THE LOGISTICS OF GRASS
The forces of the expanding Mongol Empire swept across the steppes of western Eurasia from 1236 to 1240, folding in many nomadic populations as they went. Along the way the Mongols also sacked and came to rule the cities of the Rus principalities, ultimately establishing what would become known as the “Golden Horde.” For the 1241 campaign season, Batu Khan, the Mongol commander who was directing the westward advance, set his sights on the Kingdom of Hungary. The kingdom was centered in the Great Hungarian Plain, a thumb-shaped extension of the Eurasian steppe, encircled by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and assorted other mountain ranges to the west, north, and south. King Béla IV of Hungary, aware of the wave of Mongol conquests just beyond the Carpathians, remained hopeful that the ring of mountains would prove defensible, especially after he had welcomed as nominal allies the Cuman Turks (also known as the Kipchaks or Pechenegs), who were fleeing the Mongols. The Hungarians, however, failed to reckon with their enemy’s enormously flexible and long-range operational capabilities. The Mongols didn’t campaign as a single force along predictable paths—they arrived everywhere at once.
One of the best accounts of the Mongol invasion of 1241 comes from Roger of Torre Maggiore, an Italian prelate known as “Master Roger” who was on assignment in the Hungarian city of Várad when it was captured by the Mongols. He described how the Mongol wave had first crested against the Carpathians the previous year, pushing the Cumans over the mountains into Hungary, and then, in a crucial hint of how the Mongols operated, how “they retreated to the distance of four to five days, leaving untouched the borderlands adjacent to Hungary, so that when they returned they would be able to find food and fodder for themselves and their horses and so that no news might reach the Hungarians about them.”
The Mongols’ blinding speed deprived their victims of any kind of advance warning.
The Mongols’ logistics and operational technique went hand in hand. As the Mongol armies moved over fresh grasslands outside Hungary during their approach, the green pastures fed the horses in a way that sustained the soldiers for days afterward—a kind of logistical “running start”—as the fattened horses provided milk for the soldiers. Then, as the Mongol forces concentrated on the business of fighting, they were able to move almost entirely unencumbered by logistical considerations—at least for a week or so. Their blinding speed deprived their victims of any kind of advance warning.
The primary Mongol army under Batu, according to Master Roger, pressed through the “Russian Gate” (most likely the Verecke Pass in the Carpathians) and directly engaged the main Hungarian defenses. Meanwhile, a second Mongol force removed a potential Hungarian ally from action, blazing through Poland in three columns and uniting at Liegnitz (Legnica), in the southwestern part of the country, where on April 9, 1241, it defeated the Poles and Teutonic Knights. That army then turned
