Cultural effects of a Mongol Western Europe

How would Western Europe be changed if the Mongols could conquer it? (This question of whether they could have is asked frequently enough I don't want to ask it again. Personally, I think so if Ogedei Khan didn't die, but it would have been difficult). Would greater connection to the East because of the Mongols have caused greater cross-cultural diffusion? Would the destruction caused by the Mongols have set back Europe? Other meaningful changes?
 
Rhine is enough.
That more doable then . I heard people saying country the mongol invaded suffered a conservative backlash not sure about it . Not sure if the mongol destruction would really leave lasting effect in Europe since they were far less reliant in their infrastructure than the middle eastern . If the mongol have the same effect on the German that they had on the Russian principality we might see a earlier United Germany .
 
If the Mongols reach the Rhine River, the HRE is likly on its death bed and the remaining german states west of the rhine would likly have appeled to the burgundians for aid (closest heavy weight power with land previously tied to the HRE), and remaining electors willing to effectively offer up the empororship for protection.
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Long term these german states would be folded into the burgundian sphere of influance through vassalship and marriages and would be a small enough HRE that Burgandy might be able to centralize it. In which case burgandy might claim to be the successor to Middle Francia
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The masses of german refugees from east of the Rhine might be enough to have dramatic effects if they can be pressed to fight the French, since they are the emporor, assuming if the 100 years war is not butterflies away by a unified Christian front agenst the mongols. Regardless demograpics in burgandy might lead to them becoming German or at least a German/Latin fusion similer to what happened to england.
 
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Mongols would have burned Europe easily if they had wanted, so no more HRE, French Kings, Italian states,... There was no suggestion Mongols would have stopped at Rhine: I can quote from Wikipedia
“Batu Khan then decided to "reach the ultimate sea", where the Mongols could proceed no further”.
They are ready to reach Atlantic Ocean and no European army could stop them to do it. Only British Islands could hope to survive the Mongol tsunami.
The Mongols would have create a new Horde Something to govern their new territories, led by Golden Horde leader Batu Khan. Overall Mongols demonstrated an attitude to integrate themselves with political and cultural institutions of their subjects: Kublay Khan and his successors styled themselves as Chinese Emperors, the Ilkhanate rulers converted to Islam. So probably the Khans would have converted to Catholicism, thanks to Franciscans mediation. The Pope would be happy to baptise the ruler of the greatest Christian Empire of History, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain, Spain, Scandinavia and Byzantine Empire would be spared but would have a complex relationship with the new player, not speaking about Timur and the others Mongol khanates.
 
Mongols would have burned Europe easily if they had wanted, so no more HRE, French Kings, Italian states,... There was no suggestion Mongols would have stopped at Rhine: I can quote from Wikipedia
“Batu Khan then decided to "reach the ultimate sea", where the Mongols could proceed no further”.
They are ready to reach Atlantic Ocean and no European army could stop them to do it. Only British Islands could hope to survive the Mongol tsunami.
The Mongols would have create a new Horde Something to govern their new territories, led by Golden Horde leader Batu Khan. Overall Mongols demonstrated an attitude to integrate themselves with political and cultural institutions of their subjects: Kublay Khan and his successors styled themselves as Chinese Emperors, the Ilkhanate rulers converted to Islam. So probably the Khans would have converted to Catholicism, thanks to Franciscans mediation. The Pope would be happy to baptise the ruler of the greatest Christian Empire of History, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain, Spain, Scandinavia and Byzantine Empire would be spared but would have a complex relationship with the new player, not speaking about Timur and the others Mongol khanates.
The working argument for most people is that the further west the mongols go the more they would find themselves needing to find a consistent answer to European castles and fortifications which ran counter to their preferred form of calvery warfare. Becuse of this I would imagine a more successful Mongol empire might push through the northern European plains at increasing losses as they pushed west before being forced to stop at the Rhine achieving a western border similer to Attila's Hunnic Empire.
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@Pauh the federalist This might have interesting knock-on effects for the Byzantine Empire. I think we'd see earlier state consolidation across Europe, and the ultimate decline/assimilation/conversion to Christianity of the Mongols in Europe.
 
