Does anybody have a detailed account in English from a non-Vietnamese perspective of the events leading up to and during the three Mongol expeditions to conquer Dai Viet?

And let's discuss this with me

There is no English source from a non-Vietnamese perspective written about 3 Mongol invasions because in the 13th century, no Westerner was present in that war to document their eyewitness account of the events.

From non-Vietnamese perspective I mean maybe Chinese or other Asian sources, or of western scholars' interpretation having examined documents from many sources.

http://countrystudies.us/vietnam/9.htm ---300,000 in third invasion. Seems to "give a lot of credit" to tropical diseases, but India is pretty damn tropical too and the Mongols conquered them just fine.

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/specials/00...oiswho/dao.html --vague discussion only

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/specials/00...hoiswho/ly.html --vague discussion

Maybe more later if I have the time.

Hmm, I don't think there is any English source in non-Vietnamese perspective written about these events.

^^No, he means "what is the Western scholarship take on the subject matter?" There are plenty of American, British, French Egyptologists, no?



Western ok, Chinese--You Krazay?

What Western scholarship does is it filters out the "Middle Kingdom" propaganda in its analysis of ancient Chinese historical records.

Thank you very much. The north and the major population centers were situated chiefly in the Red River Delta plains so some sources may have given too much credit for the disease factor.


I think the three main factors were:

1. Effective campaign of destruction of Vietnamese farms and food supplies to prevent the Mongols from using them (What do you call this strategy again?)
2. Mongol supplies from the north were either intercepted and destroyed or captured and used by the Vietnamese forces
3. Strategic battles were won, including various land and water campaigns

And of course diseases unknown to the Mongols and the climate were also factors, however minor.

Indeed, Vietnam won 7 out of 8 major battles fought against the Mongols.

Mea culpa

I don't think the Mongols of the 1300's ever conquered southern India, where they have monsoons, only northern India around the Indus. Aparently the Indians had some success against them. From a few Indian websites, I'm seeing that they had great success against the Mongols of the 1300's, much like the Viets did. But a 2004 thread on AF mentions in a History Channel program that says the real reason the Mongols lost was due to India's treacherous mountain terrain.

The Moghuls did rule India however, they were the direct descendants of Ghenghis & Timur centuries later.

Also, northern Vietnam is very similiar to southeastern China. It has misty moutains and so on. It gets cold at night. Dai Viet was only a fraction of the size of modern day Vietnam.

The Mongol forces were mostly Chinese. And the Chinese had ruled Vietnam for over 1000 years.

North Vietnamese died of tropical diseases on the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the Vietnam War. Likewise, Vietnamese forces died of tropical diseases in the 10 year occupation of Cambodia. Does this mean that Dai Viets died when they went into guerilla warefare mode?

When the Europeans came to the America's, they brought diseases that killed off the Native Indians, in both the warm and cold areas.

How legit is the "tropical diseases" explanation? I'm not sure.

Still, Chinese General Ma Yuan's expedition/invasion in 41 C.E. into the Red River Delta didn't have any problems. The Chinese were victorious.

Indeed. I read somewhere that the Mongols conscripted Chinese to fight in their expeditionary forces due to their familiarity with the terrain of the Red River delta area.

Terrain was certainly not a major factor.

Oh yeah, the "Mongol" armies were often, if not generally, not Mongol at all. That was their modus operandii.

I know for fact that the first invasion of Japan was made up of 50/50 Mongols & Koreans, and numbered about 25,000-40,000 depending on the various Western sources. The second invasion of Japan employed mostly Chinese and numbered about 140,000.

Mongolia then was so thinly populated so it would have been impossible for them to exclusively man such vast armies to conquer in all corners of the world.

I believe after they've subjugated one neighbour, they would use the defeated population to replenish their ranks to conquer the next. The cycle is repeated over and over.

Most of us already see it from the Vietnamese point of view and history books, but I've been wondering, if there is any surviving records in Mongolia today.

That would presume that the Mongols had a script, i.e. a written form of their language - Not bloody likely, considering their nomadic life style. Their other alternative would have been to employ Chinese, Persian or Arab scribes. That avenue was closed off when the various Mongol combat leaders went native and broke off contact with the Mongolian homeland. It also presumes that the Mongolian homeland after Genghis Khan's death gelled into a nation from a collection of tribes. And I have my doubts that this happened: political entities that have the status and trappings of states can get created out of thin air but not nations.

I don't know much about history but it is quite logical isn't it? Mongolians came from the North, from the grassland, they're not used to water and they didn't have any ships or whatsoever! It is appropriate to use people who have experience, init? 2

Impressive military history.

I believe that the climate did play a major role in foiling the second Mongol invasion - But that was because our leadership was smart enough to take advantage of every factor they had: terrain, weather, roads, intelligence regarding Mongol tactics, etc.

