Thread 17832013

How would you beat those motherfuckers/his/?

Castles

>>17832015
>Lay siege to your castle
>Kills everyone after they breach or starve you to death
Heh nothing personal bro.

>>17832013 (OP)
multiple stone and brick castles independently garrisoned and supplied with local counterattacks

>>17832051
As they are besieging the castle they need to constantly find pastures for their horses, they can't forage and raid as efficiently as before because splitting up too much from the main force at the castle siege risks destruction in detail and this happens on every step of the way. They take one castle, hooray. They take the second castle, hooray. Oh wait it's autumn our horses are losing weight and enough skirmishing took place for the army to lose 20% of their force and all we have to show for it are two castles.

>>17832219
except China did exactly this and it didn't work because they hired crack chinese siege engineers to destroy the forts one by one. This only worked in Europe because they were fighting remnants and not the main forces

>>17832015
>Heh nothing personal br-ACK

>>17832013 (OP)

Christ.

>>17832013 (OP)
Those arent Mongol you historylet

>>17832232
European castles and cavalry was better and china was too centralized

>>17832013 (OP)
by constructing bastion forts around important castles and citadels 350 years ahead of time

>>17832013 (OP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Esztergom_(1241)
The Mongols gave up the conquest of Europe because of the prospect of facing dozens, or even hundreds of sieges like this one. Their Chinese siege engineers couldn't build anything that broke into the walls, and they couldn't carry out a protracted siege with full investment etc. because they were too reliant on resource hungry horses. All of this combined with crossbows shot from walls that were able to significantly outrange horse archers and kill or greviously wound a horse or rider in a single shot to make the invasion unsustainable.

Guys just an FYI those aren't mongols the black lancer and the horse archers are Koreans and they are fighting fantasy interpretations of Sui/Tang Chinese.

>>17832420
since the OP filename is "mongols" it's pretty obvious he's asking about them and not koreans

>>17832013 (OP)
Dont put inbred nobles in command of arny so they dont fall for muh feigned retreat
Just fight them in the field and kill them like the Mamluks did

>>17832013 (OP)
Copy them. Thats what the Mamluks did, and they kicked their ass

>>17832232
>>17832349
Chinese castles were very different. Chinese cavalry was about the same as Europe's.

>muh giant walls and city walls
A typical fortification along the borders was made of mud brick and the main fortifications further south were for guarding cities, not purpose built to fuck with the enemy.

>muh knights
Chinese nobles often sponsored elite cavalry and maintained martial traditions, resembling institutions of knighthood in Europe, for example Yue Fei's cavalry raised against the Jurchens in the 12th century.

>china was too centralized
Yue Fei was executed due to autistic internal politics bullshit in the imperial palace so I guess this is true.

>they were fighting remnants and not the main forces
They weren't really remnants, it would have been difficult for the Mongols to project force from their homeland all the way to Europe and they could only support 2 tyumens. If Mongolia was magically transplanted onto the Pontic Caspian steppe it would be a different matter, they would likely stampede into Germany and northern France, the rest of mainland Europe is debatable.

>>17832585
>it would have been difficult for the Mongols to project force from their homeland all the way to Europe and they could only support 2 tyumens
They had the free use of the entire Eurasian steppe, which stretches into Europe and which Mongol successor states like the Golden Horde were perfectly capable of using to graze their herds after the Mongols originally gave up on the conquest of Europe.

>>17832460
Obviously. But I don't want good art to be misinterpreted by someone that may not be familiar with the area

This is not a picture of Mongolia, but of Goguryeo iron cavalry from Korea defeating Chinese soldiers.

>>17832232
It kinda did work for 60 years for the Southern Song. But China and Europe are very different regions. Hungary is the last place the Mongols would be able to easily supply and graze their horses in Europe and in China they had the Central Plains as a whole and a far more sophisticated logistics administration in the region. The Mongols would have trouble in Germany and France, they struggled with the Song with the same exact situation

>>17832704
>good art
>Ospreys
No they are trash, no one has ever proven Sui-Tang chest plate is actual combat armor. The only verifiable Tang era armor is completely lamellar.

