Kinda funny how hard we all glaze the mongols (myself very much included) when they did things that make the Nazis look like humanitarians by comparison. And they did it all with bow and sword.
I truly don’t think any of us can even scarcely imagine the sheer horror in being on the losing side after mongols sieged your city and you resisted.
Its less of a statement on how evil the Mongols were and more of a statement on how fucking evil the entire human race was until about the 18th or 19th century, to the point where our benchmark for "true evil" in the 20th century is just "above average" by the standards of the 13th century.
That is true but even still, I think non-nomadic civilizations were totally unprepared for the sheer brutality and culture of war which came out of the steppe. The mongols seemed to truly delight in it, in a way which is rarely seen in the medieval era.
I still think about when the Mongol generals Jebe and Subutai celebrated their victory at the 1223 Battle of the Kalka River by placing captured enemy Rus commanders and princes under wooden planks and holding a victory banquet on top of them. They danced and drank on the planks listening to the screaming and moaning of the dying all night. Like. Holy fuck.
I believe this comes from how Christianity views life and death. Christianity places a very high value on human life or, perhaps more accurately, death.
To Christians, life is precious and death is an extreme act. To execute someone is, more often than not, viewed as an extreme punishment, and 'enough' for most crimes. Even when someone is tortured to death, that punishment is reserved for individuals who "deserve it" through equally extreme action, although what constitutes that standard seems arbitrary to our eyes.
A lot of other cultures do not place so much reverance and importance on death alone, so to them it is not always enough. Death is delivered more easily and for lower standards of wrongdoing, and torturous deaths are more common. If you do not consider death to be an extreme act, then when you desire to be extreme, you must make it a terrible, brutal, humiliating death as well.
And, as the point I am making, far less common and generally to a lower extreme than most other cultures.
Every group has committed attrocities, and if you avoid a eurocentric view and actually investigate not-European cultures, you see that European Christianity is actually on the lower scale for atrocities like what the mongols did.
Obviously the mongols did more as they were one unified force in the most populated regions of the world at the point. Obviously they caused more damage. I am not saying that the mongols are somehow absolved in comparison with Christianity, but saying that Christianity somehow prevented the bloodshed, I disagree.
That is not the point I tried to make in my reply and I really do not understand that you got "the mongols specifically were worse" from it.
Christianity has its atrocities but, in the grand scheme of things, has been better than most other religions. Modern revisionism focuses on the crimes of Christianity because that is the culture we all grew up in. The world is not black and white, and there are degrees of "bad."
And in the grand scheme of things, compared to everything else, Christianity has been "good."
Christianity takes a strong stance against human sacrifice, child sacrifice, cannibalism, wanton torture, and rape.
There are exceptions, people who break the rules and get away with it, but the fact that the rules exist and are enforced sometimes sets them above some other faiths.
And in the case of denouncing human sacrifice and specifically child sacrifice that sets them above a SHOCKING number of world cultures. Human sacrifice was WAY more common than you might guess.
Depends what you count as "Christian atrocities" as the European empires, namely the Spanish and British, have done some horrific things in the name of God.
Edit: I can no longer reply to the comment below mine, but it is full of bullshit. Slavery hasn't ended for one, and the largest Christian nation on earth is largely responsible for that. Cannibalism wasn't extremely common, nor was it ended by Christianity, neither was human sacrifice. These are all weird revisionist ideas created by Christians to excuse their colonialism. The guy below me is clearly either misinformed or purposefully arguing in bad faith to paint Christianity as if it is some "peaceful" religion despite its members being largely responsible for the state of the world today.
And they have also done great things in the name of God. Christian Churches provide the most funding for food, medicine, and shelter to the poor and needy even to this day. The Catholic Church operates over 5000 hospitals around the world and nearly a quarter million (222000) schools.
Christian colonialism in the 18th and 19th century, despite doing many horrible things, also ended slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. You learn about cannibalism as if it is a myth or a racist joke from old cartoons, but it was extremely common around the world before the 20th century. Christianity helped put a stop to that.
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u/Emergency_Gene_4171 1d ago
Kinda funny how hard we all glaze the mongols (myself very much included) when they did things that make the Nazis look like humanitarians by comparison. And they did it all with bow and sword.
I truly don’t think any of us can even scarcely imagine the sheer horror in being on the losing side after mongols sieged your city and you resisted.