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Cavalry: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Cavalry
The first verified evidence of true cavalry, not chariots, appears on the 13th century BC battlefield of Tollense valley in northern Germany, where horse bones were found alongside human remains, marking the dawn of a new era in warfare. Before this moment, the power of mobility on the battlefield was largely performed by light chariots, which originated with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture in Central Asia and spread by nomadic or semi-nomadic Indo-Iranians. These chariots were quickly adopted by settled peoples, including the pharaohs of the New Kingdom of Egypt from 1550 BC, the Assyrian army, and Babylonian royalty, serving as both military technology and an object of ceremonial status. However, the power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, but was offset by the difficulty of raising large forces and by the inability of horses, then mostly small, to carry heavy armor. Despite these limitations, there are indications that from the 15th century BC onwards, horseback riding was practiced amongst the military elites of the great states of the ancient Near East, most notably those in Egypt, Assyria, the Hittite Empire, and Mycenaean Greece. Cavalry techniques, and the rise of true cavalry, were an innovation of equestrian nomads of the Eurasian Steppe and pastoralist tribes such as the Iranic Parthians and Sarmatians. Together with a core of armoured lancers, these were predominantly horse archers using the Parthian shot tactic. As early as 490 BC a breed of large horses was bred in the Nisaean plain in Media to carry men with increasing amounts of armor, but large horses were still very exceptional at this time. By the fourth century BC the Chinese during the Warring States period began to use cavalry against rival states, and by 331 BC when Alexander the Great defeated the Persians the use of chariots in battle was obsolete in most nations, despite a few ineffective attempts to revive scythed chariots. The last recorded use of chariots as a shock force in continental Europe was during the Battle of Telamon in 225 BC. However, chariots remained in use for ceremonial purposes such as carrying the victorious general in a Roman triumph, or for racing. Outside of mainland Europe, the southern Britons met Julius Caesar with chariots in 55 and 54 BC, but by the time of the Roman conquest of Britain a century later chariots were obsolete, even in Britannia. The last mention of chariot use in Britain was by the Caledonians at the Mons Graupius, in 84 AD.
The Nomadic Masters of the Steppe
The most devastating cavalry forces in history emerged not from settled empires, but from the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian Steppe, who mastered the art of horse archery and mobility. The Huns of Attila and the later Mongol armies were hosts that were mostly cavalry, utilizing their strategic and tactical mobility to conquer vast territories. The Parthians and Sarmatians, Iranic tribes, were predominantly horse archers using the Parthian shot tactic, a method where they would feign retreat and turn back to shoot arrows at pursuing enemies. The Chinese recognized early on during the Han dynasty that they were at a disadvantage in lacking the number of horses the northern nomadic peoples mustered in their armies. Emperor Wu of Han went to war with the Dayuan for this reason, since the Dayuan were hoarding a massive amount of tall, strong, Central Asian bred horses in the Hellenized, Greek region of Fergana. Although experiencing some defeats early on in the campaign, Emperor Wu's war from 104 BC to 102 BC succeeded in gathering the prized tribute of horses from Fergana. Cavalry tactics in China were enhanced by the invention of the saddle-attached stirrup by at least the 4th century, as the oldest reliable depiction of a rider with paired stirrups was found in a Jin dynasty tomb of the year 322 AD. The Chinese invention of the horse collar by the 5th century was also a great improvement from the breast harness, allowing the horse to haul greater weight without heavy burden on its skeletal structure. The Mongol Empire and its sinicized part, the Yuan dynasty, proved eager to enlist Chinese infantry and engineering, creating a formidable force that combined the mobility of the steppe with the engineering prowess of the settled empires. The Kamboja cavalry, from the region of modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, were famous for their horses and were known as Ashvakas, or horsemen, and their land was known as Home of Horses. These hardy tribes had offered stubborn resistance to Alexander during latter's campaign of the Kabul, Kunar and Swat valleys and had even extracted the praise of Alexander's historians. The Kamboja cavalry along with that of the Sakas, Yavanas is reported to have been enlisted by the Kuru king Duryodhana of Hastinapura in the Mahabharata war. The Kamboja cavalry had also formed part of the Gurjara-Pratihara armed forces from the eighth to the 10th centuries AD. They had come to Bengal with the Pratiharas when the latter conquered part of the province. The Kambojas were famous for their horses, as well as cavalrymen, and were described as Ayuddha-jivi or Shastr-opajivis, meaning nations-in-arms, which also means that the Kamboja cavalry offered its military services to other nations as well.
