For millennia, the nomadic horse archers of the great Eurasian steppe were among the most fearsome foes an army could face in open battle - and the thirteenth century Mongols were no exception. In the previous episode, the link to which you can find in the description, we talked about the structure of the Mongol army. In this video, we will examine the tactics of pitched battle that made the Mongols the dominant military power of the world for a century.
The strength of the Mongol army rested on the same skill sets of all steppe nomads: mobility and deadly long-range fire power. Doctrine for all horse archers was simple: to maximize damage to the enemy from as far away as possible for as long as possible, only closing once they had been sufficiently demoralized, their formations broken by an unceasing rain of arrows, or tricked into leaving their lines in an effort to pursue the horsemen. The Mongols did not invent these techniques, but they did apply them at a scale beyond the mightiest of previous steppe empires, adapting them as necessary for a variety of situations.
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Support our channel and go to the video description, click on the special links and you will get 1 pilot, 150,000 e-cells, and 150 d-crystals as a welcome pack for free! Mongolian and steppe nomadic army tactics evolved out of the routines of daily life. Each warrior on horseback had several remounts, armed with two or more bows and several quivers of arrows.
This was the bare minimum to be a combatant, and effective enough for most situations. Riding a horse from their earliest years and learning to draw and hunt with a bow from almost as early, by adulthood every Mongol had a lifetime of experience shooting from horseback. Nearly every medieval writer comments on the Mongols’ ensuing hardiness and stamina; the Mongols were able to endure hardship that made the armies of the sedentary world buckle.
Peerless archers and expert riders, any commander would be a fool to not take advantage of such an army. The Mongol army was not trained, as much as it was grown. The basic tactics evolved out of two tools: excellent bows and a massive supply of horses.
Every Mongol was armed with a composite recurve bow which they made themselves. Incredibly powerful, these bows could send arrows immense distances. One stone inscription from early 13th century Mongolia records that Chinggis Khan’s nephew Yisungge sent an arrow almost 530 metres.
This was likely a specially made light arrow designed for distance, and lacked any meaningful penetrative power at that range. Actual effective combat range is debated; Historian Timothy May suggests it was anything under 170 metres, while John Masson Smith Jr. puts 30 metres as the optimum distance to maximize accuracy and penetration.
Regardless of the range, medieval authors consistently describe the Mongols as frighteningly accurate with their bows. In the Caucasus, where contact was easily made with several Turkic peoples proficient in horse archery, one Armenian chronicler specifically designated the Mongols as the Nation of Archers. Alongside the power of their bows, the horse was the other vital component of Mongolian tactics.
Every nomad of the great Eurasian steppe rode a horse, where vast grasslands provided the ideal environment for rearing them. The Mongol horse is smaller than those of sedentary regions, weighing under 300 kg and rarely more than 14 hands or 142 cm high at the withers [the shoulders]. Unlike the grain and fodder fed horses of China, Europe or the Islamic world, the Mongolian horses lived almost exclusively off of the abundant grasses of the steppe.
So prime is this grassland that even today Mongolia’s horses outnumber the country’s humans, and account for over 6% of the world’s horse population. When on campaign each rider brought 5 or more horses with him, riding one a day and letting it rest for the following days while he rode the others. Like their riders, the Mongolian horses were hardy, surviving in conditions deadly for larger breeds.
Sure footed, well trained, and obedient, though not the fastest, the Mongolian horse was a reliable platform for battle. Campaigning and entering battle with strings of remounts provided the Mongols strategic opportunities unavailable to their enemies. This proficiency with a bow and easy access to great quantities of horses were the building blocks of the Mongols’ deadliness in battle.
Usually facing off against armies that could not amass any comparative number of horses or skilled bowmen, the Mongols enjoyed far greater striking power and mobility, their tactics maximizing this advantage and minimizing the need for prolonged close quarter contact with the enemy. Perhaps the most recognizable manifestation of this was the caracole, what historian Timothy May believes is meant by the shi’uchi, ‘chisel’ attack mentioned in the Secret History of the Mongols. Waves of Mongols, organized in their decimal units -arban, jaghun or even minggan - would ride towards the enemy, shooting arrows as they approached.
At a set distance -perhaps the 30 metres or less suggested by John Masson Smith- the wave would pull away. As this wave fell back, the riders would turn in the saddle and fire backwards, the famous ‘Parthian shot. ’ With one wave falling back out of range and to safety to rest men and grab remounts, another wave advanced and carried out the same process, resulting in a continuous barrage of arrows.
