Download PDF | Mongol Warrior 1200-1350, By Stephen Turnbull, Wayne Reynolds , Osprey Publishing, 2003.
68 Pages
PREFACE
The Mongol warrior was one of the great success stories of world military histone. Under the leadership of Genghis Klian and his successors Mongol armies conquered much of the known world. They fought on the frozen steppes of Russia, in the wilderness of Palestine, in the jungles of Java and on the great rivers of China. Throughout all this they showed a remarkable ability to adopt, adapt and improve a vast range of militaiy techniques and technology from siege weapons to naval warfare. Yet never did they leave their cultural heritage behind, nor were they ever more feared than when they swooped down upon some unsuspecting sedentary community like a horde of mounted demons.
The popular view has taken this image further to produce a caricature of the Mongol warrior galloping eveiyvvhere, as inseparable from his horse as a centaur. He eats in the saddle, having tenderised his meat between man and horse. He then fights in the saddle, despatching clouds of arrows with great accuracy, and then, when exhausted by these endeavours, he even sleeps in the saddle while his horse carries him towards his next battle.
This may be an exaggeration, but on many occasions this superhuman myth was deliberately fostered by the Mongols to increase terror among their victims. Yet, needless to say, the daily life of a real Mongol warrior in peace and war was a great deal more complex and down to earth than this, and the pages that follow ^vill illustrate the richness of the systems and material culture that grew up to support him.
This Warrior volume tells the stor)^ of the remarkable military organisation of the Mongol warriors that contributed to their success. It also gives full details of their weapons and equipment, their daily lives and the beliefs that motivated them, all based on the latest research. In keeping with the format and the scope of the series I have concentrated on the small-scale experience of the Mongol warrior in peace and in war, rather than larger themes such as the laws and government system of Kliubilai Khan’s Yuan dynasty.
INTRODUCTION: THE MONGOLS AND THEIR EMPIRE
At its height, the world of the Mongol warrior encompassed a large proportion of the known world of the 13th century: Japan, Java, Syria, much of Russia and Eastern Europe had experienced the Mongol warriors as real foes. By contrast. Western Europe heard of them only through travellers’ tales or garbled accounts at second hand. The exception was the Papacy, because once the Mongols were revealed as a serious threat following the battle of Leignitz in Silesia in 1241, successive popes were kept well informed of Mongol conquests by a series of envoys. Their reports allowed consideration to be given to the question of whether to proclaim a crusade against the Mongols or enlist them as allies in the long struggle with Islam. It is from such reports that much of the first-hand detail that follows is taken.
The Mongol warrior in historical context
The daily life in peace and war of the Mongol warrior can only be properly understood in its correct historical context. As the context of the Mongol conquests is an enormous one there is no space here to give anything other than a brief overview of the processes that took place. But two facts are pertinent in grasping the scale of the achievement of the Mongol warrior. First, the Mongol Empire was created within three generations, and second, for the first time in world history, Europe and Asia were both threatened by the same entity. We are therefore looking at a military phenomenon that was rapid both in its growth and its dissemination.
The rise of the Mongols from beingjust one among a number of rival nomadic tribes in Central Asia to becoming a force that shook the world has its origin in the unification brought about by a steppe warrior called Temujin, who then accepted the title of ‘universal ruler’ or ‘Genghis Khan’. He consolidated his position by conquering nearby foes, and the Mongol Empire grew from these operations.
The newly emergent Mongols were faced on all sides by potential enemies, of which the greatest was the Jin Dynasty of China. They had a glorious history, but the Jin had weakened their position by their constant rivalry with the Southern Song Dynasty whom they had failed to supplant completely. The Jin would be Genghis Khan s main enemy, but realising the need to protect his flanks, he first attacked the Xixia of north-west China who became the first foreign people to feel the impact of the Mongol warriors. Genghis Khan’s next major campaign was against the Muslim Khwarazm Empire of Central Asia. All the techniques of Mongol warfare - from cavalry battles to sieges, and from false retreats to the spread of terror - were tried and tested in this dramatic theatre of operations.
One remarkable feature of their early conquests is how quickly Mongol warriors developed expertise in siege warfare - hardly the first characteristic one would expect from steppe nomads! The biggest test of these skills came with the siege of the Jin capital of Zhongdu (Beijing). This victory enabled the Mongols to recruit skilled artisans as auxiliaries, and the Chinese prowess in siege warfare spread still further in Mongol service.
A mixture of siege warfare and mounted activities, chiefly raiding, are found in the Mongol invasions of Korea during the 1230s. A similar pattern may also be noted for Russia and Eastern Europe, though this was on a much larger scale. The battle of the Kalka River in 1223, for example, was a reconnaissance in force that was preceded by a false withdrawal that lasted nine days. The sieges of Russian and European fortified cities also tended to be of much shorter duration than Chinese operations. Kiev and Riazan succumbed after quite brief operations, while the major actions of the Hungarian and Polish campaigns were not sieges at all but two major battles in 1241 at the Sajo River in Hungary and Leignitz in Silesia.
The continuation of the campaign against southern China and the mighty Southern Song Dynasty required the Mongols to develop siege warfare techniques even further. One crucial introduction in 1272 was the first use in China of counterweight trebuchets that could deliver a larger payload than the traction-operated variety. The conquest of the Song also stimulated new expertise in naval techniques that were later transferred to a much wider canvas with the mounting of expeditions against Vietnam, Burma, Japan and Java, although in none of these cases was real ‘naval warfare’ involved. In all these operations the use of a fleet was primarily that of transporting an army on to further dry land. In both Japanese campaigns, however, their intended victims took the fight directly to the Mongol ships.
When Khubilai Khan, Genghis Khan’s grandson, became the first Yuan (Mongol) Emperor of China, that part of the Mongol world became identified with Chinese society. Elsewhere, the Ilkhans of Persia and the Golden Horde of Russia developed their own military and cultural identities that arose from adaptation and sharing with the peoples they had conquered. Yet throughout all these developments there was still a core a nucleus of the old Mongol spirit. It was not always expressed through the continuing prowess of the Mongol horse-archer, but it was constantly reasserted as the archetypal definition of the Mongol warrior. So it was that, in referring to their own Mongol heritage, the annals of the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty of China could make the following reasonable statement: ‘By nature they are good at riding and archery. Therefore they took possession of the world through this advantage of bows and horses’.
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