When did true cavalry first appear in recorded history?
The first verified evidence of true cavalry appears on the 13th century BC battlefield of Tollense valley in northern Germany, where horse bones were found alongside human remains. This discovery marks the dawn of a new era in warfare distinct from the earlier use of light chariots by the Sintashta-Petrovka culture.
Which nomadic tribes developed the most devastating cavalry forces in history?
The most devastating cavalry forces emerged from the nomadic tribes of the Eurasian Steppe, including the Huns of Attila and the later Mongol armies. These groups mastered the art of horse archery and mobility to conquer vast territories, with the Parthians and Sarmatians utilizing the Parthian shot tactic.
When did heavy cavalry become the dominant force on the European battlefield?
Heavy cavalry rose to become the dominant force on the European battlefield from the late 10th century onwards when heavily armed horsemen known as milites or knights emerged. This class of aristocratic warriors was considered the ultimate in heavy cavalry and led with the lance in battle in a full-gallop, close-formation knightly charge.
What was the greatest cavalry charge of modern history and when did it occur?
The greatest cavalry charge of modern history was at the 1807 Battle of Eylau when the entire 11,000-strong French cavalry reserve launched a huge charge on and through the Russian infantry lines. This charge was led by Joachim Murat and demonstrated the devastating power of massed cavalry before infantry squares and artillery became effective counters.
When did cavalry become obsolete on the Western Front during World War I?
By early 1915 most cavalry units were no longer seeing front line action on the Western Front due to the combination of barbed wire, uneven muddy terrain, machine guns and rapid fire rifles. The last massed cavalry encounter on the Eastern Front occurred on the 21st of August 1914 in the Battle of Jaroslawice.
How are modern cavalry units defined in contemporary military forces?
Modern cavalry units are defined as units continuing to fulfill traditional light cavalry roles by employing fast armored cars, light tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles instead of horses. Air cavalry units employ helicopters while most horse-mounted units in modern armies serve in purely ceremonial roles or as mounted infantry in difficult terrain.
As the quality and availability of heavy infantry declined in Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire, heavy cavalry became more effective, rising to become the dominant force on the European battlefield. From the late 10th century onwards heavily armed horsemen, milites or knights, emerged as an expensive elite taking centre stage both on and off the battlefield. This class of aristocratic warriors was considered the ultimate in heavy cavalry, well-equipped with the best weapons, state-of-the-art armor from head to foot, leading with the lance in battle in a full-gallop, close-formation knightly charge that might prove irresistible, winning the battle almost as soon as it began. Knights remained the minority of total available combat forces, as the expense of arms, armor, and horses was only affordable to a select few. While mounted men-at-arms focused on a narrow combat role of shock combat, medieval armies relied on a large variety of foot troops to fulfill all the rest. Medieval chroniclers tended to pay undue attention to the knights at the expense of the common soldiers, which led early students of military history to suppose that heavy cavalry was the only force that mattered on medieval European battlefields. But well-trained and disciplined infantry could defeat knights. Massed English longbowmen triumphed over French cavalry at Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt, while at Gisors, Bannockburn, and Laupen, foot-soldiers proved they could resist cavalry charges as long as they held their formation. Once the Swiss developed their pike squares for offensive as well as defensive use, infantry started to become the principal arm. This aggressive new doctrine gave the Swiss victory over a range of adversaries, and their enemies found that the only reliable way to defeat them was by the use of an even more comprehensive combined arms doctrine, as evidenced in the Battle of Marignano. The introduction of missile weapons that required less skill than the longbow, such as the crossbow and hand cannon, also helped remove the focus somewhat from cavalry elites to masses of cheap infantry equipped with easy-to-learn weapons. These missile weapons were very successfully used in the Hussite Wars, in combination with Wagenburg tactics. This gradual rise in the dominance of infantry led to the adoption of dismounted tactics. From the earliest times knights and mounted men-at-arms had frequently dismounted to handle enemies they could not overcome on horseback, such as in the Battle of the Dyle and the Battle of Bremule, but after the 1350s this trend became more marked with the dismounted men-at-arms fighting as super-heavy infantry with two-handed swords and poleaxes. In any case, warfare in the Middle Ages tended to be dominated by raids and sieges rather than pitched battles, and mounted men-at-arms rarely had any choice other than dismounting when faced with the prospect of assaulting a fortified position.
The Gunpowder Paradox
Ironically, the rise of infantry in the early 16th century coincided with the golden age of heavy cavalry, as a French or Spanish army at the beginning of the century could have up to half its numbers made up of various kinds of light and heavy cavalry, whereas in earlier medieval and later 17th-century armies the proportion of cavalry was seldom more than a quarter. Knighthood largely lost its military functions and became more closely tied to social and economic prestige in an increasingly capitalistic Western society. With the rise of drilled and trained infantry, the mounted men-at-arms, now sometimes called gendarmes and often part of the standing army themselves, adopted the same role as in the Hellenistic age, that of delivering a decisive blow once the battle was already engaged, either by charging the enemy in the flank or attacking their commander-in-chief. From the 1550s onwards, the use of gunpowder weapons solidified infantry's dominance of the battlefield and began to allow true mass armies to develop. This is closely related to the increase in the size of armies throughout the early modern period; heavily armored cavalrymen were expensive to raise and maintain and it took years to train a skilled horseman or a horse, while arquebusiers and later musketeers could be trained and kept in the field at much lower cost, and were much easier to recruit. The Spanish tercio and later formations relegated cavalry to a supporting role. The pistol was specifically developed to try to bring cavalry back into the conflict, together with manoeuvres such as the caracole. The caracole was not particularly successful, however, and the charge remained as the primary mode of employment for many types of European cavalry, although by this time it was delivered in much deeper formations and with greater discipline than before. The demi-lancers and the heavily armored sword-and-pistol reiters were among the types of cavalry whose heyday was in the 16th and 17th centuries. During this period the Polish Winged hussars were a dominating heavy cavalry force in Eastern Europe that initially achieved great success against Swedes, Russians, Turks and other, until repeatably beaten by either combined arms tactics, increase in firepower or beaten in melee with the Drabant cavalry of the Swedish Empire. From their last engagement in 1702 at the Battle of Kliszów until 1776, the obsolete Winged hussars were demoted and largely assigned to ceremonial roles. The Polish Winged hussars military prowess peaked at the Siege of Vienna in 1683, when hussar banners participated in the largest cavalry charge in history and successfully repelled the Ottoman attack.
