Quote:the 14th century saw a change from cavalry dominated battles to infantry dominated ones.
Yes but this statement is of no use without the context. In other words - question is what contributed more to that change, decline of quality of cavalry, or increase of quality of infantry, or some other factors.
BTW - the 17th century saw a renaissance of cavalry, which again had a significant role in battles.
In the 15th - 16th centuries there were also some professional cavalry formations which remained efficient. But it was the bulk of feudal knighthood, that was gradually becoming useless. I think that collapse of discipline and decreasing interest in warrior ethos contributed to collapse of knighthood. Nobility of Western Europe started to be busy with running their farms or trading companies, rather than training their military skills.
In other words - nobility gradually transformed from military elite into intellectual and economic elite.
Of course this process was largely caused by the Renaissance and by the rise of early capitalism.
As the result, knighthood lost its previous value as a military force of well-trained, skilled warriors.
More generally speaking, 15th century saw the decline of feudal armies and the rise of professional or mercenary armies, rather than the decline of cavalry and the rise of infantry. Within those professional and mercenary armies, there was still also a place for heavy cavalry (like French gendarmes).
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There are followers of a theory that only disciplined infantry can resist cavalry.
On the other hand, I am supporting a theory, that undisciplined cavalry cannot beat infantry.
Some explain instances when infantry lost to cavalry with alleged lack of quality of that infantry.
I would explain instances when cavalry lost to infantry with lack of quality of that cavalry.
But in many cases other factors were decisive - for example 100 cavalry cannot beat 5000 infantry.
Quote:Yes but this statement is of no use without the context. In other words - question is what contributed more to that change, decline of quality of cavalry, or increase of quality of infantry, or some other factors.
The context is in the book I cited. I'm hardly going to reproduce 197 pages of someone else's work on an online forum.
I suppose I know what is this book claiming already before reading it.
However, I just want to point out that most of historians are only analysing those changes from one perspective - perspective of transformations taking place within the structures of infantry.
On the other hand, not many historians bother to take a look also at transformations taking place within cavalry of the period - and analysing the decline of quality of cavalry from this perspective.
I've briefly explained above, what contributed to decline of cavalry from this point of view. This took place. Question is what was more important - improvement of infantry or decline of quality of cavalry.
The most important change within 14th century infantry, was introduction of pikes and pike warfare.
So it was not some alleged "improvement of discipline", but rather acquisition of longer sticks.
As for Agincourt - vast majority of French knights fought dismounted there. So it was not a victory of archers vs cavalry, but vs infantry. And a very important role was played by dismounted English knights.
Quote:A slow attack could be delivered in a tight and regular formation, a charge at speed, a la outrance, unavoidably led to an opening of ranks as individual horses differed in their top speed.
While I agree with you about ranks opening up at speed, in regard to cataphracts, I think that their strength lay in maintaining a tight & disciplined formation when attacking lighter cavalry with maybe lots of wheeling & turning to isolate & destroy enemy cavalry & as Peter pointed out this comes through training, both horse & rider. Because of their heavier armour & bigger horses, the light cavalry of the enemy with their swifter & lighter horses could more than likely evade an individual cataphract's charge & attack him from another angle or in groups (unless they had the lighter cavalry pinned against a natural obstacle like a river, or caught them totally unawares.)
However, as someone pointed out in an earlier post things can go wrong with a tight formation attacking at speed when the lead horses lose momentum or face an obstacle. In 484AD the Hephthalites using feigned retreat tactics lured Sassanid Savaran heavy cavalry to a prepared ditch measuring (from book Shadows in the Desert by Dr Kaveh Farrokh) 30 feet wide & 60 feet long camouflaged with wood, soil, shrubs & foliage and probably in a narrow valley, placing their horse archers in front of ditch to lure Savaran to attack & then crossed the ditch through a safe pre designated passage over the hidden trap with Savaran in full pursuit. Peroz & most of Savaran plunged into the ditch as well as a lot of support cavalry but momentum had stopped & the riders & horses who managed to avoid the ditch were easy targets for the Hephthalite horse archers. The size of the ditch indicates that Savaran were pursuing in a reasonably tight or wedge formation & the carnage inflicted on the Savaran by the trap seems to indicate that they were attacking at speed.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
Quote:A slow attack could be delivered in a tight and regular formation, a charge at speed, a la outrance, unavoidably led to an opening of ranks as individual horses differed in their top speed.
While I agree with you about ranks opening up at speed, in regard to cataphracts, I think that their strength lay in maintaining a tight & disciplined formation when attacking lighter cavalry with maybe lots of wheeling & turning to isolate & destroy enemy cavalry & as Peter pointed out this comes through training, both horse & rider. Because of their heavier armour & bigger horses, the light cavalry of the enemy with their swifter & lighter horses could more than likely evade an individual cataphract's charge & attack him from another angle or in groups (unless they had the lighter cavalry pinned against a natural obstacle like a river, or caught them totally unawares.)