Mongols would have burned Europe easily if they had wanted, so no more HRE, French Kings, Italian states,... There was no suggestion Mongols would have stopped at Rhine: I can quote from Wikipedia
“Batu Khan then decided to "reach the ultimate sea", where the Mongols could proceed no further”.
They are ready to reach Atlantic Ocean and no European army could stop them to do it. Only British Islands could hope to survive the Mongol tsunami.
It’s ridiculous the mongol aren’t some sort of Superman . There dozen of European army that could stop them . Italy and France are out of question they would have already a very hard time in Germany and if the mongol want more success in Europe they need to focus more on it and less on the rest of the world . Best mongol can hope to do in Europe is something like the Hunnic empire and they would have a herder time pulling it m
The Mongols would have create a new Horde Something to govern their new territories, led by Golden Horde leader Batu Khan. Overall Mongols demonstrated an attitude to integrate themselves with political and cultural institutions of their subjects: Kublay Khan and his successors styled themselves as Chinese Emperors, the Ilkhanate rulers converted to Islam. So probably the Khans would have converted to Catholicism, thanks to Franciscans mediation. The Pope would be happy to baptise the ruler of the greatest Christian Empire of History, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain, Spain, Scandinavia and Byzantine Empire would be spared but would have a complex relationship with the new player, not speaking about Timur and the others Mongol khanates.
Pope would we be happy to convert pagan mongol to Catholicism not crown them emperor of Europe .and it would take some time for the mongol to integrate themselves in Europe time that would be used by everyone to coordinate against them
 
The working argument for most people is that the further west the mongols go the more they would find themselves needing to find a consistent answer to European castles and fortifications which ran counter to their preferred form of calvery warfare.
This is despite the fact that the Mongols used (mostly Chinese) engineers, and even built siege engines in situ. Along with a policy of gathering siege ammunition in regular depots, a day's march apart.

The Mongols used whatever tactics made sense.
 
That more doable then . I heard people saying country the mongol invaded suffered a conservative backlash not sure about it . Not sure if the mongol destruction would really leave lasting effect in Europe since they were far less reliant in their infrastructure than the middle eastern . If the mongol have the same effect on the German that they had on the Russian principality we might see a earlier United Germany .
Well they did in ming china but that was more mongols plague and other factors
 
This is despite the fact that the Mongols used (mostly Chinese) engineers, and even built siege engines in situ. Along with a policy of gathering siege ammunition in regular depots, a day's march apart.

The Mongols used whatever tactics made sense.
Yet it took them so long to crack chinse fortresses
The conquest of europe would be in many regards like song china for the mongols to conquer europe thar means they have to take troops from something else and muster up locals to help them and the backbone of the army .
 
Mongols would have burned Europe easily if they had wanted, so no more HRE, French Kings, Italian states,... There was no suggestion Mongols would have stopped at Rhine: I can quote from Wikipedia
“Batu Khan then decided to "reach the ultimate sea", where the Mongols could proceed no further”.
They are ready to reach Atlantic Ocean and no European army could stop them to do it. Only British Islands could hope to survive the Mongol tsunami.
The Mongols would have create a new Horde Something to govern their new territories, led by Golden Horde leader Batu Khan. Overall Mongols demonstrated an attitude to integrate themselves with political and cultural institutions of their subjects: Kublay Khan and his successors styled themselves as Chinese Emperors, the Ilkhanate rulers converted to Islam. So probably the Khans would have converted to Catholicism, thanks to Franciscans mediation. The Pope would be happy to baptise the ruler of the greatest Christian Empire of History, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain, Spain, Scandinavia and Byzantine Empire would be spared but would have a complex relationship with the new player, not speaking about Timur and the others Mongol khanates.
Easily no ..they could have but they need to put effort to it Batu Force was not an invading one it was big raiding one death of ogedie or not it was going to leave do to many reasons among them the cuman revolt and bad weather of that season
Had ogedie survived Batu would have returned but if he wanted to conquer he need to conquer he need it reinforcements

If you want him to reach the atlantic ocean then you're going to need a multi year if not multi decade long campaign to subjugate italy France and the hre akin to that of china assuming this happened between 1240s to 1260s in 20 years it can be doable but that means other fronts like the middle east never occur and in china the mongols would be even more reliant on locals to compensate for the numbers the mongol conquest of europe Means the mongols are loosing another conquest so heck in this timeline song china maybe survives longer and so does the abbasid caliphate .
So yeah it's possible but leads to a different mongol empire
 
