“Devil’s horsemen”: Why Mongol horse archers were history’s most feared
bigthink.com
bigthink.com
First, the composite bow design used by the Mongolians was widely use as far as the region of the Ottoman-Turks … but also the Manchus, Chinese, Koreans.
Second, the recurve and reflex shapes of the bow is not what gives the bow its power. It is siyahs at the tip, which do not bend, and acts as a lever on the bendable parts. There is a tradeoff. The larger the siyah, the more mass the bow has to overcome to fire these arrows, so the draw weight need to be significant enough to warrant the use of a siyah. Turkish and Chinese composite bows start outperforming longbows of the same draw weight at around 40-50 pounds, while the Manchu horn bows start outperforming longbows at 70-80 pounds. According to those who test it out, the performance gap is exponential.
Third, the most powerful of the Asiatic bows are probably the Manchu bows. They double-down on making long, aggressive (forward angle) siyahs, and even innovating string bridges to increase brace height and help prevent the bows from unstringing themselves. They were not designed to shoot arrows fast. Like most Asiatic composites, these were designed to shoot very heavy, long arrows with great penetration power. Manchus also love their horses, archery, and the hunt.
A hundred years after the Manchus conquered China and founded the Qing dynasty, their archery traditions were in decline. The Qing emperors recruited Mongolians to be trained in the Manchu ways of archery to keep their traditions alive.
There is a lot more to it as well — such as the thumb draw and use of thumb rings; the variations of khatra, etc; how modern Mongolian archers competing in the Mongolian Games are switching away from thumb draw.
Lastly, a note on the Chinese. With early access to metallurgy and ideas on standardized parts, the Chinese “superweapon” was the crossbow. At no point in the Chinese history were there armor that could protect someone from a crossbow, and its effectiveness was likely a factor in the slow adoption of firearms.
So it does seem believable, that when compared to a 17th or 18th century musket, the crossbow was still the obvious choice.
Distinctly .. not true
An average plate insert will stop any crossbow bolt
Likewise, dragon armor (I think was the brand name) is a set of overlapping, scale-like armor plate contained in a molle-compliant vest
That would stop any crossbow bolt fired from a non-crew-managed-crossbow quite handily
prove it
"Distinctly .. not true
An average plate insert will stop any crossbow bolt..."
You even italicized 'any'.
All anyone has to do is find one highly penetrating crossbow bolt to disprove and negate your claim.
Thus you need to provide credible evidence to convince folks there's literally zero possibility.
here's your unsourced claim:
> There's still no practical armor, in 2023, that could protect anyone from a crossbow at short to medium ranges.
Unless you're purpose-building some kind of ultra-high-draw-weight crossbow with some very unusual bolt materials, you're not going to penetrate it
Feel free to believe myths if you want, but they're simply not true[0]
>The energy required to defeat a steel plate rises geometrically, not linearly, as the plate gets thicker, as Williams (2003) notes. In practice, a steel breastplate of decent (even just c. 2mm) thickness was functionally immune to handheld weapons and bows and crossbows except at extreme close range. You can see an example here of a high poundage (quite a bit higher than the 80lbs bows used by Williams in his test) longbow being shot into a steel breastplate at point-blank range. The breastplate is secured to the ground and there is no additional protection behind it – in terms of range, power, positioning this is an absolute worst-case test for the breastplate. It is barely scratched.
>Crossbows can do somewhat better. Skallagrim tested a crossbow against both a lamellar (layered metal plates) armor and a breastplate – both of admittedly low quality – against a 350lbs crossbow and a 975lbs crossbow. While they are able to dent and punch holes in the breastplate, neither defeats it in a way that would wound a person wearing it. Range matters a lot – and these were fired at extreme close-range for the weapons.
Now back to you: find me a source for your ridiculous claim that "There's still no practical armor, in 2023, that could protect anyone from a crossbow at short to medium ranges"
Practical armor from 1000 years ago could stop them - and you seriously think armor today cannot?
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[0] https://acoup.blog/2019/06/21/collections-punching-through-s...
Did you read the cited source?
> While they are able to dent and punch holes in the breastplate, neither defeats it in a way that would wound a person wearing it.
This sentence in particular doesn't sound credible at all. In fact it seems impossible for a person wearing a breastplate to not be wounded in some way after their breastplate is punched through with a hole.
Starting a reply with a 'lol' also can only decrease the credibility of the writer, so this doesn't seem like a smart thing to do for someone looking to question another HN user's comments.
In their early years of Western expansion, the firearms units was always staffed by the Han Chinese and were of low status.
I was thinking though, about how long the Chinese had gunpowder, and even bombs before the gunpowder formulas proliferated through the Silk Road, pre-Ming.
