Baghatur Subutai – A Fantasy || The Mongol Empire CXV

November 15, 2023November 14, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

[NOTE: If maps, pictures and legends don’t display properly in your email, go to the blog. Interactive Google maps may not work in your email but will work on the blogsite. There is a link at the bottom to the entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ series.]

Looks crowded, doesn’t it, but locations differentiate as you zoom in. Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Rus’ 9th-13th centuries and Mongol Eastern and Central European invasion 1236-42 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Calligraphy of Mongolian poem “White cloud”
composed and brush-written by Injinash Banchinval.
Source: Wikipedia – Mongolian script

By the end of March the days are clearly lengthening and the nights are warmer. The insects grow more numerous, bloodsuckers are busy, crickets chirp. A small owl hoots from a nearby copse. The men and beasts are settling down, tail-swishing horses to their grass, men to their korkkhog, gurultai shul, and kumis. Today they fought another battle against another stone fortress. Once again the results were the same and everyone is tired. They’d been fighting almost non-stop since crossing the ice to Buda on the great holy day of the Christians. But conquest takes no holidays. Except for the summer and fall, of course.

*Primer (L-R) of the Tibetan scripts Phags-pa, Lantsa and common Tibetan, plus Mongolian (traditional), Chinese Han and Cyrillic. Source: Wikipedia – Mongolian script*

In his ger, Baghatur Subutai sits at his work desk on his favorite, thickest carpet, quill in hand, scratching on a sheet of vellum by the light of the lamp. He is updating his battle list: towns, days of battle, men lost, defenders killed, loot taken, fortifications encountered, slaves taken, horses lost, food remaining. Lastly is his personal scale of battle site gain versus cost. His usual end-of-day routine. This latest town, as useless as it was, doesn’t really change the overall picture. Yes, it is that bad. He shakes his head, swears, and has another drink of kumis. The kumis, at least, is reliably good.

I quietly peer over his shoulder but cannot read Mongolian script. He notices me, a ghostlike wraith. He is neither surprised nor frightened. He greets me. I understand his language although I don’t know how or why.

“I see you; you cannot hide from me. From where and whence do you come, spirit? Asia? Europe? The lands beyond the western sea? Never mind, you are not the first, nor – I suspect – the last. This has been going on for years. What do you wish to know?”

My question, I reply, is the great question: what for centuries everyone has wanted to know. What has been decided about the Great Western Invasion? What direction will they go; most importantly, why? Of course, in our time we know what they did, but why?, why? — that is still guesswork. So much was lost or never written down. I say nothing about that. The possibility and danger of influencing the past still remains a temporal uncertainty.

“Ah, I see you are from Europe, or even farther west. Only such visitors ask that question. When they come from India or China or Africa, their concerns lie elsewhere. Yes…it has been decided. Tonight, in fact, just before you arrived. Perhaps you knew that already. I have seen this coming for many weeks, but one does not lightly give up the task of fulfilling the avowed desire of Genghis Khan. Our commission from Tengri was that the earth was promised to Temüjin. Did Tengri changed his mind? Perhaps Tengri knew that only by truly believing the world was ours and we need simply reach out and take it would we get this far. Perhaps Tengri’s intentions were other than his spoken word, and this apparent failure was exactly the success he planned. Or perhaps other roads in other directions must be traveled first. I don’t know. No one knows. Only Tengri knows.”

“I am a baghatur, a general, the top general of over 100,000 men. My spies gather information, I plan the strategy, lay out the tactics and battle plans. After the battles I record the results. That’s one of my secrets. You cannot plan your next step without knowing exactly has happened and where you stand. Otherwise you are blind. Many leaders blunder on, hoping for success, praying for success, yet not planning for success. I have won battle after battle by planning our enemy’s losing steps for them, and I watch them when we snatch their victory from their hands. I will not be fooled into laziness or surprised by defeat. If I am about to lose, I will see it coming.”

“And,” he added, “it is coming. Therefore we will leave before it arrives. Withdrawal is not defeat. Death without gain is defeat. We will withdraw, regroup, and set out in another direction. Here, look at this chart. I will explain. But before that, I must send a messenger to Batu. We gave ourselves until the end of March to see if things would improve. He awaits my conclusions. If he follows my advice, and I’m sure he will, we will withdraw. We will merge our armies in Bulgaria, a land as yet unknown to us. We will see what we find there, and then we will make our next decision.”

He took up another sheet and began writing his message to Batu. I looked at the chart and was able to understand some of its import, that which I mentioned above. I got the gist, but names were unfamiliar, meanings elusive. The characters began to swim before my eyes, they telescoped out, they’re 800 years away, the ger’s interior begins to vibrate and Subutai’s words begin to echo and fade, like someone talking down a metal pipe from far away. Most of it is lost, but using what little has come down to us today, I’ll give you a fragment of what Subutai wrote. The map below will tie it together.

Green Castles: 27 fortifications attacked but not taken.
Red Castles: 5 stone fortifications taken and sacked.
Orange Battle Sites: 6 sacked, fortifications unknown or uncertain.
Blue Battle Sites: 3 sacked but unfortified.
Purple Question Marks: 2 attacked, details unknown.
Gray Question Marks: 2 battles/sieges of doubtful occurrence.

Siege Analysis

Below is a list of attacks on fortifications and towns in Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, and Austria. It is limited to sieges and city battles described or — when little is known about them or reports conflict — at least mentioned in earlier installments. To make this easier, I’ve keyed them to the interactive map above. The list does not include the following battles in the field, as they were not attempts to pillage: Sajó River, Morava River, Brașov, and the Lika massacre. There are 45 listed sieges or attacks, which break down as follows (listed roughly north to south and west to east within each group. The map shows:

27 Green Castles
Stone Fortifications Attacked, Not Taken (towns, abbeys, castles or fortresses), adjoining unfortified areas pillaged: Trenčín, Pressburg, Nyitra, Komárom, Fülek, Abaújvár, Újhely, Sopron, Léka, Moson, Győr, Pannonhalma, Esztergom, Vasvár, Zalavár, Tihany, Veszprém, Székesfehérvár, Nagyvárad, Arad, Tamashida, Szeged, Csanád, Kalnik, Split, Trogir, Klis.

5 Red Castles
Stone Fortifications Sacked (towns, abbeys, castles or fortresses): Pest, Igriș Abbey, Küküllővár, Nagyszeben, Orljava.

Out of 45 total sieges or attacks, we are reasonably certain 32 were upon fortified structures and 27 of those withstood the siege and were not taken. Of the five fortifications successfully taken, at least one was a church (Pest) and one an abbey (Igriș). This leaves the following 13 less-than-certain sieges or town battles.

6 Orange Battle Sites
Sacked, Fortifications Unknown or Uncertain: Korneuburg, Vác, Beszterce, Kolozsvár, Alba Iulia, Zalaegerszeg.
3 Blue Battle Sites
Sacked Unfortified: Radna, Buda, Zagreb.
2 Purple Question Marks
Attacked, Details Unknown: Pécs, Kerc.
2 Gray Question Marks
Battles/sieges Uncertain as to whether battle actually occurred: Čazma, Šibenik.

Additional research might bring us clarification on uncertain battles. A quick analysis shows that 84% (27 of 32) known stone fortifications could not be taken. If we include the 6 towns sacked with uncertain fortifications, and assume they were fortified, the percentage of untaken fortifications drops to 71% (27 of 38). Therefore, at best, against stone fortifications, the Mongols succeeded only 29% of the time, and 16% of the time may be a closer figure. Even if all the remaining 13 uncertain battles (which includes the 6 towns mentioned above) were successful sieges of stone fortifications (and we know for certain some were not), the very best they could claim was 18 successes out of 45 sieges, a 40% success rate. That might be excellent for you or me, if we chose to make a career out of pillaging, but not for the Mongol army. Actually, it’s pathetic.

**The Ger Fades**

And while the letters began to waver and dance before my eyes, Subutai glances up, then eyes me quizzically.

“You are fading. I can see the wall through you. I suspect you soon will leave, as have all those who came before you. Here, I will read what I now write to Batu Khan. Perhaps that will tell you what you came to learn.”

Batu Khan:
As we previously discussed, it is now the end of March and I have recorded our results. As we previously suspected, this invasion is not worth the effort. Too many stones, too little plunder, too many crossbows, too many dead. Advise we stop all battles and return east. Meet in Bulgaria, there to replan.
Honorably yours, Baghatur Subutai.

And with that last glimpse of Subutai and the fading sound of his words, the ger, the men and horses and Hungary itself all faded away and I found myself back in the 21^st century, returned from a most interesting voyage.

Spread of the Mongol Empire 1206-1294 CE.
Source: Wikipedia – Mongol Empire

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: Conclusions || Mongol Empire CXIV
This Installment: Subutai – A Fantasy || Mongol Empire CXV

Source
Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the Mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242; Pow, Lindsey Stephen, 2012; Department of History, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Link to free thesis PDF.

Conclusions on Withdrawal & Alternate History || The Mongol Empire CXIV

November 13, 2023November 12, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

I continue with historian Stephen Pow’s thesis on the cause of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in the spring of 1242: Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242. First I present his summary (pgs. 120-121) of his comparative study of Mongol campaigns in separate regions (pgs. 79-120), then follow with his overall conclusions for his thesis, and end with some speculation on what might have happened had the Mongols continued westward. Link to free thesis PDF.

A Comparative Study of Mongol Campaigns

In the past, due to the lack of translations of original documents into modern languages, Mongol Empire studies were compartmentalized. Historians focused on studies in the languages they knew, and perhaps knew little to nothing of historical work in other languages and regions. With modern widespread availability of research and new translations into modern languages, a more holistic, cross-cultural approach can be made. In this section, Stephen Pow examines Mongol campaigns in other regions to illustrate “how Mongol success or failure often depended on the fortresses they encountered.” He believes, “An overview of campaigns in regions outside of Europe will reveal that strong, strategically located fortifications were a defining feature of states which were able to slow or halt the Mongol advance.” Rather than attempt to condense his 42-page analysis constituting pages 79-120 of his thesis, I’ll give you his conclusions.

Summary of Comparative Study of Mongol Campaigns

The following is the entirety of Pow’s summary:

What we see from this comparative study is that siege warfare was problematic for the Mongols in many regions besides Europe. However, it was also necessary for the conquest of sedentary peoples. The building materials of thirteenth century fortresses varied widely, often depending on what material was most readily available. Judging from the speed with which the Mongols reduced cities in Russia and Transoxiana, wood and mud brick fortifications could be easily breached with the Mongol artillery of the first half of the thirteenth century. Therefore defensive strategies failed in those regions. Events in Korea suggest that well-situated fortifications could enable a defensive policy to be carried out as long as the will to resist was present. The hangtu and stone fortifications of China did actually provide a potentially insurmountable problem to the Mongols, but widespread collaboration and the arrival of superior artillery in the 1270s undermined Chinese efforts. In the Middle East, the Mongols often overcame the better fortifications only through ruses. The Sultanate of Delhi, which had stone fortifications and large armies, was able to resist the Mongols.

Europe possessed many of the advantages that India had. It had a large population from which to field armies. It had an abundance of stone fortifications. European rulers also showed an unwillingness to negotiate or buy off the Mongols. These problems, combined with its relative poverty when compared to China or India, likely made Europe an unappealing target. In any case, what this comparative study demonstrates is that it required decades for the Mongols to impose their rule on heavily populated sedentary regions with adequate fortifications. If they persisted in their attacks on Europe, we must then imagine a conquest spanning decades.

Stephen Pow’s Overall Conclusions

Stephen Pow had three main points in his thesis (pgs. 122-135) :

Existing theories for the Mongol’s 1242 withdrawal from Central Europe have little supporting evidence.

Carpini’s erroneous testimony that the death of Khagan Ögedei forced the Mongols to retreat from Hungary is contradicted by Rashid al-Din’s record that the Mongols did not know of this death even as they were entering Bulgaria, let alone before deciding to leave Hungary and Croatia. Other theories — the limited goals/gradual conquest theory, the ecological/geographical theory, and the military weakness theory — have even less supporting evidence.

The Mongols encountered an enormous strategic problem in Hungarian fortifications.

Records show the Mongols had limited success when attacking stone fortresses, faring even more poorly when the fortress was protected by natural barriers such as marshes, cliffs, mountains and hilltops, or islands protected by the sea or extensive mudflats. When defenders were resolute about not submitting or when they had mercenaries skilled in siege defense, the difficulties of siege became insurmountable. Even when the Mongols took a town, pillaging was poor; Europe was not as wealthy as China and Central Asia, what valuables the locals could neither hide nor bury they would burn or destroy. The Hungarians would not accept massive enslavement by nomads from the steppes, and refused to even talk to the Mongols or reply to their messages, holding them to be deceitful pagans who freely lied and (Pow, pg. 124) “simply reneged on their promises when it suited them.”

Strong fortifications of stone had been and would continue to be a major problem elsewhere for the Mongols.

Pow reviewed both prior and following sieges in Mongolia, Russia, China, Korea, the Middle East and India. Besieging fortified cities was always difficult for the Mongols, even when they had siege engines. Many of their better known sieges were won not by force but because the defenders fled, engaged in poor bargaining or outright treason, or through long-term starvation of the occupants. The siege of Kozelsk in the Rus’ Principality of Chernigov in 1238 is one example of their difficulty with sieges: although the city was ruled by twelve-year-old Prince Vasily, they held out for fifty days; their walls and ramparts were not even stone but only wood and timber; 4,000 Mongol soldiers died in the siege; Batu was unable to take the city until Kadan and Büri arrived with their armies.

Hinged hanging trebuchet at Château des Baux, France (reconstruction). The Mongols began using this type of catapult in the 1270’s, a design imported from the Levant, in their battles against the Southern Song in China. Author: ChrisO. Source: Wikipedia – Trebuchet

What if the Mongols had continued westward?

In the final part of Stephen Pow’s thesis (pgs. 126-135) he contemplates — as have many writers before him — on what the world might look like had the Mongols continued westward through Europe. The atrocities would certainly have continued. Historian David Morgan considers the oft-applied term “Pax Mongolica” as misleading, observing “the peace established by the Mongols would aptly compare to a desert.” Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels decreased during the Mongol conquests, but not during the Black Death or the conquest of the Americas, implying that a large drop in human population and agricultural land usage occurred in the 13^th century.

Geoffrey Parker and Philip E. Tetlock in their “what-if?” book Unmaking the West argue (Pow, pg. 129) that “‘without doubt’ the Mongols could have accomplished the task, and that such a conquest would have halted the expansion of early modern Europe. In short, the events of the thirteenth century could have prevented the rise of the West.”

Passage through Slovenia into Northeastern Italy is relatively easy, quite unlike clambering through the western Alps on elephants. A Mongol detachment believed to be part of Kadan’s army was seen at Udine in Italy, 140 miles west of Zagreb and 60 miles northeast of Venice at the same time that Kadan was pursuing King Béla IV from Slovenia southward into Croatia. After Kadan gave up on capturing Béla, he could easily have backtracked north from Trogir and entered into Italy rather than continuing south into Dalmatia, an excursion which led to nothing useful. With a small army of only 20,000 and no siege equipment they likely could not take any major cities.

However, Paul E. Chevedden points out that counterweighted trebuchets (see photos above and below), a significant advance in mechanical weaponry over what the Mongols then possessed, existed in Italy at this time. They might have captured one, or seized the engineers to build one, and returned to Batu in Hungary and built as many as they wanted. With this trebuchet’s far greater hurling power in both missile weight and velocity, the stone fortresses of Hungary and Europe would suddenly become far less formidable. When the Mongols actually did bring counterweighted trebuchet engineers from the Levant to southern China in the 1270s — 4500 miles as the crow flies — to build counterweighted trebuchets with which to battle the Southern Song, their fifty year war quickly came to an end. Béla warned the pope in 1250 that if the Mongols re-invaded Hungary, he was (Pow, pg. 132) “uncertain that his people would have the desire to continue their resistance.”

1433 Italian sketch of a hinged, propped, double-counterweight trebuchet, called a bricola. More compact and portable than the single-counterweight trebuchet above. Source: Brown.edu – 13 things

Had the Mongol invasion continued and with counterweighted trebuchets in tow, Béla could not have built all the castles he created in the 1240s and later. Lacking significant help from the west, from whom he had previously received nothing in the way of help, submission to the Mongols was likely. Batu and Béla could have made powerful allies, and their conjoined armies could be invincible: crossbows and double-trebuchets, cavalry and feigned retreats, winter warfare, fire bombs and gunpowder, a real knowledge of European geography, people, armies and customs. Europe could easily have fallen under the Mongol heel with Hungary in charge of applying the pressure and collecting the tribute. Batu Khan would now be better known in the west than Attila the Hun, his grandfather Genghis Khan, Marco Polo, Kublai Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Christopher Columbus, who would never have sailed west to avoid the Turks and reach the ports of Cathay and the lands of silk and spice. Imaginative writers would then wonder what the world might be like had Genghis Khan — while he was still only the young man Temüjin and not yet any sort of khan — been killed in battle by his anda, Jamukha, rather than the other way around. Would the West have ever been able to rise, or would it today still remain under the iron thumb of Asia?

Stephen Pow ends with a cautionary note:

Clausewitz asserts that accomplishing even the simplest of tasks is difficult in war. The Mongols made war look easy. This can be detrimental to the study of their campaigns because it tempts us to forget that there were limitations to their means and abilities. We start to see every one of their victories as a foregone conclusion and we become apologists for their failures. When we allow that they were human beings constrained by morale, technological, and demographic factors, we realize that nothing was a foregone conclusion for the Mongols. Events in Syria, Japan, and even Europe should suffice to demonstrate that their commanders, lacking prescience, sometimes went a bridge too far.

In our final installment we will pay a visit to general Subutai, alone on a Hungarian springtime evening, sitting at his work desk in his ger, thinking and writing.

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: Pitched Battles versus Sieges || Mongol Empire CXIII
Next Installment: Baghatur Subutai – A Fantasy || Mongol Empire CXV
This Installment: Conclusions on Withdrawal & Alternate History || Mongol Empire CXIV

Pitched Battles versus Sieges || The Mongol Empire CXIII

November 11, 2023November 9, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

Pitched Battles versus Sieges

We continue with historian Stephen Pow’s explanation of the cause for the withdrawal of the Mongols from Hungary in the spring of 1242 CE, succinctly stated by his thesis title: Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242. [Link to free thesis PDF]

Western European armies did not do well against Asian light cavalry, of which the Mongols were the best example. They did far better in defense against sieges, both in constructing fortresses to withstand them and in the actual defensive battle. The Poles at Legnica and the Hungarians at Mohi were obliterated in the open field by the Mongols. In pitched battles between European knights and Central Asian cavalry who had fled to the Holy Land following the fall of Khwarazmia, the knights were slaughtered. Bulgars and Cumans routed the crusaders in 1205 CE at Adrianople. But after they took the City of Damietta during the 5^th Crusade, the Franks reinforced the city with stone battlements, leaving it impregnable. In 1246 the Seljuk Turks lost 100 times as many men in their failed siege on the Tarsus Armenians, largely due to the skill of the Frankish soldiers fighting on the Armenian side. The Mongols could not take Hungarian Székesfehérvár in 1242 largely due to the Latin defenders and their catapults and crossbows positioned atop the city walls. The Mongols fell far short of testing all the stone castles in Europe, or even central Europe, but against the ones they did besiege they fared poorly.

In China and central Asia the Mongols used captured locals as forced labor [levies] to gather catapult stones and fill in moats, and local engineers and artisans — especially the Chinese — to design and build the siege equipment. But in Eastern and Central Europe, the locals — expecting the worst possible treatment from the Mongols — fled into the woods, off to the west or behind stone walls to avoid capture, as they did in Hungary and Croatia, making sieges more difficult for the Mongols. One of the Alan cities in the northern Caucasus held out against the Mongols for 12 years, according to Carpini; other Alans fled deep into the high Caucasus mountains where they held out for decades.

