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> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt?

Not the OP and there is lots of post-factum rationalisation like "the Crusaders lost because they were sloppy, not because they were cavaliers", but there's also the famous example of the 1393 Battle of Nicopolis which the Ottomans won because they were way lighter compared to the Westerners. Their archers and sharpened stakes against the Crusaders' heavy cavalry can be compared to today's NLAWs against the Russians' tanks. It is true, by the mid 1400s and especially by the start of the 1500s artillery and gunpowder had won the game, that's mostly how Suleiman the Magnificent managed to reach the gates of Vienna.

Also, there's much to be said about the Mongols' excellent administrative skills once they had conquered some land, I think that because of some Western-related bias that doesn't get underlined as much as should do in today's mainstream historiography. As the US (in Iraq and Afghanistan) and the Soviets/Russians (in Afghanistan and partially in Ukraine) have found out at their own expense is not enough to militarily conquer some land, you also have to administer it afterwards, preferably with the help of some of the local population. Because, among other things, of their religious tolerance the Mongols (or Tartars, as they were mostly known here in Eastern Europe) were really good at it, probably there are some good books written about this specific aspect of their rule but to be honest I didn't put my hands on any of them until now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis

I guess technological-determinist arguments are generally easy to source, because there's usually abundant archaeological evidence of the kinds of equipment people use to fight wars.

I'm generally pretty skeptical: there are just a ton of cases where an army strong in one category (say, heavy cavalry) have slaughtered enemies strong in other categories, and vice versa.

It seems to me that technologies that dominated entire eras (heavy infantry for the romans, heavy cavalry for medieval europe, horse archers for the steppes, etc) follow naturally from the social models rather than military necessity. A feudal lord wouldn't have the ability to organize or provision a roman legion, for instance, or the raw culture of mobility and horsemanship for horse archers, etc.

In some ways that’s true but it’s important to realize military effectiveness was increasing over time. This was most obvious with naval warfare, but also holds true of land armies.

Professional feudal armies would have crushed Roman armies of equivalent sizes. However, they lacked the scale of true empires.

> Professional feudal armies would have crushed Roman armies of equivalent sizes.

Really? Why?

The other thing is that a feudal state wouldn't be able to field an army that was of an equivalent size to a Roman army. The Romans fielded eight legions at Cannae, which was like 80,000 guys. Agincourt, in comparison, involved about a quarter of that number if you combine both sides.

Even if the roman legionnaire was worse than a feudal soldier, which I see no reason to believe, it's obvious that there was a precipitous decline in organizational and logistical capacity. In a battle, that would count more than the quality of the soldiers involved.

Plus, nit to forget, a Legionnaire was a professional soldier. The majority of feudal armies was part time soldiers. Exceptions were late medieval, early Renaissance mercenaries. And those, e.g. Landsknechts, men-at-arms and the Swiss pikemen, dominated the battlefields in their time.

The Romans build their empire on logistics and organization as much as they did on legions and civil engineering. No feudal kingdom came close to that.

Rome had a huge empire and could therefore field large armies so yes they had a real logistical advantage.

As to feudal soldiers vs legionnaires it was largely a question of equipment. Mounted knights required horse that weren’t available to Rome because selective breeding had yet to produce them. Improvements in metalwork and armor design resulted in far better coverage for the same weight. Knights largely stopped using shields because they didn’t need them as much as they could use a free hand.

That said there was a large variation on both sides. Disease, exhaustion etc could also wreck an otherwise capable army.

>Rome had a huge empire and could therefore field large armies

My feeling is actually that as the empire grew, the armies they could field somewhat declined. When Cannae happened, the Romans were big, but not huge, and they could literally field army after army of professional soldiers. Part of this was demographics (there had been a population boom in Italy) but part of it is economics and state capacity.

I would guess that up until really late (like, 1880's) warfare was not that technical, so stuff like 'elan' and 'will' was typically by far the most important characteristic in a soldier. That's at least what generals right up to the first world war tended to prize. When it comes to sheer discipline, bloodymindedness and martial spirit, I don't think anybody would surpass the Romans until the modern era.

What is a "professional feudal army"?

No seriously, that is a conceptual oxymoron, or at least I understand it to be.

One example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Army_of_Hungary

That's already early Rennaissance, stabding mercenary formations started to show up around that time. Feudal armies tended to be passants being called to arms centered around some highly trained knights and professionals. The Mongols were a standing professional army, something that played an important role during their campaigns.

