Mounted Combat/Useful Notes: Difference between revisions

Horses were ridden into battle for thousands of years, but most human beings today are unlikely to see one except at a recreational stable. This [[Useful Notes]] article exists to talk a little bit about mankind's favorite beast of burden, and how it performs in war.

 

 

This is somewhat counterproductive to the nature of the animal that rides it; humans are rather more bellicose. (Well, [[Actual Pacifist|some]] [[Technical Pacifist|of]] [[Reluctant Warrior|them]], anyway.) As a result, humans have tried to prepare their mounts for combat in various ways, starting by selecting horses with traits suited to the battlefield for breeding. Horses bred for trust in their rider, size, strength and, above all, a calm demeanor, quickly became the warhorses that carried the richest warriors into battle. Further training was carried out to prepare them to overcome their natural instinct to flee; horses in Roman times were prepared for battle by simulating the noise and clamour of battle so as to make the animal used to such alarming circumstances.

On the flip side, however, a horse is a big target. Archers on foot have a much bigger target to aim at than their mounted counterparts, and if the horse was felled, the horse's rider faced a painful tumble, after which still had to get up before some infantryman could finish him off. If the horse fell ''on'' its rider, it was over. Furthermore a horse is not as stable a fighting platform as solid ground, and riders were vulnerable to being toppled; the heavier the armour of the rider, the worse this was for him. Not to mention the number of accounts of wounded horses charging off the battlefield as their bemused rider was carried off the field with the terrified animal!

 

 

Cavalry remained relegated to judiciously timed flank assaults and archer support, however, until the coming of the late Roman period, when the Huns proved that heavy cavalry could beat heavy infantry. (This was one of the factors, incidentally, which sealed the still infantry-heavy Roman army's fate... though the Eastern Romans managed to adopt a much more cavalry-heavy army.) After the collapse of the Western Roman and Hunnic empires, the Normans initially were amongst the first mounted soldiers who had a decent chance of giving an infantry formation serious pause for thought from the front, breaking the dominance of the infantry soldier through Europe's dark ages, though they preferred to soften such formations up with hails of javelins from horseback and, when that failed, archer support, before punching through the weakened lines. As time wore on and armour (and possibly more crucially, the archer component) got better, this light javelin was replaced by the couched lance, the iconic arm of the medieval mounted knight.

That said, The [[Polish Soviet War]] and the [[Red October|Russian Civil War]] before that, had considerable use of cavalry / dragoons. In general eastern Europe was more cavalry country then western, and the age of the cavalry reached its conclusion later there.

 

 

Also, it is a common spelling error to refer to men riding horses in battle as "Calvary". [[You Keep Using That Word|Calvary is a hill in Jerusalem]]. Easy way to remember the spelling: In the war movies, you always hear them talk about "Armored Cav" or "Airborne Cav", or talk about "Cav Troopers". Never "Cal".