"They(Mongols) covered distances of 70 miles a day,faster than our tank divisions,and with greater 'elan' and flexibility since their logistics was minimal"
They rotated between their mounts, letting them rest between carrying loads and riders. This kind of horse was necessary for campaigning over long distances with poor infrastructure, so that's why I brought up Renaissance Russia - they fought exactly that kind of warfare, and while the rich men might have good speedy horses, most rode the Russian "merin" who is basically a forest pony, or his bashkir cousin from the steppe. Even though they were pretty short and somewhat slow. Operational necessity. We're not disagreeing here at all.
My only point is that hotbloods and chargers are faster than primitive breeds over tactical distances.
I don't know if you have experienced temperatures of
-20 or -30 degrees, but I am certain that the Mongol ponies fared better than our tanks or the Western European chargers accustomed to campaign during campaigning season.
I grew up in Siberia, and while the city could be relatively warm, I've seen my share of -30. Easily agree that a horse beats a car in terms of reliability - but overall, the car is much cheaper
They conducted the campaign in Russia in winter as well, and potentially against Russia's steppe neighbours too. That may be an important point, Russia's nomad neighbours were semi-nomadic due to constraints in space and temperature on the Pontic steppe, so they could have been operationally tied down, the same way Grand Prince Yuri was.
The Marathon example is very good,the same applies to cars,but in the battle the Mongols did not have to run that far to lure their enemies into a trap
...well, they actually did. Sometimes. Before the battle of Kalka, the Russian and Cuman vanguard smashed the Mongol vanguard (or so they thought), who then fell into a continuous retreat for several days, covering a territory somewhat larger than Belgium in the process before giving battle for real.
The Russians on pretty typical medieval horses kept up but became disorganized and of course the princes quarreled between themselves and we know what happened after.
But certainly this shows that Eastern Europe was familiar with operations on a very large scale, they just weren't as good as the Mongols at it.
Anyhow,how far do you think a european horse could run with a fully armoured knight on its back?(as opposed to the lesser weight on a mounted Mongol).
It's not a particularly useful question: the usual charge distance is much shorter than the endurance of the gallop. The knights gave Saracens and Byzantines conniptions because they charged in with great cohesion in tight formations, so there's no way they charged longer than oh, 3-400 metres because there's no cohesion of any kind after that. And all charges would begin slow.
Galloping with a man in armour? Depending on the horse, 2-3 miles? After which the horse needs to rest for a really long time. But as I said, not a very useful question. As long as the mass of the mongols can avoid the mass of the knights, the knights cannot do a lot of damage, individual skill and horse speed notwithstanding.
That said, misdeployed Mongols could, and were, sometimes, caught by opposing heavy cavalry on a few occasions, just like the Cumans were, and the Turks were, and the Pechenegs were, and so on. Over a tactical distance of under one mile the bigger horse is faster.
As for familiarity with horse archers,they usually had to do with isolated tribe raids developing into a limited war that ended with victory or defeat with payments and goods changing hands,but they were never faced with a more or less united Asia or a great part of it that provided armies in abundance and of course with the innovations of Ghingis Khan.
The Mongols were (briefly) united. That was a big change. Prior to that, however, there
were strong tribal alliances facing say, Rus. They suffered deafeats in the beginning, but learned how to conduct campaigns into the steppe within less than a hundred years. They knew how to move both horse and infantry rapidly too (by boat and sleds, in winter).
But when the Mongols came, the strategic speed caught Yuri by complete surprise, and despite him proactively going forward to meet them (also in winter), he ended up losing the strategic focus, went on defensive, and was outmaneuvered on his own turf. His army was pinned in three places in all of its deployments and destroyed piece by piece.
That's not unfamiliarity with horse archers, that's difference in strategic leadership.
You didn't have to be a tactically uncreative chivalry-bound commander to get defeated by the Mongols, that's all.
Just show me one army ambush in the middle ages by a knight army...and if it happened it would be a celebrated rare occurence unless the commander's name was Bertrand du Gusclin, Constable of France and an unsurpassed master in indirect Strategy and ambush;in five years of activity in France he gave three battles against the English,he lost the two,but the English army was utterly destroyed due to protracted attrition
I'm a fan of Du Guesclin too, but again, ambushes was something that people were familiar with at least in Eastern Europe. Turks ambushed Byzantines, Pechenegs ambushed the Rus, the Rus lured horsemen into a town and ambushed them there, Hungarians ambushed the Mongol rearguard in Transylvania, Bulgars ambushed Mongols at the Samara bend, Yevpati Kolovrat ambushed Batu (unssuccessfully), Vlachs ambushed the Hungarians in a few famous instances...
...it's not chivalrous, but then not armies were knights, and it was still done.
Medieval armies had limitations of not being able to maintain themselves in the field for a long time, yes. They had strategic limitations due to supply carts/sleds being slower than the horsemen, yes. I'm not arguing that part. I'm just saying that you really have to look beyond the "knights are slow and stupid" to see the reasons why Eurasian armies lost to the Mongols.
But they adapted, you know. They adapted to the Cumans, and they eventually adapted to the Mongols, who were basically Cumans with better central command and strategic movement.