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Here's some comparisons between different bows and armors: http://www.scribd.com/doc/32932734/The-Land-Forces-of-Byzantium-in-the-10th-Century Starts from page 11. It's about Byzantine Army in the 10th century, and there's long digression about bows. tldr: Sources differ, but going by the lower figure: bows are effective against mail up to 100m, potentially lethal against unarmored humans up to 200m and wounding up to 300m. For horse-bows the ranges are halved. Bows that are good for shooting arrows to long distance aren't good at penetrating armor.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:10
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Nektu posted:Shooting a bow while everything is moving is possible (I did many years of archery and even tried my luck in horse archery some times - and that may get more once my own horse finally has enough training to use her for shooting). It's not optimal, it requires lots of practice and your accuracy will suck, but it is possible. It's certainly possible to do. The Japanese have done it ritually since the 9th century. But, as you'll note from the video (and there are plenty more examples online, if you enjoyed this one), it's difficult as hell, and they're shooting at targets only 3-5 feet away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf3QRc_OShE
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Sep 27, 2013 22:37
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Horse archers are as legit as it gets, it's just one of those things where you have to go directly from the womb to the saddle to be very proficient at it. Mongol archers were flinging them arrows hundreds of yards and were apparently accurate enough that the generals would order them to only target enemy riders so they could take the unscathed horses after the battle. Shooting a bow while jogging is just stupid.
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Sep 27, 2013 23:52
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One useful thing to know about horsearchery is, that it is harder to draw a bow on horseback. There are enough people around who practice it, who are able to tell you that. The average drawweight in use today will be around 30-50#. Back then the men picked and trained for that with these bows were nothing short of incredibly strong athletes, who mostly started from very young age. You can look for the guys shooting warbows on youtube, but you will not find anything about guys shooting such heavy bows from horseback with a thumbring. Short bows are prefered for horse archery. The effective range is shorter, because of the reasons I gave first about lighter arrows. You're on a horse and pretty mobile and meant to harrass the enemy line where the opportunity arises. I can't belive we're talking about the point if horse archery is legit or the effectivity of such ranged weapons when not even the chinese found a sure formula to defeat such armies of mounted archers. They did use large formations of crossbowmen and pikes to some effect, but whenever large groups of these guys come together, it tends to turn out very bad for the other side. Are we now also ignoring what the english did at Crécy or Agincourt? With the right tactics, those weapons are no joke or percussive instruments. Infantry bows are larger, for turkish bows that means sizes up to 54" nock to nock - that is reasonble if you consider the lesser mobility and the need for more power at a larger range to compensate. Like I stated before, the tartar-type bow was also in use in the ottoman army, and there are many bows in the museum at Karlsruhe that will appear to be hybrids of both. In the link that Hogge Wild gave, there is also the kinetic energy needed to defeat mail and padding at page 17. Power Khan fucked around with this message at 08:14 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 08:12
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There was a dude in the 11th century who wrecked every army to speak of between China and Italy and controlled the largest empire in history, mostly due to having hundreds of thousands of extremely skilled horse archers under his command. Railtus can you Deadliest Warrior some poo poo for me and pit an archer heavy English army from the HYW against Genghis and a couple tumans? On flat ground on a sunny day at noon. I'm going to have to go with the English just because any charge the Mongols make puts them in the meatgrinder zone of the longbowmen.
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Sep 28, 2013 11:11
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Sexgun Rasputin posted:There was a dude in the 11th century who wrecked every army to speak of between China and Italy and controlled the largest empire in history, mostly due to having hundreds of thousands of extremely skilled horse archers under his command. 
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Sep 28, 2013 11:15
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Sexgun Rasputin posted:Railtus can you Deadliest Warrior some poo poo for me and pit an archer heavy English army from the HYW against Genghis and a couple tumans? On flat ground on a sunny day at noon. Flat ground on a sunny day would give cavalry a pretty hideous advantage.