Europeans had the crossbow: they knew how to use it, many soldiers specialized in its use, and weapon masters regularly developed newer and better crossbows. These weapons could not be used from horseback, the Mongols favorite spot from which to shoot and at which they excelled. But when used while hiding behind stone parapets with assistants at hand to cock and reload the crossbow for the marksmen to fire, and with their bolt’s greater distance and impact, they were the weapon the Mongols feared most. King Béla, Duke Frederick, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and the pope all sought to add as many crossbows and crossbowmen [balistarii] to their armies as quickly as possible. Both Esztergom and Székesfehérvár were able to hold off the Mongols from topping their walls largely through the use of crossbows and balistarii in the hands of Latins and Franks. In the last chapters of the Secret History, which “must have been composed a decade after the invasion of Europe,” (Christopher Atwood, cited by Stephen Pow, pg. 68), Khagan Ögedei wishes to punish his obstreperous son Güyük by putting him in the vanguard to assault “the town walls which are as high as mountains.” Leading the storming over the battlements was by then well-known as the very worse place to be.

In Poland, Duke Boleslaw and most of the citizens of Kraków fled the city before the Mongols arrived, after which the Mongols burnt down the wooden city and castle. At Legnica, the Mongols rode around the outside of the city for several days waving the severed head of Duke Henry the Pious, demanding surrender. The inhabitants refused, the Mongols gave up and rode away towards Bohemia and Moravia.

Pow summarizes (pg. 69):

Mongol methods of siege warfare had weaknesses and much of Europe had very strong fortifications for the period. However, the sophistication of fortifications varied between regions, and I argue that this largely explains why the Mongols had success in certain parts of Europe, why they failed in others, and why they decided to avoid some areas altogether.

Centuries earlier, when the Magyars first arrived in Hungary and took up agriculture, they built the gyepü line of defense in the mountains on their northern and eastern borders, which consisted of felled trees, boulders, ditches and natural obstacles. Fortresses of earth and wood were added in the 12^th century. After learning of the impending Mongol invasion, King Béla IV inspected this gyepü in the winter of 1241, but the Mongols quickly broke through it at the Verecke Gate. The castles of wood, mud and earth, except those perched on hilltops where catapults could not reach, presented no problems for them. When they crossed into Transdanubia in December 1241, it was a different situation.

According to a letter dated 2 Feb 1242 from Hungarian religious and secular leaders (Pow, pg. 71):

“…when the Mongols finally crossed the river, the “numerous and well-armed” Hungarian defenders fell back to over 17 fortified places. Furthermore, the defenders expressed a willingness to continue their resistance, even though they had lost contact with Bela IV. Their fortresses were secure enough that the defenders claimed to fear Mongol ruses more than their actual attacks.”

Batu found Esztergom a disappointment of major proportions. After siege engines destroyed the wooden towers and levies filled in the moat, the residents saw that their city would fall; they then burned their houses and possessions, slaughtered their livestock, and sent their gold and silver to the stone citadel in the center of town. Some resisted within their stone palaces which then had to be taken separately. Batu, unused to people preferring to die rather than willingly give up their treasures to [possibly, certainly not guaranteed] save their lives, tortured prisoners with fire and executed women, trying to find out where the valuables were. When he learned they were in the stone citadel he tried to take it, and utterly failed as we previously saw in installment XCVIII (98), and the Mongol army abandoned the siege with little to show for their efforts and lives.

Similarly at Split, Klis and Trogir, Kadan was foiled by stone walls and stout defenders. At Split the defenders lobbed boulders at him from the city walls; at Klis the Mongols tried climbing the cliffs to breach the fortress walls and were shot off the rocks by balistarii bolts; at Trogir they stared at the sea, the mud, the walls and at King Béla in his boat, beyond bowshot range, counting their numbers and calculating his odds of escape. Kadan shouted his demands at the city walls — surrender lest all defenders die — but the defenders simply stared back at him and said not a word. Kadan then gave up the chase and led his armies south. His next attack at Dubrovnik completely failed, but he had some small success with villages and inadequately-defended towns in southern Dalmatia. Nothing worth writing home about, though.

Farther north, Batu and Subutai had unrewarding results with their attacks on Transdanubian and Slovenian cities and towns. When Batu and Subutai learned of Kadan’s failure to capture King Béla in Croatia, they realized that with the Hungarian king still on the loose and apparently uncapturable, as Pow puts it (pgs. 73-74):

“…the Mongols had no hope of gaining Hungary’s submission except by systematically reducing its remaining fortresses. This was not an ideal situation for an army composed mainly of nomadic cavalry…Hungary would not be a quick victory and they had lost their momentum for a drive farther into Europe. The fortresses were becoming difficult to capture with the available artillery and tactics. Finally, the amount of booty was meagre for the amount of effort they were exerting to get it. That incentive to stay in Europe had greatly decreased shortly before the withdrawal is undeniable.”

Soimos Fortress before (artist’s conception) and after the passing of centuries. This fortress was built by the Hungarians in the late 13^th century after the Mongols left. Source: Aradvaros – Medievale ȘoimoȘ

Why Abandon Hungary?

This leaves one question. It makes sense to drop the idea of pressing onward into the Holy Roman Empire, where the sieges against stone walls were likely to increase as well as the loss of Mongol lives, while the resulting booty would decrease, but why abandon already-captured Hungary north and east of the Danube? Pow gives two reasons (pg. 74).

1. Hungary was not pacified. Unreduced and resisting castles were already being fortified by the locals. The king remained on the loose, ready to rally resistance at any opportunity.

2. Eastern and northern Hungary was bordered by Polish, Bohemian, Moravian, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Balkan forces. Any or all of them could combine on a counteroffensive whenever and wherever they liked, picking off small bands of besiegers one at a time, much as the Mongols had picked off ill-defended towns.

Carpini and Rubruck both state that the Mongols feared a surprise attack by the Latin West. These statements may be alarmist. Pow comments (pg. 74): “Carpini specifies that the Mongols had an advanced outpost to watch for armies coming from Europe. Moreover, Möngke later warned the Europeans, ‘If you bring an army against us, we know what we can do.’” But Mongol generals should always consider the possibility of surges of resistance. “When Hülegü left reduced forces to hold Syria, the Mamluks seized the moment to successfully counterattack them at Ayn Jalut.”

All the Hungarian stone structures, when the Mongols bothered to attack them, were withstanding the siege. In the past, Mongols often left a force to continue a siege. They could do this in nations with large cities controlling large tracts of land where you could conquer a few cities to control the nation; this does not describe Hungary or anywhere in Europe. In Transdanubia alone, the eleven towns we known of attacked would have needed 20,000-30,000 men to watch, roughly 25% of their army. Obviously this could not be sustained. Their army would become fragmented, and small forces could be suddenly attacked by a western army, or by the people within the besieged town. Their experience at Kozelsk in the Rus’ Principality of Chernigov showed that determined residents feeling they had little to lose can inflict real damage on besieging Mongols with a surprise attack.

Bulgaria and later Serbia fell under Mongol control largely because — due to impoverishment — their towns had little in the way of fortifications beyond wooden walls, if they had walls at all. Nearby Greece with stout castles and walled Constantinople under Latin or Greek rule were never bothered by the Mongols. Pow writes (pg. 75) “…[John III Doukas Vatatzes, Emperor of Nicaea] sent envoys and after he got to know the Mongols, took little heed of them.” The Empire of Nicaea already had a formidable system of strongholds.

The fact that stone fortifications served their purpose and thwarted the Mongols is best proven by facts on the ground in Hungary following the Mongol withdrawal. King Béla IV returned to Hungary and went on a building spree, erecting new structures of stone or fortifying old ones everywhere. The Poles did the same. Béla either paid for them himself or gave special privileges to nobles who erected stone castles. He believed they had worked, and he was there, traveling his realm, counting the costs and the dead, the towns ruined and the castles and monasteries of stone still standing. Despite a few forays into Hungary in later years, the Mongols never again attempted a wholesale conquest. According to Pow (pg. 76): “Bela’s energetic policies saw the construction of 66 “new style” castles during his reign. All of them were built of stone and most were situated on an elevated site.” As local engineers capable of this work could not be found, Béla had to hire knights of a foreign military order to do the construction. As Pow writes (pg. 76): “For Bela to implement such drastic and expensive polices, he must have been certain that stone castles were useful in countering the Mongols.”

In 1246 a false alarm that the Mongols were returning caused Béla to first move the entire population of Hungary into defensible fortresses, then increase the rate of castle-building. Did this work? The Mongols did not return until 1285, fifteen years after Béla’s death. They took few fortifications and were defeated in battle in Transylvania.

Șiria Fortress built in the 13^th century after the Mongols left. Occupied by the Ottomans 1607-1693. Habsburg troops destroyed it in 1784 for strategic reasons. Source: Cniptarad – Cetatea Siriei

Lesser Poland also found success by following much the same course as Hungary. Clergy and nobles were permitted to build their own fortifications. During the major invasion by generals Nogai and Telebuga in 1287-88, the Mongols took some fortresses and towns, but their sieges of Sandomierz and Krakow failed.

Stephen Pow summarizes (pgs. 77-78): Despite being vastly outnumbered by the Europeans, the Mongols won many battles in the field and took many towns. [I’ll add that this was because they used the “concentration of force to defeat in detail” strategy, discussed in installment 75. In any particular battle location, except Legnica and Mohi, they outnumbered the local force opposing them. — CA comment] When they reached central Europe, the far larger number of towns — each small and sometimes fortified — began to work against them. Pow cites Clausewitz: “Superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory.” When the Europeans realized the Mongol superiority in the field, they avoided all such battles and switched to a defensive strategy. Polish and Hungarian fortifications were better than those of the Rus’ but not as good or as numerous as those in Western Europe. When the Mongols encountered stone walls, costly and fruitless sieges resulted. King Béla had escaped and Esztergom, the largest and richest city in Hungary, was not worth the sacking. Seeing that moving westward would only bring more of the same frustrations and lack of booty, and that any holding force left in Hungary would likely be counterattacked, they opted to leave. Upon their departure, the surviving Hungarians immediately began building more fortresses of stone which likely helped stave off any more massive Mongol invasions.

