Dark Age to Medieval

[boatman]

Hope its alright to start an OT topic in chatter but the subject is interesting.

Charles Oman, "Art of War in the Middle Ages", was of the opinion that Hastings actually saw the beginning of the end for mass cavalry against formed infantry. By our Wars of the Roses the fully armoured knight mostly acted as heavy infantry. See battles of Poitier and Crecy for cavalry against infantry. What was important was for infantry to have effective missile weapons, without them, as at Adrianople, the infantry could get hemmed in and pressured into defeat. Then you must look at the ascendancy of the Swiss infantry who only suffered defeat because they neglected the missile arm and allowed their tactics to ossify.

 

[mountainm]

Cavalry was still in use right up to and into WW1 though, that's a long time passing...

 

[Toddy]

Aye, but at what a cost in men and horses.
Thing was that cavalry was considered the elite.....look at the Guards regiments even now. Ceremonial parades and the like, there they are in all their glory on horses, in the 21st century

I think their time really came to an end when the guns became both accurate and light enough to be moved quickly. The charge of the Light Brigade was heroic, but hardly a good idea.

By 1320 they were still trying it Boatman, but the pole arm drills had become established and effective, not just in Scotland, in Flanders too. They weren't static either, their sergeants and captains were innovative and the technique kept developing. They could, and did, take the battle to the horsemen.

cheers,
M

 

[boatman]

WW1 Subaltern on purpose of cavalry in war "To give tone to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."

 

[Toddy]

Kind of says it all really, doesn't it ?

Do you think if they had kept the development of cavalry....like the Light Brigade, into something like the Mongol armies, that it would have made a difference ?
A horse carrying a heavily armed man tires quickly, but armour 'is' status, like fancy uniforms dripping in gold bullion and lace.
On one of the films that we made the horses were rested more than the men

cheers,
M

 

[mountainm]

Wasn't the pole axe one of the first weapons of war to be 'banned' (like modern day chemical weapons are) if I recall?

 

[Toddy]

Well, they tried, but by the Home Guard of WW2 apparantly they were happily resurrected in case of the necessity of guerilla resistance.
Scouts and BB's drilled with staves, stick a sharp on the end and there you go
Farm yard rakes have 3metre poles.........we used them as a source for the lances for the pole arms for filming. Four metre ones were better, but a pain to drill with. Andy, Robby and Russ would know more; they did the drilling, Andy ended up yelling their drill orders in Medieval Scots for it too

Archers, good well trained and well equiped archers were hard to beat though. Especially if a few were armed with crossbows. They go through both plate and ring armour.
That said, the stuff made from fifteen layers of silk can stop a lot of the projectile weapons of the period. Not a lot of silk around though.
Jacks, achetons, gambesons and the like helped, and the resources to make them were easily available.

cheers,
M

 

[mountainm]

The ancient Greeks had linothorax, I think a linen laminate which was supposedly impervious to arrows and spears. Like ancient Kevlar.

Edit
http://www.uwgb.edu/aldreteg/Linothorax.html

 

[Harvestman]

The charge of the Light Brigade was heroic, but hardly a good idea.

That's the best quotation I've seen on here in quite some time. A beautifully phrased piece of understatement.

 

[boatman]

Mounted scouts always needed especially when fighting semi-guerilla war as with the Boer Wars. Baden-Powell on the work of the Scout is still pertinent and interesting as of course is that for Rogers for foot scouts or Rangers. Of course cavalry always had a role where appropriate and in some instances such as with Cromwell's Ironsides could be decisive.

Good book that covers Revolutionary Russian cavalry is Red Eagle by Dennis Wheatley. History of the Russian Revolution combined with the biography of one of its generals, Vorishilov and the story of the Red, White and even Green Cavalry. But like all horse armies from the East from the beginning of time they ran into trouble round about western middle europe. In the Red Army Cavalry's's case it was tanks, wire, machine guns and poison gas that stopped them. Previously it was things like lack of grazing, disease and stiffening resistance that halted Huns etc.

John Keegan "History of Warfare" is one I like especially with his ideas on the warfare horizon.

 

[Laurentius]

The cavalry were still effective in the battle of Orgreave Colliery weren't they? They may no longer have there use in conventional war, but the mounted man is still very effective in crowd control.

