Any description of the battles of the Mongol Empire will eventually feature some variation
of this phrase: the enemy pursued the fleeing Mongols, only to be lured into a trap and
surrounded. They had just fallen for feigned retreat. From China to Europe to India, Mongol
armies used this tactic repeatedly, and generally with success. But why this tactic? Why did
it work so well for the Mongols? And why did people keep falling for it?
Let us offer a bit more of a description of what constitutes a feigned retreat, and how
it worked as a part of Mongol tactics. In a feigned retreat, army red attacks army blue.
Army red appears to break and rout before the fierceness of army blues’ warriors.
Seeing the reds running away like cowards, army blue pursues to complete the victory.
In the process, the blues’ formation spreads out, separated from the support of the rest
of the army. Once they’ve reached the desired distance, the reds spring the trap. Alone,
out of formation and surrounded, this unit of the blues is destroyed and sent running
back into the rest of the army where they disrupt the lines. Blue moral suffers, and
cohesion is lost, becoming a national humiliation centuries later. This is in essence the feigned
retreat so beloved by steppe armies for centuries. Though not exclusive to nomadic armies, it
is particularly associated with them due to their lifestyle, which we will explain by
taking a closer look at the masters of the feigned retreat, the Mongols.
With little or no armour on an average Mongol horse archer, prolonged frontal assaults were
a real threat to him. He was however well supplied with his powerful bow and a lifetime
of good horsemanship, literally learning to ride before he could walk. High maneuverability
and the lethality of their bows meant it was to the Mongols’ advantage to attack the
enemy at range for as long as possible. A preferred method for Mongol horse archers
was a caracole: waves of archers rode up to the enemy, launching arrows as they approached
before turning back rapidly without making direct contact. As they rode back they would
shoot behind them -popularly known as the Parthian shot- and continue out of range,
while the next group of riders followed and did the same, keeping the enemy under a constant
barrage of arrows. This is deceptively simple: to do this wheeling about while shooting at
the enemy, who are presumably shooting back, requires tremendous skill to not result in
groups of horsemen crashing into each other. The key to success was not numbers, but discipline,
which the Mongols prized highly. The Mongol army division was based upon decimal units,
the most well known being the tumen, down to minghaan, jaghun and the smallest, arban.
All could operate together or as individual units. Rather than a huge mass running at
the enemy like that terrible Dothraki charge at Winterfell, a Mongol attack in caracole
would be small units darting towards the enemy, giving considerable space to each other to
allow the horses maximum maneuverability and prevent collisions. Meanwhile, the main army
was held back, ready to enter the caracole and give the first units a chance to rest
and mount fresh horses. Each caracole advance acted as a feint to draw the enemy out of
the security of their own formation. The desire to pursue would be strong, especially for
haughty elite cavalrymen. Human nature means we don’t like to stand still while people
taunt and shoot at us. The pressure not to flee under the barrage, or in frustration
to lunge out at them, would be immense. If they fled, the better for the Mongols, who
could now pursue. And if they broke ranks, then they were drawn into a feigned retreat.
If despite repeated attempts the enemy held their ground, then on one of these caracoles
a unit would charge into the foe. By now the enemy was weakened by the arrows, and could
possibly break under the charge. If they held, the Mongol force was to convincingly disengage,
making it look like they themselves had broken. This is more difficult than it sounds. An
enemy with their blood up and seeing the Mongols run would want to press the advantage: it
would take great discipline to prevent this. At this stage the feigned rout could turn
into a real one if the enemy caught up with them, or if the initial engagement went on
too long. If the Mongols got too far ahead, the pursuit could be called off and the enemy
return to their ranks, command restored. But if all went smoothly and the enemy came the
required distance, the result was deadly: Mongol archers or heavy cavalry could swarm
the isolated foe. Surrounded, they were killed or sent running back into their own ranks.
The rest of the enemy army, seeing their comrades decimated, suffered a blow to morale, increasing
the chance that they would decide to run rather than face the Mongols.
Variations of course exist: Jebe Noyan in 1211, unable to penetrate a fortified Jin
Dynasty position at Juyongguan, fled before their walls. When the Jin defenders excitedly
came out in pursuit, Jebe’s hidden forces burst out to surprise them. The most famous
example thogh was the 9 day hunt Subutai took his Rus-Cuman pursuers on, until their formation
was so spread out that upon reaching the Kalka River, he could destroy them piecemeal. Time
and time again, the Mongols used this to draw out foes supported by walls or other units.
The question remains: how did people not catch on to this? Well, they did. For instance,
we have European travellers to the Mongol Empire who warn against pursuing fleeing Mongols.
Of course, the best advice in the book doesn’t always translate to the battlefield, and an
illiterate infantryman is unlikely to have picked up a copy. The key to a good feigned
retreat is that it looks like a real retreat. Indeed, as is the case on the Kalka River,
Subutai may have actually been retreating until he saw how his pursuers had strung themselves
out. A lieutenant on the ground, seeing the Mongols fleeing, could fear that by letting
them go he had given them a chance to escape and be a problem later. If the Mongols have
already been ravaging your country and people, the incentive to strike back is hard to ignore.
Humans simply do not act rationally under stress. Kublai Khan’s grandson Qaishan,
when fighting Qaidu Khan in 1300, chose to advance slowly after the initial clash, fearing
a feigned retreat. His hesitation allowed Qaidu time to join up with reinforcements
under the Chagatai Khan Du’a.
It must be remembered that most of the Mongols’ enemies thought of them as nothing but an
unruly mob of horsemen. They would be unlikely to be expecting them to have planted a trap
for them, and indeed, part of the advantage of the caracole is that it helped mask the
size of the Mongol force, while looking like random groups of archers chasing at the enemy.
The Mongols for all their use of the maneuver could fall for it themselves: no example more
famous than their defeat at Ayn Jalut in 1260. Again, a good feigned retreat looks like a
real retreat, and a retreat is something every army wants to take advantage of. And the Mongols,
were no exception.
I hope this video gives you a small clue as to why the Mongols were so militarily successful.
War is more often about outsmarting, surrounding and demoralizing the enemy than it is about
killing all of them. For the Mongols, if they could defeat the enemy by outplaying them
and terrifying them, thereby saving some of their own precious numbers in the process,
then all the better.