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: The Stone Walls Theory of Withdrawal || Mongol Empire CXII
Next Installment: Conclusions on Withdrawal & Alternate History || Mongol Empire CXIV
This Installment: Pitched Battles versus Sieges || Mongol Empire CXIII

The Deep Ditches and Stone Walls Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CXII

November 9, 2023November 9, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

Looks crowded doesn’t it, but locations differentiate as you zoom in. Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Rus’ 9th-13th centuries and Mongol Eastern and Central European invasion 1236-42 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

The Deep Ditches and Stone Walls Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

After dispensing with the best-known and longest-held arguments — the political theory, the ecological theory, the limited goals/gradual conquest theory, and the military weakness theory, historian Stephen Pow arrives at what he thinks is the theory most likely to be true, which is succinctly stated in his thesis title: Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242. In chapter 2 of his thesis, his lead paragraph briefly states his theory.

For a long time after I began reading and writing on this topic — why the Mongols didn’t continue into Central And Western Europe but stopped at Hungary — I leaned strongly towards the Political Theory, specifically that the death of Khagan Ögedei forced them to withdraw from Hungary in order to return to Karakorum, bury Ögedei and elect a new Khagan. This was for three reasons: I had read something decades ago to this effect; in virtually all the books and web sources that I initially read, this was the only theory offered; the timing seemed right. Ögedei dies, it takes three months for the Mongols in Hungary to get the word, when they do they immediately pack up and head back east. A compact package with a nice neat little knot on the top. The Environmental Theory came in a close second; perhaps the Mongols got sick and tired of being bogged down in all those marshy springtime fields. Perhaps both theories applied.

Unfortunately — or rather fortunately, as it’s always good to be disabused of significant error — I later came to conclude this explanation was completely wrong. It is Stephen Pow’s writings on the subject to which I give most of the credit. When I first saw his explanation in brief — the Mongols couldn’t get through the stone walls and the Hungarians fended them off long enough for them to change their minds and leave — I thought “Yeah. Right. Tough guy Hungarians, tough guy Europeans, did what all previous nations couldn’t do — defeat the Mongols. Sounds like the Europeans, Pow included, are breaking their arms by patting themselves on the back.” But after reading Pow’s disassembly of the earlier theories and presentation of his own “Stone Walls” theory, I completely changed my opinion. Then, after reading Pow’s paper (The Last Campaign and Death of Jebe Noyan’, summarized here) on the mysterious disappearance of General Jebe in 1223, a problem rarely addressed and unsolved in 800 years, I decided Pow may well be the best historian now working on the Mongols, and was worth paying attention to.

Stephen Pow’s Theory

[The] Mongols evacuated Europe in early 1242 primarily because of military problems they were encountering during the campaign. As they advanced westward, they were being forced to engage primarily in siege warfare which negated many of the nomadic horseman’s advantages such as speed of advance, mobility, and the ability to fight at a distance. Moreover, the sedentary population drastically increased with each westward advance, and the number of fortified places resultantly increased. Individually, these places may have been insignificant to the overall success of Batu’s operations, but when there were overwhelming numbers of unconquered strongholds, it became impossible for strategic reasons to continue to bypass them. To compound matters, with each advance, these castles, monasteries, citadels, and walled towns were becoming more sophisticated in their defenses. [Emphasis added.]

The rest of this and the following installment draw directly from Pow’s paper (pgs. 46-78), significantly abridged. Some of Pow’s detail and nuance will be lost, and I encourage anyone who wants the full fascinating story to go directly to Pow’s paper, which can be found in full at: https://prism.ucalgary.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/f409356a-4e0d-4fa2-afa7-7add6193f94b/content

Primary Criticisms of the “Stone Walls” Theory

1. By 1214 the Mongols had the best army, the best siege equipment and the best artillery corps in Eurasia.

2. The Mongols expected sieges against any sedentary society and had fought many sieges for almost forty years.

The Demographics of Europe

The areas the Mongols conquered in Eastern Europe were sparsely populated, but the farther west they went, the greater the population density they encountered. By the end of the 13^th century, the population of all Europe is estimated at between 74 million (Fontana Economic History of Europe) and 94 million (Economic historian Paolo Malanima). Sample numbers:

Russia west of Ural Mtns. (40% of European land area) 7 million
Poland & Lithuania 2-3 million
Hungary 2 million
Germany 10 million
Italy 10 million
France & Low Countries 19 million.

Western Europe was more urbanized with more towns, more town dwellers, more feudal lords, and more castles than Eastern and East-Central Europe.

Estimates vary all over the map as to the size of the Mongol Great Western Invasion army under Batu Khan. The set we’ve been using, as of the end of the Rus’ campaign, is 60,000 to enter central Hungary, 20,000 to Poland, 20,000 to Transylvania, 30,000 to stay behind in Rus’.

Europeans were baffled by how numerous the Mongols seemed to be, largely the result of their having up to eight separate armies simultaneously in the field over a vast front hundreds of miles long. When the Poles’ crushing defeat at Legnica was followed by the Hungarian’s disastrous defeat at Mohi, two days later and 400 miles to the south, Europe was stunned, bewildered and terrified. Matthew of Paris wrote: “Where have such a people, who are so numerous, till now lain concealed?” But the Mongols often used levies of locals in sieges, increasing their apparent numbers, and in their favorite feigned retreat tactic, additional armies of thousands of Mongols would suddenly erupt from hiding. Additionally, those who lose battles tend to boost their estimates of the size of the enemy army, making themselves look less incompetent in the process. If the Mongols continued west into the Holy Roman Empire, the small size of their army relative to the totality of western forces would worsen daily.

Prior to his death in 1227, Genghis Khan likely had little information about Europe save what Subutai told him upon his return from the Caucasus and Cuman steppe in 1224. He later told his eldest son Jochi to “subjugate the ‘northern tribes’ without reinforcements” (Pow, pg. 49), apparently thinking northern Asia was all the same from east to west, sparsely populated by forest-dwelling or nomadic pastoralists tribes. But as Pow (pg. 49) puts it: “However, taking into account the number of troops sent on the western campaign, Chaghadai’s statement in the “Secret History” about there being many peoples, and Sübetei’s account of receiving trouble at their hands during his famous expedition, we can conclude that this perspective had changed by the 1230s.” A proposal to use Chinese Jin infantry against the west was vetoed: too far, strange food, bad water, lethal epidemics.

When Carpini visited Mongolia in 1246, he was astonished at how few the Mongols actually were. He reported back that Europe should never consider submission to them. He also mentioned that Mongol allies and conscripted levies would revolt if given a good opportunity.

Štramberk ears made of gingerbread; whipped cream and raspberries added. ‘Tis a far, far better thing to eat these ears than to lose one’s own. Source: Travel Potpourri – Ears from Stramberk

Much is made of Mongols cutting off the ears of their fallen foes. The Moravians turned this tale into a popular dessert — gingerbread Štramberk ears. Yet Pow could find only three references to this ear-lopping: a Chinese Jin army in the early 1230s, the Alanian capital of Maghas in 1239, and Legnica, Poland in April, 1241. Ear-counting by Mongols occurred only rarely, apparently when their foes greatly outnumbered them and they wanted to know the size of their victory.

Pow suggests that the western campaign did not go as smoothly as initially envisioned. He writes (pg. 52):

“Kirakos of Gandzak asserts that when Ögödei planned the western campaign in 1235, he decreed that the armies should not return until they had placed every kingdom under his dominion. In reality, the campaign did not progress smoothly. Very few nations were submitting. They would fight, flee westward as refugees, or lock themselves in cities which had to be reduced. Two Cuman emirs did submit, only to revolt immediately after the Mongols left the area. Sübetei was forced to move against them a second time. Another Cuman leader, Bachman, engaged in an effective guerilla campaign until Möngke finally captured him.”

Due to the difficulties, Pow suggests (pg. 53) that the famous argument between Güyük and Batu at the 1240 kurultai southeast of Rus’ was because:

“Güyüg had lost his taste for the campaign and simply declared it successfully concluded, which put him at odds with hardliners like Batu and Sübetei who were aware that there were still many nations which had not submitted. This explains why Güyüg was recalled and why the Secret History has Ögödei raging about how his son demoralized the entire army. It also explains why Batu informed Ögödei that they were holding a “parting feast” when the enmity between the princes broke out in the open, and Güyüg threatened Batu. It is certain that Batu’s campaign in Europe was still underway when the great khan died in Karakorum, so this parting feast must in fact have been Güyüg’s parting feast. The reason for Güyüg’s uncontainable hostility toward Batu was not something as banal as drinking etiquette. It was because he was going back to Mongolia in disgrace.”

Batu regretted the discord at the feast (Pow, pg. 53): “…“just at the time when, having been sent to ride against a rebellious people of a different race, we were asking ourselves whether we had been successful…”, which Secret History translator Francis Cleaves interprets to mean “Will the campaign end well?” Apparently other commanders wondered the same.

The hilltop Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma,
built of stone, now modernized. Source: Wikipedia – Pannonhalma

Off the Battlefields, onto the Hilltops and behind the Walls

After Kyiv fell in December 1240, the Mongol army spread out, taking as many towns as quickly as they could, but their assaults on the hilltop towns of Danilov and Kremenets failed, and they swiftly moved on. For the next few months, most battles were what Mongols preferred — pitched battles in the open. Terror-inducing attacks on small towns and settlements also went well. But the Battle of Mohi in Hungary was touch and go; Carpini says Batu told his troops during the battle they would all die in Hungary. The Yuan Shi says (Pow, pg. 55) that Subutai stopped Batu’s attempt to flee that by insisting on continuing until they at least reached the Danube and overthrew the Magyars. Poe comments (pg. 55) on this: “The fact that an East Asian source [Yuan Shi] has Batu expressing the desire to evacuate Europe in early 1241 should immediately raise suspicions toward ideas that local resistance had nothing to do with his later decision.” [Emphasis added.] In short, Batu — as had Güyük — already had strong second thoughts shortly after entering Hungary.

