Byzantine Weapons and Warfare

[Orlirva]

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I was more thinking in the way of chnaging horses completely, not of bringing more horses along. For they, like the others, can't take the pace of a forced march as well as the infantry. Junkelmann lists some very good examples from the Amercican civil war as well as WW I, where the infantry is initially left behind, but always catches up and after several days outmarches the cavalry.
I'd be interested to learn more about those Polish examples - were they also from a march or from tactical operations? Operational mobility on a single day is certainly different from operational mobility after a week of marching, in which the stamina of the man is better than the stamina of the horse.

I'll try to getr more specifics about the Polish examples - as I know the story they were multi-week campaigns.
By this time the Romans were learning most of their cavalry lessons (including cavalry dress and kit) from the Avars and turks, and I expect they had the usual modified-nomadic practice of bringing remounts along, and not in a herd but managed by the trooper and their servants. Certainly that was the practice that survived in pre-modern times among the turks, hungarians, rus, and poles. Horses stayed next to the trooper' unit's tents. The western cavalry practice was to bring remounts in a herd, a herd that was strung outside the camp area, and that survived right through Napoleonic times.
I agree as a former marathon runner that human distance endurance is excellent, but steppe ponies had the reputation of going 40-50 miles per day, day after day, loaded. The arabs and turk horses favored by later elite cavalry could not, with a load, but might unburdened.
Civil war 'cavalry' would be called dragoons any other time. They did not do remounts anything like true cavalry did. Recall the light brigade? they remounted a hour before they were charging through the 'valley of death' behind their lances... true traditional cavalry. Also, a little OT but telling - my civil war sabre manual says do NOT use the point of the sabre because what if you stabbed someone and could not extract your saber, then you would have no sabre! true cavalry in 11-17th C. style would have said use the point, and if your estock gets stuck in someone's chest drop it and pull your broadsword, and if you lose that pull out your battle mace, and if you lose that THEN pull out your sabre.