#mongol army

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"NO ARMY HAS EVER PROVOKED SUCH JUSTIFIABLE TERROR AND LOATHING IN ITS VICTIMS..."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on illustrations of the Mongol Army and the warrior culture that encapsulated the very nature of their empire, from the book "The Mongols" (1980), written by George Turnbull and illustrated by Angus McBride. Part of Osprey Publishing's "Men-At-Arms" Series, 105.

DESCRIPTION: "The history of the Mongol armies is a catalogue of superlatives. No armies in history have ever won so many battles or conquered so much territory. No army has ever provoked such justifiable terror and loathing in its victims, or slaughtered so many of its vanquished.

What other army in history has marched on Russia in the winter and survived, let alone won victories? The stories of these and many other amazing feats of this "barbarian" people are here brought vividly to life by Stephen Turnbull, from the birth of Genghis Khan in the wind-swept steppes of Mongolia, through the conquest of China and beyond."

-- OSPREY PUBLISHING, "The Mongols" (published 1980, "Men-At Arms" Series, 105)

Source: http://miniaturasmilitaresalfonscanovas.blogspot.com/2012/02/angus-mcbride-los-mongoles.html.

[warsofasoiaf]

What army do you think is the most overrated in history?

As with all questions about "overrated" and "underrated," the question is, who is doing the rating? Being "overrated" or "underrated" means evaluating someone's judgment, while being "bad" or "good" means evaluating performance. The latter is far easier to evaluate.

Take for example, the Mongols. The Mongols were an exceptionally good army, one of the best in history for a whole host of reasons including their highly exceptional C2 system. But in "The Death that Saved Europe," Cecelia Holland argues that Ogedai Khan's unlikely death was the only thing stopping the Mongols from conquering all of Europe to the Atlantic Ocean, and this just doesn't stand up to scrutiny when evaluating their performance in Hungary and Poland. The Mongols struggled with European stone-walled castles, and moving further into Western Europe would only see the castle density increase. They're still incredibly good, but that's a clear case of overrating.

Or by contrast, take the Red Army in the Winter War. By all conventional metrics, the Red Army was absolutely abysmal in performance - poor tactics, poor leadership, poor equipment. Yet Adolf Hitler thought that they were so garbage that all he would need is a swift kick in the door for the rotten foundation of the Soviet Union to collapse like old scaffolding, and it very clearly did not. Clearly, that was a case of underrating the army. By contrast, modern non-military historians frequently overrate the performance of the Red Army in the Second World War to the point of parody, omitting the exceptionally high levels of unnecessary casualties stemming from poor military performance.

But if I had to pick, I'd either pick the Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein or the current Russian military, which has largely inherited its weakness from the Red Army.

The Iraqi Army of Saddam Hussein was considered the 5th strongest army in the world, with a formidable array of tanks, aircraft, and missile defense systems. Using primarily Soviet equipment, it was believed to be by far the most powerful regional hegemon in the region despite it's rather lackluster performance against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. In practice, the officer corps was extremely nepotistic and poorly-trained. The T-72 was shown to be an underperforming tank compared to modern Abrams, the Soviet missile systems proved unable to detect stealth fighters or handle Wild Weasel SEAD missions, and the aircraft were poorly maintained and their pilots even worse. At Medina Ridge and 73 Easting, Saddam's ground forces were poorly organized and sent into complete disarray. Far from being a million strong legion that could enforce its will on the region, it was a hollow, rotten tree trunk about to be struck by lightning.

