What Made Mongol Soldiers So Deadly #mongols #history #military

The Mongol winter hunt was a rehearsal for war. William of Rubruck wrote that they surrounded a whole district and closed the circle slowly, until the animals were trapped and shot. Stephen Turnbull notes that the call-up for the hunt was every bit as strict as the call-up for war. So the Mongol warrior went to war like a hunter, light, with five or six horses and, when food ran short, the horses themselves. 📖 Source: Stephen Turnbull, Mongol Warrior 1200–1350 (Osprey Warrior 84) and Mongol Warrior vs European Knight: Eastern Europe 1237–42 (Osprey Combat). In his coat he carried dried curds, dried meat and a stone to sharpen his arrowheads. He had two or three bows, and Marco Polo says every man carried sixty arrows. A leather bag closed with a thong kept his clothes dry when he crossed rivers. The papal envoy John of Plano Carpini described riders who came close, loosed their arrows and pulled back to their own line. When the enemy chased them, the retreat drew them into the arms of a closing ring. At Muhi, by the Sajó River on 11 April 1241, the ring closed around King Béla's camp, with one gap left open. In Turnbull's account, the light horsemen brought down the fugitives as if they were hunting back in Mongolia. The gap ended in a marsh, where two archbishops were among the drowned. The hunt was the training. Muhi was the hunt. People ask how one person makes these, and the answer is musayko.com, a platform I built that is now open to other creators. Which warrior should we reconstruct next?