Why was flanking so effective?

[Sar1n]

This is what I cannot understand. It's as if armies go into battle expecting to lock themselves in place until the battle was over. And I'm not saying this goes against the zeitgeist of the times, if pressing through the center was the go to tactic to beat the enemy, I am not disputing that, it's just that everyone's telling me flanking attacks are successful because generals cannot even tell their armies to turn in an orderly manner...

As I said before, I'm not talking about the musket/guns era, but rather the sword and shield battles. I understand the morale shock in later engagements, but when you can clearly see your enemy coming you have time to prepare.

Thank you for the long and detailed answer!

I think your problem lies in overestimating the common soldier. They knew nothing of the battle but what they could see, and even if they did, they usually couldn't think straight enough to make a decision based on it in the stress of battle. Contemporary authors describe symptoms akin to PTSD as quite common among the warrior elites like medieval knights, and those were people that prepared all their lives for battle. Imagine how much worse it had to be for a common soldier who never held a weapon until few weeks before battle and was never in anything even remotely as traumatizing as battle. Quite often it was only the tight formation and presence of comrades in arms that kept them from breaking and running, and when that starts to crumble, the instincts take over and it's fight or flight. Most people tend to run.

That's one of the reasons for all that shouting in boot camps. To desensitivize the recruits. Another is to make them obey instinctively and kill the enemy before they have time to think that they're killing another person, but that's a different matter...

[Cyclops]

...
Thank you for the long and detailed answer!

No worries I'm mostly typing for the pleasure of seeing my own brain mashed on the screen, and very happy for you and others to correct me when I am wrong.

...As I said before, I'm not talking about the musket/guns era, but rather the sword and shield battles. I understand the morale shock in later engagements, but when you can clearly see your enemy coming you have time to prepare.

The musket and gun era are relevant though as a lot of the work done is the same.

Getting men onto a field to kill one another is no mean feat. You do it by bonding them socially, emotionally and militarily. Less centralized ("civilised") societies bring warriors to the field when each individual decides to come. Complex societies have conscription and other forms of coercion, material rewards, intangible rewards , religion and so on that allows masses to be mobilised and moved. Part of these systems is practicing in formation, and the line of battle is a very old and successful institution.

The systems that bring men (and occasionally women) to fight makes them want to fight. if one army melts, doesn't turn up etc then obviously there's no battle. This can result in a lost war (not always) but the net result is warriors want to fight. So the leader's line em up and go.

Getting units of men to obey once in battle is another hurdle. They better have practiced drill because battle is too stressful to make stuff up on the spot effectively. The drill tends to be "all face this way, when they get close stab them", because thats what works. Once a unti knows how to fight and wants top fight, the next trick is making them not fight the moment they see an enemy.

Its a very well trained force that can march around not fighting and keep morale high enough to keep the army together. Hannibal did it, Fabius Cunctator did it. By the 18th century a lot of armies could do it, there was the third Silesian war where close to 10% of casualties were outside battle because the whole thing was a walkfest ("war of manouevre").

On the actual battlefield units can rush at a hated foe, or refuse to move away from their neighboring units cause its dangerous out there man. Once in a melee (or later a firefiught) units tend to get bogged down and ignore orders to stop and withdraw: they face the nearest enemy and go at them and ignore the rest. Other units can get imaginative 'is that our cavalry in the rear, or is it the enemy? Holy ..."

War is hard. Leaders try to keep their forces well positioned, not bogged down, one step ahead of the other guy. A flank attack (ie a part of your army attacking an army's wing, perhaps from an oblique, perpendicular or best of all rear angle) is a normal battle option. getting a force around a flank though exposes it, all other things being equal. By definition you detach a part of your force and send it off into the blue. It is at risk of being caught, perhaps by the enemies whole force if it is in turn out-manouevred.

Fredrick the great overcame this problem by flanking with his entire force: he'd rapid march his boys to an oblique angle and approach his center against the opposition wing: still risky but he had a manouevre advantage and he exploited it. i think he was copying (in part) Alexander's superb (risky) battle plan from Gaugemela: here again the whole army rapid marched and approached on an oblique angle, disrupting the larger enemy line and throwing prior plans into some dissarray although the main attack was against the centre and the Makedonian line was doubled to protect the rear of the first line. Gaugemela was finished with a sharp cavalry charge at the centre, another Frederickan trick.