I've already spoken at length about Russian weakness in the current Russo-Ukrainian War, but it's extremely indicative of systemic weakness when a so-called Great Power army is incapable of performing multi-theater combined arms warfare in the 21st century. This has been a staple of warfare and an overriding design feature of military equipment for decades now. Russia's much-vaunted hypersonic missiles are being intercepted by old Patriot AD systems, turning them into yet another Wunderwaffen. Their technology is not even comparable to last-gen systems and their troops incompetent. For a military that was vaunted as the second-most powerful in the world, its diminished capacity has shown it to be far inferior than numbers would suggest. Its vaunted tank fleet are vulnerable to old anti-tank weapons down to bargain-bin fwoop tubes. Its aircraft can't be stealthy and can't secure airspace even against a vastly inferior airforce. It's sole aircraft carrier is more of a floating environmental disaster whose maintenance log reads like an SCP entry. The T-14 Armata and Su-75 Checkmate are vapor-ware projects established primarily, it seems, to embezzle money for more dachas and yachts. Worst of all, its logistics corps are so deficient that countless Russian soldiers are dying from easily treatable injuries. This was supposed to be the mightiest army in Europe and the military leader of the non-Western world, the lynchpin of the "new multipolar world order," the army that was to defend the Motherland against NATO. It's losing badly to an army that wasn't even ranked in the top 20 by military observers using a combination of legacy Soviet equipment and the stuff that NATO found in the back of the toolshed.

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[parzival-12]

Riders on grassy hills -Art by Talgat Tleuzhanov

[flyingsassysaddles]

thinking about how when the Tibetan Buddhists were being run out by Bon nationalists they ran to the mongols for help and thinking of Tibet being exhausted and wary of who Mongolia even is anymore (it’s been a few hundred years he might as well be dead), walking into a ger terrified and having no idea what’s inside—

Only to lock eyes with his old friend who grins at him—holy crap he’s alive??— and then promptly being tackled and put into a bone crushing bear hug as Mongolia gushes and says how much he missed him

[thejackmeister-mongolhistory]

THE JIN DYNASTY'S LOYAL AND FILIAL ARMY, 1231

While the Jin Dynasty's armies were often destroyed by the Mongols, at the very start of the 1230s they experienced a brief period of revival, defeating several Mongol armies in the field.

At the vanguard of these armies, were forces called the Loyal and Filial Armies (Zhongxiao jun 忠孝軍). The name was somewhat ironic; first created in 1223, they were regarded as a ferocious, violent and undisciplined mob, bandits as dangerous to Jin citizenry as they were to the enemy. But their ranks were expanded, and their pay increased, for the Jin recruited them (as much as possible) from deserters from the Mongol armies. It was a diverse unit, made up of northern Chinese, Uyghurs, Naiman, Tangut and even some Qipchaq. They fought primarily as horse archers, and were relied upon both for their ferocity, and familiarity with Mongol tactics.

By the time Ögedei became Great Khan in 1229, the Jin generals Pu'a and Hada were leading the Zhongxiao jun in raids into Mongol-occupied China, and then as vanguards against Mongol armies. Over 1230-1231, they scored a number of victories over Mongols forces (though it seems some of these were minor things that were played up).

A furious Ögedei Khan set out in person against the Jin in 1231, only for one of his generals, a certain Subedei, to be defeated by them at Daohuigu 倒回谷. Ögedei nearly had Subedei permanently removed from command, only to be narrowly talked out of this by his brother Tolui.

As it was, Subedei soon avenged himself; with Tolui, he destroyed most of the Loyal and Filial Troops at the battle of Sanfengshan (三峰山) in February 1232, and soon drove the Jin dynasty to extinction by 1234.

You can watch my new video on the uses of Mongol heavy cavalry and its role against the Jin Dynasty here:

[calkestis]

what i expected playing ghost of tsushima: fun saber combat with the parry/block/dodge system that i know and love

what i got playing ghost of tsushima: another protagonist tortured by war, turning himself into an one man army and being forced to give up the fighting code he was taught because he’s crushed by survivor’s guilt and feels like the entire world is on his shoulders

[probablyasocialecologist]

Since Israel began its assault on Gaza in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack, one of the most devastating architectural victims has been a historic, centuries-old mosque. Initially constructed as a Byzantine church in the fifth century, it became known as the Great Omari Mosque in the seventh century, the first-ever mosque to be established in Gaza during the period of Islamization. Gaza’s strategic coastal location has allowed it to bear witness to many changes: 11th-century Crusaders converted the mosque back into a church, which was converted to a mosque again a century later. The region has weathered much conflict, having played a role in many different empires. “Gaza was actually a sizable city under the Byzantines and, before them, the Romans, and was a [political] center…for the Mamluk Empire in the 13th through 15th centuries. And that’s when it probably reached its highest level of administrative power,” Nasser Rabbat, the director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, tells me. “Gaza was the place where the [Mamluk] army would congregate on the way to their campaigns in northern Syria, in the Euphrates region, or in Anatolia against its host of enemies.” The Great Omari Mosque reflected this history. It had been damaged and rebuilt many times over the centuries: attacked by the Mongols in the 13th century, battered by an earthquake a few decades later, restored and expanded in the Ottoman era, and partially destroyed by British bombs in World War I, only to be restored once more. Now it’s been effectively obliterated; only some walls and one minaret remain. This is—make no mistake—a deliberate element of the Israeli campaign to erase all traces of Palestinian life.