The Qing also fielded firearm units. The Manchu bows and arrows evolved to taking the role of short-range weapon, ceding the long-range to firearms. Maybe it was a case of not going all in with firearms.
I know there is a japanese archery group in San Jose, CA....
But I am interested in this as well..
Youtube have several people that goes through the techniques. Justin Ma and his buddies spent time reconstructing the techniques from Gou Ying's late-Ming manual on traditional Chinese _military_ archery. The core techniques are available for free on Youtube, and the rest of it is in a book called _Way of Archery_. I think Justin Ma is based out in Bay Area so you might be able to find out where they shoot. Armin Hirmer also has a number of youtube resources (with variant techniques), and a large library of reviews for bows.
The key thing with Justin Ma's videos is that they focus on the form. I took it to mean that accurate shooting is a byproduct of good form -- from the draw, to the release. The biggest initial hurdle is in contacting the rhomboids and lats to provide the power to draw. The key to the thumb draw is that, you are trading off being able to distribute the load to multiple fingers with having a very clean release; meaning, if your thumb release is not clean, it's an anti-pattern.
Most of my practice is with the gaozhen -- shooting at about 1 - 3 yard range, and focus mostly on good form. Other Asiatic archery traditions practice this way. I'm not there yet where everything draws smooth without me having to concentrate yet, but that's the goal. You can create a gaozhen in your own home if you got the space and can keep dependents away from them. (I saw a video of a guy practicing in his unfinished attic).
Keep in mind too, if you are looking at traditional Chinese archery, there were many schools (all thumb draw), with different goals. Confucian archery, for example, is ritualistic. The Manchus have a strong hunting tradition that became a part of their military techniques.
Facebook has a group of traditional archery enthusiasts. I would also be glad to talk about what you would need to get started and the gotchas I had to overcome. (Example: most Western archers don't know that arrow weight, not just spine, matters for these bows) Feel free to contact me if you want to continue talking about this.
Knife on knife (all different knives, but hitting same target)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks_sBg85suA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-V9N8JVs8g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiMeevo-mpE
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These are really old - but an idea of what throwing I do - but the movement philos is the same as the focus when doing kushu Kyudo meditation
Movement and Measure
the measure creates the form
Measure forms movement.
My practices have been a slow, minor realizations of non-duality.
You ever read the Neko no Myojutsu, or the Tengu’s Sermon on the Martial Arts?
In the meantime, I have been working on archery in the context of internal martial arts (yijinjing principles). I have no idea what that will look like, but it will be interesting to find out.
Among my goals are being able to walk and shoot, and shoot from different postures.
You might like this as well...
I was galoping on a horse in Mongolia being led by a mongolian boy, and his horse put it's hoof in a small animal hole and went down. The way the boy slid forwards over it's head did a little roll and sprang to his feet looked like something Tom Cruise had practiced for weeks to do for a movie shot, and he never looked remotely bothered by any of it.
As they say in the text, it is not the speed but endurance and resilience of the horses which makes the difference. Just try riding one of them. They barely notice you, until they decide to run. And after that it's like a train.
See e.g. https://gsejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12711...
(For clarity, the only english word we have for multiple (>0) mongols, is "hoarde")
Like all good historical fiction (ref Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey–Maturin series and Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series) it is well researched, and recreates the state of mind of historical characters. In some ways I find this more important than the sequence of events, because insights into that perspective is really hard to get from mere dates and locations.
The steppes were full of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples. For thousands of years, various powers rose and fell, and sometimes they set out to conquer the surrounding sedentary peoples. The Mongols were just one of the more successful ones. (But arguably not the most successful, as the Proto-Indo-Europeans probably also came from the steppes.)
The founding of russia starts with the mongol establishment of 'the muscovy' in the 13th century - moscow being established by the mongol empire as the administrative capital of the russian people. Also, the vikings were just as 'murderous' as the mongols. In actuality, the mongols probably were the least murderous of all the major empire. The most religiously, racially, economically tolerant empire that has ever existed. Look it up. It was an anomoly for its time.
> Hence the Emblem of Ukraine sporting a viking ship…
It sports the viking ship because the vikings conquered the rus. The vikings conquered 'the rus' and made themselves their rulers. The nonsense about vikings 'protecting' the locals is propaganda established during the 'de-mongolization' period after the fall of the mongol empire and the ascendancy of europe. Had the mongol empire stuck around, it would be the bow and arrow in the emblem of ukraine showing how the mongols 'protected' the rus from the 'murderous' vikings.
This has the scent of sensationalism. You can dig into any empire and find glowing accounts of their tolerance.
> It sports the viking ship because the vikings conquered the rus.
