07-28-2006, 09:59 AM
All the available evidence indicates that though the Anglo-Saxons had horses, they fought on foot. There is a single mention (in the reign of Edward the Confessor) of one of the king's Norman favourites named Ralph the Timid, who tried to make his English vassals fight from horseback. It was an unqualified disaster.
To fight as cavalry requires long and assiduous training, preferably starting in childhood. In Francia, just across the Channel, it appears that the Franks, though they had been purely infantry in the 6th century, had developed a highly effective cavalry force by about the 8th or 9th century AD. It just never happened in Pre-Conquest England - perhaps conditions were different.
The "Battle of Maldon" poem (written some time after 991 AD) describes Earl Byrhtnoth and his men riding to the battlefield and dismounting to fight, and there are quite a few other mentions of the same sort.
And of course, the English (by the 11th century, they were calling themselves the Englisc folc, or the Angel-cynn) fought on foot at Hastings and kept the Normans (a mixed force of infantry, cavalry and archers) off for a battle that lasted all day (much longer than most battles of the period), being defeated only as evening was coming on, and after their king had been killed.
A pure infantry force which holds its ground is quite capable of defeating cavalry, given the right conditions. Perhaps the early Anglo-Saxons had quite enough victories using their tried and true methods against the Romano-Britons, that they didn't feel the need to develop a cavalry force of their own?
To fight as cavalry requires long and assiduous training, preferably starting in childhood. In Francia, just across the Channel, it appears that the Franks, though they had been purely infantry in the 6th century, had developed a highly effective cavalry force by about the 8th or 9th century AD. It just never happened in Pre-Conquest England - perhaps conditions were different.
The "Battle of Maldon" poem (written some time after 991 AD) describes Earl Byrhtnoth and his men riding to the battlefield and dismounting to fight, and there are quite a few other mentions of the same sort.
And of course, the English (by the 11th century, they were calling themselves the Englisc folc, or the Angel-cynn) fought on foot at Hastings and kept the Normans (a mixed force of infantry, cavalry and archers) off for a battle that lasted all day (much longer than most battles of the period), being defeated only as evening was coming on, and after their king had been killed.
A pure infantry force which holds its ground is quite capable of defeating cavalry, given the right conditions. Perhaps the early Anglo-Saxons had quite enough victories using their tried and true methods against the Romano-Britons, that they didn't feel the need to develop a cavalry force of their own?
"It is safer and more advantageous to overcome the enemy by planning and generalship than by sheer force"
The Strategikon of Emperor Maurice
Steven Lowe
Australia
The Strategikon of Emperor Maurice
Steven Lowe
Australia