[city-of-ladies]

Women warriors in Chinese history - Part 1

“In the nomadic tribes of the foreign princesses from the Steppes northwest to the northeast of the Chinese borders, women habitually rode horses and were frequently also skilled militarily. They had to be able to survive on their own and defend themselves when their men left camp to herd animals for months on end. Thus, unsurprisingly, many daughters of nomadic and semi-nomadic tribal chiefs were also capable fighters. Madam Pan 潘夫人 of “barbarian origins” during the Wei dynasty, the semi-barbarian Princess Pingyang 平陽公主 who helped establish the Tang dynasty, and the “barbarian queen,” Empress Dowager Xiao, are historical examples of this category of female generals.

While the barbarians to the north were known as fan 番, those belonging to peripheral areas from the southwest to the southeast were known as man 蠻. Like the nomadic princesses, these women of non-Chinese or Chinese ethnic minority groups did not bind their feet and could thus become formidable opponents. Indeed, the female battle units within the Taiping 太平 rebel forces that actually entered combat – rather than merely providing labour as most of the female units did –were reportedly made up in the main of women from the Miao 苗 tribes, aside from the Hakka (Kejia 客家) women of Guangxi. 

Female bandit leaders or daughters and sisters of bandit leaders who occupied mountains or established strongholds in marginal lands are almost indistinguishable from the man barbarian princesses of tribal chieftains in novels and shadow plays. Such barbarian women generals and female bandit leaders were rarely privileged enough to be recorded by the historians. The three found most frequently, Madam Xi 洗夫人 (502– 557), Madam Washi 瓦氏夫人 (1498–1557),95 and Madam Xu 許夫人 (1271–1368), were all pro-Chinese. While the first two cooperated with the Chinese government, the third joined Chinese forces against the Mongols. A certain Zhejie 折節 or Shejie 蛇節, a female leader of the Miao tribe, also led a rebellion against Mongol troupes, but she eventually surrendered to them and was subsequently executed. 

Real enemies of the Chinese empire, such as the Trv’vy sisters of Vietnam, are hardly ever mentioned by the Chinese, even though they are first recorded in the Han dynastic history. Even under such circumstances, of the women commanders in Chinese history studied by Xiaolin Li, a hefty per cent were from “minor nationalities.”

Female rebel leaders and women warriors in rebel forces tended to rise from peasantry and marginal groups such as families of itinerant performers, robbers, boatmen, and hunters. Many of them are beautiful and charismatic. Most of the rebel groups were basically bandits (known as haohan 好漢, “bravos” euphemistically) – how else could they have survived without a continuous source of income? Many of the bandit groups, like the sworn brothers of the Water Margin, lived in mountains and marshlands, awaiting a chance to start or join in an uprising with the hope of gaining power and legitimacy through either pardon (when they posed too great a threat to the state) or founding a new dynasty. Many had sisters, wives, or daughters who were also capable of leading armies.”

Chinese shadow theatre: history, popular religion, and women warriors, Fan Pen Li Chen

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

SPOTLIGHT ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HEAVY MONGOL CAVALRY IN BATTLEFIELD STRATEGY.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a Mongol heavy cavalryman, Liegnitz (present day Legnica, Poland), c. 1241, the Mongol Empire. Artwork by the late, great Angus McBride.

OVERVIEW: "While a standard Mongol army did field a large number of horse archers, entire battles couldn’t be won by just one tactical arm of the force. In fact, almost equally (if not more) crucial was the Heavy Cavalry that was tailored to counter-attacking maneuvers. These heavy horsemen were mostly armored in Asiatic lamellar style where scales of metal (or hardened leather) were sewn together through tiny holes.

