This structure enabled the Mongols to outmaneuver, surround, and destroy their enemies. Mongol forces routinely defeated armies five times their size. And they often confounded conventional wisdom by attacking on two fronts at once, a tactic that forestalled neighboring princes from coming to each other’s aid, lest the next attack suddenly land on their own city. Genghis’s campaigns were marked by rapid advances—his cavalry could move sixty-five miles a day, and Mongolian ponies were as nimble as dogs—by clouds of arrows, alternate attacks from light and heavy cavalry, feigned retreats and
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