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Post by lancer on Mar 4, 2015 21:27:00 GMT 3
For a large steppe army (say the Mongols) invading a particular area, how quickly did they move and how much land could they cover? How long did it take for the Mongols and Huns to conquer Eastern Europe? What realistic limits are there on movement?
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Post by srichey on Mar 5, 2015 5:25:51 GMT 3
Lancer,
I can't answer your questions off the top of my head, but, a superb book I strenuously recommend to you as an excellent place to look for answers is "The Mongol Art of War" by Timothy May. Given that the Mongols were the absolute pinnacle of Eurasian horse nomad military super-competence, whatever the Mongols did has to be taken as the perfect upper limit of what a horse-mounted steppe army could achieve.
To offer you some specifics, the Mongols made a reconnaissance in force/temporary raid into and out of the Ukraine in 1223. They outright conquered the European portion of Russia--to include the Ukraine--Poland, the far eastern slice of Germany, and Hungary in 1237-1241. They reached the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea in 1242 but did not move directly on Venice.
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Mar 5, 2015 23:24:17 GMT 3
Jean-Paul Roux also gives similar calculations in his book Histoire de l'Empire mongol.
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Post by Druzhina on Mar 6, 2015 11:51:23 GMT 3
The movement of the army was limited by the speed of wagons, but by taking herds with them they did not have to wait for food supplies to reach them. The cavalry could move a lot faster, by having more than one horse each. A horse can quickly tire carrying a man but a led horse can still be fresh. So units of the army could range over a wide area, returning occasionally to the wagons. Druzhina Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers |
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