Resisting 100,000 Angry Mongols (RAR!)

[Zor]

In this scenario, you are in charge of a Kingdom about 150% the size of France. It has coastline to the North and West, mountains to the south and (most importantly for this scenario) grasslands to the east. It's climate is temperate. It has a population of about 12,000,000 ruled by a fuedal system similar to Europe. Its technology is comprable to Europe of 1500 in most respects and has the following soldiers...

-A fortified capitol city, it has a population of 200,000 and a 10 meter tall stone wall thats 3 meters thick surrounding it with plenty of towers. The fifty other cities have lesser stone walls, but none of them are more than 50,000 people in size.
-20 Fortresses serving as command centers. Have stone walls and crude wall cannons.
-20,000 Knights: Noble heavy cavalry with full plate armor, sword and lance. Decently trained and equiped and with a little experience fighting southern men in border wars. They also serve as leaders for the other troops and are quite loyal to the crown
-60,000 Royal Soldiers: retained soldiers/governmental odd job men. Typically these come from special military families who's fit sons must serve for 10 years (longer if they choose), but volunteers are accepted as well when their is a pressing need for recruits. Come in five varieties...

Swordsmen (16,500): Swordsmen are close combat soldiers intended to fight enemy infantry. They have a steel re-enforced tower shield (125 cm by 50cm), a breastplate, Capeline Helmet, 1 meter long spatha, two javelins and a 15cm long dagger. They fight in formation and make use of shield walls.
Pikemen (16,500): Pikemen are armored in a similar manner to Swordsmen, but carry a 6 meter long pike in place of sword and javelin and fight in tight formation. Their purpose, shis-kebab enemy cavalry.
Arquebusiers (15,000): Arquebusiers are armed with a newfangled weapon called an Arquebus, as well as a Spatha for close quarters while having normal infantry armor.
Longbowmen (10,000): Longbowmen are armed with yew english style longbows. They also carry a pair of meter long metal tipped pointy sticks with about a meter of chain between them that they put in front of them to protect them from cavalry.
Artillerymen (2,000): Artillerymen man cannons, while they have been getting better at making these weapons in recent years, they are still large, slow, mostly intended to break castle walls and occasionally blow up into showers of cast iron splinters. That said, no armor nor fervor can stand against their projectiles.

These are organized into Squads (10 men) Centuries (100 men) Cohorts (500 men) Maniples (1,500 men) and Legions (6,000 men). They are led by a mixture of noblemen and men who have worked their ways up the ranks.

-125,000 Men at Arms: warriors trained, supplied and equiped by the Nobles and major guilds recruited from the peasant population. Mostly they just do regular peasanting, but once a month during peacetime (baring emergencies) they practice fighting, marching and formations. Upon induction they get a couple weeks of drilling. Each man at arms is given at leasat a helmet and a weapon, with every other one having an old suit of chainmail, brigandine or breastplate for defense. The normal weapons nowadays are halberds and crossbows. A few (about 5%) have arquebuses and a few traditionalists (10%) have round wooden shields and old swords, spears, battle axes and maces or hunting bows. About one in two hundred men at arms has a horse (being drawn from drovers) and fights as a light cavalrymen, typically armed with a sword or axe for melee and either a few javelins or a short bow for ranged attacks.

These are organized into Platoons (20-50 men) and Companies (100 to 300 men) and led by knights.

If pressed, the Royal Army could be doubled in size and the nobility might be able to double its force of men at arms (though troop quality would suffer in terms of equipment for the latter).

These forces are important, because in about three years, a horde of a hundred thousand angry mongols shall poor out of the eastern grasslands intent on conquering your country and crushing all resistance under the hooves of their small horses. Your objective is, using the forces and industries at hand, make this kingdom able to resist the oncomming mongol horde. You are not allowed to introduce any new technologies, but can change about their tactics. Surrendering to the Mongols is not an option. The people to the south will neither help nor hinder you.

Can this oncomming mongol horde be repulsed?

Zor

[Mr Bean]

Step 1
Start fortifying my major cities, pre designating some cities to be turned into deathtraps others as strongholds designed to hold of attack and siege

Step 2
Start setting up destruction plans, nothing kills a medieval army faster than killing it supplies. Year 2 I hope to have plans in place to poison every single natural spring and well in the path of advance. I can't stop the rain but I can burn anything I don't harvest and meet the Horde after they have had to spend a week crossing lands with no fodder for their mounts, no food for their men and no water (except rain) for anyone.

Step 3
Lay a few traps for example one of my deathtrap cities will be picked as being a nice target know to be rich and full of supplies, it will stay unfortified and there a loyal nobleman there will complain loudly of the expense and work and generally act like a arrogant nobleman stereotype. Assuming I can convince the Horde to attack it they will find supplies fit to bursting and all set with the best slow acting poison I can come up with in the horse feed and camp agents for the men's. Needless to say my nobleman will run away at the first sign of danger as will the population hopefully.

Step 4
After leading the Horde on a merry chase as possible with all the hundred and one various methods of weakening them I'll go on circumstances. If they are nice enough to besiege a city of mine its the perfect time for attacks on their supplies. A war of attrition and not glorious martial combat is what I want.

[Dave]

I dunno, does grapeshot or caltrops count as new technology?

