Posts: 704
Tue 03 Mar, 2009 11:50 pm
Quote: |
The reason horses are used as cavalry mounts, and mules are not, is that horses are much more easily trained to do things that could harm them, rather like dogs and people. Mules are WAY to smart for that sort of thing... |
I'd hate to say horses are that dumb, as men in the civil war were trained to march in tight formation against hundreds of rifles firing at them at close range, not to mentiongrape shot :D
But horses have a natural aversion to approach large bodies of men in tight formation, add rows of pikes and spears and it goes more against their nature.
Men have a natural aversion towards being trampled by a group of 1000+ pound horses with riders.
Training can train some of this aversion out of both men and horses, but when it comes to a cavalry charge, one or the other will often "flinch", be it horses slowing down or shying away, or men turning and running, or at least not holding their ground.
Which one "flinches" first often determines the sucess of a cavalry charge, but their have certainly been situations where neither side flinched, and if pike armed, or at least spear armed, or a shield wall, etc. the men had a very good chance of repulsing the charge.
Even if it was a trade of of casualties, as long as the morale of the men held out they were trading in battlefield terms inexpensive foot soliders for expensive heavy cavalry.
Posts: 200 Location: Mountainous Terrain
Wed 04 Mar, 2009 10:39 am
Lafayette C Curtis wrote: |
Which source?
(I know, asking this question is a bad habit I've picked up in the last couple of years or so.) |
I'm sorry for such late answer.
As far as your question is concerned. There are 2 sources which state that horses chests hit piks:
1. Diariusz drogi Króla JMci Zygmunta III od szczęśliwego wyjazdu z Wilna pod Smoleńsk w roku 1609 a die 18 Augusta i fortunnego powodzenia przez lat dwie do wzięcia zamku Smoleńska w roku 1611.
2. Wiadomość o porażce Dymitrego
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 6:41 am
Gentlmen all I can add is that at Waterloo the finest cavalry in Europe failed to break the british squares despite repeated efferts. On the whole they were beaten by hedges of bayonets not gun fire tests conducted by I believe the household cavalry showed that even hard ridden horses will turn away from hedge of spikes. I read somewhere I do not have source that horses used to be divided into three classes. New horses trained to ride down dummys these could be ridden into troops if not to close packed once. Horses who had been in battle and learned that wooden
shields and mail clad men were not padded dummys some could be driven to charge again the rest not. Lastly the veterans who had learned to avoid men and weapons these difinatly wouldnt charge home. How accurate the data is I am not sure but it makes sence to me.
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 8:14 am
Hi gary
Good point and one to be taken into account commentaters of the day did state that hastly raised or not the French cavalary lacked nothing in determination or courage so possibly in the area of cavalry things may have evened out. After I posted I considered
hastings despite losing the saxon line withstood every attack the best norman cavalry could throw for most of the day. Defeat came through line breaking not direct action. I believe that for every case of cavalry breaking foot you will find twenty of them failing I believe that where foot stood firm and held formation horse would fail.
Your bob palmer
Posts: 151 Location: London
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 8:46 am
You'll note that the British heavy cavalry did very well, however, although they did take heavy losses.
I think its actually to do with the quality of the horses. The French had used up most of their good cavalry horses by Waterloo, whereas the British bought their heavy cavalry over pretty much specially for the battle.
Bearing this in mind, I'd say Waterloo would be a huge indicator of the difference between the abilities of well trained war horses over untrained ones.
Posts: 599 Location: Brooklyn, NY
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 12:29 pm
I have wondered how striking with a lance at full gallop works. If you manage to get penetration on anyone it seems to me like you are forced to drop your lance. How can you possibly pull it back out while the horse is moving forward at speed.
If you hit the
shield plate or breast plate of and opposing rider who is much heavier, who is to say that you don't knock yourself off your own horse. Most foot combat is easy to recreate, but mounted charges are rarely done. Most modern jousts are done with breakaway sticks.
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 2:17 pm
Hi vassillis
I am no expert but I believe it would depend on the type of lance used light lance against unarmoured or lightly armoured foe I have seen displays which show that it is possible to free lance as you go past. British cavalry trained to do it twisting wrist as they went past to pull lance free. With heavy lances the weight would make controlling penetration more difficult thus making freeing it almost impossible.
