Hard riding no saddles or stirrups

[Lepidina]

Mules are cool. I had a great uncle that sold mules in Alabama but I don't know if he was ever a mule skinner. I had an uncle who used to say, "You're getting your gees confused with your haws," that took me ages to figure out what that meant. (When you're 10, I was like "um, if you say so." )

I see them from time to time at horse shows. I was riding a really green off the track TB in the warm-up ring at his first show with a girl who was riding a mule. My horse was being very good about it and just stopping and staring s if to say, "WHAT IS THAT THING?!?! It looks sort of like a horse but it doesn't smell like a horse or move like a horse. I'm confused." Other people's horses were doing the "Oh my God, RUN AWAY!! RUN AWAY!! It's EEEEEEVIL" routine. The mule, on the other hand, didn't seem to care and the girl riding it said she'd never go back to horses.

Get the mules. You can pack your gear on them for your contubernium.

[Caius Fabius]

a mule can kick different than a horse. Standing four footed, it can reach and kick a hand touching it's ear. Very fast and hand-numbing.... and they are known for being a bit more quick to bite. My neighbor's mules are plenty noisy. I see the Special Forces and 10th Mountain Division using mules and donkeys in the mountains of Afghanistan, even today.

I am still 'flabbergasted' by the idea of 18 pairs of mules pulling a train of wagons across the prairie. We'll probably never see something like that again. Now it is hard to find anyone who can hitch ahorse or mule, let alone pack them properly.

[Magnus]

On the internet...or maybe it was in an email, I saw a picture of a puma that was attacking some riders and their mules, but the mule ended up biting the puma on teh back and tossing it around until it killed it.

Quite fascinating if it's true.

[Tiberius Martius]

To get to my point, you were asking about whether or not cavalry can charge like you see in Rome Total War and Gladiator? Historians disagree on many aspects of this but I go with Adrian Goldsworthy, who writes extensively about the Roman military machine. Riding a horse without stirrups makes bracing for a charge very difficult. It's unlikely that Roman horse would mount highly effective charges on the battlefield, especially considering the rough topography of Italy, which is largely why they went with the heavy infantry approach. It is known that to charge like a medieval knight with the spear couched under your arm on a Roman saddle is very difficult when contact is made with the opposing rank because contact will almost certainly dehorse the cavalryman at full gallop in a straight charge. It would most certainly be a suicide for the front ranks who'd get ejected at point of impact and then crushed by their own ranks after being dehorsed or cut to pieces by the enemy. The stirrup was a vital invention as it allows the rider to brace his legs as a shock absorber and drive the lance through the target, instead of at it. Cavalry depictions from the Roman period show cavalrymen with the spear held overhand, so it is more likely that cavalry would attack from the walk or stationary, perhaps galloping at an angle to skirt around the enemy, as a stationary horse against infantry is in trouble, the mobility of cavalry is it's major advantage, so cavalry needed to keep moving and stabbing with the spear and defending with the shield. Charges spent both man and horse, and considering cavalry was drawn from the wealthier aspects of society, it's unlikely the Romans would send their richest and most influential citizens on a suicide charge directly into enemy infantry. We know in many battles, cavalry engaged from the flanks, but this was largely once the infantry was engaged from the front. In most of the battles I've read, the cavalry usually engaged the enemy cavalry and this proved decisive in many cases. Horses will refuse to run into other horses, so it's unlikely that you'd see Kingdom of Heaven like cavalry charges with horses galloping at full speed into each other in the Roman period. It's more likely that cavalry engaged other cav at the walk and then stationary, as trying to stab a moving target while moving yourself is very tricky indeed. Cavalry probably also was important as a missile throwing capability, attacking from the sides with javelins or bows or inticing the enemy into a rash assault by the appearance of a vulnerable position on the battelfield because of its mobility, or leading enemy cavalry away to offset. It can be concluded largely from the writings of Goldsworthy that Roman cav was largely the counter to enemy missile troops and cav and largely to crush the enemy once they turned and ran and provide scouting and patrol capabilities. It was not effective to charge into battle directly as the knights of the middle ages, but rather to attack the flanks with missiles and engage in a cycle of attack, withdraw and roll around the enemy to attack again. Remember cavalry was ridiculously expensive to train and maintain in those days, so commanders most certainly would have taken care to try to put their cavalry in the best situation possible, with relatively flat, open terrain. To see a Gladiator style charge through the woods would be highly impractical even with the most experienced riders. Not only would this break up the formation which was so important for staying power. Also, Roman horses were not huge war horses like the shire, perchon, or belgian draft breeds, they probably more resembled the Andalusian and similar breeds of Spanish origin, as Celiberian horses were used all over the world. It's more reasonable to believe that Roman horse did not charge the front of the enemy under most circumstances, but rather to engage enemy cavalry and protect the sides of the legion. it is more reasonable to believe cavalry was more of a harrasing weapon used to tie down the flanks of the enemy so the heavy infantry (which was the real killers of the Roman army) could smash through the enemy lines. Once the enemy took flight, then the cav would trample and kill the routing army and take full advantage of their mobility.