Mongols would have burned Europe easily if they had wanted, so no more HRE, French Kings, Italian states,... There was no suggestion Mongols would have stopped at Rhine: I can quote from Wikipedia
“Batu Khan then decided to "reach the ultimate sea", where the Mongols could proceed no further”.
They are ready to reach Atlantic Ocean and no European army could stop them to do it. Only British Islands could hope to survive the Mongol tsunami.
The Mongols would have create a new Horde Something to govern their new territories, led by Golden Horde leader Batu Khan. Overall Mongols demonstrated an attitude to integrate themselves with political and cultural institutions of their subjects: Kublay Khan and his successors styled themselves as Chinese Emperors, the Ilkhanate rulers converted to Islam. So probably the Khans would have converted to Catholicism, thanks to Franciscans mediation. The Pope would be happy to baptise the ruler of the greatest Christian Empire of History, from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain, Spain, Scandinavia and Byzantine Empire would be spared but would have a complex relationship with the new player, not speaking about Timur and the others Mongol khanates.
Excessive reliance on Wiki is sometimes dangerous. To start with, Batu was not a “Khan”, this title was reserved for the Great Khan and it started being used by the rulers of the Golden Horde (one more anachronism, Batu ruled the Blue Horde, by definition the “gold” belonged to the Great Khan) only when it became an independent state and to Batu it was applied retroactively, few generations after his death. Second, Batu could not decide to go to the “last sea” because it was not his prerogative to make such decisions: it was made by the Great Khan and confirmed on Quriltai as a fulfillment of Genghis’ legacy. If anything, Batu was not too eager to pursue this goal and used the first plausible excuse to stop the raid: the Mongolian advance parties reached the Adriatic, it was declared the “last sea” and the mission was accomplished.

Now, regarding the Mongolian tsunami and other “poetry”, invasion of the Central Europe involved at most 100,000 but probably considerably less and the main force was going to Hungary where the troops operating in Poland also marched after Legnica, which is rather counterproductive if one wants to invade Germany. So, in OTL “tsunami” was not happening or at least was not going toward the Rhine. 😜


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Now, if we put the realities of life aside and imagine that somehow the Mongols successfully invaded the German territories, what does it mean?

1. Scenario close to the OTL: taking into an account that the whole enterprise was a large scale raid, the Mongols would loot whatever they can and then turn back. The pattern of the whole campaign was not a conquest. Unlike the Russian territories, the Mongols did not try to set up the loyal rulers in Hungary and Poland and, again, unlike Russian territories, did not engage in the numerous sieges but just looted the countryside.

2. The Mongols brought extra forces to the theater and did a thorough job of taking the cities (and some castles, there would be no need to take all of them because the small feudal bands would not matter and because the local rulers would either capitulate or killed and replaced with the loyalists, as happened in Russia). Then what? Pretty much nothing because the closest place where the Mongols can establish themselves permanently is Hungarian Plain and, it seems that it’s grazing potential is limited. So we end up with the “Russian scenario”: the local princes (and perhaps even Frederich II and his successors) formally recognized supremacy of the Great Khan, are paying taxes (enriching themselves as the tax collectors) and asking for the Mongolian help in the case of the domestic disturbances. Sooner rather than later they refuse to pay because the Mongolian Empire is falling apart and ...er... “Hungarian Horde” is at war with the Blue Horde over the pastures on the lower Danube/Black Sea coast.

Now, this “Hungarian Horde” is not going to be “led by Batu” because it is outside of his designated domain. It would be up to the Great Khan to appoint its ruler and how long did it take for the “Golden Horde” and Ilkhanate to start fighting each other?

The possible impact of the 2nd scenario: some modest access to the “Eastern things”: the Russian principalities did not became similar to the Central Asia or China and certain specifics of their warfare had been shaped by the “neighborhood”, which would be much less influential in the Central Europe (actually, some of these specifics, like using the mounted archers, already existed in Rus prior to the Mongolian invasion: steppe was already there and so were the nomads). Implementation of the “Russian model” (unlikely) could result in a more centralized HRE but probability is rather low.
 