On the matter of lance against plate that depends a lot of how the lance is held many harness had a lance rest which braced the lance transferring a lot of the force to the harness. Given riders were braced into high backed saddles designed to stop them being unhorsed the lance would almost cirtainly break. If the rider lacked the rest then it was down to arm strength when lance met plate it either penetrated or stopped if it stopped them it came down to what bit was weakest lance shaft or riders arm.
Posts: 545 Location: Boston
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 5:10 pm
Vassilis Tsafatinos wrote: |
I have wondered how striking with a lance at full gallop works. If you manage to get penetration on anyone it seems to me like you are forced to drop your lance. How can you possibly pull it back out while the horse is moving forward at speed.
If you hit the shield plate or breast plate of and opposing rider who is much heavier, who is to say that you don't knock yourself off your own horse. Most foot combat is easy to recreate, but mounted charges are rarely done. Most modern jousts are done with breakaway sticks. |
The Medieval lance is supposed to break. In jousts points are awarded for breaking lances. In general only a solid strike will break the lance. If your lance didn't break on the other guy then it was just a "glancing" blow.
Cheers,
Steven
Posts: 599 Location: Brooklyn, NY
Fri 06 Mar, 2009 10:23 pm
Steven H wrote: |
The Medieval lance is supposed to break. In jousts points are awarded for breaking lances. In general only a solid strike will break the lance. If your lance didn't break on the other guy then it was just a "glancing" blow.
Cheers,
Steven |
I was thinking in terms of charges with lances in battle with intent to kill, rather then tournament jousts. The 1264 Battle of Lewes comes to mind which was decided by lance charges.
I was looking over the following wood carving from Worchester Cathedral of a joust. It is probably from an earlier time when the point of the joust was to take prisoners for ransom.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gCxNAAAAMAAJ...#PPA159,M1
Page 159
I shows a one guy charging into another guy with lance. The impact knocks both the man and horse back as the two are function as one unit because of the high back saddle. The question I am trying to figure out is, in a battle situation, what options does the guy have who just make the successful charge. Does he try to hold onto his lance, retreat and come back for another pass? Would he be able to do so in the melee of horses in front and behind him? If he got any penetration, is it even feasible to try and pull his lance out? Does he drop his lance and fight with sword? Should we assume that the lance was a one pass weapon and then secondary weapons were used? Such was the case with later period Husars, but they uses lighter lances.
Posts: 151 Location: London
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 1:03 am
Vassilis Tsafatinos wrote: |
I shows a one guy charging into another guy with lance. The impact knocks both the man and horse back as the two are function as one unit because of the high back saddle. The question I am trying to figure out is, in a battle situation, what options does the guy have who just make the successful charge. Does he try to hold onto his lance, retreat and come back for another pass? Would he be able to do so in the melee of horses in front and behind him? If he got any penetration, is it even feasible to try and pull his lance out? Does he drop his lance and fight with sword? Should we assume that the lance was a one pass weapon and then secondary weapons were used? Such was the case with later period Husars, but they uses lighter lances. |
Yes, lances were one shot weapons. You'd annihilate the guy in front of you and then switch to a secondary weapon. You'd probably have several spares with your baggage train, so you could always get more and try again if you were forced to retreat.
Posts: 301 Location: Palo Alto, CA
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 1:15 am
Vassilis Tsafatinos wrote: |
...
I was thinking in terms of charges with lances in battle with intent to kill, rather then tournament jousts. The 1264 Battle of Lewes comes to mind which was decided by lance charges.
...
|
On the subject of lances;
I seem to remember reading a topic here that mentioned knights were thought to lack courage (or at least have bad aim) if they returned from the charge with an unbroken lance. This would indicate that lances were expected to break during the course of battle.
On the subject of charging with a horse:
If you can train a horse to taunt 2 sharp points with 1500-2000lbs of mad cow behind them as in this thread, I'm pretty sure you could get them to charge down infantry.
Cheers,
Posts: 8,310 Location: Montreal,Quebec,Canada
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 3:49 am
Nate C. wrote: |
On the subject of lances;
I seem to remember reading a topic here that mentioned knights were thought to lack courage (or at least have bad aim) if they returned from the charge with an unbroken lance. This would indicate that lances were expected to break during the course of battle.