[Matthew]

Sure, but charging directly into formed up heavy infantry was not the standard practice of the Medieval period either, or not a very successful one, so I'm led to believe. I can't agree that Stirrups made all the difference, but that remains something of a debating point. 'The Great Stirrup Controversy' touches upon this:

http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/stirrups.html

Stirrups are no doubt an advantage, but how much of an advantage it is difficult to say at this time with any real certainty.

[Endre Fodstad]

Well, the "Great Stirrup Controvercy" (which primarily means White vs Bachrach) isn't so much about the effectiveness of stirrups but about whether or not stirrups "caused" feudalism.

On the other note, no, charging formed infantry was also considered a bad idea by heavy cavalry in the middle ages - especially since organized infantry tended to form hedgehogs or spear lines, often at a geographically favorable spot. The trick was to disorganize them enough for the heavy cavalry to exploit the breaches - missile fire and/or infantry assault was commonly used to achieve disorganization.

[Matthew]

Yes, I know. That's why I said 'touches upon'.

I'm unsure whether your 'no' is intended towards me here; if so I would ask you to reread my post, as I'm in agreement with you, at least as far as I can see.

[Tiberius Martius]

Sure, but charging directly into formed up heavy infantry was not the standard practice of the Medieval period either, or not a very successful one, so I'm led to believe. I can't agree that Stirrups made all the difference, but that remains something of a debating point. 'The Great Stirrup Controversy' touches upon this:

http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/stirrups.html

Stirrups are no doubt an advantage, but how much of an advantage it is difficult to say at this time with any real certainty.

Notice why I mentioned several possible reasons including horse size and stature and the tactics of the time. I used that as an example, watching hollywood movies does not always give an accurate depiction of the warfare of the time and this is the point I'm making. Stirrups did not make all the difference and I never said that they did. I said they were part of the reason and then included other possible reasons as well, including the lack of number of cavalrymen, their status in society and horse size and tactics.

[Tiberius Martius]

Sure, but charging directly into formed up heavy infantry was not the standard practice of the Medieval period either, or not a very successful one, so I'm led to believe. I can't agree that Stirrups made all the difference, but that remains something of a debating point. 'The Great Stirrup Controversy' touches upon this:

http://scholar.chem.nyu.edu/tekpages/stirrups.html

Stirrups are no doubt an advantage, but how much of an advantage it is difficult to say at this time with any real certainty.

Good reading though..thanks for the stuff on the "Stirrup Controversy."

[Caius Fabius]

Armchair cavalry commanders?

Horses will not this and horses will not do that.... !!!!!!!!

I will agree that horses will not fly (without help).
Most everything else that people keep saying that horses will not do is simply a matter of conditioning and training. If you want to spend your life training horses, you can teach them to obey and 1. charge other horses, 2. charge formed infantry, 3. dance, 4. lay down, roll over, and jump into a pool of water from a diving board, 5. stand next to a firing cannon, 6. move into a yelling mob of people throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails, 7. kick people in the face..... the list is limited by your imagination and ability and amount of time you want to spend. (They don't use tools very well, but they can be trained to open a door, a drawer, a barrel of feed or a gate).

Is an untrained horse going to do all of this, no, (although they like to roll over on their own and stallions will attack each other without human help.)

I get the impression that there are some really well read people here, who have not ridden even a bare 100 miles on a horse, but are quoting their reading as 'absolute known truth'. Unfortunately, then other people see these well-written 'facts' and actually believe them. I may not be able to prove what color of tunic someone wore in ancient Roman army, but if you want to pay for my time and the horse and upkeep, I can darn well prove that you can teach a horse to attack formed infantry, (you better pay their insurance), and will charge into another horse. It will take a lot of time, 2 or 3 years to get the horse working to standards, and it will take about 4-6 hours a day of my time, but then, what else were Roman cavalrymen doing? And I will have to ride bareback with just a saddle pad, until I get a 4 horned saddle that fits.

It doesn't matter if I train the horse to run at the enemy, letting me throw several missile weapons, and then slash with my long sword (spatha) or if we use a kontos, ie long spear, which we break or get rid of at first contact and then use another weapon.

