WI: Ogedei Khan, 1186-1244

[Elfwine]

Uhhh.. not that unorthodox i think. Sources are in hungarian, i dont think you could go anywhere with Bánlaky"s Magyar nemzet hadtörténelme or Négyesi Lajos about the battle of Muhi - but the later one i find interesting, i will try to translate and summarize it - and various small artickles about the battle and the invasion inlocal (historical) papers.
(The pirmary sources are usually Rogerius, Thomas of Spalato, the letters from Béla to various persons and vica versa, and Subotai's life fromt the chinese and chinese yearbook).

Unless I'm much mistaken/confusing you with someone else, you were the one questioning that the Mongols left Hungary due to Ogedei's death. That's pretty unorthodox to my knowledge.

About upper hungary, its today slovakia:

http://keptar.oszk.hu/009100/009138/hungary_1241_nagykep.jpg

Above you find the link to the "accepted" map of the destruction.
(the level of destruction diffes of course, for example in the transdanubia the mongols did not have the time for real razing - they were after the king after all)

Thanks.

 

[cimon]

Thanks, Cimon. I'm familiar with the Liddell-Hart work. Wiki, of course, is Wiki, being Wiki . Sometimes surprisingly good and sometimes very unreliable. It can be a very good gateway to source bibliographies, though.

In my IMHO, you and Elfwine should perhaps not engage each other in this thread.

It is important how one reads though;The site mentions 600000 Mongol horsemen from the Pacific to Kiev,I don't think they are many considering that the Roman battle array had 200000 in the legions not counting auxilliarii(count at least as many) in a much poorer area in population and resources and less than half in extent.I haven't read that particular site recently but I find the number perfectly feasable as also the 150000 for Russia- Europe(allocation),the three tumans for law and order in Kiev(ascertained-Plan Carpin) that leaves Subodai 120000 to operate as a first wave which may have acted in two stages:number two never happening since the Mongols left Europe.

 

[kalamona]

Unless I'm much mistaken/confusing you with someone else, you were the one questioning that the Mongols left Hungary due to Ogedei's death. That's pretty unorthodox to my knowledge.




Thanks.

Sorry for the late answering, yes, it was me, but no, i do not find it unorthodox

Historians here usually kind of avoid answer for the cause of the retreat, they mention the death of Ögödej as a possible cause, but the overall conclusion is: we simply do not know for sure.

If you take a look at the map i linked before, the retreat of the main body practically follows the retreat of the cumans (de jure, the mongols were after the cumans). Problems is, that some half year later.

Another possible reason that they planned a two stage invasion, the latter stage never happened - however, they began to install their regime.

So, my argument is: we do not know, why they left and its an interesting brain excercise to guess why