Cavalry: The sole (severe) historical flaw of this mod

[Titus Vorenus]

Hello!

Before I begin, let me first say that I am a tremendous, tremendous fan of this mod. Even at beta, it is absolutely superb, one of the finest I've ever seen for any game. I applaud the modmakers for their obvious hard work and dedication--you are creating something very special here.

With that in mind, I must make a criticism, and that is the behavior of cavalry in this mod. Familiar with how RTW and M2TW have treated cavalry, to be honest I expected little difference in PI--and was vindicated as I played through a Roman Republic campaign, which I have just finished. This is not meant as a critique of the mod team--you are only following precedent.

Unfortunately, that precedent--brought home most spectacularly in the Ride of the Rohirrim in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King--is absolutely, completely, utterly wrong.

This is because

CAVALRY DO NOT CHARGE!

At least, they do not "charge" in the way that you think they do. Let me explain:

The horse evolved to run away from things--that is how they survived, as they for the most part lack any other defensive mechanism. This is ingrained into the horse so deeply that it simply cannot be overcome. No horse--not even an enraged, trained charger--can be made to run into a solid object. It will veer off, or buck, or most likely simply stop.

Period.

If you have ever seen a steeplechase, then you are seeing this behavior in action. It takes an extremely skilled rider to coach and coax a horse to run towards a fence or other obstacle and leap over it--and even at the highest levels, such as the Olympic Games, this does not always happen.

This becomes even more egregious when you consider that in a battle setting, the solid object the horse is moving towards is almost certainly carrying a sword or, worse, a spear or a pike--i.e., something long and pointy. A horse is not stupid--"pointy"="bad", and no horse can be made to blithely run into an object so obviously dangerous.

This is a lesson well learned by Napoleon. Time and again his cavalry attempted to charge the British infantry squares--and time and again the horses veered off at the last moment, only to be blasted to smithereens by the infantry. To paraphrase the eminent military historian John Keegan in his The Face of Battle (in which he discusses, among much else, everything I've mentioned here, and is a superb read), we often sympathize with the poor British soldiers, but really we should be pitying the French cavalry.

On a similar note, people do not bounce off horses, and horses do not bowl over people. Horses have no instinct to ram--they will kick and even bite, but they're not bulls (or, for that matter, an elephant, which will indeed happily charge into things). Horses--especially domesticated ones, as they are bred for sheer speed--are terribly fragile animals. Even if you managed to get your horse to charge into a person, the impact--particularly if the foe is shielded or armoured--would almost certainly cripple the horse--and kill it, since, as those of you who follow horse racing or raise horses will be all too well aware, a horse with a broken leg is a goner.

This makes more sense if you just visualize it: two groups of horses charging into each other at full speed, or one group charging into steadfast infantry, must undoubtedly utterly devastate everyone involved--and horses, of course, are a valuable, expensive commodity which cannot be wasted so blithely.

To get even more graphic, this explains why English archers historically were able to wipe out French cavalry in droves. Imagine a group of large, powerful horses, with heavily-armoured men wielding shields and swords and lances, charging towards the archers. The archers loose, and their arrows strike some horses, or riders, or both. The stricken and all their paraphrenalia will of course immediately fall to the ground--and then the horse behind it, at top speed, will suddenly crash into the debris--a horse's body, an armoured knight, a lance stuck into the ground--and they in turn will undoubtedly collapse... like a massive highway pileup, except that everything involved is living.

This doesn't happen in RTW or M2TW only because dead bodies have no collision detection--hence, your Feudal Knights are able to happily continue on their way without pause, and cause much choppy death to your Peasant Archers.

Gothmog was exactly right at the Pellenor--pikes in front, archers behind. With the numbers coming towards them (and in way-too-close order, for that matter), it should have been a slaughter.

Want me to ruin the Lord of the Rings movies --and for the record, I love them--further? Watch the Battle of Helm's Deep very closely, as they gallop out of the fortress--you can clearly see the horse's legs go right through the dead bodies as if they weren't even there (which, of course, they weren't).


So, what is cavalry? How is it really deployed? What did a cavalry charge actually look like?

Cavalry are fast, and cavalry are scary.