I can't imagine any historian who studies the weapons and history of Alexander saying that no one could couch a lance without stirrups. You just let go instead of holding on at contact!

To imagine that in 1000 years of history, that Roman cavalry was only used in one way is another fallacy! We know that in the Republic, lightly armed cavalrymen rode into battle and dismounted for combat, remounting and riding forward or backwards; while in the late empire, the massed heavy cavalry was capable of making a frontal charge against infantry formations. I suspect that training the horse to stay at your side in the middle of a battle while you dismounted was harder than training it to be a part of a mass charge against infantry. Training a cow pony (horse) to stop and stand still when you dismount to dally up the calf you have roped, then to apply backward strain on the lariat to control the calf is much harder than teaching the horse to haze a bull or cow.

Some of this stuff can't be learned by reading books or the internet, or even sitting around a campfire, you actually have to get out and do it, or you probably should not be making pronouncements about what you can and can't teach an animal to do. One of these days I'll probably end up dead because I didn't train or know an animal as well as I thought I did, but that does not mean the animal is untrainable, just that I wasn't doing it right!

[Matthew]

Fair enough; I was mainly responding to the vital invention point you made regarding the stirrup.

Riding a horse without stirrups makes bracing for a charge very difficult. It's unlikely that Roman horse would mount highly effective charges on the battlefield, especially considering the rough topography of Italy, which is largely why they went with the heavy infantry approach. It is known that to charge like a medieval knight with the spear couched under your arm on a Roman saddle is very difficult when contact is made with the opposing rank because contact will almost certainly dehorse the cavalryman at full gallop in a straight charge. It would most certainly be a suicide for the front ranks who'd get ejected at point of impact and then crushed by their own ranks after being dehorsed or cut to pieces by the enemy. The stirrup was a vital invention as it allows the rider to brace his legs as a shock absorber and drive the lance through the target, instead of at it.

It is my understanding that it is mainly the saddle that prevents the rider from being 'ejected' rather than the stirrup and that the Roman Military Saddle was very secure. From this point of view, one might argue that the stirrup was a refinement rather than a revolution.
The couched lance technique, was, as far as can be discerned, something of an innovation, but not for cavalry versus infantry, rather for cavalry versus cavalry.

Cavalry depictions from the Roman period show cavalrymen with the spear held overhand

Perfectly true, but its also worth bearing in mind that the Bayeux tapestry overwhelmingly depicts the same sort of over hand spear technique, both, it seems, for casting the Javelin and charging directly into the enemy shield wall, as well as in conjunction with the couched spear technique, which is also depicted charging through a hail of missiles into the enemy shield wall, in what lookslike a suicide bid to me.
Indeed, William is himself said to have been dehorsed on three occasions during the battle; perhaps he was charging the shield wall directly? I wonder exactly what the casualty rate amongst the Norman horses was on that day? At any rate, it wasn't a very successful tactic, stirrup or no.
Matthew Bennett, in the paper cited above, recounts an interesting episode in the Near East where Tancred Prince of Antioch's knights failed against the citizen militia infantry of Muslim Shaizar:

'On that same day [in 1110], a number of footsoldiers came out of Shaizar. The Franks charged them, without disturbing their formation. Thereupon Tancred became angry and said, 'You are my knights and each of you receives pay equivalent to the pay of a hundred Muslims. You have these sergeants [by which he meant the infantry] in front of you, and you are not capable of moving them!' They answered, 'We fear only for our horses; otherwise we would have crushed and pierced such enemies with our lances.' Tancred answered, 'The horses belong to me; I will replace anyone's horse that gets killed'. They then made several charges against the men of Shaizar, and lost seventy horses, , but could not move the enemy from the position they had taken up.'

Autobiography of Ousama, ed. and trans. G. R. Potter, Londo 1929, 89.

Charges spent both man and horse, and considering cavalry was drawn from the wealthier aspects of society, it's unlikely the Romans would send their richest and most influential citizens on a suicide charge directly into enemy infantry.

True for the Early Republic, but what about allied cavalry? Perhaps the Romans weren't so careful with them? Seriously, though, I have to agree that this would not have been good use of resources, but tha doesn't mean it wasn't done.

We know in many battles, cavalry engaged from the flanks, but this was largely once the infantry was engaged from the front. In most of the battles I've read, the cavalry usually engaged the enemy cavalry and this proved decisive in many cases.

Got to agree with this.

It can be concluded largely from the writings of Goldsworthy that Roman cav was largely the counter to enemy missile troops and cav and largely to crush the enemy once they turned and ran and provide scouting and patrol capabilities. It was not effective to charge into battle directly as the knights of the middle ages, but rather to attack the flanks with missiles and engage in a cycle of attack, withdraw and roll around the enemy to attack again.

