Sandy Petersen <sandyp_at_idgecko.idsoftware.com> quoth in respinse to Steve
>Armor: most Mongols had leather, with metal helmets. They were
>perfectly able to make and wear chain, but mostly did not, using
>captured chain primarily. The Europeans, with heavier armor for their
>heavy cavalry, presumably would have been tougher one-on-one if the
>Mongols had ever fought that way.
True, even after the death of Ghenghis most Mongols were lightly armoured, with Armenian/Hospitaler/Georgian/Russian (in the West) troops providing more in the way of armoured cavalry. I say in the west as it is not to be forgotten that the Mongols had a truely massive reach attacking a huge arc spanning Japan, Java, Egypt, Wallachia, Prussia and using large numbers of widely different auxilliary troops on each endeavour. The 300 years from 1200 to 1500 were very exciting times to be a Mongol :).
>>The crossbow was the west's answer, so to speak, to Horse Archery.
>
> In the first place (as you know), this is not true. It was
>invented and mainly used by people who never saw a horse archer in
>their life. It wasn't even an answer to the longbow (since crossbows
>came first). It was only a technique to provide heavy firepower that
>could pierce armor. And I cannot think of a single battle in which
>crossbows were used by anyone but highly trained soldiers. The whole
>"doesn't take training" theory falls to pieces.
Most Northern European militia were armed with crossbow in the 'high' middle ages - the difference between highly trained crossbowmen such as those of the permanently embodied foot troops of the Teutonic Order and the basically untrained militia of the Baltic towns was substantial. One was capable of standing off charging Lithuanian cavalry, the other was not. Crossbow as a purely professional weapon was much earlier, before the birth of Christ when the armies of Alexander had specialists armed with ancestoral crossbows and the Chinese Emperors had crossbowmen.
ob crossbow: The CD 'First Emperor of China' about the terracotta army has some excellent pictures of a Chinese crossbow, including one of the trigger mechanism.
>>I said that the Mongols would avoid melee if possible (against
>>standing European troops).
> This is simply false. Name one time that this was done.
The Mongols would normally avoid melee lance to lance (as opposed to bow to lance) against European knights (who made up a relatively small core of Eastern European armies) unless the knights were broken up as at Leignitz (sp) or ambushed (against the Rumanians). But they were willing to frontally charge heavier troops if they had to, as was shown when they lost at Goliath Springs vs the Mamlukes.
Superior generalship allowed them to fight at the time and place of their own choosing on most occasions on the raid into Europe.
Even the later (and more heavily armoured) Timurids were none to keen to fight knights head on, as the Serbian nobles proved at the battle of Ankarra.
Aden
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