A horse, even a fully armoured cataphract (which is armoured, incidentally, not to give weight to impact but to survive arrow fire--hence why cataphracts are an Eastern invention), is faster than a person--usually much faster. This gave cavalry far greated tactical flexibility than the infantry. As we know, this makes them superb for flanking manuevers, and as any battle is all about timing, cavalry can go from Point A to Point B faster than anything else on the battlefield--except other cavalry, of course, which is why an examination of historic battles shows that the most common thing cavalry did in battles was... fight other cavalry.

OK, so my cavalry has outflanked the enemy formation--now what? Charge, right? Well, yes--sorta. The point of a cavalry charge is not to actually get the horses to slam headlong into something--as we've established, that just won't happen. The point of a cavalry charge is to scare the living **** out of the infantry.

As we all know, cavalry have always been an elite. Throughout any ancient or medieval society, only a few could afford any kind of horse at all, and even fewer could afford to have a warhorse. Having a warhorse meant having money, and having money meant having power. This naturally caused all infantry to look upon cavalry with a sense of awe--in fact, it still persists to this day.

So, here you are, Mr. Infantryman. You are most likely poor and probably malnourished and exhausted. You probably carry a spear, or if you're lucky a lousy sword, and your shield is either light and small or big and heavy, and you have, oh, maybe a helmet and what is basically a padded sweater.

All of a sudden, you hear the unmistakable, ominous rumble. You look and see a group of huge horses heading towards you at speed. You can see the sunlight reflecting off the riders' fine armour, great swords, massive spears as they continue heading towards you. Your knees quake, your bowels clench--every fiber of your being is telling you to RUN. The veterans are shouting to just "HOLD!", but that's clearly insane because the cavalry is heading towards you and they'll be on you any second now and you know you can't run faster than a horse but maybe they'll get the guy next to you instead and WAIT IS HE RUNNING TOO SO IS EVERYONE ELSE RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!

Cavalry charges do not break infantry by physical impact, but by psychological impact. No horse can stand to run into something, but it is almost as hard to get a man to stand instead of run. And, of course, as soon as the formation breaks apart and is moving away, the horses will cheerfully give chase, since horses are social animals and are ingrained to run in herds. The warrior atop the horse is then free to thrust his long lance or swing his mace into the panicked men vainly fleeing before him.

And let's not even go into the devastation mounted archers (arguably the single best use of cavalry) can cause....


If by "charge" we mean "hit the enemy at speed for physical impact", then elephants charge, and infantry charge, but cavalry do not.

Cavalry manuever around infantry, cavalry scout infantry, cavalry frighten infantry, and--to use an expression familiar to anyone who has played an MMO--cavalry "kite" infantry (either by peppering them with missiles or just by causing the infantry to vainly chase them). But cavalry do not charge into infantry.

Forget everything you've seen in Hollywood and everything you've seen in games. This is really not up for debate.

Therefore, to the PI mod team, if you truly want your otherwise-spectacular mod to be accurate, and if you intend PI to be a realistic depiction of warfare during the rise of the Rome, then I suggest the following changes:

• All cavalry--or, at the very least, heavy cavalry--should "Frighten nearby enemy"
• To give more impact to this, this might require infantry morale levels to be tweaked.
• All cavalry should have their charge values drastically reduced--like, almost nonexistent. Charge values belong to infantry, and the heaviest charge values should belong to hoplites (or elephants, if you choose to introduce them).
• Light and medium cavalry should have "Good" morale, and heavy cavalry should have "Excellent" morale. If you're a cavalryman, you're a very lucky person--and your ego is enormous.
• All cavalry should be more vulnerable to missiles--a horse is a big target. Heavy cavalry will probably have better armor than infantry, but their defence skills should probably be lower (to represent the horse, which other than bucking--not in the game--is defenseless). Heavy cavalry beats light infantry in melee, but heavy infantry beats heavy cavalry.
• To better display their mobility advantages, consider more liberal application of "Fast Moving"--which seemed to me, incidentally, a rare trait for anything as I went through my campaign--and "Good Stamina" and "Very Good Stamina", especially for lighter cavalry.

My credentials, in cause you care: I studied Classics at university, I am a huge reader of military history from John Keegan to Robert Massie, and I am a historical reenactor--my primary impression being Roman.

I hope, then, that you consider what I have said here today--brought, again, not out of malice, but out of a wish to assist--and will introduce changes to cavalry in PI. I recognize that you are all very busy (I've modded RTW myself)), and this will require much balance testing, but your mod will undoubtedly be the better for it.

Thank you for your time.

