Cavalry as the decisive element in battle

[Megas Aleksandros]

All that have studied roman military history, in some kind, know that the strenght of roman army is and alway has been - infantry. But history teaches us that battles are won by spirit and not always endurance or tactics. We know of the great cultures of the East and Africa that have always trusted on their cavalry to win the battle. Always it has been the elite part of the army.

It seems to me that the part of the past from the roman/greek period to it's end always used infantry to win battles (exception is the hellenistic period where Alexander won the most of his battles by cavalry). Middle ages gave us heavy cavalry which didn't have it's rival, same as the 17th century to modern age.

Tactics show us one thing. If one infantryman faced one cavalryman, cavalryman wins. If two infantryman faced one cavalryman, cavalryman wins. But if a detachment of trained infantrymen faced a detachment of cavalrymen, infantrymen wins. For it is just about the psyche of a horse - it will not try to jump over something that's not possible to jump over. That is the lesson of the battle at Pharsalus between Pompey and Caesar. That is why Caesar won. No other roman gerenal has ever tried something like this - to win a major battle with cavalry.

I know that Hollywood educates a lot of people in a different way. One example is a movie 'Gladiator' and the opening scene where the cavalry wins the battle and i am sure that a lot of you agree on this.

So, give your oppinion on the matter because i think it is a really good thing to discuss about.

[Vindex]

Good topic for discussion although there are already various threads which mention the influence of a mounted body of men.

I think the idea of a charging line of cavalrymen has to be put to one side for various reasons in antiquity. Cavalry in this period was not the battering ram many imagine until horses are more armoured as are their riders (and therfore bigger, heavier horses with a lot more physical impact).

Rolling up a flank - there's a much better function.

But a galloping line/squadron of horses is a terrifyng thing to stand against, particularly if you are exposed infantry. Once the line is broken, you're in BIG trouble.

As for the horse's psyche...horses can be very brave, particularly when their adrenalin is up and they are galloping with a "herd". They'll go out of their way to avoid treading on anything which isn't a good surface/footing (self preservation not compassion for a fallen man!!) and they certainly wont attempt to jump a shieled wall if there is a second rank behind it bristling with spears. But a single line of shields...I think a horse would gallop at it given the right encouragement and trust in it's rider. As I've said, it would be brave man to stand up to it because if you don't move and the horse hits you, even if you bring it down and thereby remove the rider, someone on yout flank will be crushed and the line breached.

[rrgg]

What about repeated charges? If a kontos or a heavy throwing spear can smash shields and armor in the initial charge would it really be necessary to draw swords and risk yourself in melee?

[Fruitbat]

Even later in history when cavalry were heavier and more armoured, reasonably well organised infantry could stop cavalry in their tracks. Two classic examples spring to mind, firstly Hastings, where the Norman knights tried to charge the Saxon shield wall repeatedley, but could make no headway, and took casualties. They could only get the upper-hand when parts of the wall chose to break ranks and rush forward, where the Norman horsemen could pick them off one by one.
The second being Bannockburn, where the very heavy horse of the English, although very well armoured and trained, were defeated by the sheltrons of a half trained enemy.

I cannot remember who said it but I remember someone saying '(in the proximity of infantry) stationary cavalry are dead cavalry.'

[Sean Manning]

It seems to me that the part of the past from the roman/greek period to it's end always used infantry to win battles (exception is the hellenistic period where Alexander won the most of his battles by cavalry). Middle ages gave us heavy cavalry which didn't have it's rival, same as the 17th century to modern age.

Readers of the Strategikon of Maurice might disagree! So might students of the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE, where each side's cavalry won on their right wing. Apparently the hoplites on both sides hardly came to close quarters, and the Macedonian phalanx was defeated by a hail of shafts which panicked the elephants between the units.

The Achaemenids are another Iron Age Mediterranean society which relied on its infantry in battle but occasionally gave the main role to cavalry.

[Megas Aleksandros]

I am glad to see that people are interested in this topic.

As for the horse psyche Vindex - we agree that horses can be brave, no doubt about it. Even so, horses that have been used in battles are trained in that way. The example can be what Arrian tells us of the battle at Hydaspus river in west India, between Alexander and Porus. Macedonian horses have been frightened by the elephants. The explanation that Arrian gives is that they were trained to fight almost anything, but not elephants. This also says that these horses were extremly brave, because Alexander won the battle with cavalry.

I couldn't agree more that a galloping line of horses is a terrifyng thing to stand against. But that is the beauty of it! There has always been questions why Pompey lost the battle of Pharsalus. That is the answer! 7000 horses have been stopped by 8 cohorts of Caesar just by joining the line on Caesar's right wing. Any army that has the heart, training and experience of such magnitute, not to run, flink while the earth trembles, is an army you should not meet in battle with recruits and mercenaries. And Pompey surely knew that.

