Had Genghis Khan not died, do you think his son could have taken over Europe? I mean they were so close, and the warfare between the two would have been very interesting. What with the huge diversity between the two opposing forces, it could have lead to some very compelling battles.
They were quite overstretched at the time of Genghis Khan's death. Also the Western Europeans were quite advanced militarily at that time.
What type of warfare did Western Europeans use during that time? Were they effectively using gun powder?
Actually the Mongols introduced gunpowder to Western Europe, during the Battle of Mohi. Within just a few years, the recipe for gunpowder was mastered by various European military scientists. Western Europeans mostly depended on cavalry and infantry, using naval forces only for rare occasions.
I agree with the overstretched statement. Yet I disagree with "Europeans were advanced militarily" Do you realize it was the year 1227AD when Genghis Khan died? Europe was not advanced compare to Asia at the time. There was no gunpowder weapons in Europe, but it was already used in warfare in China. The Mongols learned gunpowder weapon from the Chinese, then the Arabs learned it from the Mongols. The Europeans learned it from the Arabs. If Mongols directly invaded Europe, Europeans were just some primitive barbarians to them as Mongols were to the Chinese. Do not forget, after Mongol Empire fell as the Chinese drove them back to Mongolia, Ming Dynasty was established in China. Ming emperor sent a fleet of hundreds large ships to travel the world. Those ships were 10x larger than European ships at the time. (Hint: Chinese were far more advanced than the Europeans at the time. Yet the Mongols fully conquered entire China during their peak of technical achievement - Song Dynasty.) Song military even had primitive cannons which in fact killed one of the Khans and caused a 3-year delay in Mongol's conquest due to all the princes returned to Mongolia to fight for the throne. Mongols were also depended on cavalry. Their main advantage was (nope, not talking about kungfu here lol)... every one of their male was in fact a professional cavalry soldier since he was a kid. Even their little kids were capable of shooting arrows with high accuracy while riding a horse. Other countries all have to recruit soldiers from adult farmers etc., a few years of training is no match for being a soldier for life.
I have already mentioned their manpower in some of the other threads. You cannot compare Mongols with Spartans. Mongols were never outnumbered by more than three to one.
That can't be true. If you simply compare Mongol population to Chinese population and Indian population... number was meaningless to them. They would defeat everyone in battle regardless the numbers on each side. They could hold empire larger than any other empire ever existed, while their own population was just a few million. Yes, they were good at using the resources from their conquered land, including technologies, manpower, and others.
I was just saying that you cannot compare Spartans with Mongols. Spartans were defending their land, against Xerxes. According to Herodotus, Xerxes led an army of 2.6 million against the 1,000 or something strong army of the Spartans.
If you're talking about the battle of Thermopylae, the numbers, according to historians, is more likely 100,000-250,000 Persians to a few hundred Spartans, back up by 5,000-6,000 Athenians.
Yes, Spartan war is really fun to enjoy. They were definitely a lot stronger. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality
You can't really compare their strengths, since they never thought against each other. Also the Spartans weren't invincible, they were eventually defeated by the Athenians. Cultures based solely around the warrior don't last too long. It's fine when you are in the conquering phase, but you also need to run and manage what you conquered afterwards.
I never mentioned that they were invincible. I only pointed out that quantity isn't what people should look at.
Let's not forget perhaps the biggest advantage the Mongols had: their unity of command and leadership. Time and time again, they were able to play off rival enemy factions against each other. When the Mongols attacked the Xia Dynasty, Xia appealed for help from the Jin dynasty, however Jin refused to help, perhaps hoping to profit from the downfall of Xia. Of course, immediately after conquering Xia, Genghis Khan set about conquering Jin, which he did in short order. Had the two dynasties cooperated, they perhaps could have defeated the Mongols, or at least slowed them down. Later on, during the invasion of Georgia, the Mongols faced scattered opposition. Many of the Georgian commanders surrendered almost immediately, others could only put up local resistance. There was very little coordination of forces among the Mongols' enemies. I think this is one of the biggest reasons for their success. By attacking different parts of their enemies' forces separately, the Mongols never needed an overall superiority of force, they just needed enough force to defeat whatever local resistance they were facing.
Sorry to revive an old thread, but I think I had to give my opinion. I have no doubt that if it wasn't for the death of Genghis Khan, the Mongols would have completely overrun Europe, without much effort might I add. Remember that at this point the Mongols had already fought a 3-front war against Europeans, Arabs and Asians at the same time and won all three of them, they were just a unstoppable war machine. The death of Genghis Khan came at a time when the other two war fronts were settled and the Mongols were about to turn their full attention to Europe, they would take it by storm! The Mongols would still be able to take it after Genghis Khan died, if only their sons hadn't bickered as much over control of the Empire.
@Strykstar, Actually Genghis Khan died before China was fully conquered. They took control of all of the land north of Yangtze river first. At the time, north of the Yangtze river was Jin Dynasty. South of the Yangtze river was Song Dynasty. They two hated each other. Jin Dynasty basically sat on old Song Dynasty territories after they conquered the northern lands. The Mongols made alliance with Song Dynasty and both attacked Jin at the same time. After Jin fell, Song Dynasty sent troops to recover the land they lost to Jin in the north, and the Mongols called it breach of the agreement, and the two fought. The Song troops were winning at first all the way to the Yellow River, until the Mongols destroyed a dam and drown the main force of Song. After this battle, Song never recovered and the Mongols took control all of the territories north of Yangtze River. However, being Calvary in nature, the Mongols couldn't cross the river because of superior Song fleet. Then something political happened within Song Dynasty, some front-line generals were recalled to the capital and they were killed one after another. A large part of the Song fleet surrendered to the Mongols because the general in charge feared he might be killed next as he was recalled too . That's how the mongols crossed the river, or they could never been able to conquer the southern China. The Song Dynasty on the south side of the river held off the Mongols for another 40 years. I remember reading about the final battle. After the Song Dynasty had lost everything on the land, their last fleet gathered near the shore at South China Sea with the kid emperor (7 or 9 years old at the time) on the flag ship...they had nowhere to go. The mongols were extremely resourceful. They quickly built a larger fleet with Chinese engineers and attacked the Song fleet. With the end near, one Song official jumped into the sea with the kid emperor in his arms to commit suicide. They drowned. A few warships escaped but they were never seen or heard from again as there was a huge storm the next day.
It was not the death of Genghis Khan that saved Europe. Genghis Khan died before the European campaign. The Ogedai, his 3rd son, was the Khan. He send his brilliant Marshall Subotei to lead the attack on Europe with the Princes of the Khan. Subotei first rampaged through Russia destroying all that did not wish to surrender. Subotei attacked with coordinated attacks across a front of 500 km. That was in the time without radio and wireless. This was not repeated until WW1 His methods were so far ahead of the time that it was unimaginable to the Europeans. Despite been outnumbered in many cases 3 to 1 or 4 to 1, the Mongols directed by Subotei slaughtered the Europeans, the Teutonic Knights, and their so-called mighty armies. To keep numbers of those killed, left ears were cut off and given to Subotei by the sackfuls. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subutai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ögedei_Khan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Europe No more armies in Europe were left to stand against him and he was about to complete the total conquest of rest of Europe. At that point. Ogedai the Khan died in Karakorum. All the princes , and Subotei, had to go back to pay respects and for the kuraltai to decide on who was to be the next successor Khan.
