Mongol Empire Chapter 15 Summary

Jennifer Perez

Chapter 15

1. The Mongols had helpful fast and updated units that could go ahead of the main troops and spy on what lies ahead. These fast, mobile units were also extremely deceiving to enemies who were often lured by their low numbers and pursued to hunt them, only to be surrounded and trapped by the major troops ahead. the Mongols had excellent logistics to allow communication, supplies, and movement across extremely long distances. They used frozen rivers as the communication lines and were able to travel 50 miles in one day. During a battle, they usually elected elevated hills to be the main communication points and used flags as the way to communicate with the troops. The troops were grouped into 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000,

where each unit had a competent leader. The invasions were carried by armies approaching the enemy from numerous sides. the conquest of Hungary was done with multiple points to overwhelm the enemy.

They pushed along the Danube from Moldavia, across the Carpathian Mountains from Poland, and Czech lowlands to be met in the center of Hungary. The sheer size of the army was enough to destroy any opponent. The Mongolian expansion was based on the blitzkrieg tactic, and was not intended to acquire territory the way it was done by European, Roman, Greece, Persian, or Arabian empires. these empires wanted to create material wealth from taxes imposed on the population, which meant very little to Mongols. the acquisition of the territory meant thorough destruction of land, destroying any possible landmarks, killing entire populations, and even damaging the habitable environment. the environmental damage in Central Asia is still visible to this day. Another effective Mongol tactic was to kill all the ruling elite, as was done in Baghdad. The most convincing reason I can think is their cavalry. In those days’ cavalry played the same role in warfare as air force does in modern world. Not just Mongols, Turks too were extremely successful in medieval era. The triumph ace was abundance of extremely high quality horses in central Asia. These horses gave a distinct

upper edge to Mongols and Turks. Once gunpowder was invented and firearms came into picture, equations of power changed altogether.
2.

The Mongols failed to conquer Japan even though they had previously managed to conquer Korea and the much, much larger country of China. The major reason for this was geography and a second reason was luck. Because Japan is made up of islands, the Mongols were always going to have a harder time conquering it than they would have with countries they could invade by land. However, Japan was also helped by two very timely typhoons. Both times the Mongols tried to invade Japan, their fleets were badly damaged by typhoons. Japan in this time period was feudal. The ruling family, the Yamamoto Clan, had slowly lost the lion's share of power and the real power was in the hands of powerful, aristocratic families. This decentralized power in the hands of powerful warlords, who carved up Japan and ruled in a feudal system much like that of Europe. One of the key differences is that while Europeans had lords and knights with separate jobs, the daimyo in Japan served the role as both lord and warrior, so while the emperor seemed weak to the highly successful and on-a-role Kublai Khan, he decided to invade Japan. Khan sent a bunch of ships across to Japan, but ultimately was unable to conquer the strong ruling families, samurai, and a few disastrous typhoons which knocked out a large amount of Mongol ships. Due to samurai strength, and strong feudal

systems.
3. Under Kublai, the Mongol ruling oligarchy adopted divide-and-rule tactics. The Mongols and central Asians remained unassimilated and separate from Chinese life; the social and economic fabric of the Chinese was left basically unchanged. The rule of the Mongol minority was assured by discriminating legislations. The whole population of China was divided into a hierarchy of four social classes: the Mongols; the central Asians; the northern Chinese, Koreans, and Jürchen; and the southern Chinese. For tactical and practical reasons, Kublai adopted a conciliatory policy toward the Chinese. He revived the state cult of Confucius, ordered the protection of the Confucian temples, and exempted the Confucian scholars from taxation. Though Kublai had a rather limited knowledge of Chinese and had to rely on interpreters, he had provided a literary education for his heir apparent, Jingim (1244-1286), and other Mongol princes, allowing gradual, though limited, Sinicization.