07-23-2007, 05:00 PM
Quote:Cavalry charging Close Order Infantry;That was idscussed previously in another thread, thre are plenty of examples throughout the history of warfare, of cavalry breaking close-order infantry with good morale, ready and prepared, and the weapons to resist. The view you hold is based on English Historiography, and it is limited basically in Napoleonic Wars to the Peninsular War and to Waterloo, but of course there were many more actions, and every time someone boast that I recall Eylau, for instance.
I shall try to be brief here, as it is really off-topic and is worthy of its own thread. Throughout the history of warfare, no cavalry have broken close-order infantry with good morale, ready and prepared, and the weapons to resist. There are rare exceptions such as the incident in the Napoleonic Peninsula battle of Garcia Hernandez, when a dead horse crashed into a French square, opening a large hole and causing its demise, and two other French squares were sufficiently demoralised by this to break and run, with predictable results.
.
BTW Keegan´s conclusions about Agincourt are based on a false premise, as Curry has sufficiently proved that the French large superiority in numbers was just a myth created by the Nationalistic history in XIX century, and that French forces were actually only marginally superior in numbers.
AKA Inaki