Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  The primary difference between the Mongol army and that of other steppe nomads was its discipline. Orders were followed immediately and to the letter, or the offender was executed. Acting without orders also brought punishment. Throughout history, one can see a major weakness in victorious armies, especially mounted troops. Many a defeat was snatched from victory when winning troops stopped to loot. Many a cavalry charge pursued the enemy so far away from the battlefield that they made themselves useless when needed. Neither of these things occurred in the Mongol armies. Chinggis realized, as few commanders have, that stopping to plunder is pointless. There was always plenty of time after the victory for that, and an equitable distribution of spoils made getting an early start in the looting just as pointless.

  Other than the normal weapons training, the army trained annually in the autumn hunt, or nerge. Thousands of men would deploy in a massive circle, moving one way or another in response to signal flags. Once in place, they would all ride toward the center, herding all living creatures before them. Allowing an animal to escape, or killing it before the order, meant punishment. Once the circle was sufficiently small, Chinggis would take the first shot and then the slaughter would begin. This not only provided a huge store of supplies for the population, it simulated battle, just as Roman army training was described as bloodless war and war as bloody training. In his discussion of the Asian nomads, Edward Gibbon describes the hunt as “the image and as the school of war.… They acquire the habit of directing their eye, and their steps, to a remote object; of preserving their intervals; of suspending, or accelerating, their pace, according to the motions of the troops on their right and left; and of watching and repeating the signals of their leaders. Their leaders study, in this practical school, the most important lesson of military art: the prompt and accurate judgment of ground, of distance, and of time.”24 Although the mass hunt was not peculiar to the Mongols, Chinggis seems to have perfected it as a training operation. It seems to be one of the main reasons why the Mongol were able to engage in such organized and effective campaigning.25 Other than the hunt, the Mongols developed sixteen tactical maneuvers that they used to defeat enemy after enemy. A few examples are listed here:

  WEARING DOWN TACTIC. IF the enemy is entrenched behind a palisade that makes a cavalry charge impossible, leave a few units to keep an eye on the enemy and maintain harassment. When the enemy has to break camp to secure new supplies of food and water, then strike. In what was called the “dog fight” tactic, the Mongols feigned a withdrawal, leaving behind much of their equipment and supplies as if they had fled in haste. The city officials would send soldiers out to gather up the booty, which quickly clogged the open city gates with carts. With the soldiers on the open field, and the city gates opened, the Mongols returned and raced through the open doors to capture the city.26

  Luring into Ambush. This is the trademark steppe tactic, the feigned retreat. Nobody did it better than the Mongols. In his work How Wars Are Won, Bevin Alexander writes, “They created a special unit, the mangudai, that would charge the enemy alone.… All light cavalry learned this technique, so if a large mangudai was needed, it could be formed quickly. As had happened for a millennium and a half, unsuspecting enemy units would usually be convinced that they were on the verge of victory, and would spring after the fleeing Mongols. Unseen in the rear, Mongol archers waited.”27

  Lightning and Surprise Attacks. The surprise attack is self-explanatory, but it was often a result of the “lightning” attack, which came by covering great distances more quickly than the opponent expected. The emphasis therefore was on speed to the engagement and speed in the assault. A Mongol army, being lighter in weight, could move faster from the mobilization point to the logistics base, thereby reducing the enemy’s reaction time. In what was an incredible feat not matched until the introduction of railroads, a Mongol army could move as much as 600 miles in five days.28

  Bush Clump (or Moving Bush) Tactic. This is a variation on what was called the “crow soldier” or “scattered star” tactic, the Mongols’ primary method of harassment. It was usually used at night or on days with poor visibility and involved small units harassing the enemy but without the intent to encircle. It was perfect for keeping an enemy on edge.29

  ANOTHER UNIT CHINGGIS EXPANDED was his personal guard. Originally a few hundred, it came to number 10,000. This served multiple purposes. It was the bureaucracy that ran the ever-expanding empire. It also contained elite troops Chinggis would command in battle. It further served as something like a staff school. All of Chinggis’s commanders were in this personal guard and all young men with promise were brought in for training. He also kept hostages of captured leaders here, both to keep an eye on them and to indoctrinate them into the new Mongol system. Chinggis’s intelligence staff also composed part of the guard, another aspect that distinguished him as a commander. Sometimes a year in advance he would send out spies to gather and disseminate disinformation. He closely questioned travelers and merchants, and had maps made during reconnoitering. When his army went on campaign it was better prepared than any military of its day.