The primary and secondary sources cover the Legnica and Mohi victories in great detail, the battle at Pest in less detail, and the rest of the Hungarians campaigns into 1242 in nearly no detail at all, as we saw a few installments back when trying to determine who did what and where and when. Pow feels this is — in a sense — justified, as [in my words] the post-Pest (April 1241) Hungarian sieges and standoffs are a boring litany of failures. Pow writes (pg. 55) “Yet, the drastic shift in the type of warfare which characterized the campaign was the result of an emerging awareness in Europe that offensive strategies had failed.” The European leaders decided in near-unanimity to avoid open battles against the Mongols in the field, flee if possible and hide behind the best walls one could find whenever flight was out of the question.

King Wenceslaus [Vaclav] of Bohemia was still one day away from Legnica when Duke Henry II “the Pious” of Silesia was killed in open battle and beheaded by the Mongols, and he immediately withdrew to a defensive position in the Bohemian Sudetes Mountains between Legnica and Prague. He did not approach the Mongols the entire time they ventured into and then passed by Bohemia, nor when they traveled through Moravia and close to the southeastern border of Bohemia, on their way south to Hungary. He armed monks and reconfigured monasteries into refuges for civilians. Meanwhile, in Austria, Duke Frederick II strengthened castles at his own expense. Pow writes (pg. 56-57):

“Thomas of Split mentions that throughout Europe there was a frenzy of fortifying castles and cities as people widely believed that the Mongols intended to advance on Rome. The [Holy Roman emperor Frederick II] was in central Italy…by early summer, he held a firm conviction that a defensive posture was preferable for the present. A message found in the Regesta Imperii, dated to June 20th, 1241 and intended for all his vassals in Swabia, includes a number of new military instructions. His forces were to avoid engaging the Mongols in field battles, provision every stronghold, and arm the general populace.”

Hungarian King Béla IV wrote the pope in 1250 that (Pow, pg. 57) “…the Hungarians desperately held back the Mongols along the banks of the Danube for 10 months despite the kingdom suffering from a dearth of adequate fortifications and defenders.” In Transdanubia Rogerius describes the populace attempting to gather at central locations for defense. The town of Pereg was fortified with a moat. The Mongols took it in eight days anyway, but many of their forcibly-conscripted levies died in the process. If Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II gave little-to-no help to Hungary, it was because Béla had previously given the emperor no support in his argument with the pope. Indeed, the emperor had been busily undermining Béla, trying to get him replaced; Béla knew this and was furious at the emperor. Yet the emperor allowed his own son Conrad to lead a crusade against the Mongols, although Conrad promised (Pow, pg. 58) only to defend the Empire — not Hungary — on “this side of the alps.” When the Mongols stayed in east Hungary, the crusade disbanded. The Europeans had seen that offense in the open field against the Mongols was fruitless and suicidal. Defense was the only option.

On Europe’s change in battle tactics from offensive to defensive, Pow writes (pg. 58):

Leaving the Hungarians to their fate was not a humanitarian gesture, but it was a prudent one. I have demonstrated that Europeans in areas threatened by the Mongol invasion were now employing defensive strategies. As such, it was a sensible idea for those in the Latin West to remain within their own borders as there was a great disparity in the quality of fortifications between Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Eastern Hungary, where the Mongols had concentrated, lagged behind the Latin states in the development of fortifications. To march into Hungary and fight in the open with opponents who already had achieved great successes in pitched battle would be a terrible risk and would negate what possible advantages those in the Latin West had against the Mongols.

Esztergom Castle today. Source: Europe Between East & West – A Last Bastion

A Study on Castles

Stephen Pow (pgs. 59-60) brings to our attention a study historian Erik Fügedi made on Hungarian castles. Fügedi noted that following the Battle of Mohi (11 Apr 1241) 29 counties fell under Mongol occupation; each county had a so-called “comital” [belonging to a count or earl] castle at the center; five of the six castles that survived the invasion had been built on elevated ground; all of these castles were built not of stone but of earth, wood and clay. Mongol siege methods of bombardment, moat-filling and wall-storming worked very well against castles located on flat plains and defended only by walls of wood, earth or clay. This included Pest, which fell after only a few days. Advised to flee the town, the people opted rather to “dig a ditch, throw up a rampart, weave wicker barricades and make all sorts of useless preparations,” none of which did any good at all. According to Fügedi’s analysis there were only ten “new-style” stone castles in Hungary at the time, five were on the Austrian border (built to defend against the argumentative Austrians); the other five of stone were on hilltops and survived the Mongol attacks. Fügedi points out that unlike Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe had a great many “new-style” stone castles, most built during the early 13^th century on the tops of hills. Double-walls, undermining-resistant, flanking towers, water cisterns, arrow loops and angled anti-battering ram entrances were standard. They were the fruit of the emperor’s long siege-wars against the Italians and the Papacy, and this is what the Mongols would be besieging, not clay castles with wooden walls.

It was due to their seemingly-endless feudal warfare that Western and West-central Europe had built far more structures of stone than had Hungary, Poland and the fractious Rus’ principalities. In this sense, the inability of Western Europeans to get along with one another made them more prepared to resist their most serious invasion ever from the east. It’s much like inoculation against viral infection: a small infection peremptorily received can fend off far worse in the future. This probably wouldn’t be true if humans were more angelic and less prone towards disagreement and violence at all levels of societal organization. But we are. As it was, even though Hungary had far fewer stone defensive structures than their forever-feuding neighbors to the west, the Mongol experience of one unrewarding siege after another against stone walls quickly became a nightmare and the Mongols figuratively and literally “hit the wall.”

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: The Military Weakness Theory || Mongol Empire CXI
Next Installment: Pitched Battles versus Sieges || Mongol Empire CXIII
This Installment: The Stone Walls Theory || Mongol Empire CXII

The Military Weakness Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CXI

November 7, 2023November 4, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

Looks crowded, doesn’t it, but locations differentiate as you zoom in. Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Rus’ 9th-13th centuries and Mongol Eastern and Central European invasion 1236-42 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

The Military Weakness Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

The Military Weakness Theory argues that battle losses beginning in 1236 CE, when the Mongols first entered into northern Rus’, until 1242 when they withdrew from Hungary, were so great that they simply could not continue the campaign. The strongest advocates for this theory are Russian historians including V.T. Pashuto. Many see this theory as little more than nationalistic face-saving propaganda: the claim that Russian and Slavic ferocity and intransigence wore down the Mongols until they finally withdrew in exhaustion and bitter disappointment, therefore the Russians saved the countries of the west without their ever lifting a finger, yet again, from the nomadic barbarian hordes from the east. Despite this bias, the theory is not entirely without merit.

Support for the theory

John of Plano Carpini mentions that at the battle of Mohi [Sajó River] Batu Khan struggled to keep his soldiers from fleeing, and that the Mongols lost so many men in Hungary that they had their very own cemetery. The Chinese Yuan Shi adds that Batu became discouraged and General Subutai had to talk him out of taking flight, and that they needed to get as far as the Danube River at the very least. Juvaini says that Batu saw the Hungarians as formidable opponents and despaired before the battle. Polish historian Jan Długosz commented that their losses at the Czarna River horrified the Mongols; yet despite that, they won every pitched battle they fought in Poland. At the 50-day siege of Kozelsk [Installment LX] in the spring of 1238 in the northern Rus’ Principality of Chernigov, the Mongols lost around 4,000 men when the besieged poured out from their gate, slaughtered the Mongols and destroyed their siege engines. Reportedly “three sons of Tatar generals” died, and Kozelsk was forever after “the evil city” to the Mongols. Arab historian Ibn al-Athir described the 1223 Battle at the River Kalka as unexpectedly fierce, noting that before the Rus’ terrific defeat at the end of the Mongol feigned retreat (Pow, pg. 43), “both sides held firm in a way that was unheard of.”

Defense of Kozelsk. Miniature from Kozelsk letopis, circa 1500-1600. Mongols are using crossbow-like ballista to launch boulders against the walls. Source: Wikipedia – Siege of Kozelsk

Arguments against the theory

But no matter how fiercely the Europeans fought, they always lost; their leaders died, fled to foreign lands or knelt in submission. In six years the Mongols conquered more than half of Europe [European Russia alone comprises almost 40% of Europe], and about half that time they spent relaxing in the “Wild Fields” of the steppe, practicing archery and watching their horses graze. By mid-April 1241 Poland, Transylvania and central Hungary had collapsed. If Novgorod, Lithuania, Bavaria, Moravia, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria still stood, it was because they had been as yet ignored. Otherwise, all was success.

Stephen Pow writes (pg. 44):

Rogerius states that at the siege of the moated village of Pereg, the Mongols sent in waves of Hungarians, Russians, and Cumans, while they stood behind the attackers. Greg S. Rogers suggests that this could be seen as proof that Mongol losses had been severe. In reality, it only suggests the Mongols’ widely attested method of sending levies of subjugated people against fortress walls to reduce their own casualties. As such, it is actually evidence against the military weakness theory.

Pow is correct. As far back as the early battles in China, the Mongols always captured, “conscripted,” or enslaved conquered people from prior victorious battles and installed them in their front lines or put them to work filling in moats and re-channeling rivers. Mongol lives were thereby saved and 20,000 to 50,000 conscripts can move a tremendous amount of dirt and rocks in a few days.

