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Deep Ditches and Well-Built Walls: a Reappraisal of the Mongol Withdrawal from Europe in 1242

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Deep Ditches and Well-Built Walls: a Reappraisal of the Mongol Withdrawal from Europe in 1242 University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2012-09-27 Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242 Pow, Lindsey Stephen Pow, L. S. (2012). Deep ditches and well-built walls: a reappraisal of the mongol withdrawal from Europe in 1242 (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25533 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/232 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Deep Ditches and Well-built Walls: A Reappraisal of the Mongol Withdrawal from Europe in 1242 by Lindsey Stephen Pow A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY CALGARY, ALBERTA SEPTEMBER, 2012 © Lindsey Stephen Pow 2012 ii Abstract In 1241, Mongol armies invaded Poland and Hungary, and small reconnaissance forces even penetrated the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. The following year, the Mongols pulled out of Central Europe though they retained their hold on Russia, the Black Sea steppe, and the Volga region. A number of explanations have been offered for the withdrawal by modern scholars. This thesis argues that these theories are unconvincing and contradicted by the existing primary source evidence. As an alternative explanation, it posits that European fortifications produced a strategic problem that the Mongols were unable to surmount in the 1240s with their available manpower and siege engine technology. In order to corroborate this theory, analyses of several Mongol campaigns against sedentary societies outside of Europe are provided. These analyses reveal that fortifications posed a serious problem to any Mongol effort to subjugate a sedentary population. iii Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. David Curtis Wright for his helpful advice on this thesis. He often provided me with extremely useful resources and challenged me to take a variety of perspectives on historical questions. I would like to thank the defence committee members, and Brenda Oslawsky for always providing a ready answer to my innumerable questions. I would like to acknowledge the many historians in the past who have translated the sources on the Mongol Empire, without which it would have been impossible for me to pursue research in the field that has commanded my interest since I was a teenager. Finally I would thank my family for their support and encouragement during this slow and laborious process. iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................... iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... iv Epigraph .................................................................................................................................. v Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: An Analysis of Existing Explanations for the Mongol Withdrawal in 1242 ........ 9 The Political Theory .......................................................................................................... 12 The Ecological Theory ...................................................................................................... 24 The Limited Goals Theory ................................................................................................ 34 The Military Weakness Theory ......................................................................................... 41 Chapter 2: Mongol Strategic Difficulties Related to Fortifications as an Alternative Explanation for Batu’s Withdrawal from Europe ................................................................. 46 Chapter 3: A Comparative Study of Mongol Campaigns in the Thirteenth Century in Order to Illustrate the Decisive Influence of Fortifications ............................................................ 79 Russia ................................................................................................................................ 80 China ................................................................................................................................. 86 Korea ............................................................................................................................... 101 The Middle East .............................................................................................................. 105 India ................................................................................................................................. 114 Summary ......................................................................................................................... 120 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................... 122 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................... 135 v Epigraph What is the object of defense? Preservation. It is easier to hold ground than take it. It follows that defense is easier than attack, assuming both sides have equal means. Just what is it that makes preservation and protection so much easier? It is the fact that time which is allowed to pass unused accumulates to the credit of the defender. Carl von Clausewitz, On War 1 Introduction In the summer of 1241, Mongol felt tents spread out across the Alföld that defines the Hungarian landscape, and nomadic troops were laying waste to the territory east of the Danube. The Hungarian king, Bela IV, like countless others in his kingdom, had become a refugee. From his base at Zagreb, Bela wrote to Conrad, king of Germany and son of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, begging for immediate military assistance. Gloomily describing the barricades along the banks of the Danube being steadily broken down, he warned Conrad that if Hungary were to fall completely, reliable informants had let him know that Germany was the next target for conquest. The invaders, he asserted, posed a genuine existential threat to all of Christendom.1 Though Hungary, as a European frontier state, had been no stranger to periodic harassment by nomadic tribes like the Cumans, these threats had been manageable and not particularly dangerous to the state itself. Regarding the Mongols, it was an entirely different situation. Bela compared the Mongols to a swarm of locusts, suggesting a force of nature rather than human agency. As with many Hungarians of the time, Bela saw the onslaught as something divinely permitted to happen because of the sins of his people.2 At the same time as Bela was sending out pleas for urgent assistance to the rulers of Latin Christendom, a German chronicler recorded, “In this year, the kingdom of Hungary, which had existed for 350 years, was destroyed by the army of the Tartars.”3 1 “Brief König Belas IV. an den deutschen König Konrad IV,” in Der Mongolensturm: Berichte von Augenzeugen und Zeitgenossen 1235-1250, trans. Hansgerd Göckenjan and James R. Sweeney (Graz: Verlag Styria, 1985), 287. 2 Ibid., 286. 3 Pál Engel, Tamás Pálosfalvi and Andrew Ayton, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary: 895-1526 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 100. 2 Only a year later, Mongol forces had completely withdrawn from Europe, pulling deep into the steppe regions north of the Caspian and Black Sea. They had defeated several armies, laid waste to territory from Poland to the Balkans, and caused widespread panic throughout Western Europe since their arrival on its borders in early 1241. Hungary had been utterly devastated and its king had been pursued to a fortress on the Adriatic. As such, this sudden departure was a mystery to contemporary Europeans who feared the Mongols’ eventual return. Modern historians still debate the causes of the withdrawal. A number of theories have been offered, but through my own research, I came to see these theories as unconvincing. Therefore, this essay will be an attempt to add to the debate by offering another theory that finds support in the available sources. I contend that the Mongols left Europe in 1242 primarily because its fortifications, being both numerous and defensible, presented a strategic problem that was not surmountable with their available manpower and siege engines. In order to establish my argument, I will first outline the source material from which our knowledge of the events is taken, while providing a brief summary of the invasion. In the first chapter, I will explicate and critique the four most common scholarly theories for the Mongol withdrawal. My main intention is to show that the primary sources often contradict these theories, and therefore we should consider that there is an entirely different explanation.
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