Masters of the Battlefield

by Davis, Paul K.

  After about a year of pillaging across the countryside and reconnaissance missions as far as Vienna, the Mongol army left for home. That was certainly not its original intention, for Subedei’s overall vision for the campaign was to reach the Atlantic in an operation that would take as many as eighteen years. Two primary reasons explain the Mongol leaders’ decision to leave Europe, one political and the other practical. Ogedei had died, and it was necessary for Batu and the other princes to return home for a khuriltai to elect the next great khan. Also, the terrain was becoming increasingly difficult for a horse-bound society to live on. Gone were the massive steppe grasslands that were their home. They also would be facing more and more fortified towns and cities with fewer and fewer local troops to recruit as they advanced. Almost certainly they could have defeated European armies, but they just as certainly could not have adapted to Europe’s landscape.70

  Back in Karakorum, the khuriltai, after much debate, elected Kuyuk as the new great khan. Batu, who boycotted the meeting upon learning he would not be elected, stayed in Russia, the region he had inherited from his father, Jochi, and established what came to be called the Golden Horde. Subedei was assigned in 1244 to campaign against the Sung, but it was a short assignment. He was soon back on the steppes, where he died in 1248. For another four generations his descendants held positions of authority. His son Uriyangqadai was a major player in the defeat of the Sung Dynasty. Both father and son received posthumous honors, with Subedei being canonized as Chung-ting (“Loyal and Steadfast”).71

  Generalship

  CHINGGIS AND SUBEDEI WERE SOMETHING of a two-headed general. Chinggis established the Mongol system and army, and oversaw its grand strategy and political actions at home, in the field, and in the conquered territories. Subedei learned at the master’s feet and came to be his closest colleague, probably aiding Chinggis in details of invasion planning and execution, as best seen in the sweeping flank attack against Khwarezm that brought them to the gates of Bokhara. Subedei was certainly the originator of the reconnaissance in force that became known as the Great Raid, and Chinggis trusted him so implicitly that his only instructions were to return within three years. Both had a vision of what the Mongol nation could do and how far it could go, and both worked tirelessly to accomplish those great goals. All of the principles of war were mastered by these two.

  At all levels, the generals established an objective at the outset and planned meticulously to achieve it. They realized what the enemy center of gravity was in each campaign. In the tribal battles, it was the enemy commander. In virtually every case Chinggis wanted the manpower another tribe could provide for the Mongol nation, and he could not trust former enemy leaders to remain loyal—although he did come to trust individual enemy soldiers, such as Jebe. In the campaign against Hsi Hsia, the center of gravity was the enemy capital, to force submission. In China, it was the emperor of the Chin and later of the Sung. In Khwarezm, it was Shah Mohammad and, when he was out of play, his son Jalal-al-Din, for they were the ones potentially capable of reorganizing resistance forces. In an analysis for the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Major Glenn Takemoto describes the Mongol objectives: “The Mongols sought to destroy the Clausewitzian trinity [government-army-population] at every level of war. At the strategic and operational levels, they sought the moral collapse of the people through terror, paralysis of the government through decapitation, and destruction of the army through piecemeal annihilation.”72

  Another consistent theme is that Chinggis or Subedei always took the offensive. In order to secure their frontiers, they always had to take war to a neighboring country. On the battleground, Chinggis was flexible to changing conditions. This is best shown in his adoption of Chinese and Persian engineers to assault walled cities, the bane of every other nomadic army. Additionally, every feigned retreat was designed to bring an enemy army to a particular predetermined location in order to counterattack and destroy it.

  Centuries before Napoleon used the concept of “march divided, fight united,” Chinggis had already developed it. His superior intelligence network allowed him to strategically divide in the face of the enemy but converge in mass on an objective at a given time. Four separate advances into Khwarezm massed at Samarkand, each of the forces having local superiority along its line of march. On the battlefield of Kalka, Subedei stretched out a stronger enemy force in such a way that enemy troops committed themselves to battle piecemeal, giving him local superiority over each successive enemy unit.

