Wow! He had 4,000 Mongols and the newly-subdued Kipchaks as his own troops and this would be enough for conquest of Europe? How that can be taken seriously?
His "prize" was a designated domain of Jochi, which was ending in the Kipchak steppes. He could not held anything against the Great Khan's will because this would be a rebellion punished by death.
I wonder why Prince Yaroslav bothered to travel to Karakorum to have his status of the Great Prince of Vladimir confirmed....
If something look like a duck and squeaks as a duck, it is probably a duck. The same goes for the raid. It was a raid.
There was a Mongolian state in Europe and it never was close to conquering territory outside Eastern Europe.
Well, the Mongolian vassal states had been paying tribute and providing the auxiliary contingents in the case of war. Nothing else in Russia, Georgia, Armenia Minor. So why would it suddenly be different in Germany?
Well, I'm sorry that you have a headache. Take some aspirin or whatever.
Term "designated heir" does not make too much sense in the Mongolian apanage system where property of a father had been divided between his sons based upon the specific rules. Enough to say that his elder brother, Ordu, got already conquered part of Jochi's domain, Western Siberia (White Horde). Batu's domain had to be, yet, conquered and conquest had been done by the forces sent by the Great Khan. Batu was not even a formal commander of these forces until beginning of the Western Raid.
Now, this is a complete nonsense. While there are records of the military proficiency of many Genghisid princes in this and other campaigns, the only
military record related to Batu is his performance at Mohi, which is a questionable compliment. Batu was not a great
commander, he was a great
statesman and diplomat. The very fact that he accepted Subotai's rebuttal and publicly acknowledged that he was wrong, tells a lot.
The
military brain of the whole expedition was Subotai. Most of the troops involved had been the contingents sent by the Great Khan. Batu did not, yet, have time to build up his own army based on the newly-conquered domain and, due to the fact that most of his own troops were going to be the Polovtsy (Kumans), their inability not only to conquer Europe but even to conduct the effective big scale raids into Hungary and Poland had been demonstrated during Nogai's life time. After the Western campaign Batu got himself busy building up his newly-created state, organizing its military force, controlling situation in the vassal Russian lands and being engaged in a
political maneuvering which allowed him to survive through Guyik's reign and to help to elect Mongke with who he was on good terms. No major wars or conquests, just some punishing expeditions here and there.
The key word is "believe". You can believe whatever you want but your beliefs are not mandatory for everybody else.
If you know, than your earlier talk about the plains in Germany and elsewhere does not make sense. Should I be "insulted" by your earlier statement or by this one?
"Limited" in which sense? Their conquests had not been limited to the steppes but at that time they had been
settling only in the steppes to preserve a nomadic life style. This was a part of Genghis testaments: people of the yurts had to keep themselves separately from the people of the houses.
In the CA there was plenty of steppe and a lot of the nomadic population. BTW, to keep up with the tradition, even Timur lived in a tent (in a middle of a luxurious park), not in the palace. The rulers of the "GH" started building their capital(s) and palaces but these were winter quarters: during the summer "everybody" was moving into the steppes. One of the alleged main reasons for Ilkhanate failure to keep Syria was a shortage of space suitable for keeping the horses (and other nomadic livestock). Hulagu himself spent his time living as a nomad in southern Azerbaijan and
Armenia.
China and its conquest were a specific case but, AFAIK, there were no major Mongolian settlements in the midst of the China proper even if the Mongolian aristocracy started moving into the Chinese estates as early as during Ogdai's reign. But conquest of China was done, to a great degree by the non-Mongolian troops. Mukhali had at least as many local troops as he had Mongols and it is a known fact that even during the 1st Genghis' campaign in China there was a big cooperation from the "natives" subdued by the Jurchens. Armies used on the later stages had been seemingly even less Mongolian. Enough to say that Kublai had a whole tumen composed of the Russians.