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Discuss this new Article by @Ysengrimus here
But because of how famous the first Khan was you forget just how many of the most memorable moments of the mongol invasions happened under his descendants not him. If you stop the empire at his death there, you get no sack of Baghdad, no destruction of the southern song and their movement towards proto industrialisation, no battle with the mamluks, no push into hungary and poland, no kamakazi, no javan victory over the mongols etc, etc.
There are a few critical studies of the Mongol military (and when you're an empire, unless a mistake unmakes your empire, people tend only to remember the hits). In general, when they weren't on the steppes, they tended to do badly, but a GIANT caveat to that is the Yuan dynasty (using defecting Song infantry and boats along with the resources of the conquered Northern Jin) depended less on Mongol horse archers and more on infantry and sieges.Very interesting and I think unprecedented, nobody ever seems to examine the critical failure points of the Mongols.
As to Jochi's legitimacy, well, we're FAIRLY sure he wasn't the khan's kid (if you'll pardon the alliteration). You've seized on an interesting bit of history though--the Jochids of the Kipchak Khanate (also called the Golden Horde). They were not, in fact, persecuted (save by the usual sporadic fighting) in any systemic way. This may be in part a reflection of Genghis's more tolerant (for the time) attitude towards his not-son--enemies of the Mongols, in general were eradicated root and stem where possible. This suggests that if Genghis did have Jochi poisoned, it was not an objection to him personally, but as an obstacle to the profit and safety of the empire (a cold comfort, doubtless).Did Jochi's alleged illegitimacy have any effect on the careers of his sons IOTL? And can you draw any insights from that into how he's likely to go here?
Oh I'm well aware of the multiple times they fell flat on their face outside their comfort zone. Sometimes it seems that's limited to a handful of people on the internet.There are a few critical studies of the Mongol military (and when you're an empire, unless a mistake unmakes your empire, people tend only to remember the hits). In general, when they weren't on the steppes, they tended to do badly, but a GIANT caveat to that is the Yuan dynasty (using defecting Song infantry and boats along with the resources of the conquered Northern Jin) depended less on Mongol horse archers and more on infantry and sieges.
Another factor in their weaknesses as an empire/military force was that the Mongols were a RECENT conglomeration of tribes consolidated into one force by a charismatic leader. When that leader dies--generally--everyone remembers just how much they hate their rival tribe and tension escalate--the difference here being that the Mongols managed to put that off for a good 30ish years till the outbreak of the Toluid civil war (1260-1264).
There is a fairly good paper on the subject of Mongol weaknesses here if you want to dig a little deeper into the Mongol's less successful campaigns.
Heck I believe there has been some recent scholarship that the Mongol withdrawal from Europe began *before* they learned of the Khan's death and they used it as a post facto justification because increasingly formidable fortifications and an endless spam of armies that on the right ground could fight them toe to toe was not what they signed up for.
Or all three.The Mongols never used it, the Franciscan scholar John Carpini used it and it's the only theory anyone alive at the time gave for the withdrawal.
Of course it makes no sense as a theory because the withdrawal almost certainly happened before messengers arrived bringing new of the Khan's death and more importantly batu never actually took his army to Mongolia. He withdrew to Ukraine and stayed there, refusing to head back to the east. So Carpini was wrong when he said the withdrawal happened because batu headed back to Mongolia, he didn't. Moreover the Mongols didn't stop campaigns elsewhere, they kept fighting vs the Song during this time for instance.
It's not Carpini's fault that he didn't have all the information and made a reasonable guess but that theory is mostly dismissed now.
So then you're on to whether Batu didn't think he could win a further fight in Europe, he didn't think it was worth it to fight further when he'd already secured his borders or whether the weather/terrain made supplying his army impossible.
I just finished the article, it was rather impressive thank you. I knew bits and pieces of this but almost nothing about Korea or the Song campaigns.There are a few critical studies of the Mongol military (and when you're an empire, unless a mistake unmakes your empire, people tend only to remember the hits). In general, when they weren't on the steppes, they tended to do badly, but a GIANT caveat to that is the Yuan dynasty (using defecting Song infantry and boats along with the resources of the conquered Northern Jin) depended less on Mongol horse archers and more on infantry and sieges.
Another factor in their weaknesses as an empire/military force was that the Mongols were a RECENT conglomeration of tribes consolidated into one force by a charismatic leader. When that leader dies--generally--everyone remembers just how much they hate their rival tribe and tension escalate--the difference here being that the Mongols managed to put that off for a good 30ish years till the outbreak of the Toluid civil war (1260-1264).
There is a fairly good paper on the subject of Mongol weaknesses here if you want to dig a little deeper into the Mongol's less successful campaigns.
Or all three.
It's a really interesting set of possibilities certainly- there's questions over whether you even get the Italian Renaissance without Byzantine scholars fleeing west, but I suspect that once you've got a certain level of wealth and connections through trade there's going to be something, though it may well look more like the Kingdom of Sicily in terms of trade.
And if this is a world where Constantinople is still a major centre of Eastern Orthodox culture, where Kyiv is the capital of a large and powerful state stretching north and with trade and marriage links with the Byzantines, where the House of Wisdom still stands and then you get the Italians starting to pull together those influences with their own direct study of Rome and what was available in the west...
And of course Mesopotamia is still so much more populous given the canals are still in place. I really don't think it's inevitable anyone would come along and smash them like they were.