  Any general who fights outnumbered has to master the principle of economy of force, and the superior intelligence the Mongols gathered made this possible, for they always knew where their enemy forces were positioned so they could be blocked, misled, or defeated by the minimum number necessary. This was best illustrated at Sajo River with the holding operation at the bridge while Subedei’s force engaged in a flank march.

  The most significant—and successful—component of Mongol strategy and tactics was maneuver. It all came from speed and discipline. The toughness of the Mongol soldier and his horses made rapid movement possible, both over long marches and in ambush. The training in maneuver and response to commands in the hunting nerge showed itself constantly on campaign. The goal of maneuver is to place the enemy in a disadvantageous position, and the feigned retreat brought army after army into that situation. The sixteen maneuvers outlined above, from harassment to encirclement, are timeless in their effects, but the instant response to commands made the Mongols unequaled in execution.

  Another principle of war we see exercised, particularly by Chinggis, is unity of command. As he was the leader, in politics, planning, and execution, Chinggis’s entire rise to power reflects his goal of achieving this unity. If there was a potential Mongol weakness, however, it was here. A royal personage had to be in titular command, as Batu was in the invasion of Russia and eastern Europe, but during his lifetime Chinggis made sure that a trusted general was the one who truly made the operational decisions. After Chinggis’s death, however, with the division of empire among the sons, this became increasingly difficult to enforce. Subedei shared command with Batu at Mohi, but Subedei was the one who made the battlefield decisions. When Batu considered withdrawing from the field at Mohi in the wake of the severe casualties he had taken beating back the Hungarian assaults, Subedei made the final call: you and your princes can go, but I’m staying and fighting. Batu stayed.

  Security was another key aspect of Mongol warfare, and one that Napoleon would redevelop in the nineteenth century. The Mongol intelligence network was superior to anything possessed by any other army or government, and it also was a channel for disinformation. Keeping the enemy guessing, whether it was on the battlefield or on campaign, was a hallmark of Mongol warfare. Advanced scouts alerted the Mongols to enemy positions, but also screened the movements of the main body with harassment. Baidar’s invasion of Poland was nothing more than strategic security for Subedei’s Hungarian invasion. The ability to have fast-moving messengers, or to send messages by flag or arrow, kept the Mongol army continually aware of enemy and allied positions.

  Surprise is what the Mongol art of maneuver was all about. Whether it was Chinggis with the giant pincer movement into Khwarezm or Subedei’s placement of flanking units on the Kalka River, the enemy never knew what to expect, and what they did expect was always wrong. The utilization of siege weapons surprised Shah Mohammad, who based his entire defense on holding cities. Using those same weapons tactically at the Sajo River was technically and psychologically devastating. The speed of the Mongol army’s movement also created strategic and operational surprise.

  One would think that dividing forces across hundreds of miles in order to come together at a particular spot at a particular time, and without modern communication equipment, would be nearly impossible. However, the Mongol communication methods created an ability to coordinate movement across both countries and battlefields. With all sections of the army on the same page, complexity becom
es simplicity. Further, the constant training of the troops enabled them to instantaneously execute all orders; extended descriptions of movements prior to battle were not necessary.

  As any commander knows, victory creates its own high morale. For Chinggis, it meant more than that. The entire subjugation campaign to bring all the tribes into one nation meant bringing everyone into the same way of thinking. His creation of the yasa to break down tribal differences probably did as much to mold his army as any action Chinggis ever took. The development of unit loyalty, from the smallest to the largest formations, has always been key to maintaining morale. Unbiased discipline also contributed, as it always does, to chain-of-command loyalty. Promotion through excellence rather than birth or favoritism also was a motivating factor, as soldiers were rewarded for their hard work and commitment to their leader. Further, the reputation Chinggis’s army established over time influenced enemy morale, especially in the cities that decided surrender under lenient terms was a better option than useless resistance and annihilation.

