Hunkering Down

The tactic of raiding takes on a whole new meaning when the Mongol hordes sweep in from the distant grasslands of Mongolia, far to the east. They ride in on swift war ponies, bringing as many as five ponies for each warrior.

The Mongols are able to cover great distances in a single day, by swapping off their mounts. They are thus often able to arrive at a target before their surprised victims are even aware they are approaching.

This accelerates an already existing trend of erecting walls around any location where valuable are stored, as a deterrent to attack. Many noblemen build great stone castles, which can be defended without a large force.

Towns and cities are even more attractive targets for invaders, as this is where all the wealth of an entire region is likely to be concentrated. Almost every town of any importance has some kind of stone enclosure.


	Horsemen from the East It seems that nothing can stop the Mongols. They conquer thousands of miles of territory in just a few years, sometimes with great brutality. They butcher half a million civilians in Beijing, during their invasion of China, which prompts the Chinese to erect their Great Wall to stop future attacks. The Mongols slaughter a similar number in Baghdad, on their way west into Europe. Over time, however, the Mongol leadership fragments into rival factions. They lose their grip on power, and begin retracing their steps back towards Mongolia.



	Hiding Behind Walls With so much fighting, and the persistent threat of invasion, medieval people are understandably obsessed with security and protection. Although there are no machines to help with the construction, castles and fortified walls are built literally everywhere. All the stones have to be raised into position using animals, ropes, rollers and pry bars. When you consider the effort it would take to erect such massive walls, with such huge individual stones, you get an idea of just how hair-raising these times must have been.


	Defensive Fortifications Each RED dot on this map indicates the location of a castle or walled town. That's a lot of material and effort, just to get through the day without being overrun by hostile neighbors. Eventually, however, cannons are developed that can knock down any wall, no matter how thick. This brings an end to the strategy of trying to withstand a siege by sitting tight behind stout walls. In the future, great armies will be forced to meet in the field, to settle matters in open battle.


	Free Markets Shut Down The 1300s bring many changes which combine to disrupt the free-trade networks in Europe. The Silk Road connection with China is the first to go, as China reverts to its traditional distrust of foreigners, and closes the road. The trade-fair towns in France are next, as the French king takes control of the region. English and French kings begin introducing taxes and regulation, in order to extract money needed to finance their growing military ambitions. After ordering the expulsion of wealthy Jewish merchants and bankers, who had financed earlier trade, they seize Jewish assets. Shipping fees are extracted everywhere possible, including a castle on the Rhine River (lower left).


	Collecting Tax for the King The way that kings muscle their way into medieval business is ingenious. Taxes are easy to enact, but difficult to collect, as the only place where real money changes hands is in business. So the king grants monopoly rights to certain specific merchants. In return, these merchants agree to collect taxes on their sales to send back to the king. The mechanism is something called the 'guild,' an early form of professional association. If you are a shoemaker or baker in a town which has a guild for your trade, you are only permitted to sell your goods in that town if you are a member of the guild. The English take this a giant step further, granting monopolies to entire cities to handle trade in wool, which is England's only important export product.


	The Black Death Despite strong recovery in Europe after the fall of Rome, overall wealth in Medieval Europe continues to lag far behind that of its distant rival, China. This is due to a number of 'natural' factors which interrupt Europe's economic growth during the 1300s. Most striking is the Bubonic Plague, known as the 'Black Death' because of the appearance of the skin of its victims . It strikes suddenly in the mid-1300s, recurring seven more times by 1500, and six more times by 1600. It is estimated that a third of the population of Europe dies from the Black Death, which affects almost all of Europe (darkened area on the map). There are also a series of crop failures and famines, causing mass death by starvation. The worst of these is the 'Great Famine' of the early 1300s.