Comments by "diehardcat" (@diehardcat) on "GREAT HISTORY EN" channel.

  1. People who say it's because of the climate and environment need to find a natural map and look at it. Vietnam back then as Dai Viet only comprised of the northern 1/3rd of Vietnam today. On the west direction of that portion, it had only expanded to about 2/3rd of today's map from the eastern coastline. So it's about only half of many southern, central and eastern Chinese provinces today. So the Mongols should have conquered Dai Viet regardless because it was too small. That's why they chose to attack Dai Viet before Southern Song. Second, but they weren't the factors at all! The climate of that part of Vietnam, Dai Viet back then, is identical to the adjacent Chinese provinces. It's subtropical. There were no jungle warfare as many have ignorantly imagined because no jungle from the Chinese border to the southern tip of the Red River Delta. The Mongols had already conquered all those Chinese provinces with the same climate and together they were many times bigger than Dai Viet. They also selected troops from there, so there's absolutely no problem here. AND in all three attempts to conquer Dai Viet, they always chose to attack in December and January so it's still cold and sometimes very cold. No heat nor tropical disease because it was neither hot when they attacked nor does Dai Viet have tropical climate! The terrain in the mountainous area of Dai Viet is nothing compare to those of Yunnan, (Dali kingdom back then), Sichuan and Tibet which the Mongols had already crossed and conquered before reaching Dai Viet. The whole Dai Viet back then, all rough and flat lands together, was many times smaller than the mountainous area of those places. The peaks are twice lower, and there's no permafrost areas. From the Chinese border near the Vietnamese city of Lang Son today, the Mongols needed to cross only 70 km of mountainous area to reach the Red River Delta. If they could cross thousands of kilometers of real harsh environment of China and Tibet, Dai Viet should be a cruise. It's really an insult to them if someone says the terrain in Dai Viet could be a hindrance. And so for the Mongols, it was indeed always a cruise in all three invasions from the Chinese border to the capital city of Thang Long (Hanoi today). Taking it also wasn’t a big problem. Holding onto it and running back home were. Some say Dai Viet won by employing guerilla warfare. This is nothing further from the truth. In all three invasions, it was always decided by big battles, and the two sides fought in big battles in large numbers most of the time. Guerilla warfare only happened when the Mongols were running home through the mountainous area in the first two invasions or marching in in the third invasion. So please make a video debunking all these myths. This series is not complete without talking about it.
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  2. The terrain in the mountainous area of Dai Viet is nothing compare to those of Yunnan, (Dali kingdom back then), Sichuan and Tibet which the Mongols had already crossed before reaching Dai Viet. The whole Dai Viet back then, all rough and flat lands together, was many times smaller than the mountainous area of those places. The peaks are twice lower, and there're no permafrost areas. From the Chinese border near the Vietnamese city of Lang Son today, the Mongols needed to cross only 70 km of mountainous area to reach the Red River Delta. If they could cross thousands of kilometers of real harsh environment of China and Tibet, Dai Viet should be a cruise. It's really an insult to them if someone says Dai Viet terrain was somehow a problem. And so for the Mongols, it was indeed always a cruise in all three invasions from the Chinese border to the capital city of Thang Long (Hanoi today). Reaching and taking that capital city were never a problem for them. Staying and running back home were. All the major and decisive battles were fought on that flat land and rivers of the Red River Delta. So what’s the next excuse now? The number of Chinese who fled to Vietnam were small and negligible in every aspect, barely mentioned in any historical record. There was no Chinese general who fled China held any position in the resistance forces. They might have known the Mongols but the Viets had also known them through the first invasion when Song hadn't fallen yet. There were no fleeing Chinese then but Dai Viet had defeated them anyway. The Chinese have a very bad habit of claiming credit for every good thing happened on earth. But look, they couldn't hold off the Mongols when they were tens of times bigger in both number and territories than Dai Viet and the Mongols themselves at the beginning, so how could they in anyway help Dai Viet where the situation was reversed?! They had lost big time, that's why they ran remember?!
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  3.  @dennisshaper4744 except there was no jungle in Dai Viet. See that name? This wasn’t the Vietnam War in the 1960s.
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  4.  @samweirich5973 the climate and terrain also weren’t factors. If they were, the Mongols wouldn’t have successfully conquered China, Tibet Dali back then or half of the world for that matter! Why everybody thinks the Mongols suddenly became so fragile in Vietnam?!
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  5.  @hieudotrung3439  no, what I said is based on historical records from both sides. Guerrilla warfare was barely mentioned. Most were big battles. You just can’t defeat any army with hundreds of thousands of troops in a few months with guerrilla warfare, let alone the Mongol one! That imagination is really s th pid!