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Sep 28, 2013 11:25
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The Mongols fought on a strategic scale. They were out of the English army's league. Probably what would have happened is the Mongols would have pretended to retreat 80 kilometers or so, pulled the English army into pre-sighted artillery, cut off their line of supply, disordered them with smoke generators, gunpowder bomb artillery, and successive hit-and-run attacks until they broke and ran, then let them route. Then they would follow the routing soldiers until they were dropping from exhaustion and finally start the slaughter. This exact scenario happened to the Russians, and a couple decades later happened to two European armies with days of each other. Every pitched battle the Europeans fought with Subutai's army turned into a one-sided massacre. I doubt the English would have fared better. The Hungarians gave the best accounting of themselves and they still came away with 80% casualties, holding a river crossing. Let that sink in for a second. Opposed crossings are not usually one-sided massacres for the defending side. It's not just "the Mongols" though, that's dehumanizing. This is the Mongols under Subutai, a strategic genius who deserves to be on the list of greatest generals in history. This is a man who lead his army thousands of miles into unknown territory, on the insane dual mission of finding out who lived there and then conquering them, routinely fought outnumbered 5:1, delivered not only victory but complete and utter dominance, and brought most of his men home to tell about it, not once but twice. That takes genius, not only tactical but strategic and diplomatic. This is the guy who took 20,000 men through the Caucasus mountains in winter, came down to find every army in the area united against him, convinced them to go home and then killed all of them. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 11:54
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HEGEL CURES THESES posted:Wow, that sounds sick nasty. Obdicut, have you heard of this dude? He sounds like someone you'd be into I think someone bought me this red text because they thought it was making fun of me, but it's pretty bad-rear end. Certainly an attention-grabber. I'm not even sure what the argument is right now. Whether horse-archer arrows or other arrows could penetrate various kinds of armor is something testable. I know the Mongols had heavier arrows for armor-penetration, but I think their usual tactic against a heavily-armored dude was getting him to tire his horse out, after which I dunno, something. That's kind of an interesting point, actually, Mongols are often shown as leading off heavy cavalry and then killing them after separating them from the main army, but there's not really great descriptions of how this happened. I do agree that metal armor needs to always be tested with the fabric component; the Mongols themselves used silk as an important part of their armor, and it worked especially well against arrows.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:06
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I thought the Mongols flanked the heavy cavalry with their nimble little mares and shot them in their unarmored behinds.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:08
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Sexgun Rasputin posted:I thought the Mongols flanked the heavy cavalry with their nimble little mares and shot them in their unarmored behinds. They definitely did kill the horses some of the time, but then you've got a heavily-armored dude on foot. You still have to kill him. There's a lot of blank claims that the Mongols then ran them down with lances, which would indicate they weren't wasting arrows on a heavily-armored guy, but I haven't really seen any primary sources for that claim. It does seem pretty likely, though.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:15
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Obdicut posted:That's kind of an interesting point, actually, Mongols are often shown as leading off heavy cavalry and then killing them after separating them from the main army, but there's not really great descriptions of how this happened. Thirst? From what I've seen, Subutai really was operating on another level from his opponents. He didn't fight pitched battles so much as show up to what other people thought were pitched battles and then goad them into an elaborate deathtrap. When your opponent's main body is 10 miles from the baggage train, and the heavy cavalry is 2 miles from the main body, and their mounts are dead and they're cut off and can't see how to go back anyway because you put up a smokescreen, you don't need to shoot at them. They're beaten.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:24
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Supposedly, that story about the mongols riding on small and nimble horses like the ones you see in documentaries is a nice story. Big and strong horses for the heavy cavalry and horse archers. Mongol heavy cavalry is no joke. Mad Max doesn't ride to war on a bicycle.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:38
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InspectorBloor posted:Supposedly, that story about the mongols riding on small and nimble horses like the ones you see in documentaries is a nice story. Big and strong horses for the heavy cavalry and horse archers. Mongol heavy cavalry is no joke. Mad Max doesn't ride to war on a bicycle. Mongolian horses are small as a breed. Do you have something showing that they used larger horses for the heavy cavalry? It makes intuitive sense, but are you saying they selected the largest Mongolian horses, that they used different, larger breeds for their heavy cavalry, or something else? 
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Sep 28, 2013 12:49
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That guy's wearing clown shoes.
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Sep 28, 2013 12:57
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Hog vs. dirtbike would be slightly more apt if we're talking about the difference between the steppe horses and the massive armored beasts the Russians rode. I thought Mongols preferred mares because they could drink their blood and milk to reduce or eliminate the need for supply lines.
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Sep 28, 2013 13:04
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Looking for the literature, but I'm half on the way home and then off for some time. Just recall that the mongols picked larger horses for the heavy cavalry. Probably captured, maybe bred. I don't think I ever heard of heavy cavalry anywhere that sported small mounts like the bred that's now representative for mongol horses. Regarding antiquity, it is said that breds like the Nisean horse made heavy cavalry like cataphracts possible. Nice bike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02IG9Sb8HTM e: Yup, mares.