As for the single line of shields against cavalry - no doubt about it, cavalry wins. But those are small operations where cavalry is used more than in regular pitched battles. My desire was to give my oppinion on usage of cavalry in large scale operations.

@Sean Manning - Ofcourse, there will always be exceptions where cavalry brought advantage to it's general, but this does not apply to a general roman view that infantry is that element which wins battles. I have went through a lot of roman sources just to find examples where the general plan to win the battle relied on cavalry, and there aren't any such as Pharsalus! There are examples like Magnesia where cavalry brought advantage, but then again, if such a thing happened to a roman army all the romans ever did is to bring reinforcements to the front line and stand against galloping cavalry, thus repulsing it (like Caesar at Pharsalus). It happened numerous times in the East, and that's why Crassus lost the battle of Carrhae - because he didn't deploy infantry reinforcements to his wing to stand against the cataphracts in a single line. Instead his wings collapsed to the centre and he lost the battle.

For the end here's a interesting fact in later military history. In the time of Napoleonic wars in Spain happened a battle between the french rhombus shaped tactical unit and english heavy cavalry. Rhombus is a perfect shape for a unit fighting against cavalry because when the cavalry divides itself in two directions, it has four lines of attack (naturaly, in gunpowder times). The french always won those engagements, but not this time because when cavalry was galloping against the french, first french bullet killed the first horse in the line, and the horse made two-three death steps before it fell onto the men in rhombus shaped unit thus opening a gap for the other horses. And the french all died.

[ValentinianVictrix]

It was not until the reforms during the Early Byzantine period that Roman cavalry began to come into their own. I'm quite surprised at how brittle Late Roman cavalry were and this is something noted by Conway and others. Infantry who were prepared to stand their ground could face off even the most heavily armed and armoured cavalry, such as Clibanarii, as noted by Rance in this paper- http://www.duke.edu/web/classics/grbs/FT...Rance2.pdf

[Gaius Colletti]

Didn't Caesar win Alesia with the calvary being his masterstroke?

[Robert Vermaat]

Didn't Caesar win Alesia with the calvary being his masterstroke?

No, that was his siegecraft I think.

[Megas Aleksandros]

Caesar won the battle of Alesia because, as i've said before, he made a good decision in good time. Indeed, his cavalry was very active in those moments but infantry won the battle. It was infantry who hold back an attack from two sides.

[Gaius Colletti]

Caesar won the battle of Alesia because, as i've said before, he made a good decision in good time. Indeed, his cavalry was very active in those moments but infantry won the battle. It was infantry who hold back an attack from two sides.

The infantry held the line, but the 13 or so cohorts of cavalry were what took the Gauls by surprise, and caused them to retreat (must have been some cavalry because 13 cohorts chased away 60,000 Gauls. The legionaries were able to easily run through the retreating Gauls. The battle could not have been one without both the cavalry and infantry, but the credit goes to the cavalry for putting the Gauls under duress. The legionaries and auxiliaries simply did their job holding the line.

[Megas Aleksandros]

Caesar won the battle of Alesia because, as i've said before, he made a good decision in good time. Indeed, his cavalry was very active in those moments but infantry won the battle. It was infantry who hold back an attack from two sides.

The infantry held the line, but the 13 or so cohorts of cavalry were what took the Gauls by surprise, and caused them to retreat (must have been some cavalry because 13 cohorts chased away 60,000 Gauls. The legionaries were able to easily run through the retreating Gauls. The battle could not have been one without both the cavalry and infantry, but the credit goes to the cavalry for putting the Gauls under duress. The legionaries and auxiliaries simply did their job holding the line.

Yes, indeed, cavalry made a difference in the battle, but only when Caesar had no other choice. Labienus', as a commander of cavalry, was the one who had a simple task of holding the flank while Caesar was with his legionaries in front. But when Labienus failed, Caesar had to do the desperate thing and deploy 13 cavalry cohorts into battle. Regardless, that does not give any evidence that cavalry was the decisive element in battle, it just proves that it is the only manuverable unit that could, in times when trying to avoid desaster, make a difference (similarly to the 'civil war' of the 90's and 80's B.C. when Pompey used his cavalry only in desperate battles). It is in no way the same as a mentioned battle of Pharsalus where the inital plan was to win the battle with cavalry.

I think that the infantry of approximately 40.000 (or even 50.000 with recruits from Cisalpine Gaul), who held a two sided defence in lenght of 21 kilometres, won the battle. Labienus' and his cavalry had the 'privilege' to fail in holding the flank because infantry held it's line vigorously and with pride. Cavalry was used only when things went bad, as a desperate move to save oneself. It does not prove the roman idea of winning a battle with cavalry.

