Quote:Thank you gentlemen for this very nice and informative debate so far. Continue!
A question regarding horses charging at objects: of course a horse in its right mind would not do so, but I've heard time and again that horses can be trained to charge at formations. I believe Junkelmann trained his horses to do so, or else it's hearsay, can't remember. But if a horse is trained to charge at a formation which constantly opens to let it through, why would a horse not come to believe that this will happen every time?
We had three horses present at LRE III, each in various stages of training (below). One would pass through our ranks without difficulty, the second did this best when following the first, but the third would almost all the time shy away, even when being lead on foot.
I could easily accapt that after a lot of training, each horse would happily charge a formation that would only open at the last minute. Then, in batle, it would charge an enemy formation, not realising that this would stab and fail to open.
Ideas?
Nice photos, Robert! Very atmospheric.
Your comments highlight, I think, the major difficulties involved. First, the training itself, I presume, occurred over time - your post implies that training takes a while. Now assuming that you have the facilities, multiply that by hundreds, even thousands in time of war? How long would it take to train thousands of horses? ( and no, most ancient armies didn't have vast peacetime training facilities).
Next, I touched earlier in the prodiguous waste of horseflesh in wartime - any war - because campaign conditions don't lend themselves to looking after horses. Even if your regiment did have 1,000 trained horses at the start of a campaign, very few of them would make it to the decisive battlefield at the end. Here's one example from modern times, when full veterinary facilities were available. The famous Household Cavalry, stars of Moi's clip, embarked 550 horses for the Boer War, in a modern steam ship. Many died en route. Many more died from a variety of causes in the first weeks of the campaign - heatstroke, thirst, starvation, disease, and this was followed by a huge turnover in local horseflesh - who also died in droves. Just one year later,
only one original horse -"Freddy" - returned, to a Hero's welcome and a medal ( unusual in the British Army). At the other end of the scale, Napoleon took several hundred thousand horses into Russia, but in six months, in the Russian campaign, they were annihilated, and not in battle. Most regiments lost ALL their horses, the elite 9th Cuirassiers managed to preserve 39 horses out of the 970 they began the short, six month, campaign with, and the many more they sequestered on the campaign. In 1813, after years of War, the French Empire found it hard to find enough horses in all its European territory to mount its cavalry.
As a consequence of this, armies seldom indulged in the sort of training you describe, Robert, for it was largely a pointless waste of time, and could not be done on a mass scale anyway.
Now let us turn to the effectiveness of the training itself. While it is possible to "trick" a horse into thinking a wall of men will always open up ( and even then, it is difficult, as Robert has described), what does the horse do when the time for real action occurs? It is galloping toward the 'wall', either of foot or horse, and ten or so metres away, it realises that lots of nasty pointy things are being brandished at it, and the 'wall' hasn't opened up. It knows something is different and involuntarily, by instinct pulls up ! If it hears a fellow horse scream in pain from being hit by a missile, it knows things are not the same! I said horses were stupid, but not THAT stupid - they will tell the difference, and not commit suicide. Some may go right up to the wall, before stopping and maybe rearing up, others will try and swerve away sooner, banging into their companions either side, causing more panic ( and all this pre-supposes they aren't driven off by a hail of missiles - arrows, stones and those nasty 'martiobarbuli').
Furthermore, the line of horses behaves like a herd - if one or two pull up, they all pull up - bar the odd one dead on its feet, as occurred so remarkably at Garcia Hernandez, the day after Salamanca in the Peninsular war
Then there's the riders.How many of them are bent on suicide? Even if they should happen to be atop a blind, deaf, mad horse, when the 'wall' doesn't open ( and of course it might, in battle) he's going to instinctively rein in and not suicidally smash into a 'solid' object, just as a car driver won't drive into a wall - airbags and seatbelts notwithstanding!!
What kind of General would be pleased to have his 'strike force' of Heavy cavalry "tumble into ruin", even if victorious, the first time they are in action?
I could cite many more examples and factors, but the difficult training of a few horses to even harmlessly re-enact such things proves, I think, how impossible the real thing would be on a mass basis, especially as so few of those hypothetically 'trained' horses would ever make it to a battlefield........
P.S. Another problem of 'scaled up' training. How does an infantry line a couple of hundred yards "open up" in the face of a similar length line of cavalry riding 'boot-to-boot'? Impossible! Such a training program would break down at that point, being only really possible for individual horses or just a few, as you describe. I doubt it could be done, even for as few as ten horses riding side by side.....