Even the few battles in which Europeans supposedly bested the Mongols didn’t amount to much. Their defeats in Moravia were the results of erroneous dating, conflation of battles, and mostly Moravian nationalistic mythologizing (see installments LXXXII and LXXXIII) . Duke Frederick II of Austria claimed to have killed one Tatar and captured another in battle near Pest, although the captured man turned out to be a Cuman. Later, in a battle at the Morava River in June 1241, he first claimed to have killed 300 Mongols, but within nine days the enemy dead had increased to 700. Matthew of Paris cites the famous battle at Wiener-Neustadt, also in June 1241, south of Vienna and the river Danube, where Duke Frederick of Austria, King Wenceslaus of Bavaria and other assorted dukes, patriarchs and margraves defeated a Mongol army. Nearly all historians hold that these particular “Tatars” were actually disgruntled Cumans out marauding after the citizens of Pest murdered their Khan Kotian, as the Mongols did not cross the Danube until December 1241. Another “bloody battle” reported by Matthew of Paris at the Delpheos River [an unknown river, possibly the Dnieper] where Conrad, son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, repulsed the Mongols, seems to be completely unknown to anyone else among both the Europeans and Mongols.

Matthew of Paris had rather an alarmist view of Mongol culinary preferences. “A Tartar Feast” (portion), illustration by the author in the Chronica Majora II. The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, MS 16, fol. 167r. Source: Apholt – Accounts of the Mongols

Of course, as Pow points out (pg. 45) that merely because a victory conveniently supports “modern nationalistic fervour,” as Peter Jackson suggests, it doesn’t mean that it never happened. It should still be duly considered based on the evidence, if any. However, it was likely exactly that — modern nationalistic fervour — which (Pow, pg. 45)“…drove Strakosch-Grassman, at the end of the nineteenth century, to argue that the Mongols withdrew out of fear of a mighty Teutonic emperor” and “…why Soviet historians disproportionately viewed Russian resistance as the decisive factor that broke the Mongol advance.”

Conclusions on the Military Weakness Theory

Pow finds (pg. 45) the military weakness theory “…a flawed and unpersuasive explanation for the withdrawal because the Mongols did not suffer any major reverses in the field, nor is there proof that their losses were too great to continue the war.” Yet he finds it the closest of the four theories to what he concludes is the true explanation, which is what we shall look at next. Pow leaves us with this quotation from the Prussian general and war theorist of the early 19^th century, Carl von Clausewitz, who noted that war “is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass (total nonresistance would be no war at all) but always the collision of two living forces… there is an interaction.” As we saw in both Germany and Japan at the close of World War II and as we see even today in Ukraine, (Pow, pg. 46) “the gravest problem facing one group is the other’s means and desire to resist.” It is in Europe’s ability to resist that Pow seeks a new explanation for Batu’s decision to leave.

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: Ecological Theory Rebuttals & Replies || Mongol Empire CX
Next Installment: Stone Walls Theory || Mongol Empire CXII
This Installment: Military Weakness Theory || Mongol Empire CXI

Ecological Theory Rebuttals and Replies || The Mongol Empire CX

November 5, 2023November 3, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

The Rebuttal to Büntgen and Di Cosmo

As described in my prior installment, in May 2016 Ulf Büntgen & Nicola Di Cosmo published a paper titled Climatic and environmental aspects of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 [Link to free PDF file]. In October 2016, a rebuttal to Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s paper was submitted for publication: Climate of doubt: A re-evaluation of Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s environmental hypothesis for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, 1242 CE, co-authored by Zsolt Pinke, László Ferenczi, Beatrix F. Romhányi, József Laszlovszky, and Stephen Pow. [Link to free PDF copy.] It was published a year later in October 2017.

Pinke, et. al.’s abstract:

In their recent article published in the journal Scientific Reports, Büntgen and Di Cosmo have attempted to solve the historical mystery of the sudden Mongol withdrawal from Hungary after a year-long occupation. We cannot share the authors’ viewpoint that environmental circumstances contributed to the decision of the Mongols to abandon Hungary since the hypothesis lacks support from environmental, archaeological and historical evidence. Historical source material in particular suggests that the Mongols were able to settle and sustain their herds in Hungary as is clearly stated in a letter by King Bela IV to the pope. The Mongol army arrived in the kingdom at the end of a severe drought, and we present empirical evidence that the abundant rain in the spring of 1242 CE did not worsen but rather improved their prospects for sufficient food supplies and pasturage. The marshy terrain of the Hungarian Plain likely did not precipitate the Mongol withdrawal as the Mongol high command ultimately stationed their main forces around the marshy Volga Delta. In contrast to what Büntgen and Di Cosmo have suggested, we argue that the reasons for the sudden withdrawal cannot be explained largely by environmental factors.

This paper contains about 6 pages of text and figures and 2 pages of references. We’ll take a closer look at some of their main points. Readers can follow this link to a free copy of the paper. The paper has no pagination, but following each quote below is its location within the text. “B&DC reply point 1, 2, etc.” refers to Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s rebuttal to Pinke et.al. comments (see farther down this installment).

Sheep on the Great Hungarian Plain (Nagy Alföld).
Source: Wikipedia – Great Hungarian Plain

1. Food and pasturage was sufficient for the Mongols.

One may rightly presume that the 330,000 km² Hungarian Kingdom – of which ca. 40% was plain – could have sustained millions of horses in the thirteenth century. Indeed, medieval sources seem to indicate the Mongol army had sufficient forage for its horses. After the withdrawal, King Béla IV (1235–1270 CE) clearly stated in a letter to the pope that Hungary was suited for the Mongols and their enormous herds: “They can settle their families and animals – in which they abound – marvellously well here [in Hungary], better than elsewhere”. Thus, there is little evidence to support the argument that insufficient fodder played a role in the abrupt Mongol withdrawal. In general, theories on the Mongol withdrawal based on ecological considerations tend to grossly downplay the carrying capacity of the Carpathian Basin, especially when we consider that the Mongols’ steppe horses were well-known for their endurance and ability to survive on little food.
— Environmental Arguments par. 5; B&DC reply point 1.

2. The wet spring of 1242 would increase forage for horses, not decrease.

“…springtime inundations on the drought-prone Hungarian plain have historically been beneficial for the grazing of its enormous livestock herds. There is no evidence to support a statement which is crucial to their theory: ‘Soil wetness […] not only delays the onset of the vegetation period but also reduces the overall productivity of the extensive agricultural and natural grassland habitats in Hungary’. Recent research in landscape ecology shows quite the opposite.”
— Environmental Arguments par. 1; B&DC reply point 2.

3. The Hungarian famine was due to massacre, not weather. The famine in Hungary following the invasion was not due to adverse weather, but to the Mongol slaughter of about one million people, approximately half of the population. Farmers and pastoralists abandoned their lands and hid in the woods to escape the massacre. The Mongols successfully lured many peasants back out with promises of permanent protection if they would tend to their crops and animals until the autumn. After the harvest was completed most of them were massacred. So much for promises.

“As a contemporary observer noted: ‘For with the fury of the Tatars upon them, the poor farmers had not been able to plant the fields, nor could they bring in the previous harvest’….the Mongols left Hungary with loaded wagons after looting the country. They had plundered the livestock and horses of Hungary to such an extent that Hungarian peasants were forced to attach ploughs to themselves as the country had few remaining draught animals.
— Environmental Arguments par. 2; B&DC reply point 3

4. The Hungarians defended at the Danube in 1241. The Hungarians effectively prevented Mongols from crossing the Danube until December 1241. 1241 was the last year of a 4-year drought and the Danube river fords could be waded on horseback during the dry summer and autumn. Yet for nine months the Mongols did not get across the Danube despite their long history of great skill in crossing rivers. Hungarian armed resistance likely played a role in hindering the Mongol advance into Transdanubia.

“One author who was taken prisoner by the Mongols, Rogerius, states that the Hungarians regularly broke the ice and guarded the river so that ‘the foot soldiers continuously fought on the ice’. King Béla IV also wrote a letter to the pope, explaining his decision to fortify the Danube line on the basis that his troops had halted the invaders along the ‘water of resistance’ for ten months after the disaster at Mohi.”
— Documentary Evidence par. 1; B&DC reply point 4.

4. Trogir was a nearshore island in the Adriatic Sea. Trogir in Croatia was not temporarily surrounded by mud due to heavy rains or melting snow. Trogir was permanently surrounded by mud due to Adriatic sea level, tides and waves, backed by a stone wall. — Documentary Evidence par. 3.

5. Esztergom and Pannonhalma won with stone walls and siege defense. The marsh at Pannonhalma slowed the Mongols, but the stone archabbey at Pannonhalma stopped them. Marshes and meltwater was not a factor at Esztergom. The sources record that stiff and skilled resistance from behind stone walls withstood the sieges.
— Documentary Evidence par. 3; B&DC reply point 4.

6. Skilled mercenary fighters, not marshes or snowmelt, saved Székesfehérvár. Latin mercenaries skilled in siege defense built and used catapults and otherwise defended the town. The marsh was a permanent element of the town’s defenses, and Székesfehérvár was built specifically on islands within the marsh as a defensive measure. [I don’t want to even think about the biting insects. — CA comment] That the marshes were full of water was a permanent feature, not a temporary anomaly due to weather. A 17^th century sketch shows marshes still encircling the town; these marshes remained until modern times when they were drained. Additional snowmelt was not a key factor for success.
— Documentary Evidence par. 3 & Figure 2; B&DC reply points 4 &5.

Székesfehérvár in the seventeenth century. An Early Modern depiction of the city before the modern drainage activity, shows that it was ordinarily surrounded by marshes. The image is from a 1667 print of Merian’s Theatrum Europaeum. Source: Pinke, et.al. Climate of Doubt, pub. 2017.

7. Batu and Subutai disagreed about conquering Hungary. Even as early as the Battle of Mohi in April 1241, Mongol leaders did not agree on whether to continue against Hungary. Batu wanted to withdraw part way through this battle. Subutai insisted that they must continue and at least reach the Danube. This is supported by Mongol and Chinese documents.
— Discussion, par 1, B&DC reply point 4.

8. Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s data may be correct but their interpretation wrong. They may be correct as to the dry year of 1241 and wet spring of 1242 but are incorrect as to their assumption that it was a hindrance to the Mongols. The Battle of Mohi was won partially because “’almost the whole’ of the fleeing Hungarian army drowned in the enormous nearby swamp while trying to escape their pursuers.” The unusual cold froze the rivers beyond the ability of the Hungarians to break up the ice to prevent Mongol crossing.
— Discussion par. 1.