PART II: Sometimes entire coats were reinforced with metallic pieces – and they were possibly worn beneath dedicated armor systems for added protection, thus alluding to super-heavy cavalry units. Similarly, helmets were crafted from larger iron pieces, but they characteristically featured extended neck guards made of metallic bits. And as for arms, most of these heavy horsemen used lances, possibly both in couched and overhead positions."

-- REALM OF HISTORY (Dattatreya Mandal, February, 10, 2016)

Source: http://miniaturasmilitaresalfonscanovas.blogspot.com/2012/02/angus-mcbride-los-mongoles.html.

[memories-of-ancients]

The Forgotten Mongol Heavy Cavalry,

When it comes to legends of the vicious Mongol conquests horse archers seem to be the celebrity rock stars of the Mongol Army who get all the fame and admiration. Depictions of Mongol battles in modern times usually show wild barbarian Mongol horse archers riding circles around enemy formations while showering them with volley after volley of arrows. Missing are the less glorified Mongol heavy cavalry, an absence which I’m sure would make the Great Khan sad because the Mongols had fine heavy cavalry. Not to put down horse archers, but horse archers alone don’t always win battles. While horse archers have their advantages, they also have several weakness and limitations, especially against opposing heavy infantry and cavalry equipped with shields and armor while in a defensive battle formation. What made the Mongols effective was not the mere fact they had horse archers, but because they had better tactics, among them combined arms tactics where they were able to coordinate the abilities of different units to accomplish a goal on the battlefield. This isn’t just a principle of Mongol warfare, but a principle of warfare in general. Whether we're talking ancient times or modern warfare, the side that has better combined arms tactics typically wins.  

The early Mongol Army consisted of 60% horse archers and 40% heavy cavalry. Later the Mongols would adopt new units such as heavy infantry, light infantry, siege units, and artillery conscripted from the peoples they conquered. However for this post I’m only referring to the early Mongol Army commanded by Genghis Khan and his general Subutai.  The purpose of the horse archers were as skirmishing units; to harass, sow chaos and confusion, and weaken the discipline of enemy ranks. The purpose of the heavy cavalry was to directly engage enemy units in close combat. To do their job, Mongol heavy cavalry were heavily armed and armored, much more so than their horse archer counterparts. They were armored head to toe in lamellar armor composed of metal plates sewn together into a suit. Often this armor also covered the horse as well. 

Their primary arm was a lance used to conduct charges. For melee fighting they would carry swords or axes, and also maces for armored opponents. They would also probably carry a shield. Along with their horse archer counterparts, Mongol heavy cavalry also carried a bow in order to engage the enemy at a distance. In essence Mongol heavy cavalry were similar to Middle Eastern or Byzantine cataphracts and European mounted knights. 

On the battlefield, Mongol units typically fought in five ranks, the first three ranks composed of horse archers, the last two composed of heavy cavalry.  During a Mongol charge, the horse archers would close to around 50 - 100 yards and fire arrows while the heavy cavalry would protect them from counterattack by enemy cavalry. It should be noted that Mongol heavy cavalry were also armed with bows, so likewise would be firing on the enemy as well. After firing, the formation would turn around, resupply with arrows, and remount with fresh horses. They would then repeat the charge again and again until eventually the enemy would weaken, begin to panic, lose discipline, and perhaps break ranks.  At that point the heavy cavalry would swoop in and smash the enemy formation. The Mongols also used deceptive tactics which the heavy cavalry would be an essential part. One common tactic was the feigned retreat, where a Mongol unit would pretend to retreat in panic as if defeated. The enemy would in turn charge expecting to chase down and massacre a terrified enemy. To their horror, the Mongols would reform and counterattack, the heavy cavalry at the front to smash the disorganized enemy and the horse archers firing from the rear. Another tactic would be to use the horse archers to draw the enemy into an ambush, where the heavy cavalry would appear from a hidden position and conduct a surprise attack on the enemy flanks or rear.

[ross-hollander]

Now, when it comes...