I don’t think there is agreement to when the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance started, but 1458 could easily fit into both. That said, they started having a professional army in the 1440’s.

The late medieval and early renaissance line is blurry in part because various practices got adopted at different times in different locations.

It truly is, as is the question when the medieval period started. Personally, I think it's fair to see the first "modern" principles from 1400 onwards. What is usually considered being classical feudal middle ages is, IMHO, earlier. That's why I think the 15th century is so damn interesting. It was the turning point after which European powers became the dominant powers. Up to then global domination was up for grabs.

Do you know this book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691165851/lo...

It talks about the often overlooked civilisation in Central Asia between 800 and 1200.

Nope, and thanks a lot for the recommendation, I'll give it a try. I've mostly read Peter Golden's [1] excellent works about that area, but they approximately stop before the Mongol invasions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Benjamin_Golden

Oh, thanks. I wanted to read his Central Asia in World History since a long time. Sometime I'll write a Global History of the Turkic-Mongol mercantile business.

> This is not the case. Sounds like something that comes from a pop account of crecy or agincourt? Gunpowder is closer to the mark, but funnily enough armor kept getting heavier longer than many realize. The full plate harnesses that people generally picture when they think of a “knight in shining armor” are really Renaissance/early modern, well after the Middle Ages.

Really a combination of weapons (first crossbows - not because they were super effective against knight armor, but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen, then gunpowder for the same reasons. Knights were reasonably effective well after primitive gunpowder weapons.) and gradual decline of feudalism and thus knights as a class, as Monarchs started transitioning to standing/professional armies.

Also, as manufacturing improved, it became much cheaper to equip soldiers with standardized equipment rather than rely on tailored to the individual hand-made full-plate armor.

As always, the truth is somewhere between economics and cultural/tech shift.

> but because it was cheaper to train crossbowmen

And the difference was massive. It took years and years of dedicated training to become a good archer, something you start from childhood. The average peasant didnt have the time just do this on the side. As a result they were often handsomely paid.

Crossbows on the other hand could be maned by anyone and were usable in a few days. It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while.

> It was such a threat to the existing social order that the catholic church tried to ban its use against Christians for a while.

I'm pretty sure the same papal bull tried also to ban bows and it wasn't the first time a pope had tried to ban ranged weapons

I would like to highlight the, to me very surprising, observation that medieval crossbows truly aren't more effective than bows. Their impressive draw weights are mostly consumed by inefficiencies in arm weight/elasticity and bowstring weight.

It was very surprising to me also, after watching several videos of crossbow testing against a typical knight's breastplate, that hand-launched missile weapons could really only make dents (best case scenario) in the armor and only when hitting at a nearly perfect angle.

The vast majority of projectiles would have simply bounced off.

The effectiveness of archers then, is mostly in sheer volume (and getting lucky shots on the horse or weak spots in the armor) of projectiles, against less armored targets.

Modern crossbows with 200lb+ draw weights might be different, but that's another story.

Gun powder and social order is very interesting. At one point, under Nobunaga if memory serves, Japan had more, and better, muskets than any other country on earth. Until the social order was inforced by banning those, going into isolation and cementing Samurai rule. In Europe on the other hand gun powder let to nation stated (sort of) and ultimately (along with a ton of other factors, incl. a Chinese withdrawl from the high seas) a colonial rule across the globe.

I don’t think they were banned. Just less noteworthy because there wasn’t much war once Japan was finally unified.

> going into isolation

Japan didn't go into isolation. It's one of the many myths we invented to hide our horrible history. Japan kicked out europeans because they were enslaving japanese and taking them away. The easiest way to debunk the myth of japanese isolation is that japan didn't isolate itself from korea, china and rest of its neighbors. Only the slave trading europeans.

It's funny how we portray japan kicking out barbaric european slavers as isolationism.

> Stirrups are cool, no doubt, but far from a secret to the mongols success.

You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.

Their response was about how it wasn’t the secret to mongol success specifically. The mongols had the double recurved bow and the advantage of a fully nomadic pastoral society in which all adult males were trained to be warriors. That and Genghis Khan’s decimal system is what transformed them into a fearsome conquering machine.

True, but stirrups very introduced into Europe by the Avars hundreds of years before the Mongols.

> You don't realize how huge an impact stirrups had to horseriding and by extension, civilization.

Yeah, but in all likelihood they weren't a mongol invention. The alans and avars probably had them five hundred years earlier, of perhaps the huns beofre them.

Past participle of the verb of the day? 'Obsoleted'.