To do this successfully is tremendously difficult. It requires extensive training to not result in hundreds of men and horses crashing into each other or sending arrows into each other’s backs. In order to function smoothly, each wave needs to know when the other is advancing or falling back and move accordingly, so as to not obstruct the forthcoming waves.
When operating effectively, it was extraordinarily effective. For those subject to the Mongol caracole, it was an immense psychological attack alongside the storm of arrows. By nature, humans do not generally enjoy having large groups of horses run towards them- having it occur repeatedly brings on the additional anxiety of not knowing which wave might not turn away but ride directly into their lines.
All the while, arrows with shocking accuracy and power pick away at the other men in the line, whittling down both numbers and resolve. To someone on foot, the successive waves of horsemen would be impossible to count, appearing endless. Even well trained men would struggle to fight their instincts to flee or charge out at the enemy in anger, both options aligning exactly with Mongol desires.
If the enemy began to rout under the arrow fire, then instead of pulling back one wave would instead charge into the enemy, falling upon fleeing men and taking advantage of the opening in the line. An enemy army in the midst of flight would be unable to resist, allowing the Mongols to ride them down much easier. If instead the enemy, especially proud cavalrymen, attempted to charge the Mongol caracole, then this allowed the Mongols to employ the favourite ploy of all steppe warriors: the feigned retreat.
A feigned retreat is easy enough on paper but difficult to execute in practice. When an enemy ran after the Mongols, the Mongols would appear to flee, panicked by the charge of the very brave and well armoured enemy horsemen. There was a real danger of the feigned rout turning into a real one if the enemy horsemen reached the Mongols; their often superior armour and training would allow them to wreak havoc on more lightly armoured Mongols.
If orchestrated properly however, the fleeing Mongols took their pursuers to ground of their choosing, where other Mongol units waited in preparation. Archers picked off the isolated enemy, and heavy cavalry delivered the final blow to the stragglers. If this had been all the enemy cavalry, the Mongols could then easily surround the surviving infantry and pick them off at their leisure.
The feigned retreat was employed again and again across Eurasia; against fortresses, where garrisons were tricked into coming out from their walls to chase fleeing nomads; to epic, nine day pursuits. The most famous was that which Subutai employed against the Rus’ and Qipchaq at the Kalka River. Perhaps not quite the master plan it is often presented as, Subutai may have been genuinely fleeing before the Rus’ and Qipchaq following the death of his friend and mentor Jebe while scouting the enemy army, as suggested in a recent article by historian Stephen Pow.
Pursued across the steppe, Subutai saw the enemy formation lose structure, the faster Cuman-Qipchaqs gaining ahead of their Rus’ allies. Turning back to face them, on the Kalka River Subutai brought the full might of his army against only a portion of the enemy- first the Qipchap, who broke and ran into the oncoming Rus’. With their advance halted, Mongol arrows now fell upon them.
Order was lost, the Rus’ began to flee, and Subutai carried the day, annihilating the enemy army. In the event that the enemy did not pursue or rout, but instead held their position in orderly formation, the Mongols had another option; simply moving on. More mobile than their enemies and always fighting in enemy territory, the Mongols could pull away and ravage the surrounding countryside, disheartening the enemy army by slaughtering the local population, filling the sky with the smoke of burning homes, or cutting off enemy access to water or resources.
Defections and panic set in as refugees fled to the army with stories of Mongol brutality. A stationary foe or one holding up in a wagon fort as the Hungarians did at Mohi in 1241, was soon trapped in a nerge, a Mongolian hunting circle. Cordoning off the area, the Mongols would surround and gradually close in on the foe, cutting off avenues of escape and driving panicked villages towards the target.
At the strategic level or while hunting, strict orders allowed nothing to leave the circle alive. But on the tactical level, the nerge had a devious trick. A gap would be left in the steadily closing circle, apparently overlooked by the overeager Mongols.
To those on foot, it seemed a silver lining. The Mongols understood the psychology of men and animals; when cornered with nowhere to run, they fight to the death. Provided a means to see another day, either tiger or man will seize the chance to live.
And by doing so, they did exactly what the Mongols wanted. At Mohi, when the Hungarians fled through the gap in the line, the Mongols formed up beside the fleeing enemy, whose formation and sense to resist was long since abandoned. Once the foe was suitably bedraggled and exhausted, only then did the Mongols fall on them, minimizing harm to themselves but ensuring few, if any, escaped their clutches.