>>17832232
China was more city with wall instead of castles

>castles
Okay you defended yourself
Now how do you stop the seasonal raids?

The truth is you couldn't stop a horse archer nomad race, you could only wait them out.

>>17833438
I mentioned that the tang armor is fantasy did I not? The Korean outfit and armor is pretty accurate however. The main point is that it's representing an era that had nothing to do with Mongols.

>>17834464
Actually who cares let's just turn it into an asiatic armor thread

>>17832013 (OP)
Short answer: longbow
Long answer: A lot of longbows on a hill

>>17832934
It's also worth mentioning that china was conquered by Mongols with help of Chinese.

>>17832013 (OP)
The Mongols had the luck of launching their conquests when every major empire in their path was undergoing massive internal crisis' or even just plain collapsed. When the Mongols arrived China was already split between two warring states that were exhausted after centuries of shit, the Islamic world was similarly still in a state of turmoil after the Abbasid's had de-facto ceased to exist and was already being invaded and carved up by both Turks and the Crusades. Theres a reason they never succeeded before or after the one time Genghis got Genghis'n

Rolling wooden platforms with wooden walls that have firing slits to shoot crossbows out of. The poles did this and it absolutely massacred the few remaining Mongol remnants that were in Europe at the time

>>17832388

The Mongols didn't give up on the conquest of Europe, they always intended to conquer. What happened in the first invasion was that they realized the forces they brought were inadequate for the job, they made a tactical withdraw with the intent to bring the correct forces to bear. This is all standard Mongol operating procedure. The problem was the empire fell apart and the future hordes didn't have the resources to undertake the project.

>All of this combined with crossbows shot from walls that were able to significantly outrange horse archers and kill or greviously wound a horse or rider in a single shot to make the invasion unsustainable.

The standard European crossbow had more or less the same range as a composite bow and they're not that effective at countering horse archers. Hitting a moving target with any bow is far more difficult than people think. The only reason Hungarian crossbowmen were able to inflict heavy casualties against the Mongols during the first invasion was largely due to the retardedness of Batu, who was a shit commander and he frequently ignored the sage of advice of Subutai.

I dont have any motivation to defeat them or anyone else.

>>17834751
>>The Mongols didn't give up on the conquest of Europe

>attempt to conquer europe
>get to hungary and realise you don't have the ability to take stone castles
>leave because of this
>stay in the east administrating the areas you were actually able to conquer until you die

What you're saying is the same as "they gave up on the conquest of Europe".

>>17834751
>What happened in the first invasion was that they realized the forces they brought were inadequate for the job, they made a tactical withdraw with the intent to bring the correct forces to bear.
what is this bizarre cope? There's no evidence to suggest they were preparing for another invasion. Batu was perfectly happy to stay in the east, and the subsequent Kurultai did not order any invasions. you're also being disingenuous by implying that the collapse of the Mongol Empire occurred too quickly to allow any of this to happen - it would be a further half century before the empire started to disintegrate into rival constituencies, let alone a few campaign seasons that would be required to put together a new army.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Mongols realised they couldn't take Europe after their scouting parties reported that Germany was even more heavily fortified than Hungary. Frederick even mocked Batu in his address and didn't bother to give him any further attention, presumably seeing the failure of the Mongols to do anything more than ravage the countryside.

>>17832015
>Castles
enjoy getting plague corpses being thrown over the walls

>>17835124
If this was such an effective, tried&tested Mongol method of siege warfare how come their sieges during the failed invasion of Hungary ended so disastrously for them?

>>17835151
>The Mongols were reported by several European chroniclers such as Matthew Paris to have engaged in cannibalism. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine stated they did so only out of necessity, but Simon of Saint-Quentin believed they were also motivated by pleasure and a desire to instil fear into their enemies.[182] They invaded Hungary (Pannonia) and penetrated Austria almost to Vienna in 1241–1242. To the south of Vienna, they reached the Austrian town of Wiener Neustadt and devastated the countryside around it, torturing and eating civilians regardless of their age, sex, fortune, or class. According to Frenchman Ivo of Narbonne, who was in the town at that time, their soldiers ate old and deformed women right away, while virgin girls and beautiful women were gang-raped to death and then eaten; their breasts were cut off and served to the Mongol leaders as special delicacies.[183][184]
The Mongols had their fill of white woman meat and decided to return home.