...to dining, particularly in the military sense- armies march on their stomachs, after all -it can be broken down, from slowest to fastest, as follows:

The DCMS troops eat the slowest, or at least take the longest. The reasoning goes that troops who receive sufficient time to fraternize, relax and eat will be more loyal and more effective soldiers. The claws of the Dragon must remain strong, after all, and solid meals are what strengthen them. A great general who nobody seems to remember the name of (but they certainly aren't just inventing the quote, it has a tradition behind it, be assured) said that everything has one side soft and one side hard; thus, turn your soft side to your soldiers' needs, and they will turn their hard sides against your enemies' ranks.

FedCom military dining culture still holds sway in the FedSuns and the Commonwealth. The philosophy is that feeding your troops is nowhere as important as letting them eat with dignity, and therefore, while not as extensive as the mealtimes allotted to Kurita soldiers, they tend to have a good-sized break.

The FWL, on the other hand, treats feeding troops as a vital but troublesome activity that keeps on needing to get done, and done, and re-done all over again. Troopers are expected to shut up, get in line, eat, return their tray and leave. The dining hall is not for social events and in stricter units there are actually proctors who ensure the troops keep the chatter to a minimum.

The Confederation can be considered paranoid, but if you were in their shoes you would be too. Meals are more or less restricted to dinner, in terms of proper dining. Troops get by on snack bars and cigarettes in short breaks allowed over the rest of the day between duties. Vigilance is necessary, and dining is less important than the nation's security. The faster it can be done, the quicker the watches can be cycled through, to keep every eye looking outwards for the next invasion.

Then, there is Clan dining protocol, except that to call it 'dining' is verbal corruption, because 'inhaling' is more likely the proper term. It has to be seen to be believed. You will not witness a meal tray being scoured clean in exactly eight minutes with such efficiency anywhere else in the galaxy. The Mongol Doctrine did not dictate attacks of such ferocity. It is like a very well-ordered shark feeding frenzy, with forks.

[whencyclopedia]

Song Dynasty

The Song (aka Sung) dynasty ruled China from 960 to 1279 CE with the reign split into two periods: the Northern Song (960-1125 CE) and Southern Song (1125-1279 CE). The Northern Song ruled a largely united China from their capital at Kaifeng, but when the northern part of the state was invaded by the Jin state in the first quarter of the 12th century CE, the Song moved their capital south to Hangzhou. Despite the relative modernisation of China and its great economic wealth during the period, the Song court was so plagued with political factions and conservatism that the state could not withstand the challenge of the Mongol invasion and collapsed in 1279 CE, replaced by the Yuan dynasty.

Foundation

The chaos and political void caused by the collapse of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) led to the break-up of China into five dynasties and ten kingdoms, but one warlord would, as had happened so often before, rise to the challenge and collect at least some of the various states back into a resemblance of a unified China. The Song dynasty was, thus, founded by the Later Zhou general Zhao Kuangyin (927-976 CE) who was endorsed as emperor by the army in 960 CE. His reign title would be Taizu ('Grand Progenitor'). Making sure no rival general ever became too powerful and gained the necessary support to take his throne, the emperor introduced a system of rotation for army leaders and swept away all opposition. Further, he ensured that the civil service henceforth enjoyed a higher status than the army by acting as their supervisory body.

Emperor Taizu of Song was succeeded by his younger brother, Emperor Taizong ('Grand Ancestor'), who reigned from 976 to 997 CE. The stability provided by the long reigns of the first two emperors (at least compared to the chaotic previous centuries) gave the Song dynasty the start it needed to become one of the most successful in China's history.

Continue reading...

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Is there anything good (positive achievement) about the Valyrian/ghiscarian empires? I feel GRRM didn't bother giving them nuanced and interesting history beside mass slavery, rape and genocide, esp the ghiscarians they are mash up of the all the racist oriental tropes you can think of

Hi anon, this is a really good question. I think you can look at it two ways.