The vikings were the Rus, and they continued to rule as vassals under the Mongols in Moscow.
Dig into it. Given the stereotype of the mongols as bloodthirsty genocidal maniacs, it's surprising that they committed no genocide. Not a single one. And they were rather benevolent and beneficial. Everywhere from the islamic world to the rus to the chinese to the persians to central asia actually benefited from mongol rule. Everywhere the locals got wealthier and were better off. I'm more than happy to be corrected. And please, nothing about baghdad and the fall of the islamic empire. The mongol conquest eventually led to the greater, wealthier and more important islamic ottoman empire.
> The vikings were the Rus, and they continued to rule as vassals under the Mongols in Moscow.
Yes. But by 'the rus' I'm talking about the slavic peoples ( the eventual 'rus'sians, bela'rus'ians, ukrainians, etc ) that the vikings conquered. In other words, the viking ship is on the ukrainian emblem, not because the vikings protected the ukrainians from the mongols, but because the vikings conquered the ukrainians. The ship would have been on the emblem regardless of whether the mongols invaded or not as it is ukrainian legacy of viking conquest.
It's difficult to talk about that era since the conquered took on the name of the conquerors and eventually displaced the conquerors. It would be as if the native americans started calling themselves english or anglos. Which would have caused more confusion than calling them indians.
You could say that Ivan IV, Peter I, Stalin or Putin represent Mongol cultural heritage but that's just empty rhetoric.
The Mongols could literally run circles around other armies, avoid battles when the circumstances were unfavorable, and strike weak points deep in enemy territory.
Even if other armies had horses and bows of the same quality, they could not easily replicate this because their structure, in many cases even the social structure of the societies that fielded them, was based on cavalry being heavily armoured elite shock troops rather than archers.
Conversely, the Mongols fared poorly in areas where there was insufficient grazing for their horses, and could be defeated by appropriate tactics when they did not have the option to choose their battles as easily.
This isn't really true. They also had a fairly advanced siege corps, utilizing cannons and bombs to take down fortifications.
This played a huge role in their ability to conquer. The domination of horse archers was nothing new but traditionally you could hide behind walls and starve them out. Feeding ten thousand besieging troops is hard enough without thirty thousand horses.
With the Mongols able to destroy walls, armies needed to fight the pitched battles that horse archers excel at.
Basically the entire southeastern half of modern day Ukraine, which is among the best cultivatable land in the world, was uninhabitable because it was naturally steppe and living there put you at constant risk of raids from horse nomads (Crimean Tartars).
And because it was uninhabited, regular armies could not cross it (due to lack of forage), so the Tartars could not be atta Ked on a large scale.
That being said, the Mongols failed to build a lasting empire in Europe / West of the Ural. They pretty much did build a lasting one between the Ural and, sometimes including, mainland China.
And I'd hardly say the Mongols failed just because they couldn't hold to western Europe.
Charlemagne passed the entire empire to Louis the Pious, and Louis the Pious had three heirs that split the empire. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Verdun
The direct heir actually didn't split. It was only later the families split.
> And I'd hardly say the Mongols failed just because they couldn't hold to western Europe.
I mean failed to hold Europe.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a bow is a good guy with a bow…
The effectiveness of the Alexander's sarissa is as much a result of training and tactics as the weapon itself; I think it took years of training to turn a soldier into an effective sarissa user. Thus I personally would not consider it a wunderwaffe. A crossbow, to me, is a better example as it enabled yesterday's peasant to kill a trained soldier from a distance, without many years of training needed to master archery. My 2c.
AFAIK sarissa is a no-brainer without even ability of operating this weapon with one man. That allowed Alexander to take a lot of captured Persian men with no training under realy trained Greeks standing somewhere in more safe places of the formation. Miyamoto Musashi considered a spear as a king of weapons. But I am not a historian and all I told here is just an opinion, not a fact.
Meanwhile, reading a just-released book from an actual historian may, instead, furnish you with views that are innovative and not yet broadly accepted, or just plain wrong. You really need to read a few different historians on any given topic to start to get a real handle on it. Everyone has their own strengths, weaknesses, angles and agendas. You can do far worse than starting with Carlin. He's great at making topics interesting enough to read more on.
I am not a historian though, and I'd defer to one in assessing Carlin.
I heard from other historians the same, he is a good entertainer but not a definitive source to be absolutely trusted, it's pop-history well done.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1ppmsm/thoug...
