing once they had been sufficiently demoralized, their  formations broken by an unceasing rain of arrows, or tricked into leaving their lines  in an effort to pursue the horsemen. The Mongols did not invent these techniques,  but they did apply them at a scale beyond the mightiest of previous steppe empires, adapting  them as necessary for a variety of situations.

A quick word from our sponsor today! Jurassic  Monster World is a new cool free to play multi-player game that allows you to tame and  command dozens of blood-thirsty metal-plated monsters ready to destroy anyone on their path  to victory! It’s Available on both Appstore and Google Play, so check it out now!

The game  is set in one of our most favorite settings - Post-Apocalypse: after a global catastrophe,  dinosaurs have repopulated the planet, survivors must tame them and wage bloody battles to control  the dwindling resources. You use dinos to fight the opposing teams and get rewards for that! There  are dozens of monsters, both ground and airborne, both historical and cybernetically modified. 

A large choice of weapons and equipment allows the players to turn their dinos into full metal  monsters and the game is constantly updated with tweaks and new features! We like this game for  the variety of dinos that makes it tactically deep and the fact that you need real skill to  win! You can find me under the nickname RedPhoenix in the game.

Support our channel and  go to the video description, click on the special links and you will get 1 pilot, 150,000 e-cells,  and 150 d-crystals as a welcome pack for free! Mongolian and steppe nomadic army tactics evolved  out of the routines of daily life. Each warrior on horseback had several remounts, armed with  two or more bows and several quivers of arrows.

This was the bare minimum to be a combatant, and  effective enough for most situations. Riding a horse from their earliest years and learning to  draw and hunt with a bow from almost as early, by adulthood every Mongol had a lifetime of  experience shooting from horseback. Nearly every medieval writer comments on the  Mongols’ ensuing hardiness and stamina; the Mongols were able to endure hardship  that made the armies of the sedentary world buckle.

Peerless archers and expert riders,  any commander would be a fool to not take advantage of such an army. The Mongol army  was not trained, as much as it was grown. The basic tactics evolved out of two tools:  excellent bows and a massive supply of horses.

Every Mongol was armed with a composite recurve  bow which they made themselves. Incredibly powerful, these bows could send arrows immense  distances. One stone inscription from early 13th century Mongolia records that Chinggis  Khan’s nephew Yisungge sent an arrow almost 530 metres.

This was likely a specially  made light arrow designed for distance, and lacked any meaningful penetrative power at that  range. Actual effective combat range is debated; Historian Timothy May suggests it was anything  under 170 metres, while John Masson Smith Jr. puts 30 metres as the optimum distance to maximize  accuracy and penetration.

Regardless of the range, medieval authors consistently describe the  Mongols as frighteningly accurate with their bows. In the Caucasus, where contact was easily made  with several Turkic peoples proficient in horse archery, one Armenian chronicler specifically  designated the Mongols as the Nation of Archers. Alongside the power of their bows, the horse was  the other vital component of Mongolian tactics.

Every nomad of the great Eurasian steppe rode a  horse, where vast grasslands provided the ideal environment for rearing them. The Mongol horse  is smaller than those of sedentary regions, weighing under 300 kg and rarely more than  14 hands or 142 cm high at the withers [the shoulders]. Unlike the grain and fodder fed  horses of China, Europe or the Islamic world, the Mongolian horses lived almost exclusively  off of the abundant grasses of the steppe.

So prime is this grassland that even today  Mongolia’s horses outnumber the country’s humans, and account for over 6% of the world’s horse  population. When on campaign each rider brought 5 or more horses with him, riding one a day and  letting it rest for the following days while he rode the others. Like their riders, the Mongolian  horses were hardy, surviving in conditions deadly for larger breeds.

Sure footed, well  trained, and obedient, though not the fastest, the Mongolian horse was a reliable platform for  battle. Campaigning and entering battle with strings of remounts provided the Mongols strategic  opportunities unavailable to their enemies. This proficiency with a bow and easy  access to great quantities of horses were the building blocks of the  Mongols’ deadliness in battle.

Usually facing off against armies that could not  amass any comparative number of horses or skilled bowmen, the Mongols enjoyed far greater striking  power and mobility, their tactics maximizing this advantage and minimizing the need for  prolonged close quarter contact with the enemy. Perhaps the most recognizable manifestation of  this was the caracole, what historian Timothy May believes is meant by the shi’uchi, ‘chisel’ attack  mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. Waves of Mongols, organized in their decimal  units -arban, jaghun or even minggan - would ride towards the enemy, shooting arrows as they  approached.

