Could Rome have stopped the Mongol Hordes?

[IRG CommandoJoe]

No navy? What are you talking about? They invaded Japan, remember?

Would they be able to move their navy to the Mediterranean Sea? If not, no navy.

[CmdrWilkens]

Note I'm gonna eliminate points where we really have no contention.

They also were just as fast as the mongol archers and could have been used on the flanks to engage the mongols on the attack against the main body. Furthermore they are still better armored than the mongols and are nto as vulnerable as you seem to suggest. Their casualties would, undoubtably, be greater than those of the main cohorts but this does nto mean they couldnto effectively engage and disrupt the Mongols both in battle and in their scouting efforts.

No, Roman archery auxillia would be far slower than the Mongols. In case you forgot: All Mongols fight from horseback, and all Mongols are archers first, cavalrymen second. The Roman auxillia would cause a handful of casualties, at best.

1) I'm talking about the many types of auxilia. Specifically the Roman Heavy calvary which you dismiss while ignoring the sucess the same such heavy calvary had centuries later during the 1200s. The Mongols, despite superior numbers, were routinely beaten once the heavy calvary closed the distance and with the main body of Roman troops largely untouched the Romans stand great chance to wade through the Mongols.

2) Ideally, and I'm assuming this is after the Romans bring a true field army to bear, the Romans will combine a long range assault with archery auxilia protected by a stout wall of legionaires followed by a flanking or frontal assault with heavy calvary. the Mongols, despite great skill, are a very limited opponent, they live and die by mounted warfare and they cannot hope to successfully engage a wellbuilt Roman field army utilizing thebeginnig sof combined arms tactics.

We don't mention it because they were being assaulted on all flanks, they held the Mongols off for a long time with only a portion of their total strength.

This portion being far larger than the Mongol army.

Evengranting that, this is what the Romans are...only they are equuipped with a superior logistics, C2I, and combiend arms infrastructure.

1) Actually penetrating to the interior of the Empire requires crossing terrian that will be MORE difficult for the Mongols than for even the foot infantry of Rome. Furthermore the road system of Rome will enable quick response and bring fighting troops into positions to block the Mongols where they are not in sufficient force and delay them where they are.

The problem with this theory is threefold:

A) The terrain is not that bad. Since Germany has been emptied by the terms of the scenario, the Mongols can move into Gaul quite easily.

WTF are you smoking? Germany is composed of a long series of rolling hills and HEAVY forests, in fact woods such as the Teutonburg are dense enough to disrupt infantry formaitons, what do you think they will do to the Mongol Calvary?

B) The Mongols can also use the roads, and are more capable than the legions of leaving them when opposed.

For this to be truethe Mongols would have already penetrated the interior lines of the Romans...while you haven't yet shown how they will do that very task.

C) Even with the roads, the Mongols are far faster than anything the Romans have ever even heard of.

I seriously doubt this. The Romans have faced mobile foes before or are you forgetting the many horse heavy armies of the middle east that they crushed using the exact same formations they continued to use through the time of our scenario.

What the roads do is given the Romans the ability to muster forces faster than the Mongols cancounter and MUCH faster than they have ever experienced before.

2) There really is no such thing as an unforitfied Roman town, certianly there were towns that were unforitfied but these were remnants of the cpatured civilizaitons. The true towns of the empire were universally walled and well defended cities.

According to Keegan's History of Warfare, the only substantial fortifications in the Roman Empire were those on their borders and those around Rome. This only changed after the Goths invaded.

Keegan is talking about the equivalent of forts. Roman towns, as part of their general design, were walled affairs that, while far from perfect, afford a good deal of strength to the defender AND give advantage to archers fighting back. Furthermore the tendency to fortify (not turn into a castle) towns will delay the Mongol conquest asthey are forced to, if only briefly, besiege each town in their path.

3) You assume that the omnipresent Roman Empire would not know exactly where the Mongols were moving within their own terriotry? The great stregnth of Rome lies in that, at the time, its subjects where intensely loyal due to their means of conquest and scouting efforts for the Romans would have been simple while the Mongols would have been hindered at every turn.

Even if the Romans know where the Mongols are, they still have to cope with an army that maintains the all-time daily speed record, even to this very day. There is also the fact that when the Mongols do break through into the interior, the loyalty of that populace will be nearly impossible to maintain. One of the promises of an Empire such as Rome is that they will protect their citizen from outside threat. They are incapable of doing so in vast swaths of the Empire.

1) They maintain that record only over short time periods (it is important to note that the Mongols virtually didn't move during the spring campaign season when the Romans would have all the time they could need to crush them)

2) You seem to think that a single attack by an outside foe(who does a nice job of destroying everything you worked for as a matter of policy) would engender loyalty from a populace fat and happy off the spoils of continuous Roman exapnsion over five hundred years.

