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how did the mongols conquer so much
Picture an endless horde. In truth, historians estimate about sixty-five thousand Mongols marched on China's Jin empire in 1211, which could field several hundred thousand troops.
So numbers didn't win it. The Mongols won with organisation, speed and quick learning, and the next boards show how those worked.
Genghis Khan rebuilt his army in tens: ten men, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand. He mixed old tribes together and promoted for skill and loyalty, not birth.
Each rider led several spare horses, so armies could cover huge distances fast. And the short composite bow, made of wood, horn and sinew, could be shot from a galloping horse.
Walls should have stopped riders. So the Mongols hired engineers from conquered China and Persia, who built trebuchets, dug under walls and diverted rivers.
And fear did half the work. A city that opened its gates was usually spared and taxed; one that resisted could be destroyed, and word of that travelled ahead.
So here it is whole. Tens of thousands, not millions, but organised, mounted, armed with borrowed engineers and fear, built the largest connected land empire in history.
The Mongols never needed a limitless horde; a small, fast, well-run army that learned from everyone it met was enough.