06-16-2008, 09:46 PM
I'm interested in the lady in Scotland, but I'll also say that there's quite a well known pair of equine classicists, Littauer and Crouwel, who have fairly exhaustively demonstrated that anything you can do with stirrups, you can do without stirrups, including using a lance.
However, any honest military historian who rides can also attest to the fact that no formed infantry anywhere in history have ever been broken by cavalry action unless they first lost their formation. So if you picture cavalry crashing into Hoplites or the like--not going to happen. Horses pretty much just won't. There are a very few and mostly debatable ancient, early modern, and modern examples...but I recommend Brent Nosworthy's "Anatomy of Victory". Cavalry is decisive when infantry is already unsteady, for whatever reason. A horse presented with an unbroken wall of spear points--remember, 18th C. soldiers only have a 42 inch "spear" with a 17 inch bayonet, and they are in only 2-3 ranks--and they NEVER got broken by frontal charging cavalry... horses just won't go. they'll pull up--as you can see in some of the best paintings of the horse and musket period.
If some of the infantry panic, though, before the horses pull up--then its a whole new ball game.
The Prussian staff did a study in the 1870s and established that the weapon used in a cavalry melee was of no importance, as all that mattered was the riding skill and the size and aggressiveness of the horses. Moderns like us think technology is a determinent--so consider, just for a moment, that it might not be one, and that lances and javelins and swords might actually not have been the reason that Thessalians and Macedonians were so tough... I can say from experience just as many British cavalrymen of the 19th C. said in India--lances are fearsome, but if you parry the point, you own that guy... and if your horse is bigger...
However, any honest military historian who rides can also attest to the fact that no formed infantry anywhere in history have ever been broken by cavalry action unless they first lost their formation. So if you picture cavalry crashing into Hoplites or the like--not going to happen. Horses pretty much just won't. There are a very few and mostly debatable ancient, early modern, and modern examples...but I recommend Brent Nosworthy's "Anatomy of Victory". Cavalry is decisive when infantry is already unsteady, for whatever reason. A horse presented with an unbroken wall of spear points--remember, 18th C. soldiers only have a 42 inch "spear" with a 17 inch bayonet, and they are in only 2-3 ranks--and they NEVER got broken by frontal charging cavalry... horses just won't go. they'll pull up--as you can see in some of the best paintings of the horse and musket period.
If some of the infantry panic, though, before the horses pull up--then its a whole new ball game.
The Prussian staff did a study in the 1870s and established that the weapon used in a cavalry melee was of no importance, as all that mattered was the riding skill and the size and aggressiveness of the horses. Moderns like us think technology is a determinent--so consider, just for a moment, that it might not be one, and that lances and javelins and swords might actually not have been the reason that Thessalians and Macedonians were so tough... I can say from experience just as many British cavalrymen of the 19th C. said in India--lances are fearsome, but if you parry the point, you own that guy... and if your horse is bigger...
Qui plus fait, miex vault.