As for polearms, they eventually evolved into the bayonet fixed to the end of a musket, and very effective too.

 

[Toddy]

Good point
Police still use horses for crowd control. Not only a wider viewpoint but police horses can be scary beasts :yikes:

Boatman, I'm going to move this into Other Chatter.....it just seems more appropriate, and it'll keep Johan from nagging at me. He does it so courteously too, but he's right.

M

 

[Paddytray]

Just found this .
Monument honors U.S. 'horse soldiers' who invaded Afghanistan

By Alex Quade

Demossville, Kentucky (CNN) -- The U.S. special operations teams that led the American invasion in Afghanistan a decade ago did something that no American military had done since the last century: ride horses into combat.

"It was like out of the Old Testament," says Lt. Col. Max Bowers, retired Green Beret, who commanded the three horseback teams.
And this
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Afghanistan/Operation Enduring Freedom.htm

 

[Toddy]

That's another good point; where there are no roads, horses are awfully useful

Dark Ages.....horse fittings are found in archaeological contexts, and they are high status contexts. This is true of Bronze and Iron ages too though, and into the Medieval. An ox was of more use to the farmer than a horse, tbh. See the draftanimal forums for lots of details on that, but they're not 'heroic' really, are they ? though Europa was stolen on a bull.

cheers,
M

 

[Jared]

I thought part of the reason why Battle of Crecy was such one-sided was because the ground was boggy and the French stubbornly tried to move with weight of horse & armour. Just becoming a sitting/slow moving target for the longbow men.

 

[santaman2000]

Just found this .
Monument honors U.S. 'horse soldiers' who invaded Afghanistan

By Alex Quade

Demossville, Kentucky (CNN) -- The U.S. special operations teams that led the American invasion in Afghanistan a decade ago did something that no American military had done since the last century: ride horses into combat.

"It was like out of the Old Testament," says Lt. Col. Max Bowers, retired Green Beret, who commanded the three horseback teams.
And this
http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Afghanistan/Operation Enduring Freedom.htm

A nice sentiment but a little misleading I'm afraid. Yes it's accurate regarding the use of horses in Afghanistan. But it hadn't been 100 years since the last use. The US mounted a cavalry charge (a successful cavalry charg) against the Japanese in the Morong, Phillipines in WWII on 16 January 1942. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/26th_Cavalry_Regiment_(United_States)nYes that was the "last century" but as we're only a decade into this one (actually only a few years at the time of the Afghanistan reference) that's not really such a big gap.

Shortly after the charge in Morong, they had to butcher and eat their horses before disbursing to continue guerrilla warfare on foot.

 

[santaman2000]

Good point
Police still use horses for crowd control. Not only a wider viewpoint but police horses can be scary beasts :yikes:.......

TBH it's not entirely because they're scary though. When a mounted cop moves through a tight crowd and the horse nudges people out of the way, they just don't seem to feel animosity like they do when the same cop tries on foot. People just like animals.

 

[santaman2000]

Kind of says it all really, doesn't it ?

Do you think if they had kept the development of cavalry....like the Light Brigade, into something like the Mongol armies, that it would have made a difference ?
A horse carrying a heavily armed man tires quickly, but armour 'is' status, like fancy uniforms dripping in gold bullion and lace.....

True enough while comparing only old fashioned polished armor. It needs to be noted though that even modern aircraft, tanks (and even ifantrymen) are still armored. But the armor has changed. Still heavy though!

 

[santaman2000]

I thought part of the reason why Battle of Crecy was such one-sided was because the ground was boggy and the French stubbornly tried to move with weight of horse & armour. Just becoming a sitting/slow moving target for the longbow men.

That's what I was taught too.

 

[Goatboy]

Good point
Police still use horses for crowd control. Not only a wider viewpoint but police horses can be scary beasts .......
TBH it's not entirely because they're scary though. When a mounted cop moves through a tight crowd and the horse nudges people out of the way, they just don't seem to feel animosity like they do when the same cop tries on foot. People just like animals.

Oh I don't know, don't remember the crustys being that happy at the mounted charge up Auchterarder High Street during the G8 in 2005. Think it was the biggest mounted charge in 100 years.
Worked too.
GB.