Contrary to some depictions, heavy cavalry was used by the Mongols, though Asian cavalry differed from the heavy shock lancers imagined in Europe when the term is mentioned. For the Mongols, their own heavy armoured cavalry was a minority, more usually utilizing subject peoples in this role. For the majority of Asian heavy cavalry, from China, Iran, and the Turkic and Mongolian tribes of Central Asia, the primary weapon of heavy cavalry was still the bow, even when both horse and rider were fully armoured.
In the steppe, heavy armour was harder to procure with limited access to smiths and raw materials. The more common armour varieties reflected this, created from materials the Mongols had ready access to: felt and leather. Perhaps the most well known was the hatanga del, a sort of thick, gambeson-like coat of thickly layered felt.
Increasingly over the 13th century, the hatanga was secured with metal plates within it for a brigandine. For man and horse protection laminar was favoured, long layered bands of leather laced together. The most expensive was lamellar, consisting of individual metal plates sewn together in rows.
Flexible, the armour was designed to fold over the legs while on horseback, though the arms and hands were left exposed to not encumber usage of the bow. The Mongols considered lamellar better protection against arrows than maille, as well as easier for nomads to both produce and maintain. Mongolian heavy cavalry was intended to be a decisive finishing blow against enemies weakened by arrow fire or drawn into feigned retreats, rather than engage in any sort of prolonged melee.
With their smaller horses, the Mongols had to be careful to not overexert the animals, especially when fully armoured, and heavy cavalry charges were likely limited affairs in the early days of the conquests. As more subject peoples were added to the Mongol army, their own heavy cavalry could take on these vulnerable close quarter roles, leaving the valuable Mongolian and Turkic horse archers safe to pick off the enemy from a distance. While fighting in China, Khitan, Jurchen and Tangut heavy cavalry were regularly employed by the Mongols, while in the Ilkhanate, Armenian and Georgian heavy cavalry were at the forefront of the Mongol wars in the region, particularly against the Mamluks.
For extraordinary situations, the Mongols applied unorthodox tactics. At Mohi in 1241, the initial effort to storm the bridge was accompanied by Subutai attempting to build a bridge further downriver in an effort to flank the Hungarian army. When the Hungarians successfully resisted the attempt to force the bridge, the Mongols pulled back, and early the following morning, brought up catapults and “shelled” the guards left on the Hungarian side of the bridge.
This was quickly followed up with a cavalry charge. The bridge over the Sajo River was taken and the Hungarian camp encircled. While fighting off a Burmese invasion into Mongol controlled Yunnan in 1277, the sight and scent of the Burmese elephants frightened the Mongol horses.
The Mongol commander quickly ordered his men to the treeline to tie them to the tree trunks. Dismounted, the Mongols advanced on foot and sent volleys of arrows into the elephants. Under the incessant barrage the elephants panicked, crashing through the Burmese lines before leaving the battlefield.
While part of the Mongol force continued providing covering fire, detachments filed back to the trees to remount their horses, continuing in this order until they were all on horseback. Where the Mongols’ tactical ability failed them was in environments too unsuited to cavalry maneuvers- the humid jungles of southeastern Asia perhaps the greatest example of this. The conquest of the Song Dynasty was only completed with the massive conscription of Chinese soldiers and creation of a fleet to challenge the Song on the vital rivers of south China.
In Syria, historians like John Masson Smith have argued the region lacked the pasture capacity to provide for the vast horse herds the Mongols liked to bring with them, forcing them to advance with smaller forces the Mamluks could overcome. In straight tactical engagements, the Mongols performed their poorest against those who fought in similar fashion to themselves. Chinggis Khan’s only defeats were against other tribes of the Mongolian steppe, and it seems he considered the nomadic Turks of the western steppe, the Cuman-Qipchaqs, to be the greatest single foe against Mongol expansion.
The Mamluk sultanate of Egypt and the Sultanate of Delhi both employed Turkic horse archers, often Cuman-Qipchaps bought as slaves, to great effect against the Mongols. Essentially, these were armies which could recognize feigned retreats and nomadic ploys, and force the Mongols into engagements which minimized their superiority in horse numbers. We will continue to explore the Mongol army in future videos, so please make sure you’ve subscribed and pressed the bell button.
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