3) The natural barriers of the Roman Empire will slow the mongols down AND the excelletn scouting the Mongols depended on for their speed will be huindered by the well disperesed (but easily concentrated) Roman forces in various localities.

It bears repeating that the Mongols have a nearly insurmountable strategic advantage in this scenario. As they had with all their real-life enemies, they have the ability to pick when and where they would fight their enemy. The Romans would be hard-pressed to actually take the battle to the Mongols.

Far from fact. The Mongols, like any calvary force, has a huge logistical Achilles Heel in terms of needing grazing land for their horses. It was common practice to spend most of spring and early summer doing nothing but grazing the horses and training. In other words for 4 or so months of the year they are stationary...and a stationary force on the offensive against an Empire that can muster its forces faster than any other before or since will be dead.

[Pablo Sanchez]

1) I'm talking about the many types of auxilia.

Perhaps if you had said that, rather than obliquely maneuvering into that point from a discussion on archery auxilia...

Specifically the Roman Heavy calvary which you dismiss while ignoring the sucess the same such heavy calvary had centuries later during the 1200s.

Not the same. The heavy cav of the 1200s had vastly superior technology, in the form of stirrups (a necessity for an effective lance charge) and armor.

The Mongols, despite superior numbers, were routinely beaten once the heavy calvary closed the distance and with the main body of Roman troops largely untouched the Romans stand great chance to wade through the Mongols.

In order to close with the Mongols, the Roman cavalry auxilia will have to abandon the relative safety of the infantry formations. The Mongols can outmaneuver and outrun them, and the Roman cavalry is hampered by the difficulty of actually staying in the saddle through a full blooded attack.

2) Ideally, and I'm assuming this is after the Romans bring a true field army to bear, the Romans will combine a long range assault with archery auxilia protected by a stout wall of legionaires followed by a flanking or frontal assault with heavy calvary. the Mongols, despite great skill, are a very limited opponent, they live and die by mounted warfare and they cannot hope to successfully engage a wellbuilt Roman field army utilizing thebeginnig sof combined arms tactics.

So the Mongols will do what they always did when faced with a superior enemy. Evade contact, and use their superior speed to strike where the enemy is weak.

Evengranting that, this is what the Romans are...only they are equuipped with a superior logistics, C2I, and combiend arms infrastructure.

They also operate under the disadvantage of having a largely indefensible territory which they are obligated to futily attempt to hold against the Mongols.

WTF are you smoking? Germany is composed of a long series of rolling hills and HEAVY forests, in fact woods such as the Teutonburg are dense enough to disrupt infantry formaitons, what do you think they will do to the Mongol Calvary?

Disrupt it during the march, and they will reform after emerging. Not all of Germany is so densely wooded, anyway.

For this to be truethe Mongols would have already penetrated the interior lines of the Romans...while you haven't yet shown how they will do that very task.

By riding round the Romans. I think it is sufficiently obvious that a light cavalry army can move faster than a medium infantry army, and it is impossible to completely fortify a border as large as the Roman's. The Roman frontier is too large for their army to plug every hole,

I seriously doubt this. The Romans have faced mobile foes before or are you forgetting the many horse heavy armies of the middle east that they crushed using the exact same formations they continued to use through the time of our scenario.

The Parthians did not use tactics and strategy comparable with the Mongols, furthermore, their attacking ability was hampered by their lack of the stirrup.

What the roads do is given the Romans the ability to muster forces faster than the Mongols cancounter and MUCH faster than they have ever experienced before.

The Mongols fought people exactly like themselves for their first few campaigns. These enemies were not only speedier than the foot army can be, but they were not restricted by roads. The Mongols crushed them; it is granted that they were not as tactically versatile as the Romans would be, but the Mongols have clear experience dealing with a strategically versatile foe.

Keegan is talking about the equivalent of forts. Roman towns, as part of their general design, were walled affairs that, while far from perfect, afford a good deal of strength to the defender AND give advantage to archers fighting back. Furthermore the tendency to fortify (not turn into a castle) towns will delay the Mongol conquest asthey are forced to, if only briefly, besiege each town in their path.

Conceeded.

1) They maintain that record only over short time periods (it is important to note that the Mongols virtually didn't move during the spring campaign season when the Romans would have all the time they could need to crush them)

See below.

2) You seem to think that a single attack by an outside foe(who does a nice job of destroying everything you worked for as a matter of policy) would engender loyalty from a populace fat and happy off the spoils of continuous Roman exapnsion over five hundred years.

I didn't say that they would engender loyalty. I said that the Roman government would find it hard to maintain the loyalty of its own people to such a level as Hemlock suggested.