[alhoon]

I think a paniced or enraged horse would stampede soft and weak targets like humans. As for them being fragile, the horses in Middle ages were bred for either speed or strength and aggression.
As for charging, At some point horses were wearing blinders so they couldn't see they were charging on people. The impact of a horse on braced spearmen, even when the horse was hit by spears and dying, would kill or wound 3-4 soldiers. Also there's the reach of the cavalry man. A 3 meter lance would put the lance point 2 meters in front of the horse. There was also guiding the horse sideways so it wasn't running headlong into enemy but with an angle, so that 3 meter lance would ruin someone's day while the horse had 5 meters in front of it.

I don't know how horses worked in Roman age though since the riders of the era weren't of the knight's quality, and I don't know when blinders were invented.

[Morfans]

Great post, +rep !

I particularly enjoyed this vivid description :

All of a sudden, you hear the unmistakable, ominous rumble. You look and see a group of huge horses heading towards you at speed. You can see the sunlight reflecting off the riders' fine armour, great swords, massive spears as they continue heading towards you. Your knees quake, your bowels clench--every fiber of your being is telling you to RUN. The veterans are shouting to just "HOLD!", but that's clearly insane because the cavalry is heading towards you and they'll be on you any second now and you know you can't run faster than a horse but maybe they'll get the guy next to you instead and WAIT IS HE RUNNING TOO SO IS EVERYONE ELSE RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN!!!

Your point is clear and your technical suggestions are sensible.

I'd just add that in the time frame of PI, no "Rohirrim charge" was ever reported by coeval historians. In the (real) mother of all battles - Cannae - both Livius and Polybius (plus others) concur that cavalry on the wings engaged in melee (in fact, due to the nature of the battle field, they even dismounted).

Due to the lack of saddle and stirrups, PI (small-sized) horses shouldn't be that fast either. So, no Balaklava glory.

[Skyn0s]

Excellent Post Titus Vorenus.
I haven't the skill, to discuss about this right now with more details, but with some source to read (if you have some actually available without buy a book ^^), and some research.

I will give my opinion on the subject :

Actually, i find what you said pretty accurate. It's seem possible, particularly the "Scary effect".

We have two differents behavior, and type of cavalry : Light, and Heavy.
Firstly the Light cavalry was on the field to harass the formations enemies during a battle, or to be the scouts of the army during a march, or before a battle. It was their first role in most of the cases.
Then the Heavy troops , they were the representation of the aristocrat of the city. They were there to confort the morale troops, outflanked ennemy formation during a stable front, or if possible eliminate the Light infantry ennemy. Because of that they were just three hundred in an army of 4200 heads. (roman army)

In conclusion, they were less powerful than the most common image we have of them !

+ rep for you Titus Vorenus

Skyn0s

[Titus Vorenus]

@Alhoon:

I'm sorry, it just won't happen. A human being--particular an armed, armoured human being--is more than enough to severely injure a horse on impact, and big enough for the horse to avoid. Mind you, when horses were evolving, their main predators--giant birds and wolves--were roughly the size a human being is.

And a horse really is a terribly fragile animal. It is basically enormous muscles on top of very thin legs--and no amount of breeding can really change this, certainly not to the extent where the horse is not likely to suffer a catastrophic injury if it hits something of any substance.

As for blinders... well, I don't know the history of blinders, but I believe they've really only been worn by carthorses and the like--and besides, blinders of course don't obscure what's in front of them

You're correct that a horse foolish enough to charge onto a spear is likely to kill the soldier and some others around him--but is that really the most economical way to use your fantastically valuable trained warhorse? Incidentally, another anecdote Keegan relates in The Face of Battle talks about the one time ever recorded of a cavalry charge breaking an infantry square--because apparently what happened was the leading horse was stricken by a bullet and was already dead, but its momentum carried it and its rider into the square, which caused it to collapse and thereby be set upon by the following riders. This was the exception, however, not the rule.

You are correct in how you describe the cavalryman riding at an angle with his lance--but only within the context of the horse already being engaged, chasing someone down. The movie Alexander is otherwise absolutely terrible, but its battle scenes are arguably the most accurate in any Hollywood production: watch it and you'll note how the Companions don't crash into anything, but they instead ride through fragmented formations and administer death at their leisure. The horse, however, has probably no comprehension of how long a lance is or that the lance is protective or anything of the sort--it just knows it is running very fast at something which is bad.