The Iron Horse and The Machine Gun
The greatest cavalry charge of modern history was at the 1807 Battle of Eylau, when the entire 11,000-strong French cavalry reserve, led by Joachim Murat, launched a huge charge on and through the Russian infantry lines. Cavalry's dominating and menacing presence on the battlefield was countered by the use of infantry squares. The most notable examples are at the Battle of Quatre Bras and later at the Battle of Waterloo, the latter which the repeated charges by up to 9,000 French cavalrymen ordered by Michel Ney failed to break the British-Allied army, who had formed into squares. Massed infantry, especially those formed in squares were deadly to cavalry, but offered an excellent target for artillery. Once a bombardment had disordered the infantry formation, cavalry were able to rout and pursue the scattered foot soldiers. It was not until individual firearms gained accuracy and improved rates of fire that cavalry was diminished in this role as well. Even then light cavalry remained an indispensable tool for scouting, screening the army's movements, and harassing the enemy's supply lines until military aircraft supplanted them in this role in the early stages of World War I. In the Crimean War, the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Thin Red Line at the Battle of Balaclava showed the vulnerability of cavalry, when deployed without effective support. During the Franco-Prussian War, at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour in 1870, a Prussian cavalry brigade decisively smashed the centre of the French battle line, after skilfully concealing their approach. This event became known as Von Bredow's Death Ride after the brigade commander Adalbert von Bredow; it would be used in the following decades to argue that massed cavalry charges still had a place on the modern battlefield. By the beginning of the 19th century, European cavalry fell into four main categories: Cuirassiers, heavy cavalry, adorned with body armor, especially a cuirass, and primarily armed with pistols and a sword; Dragoons, originally mounted infantry, but later regarded as medium cavalry; Hussars, light cavalry, primarily armed with sabres; and Lancers or Uhlans, light cavalry, primarily armed with lances. There were cavalry variations for individual nations as well: France had the chasseurs à cheval; Prussia had the Jäger zu Pferde; Bavaria, Saxony and Austria had the Chevaulegers; and Russia had Cossacks. Britain, from the mid-18th century, had Light Dragoons as light cavalry and Dragoons, Dragoon Guards and Household Cavalry as heavy cavalry. Only after the end of the Napoleonic wars were the Household Cavalry equipped with cuirasses, and some other regiments were converted to lancers. In the United States Army prior to 1862 the cavalry were almost always dragoons. The Imperial Japanese Army had its cavalry uniformed as hussars, but they fought as dragoons.
The Last Charge of the Horsemen
In August 1914, all combatant armies still retained substantial numbers of cavalry and the mobile nature of the opening battles on both Eastern and Western Fronts provided a number of instances of traditional cavalry actions, though on a smaller and more scattered scale than those of previous wars. The 110 regiments of Imperial German cavalry, while as colourful and traditional as any in peacetime appearance, had adopted a practice of falling back on infantry support when any substantial opposition was encountered. These cautious tactics aroused derision amongst their more conservative French and Russian opponents but proved appropriate to the new nature of warfare. A single attempt by the German army, on the 12th of August 1914, to use six regiments of massed cavalry to cut off the Belgian field army from Antwerp floundered when they were driven back in disorder by rifle fire. The two German cavalry brigades involved lost 492 men and 843 horses in repeated charges against dismounted Belgian lancers and infantry. One of the last recorded charges by French cavalry took place on the night of 9/the 10th of September 1914 when a squadron of the 16th Dragoons overran a German airfield at Soissons, while suffering heavy losses. Once the front lines stabilised on the Western Front with the start of Trench Warfare, a combination of barbed wire, uneven muddy terrain, machine guns and rapid fire rifles proved deadly to horse mounted troops and by early 1915 most cavalry units were no longer seeing front line action. On the Eastern Front, a more fluid form of warfare arose from flat open terrain favorable to mounted warfare. On the outbreak of war in 1914 the bulk of the Russian cavalry was deployed at full strength in frontier garrisons and, during the period that the main armies were mobilizing, scouting and raiding into East Prussia and Austrian Galicia was undertaken by mounted troops trained to fight with sabre and lance in the traditional style. On the 21st of August 1914 the 4th Austro-Hungarian under clashed with the Russian 10th Cavalry Division under general Fyodor Arturovich Keller in the Battle of Jaroslawice, in what was arguably the final historic battle to involve thousands of horsemen on both sides. While this was the last massed cavalry encounter on the Eastern Front, the absence of good roads limited the use of mechanized transport and even the technologically advanced Imperial German Army continued to deploy up to twenty-four horse-mounted divisions in the East, as late as 1917. For the remainder of the War on the Western Front, cavalry had virtually no role to play. The British and French armies dismounted many of their cavalry regiments and used them in infantry and other roles: the Life Guards for example spent the last months of the War as a machine gun corps; and the Australian Light Horse served as light infantry during the Gallipoli campaign. In September 1914 cavalry comprised 9.28% of the total manpower of the British Expeditionary Force in France, by July 1918 this proportion had fallen to 1.65%. As early as the first winter of the war most French cavalry regiments had dismounted a squadron each, for service in the trenches. The French cavalry numbered 102,000 in May 1915 but had been reduced to 63,000 by October 1918. The German Army dismounted nearly all their cavalry in the West, maintaining only one mounted division on that front by January 1917. Italy entered the war in 1915 with thirty regiments of line cavalry, lancers and light horse. While employed effectively against their Austro-Hungarian counterparts during the initial offensives across the Isonzo River, the Italian mounted forces ceased to have a significant role as the front shifted into mountainous terrain. By 1916 most cavalry machine-gun sections and two complete cavalry divisions had been dismounted and seconded to the infantry. Some cavalry were retained as mounted troops in reserve behind the lines, in anticipation of a penetration of the opposing trenches that it seemed would never come. Tanks, introduced on the Western Front by the British in September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, had the capacity to achieve such breakthroughs but did not have the reliable range to exploit them. In their first major use at the Battle of Cambrai in 1917, the plan was for a cavalry division to follow behind the tanks, however they were not able to cross a canal because a tank had broken the only bridge.
