Mongols: Men Return, and War Tech Changes

After Genghis Khan died, the men decided that it was time for time for them to enjoy the spoils of war and empire, writes Jack Weatherford in The Secret History of the Mongol Queens:

“As the role of women in public life in the Mongol Empire continued to recede over the next century, the elite Mongol men fell into a life of debauched pleasure in their Chinese parks, Persian gardens, and Russian palaces.”

Thus began the decline of everything Genghis had built, albeit it took over a few centuries for the empire to fade out altogether.

 

Even as the Mongols declined, war tech had moved along:

“Advancements in firearms had negated the Mongols’ most important asset, their ability to use bows and arrows very effectively from horseback. No matter how well trained and extensively practiced, a warrior with a bow and arrow cannot compete with cannons and firearms.”

 

So it came to back that the now-driven-out-of-China generation of Mongols found themselves with only two options: trade and/or raid. Which is where the asymmetries of China and Mongolia began to matter. The former was huge, the latter much smaller. The purpose of the Chinese was to defend (there was nothing attractive about Mongolia), the Mongols were there to raid and go back since they were no longer capable of holding onto land against the superior Chinese army.

 

No wonder then that it became increasingly impractical, boring and expensive for the Chinese to keep their army on the border on permanent standby for Mongol raids. It was against this backdrop that Ming commander Wang Yue came up with a novel technique. Send out large supply trains, he said, “whose movements could easily be monitored by the Mongols and which would serve as tempting targets for their raids”. When the Mongols attacked, the hiding Chinese army would spring out of the box. It would make things a lot more predictable for the Chinese and at the same time, increase the cost and risk for the Mongols.

 

A rival Chinese officer, Yu Zi jun, suggested a different approach: build walls upto thirty feet tall along the top of the hills along the border. They would provide “maximum visibility for spotting approaching marauders and for the relay of signals from one part to another”. His proposal was rejected as being too expensive. Yu countered by adding other items to the “cost-benefit analysis”: the soldier-farmers along the border who often sold their crops to whichever side paid the most could be watched, and eventually walled-in altogether, he argued. Yu got his way, but only in the long run (centuries): what we now call the Great Wall of China got built.