Great historian authors were always part of Milt Rosenberg's radio program that ran fr fifty years on WGN radio in Chicago and it was great to see and hear another one as Mit is now on the tiny WGBO station for a couple of hours a day between the hours of four to six pm. Milt had the great British author Frank McLynn on his program recently and it can be heard on his podcast rebroadcast of his new shows through the internet. Milt tried to up one of this historian as the social psychologist questioned the often recapitulated story of the Mongols offering cities to surrender or find the city wiped out totally destroyed to the last man, woman, and rat.
Milt wondered if this threat was not just reserved for the Mongols and if it was not often repeated from other armies through history from Roman empire to the Huns. Frank didn't really have an answer for this but nonetheless a great discussion from this author who has written many books on medieval warfare and destruction through the ages. McLynn and other historians love to mock the notion that Europeans considered the Mongols hoards as they were usually outnumbered as some indication of racism that they refused to believe that a small army could defeat the strongest armies Europe had to offer. I always counter this notion in history classes over the years that these same anti-western academics and historians don't want to give credit to the massive resistance the Europeans gave to the Mongols and the casualties undoubtedly encountered and abilities seen of the Europeans as being why these Mongol cowards left Europe alone and went back East never to come back to Central Europe.
The Europeans considered the Mongols hoards because when taken into account that every Mongol no matter how low was swift and on a horse made their appearance much larger than they obviously were. Mongols without the shock and technology of arrow making and without the horse really would of been nothing in history except for the vacuous nomads that they were only capable of waging war and not able to produce any legacy or settlement for mankind. Why historians are so infatuated with these twisted long-gonegone peoples of the past is more of a desire to show Asians in a more warrior status and military dominate in world history when in fact the ongols achieved little except destroying something that other peoples built.
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