The Ghosts of the Battlefield
Despite horse-borne cavalry becoming obsolete, the term cavalry is still used, referring in modern times to units continuing to fulfill the traditional light cavalry roles, employing fast armored cars, light tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles instead of horses, while air cavalry employs helicopters. Most cavalry units that are horse-mounted in modern armies serve in purely ceremonial roles, or as mounted infantry in difficult terrain such as mountains or heavily forested areas. Modern usage of the term generally refers to units performing the role of reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition, analogous to historical light cavalry, or main battle tank units, analogous to historical heavy cavalry. In the interwar period many cavalry units were converted into motorized infantry and mechanized infantry units, or reformed as tank troops. The cavalry tank or cruiser tank was one designed with a speed and purpose beyond that of infantry tanks and would subsequently develop into the main battle tank. Nonetheless, some cavalry still served during World War II, notably in the Red Army, the Mongolian People's Army, the Royal Italian Army, the Royal Hungarian Army, the Romanian Army, the Polish Land Forces, and German light reconnaissance units within the Waffen SS. The cavalry of the United States Army prior to 1862 were almost always dragoons. The distinguished 1st Virginia Cavalry ranks as one of the most effectual and successful cavalry units on the Confederate side. Noted cavalry commanders included Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and John Singleton Mosby, a.k.a. The Grey Ghost, and on the Union side, Philip Sheridan and George Armstrong Custer. Post Civil War, as the volunteer armies disbanded, the regular army cavalry regiments increased in number from six to ten, among them Custer's U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment of Little Bighorn fame, and the African-American U.S. 9th Cavalry Regiment and U.S. 10th Cavalry Regiment. The black units, along with others, collectively became known as the Buffalo Soldiers. According to Robert M. Utley, the frontier army was a conventional military force trying to control, by conventional military methods, a people that did not behave like conventional enemies and, indeed, quite often were not enemies at all. This is the most difficult of all military assignments, whether in Africa, Asia, or the American West. These regiments, which rarely took the field as complete organizations, served throughout the American Indian Wars through the close of the frontier in the 1890s. Volunteer cavalry regiments like the Rough Riders consisted of horsemen such as cowboys, ranchers and other outdoorsmen, that served as a cavalry in the United States Military. The French Army maintained substantial cavalry forces in Algeria and Morocco from 1830 until the end of World War II. Much of the Mediterranean coastal terrain was suitable for mounted action and there was a long established culture of horsemanship amongst the Arab and Berber inhabitants. The French forces included Spahis, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Foreign Legion cavalry and mounted Goumiers. Both Spain and Italy raised cavalry regiments from amongst the indigenous horsemen of their North African territories. Imperial Germany employed mounted formations in South West Africa as part of the Schutztruppen garrisoning that territory. In 1903 the British Indian Army maintained forty regiments of cavalry, numbering about 25,000 Indian sowars, with British and Indian officers. Among the more famous regiments in the lineages of the modern Indian and Pakistani armies are the Governor General's Bodyguard, Skinner's Horse, Gardner's Lancers, Hodson's Horse, and the Bengal Lancers. Several of these formations are still active, though they now are armoured formations, for example the Guides Cavalry of Pakistan.