On the one hand, if we're analyzing the books from a literary perspective, GRRM's portrayal of the entire continent of Essos is pretty Orientalist and doesn't hold up that well. And we can blame this to some extent on GRRM being a white boomer who clearly did not think all that deeply about the stereotypes he was playing into when he created his "exotic" eastern continent. 90s fantasy was rife with this stuff (even my beloved Robin Hobb is not completely immune-- I'm looking at you, Chalcedeans), and at the time Orientalism was, much like critical race theory or decolonization, a grad school level concept, unless you ran in activist circles. You didn't have Tumblr and Twitter and TikTok and Youtube generating Discourse, you had to actively seek out different perspectives. And ex-hippie liberal white boomers often assumed that they already had the right perspectives, that they knew what traps to avoid, and so you'd get 90s SFF authors thinking they were very cleverly subverting these tropes by going, "I know, I'll have an intensely misogynistic culture of desert dwelling nomads who have harems and slaves but I'll make them white." It was pretty bleak. Luckily for all of us, fantasy has come a long way since then.

And yeah, once you see the Orientalism in ASOIAF, you can't unsee it. Lys is basically the fantasy version of the "pleasure planet" trope, the Dothraki are a stereotype of the Mongol armies without any of the many positive contributions the Molgols made, Qarth is like the Coleridge poem come to life with people riding camels with jeweled saddles and wearing tiger skins, with its women baring one breast and it's sophisticated assassin's guild, and Mereen has its pyramids. The entire continent is brimming with spices and jewels and pleasure houses and people saying "Your Magnificence." It is also a place of blood magic and dragons and Red Gods and shadowlands. It is everything exciting and "exotic," juxtaposed against what appears to most readers to be very mundane--septas and pseudocatholicism and maesters in the citadel. So yeah, it's an Orientalist's fantasy world, and the point of all this is not necessarily to cast it as evil per se, but to cast it as "Other" (and to be clear, Orientalism is harmful and GRRM deserves the criticism he gets for leaning into stereotypes). Valyria and the Valyrians are certainly included in that-- they are explicitly Other as foreign born ruling family in Westeros, and they are treated that way both in-world and by the narrative.

The question then becomes, although GRRM's depictions of Essos lean heavily and inelegantly into Orientalist tropes, why did he create these worlds the way he did? Why is Valyria an "Other" and what significance does it have to the story? And I think that some of this is GRRM's shorthand for something magical that is lost and forgotten and fading away, just like Valyria itself is in the memories of the Targaryen family. It is the Xanadu of Coleridge's Kubla Khan, not just the East viewed from the West, but the past viewed from the present, a nostalgic yearning for a place that only ever existed in the imagination. When the narrative does visit these places in person, rather than telling us about them secondhand, they become ugly and brutal, the jeweled facade hiding a rot underneath. In ASOIAF we have Dany ripping that facade off of Meereen and Yunkai, but she idealizes her own Targaryen heritage, and that is not insignificant, and as readers, we are invited to idealize it right along with her, in spite of plenty of hints that perhaps we should not (like the aforementioned slavery). We even hear Astapori and Yunkish slavers speaking to Dany echo sentiments about the even older Ghiscari empire, also lost, "Ours is the blood of ancient Ghis, whose empire was old when Valyria was yet a squalling child." Old Ghis and the Valyrians who conquered them are both long gone at this point, and yet their descendants are clinging to the legacies of cultures that would be wholly foreign to both of them. Because if Valyria is Xanadu, the Old Valyrians and Old Ghiscari are also Ozymandias, the mighty who have fallen, their once grand civilizations nothing but forgotten ruins. The Targaryens don't yet realize that they are that "half-sunk shattered visage," that they are yearning for something that is gone and never returning, something they never really knew in the first place.

Westeros is not immune to this either. I think it's a consistent theme that GRRM plays with is the ways which the past is glorified and distorted and romanticized. Even in a meta-sense, his entire medieval world is, in many ways, a half-remembered medieval fantasy, the medieval world as imagined by people who read Ivanhoe, rather than a medieval world as actually was. And GRRM simultaneously presents this romanticized world alongside the brutality of the past (and to drive that point home, George's medieval world is much more brutal than the real medieval world was), and so he asks us, just like Dany must ask herself at some point, is the past really all that romantic? Or are we simply yearning for something unnamable and Other? And if we yearn for that, why?