Not sure how far I agree with Goldsworthy. Seems to me like a misunderstanding of medieval warfare. The above functions would certainly not be unfamiliar to the mounted Knight of the earliest period and the Sergeant of the later. Knights tended to charge enemy cavalry directly, but not enemy infantry, unless they were desperate or being over rash.

Remember cavalry was ridiculously expensive to train and maintain in those days, so commanders most certainly would have taken care to try to put their cavalry in the best situation possible, with relatively flat, open terrain. To see a Gladiator style charge through the woods would be highly impractical even with the most experienced riders. Not only would this break up the formation which was so important for staying power.

True enough, but no less true in the middle ages.

Also, Roman horses were not huge war horses like the shire, perchon, or belgian draft breeds, they probably more resembled the Andalusian and similar breeds of Spanish origin, as Celiberian horses were used all over the world.

Niether were medieval horse over large, though this is a matter of some debate, it seems fifteen hands might have been quite usual.

Glad you enjoyed the 'Great Stirrup Controversy' link.

[Lepidina]

(They don't use tools very well, but they can be trained to open a door, a drawer, a barrel of feed or a gate).

Heck, some horses don't need to be trained to do that!! I've seen them get dog snaps off by themselves.

I can darn well prove that you can teach a horse to attack formed infantry, (you better pay their insurance), and will charge into another horse.

That one is easy. Play polo. If you don't get out of the way, you will be run over whether you are on a horse or on the ground. We also "bump" other horses which is riding at the same speed side by side trying to push the other person out of the way, kind of like body-checking in hockey. Polo ponies don't have nearly the training as a good warhorse so it can definitely be done.

[Felix]

It is possible to conduct shock combat without stirrups, the Companions of Alexander showed this. It may not be easy to use a couched lance (i.e. tucked under the arm) without stirrups, but the main force of impact tends to push the rider back (so I am told) off the rump of the horse, and it is the saddle which is most critical in preventing this. There are other ways of spearing an opponent.

"Cavalry depictions from the Roman period show cavalrymen with the spear held overhand"

There is a famous Roman era illustration of a lance used underhanded, two-handed, for shock without stirrups - the Dura Europos graffito. Two handed use of the lance was recorded by Tacitus for the Sarmatians, and is described in medieval muslim manuals of horsmanship - as a shock weapon. The contos can be used to stab without the full impact of the thrust being absorbed by the body of the rider - his arms take up some of the recoil; and this technique endured for thousands of years.

[Tiberius Martius]

Ok..wait a minute everyone haha. Notice in my writing I use the words "reasonble to believe" or we assume this or that. I never said you can't train a horse to do those things. I simply tried to state that to do that in battle would have been impratical given the circumstances. It'd be like using a nuclear weapon against 10 infantry, it can be done, but it's largely impractical in the broad scheme of warfare. I'm not a Roman cavalryman, nor am I a scholar of any kind or master equestrian. But Caius I have spent time around horses extensively, I live in Iowa so naturally we have lots of farmland here. It's reasonable to believe that Roman cavalry were used primarily for other duties, not because horses not smart enough to be trained to charge, that was putting words in my mouth I never said that. I said with the money invested in cavalry it was more reasonable to believe cavalry would perform different roles than being thrown directly into enemy infantry in a headlong charge. It can be done, but it makes no sense concerning you would kill off most of your future officers and wealthy men and or allies. I simply said these tactics were more practical efficiently using the mobility of cavalry to its full advantage. With lots of training you can train a horse to charge into other horses, and then your horse is dead and all that training and time and money was wasted...beginning to see my point here? It's simply nonsense to believe an ancient commander would charge headlong into a phalanx or pila volley, that's suicide no matter how good your horse is.
Regarding the spear being couched. It is true that two handed spears were used for shock charges. However this left the rider very vulnerable to missile attack. It may absorb some of the shock, but imagine sitting on top of a car at 40 mph and driving your lance into a solid object, you're probably going to get knocked backward and I dont know if saddles of that time were advanced enough to keep a soldier mounted with that kind of force exerted. (even if they did, you'd get one heck of an enema!) So please don't quote me wrong here. I was trying to state for Woad way back at the beginning of the discussion that thunderous charges were probably rare on the battlefield because of their lack of practicality. Never did I say they can't be done, but that to do them would require such an investment of time and money that'd it would be highly unlikely to see such a force at work given the thousands of variables in war.

[Tiberius Martius]

Keep this up though..I need more criticism..you all are giving me great ideas for my disortation!