[Elling Polden]

When it comes to cavalry, I do not belive heavy vs light armour is the main difference. Everybody wears as much armour as they practicaly can, and the europeans make more and better armour.
They also have a military system that focuses on producing heavy troops, to the exclusion of others.

The difference lies in wether or not you focus on melee or ranged weapons. In the west, the focus is almost singularly on melee. In other parts of the world, there has been a mix of melee and ranged, or, most commonly, double armed men.

There is most likely several reasons for this.
One is the relative lack of arches as main battle formations in early medevial europe. In an enviroment where everybody and his aunt carries a 80-110cm shield and fights in wide, mutaly protective formations, archers serve mainly to harass.

Another is the intender role of the european knight. Rather than fighting in a large army, he spends most of his time defending his fief from numericaly superior brigands and raiders. This is harder to do with horse archers, especially if the attackers are european infantry.

It is also a known problem that missile cavalry, be it horse archers or pistoliers, "flinch" and fire to early, subsequently falling on the defencive. European lancers, however, are trained to brace their lances and aim for direct impact.
(This is described in the "From Lance to Pistol" feature article on this site)

Over all, it would seem that misile cavalry is more adaptet to a mobile, defensive style of warfare, while heavy cavalry are better for desicive engagements and taking ground.

Of course, rapid advance with any kind of troops cause the risk of beeing spread out and ground up, be it neaderthal rocktrowers or M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tanks.

[Jason Daub]

Gene,

The Mongols were reportedly shocked by the casualties they took in Poland. I do not think that they ever had a realistic chance of taking and holding Europe. The army that the Mongols destroyed was a polyglot amalgamation including German miners, conscripts from Greater Poland and traditional feudal levies along with small detachments of Hospitallers and Templars. The examinations of this battle that I have read basically blame Henry the Pious for letting the Mongols fight the entire battle their way. In addition as far as I have been able to determine the western force did not have a decent archer corps.

If I recall correctly the Magyars were in an alliance with the Bulgarians at the beginning of the ninth century and just drifted further into Europe until they pushed into the Carpathian basin a century later where they were a royal pain to N. Italy and raided throughout Europe. The key here is raided, they were stopped cold at the battle of Lechfeld, the later Hungarians settled down and adopted the more common European military structure.

Take a closer look at the Huns and how far they pushed into Europe, they were not the unstoppable force that the "Scourge of God" title given Attila makes them out to be. If you examine the political situation at the time you can see that the Huns were facing a rather sick Western Roman Empire. After the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, Attila was forced to retreat back over the Danube, he then raided very successfully in N. Italy a year later. After his death the Huns were no longer a threat due to disputes over leadership. The Huns always seemed to me as having an excellent fighting commander who was lucky enough to face an enemy that was not at the top of their form.

As for Charles the Hammer, he would have lead a very heavy force by the standards of the time. It would have been a heavy infantry force of retainers, mail armoured, with helmet, shield, spear, and sword. I think I recall a description of them as a "wall of ice, terrible and unmoving" or something close to that.

[Jason Daub]

Gary,

I agree with some of your points, but let me address Hattin and Arsuf. The battle of Hattin was a strategic, grand tactical and tactical failure from start to finish. What competent commander could make as many blunders as Guy of Lusignan?

Arsuf was a battle that happened because the commanders of Saladin's army pushed too hard and got counterpunched. Richard's plan was to move carefully to take Jaffa by moving down the coast in a formation designed to prevent the usual Muslim tactics from succeeding. He was careful to always camp at water sources and keep his men under control and in formation. The battle was brought about by the Muslim army pushing so hard that they were in amongst the Hospitaller crossbowmen forming the rearguard, I think that some of them had actually dismounted to engage in an archery duel with the slower firing crossbowmen. It was at this point that the Hospitaller commander ignored the command to keep marching and charged. Richard took control of his men and led a series of charges, three I believe, that shattered the attacking force. It was an excellent bit of command that turned a meeting engagement into a fairly decisive battle.

A problem that I see is that we are working from what I like to think of as the equivelant of a regimental history. The chronicles glory in the prowess of the class that is paying to have the manuscript illuminated and written, or it is written by a churchman that should have a vocational dislike of violence and a propensity to "show off" by continually referencing the Bible through replacing historical fact with battles and numbers lifted "chapter and verse" as it were. Careful reading of manuals, pay records, etc., show that medieval commanders seem to have favoured a "combined arms" approach with the correct troop mix dependant on terrain and enemy.

[Robin Smith]

As touched on already in this thread, pre-modern militaries are reflections of the societies and economies that sustained them. For a European Medieval army to be like the Mongols, would require the society itself to be like the Mongols.

Furthermore, I don't thin there was an overwhelming advantage to light horse archers. For the most part, the battle was won by whichever side managed to make fewer mistakes.