At a set distance -perhaps the 30 metres or less suggested by John Masson Smith-  the wave would pull away. As this wave fell back, the riders would turn in the saddle and fire  backwards, the famous ‘Parthian shot. ’ With one wave falling back out of range and to safety  to rest men and grab remounts, another wave advanced and carried out the same process,  resulting in a continuous barrage of arrows.

To do this successfully is tremendously difficult.  It requires extensive training to not result in hundreds of men and horses crashing into each  other or sending arrows into each other’s backs. In order to function smoothly, each wave  needs to know when the other is advancing or falling back and move accordingly, so  as to not obstruct the forthcoming waves.

When operating effectively, it was extraordinarily  effective. For those subject to the Mongol caracole, it was an immense psychological  attack alongside the storm of arrows. By nature, humans do not generally enjoy  having large groups of horses run towards them- having it occur repeatedly brings on the  additional anxiety of not knowing which wave might not turn away but ride directly into  their lines.

All the while, arrows with shocking accuracy and power pick away at the other men in  the line, whittling down both numbers and resolve. To someone on foot, the successive waves  of horsemen would be impossible to count, appearing endless. Even well trained men would  struggle to fight their instincts to flee or charge out at the enemy in anger, both  options aligning exactly with Mongol desires.

If the enemy began to rout under the arrow  fire, then instead of pulling back one wave would instead charge into the enemy, falling  upon fleeing men and taking advantage of the opening in the line. An enemy army in the  midst of flight would be unable to resist, allowing the Mongols to  ride them down much easier. If instead the enemy, especially proud cavalrymen,  attempted to charge the Mongol caracole, then this allowed the Mongols to employ the favourite ploy  of all steppe warriors: the feigned retreat.

A feigned retreat is easy enough on paper but  difficult to execute in practice. When an enemy ran after the Mongols, the Mongols would appear to  flee, panicked by the charge of the very brave and well armoured enemy horsemen. There was a real  danger of the feigned rout turning into a real one if the enemy horsemen reached the Mongols; their  often superior armour and training would allow them to wreak havoc on more lightly armoured  Mongols.

If orchestrated properly however, the fleeing Mongols took their pursuers to  ground of their choosing, where other Mongol units waited in preparation. Archers picked off  the isolated enemy, and heavy cavalry delivered the final blow to the stragglers. If this had  been all the enemy cavalry, the Mongols could then easily surround the surviving infantry  and pick them off at their leisure.

The feigned retreat was employed again and  again across Eurasia; against fortresses, where garrisons were tricked into coming out  from their walls to chase fleeing nomads; to epic, nine day pursuits. The most famous  was that which Subutai employed against the Rus’ and Qipchaq at the Kalka River. Perhaps not  quite the master plan it is often presented as, Subutai may have been genuinely  fleeing before the Rus’ and Qipchaq following the death of his friend and  mentor Jebe while scouting the enemy army, as suggested in a recent article by historian  Stephen Pow.

Pursued across the steppe, Subutai saw the enemy formation lose structure, the faster  Cuman-Qipchaqs gaining ahead of their Rus’ allies. Turning back to face them, on the Kalka River  Subutai brought the full might of his army against only a portion of the enemy- first the  Qipchap, who broke and ran into the oncoming Rus’. With their advance halted, Mongol arrows  now fell upon them.

Order was lost, the Rus’ began to flee, and Subutai carried  the day, annihilating the enemy army. In the event that the enemy did not pursue  or rout, but instead held their position in orderly formation, the Mongols had another option;  simply moving on. More mobile than their enemies and always fighting in enemy territory,  the Mongols could pull away and ravage the surrounding countryside, disheartening the  enemy army by slaughtering the local population, filling the sky with the smoke of burning homes,  or cutting off enemy access to water or resources.

Defections and panic set in as refugees fled  to the army with stories of Mongol brutality. A stationary foe or one holding up in a wagon  fort as the Hungarians did at Mohi in 1241, was soon trapped in a nerge, a Mongolian hunting  circle. Cordoning off the area, the Mongols would surround and gradually close in on the foe,  cutting off avenues of escape and driving panicked villages towards the target.

At the strategic  level or while hunting, strict orders allowed nothing to leave the circle alive. But on the  tactical level, the nerge had a devious trick. A gap would be left in the steadily closing circle,  apparently overlooked by the overeager Mongols.

To those on foot, it seemed a silver lining.  The Mongols understood the psychology of men and animals; when cornered with nowhere to run,  they fight to the death. Provided a means to see another day, either tiger or man will seize  the chance to live.

And by doing so, they did exactly what the Mongols wanted. At Mohi, when  the Hungarians fled through the gap in the line, the Mongols formed up beside the fleeing enemy,  whose formation and sense to resist was long since abandoned. Once the foe was suitably bedraggled  and exhausted, only then did the Mongols fall on them, minimizing harm to themselves but  ensuring few, if any, escaped their clutches.