9. Mongols ate meat, not grain. They were meat-eating pastoral nomads, not grain-eating farmers, and their horses foraged for themselves. A loss of grain might affect their non-horse livestock, which they ate, but would not directly affect the Mongols.
— CA comment.

Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s Rebuttal to “Climate of Doubt” by Pinke, et.al

Later in 2017, Büntgen and Di Cosmo issued a short paper rebutting points made by Pinke, et.al.: Reply to ‘Climate of doubt: a re-evaluation of Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s environmental hypothesis for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, 1242 CE’. Link to free PDF file. From Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s abstract:

“… their arguments are based on a level of generality that fails to appreciate the specific conditions of the Mongol invasion, do not offer new or different climatic data, and are supported by anachronistic production data and environmental information, which cannot be related to the period in question.…we stand by our conclusions.”

Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s paper touched on five points of contention. These are the “B&DC reply points” referred to above.

1). In his 1250 CE letter to the Pope, King Béla’s assertions that the Mongols could have settled in Hungary “marvellously well here, better than elsewhere” bears no relationship to actual Spring 1242 conditions when flooding and swamping hampered their military operations. “The Mongols might have settled in Hungary under normal conditions, and indeed preparations were made in 1241. Flooding and swamping, however, possibly hampered their military operations, and made the Mongols weary of settling.”

2). Agriculture in Hungary, which has a high water table, was adversely affected by the Spring rains and snowmelt, unlike the dryer steppes of Eastern Europe which may have benefited. The wetter conditions hampered Mongol cavalry mobility. Pinke, et.al. also “confuse military capabilities with economic potential…wetter conditions hampered mobility of the Mongol cavalry…critically contributed to their low success rate in 1242 and subsequent withdrawal.” Extensive drainage beginning in the 18^th century improved matters.

3). Recent research revealed the drought of 1237-41 and the cold and wet winter and spring of 1242. Additionally, historian Vadas “…attributes the famine of 1315–17 in Hungary to lower temperatures and flooding” supporting their contention of the same effect in Spring 1242.

4). The Mongols were successful in eastern Hungary in 1241 as weather conditions were then favorable for army maneuverability. They did far less well in Transdanubia in 1242 when weather conditions were unfavorable. That’s why archaeology has found far more caches of valuables in eastern Hungary and far fewer in western Hungary.

5). The sketch of Székesfehérvár showing extensive surrounding marshland is from 1667, is anachronistic and does not show conditions in 1242.

Székesfehérvár in the seventeenth century. An Early Modern depiction of the city before the modern drainage activity, it shows that it was ordinarily surrounded by marshes. The image is from a 1667 print of Merian’s Theatrum Europaeum. Source: Pinke, et.al. Climate of Doubt, pub. 2017.

Büntgen and Di Cosmo conclude that we must overcome “deterministic and reductionist tendencies,” and use “truly cross-disciplinary approaches between natural sciences and the humanities when interpreting archaeological remains and historical events in the context of past climatic changes.”

Homesteads around Szeged (Csongrád) in the Great Hungarian Plain.
Source: arcanum.com – Lexikonok-magyar-neprajzi

Pow’s reply to Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s Rebuttal

In what may be (but I wouldn’t count on it) the last in this series of disputes on the effect of Hungarian weather in 1242 CE, Stephen Pow wrote “Climatic and Environmental Limiting Factors in the Mongol Empire’s Westward Expansion: Exploring Causes for the Mongol Withdrawal from Hungary in 1242,” published February 2019. It comprises chapter 15, pages 301-321, in Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road, published by Springer Cham. Link to free PDF copy.

From Pow’s Abstract

In 1241–1242, the Mongols invaded and occupied Hungary for a year before mysteriously withdrawing eastward into the steppes. Many theories have been offered for this event…including most recently Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s “environmental hypothesis” that short-term climatic fluctuation and environmental factors played a decisive role. [This current paper discusses]: the suitability of the Kingdom of Hungary for long-term occupation by the Mongols; the role that the climatic events of 1242 played in the famine that ravaged the kingdom after the withdrawal; and the role that environmental factors could have played in Mongol military setbacks and problems during the invasion.

Pow then discusses three main points.

1. The Kingdom of Hungary was eminently desirable and suitable for long-term occupation by the Mongols, largely because the Great Hungarian Plain was the western end of the steppe habitat the Mongols much preferred, stretching across Eurasia from Manchuria in northern China to Hungary, with many trade networks using it or crossing through it. The conjecture that (pg. 317) “…a few months of unseasonable cold and above average precipitation convinced experienced Mongol leaders that the Carpathian Basin was unsuitable for a long-term occupation ignores the larger context of their successful and often overlooked conquests in the Balkans in subsequent years.”

2. A wide range of textual material shows that (pg. 317) “…the Mongols used famine as a weapon against people they were trying to subjugate everywhere,” most commonly to starve a city under siege. Add to that (pg. 317) “…recent findings on medieval Hungary’s reaction to long-term climate change, it seems that the famine of 1242 was largely manmade. Thus, the use of textual accounts of famine to support a climate-centered explanation for the withdrawal is untenable.”

3. Mongols had difficulties with “strategically situated fortresses” in all nations, regions and climates. Strong fortresses often had natural defenses — rivers, mountains, marshes — for which their sites were chosen in the first place, and which made them even more difficult, or impossible, to take. When sieges of such locations were eventually successful, whatever the defending nation, it was often due to betrayal or outright flight by the defenders, or the Mongol-induced starvation of the occupants.

In the next installment we will look at the “military weakness theory” of withdrawal, the fourth and final of the traditional theories of Mongol withdrawal from Central Europe.

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: Ecological Theory of Withdrawal || Mongol Empire CIX
Next Installment: Military Weakness Theory || Mongol Empire CXI
This Installment: Ecological Theory Rebuttals & Replies || Mongol Empire CX

Sources
Climate of doubt: A re-evaluation of Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s environmental hypothesis for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, 1242 CE, co-authored by Zsolt Pinke, László Ferenczi, Beatrix F. Romhányi, József Laszlovszky, and Stephen Pow; 5 October 2017. National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI): Published online 2017 Oct 5. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-12128-6 Link to free PDF file.

Climatic and environmental aspects of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE; Büntgen, Ulf & Di Cosmo, Nicola; 26 May 2016; Scientific Reports, 6:25606; DOI: 10.1038. Link to free PDF file.

Climatic and Environmental Limiting Factors in the Mongol Empire’s Westward Expansion: Exploring Causes for the Mongol Withdrawal from Hungary in 1242;” Pow, Stephen, Feb 2019. This also comprises chapter 15, pages 301-321, in Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road, published by Springer Cham. Link to free PDF copy.

Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the Mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242; Pow, Lindsey Stephen, 2012; Department of History, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada. Link to free thesis PDF.

Reply to ‘Climate of doubt: a re-evaluation of Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s environmental hypothesis for the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary, 1242 CE’; Büntgen, Ulf & Di Cosmo, Nicola; 5 Oct 2017; National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI): Published online 2017 Oct 5. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-12126-8. Link to free PDF file.

The Ecological Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CIX

November 2, 2023November 1, 2023 ChukarLeave a comment

[By Chuck Almdale]

Looks crowded, doesn’t it, but locations differentiate as you zoom in. Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Rus’ 9th-13th centuries and Mongol Eastern and Central European invasion 1236-42 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

The Ecological Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

We continue to rely heavily on Stephen Pow’s analysis, found in his thesis Deep Ditches and Stone Walls (2010, pgs. 24-34). In 2016 and later, additions to the ecological theory were proposed by other historians. These additions will be addressed in this and the following installment. [Link to free thesis PDF.]

The Ecological Theory emerged with Denis Sinor’s 1972 paper “Horse and Pasture in Inner Asian History.” At the end of his paper Sinor presented this argument (Pow, pgs. 24-25):

If a single horse required 120 acres of pasturage per year in pre-modern conditions, then the Nagy Alföld of Hungary could support a herd of 205,920 horses.

Historian Denis Sinor based his calculation for the necessary quantity of fodder on statistics of American horse-breeders and Chinese histories. Mongol warriors had multiple mounts; Sinor assigns an average of three horses to each rider. If no other animals used the pastures, only 205,920 horses (for 68,640 warriors) could occupy Hungary and feed their horses. Mongolia had enormous pastures for nearly unlimited numbers of horses; China too had enormous pastures but the Carpathian Basin did not. Nomadic steppe peoples — Huns, Avars, Magyars — could not feed enormous herds for their cavalries and when they settled into the region of Hungary they were forced to take up more sedentary lifestyles.

Historian David Morgan allows (Pow, pg. 25) that it is “not implausible that Batu withdrew to the Kipchak steppe in order to monitor the situation in the Mongol heartland.” But he concurs with Sinor that it was environmental and not political factors which prevented the Mongols from continuing or later repeating the invasion, and holds that the ecological explanation (Pow, pg. 25) “provides a much more satisfactory explanation of the Mongols’ precipitate and permanent withdrawal.” There is, however, Pow points out, little primary source support for this view. Thomas of Split does relate that Kadan took only a portion of his force south because “there was not sufficient fodder for all the horses in the army; for it was the beginning of March, and the weather was still harshly cold.” This statement, according to Pow (pg. 26) “refers to a temporary frost-related shortage in a mountainous region of Croatia.”