  Exploitation is one area in which the Mongols could be accused of going too far. While the goal of battle is to destroy the enemy’s will or ability to resist, for the Mongols the goal was destruction. During the steppe wars, Chinggis showed his determination by killing every member of the Tatar tribe taller than a wagon wheel’s axle. City after city in his later campaigns was burned to the ground and the citizens slaughtered. There were, however, some exceptions. Nomadic enemy soldiers could and usually would be brought into the Mongol army and nation. Citizens of enemy cities, if valuable as craftsmen or engineers, were spared and sent to Mongolia. But as seen at the Kalka River and in the wake of the battle at the Sajo River, annihilation of the enemy army was the goal, and it came very close to being accomplished.

  ALTHOUGH CHINGGIS ESTABLISHED a multigenerational empire, his dream of an all-encompassing and perhaps never-ending empire was no more possible for the Mongols than for any other population. He did accomplish more than any other nomadic leader, but in the final analysis what he sought was an impossible dream. Acquisition of loot has to have a purpose. Once it is acquired, it is either kept or traded for something else tangible. One cannot continually acquire goods and live in mobile tent communities. The Mongols, like so many other conquerors, were eventually absorbed by the conquered. Nevertheless, they did establish a military that was without equal in training, discipline, national identity, and an overall success that has never been equaled. The empire of Napoleon did not cover a third of that possessed by Chinggis Khan.

  Subedei had an almost unbroken string of victories; only a defeat by the Bulgars on the way home from the Great Raid marred a stellar career. Like Chinggis, he knew his enemies and knew himself—Sun Tzu said that such knowledge would produce victory in a hundred battles. Subedei also lived on in modern times. In the mid-nineteenth century a Russian officer, Lt. Gen. Mikhail Ivanin, faced steppe cavalry tactics while fighting Uzbeks in Turkestan. His analysis of that style of warfare was published in 1846 as The Art of War of the Mongols and the Central Asian People, which became required reading in tsarist and then Soviet military academies. It became standard Soviet doctrine (known as “deep battle”) in the 1930s thanks to Mikhail Tukhechevsky, Red Army chief of staff. As Subedei biographer Richard Gabriel writes, “By 1937 the Russians had—in a doctrinal and tactical sense—essentially reinvented the Mongol army with modern equipment. The Red Army was the largest and most mechanized army in the world, and its commanders were better trained in operational control of large units over great distances than those of any officer corps in the West.… [Tukhechevsky] had reconfigured the Russian armies in the image of the armies of Genghis Khan and Subotai.”73 Proof that some people do learn from history.

  9

  Jan Žižka (1360?–1424)

  Leader of Hussite Forces during the Early Catholic Crusades

  To most of his contemporaries he was, it seems, not so much an individual character as a great and frightful natural phenomenon: a terrific power, sent by God to save the Law of God and to punish the sinners; or, to his enemies, a great scourge of humanity, but even so: sent by God. That it was God indeed, who made him do what he did, was the firm conviction of Žižka himself.

  —Frederick Heymann, John Žižka and the Hussite Revolution

  THE YOUNG LIFE OF JAN ŽIŽKA is a matter of much speculation, without even heroic legend to attempt to fill the gaps. Born in the Bohemian town of Trocnow, he seems to have been from a family in the minor nobility. He thus had some social standing, although sources disagree as to his family’s financial condition. Perhaps the most significant experience of his youth was the loss of sight in an eye, although how it came to be lost is also a matter of conjecture; it may have been from a childhood accident or from a teenaged fight. Some sources say Žižka was a nickname meaning one-eyed; his real name was John Trocnowski.1

  In 1306 the royal line in Bohemia died out, and the crown was offered to the Germanic House of Luxemburg. In 1347, King Charles IV began something of a nationalist movement by establishing the University of Prague, a center of learning not controlled by the church and thus a rare forum for free thinking. Charles died in 1378 and was succeeded by Vaclav IV as a dual monarch, both king of Bohemia and king of the Romans (i.e., Germans).2 In 1380 a Žižka is listed as entering King Vaclav’s service as a hunter. Vaclav loved to hunt, far more than ruling his domain, and as he was well known for not standing on formality, it is probable that he became quite friendly with young Jan. Jan’s rapid advancement at court supports this supposition, as do the politico-military events surrounding Vaclav’s reign.