On the other hand, from an in-world perspective, if you are Westerosi, are there any redeeming qualities to Valyrian culture? And I think we can answer that question by asking ourselves, is there anything salvageable from the past, even if the past was terrible? Even if what we perceive of Old Valyria wavers between a horrific empire based on conquest and slavery, and an idealized homeland full of magical dragonriders, depending on who is doing the telling, if we accept it as a fully fleshed out world, then I think we can remember no cultures are monoliths. Old Valyria had art, architecture, fashion, music, literature, and I like to imagine that there were good freeholders, perhaps even Valyrian versions of the Roman Stoics and the Cynics, who raised moral objections to slavery. Certainly the Valyrian "freeholder" government itself, a kind of proto-democracy, similar to that of Athens, was innovative for its particular time and place, even if it was not as democratic as our modern democracies are, and that model of government is replicated throughout Essos, where strict hereditary monarchy seems to be relatively uncommon. Valyria also had a great deal of religious freedom, which persists throughout Essos as well. And as with any empire, it's important to keep in mind that the ruling class made up only a small percentage of actual Valyria, and we know there were Valyrians who were not dragonlords but just normal people, going about their lives who had nothing to do with the atrocities committed, and those people were telling stories, creating art, writing songs, and producing culture too. So I think, tying back into how GRRM uses Valyria and Essos in his narrative, we do not have to discard the past entirely, nor do in-world Targaryens, but it's the romanticization that's the problem, and I think that's something that both in-world characters and readers are cautioned against.

[the-quackeroos]

moments before a battle between Montague and his army, Tobias, and his legion of heroes offscreen. special guests include a gnoll I played in a D&D campaign and a Mongol-type orc.

making redraws of Tobias & the Half Pariah is so much fun. ^^

[thosearentcrimes]

The Achaemenid/First Persian Empire is kind of wild. At the time of its greatest conquests it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, by a significant amount. Like any good empire it's a triumph of logistics, of course, but what's unusual is the character of the logistics in question. The kinds of empire we're used to are generally either basically maritime (Roman, Spanish, British, American) or basically horselord (Xiongnu, Parthian, Mongol, American) or Chinese (special case, the general tendency for there to exist a Chinese Empire is impressive in its own right but relatively familiar).

The Achaemenid Empire touched a lot of seas and bodies of water (Indus, Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, Tigris and Euphrates, Red Sea, Nile, Mediterranean, Aegean and Bosporus, Black Sea, Caspian Sea) and certainly these would have been used to facilitate logistics to some degree (Persian invasions of Greece relied on naval support, for example), but it certainly seems like the fundamental lifeline of their state was their extensive system of roads. The Romans talk a big game about their road system but ultimately the major logistical corridors of the Roman state were maritime and riverine. The Inca Empire was similarly road-based, likewise a hilly/mountainous region, and is also extremely cool, but didn't last nearly as long and was much smaller.

Herodotus says: "There is nothing mortal that is faster than the system that the Persians have devised for sending messages. Apparently, they have horses and men posted at intervals along the route, the same number in total as the overall length in days of the journey, with a fresh horse and rider for every day of travel. Whatever the conditions—it may be snowing, raining, blazing hot, or dark—they never fail to complete their assigned journey in the fastest possible time. The first man passes his instructions on to the second, the second to the third, and so on." A different translation of a section of this passage is famously associated with the US postal service.

Herodotus may be wrong in the details because the actual intervals between adjacent waystations seem to have been on the order of 16-26km, a distance a rider could reach in an hour (and perhaps most relevantly, a pedestrian or army might reach in a day), and as such it's certainly plausible horses were changed more than daily, as is attested in later relay postal networks, but it's easily possible he was right about their incredible speed. A perhaps somewhat generous estimated speed of government messages along this route is ~230km/day, by analogy of the pirradazish to the Pony Express and barid systems. This would make them faster than Roman communications, though certainly we have to recognize that maritime transport is ultimately faster and more convenient for trade in bulk goods and food. All figures taken from H.P. Colburn, "Connectivity and Communication in the Achaemenid Empire" Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56 (2013).

That's so cool! It's several hundred BCE and they have a complex permanent relay system with stations every couple dozen km, on a system of roads running throughout an empire thousands of km from center to edge. Just for one road, like the Sardis-Susa section that the Greeks usually talk about, that's over a hundred stations, each with a stock of supplies, backup mounts and riders, accommodations, anything else they might need, and Sardis-Susa was just one possible road stretch among many. That's incredible! I wish we knew what the people who made it and ran it thought. What was the life of a gas station attendant waystation operator in the reign of Artaxerxes I like?

