Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Orlirva]

I asked Radek Sikora about the Polish examples, who said:
"According to Jerzy Kudelski, a standard distance of 1 day of march in a good
weather was 50 km. Longer marches (over 10 hours / 60-70 km) were called forced
marches. After 3-4 days of forced marches, cavalry usually rested 1 day. It
gives an average speed of 45-56 km / day (180-280 km in 4-5 days). I don't have
data for longer marches.
Anyway, light cavalry was able to move even 160-300 km in a single march (I
mean, without a longer rest). Heavier cavalry was slower, but for example some
units of Polish hussars moved 120 km in 24 hours and in the meantime they
participated in 5-hours battle (it happened in the battle of Kluszyn 1610)."


The figures are for generally flat easy-travel terrain, with good grazing. The polish hussars certainly would have brought their prime battle horse along unburdened, while they rode other horses. To continue the comparison with baggage, each heavy cavalry post of (let's say) 3 fighting men had their own tabor wagon and two servants (who could perhaps fight in defense of the camp or in sieges, they also escorted remounts to the edge of the battlefield). The wagon was quite small and was pulled by two good horses, and could keep up with the cavalry's pace. They would have maybe 8 riding or spare wagon horses, and 3 good highly-trained fighting horses and 2-3 lesser quality fighting horses. The banner had some additional unit wagons, some of which might be like Conestoga wagons pulled by teams of 6 or 8 horses and could also keep up. If the grazing was not good (e.g. in winter or in bad terrain), the system did not work and the traveling horse parade went nowhere fast, because they counted only on bringing some bags of oats to supplement the fighting horse's diet. Professionals, they could of course operate in winter by doing the logistical legwork and hauling fodder and creating depots, and sometimes they pulled a surprise on Tatars who were operationally immobile in winter/early spring, because of fodder issues.

I mention this because the servant count and other hints are similiar to that recommended in the Strategkon. I don't know how much of this applies to the Byzantine way, but in the absence of other recorded details....

Above I mentioned the servants' role of bringing remounts to the edge of battle... maybe that is even into battle so they would have been armed - but expected to avoid fighting anyway. Pasek (a junior officer of the Polish pancerni-cossaks ca 1660) wrote of their job in collecting battlefield prizes - especially in the form of trained war horses which were extremely valuable....worth on average a cottage on 10 acres of land, and perhaps far more. Pasek told of overruning a muscovite cavalry unit and killing a richly dressed boyar (a young teenager, by the way) on an unusally fine horse, grabbing the reins and calling and looking around for his servant who was no where to be found ( he was expected to stay in sight?). His heart breaking and cursing his lacky, he let go of the horse because there was still fighting to do.