Of course when you take a town you kill the ruler and most of the nobles. But people with talent would be drafted to do whatever it was they were good at… so translators, people helping with logistics, and so on, right?
Comment on Dicks out for victory
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 week agoI by “recruit” you mean enslave thousands of people and force them to work on building siege machines and digging tranches than yes :)
Seriously, I’ve read that each Mongol warrior was supposed to catch like 10 people as they moved through the invaded lands and they would move all those people like cattle with the army. When they finally reached the main objective they would force all those people to cut down trees and build siege machines. People from smaller towns would flee the incoming army to bigger forts which meant that before Mongols got there the cities were already overcrowded and had troubles to withstand the siege. It was methodical and brutal and worked perfectly.
NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 1 week ago
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 1 week ago
Oh yes, they would be brought back to the capital to serve the empire. I thought you meant recruited for fighting which I don’t think happened. They were great at using all the skilled tradesmen. I think they even brought some miners back from Europe to open mines in Mongolia.
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Also they used the captured locals left over as “cannon fodder” in front of the army as a way to demoralize the defense that had to kill their owns.
(Of course cannon here is more arrows but you get the point)