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Sep 28, 2013 13:10
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InspectorBloor posted:Looking for the literature, but I'm half on the way home and then off for some time. Just recall that the mongols picked larger horses for the heavy cavalry. Probably captured, maybe bred. I don't think I ever heard of heavy cavalry anywhere that sported small mounts like the bred that's now representative for mongol horses. Regarding antiquity, it is said that breds like the Nisean horse made heavy cavalry like cataphracts possible. One thing that I think is getting confused here is that the Mongols traveled with a gigantic horse herd, with lots of remounts. I have never seen a primary source that asserted the battle mounts were mostly mares, but they obviously had a bunch of mares along with them in the large herd. I don't agree that Mongols were actually divided into 'heavy' and 'light' cavalry, I think that's more of a western distinction and is more about tactics and doctrine than it is equipment. If you're going to assert that the Mongols had regularized 'heavy' cavalry mounted on larger horses, then it'd be nice to get a primary source for this. It'd require Mongols to acquire very different horses than they were used to and practice riding them; I think that possibly 'Mongol' units of heavy cavalry were allied or subjugated groups. It's possible, but I think a more likely explanation is that since Mongol 'heavy' cavalry didn't tend to charge braced units or other cavalry in the same way that European 'heavy' cavalry did, there's no need for them to have much bigger mounts than 'ordinary' Mongol cavalry. Mongolian horses are small, but strong and powerful and I don't think there's sufficient reason to believe that Mongols has units of much heavier and larger horses. The breed now known as Mongolian horse is strongly believed to be very similar to the Mongol horse herds of Ghengis's day, and really it'd require an extraordinary explanation for why they wouldn't be, since only 900 years has passed since then.
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Sep 28, 2013 14:33
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InspectorBloor posted:"We know that was not the case"? From where would you know that? A youtube video, where guys shoot a longbow and a corresponding war arrow with platecutter tip at mail with padding? Or can you give us literature to back that up, where they lay out the setup and material and test both types of equipment? It's documented that both types pierced even plate with bodkin tips. The turkish arrow is better at piercing it because it's faster and is less subjected to friction when entering the material, because of the barrel taper in front (with diameter of the shaft of around 6mm). I'm sure you have no problem googling the formula for kinetic energy and realizing why increased velocity is better than increased mass. Fyi, an arrow of 600grain, shot from am bow of 150# will provide 118J. I'm not sure that I'd want to be anywhere these things wearing mail or plate. If you still point to that experiment, you'll surely realize that the setup is not the same. I don't know what gave you the impression I was using a youtube video as a source when I was expressly critical of reconstructive testing on the very same page that you made this post. As for sources, you would be well served to read Dan Howard's article "Mail: Unchained" which has been referred to by Railtus on the previous page, and by myself earlier in this thread. Here is the link: http://www.myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html Of particular interest in Howard's article is Joinville's account of Walter of Chatillon being shot with Mamluk arrows. The Munyatu'l-Guzat, an Arabic military manual with heavy Kipchak-Mamluk additions, describes shooting short arrows and the use of an arrow guide for this purpose. Archaeological excavations from the castle of Arsuf show the Mamluks used bodkin arrowheads seemingly similar to the Turkish ones you show, and they used cedar and pine shafts, which are noticeably less dense than the ash shafts used with longbows. Russ Mitchell, in his article 'Archery vs. Mail' notes that it was these kinds of short arrows that likely wounded Joinville himself in 5 places, but not so badly that he could not continue to fight. We can also turn to earlier primary sources dealing with the Seljuk Turks. At the siege of Antioch in 1097-98, Peter of Tudebode notes quote:At this time some of the besieged climbed a gate above us and rained arrows into the camp of Bohemond. In the course of this action one woman lay dead from the wound of a speedy arrow. We can also look earlier, at the Battle of Dorylaeum in 1097 which lasted six hours overall, and for the majority of it saw the contingent of Bohemond of Taranto under volleys of Seljuk arrows. From the Gesta Francorum: quote:But after this was all done, the Turks were already encircling us on all sides, slashing, hurling, piercing, and shooting far and wide in wondrous fashion. Though we could not resist them, nor withstand the press of so great an enemy, yet we (held out) there together. Further, the majority of the Franks' casualties were among the unarmoured noncombatants, rather than the knights who formed the main fighting front. The one account of the Battle of Nicopolis I have access to is, unfortunately, not much use for analysis. The Turks, according to its author, aimed only at horses. If you could give me your source for your claim of a French knight 'riveted to his helmet', however, I'd be interested in reading it. One last thing: kinetic energy is valuable for armour piercing, but what matters more for penetrating beyond an initial impact is momentum. As Russ Mitchell relates in the aforementioned article, quote:shot by an identical bow, the lighter, faster arrow has greater kinetic energy and should do a better job penetrating armor, but cause relatively shallower wounds than a heavier, higher-momentum that does manage to penetrate armor. I simply cannot believe mail was useless to Turkish arrows, and have provided ample evidence that it was not. It will take more than vague references from some self-published wank piece to convince me otherwise. quote:What about the quote that just states "metal", and yea, it's most likely brass, as the example for wood would suggest? What of it? It's good at shooting holes in things and people. Are you so fussy that you don't enjoy a little theatrality? I have no idea what you're asking with that first question. Please rephrase it. As for the second question, you were using the bell as proof of the power of Turkish archery. My point is that this feat is not indicative of an especially powerful arrow shot. Sexgun Rasputin posted:Horse archers are as legit as it gets, it's just one of those things where you have to go directly from the womb to the saddle to be very proficient at it. Mongol archers were flinging them arrows hundreds of yards and were apparently accurate enough that the generals would order them to only target enemy riders so they could take the unscathed horses after the battle. Like I said, shooting for the face was an acknowledged tactic, and I see no reason why this should only apply to Western bowmen. Strickland devotes a subchapter to it in The Great Warbow. Obdicut posted:I do agree that metal armor needs to always be tested with the fabric component; the Mongols themselves used silk as an important part of their armor, and it worked especially well against arrows. This is absolutely correct unfortunately there have been no adequate tests with period-correct mail, period-correct textile backing. Even the type of wool used to make a garment is important. Arglebargle III posted:The Mongols fought on a strategic scale. They were out of the English army's league. Probably what would have happened is the Mongols would have pretended to retreat 80 kilometers or so, pulled the English army into pre-sighted artillery, cut off their line of supply, disordered them with smoke generators, gunpowder bomb artillery, and successive hit-and-run attacks until they broke and ran, then let them route. Then they would follow the routing soldiers until they were dropping from exhaustion and finally start the slaughter. This exact scenario happened to the Russians, and a couple decades later happened to two European armies with days of each other. Every pitched battle the Europeans fought with Subutai's army turned into a one-sided massacre. I doubt the English would have fared better. The English under Edward III and his successors explicitly tried to fight defensive engagements- that is the key thread from Halidon Hill to 1453, and even beyond. That sort of operational theme means your theory is rather unlikely. Also, 'they fought on a strategic scale' is a useless truism. Everyone fights on a strategic scale. The regulars already know my feelings on the Mongols, but to sum it up: a common narrative is that Ogedei's death is saved all of Europe from Mongol domination, and that cannot be said with anything approaching certainty. InspectorBloor posted:In the link that Hogge Wild gave, there is also the kinetic energy needed to defeat mail and padding at page 17. That test is from Alan Williams' Knight and the Blast Furnace, and it is not a good one. As I mention above, as well, kinetic energy can only tell you so much. However, as I have said multiple times now, I do not rely on reconstructive tests for my proofs.
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Sep 28, 2013 14:51
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Hogge Wild posted:Here's some comparisons between different bows and armors: http://www.scribd.com/doc/32932734/The-Land-Forces-of-Byzantium-in-the-10th-Century I read it and I’m still not sure how he comes to the 100m conclusion. The main test I see is mail piercing being unlikely past 50m even when using a very powerful bow. There are a few cases where he notes people claiming implausibly high numbers, but with the exception of the Williams test there is little indication of what the evidence is for the claims about mail. Even accepting 50m as a figure, to me it raises the question what stops cavalry charges from just being routinely shot down by archers on the way in. I think there is definitely more going on than is being considered here. Sexgun Rasputin posted:There was a dude in the 11th century who wrecked every army to speak of between China and Italy and controlled the largest empire in history, mostly due to having hundreds of thousands of extremely skilled horse archers under his command. The situation you describe sounds like a mix of Verneuil & Patay. In Verneuil the English archers were quickly scattered by French cavalry (though with not too many dead longbowmen and the English men-at-arms drove off the French) and at Patay a relatively small French cavalry force quickly crushed an English army. The HYW English would have a technological advantage, so it is possible that the Mongol heavy cavalry would not be as well armoured, although the general trend I see is the English did not do well against armoured cavalry unless they were fighting from a prepared defensive position. However, things like this is what makes me lean towards armour on the armour vs arrows debate. If it was feasible or reliable to shoot down armoured cavalry during a charge then it would be less common for a cavalry charge to defeat archers. At Mohi, the Mongols used fire weapons on the Hungarian camp rather than try to assault it directly, and just attacked the people escaping from the fire and smoke rather than fight them. I am not sure how well it would work on the English fields of stakes if at all, though. If the English are dug in, as they preferred during the HYW, then the Mongols could not assault their camp directly. On the other hand, without their field fortifications the English are vulnerable. This raises the question of whether the Mongols need to launch an attack right now, or whether they can fall back and attack at another angle or cut off the English supply lines. My feeling is artillery would play an important role: either for the English as a way of provoking the Mongols into making an attack, or for the Mongols in disrupting the English defences. The Mongol horse archers would probably not be that important for this scenario. If this specific Mongol army was overly dependent on the horse archers then I would give the advantage to the English, but I think it is important to note that Mongols had far more than horse archers in their toolbox.
