Back after a long hiatus - I landed with a two-month position at the Museum of Defense that took more time than expected and haven't been on the net in a while. Since this thread has moved quite a bit on since my last post, I'll settle with answering Pontiacs' response(s) to that post. We were off the track a bit.
Considering vitriolic posts, I seem to have angered the gentleman quite a bit. My claims to the usage of a toy phrace referred to the word "revisionism" and his characterization of the entire argument as this. New views certainly never have to be correct. But neither can they be discarded out of hand.
Regarding Hildinger;
I have not read his recent Plano de Carpini translation. My main copy in English is from the 60s and is by Cleaves and Kahn. It is quite ponderous but translates the text very directly, with explanations in footnotes and the original text as an appendic. I feel this is the best way of translating primary sources as you circumvent the need autors often have for interpretation.
Hildinger is an excellent academican but personally I do not care much for his works on the mongols. This especially applies to his vivid and extensive descriptions of battles where the source situation is so weak that a battle cannot be described as accurately as he does. If you(Pontiac) got the description from Hildinger (it does resemble his account of it in Warriors of the Steppe) I have to admit I feel he goes too far in interpreting the sources available. I'll use his works but I won't trust them entirely.
Impetiousness:
Considering how little we have available on descriptions of mongol warfare it's not surprising there's few accounts of impetiousness. They do pop up here and there, though: the skirmishers killed by the main russian host before Kalka engage the russians at sight, according to the Novgorodian Chronicle. At Ain Jalut Kitbuqa's army(at least according to Al-Maqrisis) was drawn into a trap because the Mameluk army appeared disorganized(though he is vague about how much of this was Kitbuqa's fault). Overall, the source situation on the mongols is so bad that we are forced to use a western source regarding how they were organized: Plano de Carpini's description of the mongol military organization is the one most often used one - and he is contradicted by Guilliame de Rubruck, who writes only that they "fight under their clan chiefs, in varied(diverse?) bands". Admittedly, Guilliame openly despises the mongols. Another issue that strengthens the position that the mongols had discipline problems is the very fact that Chinggis Khan's military code(once again as narrated by Plano de Carpini) is vastly harsher on indiscipline than on any other crime: this is usually, in pre-modern texts, an indication that indiscipline was a problem. Similar examples can be seen in the exceptionally harsh laws against the consumption of wine in Il-Khanate territories in the mid-14th century, which appear in a period when wine import into the Khanate is on an all-time high(and doesn't decline despite the prohibition), not to mention thousand of similar cases in both western, middle eastern and asiatic medieval sources - what the lawgivers try to forbid
On westerners, we can cite battles aplenty, but wins and losses- because the source situation is so much better. It seems to me that the indiscipline problems so often quoted from manuscripts come either from the aforementioned need for chroniclers to find someone to blame and are far less widespread than most general historians believe: consider the fact that several moslem authors, most prominently among them Ibn al-Qualanisi, mention among the many warlike traits the franks(i.e. all westerners he's met) possess the fact that they are "amongst the most cautious in war". Hardly a description of unruly hotheads.
The track record of western medieval armies after the dark ages when matched against westerners is obviously good enough to allow them a stay in palestine for longer than the mongols held onto china, to recounquer the entire Iberian peninsula and to more or less conquer every major mediterranean island...the main territory losses christians suffered to moslems were inflicted upon the ailing Byzantine empire(and the Crusader states) - it is only after the medieval period that the islamic(turkish) counter-push begins).
The bows: My original argument was that, while excellent horseman's bows, mongols bows were not all that more efficient than western bows: it's never a complaint anyone makes against them, thought the Primary Chronicle states that the Russians noted captured bows were of good quality. The "superior" bow argument has been used quite a lot in earlier literature to explain mongol battlefield superiority(On a side note: while I have a lot of respect for reenactors and people who demonstrate medieval technology, I find it very hard to believe that the mongol bows have remained unchanged for 800 years - this would make the mongol bow-maker community more conservative than virtually any society on earth).
I tend to agree with Sinor, : The mongols were not all that unbeatable in battle, but (especially their early leaders until their internal troubles start) were master of strategic mobility and were very skilled at pulling troops together where needed. To regard a mongol army as undefeatable in battle and an un-weakened mongol attack on europe as unbeatable by any means(which was were this argument started) is a undefendable position, at least in my view.
EF