That battle gives me cold sweats when I think about it. March the whole force diagonally, trust the weak second line to defend the rear of the incredibly short front line, "don't worry guys, I'll catch the enemy cavalry with the tribesmen we have hanging off our bridles of our massively ounumbered cavalry, then we'll dart back toward the centre (no way the elephants will have moved across to cover it by then) and i will personally kill the opposition king before the rest of you are trampled by the largest army anyone has yet assembled". He was a genius to make it work, did not attempt a flank attack or outflank (he did feint toward the flank though) and Darius' attempted double envelopment failed because he was too slow, didn't deal with the second line and couldn't blunt the Companion Cavalry charge before it reached his own position.

At Austerlitz the Russians attempted a massive outflank, marching over half their force south to sweep up the French from the right to left. It was bold and well planned: Napoleon's right was weak, the Russian centre was protected by the Pratzen heights (which were thought to obscure sight of the move and to hinder any French spoiling attack) and they could smell victory. Sadly things went wrong.

Davout had force marched all night and arrived to block the Russian left. French scouts spotted the Russians in marching columns heading south. Soult counterattacked across Pratzen heights (Napleon's infantry had developed uncanny speed and now high morale as well allowing rapid movement and return to formation beyond other army's capabilities at the time: the Russians had not seen this yet) and took the Russian regiments heading south in flank, scattering them piecemeal. French left held the Austrians at bay. The Russian move to outflank led to the near destruction of their force (the remnants were saved by repeated reckless charges by the guard cavalry led by the Emperor's brother) and the Austrians wisely bugged out to fight another day.

Against a skilled nimble opponent a gamble like an outflank was possibly suicidal. In the right circumstances it could bag a smaller opponent with less loss of life. Art Agincourt the English line held (because of superb terrain choices by Henry V, and because the French knights only wanted to fight the English knights, and caused a pedestrian crush trying to all get at them while ignoring all other English, who beat them to death with hammers-true story) and the only serious threat was a tiny outflank attempt made against orders by a stray local noble.

At Agincourt the French wanted a face to face battle because their superiority in chevaliers vs knights (which they considered the only important fighting element ) was colossal, at least ten to one. They wanted a knight vs knight battle because that satisfied honour. The English, more intent on surviving fought a battle we would recognise as more "military" in character: they aimed to defeat the attack with all arms playing a part. French tactics were to advance on foot, so their horses would not be shot from under them (cunning plan!), wear heavier armour to neutralise English archery (well it worked) but once on the field the French began falling over one another to get to the handful on English knights in the line.

Soldiers do not always behave intelligently in battle. They are not trained too, they are trained to carry out a set of tactics, and how they do that is influenced by a dizzying array of other factors: education (the French infantry in the Napoleonic wars was more literate than other armies, and it showed), social position, specialcirumstances relating to pay, supply, the character of the commander etc etc.

The variety of systems that get men to battle do not always prepare them to respond effectively to what really happens. The French in the Battles of the Frontiers in 1914, the British force at the Somme in 1916, the Romans at Cannae, all these seem stupid wastes but they were actually well thought out plans that seemed to their commanders would work.

Sometimes an outflank works. Sometimes a stab at the flank works. Sometimes it does not.

[Morifea]

A great post Cyclops, nothing better to read than such goldpieces while procrastinating at work.

That battle gives me cold sweats when I think about it. March the whole force diagonally, trust the weak second line to defend the rear of the incredibly short front line, "don't worry guys, I'll catch the enemy cavalry with the tribesmen we have hanging off our bridles of our massively ounumbered cavalry, then we'll dart back toward the centre (no way the elephants will have moved across to cover it by then) and i will personally kill the opposition king before the rest of you are trampled by the largest army anyone has yet assembled". He was a genius to make it work, did not attempt a flank attack or outflank (he did feint toward the flank though) and Darius' attempted double envelopment failed because he was too slow, didn't deal with the second line and couldn't blunt the Companion Cavalry charge before it reached his own position.

