Horses in warfare

• 1. Introduction

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  Horses in warfare shaped the outcomes of battles for roughly six thousand years. Between 4000 and 3000 BC, somewhere in the steppes of what is now Ukraine, Hungary, and Romania, people began riding horses to raid neighbouring settlements. Those targets could not give chase. So they abandoned open settlements and gathered inside fortified towns instead. A single animal changed where and how people chose to live.

  The questions that follow from that moment are vast. How did a prey animal become the engine of ancient armies? What technologies unlocked the horse's full potential on a battlefield? Which cultures built their entire way of war around the horse, and which eventually chose to move past it? And when the age of horse cavalry finally ended, what did it leave behind?

• 2. Form Follows Function

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  A horse that weighs roughly 800 to 1000 lb can sprint, pivot, and endure a long march. A horse in the 1500 to 2000 lb range can carry a knight in full armour or haul a supply wagon across difficult ground. These were not interchangeable animals, and the armies of history understood that difference precisely.

  Light oriental horses, ancestors of the modern Arabian, Barb, and Akhal-Teke, suited any role that demanded speed and agility. Riders on these animals kept their own kit light: bows, light spears, or javelins. The Ancient Egyptians, the Mongols, the Arabs, and the Native Americans all relied on animals of this type.

  Medium-weight horses, ranging roughly from 1000 to 1200 lb, filled the gap between speed and carrying capacity. The Scythians were among the first cultures to breed them deliberately. By the Middle Ages, larger animals in this class were sometimes called destriers. They were distinct from true draught horses, averaging a moderate height and, despite their bulk, remaining agile in combat.

  Heavy draught horses came into their own for pulling supply wagons and, in some accounts, carrying the most heavily armoured knights of the late Medieval period. Historians dispute whether the destrier was ever truly a draught animal. Breeds near the smaller end of that heavyweight range may have included the ancestors of the Percheron, animals agile enough to manoeuvre on a battlefield despite their mass.

  The arithmetic of load and speed shaped every decision. A horse harnessed to a wheeled vehicle on a paved road can pull as much as eight times its own body weight, but the same animal pulling a wheelless load over rough ground manages far less. Riders faced a parallel trade-off: armour added protection and added weight, and added weight cut maximum speed. No single horse answered every need.

• 3. The Chariot Era

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  Among the earliest firm evidence for chariot use are burials of horse and chariot remains by the Andronovo culture, in what is now Russia and Kazakhstan, dated to approximately 2000 BC. Chariots offered armies a platform for speed, a means of delivering an archer or spearman into range and extracting them before an enemy could respond.

  The oldest documentary evidence of what was probably chariot warfare in the Ancient Near East is the Old Hittite Anitta text, from the 18th century BC, which mentioned 40 teams of horses at the siege of Salatiwara. The Hittites became known across the ancient world for their chariot skill. Widespread chariot use across most of Eurasia roughly coincided with the development of the composite bow, attested from around 1600 BC.

  The Hyksos brought the chariot to Ancient Egypt in the 16th century BC, using an improved harness design featuring a breastcollar and breeching that let horses move faster and pull more weight than the neck yokes borrowed from ox-cart design. Egypt adopted the chariot from that point forward. Chariots also appeared in China as far back as the Shang dynasty, roughly 1600 to 1050 BC, visible in burial sites; their high point in China came during the Spring and Autumn period, from 770 to 476 BC.

  The oldest preserved manual on war horse training anywhere in the ancient world is the Hittite text of Kikkuli, dated to about 1350 BC, which describes the conditioning of chariot horses. Julius Caesar, invading Britain in 55 and 54 BC, noted British charioteers throwing javelins and then dismounting to fight on foot, a tactic that the Iliad, describing practices from around 1250 BC, had already associated with an earlier era.