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Sep 28, 2013 15:19
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This horse archer talk brings to mind a question that maybe someone in this thread can answer: What was the state of Chinese fortification at the start of the 13th century? I mean that both systematically and in relation to the actual layout and defensive measures of particular fortifications. China is somewhere I know almost nothing about.
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Sep 28, 2013 15:42
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This horse archer talk brings to mind a question that maybe someone in this thread can answer: What was the state of Chinese fortification at the start of the 13th century? I mean that both systematically and in relation to the actual layout and defensive measures of particular fortifications. China is somewhere I know almost nothing about. The short answer is 'varied', and it depends what you mean by the state of them. Kaifeng, for example, had triple city walls that were extremely well-made, but like any other massive city they were hard to man along the entirety, and the city was extremely flammable. In terms of actual castles, they didn't have many, they tended to just have a heavily fortified section of the city, which we'd identify as a 'castle'. What 'castles' they did have tended to be along rivers, to control the river traffic. Most Chinese fortifications were for cities and tended to be massive but almost always had parts of the city outside the walls. This made them especially vulnerable to Mongol tactics of creating a bunch of refugees, who would flood into the city and cause a logistics crisis, and Mongols often set a bunch of fires in the areas of the city outside to cause confusion and cover the areas where the Mongols were actually breaching. There's not a lot of great first-hand descriptions of the fortifications as they existed in that time period, and a lot of the descriptions are disparaging because they, well, failed, and it's an area that could definitely use more research. But put shortly, the attitude was similar to European fortifications: hole up in there and wait for the enemy army to run into logistics problems/have an ally march to your aid. This didn't really work on the Mongols because the Mongols (or Jurchen) because the Mongols enjoyed a superior and less-stressed logistics situation and were usually either keeping the field armies busy elsewhere or actively ambushing them on their way to relieve the cities. The Mongols improved their anti-city seige tactics greatly during their China campaigns, at first ignoring the cities, then realizing they had to reduce them and coming up with a wide variety of tactics and strategies to use against them. Though it focuses more on the weapons than the fortifications, the pretty-pictures Osprey book is reasonably good: http://www.amazon.com/Siege-Weapons-Far-East-960-1644/dp/1841763403 And there are some good sections in this overall-excellent book about China's general military history: http://www.amazon.com/A-Military-History-Of-China/dp/0813339901
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Sep 28, 2013 16:25
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Railtus posted:I read it and I’m still not sure how he comes to the 100m conclusion. The main test I see is mail piercing being unlikely past 50m even when using a very powerful bow. There are a few cases where he notes people claiming implausibly high numbers, but with the exception of the Williams test there is little indication of what the evidence is for the claims about mail. If bows start to penetrate armors only at close ranges, then the archers can't inflict great casualties at the charging armored cavalry. Weren't the great English victories in the HYW won on muddy fields where the cavalry couldn't charge properly? Mongol horse-archers carried also longer bows for dismounted use, and their cavalry was a mix of archers and lancers. So as you say, they had lots of tools.
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Sep 28, 2013 16:33
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Rodrigo Diaz posted:This horse archer talk brings to mind a question that maybe someone in this thread can answer: What was the state of Chinese fortification at the start of the 13th century? I mean that both systematically and in relation to the actual layout and defensive measures of particular fortifications. China is somewhere I know almost nothing about. A little after when you asked, but the Ming built this old thing in the 14th century.* Beginning of the 13th century is the Yuan Dynasty, who basically were just Mongols and kept their power way up North of the Changcheng, and, to my knowledge, didn't give any fucks about fortifications. *Okay, it'd been around since the Spring and Autumn Period, yeah, but it was mostly rammed earth and bullshit. The Ming made it look like what it looks like now.
