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Can we talk about how I used to think the Mongol Empire could never hold Europe, then a guy at a library talk in Austin made me rethink it
I always figured the Mongols would have bounced off European castles and called it a day, but he pointed out they took walled cities in China and Persia for decades, so a few stone keeps in Hungary wouldn't have stopped them. Now I think if Ogedei Khan hadn't died in 1241 and pulled the armies back for the kurultai, we'd be reading about a very different 1300s in Vienna and maybe Rome. What's your take, was the succession thing the only reason they turned around, or was there something else larger at play?
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kimmurphy13d ago
1241 is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this whole what if game, huh? Everyone acts like Vienna was saved by one guy dying at the exact right moment, like Europe had some magic shield that Ogedei's death activated. The Mongols did smash stone walls at Kiev and Baghdad, sure, but they also lost guys to Hungarian castles at that same time, so it's not like they were unbeatable. Maybe the bigger thing was they were already stretched thin after riding halfway across the world, and Europe is basically one big wet forest full of angry dudes in armor. A dead khan is a convenient excuse, but armies run out of steam for boring reasons too.
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