However, as someone pointed out in an earlier post things can go wrong with a tight formation attacking at speed when the lead horses lose momentum or face an obstacle. In 484AD the Hephthalites using feigned retreat tactics lured Sassanid Savaran heavy cavalry to a prepared ditch measuring (from book Shadows in the Desert by Dr Kaveh Farrokh) 30 feet wide & 60 feet long camouflaged with wood, soil, shrubs & foliage and probably in a narrow valley, placing their horse archers in front of ditch to lure Savaran to attack & then crossed the ditch through a safe pre designated passage over the hidden trap with Savaran in full pursuit. Peroz & most of Savaran plunged into the ditch as well as a lot of support cavalry but momentum had stopped & the riders & horses who managed to avoid the ditch were easy targets for the Hephthalite horse archers. The size of the ditch indicates that Savaran were pursuing in a reasonably tight or wedge formation & the carnage inflicted on the Savaran by the trap seems to indicate that they were attacking at speed.
Regards
Michael Kerr
The only really detailed description of the formation taken up by very heavily armoured men on armoured horses dates to the 10th century, describing Nikephoros Phokas' klibanophoroi, but I think that we can be reasonably certain that similar contraints operated at other times. The basic parameters of the Nikephorian formation was that it was deep and compact. I think that such formations would have been difficult to change direction with and even at a trot would have been hard to halt in front of an obstacle. Given that horses wearing barding would have had difficulty cooling themselves by sweating, and in hot climates would have easily suffered from heat exhaustion, I think that they were essentially one-shot weapons.
It does have some relevance. Generally speaking, the Romans trained their cavalry in Alan tactics. Horse Archers, like the Huns, would break and run when being attacked by well-trained lancers like Alan Catafractarii, but lesser trained lancers, like most Roman cavalry, would break when attacked by Huns.
On the notion of pistols, the Romans did have arcuballistae, which could be fired one handed.
In Moderator Green (I'm on a school computer -_-): I should also note that this post is an attempt to bring this thread back to a Roman context.
Hi Evan, if you had ever seen a acruballista up close, you would realise there is NO way it could be fired one handed! They are big and have a lot of weight up front, picture courtisy of Xanten museum.
Hi, I seem to have trouble reading Robert's post on both IPad & PC.
As soon as I posted this Robert's post has appeared, along with mine on page 10 of thread so don't know if it's me or server? If I delete this post, Robert's post goes as well & thread says 9 pages not 10 so I left my post alone. Maybe server has problem with script or something when creating new pages starting with posts with attachments sometimes? I am no expert though, on paging scripts or technical computer stuff in general.
Regards
Michael Kerr
Michael Kerr
"You can conquer an empire from the back of a horse but you can't rule it from one"
I have had exactly the same problem with the same post, I also couldn't see one of my own posts before it was replied to. So the problem is not confined to one user. I couldn't see the post on the thread but it was recorded on the "my posts" function on my user pages. Strange.
Quote:It does have some relevance. Generally speaking, the Romans trained their cavalry in Alan tactics. Horse Archers, like the Huns, would break and run when being attacked by well-trained lancers like Alan Catafractarii, but lesser trained lancers, like most Roman cavalry, would break when attacked by Huns.
On the notion of pistols, the Romans did have arcuballistae, which could be fired one handed.
Even so (and I fear that you may have been thinking of recent depictions of small ballistae in Hollywood movies), these weapons are not in any way comparable to early pistols or other firearms. Besides that, we have no evidence of them being used by Romans in any simalar massed way.
To those who have indeed tried to create a relevance between Ancient heavy cavalry against heavy cavalry, I say Good job! To those who continue here to mainly show off their knowledge about post-Medieval cavalry, but without attempting to do the same about Roman cavalry, I say Please read a book on Roman cavalry issues, in order to make this a relevant discussion that does not digress on every page towards modern issues.
There are several experts on Roman cavaly on this forum, yet none of them are engaging in this discussion, which is a real shame.
Robert Vermaat MODERATOR FECTIO Late Romans
THE CAUSE OF WAR MUST BE JUST
(Maurikios-Strategikon, book VIII.2: Maxim 12)
Quote:Even so (and I fear that you may have been thinking of recent depictions of small ballistae in Hollywood movies), these weapons are not in any way comparable to early pistols or other firearms. Besides that, we have no evidence of them being used by Romans in any simalar massed way.
Well what you and Robert W. are showing is the Manuballista, not the Arcuballista. I'm referring to this:
