What has always interested me is the very question Favonius raised . . . that cavalry tactics and heavy armor apparently were so important to Mongol tactics that what would they do if caught on poor ground, where they could not manouver? And yet they were so seldom defeated that I have to imagine their tactics also relied on sheer numbers as well as arrows.

Of course, another point that occurred to me - what influence could the Parthians have had on the Mongols, if any? Heaven knows, it was hundreds - even a thousand - years before. But their use of arrows, heavy armored cavalry, etc., sounds so much like the features of Parthian warfare that I wonder if any connection can be made. Or was it just - spontaneous recreation of an old idea?