[Albertomv]

Cavalry can´t win infantry if the last hold the ground, but this is the cuestion a lot of nerve is needed to hold fast when you see hundreds of horses runing in your direction and men around you are shaking.

[Macedon]

Cavalry had an extremely important role. It could and did win battles and campaigns as well. A common mistake is mixing up the historical weakness of cavalry when coming in blows with most types of infantry orderly and densely arrayed with its overall value in the process of a battle. The one thing gents has nothing to do with the other. Cavalry is one of the weapons available to the general in battle and had its uses exactly as the elephants, the light infantry, the chariots. Would anyone claim that skirmishing infantry could not be decisive because they would never be able to charge into melee with the heavy infantry line? This was not their job. On the other hand they would be sent forward, harass them with their missiles, capture strong points, constantly shower them with arrows, stones and javelins while the infantry line would be unable to do anything if itself was not supported by light infantry. To counter them, one just HAD TO employ his own foot skirmishers. The same applied to cavalry. If one side had no cavalry or very few it would be in great danger, as many battles/campaigns in history proved. Similarly, to counter cavalry you needed cavalry. For cavalry was very fast and mobile. It could not easily and as such did not habitually charge into unwavering infantry but it could encircle them, harass them with even more efficiency than infantry skirmishers, it could violently attack strugglers, extraordinaries, simultaneously threaten/attack (attack of course not meaning "charge into" but "attack in the way and method usual to the troop in question") front, rear and flanks, chase off or decimate enemy skirmishing infantry. Its impact could be huge and to counter that the usual method was a rectangled formation of infantry which had a purely defensive/protective role, for an army should be able to move and protect its baggage train and civilian personel. So, it does not matter that the Parthians of Surena were unable to breach the Roman lines. The inability of the Romans to harm them was so crushing psychologically that, in their minds, they had to chase them off and lose their own cavalry in the process, they deserted their plans and were chased off the land without being able to make any damage. But even in mixed armies, we see how reluctant infantry can be to aggressively engage the enemy when surrounded by enemy cavalry. Magnesia (as stated above)being a very good example, but one of many (Cannes, Gaugamela, Hydaspes being just a few more...) Remember Pharsala? Caesar especially feared Pompey's abundance of cavalry and devised a cunning plan to counter it. This very fact shows though that Julius did indeed deem cavalry as being a decisive element in the battle that he had to counter as the side lacking it...

[Megas Aleksandros]

I agree what Macedon said, but not completly. I am not doubting the usage of cavalry, as you have stated it's necessary to have a complete army of cavalry, skirmishers, heavy infantry etc. The doubt arises when talking about roman strategy. Cavalry had it's uses, and in many battles great ones but i no way did the romans in their strategy rely to win a pitched battle with cavalry. As any other unit it had its task that had to be completed.

Pharsalus is actually a tipical example of a mistake when trying to win a battle with cavalry. Caesar could have deemed the greater number of soldiers on Pompey's side as a decisive element that he had to counter but he didn't because he knew how untrained they were. He deemed Pompey's bad call to outflank Caesar with cavalry, and not the idea that Pompey had a larger cavalry which could be the decisive element. Pompey must have known this, so more because it was his infantry that also won battles against foreign heavy cavalry just by standing in line (and roman also in the civil war of 90's). The cavalry that Labienus commanded was untrained, consisting of young romans unexperienced in pitched battles, so it was Caesar's infantry that was this decisive element. They defeated Pompey's cavalry by just standing in line, no matter the number of horses, spears and noise.

It may seem that i wanted to generalize the usage of cavalry in battles, for small scale operations are still - battles. My intent was to point out that in devising the plans for a pitched battle, were strategy is everything, romans relied on their infantry to win a battle, not so on cavalry. It had an extremly important role in the process of a battle, and it's uses can be described in numerous pages but, the infantry men were this decisive element. We know that most of the battles that romans fought was won in first hours, because of it's superiority over the enemy.

We can talk all we want about strategy, cavalry, infantry and it's uses, but we forgot the main thing. For example - we know that the german warriors before the battle used to shout as louldy as they could because it's a way to relieve stress. Most of the times they outnumbered the romans. So imagine you were one of that german warriors, shouting and watching as this metal machine of roman soldiers, outnumbered, marches towards you. No matter how loud you're shouting, throwing stones and arrows at them, they are marching towards you, silent. And when they are very close they run and the first couple of rows of infantry throws everything they got, making a big noise together with the trumpets. That's the thing that won battles for the romans.