WHAT IF.... The Mongols had pushed further into Europe?

ROTFLMAO!!!
150

 

Ahhh... Interestingly enough:

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Baghdad_(1258)

A bit more reference on the Mongols siege weapons:

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Xiangyang

The picture below is a depiction of the Mongol siege of Baghdad - note the siege weapons (which appear to be trebuchets):

 

You've slightly missed the points of my posts Slip. Yes, they'd faced Plate armour and fought seiges before, But Western European plate armour and English castles were the state of the art. Things like the Parthian shot would have been of limited effectiveness, as you needed to be less than 100 feet away to penetrate plate armour (hence dont' fire until you see the whites of their eyes).
Much is made of the technological superiority of the Mongol bow, but the effectiveness of a weapon is dependent on tactics. For example, the French muskets during the Napoleonic wars were superior to ours, but superior tactics and fire discipline proved a much more decisive factor. What the Mongols gained in mobility they lost in cohesion and rate of fire. Solid blocks of English archers firing continuously would have wreacked havoc on a loosely packed, lightly armoured troops. English medieval armies really did blot out the sun (and no-one made jokes about fighting in the shade). The heavy cavalry would then charge from relatively close range while they were still reeling from the barrage.
Perhaps the most important factor though, is that English and French societies were highly militarised, and their armies fairly experienced, and therefore the Mongols would have needed to field a much larger army than they could send that far from home.The Mongols were not invinceable, and lost in Palestine and Japan.

 

No your points aren't lost. I hear ya. I'm just running all the possiblities.
I also don't hold that Mongols were invinceable either - every group has their weaknesses and strengths. My comment on the Parthian shot was not really in relation to a castle siege. Not all battles would have been castle sieges. That's why I pointed out that they had experience with sieges and siege technology and weapons. Of course they wouldn't have tried to attack a castle using a Parthian shot.

I'd be curious to know just how much of the Mongol army outside of Mongolia was actually ethnically Mongolian? If memory serves... they had rather large armies of the peoples they'd conquered. So I'm not all together sure that they'd really have to draw an army all the way from Mongolia.

I'm not sure that you could get a society that was more attune to war... and particularly to guerilla style tactics than the Mongolians. So I'm not so sure that simply because the French and the English were highly militarized and experienced that they have put a stop to the Mongols. It's not as if the Mongols were Johnny come lately to warfare at that point.

 

You need to research the period better, the Mongol Empire lasted from the 1200s to 1400s, we don't even start to see plate armor until the 1400s. The famed English Bowmen had not developed as of yet either.

The defeats both happend under different Khan's in the latter years. In Japan it was because they were struck by a storm before landing on Japanese soil. In Palastine the Mamluks attacked the Mongols on their own terms; normally the Mongols controlled when and where the battle would occur. A tactical disaster for the Mongols.

 

The extravagent full plate that the term evokes stems from 1400+, but plate armour was well in development already by this stage, and knights would have had breast and back, arm plates and a great helm, with either a plated skirt or greaves. The English longbow was already in existence by this stage (actually it's origin is possibly welsh), and Edward the First (1272-1307) was the first English king to instigate compulsory archery practice for English men.
The English archery tactics were already developed by the Scottish campaigns, and were of course a major factor in the English victory at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, so we're well in the Mongol time frame.

 

Sod that, what if the muslims had pressed further into Europe? Thank god for Charles Martel.

 

Let's try to keep this clean. I don't want to see any muslim vs the rest of the world posts. Thanks.

 

Start your own What If thread on that topic... so the rest of us can have the pleasure of watching it locked up.

 

They were also put to fantastic use against the French during the hundred year war. I don't think there is any doubting the effectiveness of the long bow.

 

True, and in rain sodden ground, i assume the mongolian horse based forces would have problems using there much famed mobility against the european forces.

Do we know averege rate of fire when comparing a mongolian bow to the English longbow?

Had the mongolians come across pike/polearm warefare coupled with massed longbow fire before?Do you think that the mongolians would have a soloution to crossbowmen behind pavises?or indeed were the mongolians used to defensive warefare,where could they go on the defensive if they were nearly always mobile?

I think we can assume on the Naval front the europeans would probably hold supperiority,giving posssible routes of supply unavailable to the Mongolians.

I think europe could have been taken but it would be unlikely and it couldnt be held for any reasonable period of time while still holding the eastern fronts in check.I still think religion would hold a good few aces in how it turned out in the end.

 

http://www.britishbattles.com/100-years-war/crecy.htm

Apparently, an English low bow could be fired at the rate of 1 arrow every 5 seconds, whilst a crossbow was apparently about 1 every 2 minutes as it required a complex reloading system.

 

Empirical rates of fire don't mean much here, as the English archers were trained to create constant barrages of arrows, wheres the Mongols were trained to use their bows for mounted skirmishing.

 

Once again, check any resource and it will tell you that:

A) Plates were added to the chain mail haubergeon to protect joints and shins in the late 1300's. It wasn't until the 1400's that we see more plates added eventually culminating in the Maximilian armour of the 1600's.
B) Plate armor was difficult to produce and was not in wide use.


The first real recognition of the English Long bowmen came with Edward I, in 1272-1305, with their most desicive uses coming during the Hundred Years War starting in 1346. The Mongol campaign took place in 1241-1242. There were other invasions attempted after Genghis but they weren't on the same scale as the initial attempt.

 

The Mongols probably could have conqured the whole of Europe, if not completely in battle, then probably by burning crops and what not to break the region internally.


Of course, had the Viking berserkers been there...

 

You're joking right?

At least try to post a historically accurate image.
Not some poorly drawn D&D fan art.

 

Bcullen, you're shifting your frames of referrence to fit your argument at the time
We've gone from the Mongol era to the immeadiate aftermath of the battle of Leignitz.

 

That's probably my mistake for not setting more parameters for this thread/discussion. The thread wasn't specifically the Mongol era... since it's pretty much a What If type thread.

 

The fact is that the Mongols would have needed to field an army probably 50-60,000 strong (3 times the army that went to Poland) simply to beat the French, never mind hold France from a subsequent British invasion or face an Anglo French alliance against the invasion. With the distances involved and the politics of Mongol society it would never happen.

 

That's what the argument is; you are presuming things that either did not exist or that came later in the timeline. So you are complaining about me contradicting you with facts?