It's kind of tragic that the Achaemenid Empire has been marginalized historiographically for so long. Generally it was treated as significant for its invasions and meddling in Greece, for ending the Babylonian captivity, or for providing a ready-made empire for Alexander to take over. It's not nothing, other places and time periods end up with much less of an imprint on our contemporary understanding of the past. We know a lot of cool stuff. But I wish we had more reflections on Persia from within. Most of what we seem to have is reports from Greeks, fragmentary letters and steles, and precious few excavation sites.

[city-of-ladies]

Sent to a foreign country as a tribute, Lady Ki (c.1320- after 1369) carved a place for herself and became a powerful empress, the last of the Yuan dynasty.

From maid to imperial consort 

Lady Ki, also known as Öljei Khuduq, was born in Xingzhou, Gaoli (present-day Korea). The Korean state used to send a tribute of women to its neighbor, the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty, who controlled most of modern-day China and its surrounding areas such as present-day Mongolia. 

Lady Ki entered the palace and was assigned to Toghon Temür's service. Described as beautiful and clever, she quickly caught the young emperor’s attention and was elevated to the rank of consort.

The empress Danishiri was hostile to Lady Ki but was executed in 1335 or 1337 for having tried to protect her brother who was involved in a rebellion.

Toghon Temür then tried to name Lady Ki empress, but his decision was met with extreme hostility. Indeed, no Korean woman had held the dignity so far. Most empresses came from the Mongol Khongirad clan. He ultimately relented and chose a Mongol empress: Bayan Khuduq. 

A powerful favorite 

Lady Ki’s position was strengthened when she gave birth to a son, Ayushiridara (future emperor Zhaozong of Northern Yuan, r.1370-1378). Bayan Khuduq's son died young. Having a frugal and effaced personality, the empress was furthermore no match for Lady Ki. Ayushiridara was thus made heir apparent in 1355.

Empress Ki was influential and involved herself in political and military affairs. She for instance protected the high-ranking official Toqto'a but withdrew her support when he opposed the installation of her son as heir apparent. 

She liked to read the Women’s Book of Filial Piety and sought examples of past empresses she could emulate. When a famine struck in 1359, she showed her generosity by having the officials distribute porridge to the hungry, using her own funds to have thousands of corpses buried and hiring monks to perform funeral services. 

Lady Ki used her influence to promote her family’s interests. Her kinsmen in Korea were granted official ranks and titles. They repeatedly abused their power, which led the Korean king to execute Lady Ki’s entire clan. 

When she learned about it, she asked her son to avenge her family and raise a force of 10,000 soldiers. The military campaign was a complete failure and the entire force was routed. 

Empress before the fall

Bayan Khuduq died in 1365. No obstacles stood in Lady Ki’s way and she received the empress’s seal. It seems that she tried to make up for the mistakes of a poorly-performing emperor. Later historians indeed wrote that Toghon Temür preferred focusing on wine and women, though this could be an exaggeration to justify the fall of the Yuan Dynasty. 

The government’s structure was disintegrating. Empress Ki conspired to force the emperor to abdicate and put her son on the throne but failed. She faced little consequences and was simply put under house arrest for 100 days. Her agressive defense of her son’s interests was in keeping with Mongolian political culture, which recognized the influence of strong women. 

The Yuan dynasty fell in 1368 when the armies of the future Ming Emperor Hongwu entered the capital. Empress Ki fled to the north with Toghon Temür. What happened to her afterward is unclear, but she likely died the following year.

Her life was the inspiration for a 2013  Korean television drama, Empress Ki.

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Further reading 

Buell Paul D., Fiaschetti Francesca, Historical Dictionary of the Mongol World Empire

McMahon Keith, Celestial Women: Imperial Wives and Concubines in China from Song to Qing

Robinson David M., Empire's Twilight: Northeast Asia Under the Mongols

Xu Shindan, “Öljei Qudu”, in: Hong Lee Lily Xiao, Wiles Sue (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women, Volume II: Tang Through Ming 618 - 1644