No they didn't. Steppe people came in and conquered settled people repeatedly throughout history. The Mongols are merely the most famous example. But you know the chinese faction the Mongols first conquered? A steppe people that had conquered Northern China, and not even from the native Han, no, they conquered it from the LAST steppe people that conquered northern China, and these were the ones that conquered it from the native Song dynasty.
The Mongols first hit the Empire of Jin, founded by the Jurchen tribes. Yes, these were steppe people that took advantage of the situation of NORTHERN Song and Liao Empire of the Khitai. I've already properly mentioned the Song Empire is already considered to be the WEAKEST of relative military power in all the history of Chinese Empires.
I've specifically stated that steppe people only entered China AFTER the Chinese basically tore themselves up from the inside. When their empires were functioning normally, sorry, but all the steppe people could muster were occasional raiding parties along the border frontiers.
Wanna know who was ruling persia and syria and most of anatolia at the time the Mongols arrived? The turks, another people who had conquered these lands from the steppes.
Plain wrong and misleading. Out of the 600 years of the great Muslim Empires, the front half of 300 years were the Umayyads and Abassids. The Umayyads were Arabian, and the Abassid Kurds were long assimiliated into the general Muslim Caliphate culture -- as well as the Seljuks and Ottomans.
You're speaking of people who
CAME from the steppes and
spent over 300 years assimilated to a highly-advanced city life. What part of Seljuks or Kurds living in places like major cities of Aleppo, Cairo, Damascus and etc, are you willing to call 'steppe,' I wonder.
Ever heard of Hungary? Made by steppe people. Who had conquered another group of steppe people, who had conquered yet ANOTHER group of step people who had set up shop in Roman territory.
FORMER Roman territory that experienced a vacuum of power and governance as the dominion of the Eastern Empire retreated under internal pressures.
Steppe people were well adapt at conquering cities. They did not, in any way, "suck" at it.
Again, 6 years in Xiangyang and 44 years in Song disagrees with you.
They were able to take one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world in China though.
The Mongols also never actually invaded Poland in force, and the forces that invaded Hungary were called away before they had time to settle in for any sort of siege warfare, and subsequent attempts never succeeded enough to invest in sieges.
That city, which you can't even remember the name of, is that Xiangyang. Spent 6 years.
With the best fortified city on earth barring MAYBE Constantinople. Not to mention the previous lands they had conquered from steppe dynasties ruling from chinese cities they conquered.
Again, to fill in the details you've either very conveniently left out, or just did not know, that "most heavily fortified city on Earth" you mentioned is the city of Xiangyang, which withstood a siege for bloody 6 years and stood tall -- until the Mongols had to bring in something that's got nothing to do with their steppe-arses -- trebuchets. That tech, and the arrival of Muslim engineers, broke the defenses.
The "previous steppe people the Mongols conquered" -- were the Jurchens, as I mentioned above, and they were in the midst of heavy rebellion within their territories from Chinese resistance forces, as well as locked in a bloody war with SOUTH Song -- when the Mongols started a blitz to pass the northern defenses to hit Jin.
And those northern Chinese cities the Jurchen Jins -- who've already adapted OUT OF THEIR STEPPE LIFE STYLES TO RULE CHINA -- were defending?
The Mongols, at the prime of Genghis Khan, took 23 years to finally break through Jin and conquer them, because they've met tremendous resistance in the Chinese cities. Under a normal situation, no steppe leader has enough political power to put their tribe through a war that takes decades. BECAUSE THE MONGOLS WERE AN ANOMALY IN THEIR CONSOLIDATION OF POWER these campaigns were possible -- which I have also mentioned.
It's like people think the world lives off video game determinism and if you put your civilization points in horse archers, you couldn't possibly have enough left over for siege engines or something.
You couldn't. That's not how socio-political conditions work.
The fact that steppe people could field so many cavalry, comes from their overall material situation. Their life style that produces such a strong field army, in turn, makes it impossible for them to maintain a consolidated military force for long enough a time to run yearslong campaigns to really conquer anything. Which is why the process of the Mongols coming to power, and forming a tight political control under the power of the Khan was something unprecedented and unseen in the steppes.
]
Because the Khan held such unusual power, he could assert enough will to keep the army besieging major fortifications despite heavy losses with no progress, for years.
Europe's social structure promoted the creation of fortifications on a scale that more centralized eastern empires did not replicate, though, again, China had some of the absolutely largest and best defended fortified cities in the period, they didn't have a vast feudal nobility that had been entrenched for centuries with all of them building themselves a ****ty keep to rule their local area. Indeed the Song deliberately stripped power from military warlords to prevent what had happened to the Tang.
Also Germany and west gets pretty far out of Steppe territory and it is harder to maiuntain a vast amount of remounts the Mongol armies relied on, though they could and did make that up with local forces elsewhere. But there's a reason the mongols never managed to fully conquer the indochinese societies despite a number of attempts (vietnam really sucks to invade).
Also the mongol empire was never stable enough to pursue a campaign in Europe so far from the heart of the empire, and successor states lacked the manpower, wealth, and organization the empire at its height did. Which is, ultimately, the actual historic reason the mongols never conquered europe. The attempt of the empire to project a force into Europe was foiled by the death of the kahn, and subsequently civil war for decades and decades between factions and successors, even as they continued their efforts to subdue China. The Yuan ultimately had little control over the mongol leaders in the western steppes who had supported Kublai's rivals, and eventually the Ilkahns also broke away.
And, finally, the mongols were not undefeatable and could be beaten in the field and driven off. The Egyptian sultanate drove the Mongols away (and then was rapidly couped by the mamlukes, who continued to reclaim Syria from both crusader and mongol forces). Nogai's attempts to invade hungary once more were foiled by a people that had learned something of their last defeats.
And guess why the Mongols were so unstable.
I'll give you a hint: it's a "steppe thing."
None of this has anything to do with some sort of inability to understand siege warfare coded into steppe people's DNA or something. Even if they lacked the institutional knowledge at first, they just learned. And the Khuzaits already have large cities, so, like, yeah, they'd have figured it out.
Nobody mentioned anything about "DNA" did they. Being a "steppe people" meant their formation of armies, way of warfare, were dictated by their culture and life-style, and economic/political foundation.
And that foundation, does not support the conditions required to be able to maintain an army capable of sieges, because siege warfare strips them of everything why a steppe army can be powerful, and takes it down to fight of pure attrition-by-numbers, faced against a force multiplier of walls and turrets and artillery, which they did not have access to.
I mention once again, that even the most mighty Mongols, required technology that was not of the steppes, to overcome such problems, and in the coming years their armies and even their life style lost semblance to the steppe life style, because you can't conquer and rule places like China while still being steppe people.
Steppe people suck in sieges, and that is a fact. Becoming proficient in siege warfare meant diluting that "steppy" characteristic of the army and welcoming in outside factors which a steppe army could not normally field. By the time Kubilai's army reached the southernmost sures of China in the last battle against Song, they were no longer the steppe army of horse archers and lancers. They were a mixed-force of infantry and cavalry, with artillery and siege engines, complete with naval forces headed by Chinese sailors and captains. <-- what part of this is "steppe" again?