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Sep 28, 2013 16:44
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Hogge Wild posted:If bows start to penetrate armors only at close ranges, then the archers can't inflict great casualties at the charging armored cavalry. Weren't the great English victories in the HYW won on muddy fields where the cavalry couldn't charge properly? Yes and no; not muddy fields specifically (though it was the case at Agincourt), but terrain features and field fortifications were a major part of English successes in the HYW. 50 yards is half the length of a soccer pitch though. That is still a fair distance to cover without being shot at. Even on horseback, I would expect archers to be able to shoot at least once, and in a large group I would expect most of the arrows to hit somebody even if not the intended target. I know there are shields as well, but I would still expect archers to inflict at least a few more casualties before the charge struck. It could be as simple as the angle; maybe the shield covering the centre-mass could mean most arrows that strike are relatively glancing hits that the armour can deflect rather than absorb?
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Sep 28, 2013 17:37
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Railtus posted:Yes and no; not muddy fields specifically (though it was the case at Agincourt), but terrain features and field fortifications were a major part of English successes in the HYW. There's a lot of possibilities. Part of it is, I think, that most 'level' ground isn't, it will roll up and down slightly, so aiming is a little more difficult. The rider on the charge, especially a melee rider, will be hunched forward, so their shoulders are what are mostly presented, which are some of the strongest armor. Against missile troops, the archer have to shoot while expecting arrows or facing arrows, which will throw off your aim. The Mongols charged at an angle, rather than straight on, making shots more difficult to aim. I don't know a ton about European cavalry charges, but I assume they tried to flank as much as possible, and while obviously an archer can just rotate on their feet it's still going to block their shot a little and be a bit harder to aim. 20 mph, which is probably a little fast but not a ton, is over 8 meters per second. So you've got 6 seconds to fire once they hit that 50 meter range before the horse is really right on top of you, and you probably want to reserve a second or two for jumping out of the way or flattening yourself. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 17:51
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Yeah, armor penetration was probably only possible if you hit at a good angle. So that's another reason why bows weren't so effective against armored targets at longer ranges.
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Sep 28, 2013 17:53
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Mongolians were awesome, don't get me wrong, but horse archers attacking a fortified longbow contingent would be suicidal. English longbowmen represent everything that the Mongolians had problems with: heavier foot-archers, entrenchment, and rain. A horse bow is half the poundage of a warbow, which leaves the Mongolians significantly out-ranged (and larger targets to boot). Horse archers also need relatively flat and dry terrain to fight effectively, and do poorly attacking walled defenses - whereas Western Europe is characterized by plentiful castles and marshy forests. And finally (and perhaps most importantly) the Mongolian composite bow is reliant upon water-permeable glues to function - the heavy rains and constant humidity of Western Europe would quickly warp and ruin the bows. The weather is why the English preferred their longbows made out of single staves of yew, ash or elm - woods which Mongolians did not have ready access to. It's all well and good to imagine that the Mongols would perform some kind of tactical coup, but the reality is that the odds would be significantly stacked against them. It's precisely why the Mongolian Empire did not attempt to conquer western Europe in the first place, and why horse archery eventually waned throughout the world.