>>17835176
Source?

>>17835183
here, the Chinese also complained about the same thing btw so it's likely to be true
>A Chinese writer who had lived through the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) likewise complained about their cannibalism, criticizing that Mongol soldiers did not hesitate to sacrifice civilians for their culinary pleasure: "Young children were the most appreciated; women came next and men last." He also criticized their cruelty, stating that victims were roasted alive (on iron grates) or boiled alive (by placing them "inside a double bag ... which was put into a large pot"). Just like Ivo of Narbonne's, his account indicates that breasts were particularly prized – if there were more corpses around than needed, they were sometimes the only part of a woman's body that was eaten.[185] The Song Shi written during, as well as later chronicles written about the dynasty, also note that children and "the weak were killed and eaten" during war campaigns at that time.[185]
they just loved castle coward meat

>>17835176
>>17835196
So one known liar alleges cannibalism and rape, how exactly does this prove that they were able to take castles when we have evidence to the contrary?

>>17835207
It's not just this guy though that's my point. But anyway back on topic, I believe they were just stretched too thin. In China for example they could take on much stronger fortifications see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kaifeng_(1232) than what you'd find in a random euro castle

>>17835234
>It's not just this guy though that's my point.
The accounts of cannibalism and gang rape were additions by that specific guy, it was not eyewitness testimony. It's literally medieval propaganda.
>I believe they were just stretched too thin.
Their armies would've been larger than most European armies by an order of magnitude, if a 10x numerical advantage isn't enough then how many Mongol supersoldiers do you need to take a few European castles? 100,000 per fortification?
>In China for example they could take on much stronger fortifications see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kaifeng_(1232) than what you'd find in a random euro castle
A siege of a city is vastly different than the siege of a castle. Kaifeng surrendered after many months of siege and starvation. Castles can be garrisoned by a few dozen men and have provisions for years. I don't know why you think the fortifications of a Chinese city is somehow better than a structure that is primarily built to be a fortress, not a walled city. We can see dramatically different results in the first versus second Mongol invasion of Hungary, they Mongols were immensely troubled by stone castles.

>>17835261
And he's not the only one to have reported this about them so I don't discredit it even if he was known to tell a tall tale.
>Their armies would've been larger than most European armies by an order of magnitude
Well in the second Mongol invasion of Hungary the lower estimates made them pretty much equal (I don't trust those exaggerations) and the for first one as well.
>Castles can be garrisoned by a few dozen men and have provisions for years.
In this particular case they allowed trade though iirc so this is irrelevant I believe. Also I am not sure why you believe a less well defended structure could resist better, given the fact the same exact tech and tactics can be used against both. Don't forget a city has way more resources to repel attacks, it's not just a bigger population

>>17835280
>And he's not the only one to have reported this about them so I don't discredit it even if he was known to tell a tall tale.
He is, he took some letters from an eyewitness and embellished the fuck out of them to drum up propaganda about scary Tatars.
>Well in the second Mongol invasion of Hungary the lower estimates made them pretty much equal (I don't trust those exaggerations) and the for first one as well.
Hungary was at the time one of the larger kingdoms on the continent, though still decentralized and with its total army size being split up across various nobles - most other nations would have fielded much smaller armies and could not do so for extended periods of time. Anyway, I guess that makes us in agreement that at numerical parity or even at a slight advantage the Mongols can't invade.
>In this particular case they allowed trade though iirc so this is irrelevant I believe. Also I am not sure why you believe a less well defended structure could resist better
I'm not sure why you think a castle is less defended than a walled city.
>given the fact the same exact tech and tactics can be used against both
No, you can't. They are built differently.
>Don't forget a city has way more resources to repel attacks, it's not just a bigger population
Cities also have more mouths to feed. The crown jewel of Mongol siege warfare that you linked ended after months of starvation, whereas a stocked European castle could last way longer than that.