[William P]

a better question though is yes all used lancers etc, heavy lancers at thats...

so why no eastern plate harnesses i wonder.. was the technology just not there in the east??

also interestingly as usual, the japanese somehow manage to be the exception, they were fuedal, heavy cavaly, yet primarily acted as horse archers to begin with as a result of having to deal with the emishi around the 9th-11th centuries (oir thereabouts, but maybe even earlier..

is it because eastern (by eastern i mean arab/ chiinese armies) faced alot more archery than lances they didnt NEED full harnesses? instead relying on plate and maile..
though

[Kurt Scholz]

In my opinion Western Europe had a strong javelin tradition whereas in the East the bow was more prevalent. The crossbow in my opinion was more of a javelin than a bow upgrade for Europe's tactics. The degree of armour protection and horses available in turn depends on the economic situation. If horses eat grain, they need a lot. If you have an economy with wealthy craftsmen, you have heavily armoured infantry. The question was now, what armament do my expected enemies have? I dress accordingly. Some strange guys from beyond the horizon are not within scope, but can be defeated if there's enough information on them.
The Mongols for example had ample information before each assault.
Hattin was due to a force of infantry mercenaries that went on an ill-prepared march for a kingdom that had a hard time fielding the manpower to fight such a mighty enemy. What they critically lacked, were for example camel mounted crossbowmen (using heavy crossbows, dismounting to shoot and arming he mount with one-two large light leather shields) in the Christian army who could have countered the Muslim light cavalry better. Why didn't they use camels, something about exporting Europe?

[Gary Teuscher]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

[Ahmad Tabari]

I think using the category 'Eastern' is very misleading. As Gary pointed out, not all horsemen east of Europe were light skirmishers. On the contrary, heavy cavalry was featured in almost every Eastern marital culture worthy of mention. In the Middle East, heavy cavalry was the mainstay of many armies prior to the Seljuk arrival. And even after the arrival of the Turks, heavy cavalry continued to flourish either in the form of armoured Arab and Kurdish lancers or Mamluk horsemen. If you go further east to China, you will see that heavy cavalry were an essential part of most armies. Even the Mongols had heavy cavalry.

[Gary Teuscher]

I think the question might be a bit misleading. Perhaps the question should be "Why did the tradition of Horse archery see use among eastern armies but not Western ones"

And this is even a bit misleading, as Hungary among other European nations in eastern europe used horse archers.

Western Cavalry for years DID make use of light cavalry skirmishers, but they used the Javelin, not the bow, and this continued in Spain well after dieing out in much of western Europe.

[Elling Polden]

Benjamin: Yes, you are quite correct that this is a exageration. There are plenty of examples of missile use by european cavalry. However, looking at the top tier, "ideal type" cavalry of the various regions, eastern heavy cavalry would be more likely to be double armed.

This is a quite interesting point. This in not a pure melee/ranged dictomy. It There is no problem carying both melee and ragned weaponry. As demonstrated, for instance, by the late roman cavalry that both western and eastern mediteranian cavalry forces where direct decendants of.
In the east, double armament remained the standard. In the west, the missiles become progresively less important.

Flexibility is usually a good thing, so there should be a reason the northwestern eurpeans chose to forgo their missile weapons. Personally, I belive it has to do with their prefered mode of combat: They want to fight decisive battles, and then go home.
The arabs and byzantines where more fond of lower intensity, protracted campaigns, where mobility and harassment played a more central role.

It is also worth noting that horse archery did not spread back to western europe after their conflicts with the muslims. Nor did the heavy armour trend change during the 100 years war. Rather, these conflict promted even heavier armour, to the point where even the mounted skirmishers where clad in more or less full plate in the late 100 years war...

[Ryan S.]

I think the difference between heavy and light cavalry is in use, heavy is shock and light is forage, recon ect.

[Gary Teuscher]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Gary Teuscher]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Ryan S.]

well, if you want to boil it down to a simple contest between two soldiers, one a bowman, the other a lancer; the question of victory is going to be based on the ability of the lancer to reach the bowman. To put it another way, an archer only has a short window of time to kill his opponent before he reaches him. Being on a horse gives the archer the ability to maintain distance longer, but also cuts back on accuracy. The armor of the lancer is also an important factor, the ability to charge in the face of arrow fire can almost assure victory. There were a number of factors determining the capacity for knights to make it to the melee, but once there they could do some serious damage, if not rout the enemy.

If you want to look at heavier armed cavalry with large horses, versus lighter armed more mobile smaller horsed cavalry, it there is another set of cost and benefits. Heavier armor of course comes with its own obvious lists of cost-benefits. If you look at the horses, some things might be breed specific, but in general bigger horses are stronger and faster in the charge, not to mention more intimidating. However, they require more food and lack stamina. Additionally, as a possible east-west difference there might be variance in horsemanship. Mongols as I understand lived on a horse(and still do), whereas I have been read to believe European medieval standards of horsemanship were poor. This may be reflected in that a straight on lance charge is pretty easy compared to the tactics used by the Mongols (feigning retreat and then turning to shoot).

[Bartek Strojek]

[Gary Teuscher]

[Elling Polden]

By logic, if light missile cavalry was more effective, it would promt a change of tactics by those facing them.

As it turns out, the eastern european nations, such as Poland, retained their heavy lance cavalry long after it was abandoned elsewhere. Pratially because they faced eastern light horse archers rather western european pistolliers.