Hard riding no saddles or stirrups

[floofthegoof]

It would be good to consider Ardant du Picq's famous work rather carefully. He was writing in the mid-19th century, and much of his work is about the psychology of combat - before the term psychology was even invented, let alone any scientific work done on the subject. This does not mean his work is wrong, but it certainly has a limited perspective. For example, he does not touch on the idea of small-unit cohesion at all, dealing only with soldiers as members of official units (platoons, companies, squadrons and larger).

I think it's fair to say that while his ideas might be old fashioned for his time, and we can't rely on his actual knowledge of ancient battles, the fact that he really witnessed cavalry warfare puts him at an advantage compared to us.

I think the work is a very strong argument against cavalry ever being used as a battering ram against infantry. The idea he mentions that actually pressing a cavalry charge home would simply cause mutual destruction is something that seems very plausable to me. The fact that it wasn't done in his time says alot about it's usefulness in earlier times I think.