  The key players in the trouble brewing in Vaclav’s kingdom were of the House of Luxemburg. Vaclav’s younger brother Sigismund was king of Hungary. Vaclav also faced trouble with the Bohemian nobility, who chafed under any sort of rule; many of these nobles rallied around Henry of Rosenberg in 1395, creating the League of Lords, which allied with Sigismund and his cousin Margrave Jost of Brandenburg. King Vaclav had the assistance, however, of the youngest Luxemburg brother, Duke John of Görlitz, as well as Jost’s brother Prokop, margrave of Moravia. Large-scale fighting broke out in 1399 with the nobles on both sides backing bands of retainers and supporters that engaged in widespread pillage and guerrilla warfare. Sigismund convinced the Bohemian nobles to remove Vaclav as king of the Germans and replaced him with Rupert III (Sigismund later got himself elected to that position in 1411). The fighting continued into the early years of the fifteenth century, taking place throughout Bohemia and neighboring Moravia. The conflict was “fought out on three levels: the personal and political struggles between the two kings and the two margraves of the House of Luxemburg; the feuds of the barons, who supported one or the other side; and finally the guerilla warfare of the mercenary bands employed by the barons,” according to Žižka’s main biographer, Friederich Heymann.3

  Žižka’s name features regularly as an enemy in the records kept by the Rosenbergs, so it is certain he was fighting for one of these irregular bands in Vaclav’s service. His unit was commanded by Matěj Vůdce and was under the control of the lords of Lichtenburg, another of the noble families. Žižka apparently did not hold a command position; indeed, he apparently drew little attention from his own leaders other than as, perhaps, a useful junior officer.4 The fighting waned about 1406, when Vaclav’s ally Prokop died; Vaclav also made peace with Henry of Rosenberg and Margrave Jost, while Sigismund was diverted by issues in Hungary. However, support for or against the king of Austria (also fighting his own brother) drew in some of the marauding bands, so some pillaging continued for several more years. During these times of troubles, Žižka had come to the attention of John Sokol, the most militarily talented of the Bohemian nobles, who had placed himself under Vaclav’s banner. Sokol apparently had seen something in Žižka the previous commanders had not; in the guerrilla warfare Žižka had shown himself to be a natural leader.5 In 1409 Žižka joined himself to Sokol, who had been hired by the king of Po
land to fight the Teutonic Knights.

  The Poles had recently allied themselves with Lithuania, which had long been targeted by the Teutonic Knights as a pagan nation. That changed in 1386 when Lithuanian prince Jagiello became king of Poland and converted his nation to Christianity. The Knights had come to dominate Prussia since their arrival at the beginning of the fourteenth century and, with no pagans to fight, expanded their holdings just because they could. They had the finest heavy cavalry in the region and no organized resistance to slow them down. However, with Poland and Lithuania united, an organized government now could place an army in the field that might present a real threat to the Knights. The Polish cavalry was made up of bold nobles on outstanding mounts, proving themselves a fit rival.6 The Lithuanians were primarily light cavalry on the Asiatic model, having faced the Mongols for many decades. Unfortunately, the Polish-Lithuanian infantry was poorly armed and trained, no match for the Teutonic Knights in open battle except in terms of bravery.7 Hence, the government needed to recruit soldiers from Bohemia, who at the time were considered to be superior to almost anyone in central and eastern Europe.8