@Morfans

Thank you, and your points are correct--I can't believe I forgot to mention the lack of stirrups

A particularly skilled rider can ride a horse at good speed without a saddle or stirrups, but this should really only apply to, say, Numidians--otherwise, you're right that for the majority of peoples it'd be very awkward and difficult.


@Skyn0s

Thank you as well. I'm not sure if you're asking me if I have sources or not, but I do--although frankly I think PI already has enough historical experts from what I've seen

Good points, particularly regarding the small number of heavy cavalry. For the most part I think PI does a pretty good job of limiting cavalry numbers, although I don't think it would be unreasonable to make heavy cavalry even more expensive--to the point that to encounter it is really quite a notable and impressive thing. I'm not sure if that would imbalance them to the point of uselessness though... then again, that'd pretty much be historically accurate too

[Iguanaonastick]

Not up for debate? Hollywood and games are wrong, true enough, but there's considerable controversy on this subject.

I'm mostly in agreement with you though. I think cavalry did "charge" but as you argue this involved no head-on collisions.

We've eye-witness reports of 18th and 19th century cavalry engagements where the groups of horsemen galloped right at each other... and then through each other... striking blows as they pass... and then out on the other side, causing remarkably few casualties to either group. Cavalry battles would be fluid, mobile affairs of horsemen charging forward, engaging other groups, fighting for a minute or even less, retreating, reforming, repeat. This is a part of why infantry support was valuable even to cavalry-heavy medieval armies and the like: they provided a safe screen for the cavalry to regroup behind. Disordered cavalry often proved very vulnerable to attack even by smaller numbers of enemy cavalry. Or even infantry. The Roman legionaries managed to charge and rout cavalry a good few times. (Pharsalus and the various battles of Publius Ventidius Bassus come to mind.)

As for cavalry charging infantry... I've forgotten just where I read this, sorry, but one explanation I read is that the cavalry would charge at the infantry, but not straight at them. They'd ride across corners, through existing gaps in the formation (no formation could be completely solid because for one thing this would make moving over rough terrain almost impossible.) or through gaps that opened up as men moved sideways out of the way of the approaching cavalry. (Even if the line did not rout, it might waver like this. At Zama the Romans instructed their men to do this deliberately to avoid the elephants.) When passing the cavalry could strike at the infantry with their lances or even swords, or throw javelins from close range, etc.

Again, to my frustration I can't remember exactly where I read this, but I recall a boast from one of Hannibal's (Gallic?) cavalrymen at the battle of Lake Trasimene I think it was that he'd ride through the Roman column three times. This would only possible if a cavalry charge indeed is less of a collision with a solid object and more riding through not-too-closely packed infantry.

Anyway, as for implementing all this in the Total War engine... I'm not sure.

If you have cavalry that can't charge or fight well in mêlée but with special fear attributes then you won't get historical use of cavalry. You'll get people using one or two units to ride around the rear of the enemy infantry thumbing their noses and clacking coconut halves together. The fear attribute doesn't stack, so infantry won't fear a dozen cavalry units any more than they do 6 riders. And I think being charged causes a bit of a morale shock already anyway.

If you have cavalry that can fight well in mêlée but can't charge then people will keep them in combat for extended periods of time. Not historical either.

Now with lightly armed javelin cavalry this can work. Make them vulnerable to infantry, capable of fighting other cavalry with equally sucky stats, and useful in a combat capacity by riding close to the enemy and throwing their javelins. With 6-8 ammo these'd be useful troops used in a fairly historical fashion.

But troops like the Hellenistic Hetairoi? They -were- shock cavalry, and since the full effect of a hetairoi charge can't be modelled in the engine I think bowling over a few infantrymen is the lesser of two evils.

Because... well, I disagree with your title. Cavalry charges aren't the sole historical flaw of Total-war engine based mods. The entire battle system is flawed. Infantry clashes did not happen like they did in the game either.

Hoplite battles, even if they lasted hours, saw under 5% casualties during the actual fighting, often more like 2% on the winning side and around 10% on the losing. Most of the latter would be killed in the pursuit after the day was lost. Later ancient battles give similar figures except higher casualties for the loser as armies included more light infantry and cavalry to do the pursuing.

Infantry battles weren't, couldn't have been massive clashes between armed men stabbing eachother at close quarters for hours. That would've resulted in massive casualties and as a reenactor you no doubt realise that fighting for so long is a phsycial impossibility. Battles must have been more tentative affairs and mêlée clashes relatively rare, short, and often decisive.

My point being: I don't think it does a lot of good to try and accurately model one aspect of ancient warfare yet leave the rest in the hollywood-influenced Total War mould. Better to create a mod that works well and plays well in the total war engine than trying to make the engine represent a kind of battle it really wasn't designed for.

For cavalry my ideal would be something like Europa Barbarorum: Cavalry charges cause damage but do not flatten entire units. Massed cavalry charges cause a heavy morale shock that can break undisciplined infantry on a frontal charge and better infantry even on a rear charge. Many cavalry types can't actually cause a lot of damage on the charge though, only specialised lancers do this.

Edit: I just googled this and found this very cool description of a cavalry charge. By one Winston Churchill, describing a nineteenth century battle:

"Stubborn and unshaken infantry hardly ever meet stubborn and unshaken cavalry. Either the infantry run away and are cut down in flight, or they keep their heads and destroy nearly all the horsemen by their musketry. On this occasion two living walls had actually crashed together. The Dervishes fought manfully. They tried to hamstring the horses, They fired their rifles, pressing the muzzles into the very bodies of their opponents. They cut reins and stirrup-leathers. They flung their throwing-spears with great dexterity. They tried every device of cool, determined men practised in war and familiar with cavalry; and, besides, they swung sharp, heavy swords which bit deep. The hand-to-hand fighting on the further side of the khor lasted for perhaps one minute. Then the horses got into their stride again, the pace increased, and the Lancers drew out from among their antagonists. Within two minutes of the collision every living man was clear of the Dervish mass. All who had fallen were cut at with swords till they stopped quivering, but no artistic mutilations were attempted."

[Morfans]

Just one technical comment :

Rather than "Frighten nearby enemy", cav units should probably have frighten_foot attributes in the EDU.

-

[kaesonius]

As decent as the M2TW engine is, it might be quite tough to create the desired effects. Two things spring to mind.

1. You have a great argument but remember that it's a game and with the technology its going to be a while until someone creates AI for a PC game that will work they way you outlined. It would also have to correct infantry too, as mentioned before.

2. I believe that there are other issues to address concerning cavalry in PI. As you have seen by the time period, heavy cavalry wasn't really HEAVY per-se. Many of the cavalry units in the game ride bareback with little armour and are still way too good at melee. they can wade in and engage units of infantry head on for extended periods of time and inflict large casualties. Yes, they die now but the bonuses they gain vs infantry in prolonged melee are too great. If you want to make things balanced, fix this first. Again, as said before EB had a great set up for cavalry, pity it crashed so much...

[SigniferOne]

As others have said, we can't change the engine. If the effect exists in all major mods in Med2, and even RTW, then that's simply part of the world as we have to deal with it.

[alhoon]

@Alhoon:

I'm sorry, it just won't happen. A human being--particular an armed, armoured human being--is more than enough to severely injure a horse on impact, and big enough for the horse to avoid.
...
a horse foolish enough to charge onto a spear is likely to kill the soldier and some others around him--but is that really the most economical way to use your fantastically valuable trained warhorse?

Nope, but it's enough for the spearmen to wet their pants and break ranks as you said in your post earlier. When 12 horses are galloping full force towards you with point things aimed towards your face (whether you think they're the elite of the elite or not) you aren't likely to think "If it crushes on me it will kill me + 2-3 of my comrades behind me but it will be an acceptable loss for killing the horse".

If you're braced then the horse just veers away gently and you have the chance to watch how splendid this warbeast is that it can turn away at such speed as you catch a lance in your throat.

If you break formation and run away then the horse is now in the formation and warhorses tend to kick and kick powerfully. So you either get the aforementioned lance in the back or a petal hoof in the face.
(Really, it sucks to be infantry vs Cavalry without pikes.)

What I wanted to say though isn't that horses are rhinoceri charging with the head down. It's that there are ways to use the momentum of the horse's speed with a lance and that is a charge bonus. All things we described, the horses either veering away and the lancer hitting you as it turns or formation weakening and horses breaking in M2TW game IMO can adequately be represented with the way charge works. Sure horses don't throw people here and there. But they have a devastating charge never the less.

What you would want could be the horses themselves run around formations as they do with obstacles while the rider attacked. A cavalry unit in M2TW would veer around a hourse or stop but the rider wouldn't attack.

[Hister]

Our horse models need to be made 30% smaller to be more on line with what Italics had at their exposal. Current vanilla ones don't cut the deal.

[David93]

There are instances were cavalry cant charge a solid line, for example hastings, but it has to be SOLID no gaps or weakness. A proper infantry line like this is rare (romans - possibly) but history shows cavalry was used to great effect against the romans on many occasions.

"A particularly skilled rider can ride a horse at good speed without a saddle or stirrups, but this should really only apply to, say, Numidians--otherwise, you're right that for the majority of peoples it'd be very awkward and difficult."

This is just wrong, numidians might have had the edge in some ways as they were so used to horse, but any deadicated cavalry wing would be just as good and would have had no problem riding, archilogical evidence shows that greek troops (who were horsemen) have massive muscle attachments on their leg bones and adominal region. Showing they were well used to riding without stirups.

More importantly it cant be implemented.

[cpt_obvious]

Gothmog was exactly right at the Pellenor--pikes in front, archers behind. With the numbers coming towards them (and in way-too-close order, for that matter), it should have been a slaughter.

Hi you forgot that Gothmog lost the battle and the Rohan cavalry completely trampled over his pike formation, thus clearly disproving your theory that horses will not ride into infantry.

[Mavs]

I agree with most of what you've said, but implementing this in a TW game would be very problematic. =/

[Iguanaonastick]

After reading more passages from Churchill's book I'm coming down on the other side of the argument. It seems pretty clear to me that horses could and did charge infantry lines. It just wouldn't involve massive slaughter like Medieval Total War shows.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As the 21st Lancers left the ridge, the fire of the Arab riflemen on the hill ceased. We advanced at a walk in mass for about 300 yards. The scattered parties of Dervishes fell back and melted away, and only one straggling line of men in dark blue waited motionless a quarter of a mile to the left front. They were scarcely a hundred strong. The regiment formed into line of squadron columns, and continued at a walk until within 300 yards of this small body of Dervishes. The firing behind the ridges had stopped. There was complete silence, intensified by the recent tumult. Far beyond the thin blue row of Dervishes the fugitives were visible streaming into Omdurman. And should these few devoted men impede a regiment? Yet it were wiser to examine their position from the other flank before slipping a squadron at them. The heads of the squadrons wheeled slowly to the left, and the Lancers, breaking into a trot, began to cross the Dervish front in column of troops. Thereupon and with one accord the blue-clad men dropped on their knees, and there burst out a loud, crackling fire of musketry. It was hardly possible to miss such a target at such a range. Horses and men fell at once. The only course was plain and welcome to all. The Colonel, nearer than his regiment, already saw what lay behind the skirmishers. He ordered, 'Right wheel into line' to be sounded. The trumpet jerked out a shrill note, heard faintly above the trampling of the horses and the noise of the rifles. On the instant all the sixteen troops swung round and locked up into a long galloping line, and the 21st Lancers were committed to their first charge in war.
Two hundred and fifty yards away the dark-blue men were firing madly in a thin film of light-blue smoke. Their bullets struck the hard gravel into the air, and the troopers, to shield their faces from the stinging dust, bowed their helmets forward, like the Cuirassiers at Waterloo. The pace was fast and the distance short. Yet, before it was half covered, the whole aspect of the affair changed. A deep crease in the ground—a dry watercourse, a khor—appeared where all had seemed smooth, level plain; and from it there sprang, with the suddenness of a pantomime effect and a high-pitched yell, a dense white mass of men nearly as long as our front and about twelve deep. A score of horsemen and a dozen bright flags rose as if by magic from the earth. Eager warriors sprang forward to anticipate the shock. The rest stood firm to meet it. The Lancers acknowledged the apparition only by an increase of pace. Each man wanted sufficient momentum to drive through such a solid line. The flank troops, seeing that they overlapped, curved inwards like the horns of a moon. But the whole event was a matter of seconds. The riflemen, firing bravely to the last, were swept head over heels into the khor, and jumping down with them, at full gallop and in the closest order, the British squadrons struck the fierce brigade with one loud furious shout. The collision was prodigious. Nearly thirty Lancers, men and horses, and at least two hundred Arabs were overthrown. The shock was stunning to both sides, and for perhaps ten wonderful seconds no man heeded his enemy. Terrified horses wedged in the crowd, bruised and shaken men, sprawling in heaps, struggled, dazed and stupid, to their feet, panted, and looked about them. Several fallen Lancers had even time to re-mount. Meanwhile the impetus of the cavalry carried them on. As a rider tears through a bullfinch, the officers forced their way through the press; and as an iron rake might be drawn through a heap of shingle, so the regiment followed. They shattered the Dervish array, and, their pace reduced to a walk, scrambled out of the khor on the further side, leaving a score of troopers behind them, and dragging on with the charge more than a thousand Arabs. Then, and not till then, the killing began; and thereafter each man saw the world along his lance, under his guard, or through the back-sight of his pistol; and each had his own strange tale to tell.

Emphasis mine.

Theory is nice, but it's hard to argue with eye-witness accounts.

It seems to me cavalry could and did charge infantry, though Churchill does suggest here that it is very rare (in his era, at least.) Generally the infantry will run, or the cavalry shy away. In this account the cavalry charged only because the enemy suddenly appeared and out of a furrow in the ground that had concealed them from sight.

Churchill describes that the charge is a phsysical impact, men and horses being thrown and trampled, many being stunned. Only after the charge does any mêlée fighting start. (As in the quote I gave on the previous page.) The whole thing lasted 1, 2 minutes only according.

[total war lover]

In the era Churchill lived in,I don't think infantry used to stand very close together,did they? I didn't think so,thanks for a worthless argument. What Titus Vorenus(awesome name btw,from that BBC serie Rome right?) said is incredibly well informed,and correct I guess. Don't base your arguments solely on games and movies.

[David93]

In the era Churchill lived in,I don't think infantry used to stand very close together,did they? I didn't think so,thanks for a worthless argument.

Yes of course they did, line infantry fought in lines, up until the first world war.
even disregarding that statement, Churchill could have talked to primary witnesses using only primary sources we can still go back to the 1800s (the time of Napoleon)
Its hard to believe churchill (a military student) wouldnt have known about such things.

[Iguanaonastick]

Can we keep it civil please?

It is true that medieval or ancient combat is very different from 18th and 19th century combat that we have eyewitness accounts from.

But humans are the same then as they were a thousand years earlier. Horses did not change either.

And this is a colonial war. The Sudanese here are armed with swords, spears, javelins. Sure, some of them have rifles, but not enough to change the face of the entire combat. The British Lancers likewise are armed with swords and lances just like in ancient times. If they have revolvers and carbines too, well, they're not used much in a this particular fight and again don't make -that- big a change from ancient weaponry.

So given the choice between an eye-witness account of a later era and nothing but theory about earlier eras... I feel that (cautiously) using the later testimony is essential as it's the only way to test the theory even a little.

No, a Sudanese army is not a Greek phalanx or a Gallic warband. But it's the closest you're likely to get in 1900, particularly to the latter. I would say it demonstrates that under some circumstances horses can and will charge straight into and through unbroken infantry.

(Oh, and in case it wasn't clear... the above -was- an eyewitness account. Churchill was there, fighting with the 21st Lancers. He follows this fragment with all kinds of personal anecdotes he got from other eyewitnesses, though some of those may have been exaggerated.)

[total war lover]

dude,a guy on a horse with a lance just thrusts his spear into his enemy right before impact,making that one so "solid" line not so solid anymore,the formation would be broken,allowing the lancers to further penetrate the enemy lines,by hacking and thrusting with their sword and lance. May I further point out that you can't call the Sudanese (a bunch of untrained,badly equipped "soldiers".) They were tribes for Christ sake,ever seen an African tribe today? Imagine that but then 100 times worse(because it was approximatly 100 years ago) They hadn't evolved into super welly trained and equipped über soldiers. Ok so suppose they "could" form a decent line, when they saw the lancers coming at them,I can't believe they didn't fled. I mean come on,get some sense.

[David93]

Your argument makes no sense, the fact that they arent that organised doesnt matter, were talking about anchient times were armies consist of levies or tribal warriors, horse arent going to win against a greek phalax, arguing that a lance will break a line makes it more likely there will be a charge.
your post makes no sense.

Ok so suppose they "could" form a decent line, when they saw the lancers coming at them,I can't believe they didn't fled. I mean come on,get some sense.

yea because you were there and are far more reliable than an eye witness account.