mongolboos are annoyingly inconvincible about their obvious weakness in europe, i only ever see them use "but they took big strong chinese fortresses and castles", not realising how shitty and different those are from european castles and all the tactics around them.
they got humiliated by hungary doing the bare minimum and to the west they were well aware of who mongols were and what they were like.
yuropoor castle warfare + european geography + cavalry is a hardcounter to mongols no matter what special gimmick like chinese engineers or plague bodies you pull out, good luck trying to reach over walls 4 times as tall as chink ones on top of a hill.
why is it so hard to admit? is btfoing chinks and arabs not enough? do you think horse archers would raze the amazon jungle and modern day ukrainian trenches aswell?

>>17835337
I mean if that's what you want to believe sure. But nobody as far as I know from his time ever said he was lying about that particular report. Plus it has been documented on the other side of the planet...
>I guess that makes us in agreement that at numerical parity or even at a slight advantage the Mongols can't invade.
Yes I suppose but I only believe this to be the case for places far from their homelands. Still though they were a massive problem even in Hungary with at most 1/4th of the population dying because of their attacks and the aftermath. Of course most of them were not inside powerful fortifications like that and so it is kind of irrelevant to the point being made.
>I'm not sure why you think a castle is less defended than a walled city
Well cities have bigger walls and you have a lot more flexibility with positioning your bowmen for example. Their fault is that they weren't really always built entirely of stone, but there are exceptions.
>Cities also have more mouths to feed. The crown jewel of Mongol siege warfare that you linked ended after months of starvation, whereas a stocked European castle could last way longer than that.
Yes but they could theoretically store a lot more food too, right? Also about that, Mongols didn't really even try that hard. I suppose the local delicacy was just as easily found outside of the gates so they didn't have to invest so much effort

>>17835395
read about the second invasion of hungary, the mongols started eating their own dead soldiers because they were starving and basically ragequit anon. they plundered a few defenseless towns on their way out of the place and thats it. they were not a serious power in the first invasion and in the second one they had a shitty opportunistic king while the armies and barons relied on the new stone castles and crossbowmen built by the previous one. chink cities are more like a death-trap against mongols than anything, european castle warfare revolved around emptying everything around it and launching small flanking skirmishes constantly, they wouldnt even be able to feed their horses or stay in one place.

>>17835395
>I mean if that's what you want to believe sure. But nobody as far as I know from his time ever said he was lying about that particular report. Plus it has been documented on the other side of the planet...
That still doesn't make him credible when he is known to embellish stories.
>Yes I suppose but I only believe this to be the case for places far from their homelands. Still though they were a massive problem even in Hungary with at most 1/4th of the population dying because of their attacks and the aftermath. Of course most of them were not inside powerful fortifications like that and so it is kind of irrelevant to the point being made.
So you agree that they were unable to take the castles, they just devastated the countryside but made no real progress.
>Well cities have bigger walls and you have a lot more flexibility with positioning your bowmen for example. Their fault is that they weren't really always built entirely of stone, but there are exceptions.
They did not have bigger walls on average nor do you have more flexibility on how to place bowmen, as if that is a particularly relevant or deciding factor for a fortifications defensiveness.
>Yes but they could theoretically store a lot more food too, right?
Physical space is typically not the limiting factor, it's how much of a surplus you can produce to store.
>Also about that, Mongols didn't really even try that hard. I suppose the local delicacy was just as easily found outside of the gates so they didn't have to invest so much effort
Why are you trying so hard to run with the "Mongols were sadist cannibals who were only in it for the human meat" narrative? Is it a coping mechanism to explain their failures?

>>17832585
>Yue Fei was executed due to autistic internal politics bullshit in the imperial palace so I guess this is true.
China loves to execute their best generals.

>>17832051
>>17835124
>ends your 20 year win streak
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Esztergom_(1241)
heh sorry mongoloids, but magyaroks are the TRVE lords of the steppes.

>>17835488
Please don't ridicule the Mongolboo's favorite chronicler. Very disrespectful.