It's a 1000lb body with four independent legs, and with super human strength, speed, vision, smell, and hearing, and a hypersensitive relation to its environment that you learn to literally direct with your mind. The being senses your intentions and accepts them as its own, and you interpret its enhanced senses as your own in turn. That symbiosis is some real inter-being mind-meld stuff. Before heavier techology, the use of animals in warfare must have been completely overwhelming. Culturally, just relating with such a rich nonverbal physical presence would have been a different experience of their environment. If a group of Mongol horsemen rode up on some agrarian villagers, the gravity of what they were encountering must have been clear - animals in nature deferred to them.
When I'm asked why I still ride in a world like todays, I often respond that it develops an essential human quality of connecting with other beings. Also, if things ever went apocalyptically bad, we also know that there are no kings without horsemen. It's an enjoyable hedge.
Without that, I think the Mongols would easily win. They had a huge army that rapidly conquered the largest contiguous land empire ever. They had powerful bows, better armour, very effective tactics, but they were also excellent at sieges. Every country they conquered, they assimilated the best ideas and technology they had, which made them able to shift to very different types of warfare. They were capable of strategic maneuvering on a scale that wouldn't be seen again until WW2.
Their weakness was primarily in their rules for succession. If the death of a leader requires you to abandon all campaigns and moving all generals to the capital, after which the empire still fragments into several pieces, that's a bit a of a problem.
The English longbow was estimated to have a draw weight of between 45kg and 82kg (100lbs to 180lbs)[1] but of course was much bigger and couldn't really be used on horseback.
[1] https://interestingengineering.com/lists/the-most-powerful-b...
[2] https://centerofthewest.org/2017/07/21/plains-indian-weapons...
In the Homeric poems, Iliad and Odyssey, composite bows are described, e.g. used by the very skilled archer Odysseus.
Moreover, even older descriptions (from the second half of the second millennium BC) of composite bows can be found in the myths preserved on the tablets from Ugarit.
It is true that an Asiatic composite bow over a certain draw weight (depending on design) can impart greater energy on the arrow than a self-bow (long bow) of the same draw weight. The force-draw curves are different, and some of these bows have very long draws in comparison.
The site the interestingengineering references, itself does not contain references. There are odd discrepancies, such as the section on stringing the bow. Past a certain draw weight, you can no longer string the bow using the one leg or sitting method. The Manchus used equipment off the horse to string their bow, and kept them in cases while strung, to protect them.
Europeans did not bring horses to America until after the Mongol empire had already collapsed, so the people there (whether called Comanches, Shoshone, etc.) couldn't even have any horseback archers. :P
"would have fared Very Badly (or perhaps Not Applicable.)"
Hrrm 900 Alda is somewhere in the ballpark between approximately 1440 meters and 1620 meters.
That seems a bit far.
https://chat.openai.com/share/983ebd1b-58a7-43b1-8c06-cf6a25... (code interpreter)
Upon reading the article that seems to be all there is to it. A bit underwhelming to be honest.
[1] Genghis Khan a Kazakh?
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2004/04/06/Genghis-Khan-a-K...
[2] A horse in a burial-Memorial ceremony of ancient nomads in Kazakh Altay region:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286946217_A_horse_i...
[3]Horses and Humans: Ancient Bond:
https://astanatimes.com/2023/04/horses-and-humans-ancient-bo...
The source is one historian from Kazakhstan, and his main reasoning is that common names have meaning in the Kazakh language. A language that seems to trace it's origins to The Golden Horde centuries after the Mongols.
Beyond that, most of the Eurasian Steppe had a strong history of using horse archers for millennia. That wasn't unique to the region that is now Kazakhstan.
Maybe there's some more compelling argument, but the one you presented seems weak. It's possible the Kazakh language bits had some meaning lost when translated to English, as the way they are presented is somewhat embarrassing. It somewhat sounds like he's saying modern people from Kazakhstan are more closely related to the leaders of the Mongol empire, but that's a very different claim than "Genghis Khan a Kazakh."
Most of the hunter gatherer populations on this planet adapted to their environment and used what was around them to succeed. Mongolia doesnt really have a lot of vegetation, like trees and bushes, so using horses and strong bows to cover the distance quickly and have a weapon with some range was probably born out of necessity.
Likewise breeding good animals is part of our dna, it also explains arranged marriages in some respects, but viking burial sites have also found Norwegian Elkhound remains buried with them.[1] Even the ancient Egyptians used to have their pets buried with them which included things like gazelles and baboons![2]
The lifestyle back then also meant kids would have learnt a trade from a very young age so expertise would and should be alot higher than today when thinking about the more wide ranging subject matter that is taught today, this perhaps explains why High Functioning Autistics are the experts in their domain of knowledge because they push things to the limit and know everything inside and out, making them ideal employees for some jobs.
[1] https://ahcfargo.com/client-resources/breed-info/norwegian-e....
[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/news-egyp....