Military strategies of Genghis Khan
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Mongol soldiers were rigoursly trained. To sharpen their fighting skills and get meat for a huge feast, the Mongols held an annual great hunt called a gorugen in which thousands of horsemen encircled all the game in a large area and closed in. Each man was allotted only one arrow; failure to kill an animal was met with ridicule.
Mongol Weapons
composite bow
The Mongols improved on Persian and Chinese weapons. Mongol cavalrymen carried maces, lances with a hook and snare, sabers, three-quivered arrows and a composite bow made of wood, sinew and horn. Strapped to their left arms solder carried daggers used in close range fighting. The front guard was made up of lancers who rode high in the saddle with short stirrups which gave leverage for powerful thrusts.
Mongol bows had a range of 250 meters, twice that of English longbows. The Mongols could fire up to six arrows a minute, and utilized several arrow and arrowhead designs, including longe-range ones, short-rage ones and ones that could pierce armor. In addition to those made strictly for killing, they used arrows that left terrible wounds, ones that whistled to scare the enemy, ones that whistled and wounded the enemy and ones that were dipped in naphtha and set on fire.
Towards the end of the Mongol era both soldiers and horses were protected in leather armor made from horsehide soaked in urine. Leather armor was lighter and more flexible than the chain-mail favored by Europeans. To protect their faces, Mongol cavalrymen carried small leather shields in their left arm. Under a loose robe they wore a tunic of tightly woven silk that blunted the impact of enemy arrows. Their boots were lined with sewn-in metal plates that protected the warrior's calves.
The Mongols were the first to use gunpowder in battle. They used it as an explosive not as a propellant to hurl bullets or cannon fodder. During sieges the Mongols used mangonels, giant catapults, to hurl stones and other objects.
Mongol Battle Tactics
The Mongols pioneered the use of feigned flight, surprise attacks, hostage taking, psychological warfare and human shields. The Mongol cavalry, situated around the around the outside of the tumen, could swiftly advance to the front with little warning, and attack the enemy with a hail of arrows. A screen of outer riders acted as an early warning system. The size of the Mongol army was exaggerated by placing dummies on the backs of horses and lighting strings of bonfires at night.
In a review of Erik Hildinger's “Warriors of the Steppe”, Christopher Berg wrote: In China, Genghis discovered the art of siege. Chinese engineers would prove to be Genghis’ secret weapon against all who lived in fortified cities. Furthermore, Genghis would use another tactic repeatedly with great effect: terror. Sieges were used to take fortified positions while the “calculated use of terror” was used to demoralize any who thought to defy the Mongols.
Mongol cavalry
In field battles the Mongols typically showered their enemy with armor-piercing arrows paving the way for a cavalry charge in which swift-moving horsemen hacked down survivors with hooked lances. A favorite military ploy was feigning retreat and luring the enemy into a prepared position and surrounding them with mounted archers or suddenly turning on the pursing army and raining them with arrows, with a concerted effort made at going after their leader. Mongol tactics and mobility were so superior to that of their rivals, that often easily defeated armies that were several times larger than theirs.
When attacking a large powerful city, the Mongols advanced on a broad front. They employed this tactic effectively in the assault on Samarkand where the force coming from the desert north was more than 1,300 kilometers northwest of a force coming in over the Pamir mountains. When the Mongols attacked Europe they formed an even broader front, one that stretched from the Baltics to Transylvania.
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