February snow in Lika county, Senj area, Croatia, 14 Feb 2012.
Photo: Roberta F. Source: Wikipedia – Lika-Senj County

Sinor also takes the 1241-42 famine in Hungary as sign of cropland insufficiency. But Thomas of Split states the famine was caused by the farmers abandoning their planting and care for their crops and livestock when they fled the Mongols and hid in the woods. When the Mongols left in 1242 they took all the Hungarian livestock with them, leaving the surviving farmers to pull their own plows to till the soil. Pasturage was possible, but there were no animals to help sow it and none to eat it. It’s not that historians and chroniclers didn’t bother to mention problems of the environment or climate; in fact they typically made note of adverse weather, poor crops, bad harvests, resulting famines and even cannibalism. Thus Pow finds it noteworthy that no mention was made by them of a pasturage shortage in 1241-42. He writes (pg. 28):

While a captive of the Mongols, [Rogerius] was employed by a knes, or headman, who oversaw a thousand villages and was responsible for managing the fodder, livestock, and equipment of the occupying force. Rogerius even attended their weekly logistics meetings! He mentions no shortage of necessities on the part of the Mongols who managed the environment quite well to ensure their stocks for the winter. The Mongols ended up leaving in the spring when the grass was first sprouting, and a nomadic army would feel the least environmental pressure to evacuate the area.

King Béla IV also seemed unaware of Hungary’s insufficiency of food and — following the withdrawal — believed just the opposite. Around 1250 when rumors appeared of an approaching Mongol reinvasion, he wrote the pope (Pow, pg. 29):

“If … [Hungary] should fall into the possession of the Tartars, the gate to other lands of the Catholic faith would lie open. For one, because there is no ocean to hinder their approach to the Christians, and moreover, because it is exactly here that they are able to settle their enormous hosts better than elsewhere.”

Additionally, Mongolian horses were quite capable of finding their own food throughout the year, including digging for roots with their hooves. That was one of their major advantages over horses of other nations. Sinor used American horse-breeding statistics which assume that a (Pow, pg. 31) “fairly productive grass range” is 120 acres per horse per year. Smaller Mongolian horses that evolved through millennia of harsh steppe winter conditions don’t require the same volume and quality of grass as larger American horses descended from Arabian stock. Lastly, it was springtime – the grass sprouting fresh and green – when the Mongols pulled up their ger stakes and left. If lack of food for horses was a problem, it was a strange time indeed to move on to an unknown, unfamiliar land like Bulgaria [– CA comment].

Later Mongol Threats

Mongols continued to threaten Hungary and all of Europe for decades in apparent disregard of these purported shortages of fodder or other environmental problems. King Béla IV received additional demands from the Mongols for tribute, marriage alliances, use of Hungarian troops and threats of destruction, all of which he ignored. While in Mongolia, John of Plano Carpini watched Güyük (Pow, pg. 30) as he “raised the standard to proceed against the Holy Roman Empire and all Christian kingdoms of the West.” In 1260 Berke [now Khan of the Golden Horde following the death of his brother Batu] demanded submission from Louis IX of France. As Pow writes (pg. 30) “It seems that if taking Europe were an ecological impossibility, nobody was aware of it in the decades immediately after the first campaign.”

Many of the lands conquered by the Mongols were not ideal for horse-based pastoralism. Southern Central Asia was hot and dry, India was hot and humid, large portions of China were mountainous or desert, Siberia was forested, boggy and cold. They invaded Japan and Java by ship, certainly unusual for steppe nomads. They overcame many logistical problems by adopting and adapting the expertise of local peoples. Siege engines were copied from the Chinese, and Chinese engineers to design and build them were taken along into central Asia. Persian viticulture was relocated to northern China (– CA comment). Rogerius wrote of Hungarian peasants coaxed by Mongols out of the forests with promises of safety if they’d bring in the harvest. Then, as we previously saw, they massacred them all. During their long war with the Southern Song when food supplies became very scarce near the front, a Chinese general fighting for the Mongols ordered his troops to do the farming themselves, lest they all starve. Suitability for horse-based pastoralism was not a prerequisite for the Mongols to intend conquest.

While the Mongols considered themselves superior to everyone else [as does nearly everyone everywhere — CA comment] part of their success in battle and conquest was due to the full use they made of the knowledge and skills of the people they met. All positions in their army were open to anyone from anywhere providing they had the skill, desire and aptitude, and any leader could be replaced at any time if a better candidate appeared. All religions were allowed, none were disallowed. In all of that, the Mongols were egalitarian [– CA comment].

Well (gémeskút) in the Hortobágy National Park, Puszta, Hungary. Source: Wikipedia – Great Hungarian Plain

The Büntgen & Di Cosmo Paper of 2016

In May 2016, Scientific Reports published a study by Ulf Büntgen & Nicola Di Cosmo titled Climatic and environmental aspects of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 [Link to free PDF file]. This study looked at
paleoclimatic evidence between 1230 and 1250 CE, focusing on what documentary sources and tree-ring chronologies could reveal. They found warm and dry summers from 1238 to 1241, followed by cold and wet conditions in early 1242. The abstract states:

Marshy terrain across the Hungarian plain most likely reduced pastureland and decreased mobility, as well as the military effectiveness of the Mongol cavalry, while despoliation and depopulation ostensibly contributed to widespread famine. These circumstances arguably contributed to the determination of the Mongols to abandon Hungary and return to Russia….our ‘environmental hypothesis’ demonstrates the importance of minor climatic fluctuations on major historical events.

Here is a brief summary of their supporting evidence.

Documentary evidence indicates that (pg. 3):

Spring 1241 was warm: Hungarian soldiers suffered from heat at the battle of Mohi (April 11); there was no famine in the Mongolian army; Mongols traveled quickly across Poland and Hungary; Hungarian towns and castles were conquered with relative ease; there was ample fodder for their horses.
Summer and fall 1241 weather is unknown: However Mongols did not burn Hungarian crops; their horses were fed by the locals, under orders; people were not slaughtered but left alive to bring in the harvest; this may indicate an expectation of early winter.
Winter 1241 was unusually cold: heavy snowfall; Danube River froze solid; at Christmastime Mongols crossed the river westward into Transdanubia towards Austria and Germany; documentation exists to support this severity.
Winter 1242 was hard: Mongols had difficulties in storming fortified towns and castles; Székesfehérvár was surrounded by marshes on the verge of melting; in Croatia, Trogir was surrounded by mud; thawing snow and ice flooded large areas, making cavalry movement difficult. Starvation spread among Mongolian captives and Hungarian and Croatian citizens began to starve; provisions for Mongols and their horses becomes limited.

Dendroclimatological (tree-ring) evidence indicates that (pg.3):

The period 1230-1250 experienced “a plateau of four successive summers with above average temperatures from 1238–1241, followed by a sharp cooling in 1242”
The period 1238-1241 experienced an uninterrupted cluster of above average temperatures over Hungary and its surroundings.
The period 1242-1244 had colder summers in Hungary and its surroundings.
Most of Europe from the Iberian Peninsula to the Baltic was unusually dry in 1241.
The exceptional wetness of 1242 was only in southern Poland, most of the Czech Republic, western Slovakia, northwestern Hungary and eastern Austria.
The above area experienced above average wetness until 1246, but dryness characterized surrounding areas to the east and south.

The study’s authors concluded (pgs. 5-6):

“It is therefore under conditions of (i) reduced mobility and military effectiveness; (ii) reduced fodder for the horses; and (iii) reduced victuals for the army, which in the late spring of 1242 the Mongols left Hungary…. Our ‘environmental hypothesis’, therefore, argues that small climatic changes from 1241–42 were though [sic] sufficiently extensive to alter the conditions under which the Mongols first invaded Hungary. These changes would not allow them to function effectively as an occupation army, thus forcing them to withdraw.”

Clouding over the Great Hungarian Plain, artist János Tornyai (1869-1936). Source: Wikipedia – Great Hungarian Plain

In the next installment we’ll look at the 2017 rebuttal to Büntgen & Di Cosmo’s paper by Zsolt Pinke, László Ferenczi, Beatrix F. Romhányi, József Laszlovszky, and Stephen Pow. This is followed by Büntgen & Di Cosmo’s 2017 reply to Pinke’s et.al.paper, and Stephen Pow’s 2019 follow-up reply.

Interactive Google MyMap above shows all locations for Central Asian conquest 1220-1224 CE. Click on any marker or line for description. If map doesn’t display properly in your email, go to the blog.

Entire Mongol Empire & Rus’ Series: Click Here
First Installment: Why didn’t the Mongols Conquer Europe in the 13th Century?
Previous Installment: Political Theory of Withdrawal || Mongol Empire CVIII
Next Installment: Ecological Theory Rebuttals & Replies || Mongol Empire CX
This Installment: Ecological Theory of Withdrawal || Mongol Empire CIX

Source
Climatic and environmental aspects of the Mongol withdrawal from Hungary in 1242 CE; Büntgen, Ulf & Di Cosmo, Nicola; 26 May 2016; Scientific Reports, 6:25606; DOI: 10.1038. Link to free PDF file.

ChukarBlog

Whatever's interesting in birding, science & society

Tag: Hungary

Baghatur Subutai – A Fantasy || The Mongol Empire CXV

Siege Analysis

**The Ger Fades**

Conclusions on Withdrawal & Alternate History || The Mongol Empire CXIV

A Comparative Study of Mongol Campaigns

Summary of Comparative Study of Mongol Campaigns

Stephen Pow’s Overall Conclusions

What if the Mongols had continued westward?

Pitched Battles versus Sieges || The Mongol Empire CXIII

Pitched Battles versus Sieges

Why Abandon Hungary?

The Deep Ditches and Stone Walls Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CXII

The Deep Ditches and Stone Walls Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

Stephen Pow’s Theory

Primary Criticisms of the “Stone Walls” Theory

The Demographics of Europe

Off the Battlefields, onto the Hilltops and behind the Walls

A Study on Castles

The Military Weakness Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CXI

The Military Weakness Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

Support for the theory

Arguments against the theory

Conclusions on the Military Weakness Theory

Ecological Theory Rebuttals and Replies || The Mongol Empire CX

The Rebuttal to Büntgen and Di Cosmo

Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s Rebuttal to “Climate of Doubt” by Pinke, et.al

Pow’s reply to Büntgen and Di Cosmo’s Rebuttal

The Ecological Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe || The Mongol Empire CIX

The Ecological Theory of Withdrawal from Central Europe

Later Mongol Threats

The Büntgen & Di Cosmo Paper of 2016