Contrary to some depictions, heavy cavalry  was used by the Mongols, though Asian cavalry differed from the heavy shock lancers  imagined in Europe when the term is mentioned. For the Mongols, their own heavy  armoured cavalry was a minority, more usually utilizing subject peoples in this  role. For the majority of Asian heavy cavalry, from China, Iran, and the Turkic and Mongolian  tribes of Central Asia, the primary weapon of heavy cavalry was still the bow, even when  both horse and rider were fully armoured.

In the steppe, heavy armour was harder to procure  with limited access to smiths and raw materials. The more common armour varieties reflected  this, created from materials the Mongols had ready access to: felt and leather. Perhaps  the most well known was the hatanga del, a sort of thick, gambeson-like coat of thickly  layered felt.

Increasingly over the 13th century, the hatanga was secured with metal  plates within it for a brigandine. For man and horse protection laminar was favoured,  long layered bands of leather laced together. The most expensive was lamellar, consisting of  individual metal plates sewn together in rows.

Flexible, the armour was designed to fold over  the legs while on horseback, though the arms and hands were left exposed to not encumber usage of  the bow. The Mongols considered lamellar better protection against arrows than maille, as well as  easier for nomads to both produce and maintain. Mongolian heavy cavalry was intended to be a  decisive finishing blow against enemies weakened by arrow fire or drawn into feigned retreats,  rather than engage in any sort of prolonged melee.

With their smaller horses, the Mongols had  to be careful to not overexert the animals, especially when fully armoured, and heavy  cavalry charges were likely limited affairs in the early days of the conquests. As more  subject peoples were added to the Mongol army, their own heavy cavalry could take on these  vulnerable close quarter roles, leaving the valuable Mongolian and Turkic horse archers  safe to pick off the enemy from a distance. While fighting in China, Khitan, Jurchen and  Tangut heavy cavalry were regularly employed by the Mongols, while in the Ilkhanate,  Armenian and Georgian heavy cavalry were at the forefront of the Mongol wars in the  region, particularly against the Mamluks.

For extraordinary situations, the  Mongols applied unorthodox tactics. At Mohi in 1241, the initial effort to storm  the bridge was accompanied by Subutai attempting to build a bridge further downriver in  an effort to flank the Hungarian army. When the Hungarians successfully resisted  the attempt to force the bridge, the Mongols pulled back, and early the following morning,  brought up catapults and “shelled” the guards left on the Hungarian side of the bridge.

This  was quickly followed up with a cavalry charge. The bridge over the Sajo River was  taken and the Hungarian camp encircled. While fighting off a Burmese invasion  into Mongol controlled Yunnan in 1277, the sight and scent of the Burmese elephants  frightened the Mongol horses.

The Mongol commander quickly ordered his men to the treeline to  tie them to the tree trunks. Dismounted, the Mongols advanced on foot and sent volleys of  arrows into the elephants. Under the incessant barrage the elephants panicked, crashing through  the Burmese lines before leaving the battlefield.

While part of the Mongol force continued providing  covering fire, detachments filed back to the trees to remount their horses, continuing in  this order until they were all on horseback. Where the Mongols’ tactical ability failed them  was in environments too unsuited to cavalry maneuvers- the humid jungles of southeastern  Asia perhaps the greatest example of this. The conquest of the Song Dynasty was only  completed with the massive conscription of Chinese soldiers and creation of a fleet to challenge  the Song on the vital rivers of south China.

In Syria, historians like John Masson  Smith have argued the region lacked the pasture capacity to provide for the vast horse  herds the Mongols liked to bring with them, forcing them to advance with smaller  forces the Mamluks could overcome. In straight tactical engagements, the Mongols  performed their poorest against those who fought in similar fashion to themselves. Chinggis Khan’s  only defeats were against other tribes of the Mongolian steppe, and it seems he considered  the nomadic Turks of the western steppe, the Cuman-Qipchaqs, to be the greatest  single foe against Mongol expansion.

The Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and the Sultanate  of Delhi both employed Turkic horse archers, often Cuman-Qipchaps bought as slaves,  to great effect against the Mongols. Essentially, these were armies which could  recognize feigned retreats and nomadic ploys, and force the Mongols into engagements which  minimized their superiority in horse numbers. We will continue to explore the  Mongol army in future videos, so please make sure you’ve subscribed  and pressed the bell button.

Please, consider liking, commenting, and sharing -  it helps immensely. Our videos would be impossible without our kind patrons and youtube channel  members, whose ranks you can join via the links in the description to know our schedule, get  early access to our videos, access our discord, and much more. This is the Kings and Generals  channel, and we will catch you on the next one.