>>17835459
>Result: City devastated...
>>17835492
He's vindicated https://24.hu/tudomany/2022/01/30/kannibalizmus-kiserte-a-tatarjarast/

>>17835488
>the helpful hebrew hatches a jewish plot to poison the mongol invaders and save evropa
>get killed by antisemitic schizos
maybe we need to reevaluate the jews

>>17835498
>He's vindicated https://24.hu/tudomany/2022/01/30/kannibalizmus-kiserte-a-tatarjarast/
An article that no one in the thread understands, I kneel.

>>17835498
>city devastated
>Batu withdrew in defeat having obtained no treasure and ending 20 years of unbroken victories
brutal mogg

>>17835519
You think you're making a great point by pointing out that the Mongols withdrew after no success, but what you don't know is that according to our most reliable main man Matthew of Paris the Mongols were not after actual treasure or political power, they were simply sadistic cannibals, so technically they won because they killed a lot of civilians (and presumably ate them before or after they raped them, Tatar style) even if they couldn't take castles. War is about eating people, not about achieving any tangible goals.

mongols would get genocided in central europe and not even survive an attempt at fleeing, none of their crutches work in europe and are actually weaknesses for them.
they struggled hard to take the weakest shithole that was hungary and ragequit first, then got btfo'd the second time. in germany there were like 100 domains with stone castles and fortifications everywhere, no flat land, they already had the perfect recipe of crossbows and heavy cavalry. the mongol strategy of blitzing around and taking nobles and kings hostage wouldn't work against europe specialising in kings secretly fleeing ahead of time, scorched earth gorilla warfare.

terrorising defenceless peasants doesn't work against christschizos who use it to temporarily halt their 150 year long feud to ally with 26 kingdoms to go on a crusade and flank the jewish mongolsissy menace. whenever such forces got defeated and fleed they would get chased and flanked while they were at it too, attila got raped the same way.

chink siege engines couldn't hurt european castles and mongols got out-reached by crossbowmen on towers/walls, they had no mobility and would be sitting ducks for mounted knight charges.

>>17832013 (OP)
steppeniggers in general? i would lure them into a position where they would be weak, while making them believe they are strong. such as deceiving them by moving most of my army standards away and making it seem like my men at hand are few and most are absent, prompting them to attack, at which point i would spring a trap. when your opponent is physically superior, you have to use cunning to defeat him.

>>17835565
>mongols would get genocided in central europe and not even survive an attempt at fleeing
The Mongols absolutely mauled Central Europe and the Golden Horde would continue to terrorise the region for decades after. And no, Germany is not Central Europe and comparing medieval Poland or Hungary to Germany is stupid.

>>17832013 (OP)
Wagon forts were how the Russians defeated the Tatars and conquered Siberia and Central Asia, and how American pioneers settled the West and the prairies.

>>17835580
germany is central europe, eastern europe starts with poland.

>>17835538
>technically they won because they killed/raped a lot of civilians
Yes! Even today this is the standard, the greatest nations on Earth use that metric.
>War is about eating people
For the mongols yes and archeology approves of his account. Hungarians fed the hungry mongols with their flesh, hence the name of their people.
>b-but this hecking pile of stone wasn't conquered so it means I won!
No, delicious women can be found elsewhere.
>>17835507
Here you go

>>17835587
>germany is central europe
Germany is Western European. They have far more in common with France and England than they do any state east of them during the middle ages. 'Central Europe' is a weasel term that tries to include Germany in with states which it did not share historical development with, Germany projected their culture and political structures onto them.

>>17832051
>>17832013 (OP)
Hungary won against Golden Horde.

>>17835580
they got raped in hungary as soon as they built some stone forts and bought a few crossbows, which was a dysfunctional shithole in civil war with only light cavalry/infantry and wooden huts without walls in the first invasion. hungary was basically a punching bag compared to anything to the west.

>>17835600
>they got raped in hungary as soon as they built some stone forts
The building of stone castles in Hungary would take decades. There were only three of them, built by Germans in the west of the state when the Mongols first invaded.
>and bought a few crossbows
Crossbows were used by everyone even in the 11th century. It's mainly how the Crusaders fought against the Turks and was well known.

