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Comment by ivanhoe | Hacker News Reader

> these poor people served as a "buffer" against the Mongols, saving Europe from the slaughter ...

You mean saving Western Europe :)

Mongols ran over (and did a lot of slaughter in) the most of Eastern and Central Europe, including Poland, Czechia, parts of todays Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia and Austria. There was no "buffer" that stopped them, they've stopped eventually because their Great Khan died. As the leadership broke down and fights for power arose, they've been forced to return back home.

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Mongols invaded Eastern and Central Europe several times, but they always turned back. There are at least two common explanation for that.

First, European countryside was infested with castles. Defeating the king and sacking his capital wasn't enough to pacify the land. Mongols would have had to deal with every local warlord separately, and Europe wasn't worth the trouble.

Second, Mongols were getting too far away from the steppe. Their armies could not stay in Europe in the long term due to the lack of large enough pastures.

> Defeating the king and sacking his capital wasn't enough to pacify the land

So, decentralization, in a way. Nice.-

The hills and forests of Western Europe were also unfavourable for their preferred cavalry based tactics. And even the damp weather was against them since they couldn’t use their compound bows in the rain.

It really makes sense, on all counts, logistics, weather, terrain, tactics.-

> There was no "buffer" that stopped them, they've stopped eventually because their Great Khan died.

Basically unstoppable, eh? So, basically, an "accident" of history they did not take over the Mediterranean ...

That's not unique to the Mongols. Another easy example would be Alexander of Macedon. History is filled with great empires, many of them expanding, which fell or contracted after the leader passes.

Point.-

PS. I wonder what - if anything - implications that has for leadership or management - you know, the whole achievement falling apart, missing one individual ...

(Or, to project management - low "bus factor", so to speak ...)

Well, they were basically a highly-mobile light cavalry/archers combination, so while they progressed very fast they were not spending much time sieging heavily fortified cities or going into mountains and other hard to cross terrains. Also it took Europeans a while to learn how to fight them efficiently, but eventually they did figure out that European heavy cavalry is a good match for them. So it's not they were "unstoppable", they simply avoided hard targets, and pillaged the villages and other less defended areas, and moved quickly through disorganized European kingdoms fighting each other.

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