• 4. The Rise of the Rider

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  Some of the earliest horse-mounted fighters were archers in the armies of the Assyrian rulers Ashurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser III. These riders sat far back on their horses and required a handler on the ground to hold the animal while the archer drew his bow. They were effectively mounted infantry, not cavalry. The Assyrians accelerated toward true cavalry in response to pressure from nomadic peoples from the north, including the Cimmerians, who entered Asia Minor in the 8th century BC, and the Scythians, who influenced the region in the 7th century BC. By the reign of Ashurbanipal in 669 BC, Assyrian riders sat forward in the classic position still used today.

  Philip of Macedon is credited with developing tactics for massed cavalry charges. His son Alexander the Great used the companion cavalry as his most famous heavy strike force. The Chinese of the 4th century BC, during the Warring States period from 403 to 221 BC, began deploying cavalry against rival states, and the Han dynasty, from 202 BC to 220 AD, developed effective mounted units to counter nomadic raiders from the north and west. During the campaigns to expel the Xiongnu from the Ordos Desert and surrounding regions, the Han recorded that 300,000 government-owned horses were insufficient for the cavalry and baggage trains of that military.

  In India, cavalry also carried political weight. The Mahābhārata, from around 950 BC, recognised efforts to breed war horses and identified the horses of the Sindhu and Kamboja regions as the finest quality. At the battle of Massaga in 326 BC, the Assakenoi forces fielded 20,000 cavalry against Alexander. Cavalry of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, and allied peoples helped Chandragupta Maurya, ruling roughly from 320 to 298 BC, defeat the ruler of Magadha and found the Mauryan dynasty in northern India.

• 5. Technologies That Changed Battle

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  Bit wear on the teeth of horses excavated at Botai culture sites in northern Kazakhstan, dated 3500 to 3000 BC, provides the earliest evidence that people were already attempting to control horses from the saddle. The bridle came nearly as soon as the horse was domesticated. What followed over the next four millennia was a sequence of inventions that each shifted what mounted warriors could do.

  Xenophon mentioned padded cloths on cavalry mounts as early as the 4th century BC. Both the Scythians and Assyrians used felt pads secured with a girth. The solid-treed saddle, which distributed the rider's weight across a firm frame rather than concentrating it, was not widespread until the 2nd century AD. The Romans are credited with its invention. A solid tree allowed a more built-up seat and meant horses could carry more weight, because that weight was spread evenly across the horse's back.

  The stirrup transformed cavalry. A toe loop used in India possibly as early as 500 BC gave a rider some grip, but the first set of paired stirrups appeared in China around 322 AD during the Jin dynasty. Paired stirrups gave a rider leverage for weapons and stability in the saddle that a pad or blanket could not provide. Nomadic groups including the Mongols adopted this technology and built a decisive advantage from it. By the 7th century, stirrup technology had spread from Central Asia to Europe, carried primarily by invaders. Widespread use in northern Europe, including England, is credited to the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries.

  For horses that pulled loads, the horse collar was the critical step. Invented in China during the 5th century AD, in the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties, it replaced the ox yoke and breastcollar designs that had constrained both the strength and the breathing of harnessed animals. The collar arrived in Europe during the 9th century and became widespread by the 12th. Once gunpowder arrived, horse artillery followed. A battery of six guns could require between 160 and 200 horses, counting the animals pulling the guns, the supply wagons, and the riding horses for officers and support staff.

• 6. The Medieval Knight and its Decline

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  During the European Middle Ages, three main war horse types served different purposes: the destrier, the courser, and the rouncey. The destrier of the early Middle Ages was moderately larger than the others, built to accommodate heavier armoured knights, though still distinct from true draught horses. Stallions were often chosen as destriers for their aggression. The Moors, who invaded parts of Southern Europe from 700 AD through the 15th century, preferred mares, who were quieter and less likely to call out and betray a position. The Teutonic Knights used geldings, called "monk horses," partly because if captured, they could not be used to improve an enemy's bloodstock.

  The heavy cavalry charge, despite its reputation, was not common. Battles were rarely fought on land suited to it. By the end of the 14th century, it was common practice for knights to dismount and fight on foot, their horses sent to the rear in readiness for pursuit. Pitched battles were avoided where possible; much of early Medieval offensive warfare took the form of sieges, and later, mounted raids called chevauchées.

  The reasons for the decline of the armoured knight are contested. Some historians link it to gunpowder, others to the English longbow, and some to both. A competing argument notes that plate armour was first developed to resist crossbow bolts and later refined to resist longbow arrows. A full harness of musket-proof plate from the 17th century weighed 70 lb, significantly less than tournament armour from the 16th century. The more likely cause was economic: rising costs of outfitting and maintaining horses and armour, combined with the spread of paid professional armies reimbursed through contracts rather than ransom and pillaging, made the traditional knightly class unsustainable. Light cavalry, called prickers, took over scouting and reconnaissance, and teams of draught horses pulled the heavy early cannon.

• 7. From Napoleonic Shock to World Wars

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  During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, cavalry served as shock troops, harassing infantry flanks, forcing infantry lines to break and reform into formations vulnerable to artillery, and pursuing retreating forces. A charge's maximum speed was 20 km/h; moving faster broke formation and fatigued the horses. Charges were most effective against infantry in column or line on clear rising ground. At the Battle of Waterloo, horse artillery acted as a rapid response force, repulsing attacks and assisting the infantry.

  In the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865, cavalry held the most important and respected role it would ever occupy in American military history. At the beginning of the war, most experienced cavalry officers had gone south and joined the Confederacy, giving the Confederate Army early battlefield superiority. That advantage ended at the 1863 Battle of Brandy Station, the largest cavalry battle ever fought on the American continent, part of the Gettysburg campaign, where Union cavalry broke Confederate dominance. The surrender terms at Appomattox allowed every Confederate cavalryman to keep his own horse, because Confederate riders, unlike their Union counterparts, had provided their own mounts rather than drawing them from government supply.

  World War I brought a different kind of reckoning. Trench warfare, barbed wire, and machine guns rendered traditional cavalry nearly obsolete. Tanks, introduced in 1917, began taking over the shock combat role. On the Western Front, mounted troops had been useful during the Race to the Sea in 1914 but struggled once trenches were fixed. On the Eastern Front, cavalry remained more relevant.

  The German Army in World War II used around 2.75 million horses, more than in World War I, because its factories were committed to producing tanks and aircraft instead of motorised transport. The Soviets used 3.5 million. One German infantry division in Normandy in 1944 had 5,000 horses. General George S. Patton lamented the absence of pack animals in North Africa and Sicily, saying that had an American cavalry division with pack artillery been present in Tunisia and Sicily, not a German would have escaped. The last British cavalry charge of the war came on the 21st of March 1942, when the Burma Frontier Force encountered Japanese infantry in central Burma.

• 8. Horses After the Wars

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  At the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operational Detachment Alpha 595 teams were covertly inserted into Afghanistan on the 19th of October 2001. Horses were the only practical means of transport in the mountainous terrain of northern Afghanistan. They were the first U.S. soldiers to ride horses into battle since the 16th of January 1942, when the 26th Cavalry Regiment charged a Japanese advance guard outside Manila.

  The only remaining operationally ready, fully horse-mounted regular regiment in the world today is the Indian Army's 61st Cavalry. Organised armed fighters on horseback still appear in parts of the world. The Janjaweed militia in the Darfur region of Sudan became notorious for using horses in attacks on civilian populations. Horses and donkeys have also been documented in use by Russia's army for supply and reinforcement during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where vehicular resupply became dangerous due to attack drones.

  The civilian legacy of horse-mounted warfare runs into Olympic sport. The first equestrian events at the Olympics were introduced in 1912. Through 1948, competition was restricted to active-duty officers on military horses. Only after 1952 were civilian riders allowed to compete, as mechanisation of warfare reduced the pool of military riders. Dressage traces its origins to Xenophon's cavalry training methods. Eventing grew from cavalry officers' need for versatile horses. Federico Caprilli, a key figure in developing modern riding techniques over fences, came from military ranks. The PDSA Dickin Medal, an animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross awarded by the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals in the United Kingdom, was given to three horses that served in World War II. That a charity in peacetime Britain felt called to formally honor horses in that way says something about how long and how deeply the animal had been embedded in the business of war.