>>17835580
>mauled central Europe
>lost every major siege
>never took a single castle
>the ethnonym for Croatian became synonymous with evil spirit in the mongol language
>lost veteran armies to Germanic petty barons
>peasants outnumbered defeated mongol siege forces using crossbows

It seems like the mongols were a paper tiger and everyone they beat was actually shit anyway.
>NOOOOOO MUH HECKIN BROWNS WERE GOOD THE MONGOLS JUST AMAZING
nah, the mongols were shit, the monkeys in the east lost to the mongols because they are shit.
Muds cant fight, look at them today getting danced on by israel.

>>17835618
>>lost every major siege
>>never took a single castle
>>lost veteran armies to Germanic petty barons
What do you get by lying so blatantly?

>>17835612
they had no stone castles during the 1st invasion, which is why the mongols were successful then.
after the 1st invasion, hungary built a lot of western style stone fortifications to prevent the same thing happening, and ordered crossbows, which mongols did not like and did not use. crossbows shot from towers would outreach the arrows and velocity of archers on the ground.
mongols shat their pants and would burn random empty towns and villages in their sissy temper tantrum and didn't return the same way ever again.

how true is it that mongol composite bows basically fall apart in european climates?
the more i look into this the more it looks like europe is pure kryptonite to mongolians.

>>17834891

>what is this bizarre cope? There's no evidence to suggest they were preparing for another invasion.

That's because you don't know the pattern of behavior of the Mongols. Withdrawing at the face of stiffer than anticipated opposition and coming back with a larger force is standard procedure for them; they did this in Persia, Russia, and China.

> Batu was perfectly happy to stay in the east, and the subsequent Kurultai did not order any invasions. you're also being disingenuous by implying that the collapse of the Mongol Empire occurred too quickly to allow any of this to happen -

The empire was already stretched thin by the time of the first invasion of Europe and most resources were dedicated to the meatgrinder in China. All of the Mongol sources point to them suffering heavy casualties in Poland and Hungary, and leadership realized that Europe was going to be a far tougher nut to crack than they expected. They didn't have resources to engage in a follow up operation, that's why further invasions didn't occur.

>Frederick even mocked Batu in his address and didn't bother to give him any further attention, presumably seeing the failure of the Mongols to do anything more than ravage the countryside.

Bluster. Frederick didn't have the manpower to deal with a Mongol threat to the East, given that most of his forces were tied up in Italy warring with the Pope.

>>17835729
>That's because you don't know the pattern of behavior of the Mongols. Withdrawing at the face of stiffer than anticipated opposition and coming back with a larger force is standard procedure for them; they did this in Persia, Russia, and China.
This thesis somewhat falls apart with the fact that we are completely sure there were no plans for nor preparations made for another invasion, nor were orders to carry one out given.
>The empire was already stretched thin by the time of the first invasion of Europe and most resources were dedicated to the meatgrinder in China. All of the Mongol sources point to them suffering heavy casualties in Poland and Hungary, and leadership realized that Europe was going to be a far tougher nut to crack than they expected. They didn't have resources to engage in a follow up operation, that's why further invasions didn't occur.
Hence why they gave up on the conquest of Europe, yes.
>Bluster. Frederick didn't have the manpower to deal with a Mongol threat to the East, given that most of his forces were tied up in Italy warring with the Pope.
He did, though. The Mongols attempted some sorties into the HRE and gave up there, too.

I'd listen to what they had to say and that's what no one else did

>>17835759

>This thesis somewhat falls apart with the fact that we are completely sure there were no plans for nor preparations made for another invasion, nor were orders to carry one out given.

Lack of preparation is not evidence against of intent. We know the intent was always there for another invasion due to the threatening letters Batu sent to various European monarchs telling them to submit to Mongol rule or face the consequences.

>He did, though. The Mongols attempted some sorties into the HRE and gave up there, too.

A handful of garrison skirmishing with opportunistic raiders pursuing Bela IV isn't evidence of anything.

>>17834464
>The Korean outfit and armor is pretty accurate however.
There is a lack of detail(lacing especially) that holds it back. When it comes to East Asian armaments Ospreys is simply not up to date.