lords of Battle

[nithijo]

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.

Actually the AS chronicle states that the english fled because they were on horseback.

Perhaps being on horseback was what got them out alive?

Indeed John of W claims that the Normans began the flight at Hereford.

Are we to believe that the Normans didn't have cavalry either?

When John of Worcester wrote his version 60 years later the english did fight on foot because the cavalry was provided by the Normans.

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.

Here Byrthnot send the horses away exactly to prevent the possibility
of flight. Until then mounted combat seems to have been an option.

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..

At Hasting Harold was facing the best shock cavalry in Europe, but had
the option of taking a defensive dismounted position on a ridge.

Being a sane chap that was what he did.

Mostly from Guy Halsall,'Warfare and society in the barbarian west, 450-900'

Cheers
Nithijo

aka Soren Larsen