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Sep 28, 2013 18:32
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Kaal posted:It's all well and good to imagine that the Mongols would perform some kind of tactical coup, but the reality is that the odds would be significantly stacked against them. It's precisely why the Mongolian Empire did not attempt to conquer western Europe in the first place, and why horse archery eventually waned throughout the world. I was under the impression that the reason the 'expedition' to Europe stopped was because of a succession crisis. We don't really have to imagine the Mongols doing a tactical coup. It is exactly what they did on the rare occasions they did venture into Europe. It's not that they are mystical superior ubermensch, it is just that when it came to war they were in a higher league than Europe or Asia Minor. Edit. I don't expect horse archers to fair particularly well in Western European forests and swamps but by then they had an absolutely massive empire of resources to call upon.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:03
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Kaal posted:Mongolians were awesome, don't get me wrong, but horse archers attacking a fortified longbow contingent would be suicidal. English longbowmen represent everything that the Mongolians had problems with: heavier foot-archers, entrenchment, and rain. A horse bow is half the poundage of a warbow, which leaves the Mongolians significantly out-ranged (and larger targets to boot). Horse archers also need relatively flat and dry terrain to fight effectively, and do poorly attacking walled defenses - whereas Western Europe is characterized by plentiful castles and marshy forests. Mongols fought against a lot of foot archers both in China and the Middle East, so this is going to need some revision on your part. They also did wonderfully while attacking walled defenses, when they decided to attack them, so again, I'm not sure what your point is there. They didn't, of course, just charge at the walls of the castles with horses and hit at it with a sword, they built siege engines, diverted rivers, used refugees as mass human wave attacks, set fire to the cities, poisoned water supplies, etc. You seem to be combining multiple things here, and imagining a horse archer charging at a castle. Also, Western Europe is not characterized by marshy forests. It has some marshy forests, but it's hardly the majority of the terrain. quote:It's all well and good to imagine that the Mongols would perform some kind of tactical coup, but the reality is that the odds would be significantly stacked against them. It's precisely why the Mongolian Empire did not attempt to conquer western Europe in the first place, and why horse archery eventually waned throughout the world. Horse archery waned throughout the word due to the development of gunpowder and firearms, but remained in use for a surprisingly long time. Is your contention that horse archery declined because of increased use of fortifications? Whether or not the Mongols could perform some sort of tactical coup depends entirely on who is leading the Mongols, as Mongols are not hive-mind creatures with distributed intelligence. Many Mongol generals were awesome tactically and performed many tactical coups, including capturing impressive fortifications like the Ismaili castles, and defeating large numbers of foot archers. Many (later) Mongol generals were of much poorer quality. It's still silly to talk about what the "Mongols" or "Europeans" could have done without being more specific.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:13
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Namarrgon posted:I was under the impression that the reason the 'expedition' to Europe stopped was because of a succession crisis. We don't really have to imagine the Mongols doing a tactical coup. It is exactly what they did on the rare occasions they did venture into Europe. It's not that they are mystical superior ubermensch, it is just that when it came to war they were in a higher league than Europe or Asia Minor. That's painting Europe and Asia Minor with a pretty broad brush. I don't think that steppe peasants or the decaying Kievan Rus' can really be equated with the armies of medieval England. Mongolian expansion continued apace after the succession crisis, but they never attempted to break into Western Europe. The closest they came was when they trounced some field armies of knights in Poland and Hungary.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:18
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Kaal posted:That's painting Europe and Asia Minor with a pretty broad brush. I don't think that steppe peasants or the decaying Kievan Rus' can really be equated with the armies of medieval England. Mongolian expansion continued apace after the succession crisis, but they never attempted to break into Western Europe. The closest they came was when they trounced some field armies of knights in Poland and Hungary. I don't know, defeating the Byzantine Empire around 1265 has to count for something.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:27
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Obdicut posted:Mongols fought against a lot of foot archers both in China and the Middle East, so this is going to need some revision on your part. They also did wonderfully while attacking walled defenses, when they decided to attack them, so again, I'm not sure what your point is there. They didn't, of course, just charge at the walls of the castles with horses and hit at it with a sword, they built siege engines, diverted rivers, used refugees as mass human wave attacks, set fire to the cities, poisoned water supplies, etc. You seem to be combining multiple things here, and imagining a horse archer charging at a castle. Also, Western Europe is not characterized by marshy forests. It has some marshy forests, but it's hardly the majority of the terrain. That's all great, but horse archers aren't doing any of that. If you're expanding the contest to the entire Mongolian army, then you're shifting the goalposts pretty well. What you're describing is simply the tactics of medieval warfare - Europeans did the same things - and in this comparison the Europeans would have had 100 - 200 years of advancement as compared to the Mongols. The differences in equipment quality and design would be pretty stark. Namarrgon posted:I don't know, defeating the Byzantine Empire around 1265 has to count for something. The Mongols plundered Eastern Thrace, and Nogai married the Emperor's daughter. Not really the same thing as "defeating the Byzantine Empire".
