Cavalry and chariots against infantry

[Domen]

It seems you are particularly interested in the Polish cavalry of the late 16th early 17th centuries.

Polish-Lithuanian hussars is not the only or main field of my interest when it comes to cavalry and military history. But this a rather good example of efficient shock cavalry in confronting infantry.

Provide the sources so that we can understand the mechanism of the hussar charge, when and how they charged. I hope you will excuse me if I do not research them myself in depth, I really do not have the time. However, I am more than happy to read through any trustworthy source - I personally prefer primary sources or sources as close to the era as possible rather than conclusions already made by researchers - you can provide. Always keep in mind that cavalry "attacking" infantry was not unusual. It is the mode of the attack and the tactical details we are discussing.

Of course. I do realize that we are discussing here the mode of the attack and the tactical details - and also the reasons why infantry was successful or not in defending against a cavalry charge. I will provide some more information (and primary sources I hope) on the methods used by husaria when I have some more free time. But you should know, that there are still controversies regarding this among various authors (although Radosław Sikora is recently considered as perhaps the best researcher of fighting methods of hussars - which doesn't mean that there are no some researchers who still disagree with him at least in some aspects). The problem is that primary sources do not describe everything in such details, that would be pleasing for us, nowadays. Perhaps for people of that time, these things were so obvious and those mechanisms of combat so well-known, that they did not consider as necessary to describe such matters in extreme details. That's why we are to some extent forced to rely on interpretation and conclusions made by modern researchers - based on analysis of those 16th - 17th century primary sources. There is often shortage of some tactical details in descriptions from primary sources.

I would be intrigued to learn that the Polish hussars developed a method to train their horses to act with no regard to their safety

Perhaps indeed they had such horses. Surviving casualty reports and casualty lists from that time show that repeatedly casualties among horses were much higher than among men.

Some primary sources from the battle of Kircholm suggest that 600 Polish cavalry at Kircholm which frontally charged the Swedish pike-musket infantry of the first echelon (3840 men), lost as many as 150 horses (25%), while only 30 or 40 men were killed. And the infantry formation was broken (the charge was victorious - despite these 25% of precious horses being lost).