Mongol Invasion of Europe - End of The Mongol Advance

End of The Mongol Advance

In A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill wrote:

But Asia too was marching against the West. At one moment it had seemed as if all Europe would succumb to a terrible menace looming up from the East. Heathen Mongol hordes from the heart of Asia, formidable horsemen armed with bows, had rapidly swept over Russia, Poland, Hungary, and in 1241 inflicted simultaneous crushing defeats upon the Germans near Breslau and upon European chivalry near Budapest. Germany and Austria at least lay at their mercy. Providentially in this year the Great Khan died in Mongolia; the Mongol leaders hastened back the thousands of miles to Karakorum, their capital, to elect his successor, and Western Europe escaped.

The historian Jack Weatherford claims that European survival was due to Mongol unwillingness to fight in the more densely populated German principalities, where the weather affected the glue and sinew of the Mongol bows. The territory of Western Europe had more forests and castles than the Mongols were accustomed, and there were opportunities for the European heavy cavalry to counter-attack.

Some historians believe that the reason for Batu's stopping at the Mohi River, was that he never intended to advance further. He had made the Russian conquest safe for the years to come, and when the Great Khan died and he rushed back to Mongolia to put in his claim for power, it ended his westward expansion. Subutai's recall at the same time left the Mongol armies without their spiritual head and primary strategist. Batu Khan was not able to resume his plans for conquest to the "Great Sea" (the Atlantic Ocean) until 1255, after the turmoil after Ögedei's death had finally subsided with the election of Möngke Khan as Great Khan. He was not capable nor interested in launching an invasion on Western Europe.