3) The natural barriers of the Roman Empire will slow the mongols down AND the excelletn scouting the Mongols depended on for their speed will be huindered by the well disperesed (but easily concentrated) Roman forces in various localities.

Perhaps.

Far from fact. The Mongols, like any calvary force, has a huge logistical Achilles Heel in terms of needing grazing land for their horses. It was common practice to spend most of spring and early summer doing nothing but grazing the horses and training. In other words for 4 or so months of the year they are stationary...and a stationary force on the offensive against an Empire that can muster its forces faster than any other before or since will be dead.

You appear to assume that the Mongols would remain stationary after being attacked. More probably they would see the Romans coming, engage them in running battles, and harry them without respite for as long as their remained in the Mongol 'territory.'

[The Duchess of Zeon]

One should remember that there are more defensive barriers than just the Rhine and the Danube within European Rome:

1. The Pyrenees were used to hold off the Vandals and then the Visigoths by local militias for several years in each case before they were overwhelmed, near the end of the Empire.

2. In the Balkans there are numerous narrow passes which can be fortified, and of course the most famous of these is Thermopylae which protects Greece proper. The Romans might have been able to punch Antiochus III out of it a while before, but could the Mongols push a Roman defending army out of the Gates of Fire? The terrain of the Balkans in generally bad for cavalry, and the barbarians which had the most success there were not horse barbarians.

3. Though the Mongols might penetrate into the northern Latin plains, the region around Rome and in southern Italy is progressively worse in terms of cavalry terrain, and all of Italy is heavily fortified, namely because Italy was of course originally a confederation of Roman allies, each city having its own walls and own fortifications. Now under the control of the Principate, these will serve as easy points to supply reinforcements from Asia and Africa, or Hispania as the situation dictates, and challenge a Mongol army which might succeed to cross the passes of the Mediterranean Alps and enter Latin Gaul. Helvetia, of course, is quite safe.

I think that a Mongol army could cause immense destruction in Gaul proper, and in Illyricum and the upper Balkans, if under such a commander as Subedei - But ultimately could not overthrow the Empire or hold territory. It would be thrown back beyond the borders, totally repulsed, unable to conquer the Imperial strong-points, ravaged when it tried, and quite possibly even such levels of destruction as that avoided in pitched battle on the plains of Gaul:

When attacked, they will sometimes engage in regular battle. Then, going into the fight in order of columns, they fill the air with varied and discordant cries. More often, however, they fight in no regular order of battle, but by being extremely swift and sudden in their movements, they disperse, and then rapidly come together again in loose array, spread havoc over vast plains, and flying over the rampart, they pillage the camp of their enemy almost before he has become aware of their approach. It must be owned that they are the most terrible of warriors because they fight at a distance with missile weapons having sharpened bones admirably fastened to the shaft. When in close combat with swords, they fight without regard to their own safety, and while their enemy is intent upon parrying the thrust of the swords, they throw a net over him and so entangle his limbs that he loses all power of walking or riding.

- Ammianus Marcellinus.

How, exactly, is the Hunnish ability to "engage in regular battle", and "going into the fight in order of columns," then "but by being extremely swift and sudden in their movements, they disperse, and then rapidly come together again in loose array," so that they may "spread havoc over vast plains, and flying over the rampart, they pillage the camp of their enemy almost before he has become aware of their approach" any different from Mongol tactics?

[Pablo Sanchez]

snip mountain discussion

The Mongols were reasonably effective at crossing mountains (they trooped about in Afghanistan after they got sick of Indian heat). If the Romans can confront the Mongols during their crossing, however, they will wreak havoc.

And the Mongols will probably NOT cross the Alps.

How, exactly, is the Hunnish ability to "engage in regular battle", and "going into the fight in order of columns," then "but by being extremely swift and sudden in their movements, they disperse, and then rapidly come together again in loose array," so that they may "spread havoc over vast plains, and flying over the rampart, they pillage the camp of their enemy almost before he has become aware of their approach" any different from Mongol tactics?

The lack of organization stands out. Rather than simply enveloping the enemy in a cavalry blanket, the Mongols had the ability to use tactics of maneuver to bring the mass where it could do damage. They also had the reconnaissance base to find out where such a point occurs. Among other things: the Mongols had siege machinery (admitted 'stolen,' but they had it), they exploited enemy weakness at a superior level to the Huns (as in their famous tactic of opening ranks, then snapping shut on anyone who attempted to flee). The Mongol tactics are best described as a development of the standard steppe technique to its highest possible level.

Since this debate appears to be dying, I'll give a partial concession. The Mongols could concievably ravage Gaul and some of the Balkan provinces, but the Roman army and the terrain difficulties would be enough to dissuade them from doing much more. They'll probably accept an annual tribute in return for leaving the Roman Empire, leave a small horde behind to collect and deliver the cash to home, and return to the east, never to return in force.