[Gordon Frye]

Daniel;

Your're very right on that point! It seems as though the Huguenot Gendarmerie was pretty close to being totaly nuts in their ferocity, which was quite something, considering that the French already had quite a reputation for being overly aggressive in their cavalry assaults. Louis de Bourbon, Prince of Conde and head of the Huguenot faction, seemed to think that all battles were won by cavalry charges, with himself in the lead... something shared by his nephew Henri of Navarre, LOL! What is even more surprising is that both of them seemed pretty well founded in their opinions!

Ah, my heroes... Anyway, back to lances and spears...

Cheers!

Gordon

[Malcolm A]

Hello again.
Just checked on my video copy of the program that I referenced above and thought I would add some more stuff.

THe word I couldn't remember was the "Graper"; this was the disc / flange that was fitted to the lance which allowed the knight to brace it against his body thereby bringing together the lance, man and horse into "guided missile".
The guy I mentioned, Mike Loades, did some research into the effect of a lance on armour; it was awesome.
Whilst on a horse he tried using a spear held at arm's length, the couched and finally with a proper grapered lance, all against a foam aluminium target.
Using the results he got a military lab to replicate the damage to calculate the force generated on each occasion.
This was then used to reproduce the blows against a coat of plates; results were as follows.
[a] The spear at arms length resulted in penetration of the outer cloth only.
[b] The couched spear managed a small penetration but not significant.
[c] The grapered lance walloped the coat of plates and did pierce the plates.
The conclusion was that an armoured [likely to have a coat of plates with mail underneath] knight may not get skewered by the couched lance though he would get a big / huge low.
As a final trial the couched lance was tried on mail without the coat of plates. What can I say, God help the man who was so armoured and who was lanced!

In the Battle of Lewes, 1264 [the first full scale battle using lances in the UK] Prince Edward [latter King Edward the First] charged uphill against Simon de Montforts foot soldiers. He crashed into / through them and did great carnage. Sadly he followed them and chased them away for miles leaving his king's army with a large amount of cavalry missing. De Montforts cavalry returned the favour in a downhill charge that carried the day.

On knights aiming at horses in actual battle, the TV program "quoted" an Italian master of arms, Pietro Monte [unsure of spelling] of 15th century. Actual words were paraphrased:
"In the joust go for the man. In war go to the biggest weakest target, the horse."

Additional note: there is wood carving in Worcester Cathedral that shows an armoured knight crashing into another. The second man's horse is depicted thrown back on its haunches from the impact! Heavy cavalry with the emphasis on HEAVY!!!!!

Hope the above is of interest.
Cheers

[Jaroslav Kravcak]

Good day.

Im interested in french cavalry of 15th and 16th century although in my country I dont have acess to good sources about this topic.

Id like to ask if cavalry of this period used rather lighter or heavier lances and if they supposed to be broken at first opponent they encountered. I learn fencing a little and would like to try jousting but here there arent conditions do to something like this. At least not for now. So I dont have any practical experience I only that galloping horse could cumulate huge kinethic energy into lancetip and shock of colision can kill anyone. Id like to ask if lance was only used to fight first ranks and then horsemen had to draw close quarter combat weapons like axes or maces or would disciplined cavalry formation use its lance during whole charge I mean against infantry? Would they really break so easily?

[Dan Howard]

[George Hill]

One question that has bothered me recently is this.

When the cavalry with the heavy lances charge infantry, what happens? You'll have a line of infantry several deep, and let's imagine they don't have spears, thus allowing the horses a bit more advantage. The Cavalry charge them with the riders knee to knee, and whoever gets hit by the lances is obliterated....

Now the horses plow into all the guys who weren't obliterated...... and what happens? I mean, it's mass running into mass. Do they shove their way through the dencely packed line?

What happens just after the lance tips hit?

[Jaroslav Kravcak]

According to what I know blunt damage is too much to withstand for anyone no matter what armour used even collision with horse is enough infantry that cant reach and stop horses before they reach them in my opinion is lost. I have no knowledge of armour but Id say lances are good in fight against heavily armoured infantrymen as they deflect easier and not get stuck in opponent so when the line of cavalry is not broken lance could be used throughout whole charge. Is there someone that could help me find out more?