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Sep 28, 2013 19:40
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Kaal posted:The Mongols plundered Eastern Thrace, and Nogai married the Emperor's daughter. Not really the same thing as "defeating the Byzantine Empire". In general, when the daughter of a defender marries the attacker (and sends goods as tribute to the attacker afterwards), that is considered surrendering under certain terms. Not all wars are total wars.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:45
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Kaal posted:That's all great, but horse archers aren't doing any of that. If you're expanding the contest to the entire Mongolian army, then you're shifting the goalposts pretty well. What goalposts? What are you talking about? If you're talking about single foot archer vs single foot archer, then the fortification stuff you were saying doesn't make a ton of sense. quote:What you're describing is simply the tactics of medieval warfare - Europeans did the same things - and in this comparison the Europeans would have had 100 - 200 years of advancement as compared to the Mongols. The differences in equipment quality and design would be pretty stark. Not really sure what you mean by the differences in equipment design and quality. Could you explain? The Mongol siege weapons, which are the most relevant to attacking fortifications, were extremely well-designed; in fact, since the Mongols didn't transport them but rebuilt them at the battlefield, they had some pretty nifty designs. What equipment are you referring to, and what is your basis for this temporal advantage the Europeans enjoyed? I'm not really understanding it. quote:The Mongols plundered Eastern Thrace, which was a rural territory controlled by the Byzantine Empire, and Nogai married the Emperor's daughter. Not really the same thing as "defeating the Byzantine Empire". The Mongols conquered many places with fortifications-- Iraq, the Ismali fortresses, Chinese walled cities-- and conquered many places with large foot-archer contingents, and pretending they didn't is pretty silly.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:45
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Yeah, they were quite good at what they did, and it's also nearly impossible to retaliate properly against a nomadic culture since they don't have much in the way of lands worth holding. Unlike settled enemies, where you can go over, kick their rear end and make their wealth your own, any victory against nomads is necessarily transient. Of course, it does mean that after settling down they tended to lose their advantages, so they weren't very good at keeping the lands they hold without being assimilated.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:52
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Namarrgon posted:In general, when the daughter of a defender marries the attacker (and sends goods as tribute to the attacker afterwards), that is considered surrendering under certain terms. Not all wars are total wars. The Mongols didn't take any defended cities, and Byzantium retained control of its territory. They paid the Mongols to stop raiding. As far as Mongolian prowess over organized European armies goes, it's a pretty limited comparison. And Byzantium was relatively weak and decaying itself at the time. Obdicut posted:What goalposts? What are you talking about? If you're talking about single foot archer vs single foot archer, then the fortification stuff you were saying doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't really understand what points you're trying to make, and it really seems like you're more interested in declaring Mongolians to be total badasses than actually, you know, talk about medieval history and combat. So yeah, Mongolians were total badasses.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:55
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veekie posted:Yeah, they were quite good at what they did, and it's also nearly impossible to retaliate properly against a nomadic culture since they don't have much in the way of lands worth holding. Unlike settled enemies, where you can go over, kick their rear end and make their wealth your own, any victory against nomads is necessarily transient. This isn't really relevant, as the Mongols conquered cities and then acted in defense of them. I'd say the much bigger advantage the Mongols enjoyed wasn't specific to nomadic civilizations, but rather that they had extremely low casualties in most of their engagements, which is awesome for all sorts of reasons, and they were highly mobile in the field which allowed them greater freedom of picking their battles, which is kind of similar. But mostly they and their client-states didn't get counter-invaded because they rarely stopped expanding and putting others on the defensive, until the contractions post-succession-squabbles.
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Sep 28, 2013 19:58
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Kaal posted:The Mongols didn't take any defended cities, and Byzantium retained control of its territory. They paid the Mongols to stop raiding. As far as Mongolian prowess over organized European armies goes, it's a pretty limited comparison. And Byzantium was relatively weak and decaying itself at the time. Again, talking about "Mongolians" like that is kind of silly. Subotai was a badass. They had sucky generals too. That's one of my main points: it matters who is charge. I'm not sure why you just bypassed all my other questions to attack this strawman so heartily. There are advantages that the Mongols had regardless of who was in charge, but the use of those advantages and the efficacy of that use differed wildly depending on who was in charge. Once Ghenghis's original officer cohort starts dying/being removed/retiring, a lot of the quality of the Mongol military goes away. Can you explain what equipment differences you feel were present that would give Europeans an advantage? How did this equipment differences manifest in actual Mongol-European combat? And what the 100-200 years of technological development is? One of the advantages that Mongols enjoyed was the application of technology and experts they'd acquired from all over the world (including Europe), and that they adopted these technologies and strategies. No matter who the general was, Likewise, Europeans weren't at a single level of technological development (or ability to use that technology on a large scale). If you're interested in just talking about horse archers charging foot archers in prepared defensive positions, then the foot archer is going to enjoy a significant advantage. That seems a pretty trivial point though.
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Sep 28, 2013 20:05
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An actually good argument against the Mongols defeating the English is that the Mongols never managed to conquer Japan despite trying twice. They actually managed to conquer people with many bows, many castles or annoying terrain successfully. But when they tried to conquer a large island state they failed.
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Sep 28, 2013 20:10
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