Otherwise I'd be experimenting with trench warfare, and reading up on proposed counters to blitzkrieg. And training longbowmen to be guerrillas / snipers.

It would also probably be less than ten minutes before I make the joke about spamming pikemen because they cost 0 gold (Age of Empires, anyone?).

[Zor]

I dunno, does grapeshot or caltrops count as new technology?

They have both already.

Zor

[fgalkin]

The whole ludicrous set-up collapses into civil war as I have no way to pay for that absurd army (20k knights in a population of 12 million? Really?). Mongols arrive but I am already long dead by that point. The end.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Thanas]

Mongols die to starvation and/or Gewalthaufen.

[Simon_Jester]

The whole ludicrous set-up collapses into civil war as I have no way to pay for that absurd army (20k knights in a population of 12 million? Really?).

Excuse me, what is a realistic ratio?

[Thanas]

A tenth of that at the most. France, with a population of 18 million, never fielded more than 4k of knights/men at arms in a battle.

[Demiurgas]

Didn't they have something called Men-At-Arms during the 1400's?

[Thanas]

They had "something" like that for most of the middle ages.

[Demiurgas]

Ah... My history book said that Men-At-Arms were distinguished from Knights and not poorly trained. How many Men At Arms could a population of 18,000,000 sustain?

[Thanas]

Like I said, the French hardly ever fielded more than 4000 combined knights/men-at-arms. m

[Force Lord]

Medieval European logistics were a far cry from what the Roman Empire could pull off anyway.

[Simon_Jester]

A tenth of that at the most. France, with a population of 18 million, never fielded more than 4k of knights/men at arms in a battle.

[blinks]

I take it that this includes the major battles of the Hundred Years' War?

Before this conversation, my impression was that while actual knights of rank on the field in those battles might have only been a few thousand, the number of heavily equipped men-at-arms rounded out the French 'heavy' arm to something in the high thousands, perhaps as much as ten thousand men.

I must have been grossly misinformed. Or are you considering these as rare exceptions to the general rule, and therefore irrelevant?

Didn't they have something called Men-At-Arms during the 1400's?

"Man at arms" basically just means "guy with weapons." Although from what I know it does imply that you're a serious professional with good equipment, who works for someone with status in society.

I am not an expert on medieval history.

[Lord Zentei]

Wouldn't that 4000 man figure be the maximum field army as opposed to the armed forces in total? [EDIT: damn ninjas]

Though 20k knights, 60k royal soldiers and 125k men at arms is clearly way too high. That's over 200000 troops, before the army can be doubled with reserves!

Zor, you might want to replace "France" with "Roman Empire", there.

[Thanas]

A tenth of that at the most. France, with a population of 18 million, never fielded more than 4k of knights/men at arms in a battle.

[blinks]

I take it that this includes the major battles of the Hundred Years' War?

Before this conversation, my impression was that while actual knights of rank on the field in those battles might have only been a few thousand, the number of heavily equipped men-at-arms rounded out the French 'heavy' arm to something in the high thousands, perhaps as much as ten thousand men.

I must have been grossly misinformed. Or are you considering these as rare exceptions to the general rule, and therefore irrelevant?

There is a difference between mounted and dismounted. The French fielded ~12000 of dismounted men-at-arms of various quality. However, only 1000-1500 mounted knights at Agincourt, for example. This is why 20k mounted, plate-armored knights in addition to 33k heavily armed infantrymen and 27k ranged warriors, all professional, is utter insanity.

[fgalkin]

Add to that those huge cannon-armed fortresses, and you can easily tell what the next three years will be like.

An old-style hipotetical senario RAR in 2012. I am impressed.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Akhlut]

From my border to one kilometer in, I plant millions of fast-growing thorn bushes. Behind them, a 1 kilometer thick swathe of bur-bearing plants. Behind that, a 1 kilometer thick swathe of sand and sharp rocks.

Boom, winning.

[Thanas]

And what will you do if the high infantry-percentage mongols start to clear swathes through it?

[Akhlut]

Zor makes it seem like the Mongols are spamming cavalry, here, so that should at least keep their horses tied up well enough.

Also, if they have to trudge through 3 kilometers of assholish terrain, they might just give up.

But, if that fails, cannons, I guess.

[Thanas]

cannons from the 14th century? Have fun with them.

[Zor]

cannons from the 14th century? Have fun with them.

Ahem...

Its technology is comprable to Europe of 1500

Zor

[Thanas]

So...you thought it fun pitting an army that is essentially one or two centuries behind in tech and combat doctrine against a renaissance army?

[Zor]

So...you thought it fun pitting an army that is essentially one or two centuries behind in tech and combat doctrine against a renaissance army?

Well back in their day they generally were pretty unstopable.

Zor

[Thanas]

So...you thought it fun pitting an army that is essentially one or two centuries behind in tech and combat doctrine against a renaissance army?

Well back in their day they generally were pretty unstopable.

Zor

This is the equivalent of me making a thread asking what would happen if I pit Napoleon's Guard against the German Gardedivision of WWI. You are basically asking if one of the greatest leaps in technology, metalworking, weaponry and combat doctrine would have any effect if you also give said army strategical, numerical and tactical superiority. Well, it just might.