[David Black Mastro]

Wow, I haven't been around for a while.

Great thread, folks.


A lot of good points have been brought up, and I'd like at add a few more. The word "landsknecht" literally means "servant of the land, but Douglas Miller noted that, as early as 1500, the word was being spelled as lanzknecht, which has a totally different meaning ("lance-servant"). This alternate spelling apparently continued for a pretty long time, as Sir John Smythe makes reference to the "lance-knights of Germany" in his Certain Discourses Military of 1590.

Clearly, folks weren't as specific in their use of various terms back then.

It's also interesting to note that, in many period Spanish documents relating to Spanish troops in the Philippines in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the word "lance" is frequently used to refer to pikes.


Simple lances for light cavalry (like the lanza jineta) are quite simple in form--pretty much like a spear. Then, you have the fully-developed lanzon or "great lance" used by knights and other heavy cavalry.


If I think of anything else I'll post it, but it looks as if you folks already covered this topic quite well.


Best,

David

[Gordon Frye]

Gentlemen;

One of the things to keep in mind here is that generally, Cavlary ("Horse") doesn't charge Infantry ("Foote") unless the Foote is somehow disaccomodated in some way to make them vulnerable. I'm not speaking of the standard "Peasant Rabble" that we think of most Medieaval Infantry as being, but rather a solid wall of footmen, such as the Scottish Schiltrom or a Swiss Pike column. Those boys weren't to be meddled with lightly without unfortunate consiquences to the meddlers.

There were several basic "moments" for sending an assault force of Heavy Horse against an Infantry unit: First was if said Foote were somehow disrupted in their formation or moral, be it from some geographic form that caused them to have to break ranks, or from being engaged on another side by either other Foote or Horse. Hitting them while vulnerable was often as not a battle-winner. Second would be to hold the mass of footmen in place while missile weapons took their toll, be it Archers or Artillery (Marignano, in 1515 is a great example of this. Francois I of France used his Heavy Horse to pin the Swiss into place while his Artillery pounded the bejeezuz out of them). And of course, Heavy Horse could be used as a last effort to stave off defeat if thrown against otherwise impossible odds... sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But Heavy Horse was best used to break already shaken Foote, and turn them from a somewhat solid wall into a quivering mass of flowing, desintigrating jelly.

That being said, from my understanding of the tactics of the 15th and 16th Centuries, when Heavy Horse (being fully armoured Men-at-Arms using the heavy lance, riding large, strong, armoured or lightly armoured stallions) charged Foote, it was done so in waves. Comparatively small units of Cavalry formed in a line side-by-side would be hurled at the infantrymen, would crash into the mass, remove themselves and be followed by another line of Cavalry doing the same thing in repeated hammer blows. Sometimes the Heavy Horse would actually penetrate and go all the way through the Infantry square, emerging reasonably unscathed from the other side (Ceresole 1544, Dreux 1562), but still not break their opponents. The trick was to wait until about 60 yards or so before breaking into the "Full Career" Charge, otherwise you would "blow" your horse and not hit with full force, nor be unable to retreat when necessary.

Just what happened when Horse contacts Foote at full speed is generally unrecorded, from my own readings. Knowing what happens when one fairly light (by comparison) horse meets a fairly heavy (by comparison) man at speed, I can make the conjecture that it was rather like bowling, though, with men being the pins, and horses being the bowling ball. Sometimes the horses were killed or severely injured in the process, making them even more akin to a bowling ball scattering "pins" across the landscape, and the armoured rider would be hurtled into the mass of men at the same speed, adding one more projectile to the equasion. There's very good reason that the old Heavy Cavalry, armed with the heavy lance, is referred to as "Shock Cavalry". It would take a very, very steady and cohesive unit of footmen to withstand repeated such blows without deciding that this is a rather poor environment for long-term health, which is why units such as the Swiss or Spaniards, with a very strong group mentality did so well, as opposed to ad-hoc aggregates of mercenaries hired helter-skelter across the landscape. Without a VERY strong esprit de corps and unit-wide sense of belonging, it would melt like butter on a forge, and often as not did.

