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Parthian/Sassanid heavy cavalry use bamboo lances?
#31
Nothing to do with mail, which was also abundant in the East, along with other forms of armor. Other than a preference for stallions, there wasn't a difference in horse sizes, and anyone who'd read the manuals would note that the Romans employed superior shock tactics.

As for Alexios emphasizing shooting horses over riders, he'd have said something similar regarding enemy kataphraktoi and these would've had barded horses.

Alexios was in a position where he had to cobble together forces mostly consisting of crap, as the civil wars had depleted the treasury and experienced manpower was in short supply, mentioned in the Alexiad, plus he wasn't that great a general. At Dyrrhachium, those invincible Norman horsemen were impotent facing a phalanx of Varangians and if they hadn't over-extended themselves, Alexios wouldn't have had a reoccurring ulcer.

If I might ask, how much of the Alexiad have you read or are you just cut and pasting cherry-picked passages? The Alexiad is about as reliable as the Bible and shouldn't be taken at face value, unless one's a fundamentalist .
aka T*O*N*G*A*R
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#32
Quote:
Urselius post=353122 Wrote:If the couched lance technique had been in use for many centuries by many different peoples how do you account for the superiority shown by the heavy cavalry of the Normans and other Westerners against Byzantium from the 1060s and against the Middle Eastern Muslim peoples from the First Crusade onwards? Please do not say armour, because Western armour at this time, though heavy, was not as diverse or effective as the armour used by their Byzantine and Muslim foes.

Quote:The Byzantine princess and historian Anna Comnena stated: "For a Frank on horseback is invincible, and would even make a hole in the walls of Babylon". Franks were obviously doing something that contemporary Byzantine cavalry were not.

Their mail was superior to that of their opponents and it covered more of the body. Their horses were larger and better trained for shock tactics.

"He furnished them abundantly with arrows and exhorted them not to use them sparingly, but to shoot at the horses rather than at the Franks. For he knew that the Franks were difficult to wound, or rather, practically invulnerable, thanks to their armoured coats of mail. Therefore he considered shooting at them useless and quite senseless. For the Frankish defensive arms is this coat of mail, ring woven into ring, and the iron fabric is such excellent iron that it repels arrows and keeps the wearer’s skin unhurt." [Alexiad, VIII.8]
Nothing to do with mail, which was also abundant in the East, along with other forms of armor. Other than a preference for stallions, there wasn't a difference in horse sizes, and anyone who'd read the manuals would note that the Romans employed superior shock tactics.

As for Alexios emphasizing shooting horses over riders, he'd have said something similar regarding enemy kataphraktoi and these would've had barded horses.

Alexios was in a position where he had to cobble together forces mostly consisting of crap, as the civil wars had depleted the treasury and experienced manpower was in short supply, mentioned in the Alexiad, plus he wasn't that great a general. At Dyrrhachium, those invincible Norman horsemen were impotent facing a phalanx of Varangians and if they hadn't over-extended themselves, Alexios wouldn't have had a reoccurring ulcer.

If I might ask, how much of the Alexiad have you read or are you just cut and pasting cherry-picked passages? The Alexiad is about as reliable as the Bible and shouldn't be taken at face value, unless one's a fundamentalist .
aka T*O*N*G*A*R
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#33
The couched lance technique was an evolutionary dead-end and reflected the lack of sophistication of Frankish cavalry compared with Easterners, who had been using it, along with various two-handed methods, before and after the adoption of stirrups. John II and Manuel I adopted Frankish methods and gear, because most of their campaigns were against them, while traditional methods were employed against Seljuks. In the 1167 Battle of Sirmium, Byzantine cavalry effectively used their fearsome iron maces in melee against Hungarian knights in Western gear, no different than facing armored Muslim cavalry in the 10th Century.
aka T*O*N*G*A*R
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#34
I think searching for reason of success of a certain group of warriors in their equipment is usually a faulty way of aproaching the problem unless the difference in equipment is very high. Tactics are a better contender for the main reason of success, but high moral, agressive and commited aproach is what usually wins wars.
For example, siege of Antioch, First Crusade, AD1098. Why did Christian knights win the battle outside the walls? Because they had the high morals because of the supposed holy lance that pierced Jesus's side, because they had nothing to loose and everything to win so they fought like mad and retreat wasn't an option and because they had a vision in their minds, an oath they had to keep. Muslims didn't have that much on stake in that battle and when pressured, they broke. If they stood and fough they would envelope the Crusaders and defeat them, even though casualties would be high for them. But they could retreat and fight another day, Crusaders would starve to death if they didn't win that battle.
Since we are on RAT, everybody here would be familiar with Gallic Wars and Ceasar. :wink: Why did he win all those battles against Gauls? I think his aproach to that war was far more important than roman weapons and equipment. He went to war to conquer the Gaul. Gauls realized much to late that he Ceasar is fighting a total war against whole Gaul, not just certain tribes and they united to late. They didn't think defeat in that war would be an end to their culture and way of life. If they knew that from the beginning, the Gallic Wars might have looked very different.
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#35
The deep seat with an exaggeratedly straight leg, with the heels depicted lower than the toes, is characteristic of illustrations contemporary with the use of the couched lance. You can view 11th century Byzantine illustrations and this characteristic is not visible. For other styles of fighting, particularly horse archery, a shorter stirrup allowed the rider to stand with his fundament clear of the saddle and this gave the rider the necessary freedom of movement demanded by his fighting style.

I suspect that the straight leg and deep seat was used in order to brace the rider's pelvis against the high cantle of the saddle employed by all riders using the true couched lance technique. An unbraced rider using a couched lance would be slammed backwards into the cantle and probably be injured by any impact of the small of the back with it.

Show me an image of a cavalryman sitting in anything other than a high cantled saddle, with any other than a straight-legged, braced, posture and you are showing me an image of a cavalryman who could not use the true couched lance technique.

Substantial pieces of Byzantine mail exist, in Athonite monasteries for example, and it is of the same one in four ring construction used in Western Europe. The Alexiad admonition to shoot at the horses applies only to archery, not lances or other weapons, and could be taken as being significant in relation to the relative absence of horse barding in the West.

In the 1080s at Dyrrachion Byzantine kataphraktoi were routed by Western knights. In the 1160s at Sirmium, Byzantine kataphraktoi broke a Hungarian army whose strike-force was composed of knights on barded horses. Both sides are described as fighting with lances and that the "lances were shattered." Kinnamos (folio 125), states that Emperor Manuel I (1143-1180) organised training for his cavalry (jousting), "Thus charging with blunted lances, they practised manoeuvring in arms. So in a brief time the Roman [Byzantine] excelled the mettle of French and Italians." Something had happened between Dyrrachion and Sirmium to drastically improve the performance of Byzantine heavy cavalry when faced with Western knights, and Kinnamos tells us what it was.
Martin

Fac me cocleario vomere!
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#36
Quote:wat

Lances are all over iconography and written records referring to the Arsacids and Sasanians ...

He mean the bamboo lance in the photo.
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