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  6.  @TheZevvy  much of Tibet is flat, yes, but it’s not like Mongolia because it’s a 5000 meter high plateau. It’s hard to even breathe there if you’re not the natives! On the south and east side of it, there are two of the highest mountain ranges in all of Asia and the world. The terrain and environment are definitely many times more challenging than Dai Viet. Dali kingdom (Yunnan, China today) and Sichuan, have much worse terrains than Dai Viet too but they had fallen anyway. For Laos (Khmer empire back then) and Myanmar (Pagan back then), the Mongols must cross real, deep jungles that spanned many hundreds or thousands kilometers to get to the flat land where large populations lived but Dai Viet wasn’t the case. The Mongols on the shortest route from the Chinese border only needed to cross about 70 km of mountainous area to reach the flat land of the Red River Delta, and another 70 km to reach the capital city of Thang Long or Hanoi today. They had never had problem reaching and taking that capital city. Holding onto it and escaping Dai Viet were the problems. But it’s not the climate or weather like you imagined. They always purposefully chose to attack Dai Viet in the dead of winter of December or January. And yes, Dai Viet, which was the 1/3rd northern part of Vietnam today does have winter because it’s in subtropical region like adjacent Chinese provinces. There’s no tropical climate, so there was no jungle, nor hot weather, nor tropical diseases, and the Mongol invading forces were always defeated and ran home before summer set in! There’s really no excuse! They had simply defeated in battles and lost the war. It’s as simple as that so get over it! It’s not like they had never defeated elsewhere on the planet!
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  7.  @Nobumblegumforyou Fact: the climate and terrain of Dai Viet was way too easy compared to China for the Mongols
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  8.  @michmanusa Those surnames of Lý and Trần are Baiyue (Viet) surnames. Han Chinese conquered Baiyue lands south of the Yangtze 2200 years ago and call them theirs but the people and lands weren’t Chinese originally so stop claiming the whole world belongs to China!
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  9. @ That's only ur imagination. History didn't happen that way.
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  10.  @hieudotrung3439  Just talking back like a 12-year-old won't help you. You don't even know the meaning of the word 'imagination'. Imagine is when you just make it all up in yr head. It's not based on facts, so there's nothing to back it up. That's what you've been doing. What I said is the truth because everybody can easily verify it by looking up actual historical records and geography/climate facts of North Vietnam where Dai Viet was.
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  11. There was no jungle where the Mongols fought the Vietnamese.
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  12. The Mongols beat and wiped China off the map in a naval battle, so you cannot say they weren't good at that! There was no naval battle in the Mongol's Japan campaign. Essentially, their fleet was wiped out by a storm!
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  13. The first invasion of the Mongols against Dai Viet happened before their successful conquest of China but they failed too, so it’s not about the generals, or the drive for conquest,…Heck, they invaded Dai Viet three times and were preparing for the forth and you say they had no drive?! There’s no jungle in Dai Viet, get over it. The Mongols had conquered half the known world back then. There was nothing they hadn’t seen! Terrains, climate,…warfare tactics. They knew them better than anybody else.
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  14.  @hieudotrung3439  But that’s only your imagination and your imagination doesn’t count. Go learn some actual history.
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  15.  @hieuphanthanh5959 the Americans won or lost in Vietnam has nothing to do with what I said. You’re another j Eliot!
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  16.  @hieuphanthanh5959  both or you need to learn to read!
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  17. The jungle only exists in your head, not Dai Viet back then. And so the Mongols did successfully utilize their horses and arrows at first but were routed at the end anyway.
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  18. @Nico-x2t4t there’s no jungle where the Mongols fought Dai Viet. The two sides fought mostly in large battles in large numbers in the Red River Delta where most of about 4.5 millions Viets lived. There’s no jungle from there to the Chinese border ever because the climate of that region isn’t tropical. Jungle only exists in tropical climate.
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  19. The the Mongols always chose to attack in December or January, in the dead of winter of Dai Viet, and always defeated before summer set in. There’s absolutely no high temperature or humidity excuse here. And yes, Dai Viet had winter because it was in the same climate zone of Southern China which is subtropical. Tropical climate is only something in your head!
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  20.  @Taromango-x9f  But it's not anything that you can call 'hot'. Hanoi's temperature ranges during each month in a year are about the same as Nanning and Guangzhou, two of the adjacent China's provinces' capital cities. And all of those places are not hotter than the Middle East. The Mongols did successfully conquer a lot hotter and larger region like the Middle East and the whole China, so why must the winter temperatures in Hanoi suddenly become the reason for their failure in Dai Viet?!
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  21. They thought it would be quick the first two times and they could always rob food from the locals as usual so they brought only enough. But all the locals had left their villages and cities with their food and burnt down everything else following the government order. Learning the lesson well, they carefully prepared for the third time but the fleet carrying food and supplies was attacked by Dai Viet, so the troops either got drowned or dispersed and those food and supplies never reached their destination.
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  22. The jungle only exists in your head, not Dai Viet.
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  23.  @robvision3888  OK so Lt. Dan is your source of info in life?! No wonder!😂You need to ask John McCain though because he was actually shot down over Hanoi and imprisoned for a few years there so he'd know. Hanoi was where the Mongols fought the Viets, not where Lt. Dan was. He had never got a chance to go anywhere near Hanoi before or after losing both his legs so he wouldn't know. Here's a hint, Vietnam is a 1000 mile long country with different climate regions.
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  24. The climate in North Vietnam is almost identical to that of adjacent Chinese provinces so climate reason is among the lamest!
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  25. @ How's what?!
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  26. Jungle warfare exists only in your head because there were no jungles in Dai Viet
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  27. Rainforest exists only in the central and southern parts of Vietnam, not the north part which was Dai Viet back then. Have you heard the clip?! There was no mentioning of rainforest blocking the Mongols, both sides always fought on the flat land of the Red River Delta until the Mongols lost and ran home.
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