  Conquests

  LITTLE IS WRITTEN ABOUT CHINGGIS’S actual role in combat, but plenty of evidence shows his ability as a master of both strategy and grand strategy. This is yet another difference between him and any previous steppe leader, with the possible exception of Attila almost a millennium before. Chinggis not only had big dreams for his people; he saw the larger picture as well. His invasions were only undertaken with an eye to security. First, in the wake of the 1206 khuriltai and the army and social reorganization, he mopped up any remaining pockets of resistance on the steppes. Some leaders of defeated tribes were able to escape and even reestablish themselves elsewhere, but he knew where they were and would get to them in his own time.

  Second, he began preparations to take on the major power on the continent, China. Luckily for him there were two rival dynasties, the Chin in the north and the Sung in the south, so he could assume the assistance of one against the other. In order to completely secure his base, however, he needed to neutralize a third, relatively minor power in western China, the state of Hsi-hsia. It was the home of an erstwhile steppe tribe, the Tanguts, who had settled into a sedentary lifestyle. They still maintained a credible army based on cavalry, but had also built walled cities on which to base their national defense. Chinggis needed to secure his right flank before invading China proper. Chinggis managed to overrun the countryside in two campaigns (1205–7 and 1209), but he could not capture the major walled cities as he had no siege weapons.30 He did, however, sufficiently impress the ruling family with his abilities that they signed a treaty swearing vassalage, sealing it with a dynastic marriage between Chinggis and the king’s daughter. Hsi-hsia promised to provide troops upon request any time Chinggis needed them.

  By 1211 Chinggis was prepared to invade China. The Chin emperor (to whom Chinggis was technically a vassal since his days allied to Togoril, or Ong Khan) had recently died, creating in the capital city the typical disorder that comes with a change of leadership. Further, the ruling dynasty was made up of Jurchens, also former steppe peoples, not ethnic Chinese and therefore unpopular with the citizenry. All this worked in Chinggis’s favor, even though he faced an army much larger than his own, perhaps 120,000 cavalry and 500,000 infantry (though it was scattered across the empire). Chinggis probably entered China with 65,000 men. He picked up more manpower with a defection by some of the border Onggud tribesmen and a revolt of the Khitans from the region of Manchuria. Chinggis’s first goal was to control the frontier along the Great Wall. The second goal was to conquer southern Manchuria and its tribal population. Subedei, though subordinate to fellow commander Jebe’s command during the first years of the China campaign, was involved in achieving both goals. It is said that Subedei made a name for himself as the first man to scale the walls of the city of Huan-chou, a strategic city on the frontier.31

  Hard fighting followed, for the Chinese army
possessed talent and training, but more defections weakened the Chin leadership until finally the Mongols laid siege to the capital at Chung-tu, modern Beijing. Although he had earlier refused to parlay, Chinggis did now, in 1214, since his troops were beginning to suffer from disease and the walled city still resisted him. A treaty was signed with another new emperor, but when he established a new capital further south, Chinggis took that as a sign the Chin were trying to regroup, so the war picked up again in 1214. This time Chung-tu was captured.

  The primary lesson learned in this first war against China was that the Mongols needed siege equipment. Chinggis thus began to hire or draft Chinese (and later Persian) engineers to fill that need. As a leader, Chinggis had a firm grasp of reality, and valued innovation over tradition. He had no mania to preserve the old ways if new methods were necessary. From captured Uighers he adopted the practice of writing, in order to modernize his population and to facilitate administration. He embraced the concept of new weaponry when siege engines were necessary, and he incorporated nonsteppe peoples into his army and even his ruling council just as he had done with defeated tribesmen.