It’s ridiculous the mongol aren’t some sort of Superman . There dozen of European army that could stop them . Italy and France are out of question they would have already a very hard time in Germany and if the mongol want more success in Europe they need to focus more on it and less on the rest of the world . Best mongol can hope to do in Europe is something like the Hunnic empire and they would have a herder time pulling it m

Pope would we be happy to convert pagan mongol to Catholicism not crown them emperor of Europe .and it would take some time for the mongol to integrate themselves in Europe time that would be used by everyone to coordinate against them

China is a far harder nut to crack and the Mongols managed that. Even if they couldn't figure out a way to deal with castles (seems unlikely to me) they would decimate Europe across the Northern European plain. Perhaps Italy is out but France will be wrecked. The surviving groups in each castle will likely set themselves up as petty kings with no central authority left.

As for the Popes, they have had form of crowning the most powerful Catholic prince as Roman Emperor, regardless of lack of pedigree.
 
2. The Mongols brought extra forces to the theater and did a thorough job of taking the cities (and some castles, there would be no need to take all of them because the small feudal bands would not matter and because the local rulers would either capitulate or killed and replaced with the loyalists, as happened in Russia). Then what? Pretty much nothing because the closest place where the Mongols can establish themselves permanently is Hungarian Plain and, it seems that it’s grazing potential is limited. So we end up with the “Russian scenario”: the local princes (and perhaps even Frederich II and his successors) formally recognized supremacy of the Great Khan, are paying taxes (enriching themselves as the tax collectors) and asking for the Mongolian help in the case of the domestic disturbances. Sooner rather than later they refuse to pay because the Mongolian Empire is falling apart and ...er... “Hungarian Horde” is at war with the Blue Horde over the pastures on the lower Danube/Black Sea coast.
This itself is devastating for Western Europe, as we saw from Russia's diverted development, away from the Rus states to Muscovy's autocracy and extraction model. I have seen this across countries in my experience as a development economist. Whenever the biggest buck lies in taking a greater share of the rent seeking, you completely abolish all incentives to make the necessary compromises to allow wealth creation. Compromises with the nobility are set back in the monarchs favour, and free cities are completely screwed. The despot most willing to use violence comes out on top. And the disproportionate power going to the Mongol favored state means innovative governance models don't have room to survive.

And this is all before we get to the devastation of Europe's universities that kick started the renaissance.
 
China is a far harder nut to crack and the Mongols managed that. Even if they couldn't figure out a way to deal with castles (seems unlikely to me) they would decimate Europe across the Northern European plain. Perhaps Italy is out but France will be wrecked. The surviving groups in each castle will likely set themselves up as petty kings with no central authority left.

As for the Popes, they have had form of crowning the most powerful Catholic prince as Roman Emperor, regardless of lack of pedigree.
Supplies where closer to the center of the mongol empire yet it took decades of conquest many hounders of thousands of native chinise troops thar made the conquest possible as horse archers were kinda of useless down there how is song china a harder nut to crack ? The divided nature of the hre means some would join the mongols but it also means that unlike china there is no take xiangyang and the whole structure falls
take one important castle ? Good for you there Is still many hounders more than probaly don't care
time is not on the side of the mongols Batu if he wants an invasion force has to convince ogedie to give him one etc etc
that takes time even if ogedie lives longer say 10 years you already waste some of that like 2 or even 3 in ogedie and the kurultái in deciding and sending the army so batu has from 1245 to conquer as much as he wants before ogedie kicks the bucket ( he would be 60 by 1245 )
 
The working argument for most people is that the further west the mongols go the more they would find themselves needing to find a consistent answer to European castles and fortifications which ran counter to their preferred form of calvery warfare. Becuse of this I would imagine a more successful Mongol empire might push through the northern European plains at increasing losses as they pushed west before being forced to stop at the Rhine achieving a western border similer to Attila's Hunnic Empire.
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It’s a common mistake to compare Mongols and Huns: Huns had not skills to adapt and integrate knowledge of their subjects and didn’t assimilate technologies and strategies of other cultures/states. They exploded under Attila and died with him, with their empire collapsed extraordinarily quickly and almost without cultural legacy after Attila’s death. At the opposite Mongols built a centuries-lasting empire that covered a large part of Asia and part of Europe, created dynasties and reigned as legitimated monarchs of their subjects. At the they left a huge cultural legacy in form of Mongolia itself and various people in Central Asia, Siberia and Tarim Basin.
Castles and fortifications existed in Asia too, but they didn’t stop the Mongols: India, China, Korea, Corasmia, Persia,... They all had defensive walls, towers, fortifications and all the stuff necessary to defend their cities. And they fell before the Mongols in few years. Do you never heard about the Long Wall? The Mongols overcame it easily and then descended in China, burning and taking every Chinese city in less then a decade. And this before integrating Chinese engineers in their army. I don’t say Europeans kings would not oppose resistance but I say by 1260 at least there would not be more.
It’s ridiculous the mongol aren’t some sort of Superman . There dozen of European army that could stop them . Italy and France are out of question they would have already a very hard time in Germany and if the mongol want more success in Europe they need to focus more on it and less on the rest of the world . Best mongol can hope to do in Europe is something like the Hunnic empire and they would have a herder time pulling it m