Cheers, |
It would be this page of this Topic 8 posts from the top: Usage of the Knight's Lance
http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=8633&start=0
Scary aint it what I remember ...... :p
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 4:45 am
Hi all
On the matter of charge the term can be missleading in norman and crusader period and probably later the key was to hold a solid formation and strike was usually delivered at the canter at best trying to hold close order at the flat gallop over even good ground would be difficult. Riders would ride leg touching leg often in two ranks second one horse length behind lances lined between riders in front. So the image of massive hell for leather gallops is not supported by evidence plus the later war horses was bred for strength and staminiar not speed.
Yours Bob palmer.
Posts: 2,121 Location: Northern Utah
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 5:42 am
Bob,
I think Cliff's article went through a great number of chronicles over the high and part of the late medieval period (not sure if he went to 1350 or 1400) to look at exactly that question. If there were more accounts where cavalry won over being repulsed that is. I think the answer was they did.
I think it should be fairly clear a horse can be trained to hit/run over people but that it is not in their nature in general to do so. Jousting for example few horses take on their own at first. I remember a young horse that bolted away from the other horse as soon as they neared it. With training this changed and it knew what to do and had no issue with it. There is enough primary documents that describe effective heavy cavalry charges that I cannot see how it can be argued really they were not possible. I think the key is looking into how and why it fails to when it does not.
RPM
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 12:00 pm
Randal
I do not doubt that horses can be trained to charge down and hit people history shows they can and did. I do feel jousting horses are a little different from battle the tilt is divided by a barrier so horses are not on collision course so training horses to run the course should be simple enough. Training horses to charge head on into other horses or men is a very different matter it is obviously possible cliff has proved that in his research.
That cavalry succeeded is proven I agree with you we need to look more at the foot than the horse why they failed or succeeded is key to the cavalry's success or failiour..
Your Bob palmer
Posts: 3,641 Location: Maitland, NSW, Australia
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 2:17 pm
So is there any evidence of a cavalry charge breaking through an unbroken line of spears? Just citing a few examples where cavalry were successful tells us nothing. I agree with Robin that it is the infantry that needs to be examined. As already said, there is an enormous difference between convincing a horse to run down some men who have dropped their spears, or running towards a gap in a line that already lost cohesion, and convincing that horse to impale itself on a wall of spear points. If the infantry can maintain cohesion then it will repulse cavalry. If not then cavalry will win through.
Posts: 570 Location: Gothenburg/Sweden
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 2:42 pm
Dan Howard wrote: |
So is there any evidence of a cavalry charge breaking through an unbroken line of spears? Just citing a few examples where cavalry were successful tells us nothing. I agree with Robin that it is the infantry that needs to be examined. As already said, there is an enormous difference between convincing a horse to run down some men who have dropped their spears, or running towards a gap in a line that already lost cohesion, and convincing that horse to impale itself on a wall of spear points. If the infantry can maintain cohesion then it will repulse cavalry. If not then cavalry will win through. |
The battles of Cerisoles 1544 and Dreux 1562 saw French Gendarmes smashing their way through massed pikes, not without losses, particualrly in the first battle but the cavalry was able to break through formed and well ordered pikemen.
At Kircholm Polish hussars broke into but not through several of of the Swedish infantry "squares" in a costly frontal charge with inflicted great losses on both sides.
Posts: 2,698 Location: Indonesia
Sat 07 Mar, 2009 11:11 pm
I guess the rule in finding an answer to the question is "If it happens once, it doesn't necessarily have to happen every time;" direct hand-to-hand clashes between an unbroken infantry and a charging cavalry formation certainly happened, but most of the time the clash was decided before contact when the infantry broke and ran (thus becoming no longer "unbroken"), the horses shied, or the riders chickened out (in both cases meaning that the cavalry ceased to be "charging"). Winston Churchill said as much in his personal account of the Battle of Omdurman--where he was involved in one of those uncommon occasions where attacking cavalry did contact and ride through unbroken infantry.
Posts: 138 Location: herne bay Kent UK
Sun 08 Mar, 2009 5:25 am
With respect to Winston churchill as I recall the charge was against dervish foot who while brave and determined men were not trained foot in a massed block.
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