  Chinggis left troops in Chin territory to keep an eye on things while he returned to Mongolia to suppress some uprisings. During this period he had made contact with Shah Muhammad II of Khwarezm, recent conqueror of an area encompassing territory from the Persian Gulf to modern Kazakhstan, north of the Caspian and Aral Seas. Chinggis had hoped to not only maintain a passive presence to the rear while he dealt with the Chin but also reopen the Silk Road for income for his nascent empire. After initially positive relations between the two leaders, the shah altered his attitude. Fearing that Mongol traders were actually on spy missions, he agreed to a subordinate’s plan to slaughter an entire caravan. Chinggis, not surprisingly, demanded compensation as well as the head of the transgressing subordinate, the governor of the city of Utrar. The shah had killed or humiliated three Mongol ambassadors, which for Chinggis was tantamount to a declaration of war. He tolerated national insults no more than he did personal ones.

  Before he could punish Shah Muhammed for his crimes, however, he had to secure his flanks. This involved suppressing two old enemies. Kuchlug of the Naimans had escaped his tribe’s major defeat and fled to Kara Khitai, bordering Khwarezm to the northeast. There he married the king’s daughter in 1208, and usurped the throne in 1210. He proceeded to oppress the mainly Muslim population. He was technically in league with the shah (who had helped him in his seizure of power) but there was more distrust than friendship. Chinggis could not mount an invasion of Khwarezm with Kara Khitai under hostile control on his left flank. There were also some reorganized Merkids just north of the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River who could prove troublesome. Chinggis sent two of his Dogs, Jebe and Subedei, to handle the situation. Jebe was assigned to defeat Kuchlug while Subedei went with Chinggis’s son Jochi to deal with the Merkids. Both were ultimately successful.

  Like the Chin Empire, that of Khwarezm suffered internal leadership problems. Muhammad II was a minority ruler who inherited much of his empire from his conqueror father. Real power rested with the army, made up of primarily Turkish troops with no ties to the Persian, Afghan, and other peoples of the empire. Muhammad was at odds with his mother, an aristocrat with strong ties to the military leaders. She was a power not only behind the throne but often in opposition to it. The internal disorder benefitted Chinggis, who hoped the Khwarezm population would look on him as a liberator rather than conqueror. This was supported by his well-known policy of allowing complete religious freedom. Thus, though the defenders of Khwarezm vastly outnumbered the Mongols, they lacked sufficient unity and motivation.

  Muhammad dispersed his army across a broad front along the Amu Darya frontier in a cordon defense based on a number of walled cities. His son and chief commander, Jalal-al-Din, proposed a concentration of troops forward, along the Syr Darya, to meet the Mongols at the end of their march, when they would be tired. Given the Mongol plan, Jalal-al-Din (had he won his initial battle) might have been able to defeat the Mongol attacks one by one. It was not to be. No one else was willing to bet everything on a single battle in the open. Muhammad also had to disperse his troops to maintain order over a disaffected, heavily taxed population.

  The invasion of Khwarezm was the textbook version of Outflanking Tactic B, the strategic flanking movement. Early in the year 1220 Chinggis deployed his main force of 30,000 (under two sons, Ogedei and Chagedei) in the center to focus the Khwarezmian army’s attention and give the impression that the cordon defense would work. Their job was to capture Otrar and punish the offending governor who provoked the war initially, then work southeastward toward the capital city of Samarkand. Meanwhile, Chinggis’s son Jochi with three tumens would take his forces southward from Kara Khitai into the mountains, through the passes into the Fergana River valley, in order to threaten the eastern end of the Khwarezmian line. Jebe took a small force even farther southward before turning west down the Amu Darya toward Samarkand. Chinggis took the third part of the army (another 30,000) along with Subedei farther to the west, where it disappeared unnoticed and captured the Turkoman city of Zarnuk, for the sole purpose of contacting a man who knew a chain of water oases through the Kyzyl Kum desert.32