Pope would we be happy to convert pagan mongol to Catholicism not crown them emperor of Europe .and it would take some time for the mongol to integrate themselves in Europe time that would be used by everyone to coordinate against them
Can you define “superman”? Because if you are speaking about a humanoid alien with superpower and allergic to Kryptonite, well, yes of course, Mongols are not supermen. But if you are speaking about the men who in less then thirty years create from nowhere a gigantic empire from Korea to Syria, incinerating old and well-respected empires and creating a new one who lasted for centuries, well, that’s completely a different matter.
Dozens of armies? Dozens of (rival) kingdoms don’t mean dozens of armies. Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Russian princes had all their armies and were annihilated. Henry III of England was at war with France and his Barons for most of this period and never led an army larger then 30 000 men. Louis IX was at war with Henry III and involved in several Crusades: he never led an army of more then 30 000 too. Emperor Frederick II of Svabia was at perennial conflict/war with the Pope and his allies in Italy and Germany and had similar military numbers. It’s evident he and HRE would be the first to be attacked: Mongols (only during invasion of Hungary Batu had at least 70 000 men) would rain down in the Germanic plains and encircle and destroy Imperials forces. The choice between engage Mongols in an open field (and be annihilated by superior numbers and tactics) or let them besiege you is not a real choice: a part some sacks of resistance, Germany would fall in Mongol hands. After months of pillaging they would retreat, build an other, larger army with all the resources sacked and return the next year. Meanwhile with cities burned, field destroyed and trade collapsed Germany would experimented anarchy and famine and would be not able to collect a new army to oppose Mongol advance. I’m not exaggerating: Bantu’s invasion of Hungary killed half of Hungarian population, if not more. After few waves Germany would be completely occupied, with cities and nobles ready to offer themselves as vassals of the culturally and religiously tolerant Mongols in exchange of peace and trade. Without Germany Italy would fell too in few years. Then Mongols would have crossed the Rhine and invaded France. I don’t understand the point about the Rhine: the Goths, the Franks and all the other barbarians people crossed it without problems although not having neither engineers or technical know-how, that Mongols had, but all speak about the latter as they were allergic to the water. After crossing the Rhine, Louis IX would launched his personal crusade against the invaders and probably died heroically. After few years and waves, France would fell. Then enough: England is unable to invade the Continent alone and no other power existed big enough to face Mongols. Batu Khan Europe.
Other points:
- there is not a scenario where “the mongol want more success in Europe they need to focus more on it and less on the rest of the world”: Mongols were divided in different and autonomous hordes and that was enough. Batu’s Golden Horde planned and led invasion of Europe, not the Great Khan in China, the Ilkhanate or the other khanate in Central Asia, that could have continue their respective expansionist plans (by the way, not really big, they had just conquered all they wanted).
- Charlemagne was Roman as George Washington was Chinese but the Pope crowned him Emperor and so did for all his (Germanic) successors. Papacy recognised as legitimate authorities many barbarian rulers (kings of Goths, Longobards, Franks,...) after they converted to Christianity, a faith that, culturally speaking, was and is one of best integration mean never seen in human history. The Mongols had friendly relationships with Christianity and its various Churches: they hosted many Eastern Christians (especially Nestorians) and catholic monks (especially Franciscans) in their courts and had impressive cultural exchange with them. The same Kublay Khan prayed Jesus, together with Buddha and Mehmet. So the Batu’s Mongols would follow the Ilkhanate way: after Batu’s death shortly after the end of the conquest, his son would create a court to learn as reign over their new subjects, with many Church thinkers and Latin speakers within this. Mongols could easily find the bishops and priest a good administrative structure as it was used under the HRE. After the death of the second Khan “friend of Christians”, his successor would have convert and be crowed by the Pope as Khan/Emperor. For Rome’s point of view is a good development as at the same time Christianity gains control over pagan Baltic’s, Orthodox Russians and Muslim euroasiatic plains peoples.
- coordinate what? After Mongols would have burned cities and kingdom the clash is over. It’s not Second World War, there is not something like “national consciousness” to act as ideology to mobilise people. As Greek Anatolians after Turkish conquest, the Byzantine subjects in Muslim hands, inhabitants of territories under Roman-Barbarians rulers and many others, Europeans would have scrolled their shoulders and move on. Soon they would discover the Mongol can assure rich trade routes with Asia, religious peace, no more endless wars between vassals and papists and anti-papists, and enjoy it.
Easily no ..they could have but they need to put effort to it Batu Force was not an invading one it was big raiding one death of ogedie or not it was going to leave do to many reasons among them the cuman revolt and bad weather of that season
Had ogedie survived Batu would have returned but if he wanted to conquer he need to conquer he need it reinforcements

