Decimal cavalry
A steppe organisational grammar -- historical label, not a training syllabus.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale85
Intensity82
Duration70
Tech shift35
Political impact80
Cultural memory60
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Last reviewed Sources & creditsMedia creditsMethodology
Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many died?
About 20-40 million is a commonly cited scholarly-range band across Eurasia, with very high uncertainty. Some local chronicle figures are impossible as censuses. Use ranges.
Did they "conquer the world"?
They built the largest contiguous land empire, then stopped or failed at Japan, the Mamluk Levant, and parts of Southeast Asia. Sea and desert edges mattered.
What was Baghdad 1258?
Hulagu's forces took the city and ended Abbasid caliphal rule there. Chronicle death figures are huge and disputed; the political shock is not.
How was Korea involved?
Mongol campaigns against Goryeo ran through the 1230s-50s. Later, Goryeo was forced to support Kublai's Japan expeditions of 1274 and 1281 -- a Korean tragedy inside a Japanese legend.
What is Pax Mongolica?
A later phrase for relative security on some overland routes in the mid-to-late thirteenth century. It does not cancel the conquest deaths.
The decimal cavalry army, allied steppe groups, and later Chinese and Korean levies (especially for ships) were the force mix. Mobility and siege engineers (often conscripted specialists) appear together in the sources.
This is a historical description of organisation, not a field manual.
Systems
Conquered specialists
Siege engineers and later shipwrights drafted into the project.
Yam posts
Communication as an imperial system.
Khanate courts
Successor governments with different religions and tax styles.
Goryeo levy
A Korean institutional wound: ships, soldiers, princesses as politics.
Census and tax
Yuan and Horde extraction as the after-conquest state.
Meters
Geographic reach
94
Death-toll uncertainty
90
Korean historical weight
80
English pop memory
66
Institutional duration (unified)
40
Tech shift (relative)
32
Hotspots
Mongolian steppe
The political launch.
North China / Zhongdu
Early urban war.
Khwarezm cities
Chronicle massacre zone.
Goryeo
1231-59 war and later ship levy.
Baghdad / Ain Jalut / Japan
Three different kinds of limit and shock.
Materials
Horses and grass
The seasonal logistic fact of a cavalry empire.
Ships (Korea/China)
The failed ocean tool of 1274/81.
Paper and paiza
Passports of the yam -- administration as material.
City stores
Siege as hunger; described, not instructed.
Conquered peoples were drafted. Goryeo shipwrights are part of the force picture for the Japan attempts.
No live ORBAT, no raiding instruction.