  With Muhammad focused on three forces approaching his capital from the northwest, east, and southeast, he was shocked when Chinggis and Subedei emerged from the desert in April and appeared before the city of Bokhara, a hundred miles west of Samarkand. Not only was he threatened from yet another direction, but any hope of support from the west was now impossible. Muhammad gave a few more orders for troop deployment, then fled southward for his life. The rest of the campaign was a series of successful sieges of those cities that resisted and peaceful occupations of those that did not. In a matter of months, Chinggis virtually destroyed a kingdom, almost entirely by the use of strategic moves that left the defenders unable to respond. At every decisive point, surprise permitted him to assemble locally superior forces, though his overall strength was less than Mohammed’s.33 Just as importantly, Chinggis possessed what no other nomad army ever had: siege equipment. The ability either to fight in the open or successfully conduct sieges negated Muhammad’s strategy. Jalal-al-Din tried to rally forces in Afghanistan and remained a threat for several years, but he died in Kurdistan in 1231, virtually alone.

  Chinggis concentrated his center of gravity more rapidly than the Khwarezmians. The Mongols threw the effects of their superior mobility upon the most decisive points in the kingdom, and each operation in the campaign set up follow-on operations that helped the Mongols destroy Khwarezm’s ability to fight.34 By spreading out his army, necessary though it may have been, Muhammad allowed the Mongols to gain local superiority at each city they attacked. The fact that no city held out for more than a few weeks meant that even had the Khwarezmians desired to send reinforcements, they had no time to do so.

  What is remarkable about the operation is the four-prong attack, with each prong moving in complete isolation from the others, knowing what to do in advance without having to maintain contact between the prongs.35 Liddell Hart observes: “In these brilliantly conceived and harmoniously executed operations we see each of the principles of war—direction, mobility, security, concentration, and surprise—woven into a Nemesis-like web in which are trapped the doomed armies of the Shah.”36 Some sources say the invasion was planned by Subedei, others by Chinggis. Either way, it proved that Chinggis had developed both the tactical methods to win battles and the strategic vision to win wars. Subedei took what Chinggis had created and implemented it in operations where he was far away from any supervision, where his own vision and battlefield acumen would be demonstrated.

  Subedei and Jebe were given the task of pursuing Muhammad, to kill him or bring him back to Chinggis. After a lengthy chase, Muhammad escaped to a small island near the south coast of the Caspian, where he died sometime between December 1220 and February 1221. Having traveled a great distance already,
Subedei then suggested a remarkable feat, which was approved: an exploratory mission to continue on east and then northward around the Caspian Sea, through the Caucasus Mountains, and into the region of the Kipchak nomads. There they would link up with Chinggis’s son Jochi, who would explore westward from Khwarezm.37 Chinggis thus sent the two Dogs on what came to be called the Great Raid, a two-year reconnaissance around the Caspian Sea, over to the upper shores of the Black Sea, and back home to report.

  Eastern European Warfare

  CHINGGIS FELT SUFFICIENTLY COMFORTABLE with his Asian conquests to begin to think about expeditions westward, to Russia and eastern Europe. In the thirteenth century Russia was a collection of principalities with little or no mutual loyalties. Owing to their position on the frontier between Europe and Asia, their military exhibited characteristics of both cultures. As did the Europeans, they based leadership on aristocracy that fought as heavy cavalry. Byzantine influence remained dominant until the early thirteenth century, with the Russian cavalry equipped with straight sword, bow, mail cloak, segmented helmet, and large, round shield.38 The aristocracy kept bodyguards (druzhina) also made up of cavalry, in units that could number as high as 5,000. The older veterans of the bodyguard were lancers, the younger troops were light cavalry archers. Units consisted of 100 and 1,000 men drawn from urban militia and a general levy called the smerd, something like the fyrd of England. The prince’s armory or that of the city supplied arms and armor. Most principalities also had auxiliary horse archers made up of steppe tribes that had drifted or been driven westward.