My theory is that we retreated into the swamps and the Mongols made the mistake of following us there, to be hit by the malaria. At first, the Mongol commander thought he was doing well: after all, his troops had occupied our capital, had won every engagement against our forces and were pursuing us in the swamps.

He may or may not have realized that we had deliberately evacuated the capital, probably in response to intelligence provided by Chinese refugees that the Mongols were in the habit of using Chinese civilians as human shields whenever they were assaulting Chinese fortified cities.

He may or may not have realized that while Mongol cavalry was the best in the world, our plains and our roads were too constricted for their cavalry tactics to be effective. In addition, our scorched earth tactics meant that his army was bound to run into supply constraints in short order. He may or may not have realized that, while we were being defeated in those engagements, we were learning from our defeats and that those engagements were getting heavier and heavier.

The malaria may have done its work too quickly for the Mongol commander to realize that he was in big trouble: the capture of our capital meant nothing to us while it may have spelled disaster to someone else; we had managed to preserve our forces; he had a supply problem and now he had a malaria problem. He stayed a little bit longer in Vietnam than he should have, misled as he was by the fact that his troops were winning every engagement so far.

By the time the Mongol commander realized that his troops had been seriously weakened by the malaria, the malaria was spreading through his army like a tsunami. By the time he decided that he should return North to the Chinese border, it was too late. And thus it came to pass that whereas 600000 Mongol-led troops had crossed the border into Vietnam, only 100000 of these returned home successfully, harassed, ambushed and sabotaged every step of the way by our forces.

The Mongol human resources advantage was lopsided: they had assembled 600000 warriors from all parts of their empire including Russia, Korea, China, etc. On our side, we had raked the bottom of the barrel and had come up with 200000 including women, young boys and the elderly - If you wanted to fight, you were in.

Our only external asset was the alliance we had concluded with Champa: the Cham king's valiant guerrilla war against the Mongol amphibious assaults against Champa ensured that the prospect of a coordinated Mongol assault from our South was a possibility that we had not to seriously worry about.

Fortunately, we were not arrogant and we had done our homework: we had familiarized ourselves with Mongol tactics thanks to intelligence provided by Chinese refugees through their own bitter experience in fighting them and we had worked out tactics that nullified the Mongol adantage in numbers and sophisticated flexible and opportunistic cavalry tactics. In addition, the Tran king had directed that every available Vietnamese be trained in the martial arts in preparation for the Mongol invasions - Our Tran king was one of the finest kings to ever rule us, both as a competent official and as an individual who respected the dignity of even the lowliest Vietnamese. Finally, Tran Hung Dao, the general who served him, devised sound tactics and rules of engagements, and surrounded himself with competent, talented tacticians.

I believe that the Mongol commander was no fool, but we were just too much for him. At any rate, he himself never made it back home.

Dude, your knowledge of this subject is so terrible. The Mongolian never ventured into any swamp land at all. In fact, they only camped around the Red River Delta to protect themselves from getting any kind of surprised attack by us and that's the reason why 4 out of the 7 major battles that Vietnam won against the Mongolian were naval battle.

I thought the bulk of the Mongol invasion force went through the valleys in the north, not through waterways, except for the flotilla of Mongol warships which entered the Red River delta through Ha Long bay.

My understanding is that the second Mongol invasion was purely land based, and that the third Mongol invasion was a combined land-sea operation. You must be referring to the third Mongol invasion, while I was referring to the second one.

Mongolians do have a script. It was created in Chingis Han's time.
The secret history of the mongols was the first mongol history book but it does not deal with the mongol invasion of vietnam.
That invasion is more like a Yuan invasion of vietnam .
you have to look up the History of Yuan dynasty.

^do you have a link or anything?

^^Looks like a cross between Chinese & Arabic.

understanding mongolian warriors.. they are nomadic..
their warrior can ride the horse all day nonstop.. n china
was meant for conquest b/c the battles were on plains//grasslands..
mongolian warriors mounted on horse fought best on grassland..
that is one reason why china lost.

vietnam is different.. mountainous, forest.. not grassland..
how u gonna ride a horse n fight? that is one reason they lost..

this is mentioned in thuy nga paris 7x..

Practically all of the Mongol forces that entered Vietnam in the 2nd & 3rd invasions, were Chinese. .

Contemporaneous Chinese records show that Chinese Generals were in charge of their own troops using superior Chinese weapons and Chinese tactics. The Mongols were the overall leaders.

I'm not sure about the first invasion, but it numbered only about 25,000. In these smaller armies, Mongols often made up only 1/2 of the total. The 2nd was 500,000 according to Western sources. And the 3rd was about 300,000.

There was rebellion after rebellion throughout the first millenia where the Chinese
were victorious each and every time. The rebels usually went hiding in the moutains and swamps then too. The second millenium, the Viets won each and every time. See the pattern?



And what does "thuy nga paris 7x" have to say about Saddam's massive stockpile of WMD's in Iraq?

How in the world does it look like Chinese characters?

Ask any white person...

It all looks like chicken scratch.