By the same token, it takes a great deal of training of both man and horse to manage such Cavalry assaults as well. You just don't throw together a horde of men on horseback and expect them to hurl themselves at a veritable brick wall of sharp pokie things and expect much of a result other than a mass of men and horses coming back at speed to rejoin the rest of the "herd". Keeping a line of men and horses going at the same speed, to hit at the same time, is a trick in and of itself, and training horses, even stallions to charge into seemingly solid objects has it's own set of interesting training aspects.

Anyway, I hope that this somewhat answers your questions. I'm sure that there are those who will take issue with my findings here, but I firmly believe that as a general rule the above comments apply to most late-Medieval and early-Renaissance warfare.

Allons!

Gordon

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Elling Polden]

One must remeber that there is huge variations in the composition and construction of armour; There is no definite "Mail armour" or a definite "Breastplate".
A 16th cent breastplate could posibly bounce a couched lance. Why? Because it was reinforced to exactly that. A 15th cent breastplate might not be able to take the impact, wich caused the next "generation" of breastplates to be stronger.

Likewise, Mail can be anyting from a mail shirt without any padding at all to 4mm rings over a 30 layer jack and a coat of plates.

These things do not always become linearly better with time. The quality of armour might drop during peace time, when weight considerations become more important, and so on.
Thus, a 16th cent landsknecht might wear a mail armour that is less efficient than the one worn by a 13th cent knight...

[Dan Howard]

Thank you Elling. As I said, not all mail is the same. It is irresponsible to make a generalisation such as "mail was little defense against the couched lance." It was perfectly possible to produce mail that was proof against the couched lance and it was done from Roman times onwards. That does not mean that all mail was equally protective, as can be seen from the sources.

[Craig Peters]

I'm sure it doesn't universally apply, but in Hastings, Peter Wright asserts that the lances used by the Norman cavalry were different from spears, insofar that they were lighter and made to be thrown at the enemy. After the lances were thrown, the Normans drew their swords and engaged at close quarters with the Saxons.

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Felix Wang]

In re Hastings, it is worth noting that the Bayeux Tapestry, for all its limitations, very clearly shows the Normans using a lance/spear in every way possible. Most often it seems to be used overhand, sometimes clearly for throwing, but also for downwards thrusts. It is also used underhand, for thrusting, and it is also seen to be couched. No one seems to be carrying multiple spears, as is often the case when the primary use is as a javelin. I am sure it was sometimes thrown, but I am equally sure it was often used for thrusting, just as the Viking ancestors of the Normans did.

[Craig Peters]

[George Hill]

[Elling Polden]

A typical viking age/ early medevial spear had a quite narrow socet., say about 2 cm. Presumably because they where designed for one-handed use against unarmoured targets. A lance would need to be thicker not to break on impact.

I would guess that the lances of the normans are similar spears, used on horseback. These can also be thrown, with some effect, but are to long to be propper javelins.

When it comes to the grip used, the underhand grip and the couched cavalry chacrge is not the same; A regular one handed spear is used underhand most of the time. But when couching the lance, you hould it firmly, and "walk into" the target with your horse, rather than extend the arm, or thrust with your back muscles.

When it comes to lance proof mail armour, a 13th cent heavy cavalryman would, according to contemporary sources, wear a arming coat (estimate 10-20 layers?) of soft canvas,a coat of plates, a mail shirt, and a sleeveless gambeson on top of that. (estimate 20-30 layers ?) He would most certainly be lance-proof. in the chest. A leg or head hit would be another matter. Wether it was practial or not is another matter.

[Jaroslav Kravcak]

Its very interesting reading.

Im no expert but I think that combination of heavy cavalry and artillery was most succesfull and effective tactics through maybe whole century from middle 15th century. Just as you said that artillery would weaken enemy and horses would finish him off like at marignano or sooner at Castillon for example.

Right now I dont have too much practical knowledge about lance maybe its stupid question but I like to know your opinion on what would be preferred way of using lance when charging heavy infantry: Use it to pierce armour thus forcing rider to throw it away when he encounters first enemy or rather use it for blunt damage to cause internal wounds and shock and be able to use it at several opponents?

[Elling Polden]

[Gordon Frye]