If you want him to reach the atlantic ocean then you're going to need a multi year if not multi decade long campaign to subjugate italy France and the hre akin to that of china assuming this happened between 1240s to 1260s in 20 years it can be doable but that means other fronts like the middle east never occur and in china the mongols would be even more reliant on locals to compensate for the numbers the mongol conquest of europe Means the mongols are loosing another conquest so heck in this timeline song china maybe survives longer and so does the abbasid caliphate .
So yeah it's possible but leads to a different mongol empire
Yes, and that was exactly the plan Batu had in mind: a multiyear invasion to conquer Europe.
As he explained in this same message the Golden Horde would carry on the invasion while the Great Khan would eliminate the last Songs and Hulegu move toward Middle East.
Excessive reliance on Wiki is sometimes dangerous. To start with, Batu was not a “Khan”, this title was reserved for the Great Khan and it started being used by the rulers of the Golden Horde (one more anachronism, Batu ruled the Blue Horde, by definition the “gold” belonged to the Great Khan) only when it became an independent state and to Batu it was applied retroactively, few generations after his death. Second, Batu could not decide to go to the “last sea” because it was not his prerogative to make such decisions: it was made by the Great Khan and confirmed on Quriltai as a fulfillment of Genghis’ legacy. If anything, Batu was not too eager to pursue this goal and used the first plausible excuse to stop the raid: the Mongolian advance parties reached the Adriatic, it was declared the “last sea” and the mission was accomplished.

Now, regarding the Mongolian tsunami and other “poetry”, invasion of the Central Europe involved at most 100,000 but probably considerably less and the main force was going to Hungary where the troops operating in Poland also marched after Legnica, which is rather counterproductive if one wants to invade Germany. So, in OTL “tsunami” was not happening or at least was not going toward the Rhine. 😜


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Now, if we put the realities of life aside and imagine that somehow the Mongols successfully invaded the German territories, what does it mean?

1. Scenario close to the OTL: taking into an account that the whole enterprise was a large scale raid, the Mongols would loot whatever they can and then turn back. The pattern of the whole campaign was not a conquest. Unlike the Russian territories, the Mongols did not try to set up the loyal rulers in Hungary and Poland and, again, unlike Russian territories, did not engage in the numerous sieges but just looted the countryside.

2. The Mongols brought extra forces to the theater and did a thorough job of taking the cities (and some castles, there would be no need to take all of them because the small feudal bands would not matter and because the local rulers would either capitulate or killed and replaced with the loyalists, as happened in Russia). Then what? Pretty much nothing because the closest place where the Mongols can establish themselves permanently is Hungarian Plain and, it seems that it’s grazing potential is limited. So we end up with the “Russian scenario”: the local princes (and perhaps even Frederich II and his successors) formally recognized supremacy of the Great Khan, are paying taxes (enriching themselves as the tax collectors) and asking for the Mongolian help in the case of the domestic disturbances. Sooner rather than later they refuse to pay because the Mongolian Empire is falling apart and ...er... “Hungarian Horde” is at war with the Blue Horde over the pastures on the lower Danube/Black Sea coast.

