I once again stumbled upon some stuff about the Mongol conquests and the terrible massacres that they did everywhere, and then it struck me:
"How on earth could they massacre hundreds of thousands of civilians, when breaching the walls of a city?"
Seeing how the besieging armies were sometimes outnumbered up to 100:1 by the civilian population. After all, even a peasant with a stick is dangerous when fighting for his life and his families' life, and when there's 20 of them for every Mongol soldier. I just don't see how it'd be possible. Or do the estimates for the massacres consist solely of old women, cripple and children?
It's not like the usual 'paralysing fear', that often prevents prisoners from resisting, is applicable when the enemy is straight up running through the streets, entering houses and killing everyone in sight, either... right? You'd have to fight.
Extremely curious to hear on the matter from an expert. Cheers!
Being outnumbered 100:1 doesn't matter if they aren't outnumbered locally. If every family is in their own home, hoping the Mongols don't come for them, it doesn't matter how many of them there are. If they managed to put together an organized force and steel themselves for an all out battle no matter what the losses, the Mongols wouldn't have stood a chance. But that's no small thing you're asking for there.
Since they weren't all gathered in one spot you could just kill them at your own pace, not biting off more than you can chew you might say. If the Mongols spread themselves out perfectly evenly throughout the city the numbers would matter but if they took it street/neighbourhood at a time, they could get the job done while still maintaining local superiority.
Logical reasons aside, downright fear definitely does seem to have played a large part. Historian Ibn al-Athir said
it is said that a single one of them would enter a village or a quarter wherein were many people, and would continue to slay them one after another, none daring to stretch forth his hand against this horseman. And I have heard that one of them took a man captive, but had not with him any weapon wherewith to kill him; and he said to his prisoner, "Lay your head on the ground and do not move," and he did so, and the Tatar went and fetched his sword and slew him therewith. Another man related to me as follows: "I was going," said he, "with seventeen others along a road, and there met us a Tatar horseman, and bade us bind one another's arms. My companions began to do as he bade them, but I said to them, "He is but one man; wherefore, then, should we not kill him and flee?' They replied, 'We are afraid.' I said, 'This man intends to kill you immediately; let us therefore rather kill him, that perhaps God may deliver us.' But I swear by God that not one of them dared to do this, so I took a knife and slew him, and we fled and escaped.' And such occurrences were many.
A common Mongol tactic, as related in EMPIRE OF THE STEPPES, was to round up the entire population from some district. these people were given primitive weapons, such as wooden stakes, and driven against the walls of the cities in the next district. They had the choice of fighting their compatriots in front or being mowed down by the Mongol arrows. If they defected into the city under siege, that was agreeable to the Mongols as starvation would do its work faster. If of no further use, these human herds were shot down anyway.
The above tactic was very useful in Muslim lands, where people's experience with nomads was with civilized Turks and polished Kara-Khitai, not with Jenghiz Khan's culturally "savage" army. In China, where people were familiar enough with Mongols as neighbors, these tactics were much less effective; Chinese warfare was needed, with Chinese enlistees fighting alongside Mongols, and the conquest of China still took six decades to accomplish.