Now, this “Hungarian Horde” is not going to be “led by Batu” because it is outside of his designated domain. It would be up to the Great Khan to appoint its ruler and how long did it take for the “Golden Horde” and Ilkhanate to start fighting each other?

The possible impact of the 2nd scenario: some modest access to the “Eastern things”: the Russian principalities did not became similar to the Central Asia or China and certain specifics of their warfare had been shaped by the “neighborhood”, which would be much less influential in the Central Europe (actually, some of these specifics, like using the mounted archers, already existed in Rus prior to the Mongolian invasion: steppe was already there and so were the nomads). Implementation of the “Russian model” (unlikely) could result in a more centralized HRE but probability is rather low.
I’m glad to find some cultured person about this too often forgotten issue. I know the denominations’ differences but I tend to use main denominations, even when retroactive, to avoid confusion with other people who don’t know the differences between Golden and Blue Hordes and similar.
The Kurultai (if we want to be precise with English interpretation; if not it’s Qoriltay) had approved Batu’s invasion and his targets, so this is a no issue. By the way, Batu was the most respected and prestigious prince of Mongol Empire (agha, “elder brother”), direct descendent of Gengis Khan and powerful leader. I’m pretty sure no one would have objected for some independent initiative. The Adriatic Sea was definite as “the last sea” only retroactively, to cover the fact their mission essentially failed.
As you’re a cultured man you will know surely the European geography, so you will know that Hungary has a border with Austria, yes? In fact Batu had just decided Vienna and Austria to be the next targets: the first Mongol raiders moved against them, attacking Wiener Neustadt and Korneuburg in 1241, before Ogodei’s death. Mongol strategy was based on mobile tumen, that attacked the enemy and then reunited to form a larger force and then re-divided to attack from more sides. At the same way Subutai and Batu invade Hungary and destroyed it while Orda invaded Poland, penetrating until Meissen, near Dresden, making recognition of German lands, before marching south to reunite with Batu in order to attack Germany with a larger army.
The attack was not a conquest? Because they didn’t set up loyal rulers? I’m sorry but you are simply wrong. Batu himself clarified it announcing to Frederick II he was coming to usurp his throne. Many princes and eastern rulers (Polish, Lithuanians, Rutenians) swear loyalty to the Mongols to have spared their life. Bela IV refused it and was forced to his himself on a little island in Adriatic Sea and offering all his lands to Frederick II in exchange of aid that never came. Instead Batu assigned all Hungary to Orda, one of his generals. I didn’t understand why Hungarian plains are the only place where Mongols can establish themselves: because plains? Even Germany, Italy and France have them. Because in the rest of Europe there mountains? What about Persia or China or Central Asia?
That’s not “poetry”, that’s History: Batu and Subutai’s invasion was approved by the Mongols leadership, they planned to conquest the Continent and they had all the means to succeeded in it, as they demonstrated in previous endless campaigns. If you think European armies can take on them, ask Hungarians. If you think they “just looting the countryside and ignore besieging cities”, ask to Krakow’s citizens. If you think they are not able to besiege a city or cross a river ask to the Long Wall and the Yellow River how much they lasted.
 
China is a far harder nut to crack and the Mongols managed that. Even if they couldn't figure out a way to deal with castles (seems unlikely to me) they would decimate Europe across the Northern European plain. Perhaps Italy is out but France will be wrecked. The surviving groups in each castle will likely set themselves up as petty kings with no central authority left.
you would remark that China is a lot closer to the Mongol homeland than Western Europe . Mongol have been proven capable of taking Castle and from what I understand they used Chinese engineer to do it we’re speaking of Western Europe here the mongol OTL seemingly didn’t put the ressource to subjugate Central Europe because they were needed elsewhere . You would need a different Mongol Empire for them to send specified troop and ressource to taking Castles and more troop to continue Hold on it . I doubt it the mongol aren’t going to massacre every European who aren’t in a castle . It’s unlikely for the surviving group to do that why would they declare themselves independant whith the dangerous mongol nearby ? Even in the worse case censorious where Paris has been sacked and somehow every Capetian is dead the Pope and catholic clergy is still here to appoint some agreed upon leader to keep a united front . Also are you referring to Charlemagne ? Because there a difference between him and his family and the Pagan ( or sat least recently pagan ) nomadic horse warlord .
 
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