One can arque that this kind of Battleplan could only work with a well honed war machine like the macedonian Army of Phillip II and Alexander.... This and the Charisma of Alexander kept the Men in line and from panicking in such an unbelieveable battle. Those men knew each other, knew the other units in the army, the fame of their commanders and knew that their King has led them from victory to victory.

[Cyclops]

...
One can arque that this kind of Battleplan could only work with a well honed war machine like the macedonian Army of Phillip II and Alexander.... This and the Charisma of Alexander kept the Men in line and from panicking in such an unbelieveable battle. Those men knew each other, knew the other units in the army, the fame of their commanders and knew that their King has led them from victory to victory.

Indeed. Its a tremendous moment when the men, the commander, the training, the tactics and the equipment come together to pull off a stunning and miraculous victory.

I am no soldier of course and may well be talking out of my arse, but I have a strong opinion on the realism of TW games. I think MTW was the best representation of a battlefield I've seen, not because of its simplicity or its crappy graphics, but because the balance of morale, skill, attack, defense, manoeuvre and leadership was so perfect.

You'd build your army, scratch around for units to make up numbers, struggle to get them together and then roll forwards. Once in battle you'd shuffle forward and everyone would get tired and need a little rest. It was a struggle to keep the line straight, and the flank units were always getting scared so you put good units there. The enemy would draw close and suddenly your peasants get shaky, some might even break. You could flank with an elite unit, but you didn't even think of sending a crappy archer or peasant to outflank, they'd break and run for the rear once they were away from the comforting presence of the general. of course elite units tended to be hot-head like knights of vikings and they'd suddenly decide they weren't outflanking after all they wanted to charge the nearest enemy (Goddamit Hrulf!).

Once you finally shambled into contact they'd hack away at one another, until someone broke. Then it would be a panic dominoes down the line. It felt very real, like the limitations of reality were strong and anything beyond basic manoeuvres was too hard for poor quality units. You valued your elites (especially disciplined units), you needed them to do the special jobs. It gave a clear idea why a "Byzantine" army could perform one way (they can disengage, reform their line and still keep good order? What sorcery is this?), while a crusader army went another (CHAAAARGE) and Turks a third way (Hah, they flee!...wait...they're coming back..).

Back to the topic, a flank attack is a normal part of the battlefield repertoire. An outflank or a double envelopment is a risky manoeuvre beyond many units' capabilities. There are lots of examples where it goes wrong, and some sweet examples where it goes right.

At Cannae the Romans deployed a double thick line: Hannibal had cut their line in the last two battles and rolled them up from the middle so it was a sensible response. The plan was to push forward with the double thick line and bust his centre, win the battle quickly and devastatingly. Hannibal seemed to have set up badly: he had his Kelt and Iberian swordsmen in the centre in a thin single line, and his phalanxes toward the flanks. The Romans pushed forward hard, but the Punic centre fell back fighting, it did not hold its ground. They were disciplined and skilled enough to fall back elastically while holding some sort of line.

The phalanxes did not fall back: the Roman line stalled there on either side. The line of legions bowed but they were not experienced enough to hold order. The second line of Romans pushed in too, that was the plan: steamroll right through the Carthaginians centre, but that mashed their front line between enemies in front and friends jostling from behind. The Scipionic idea of maniples was not in general use at this point, so the Romans were operating in fairly fixed lines. Detaching a few centuries to face about was a novel idea that experienced men and leaders could employ but beyond these raw recruits.

When units lose formation they lose the ability to manoeuvre or fight effectively, and the Roman centre was now a milling mass. I'm searching for a metaphor here, Hannibal's centre wasn't a latex condom catching the Roman thrust, it was more like a net with a hard rim, the Romans pushed their head in but their shoulders got stuck. Then the body concertina'd up behind that.

The Romans weren't looking to fight their battle on the flanks, they'd been cut up by the brilliant Punic infantry in the centre before, thats where their focus was. They were used to being outclassed by the enemy cavalry but this was something else (and new to the Romans, Trebia and Trasimene were infantry actions in the northern hills). Iberian and African horse swept away the equites unbelievably fast and the rear was under pressure at the same time as the double centre was getting mashed by its own weight against the Punic cookie cutter centre.

Hannibal's very effective light infantry finished the work: javelins hurled into a mass of disorganised men are terrifying I guess, and the Romans were tired from pushing against their own comrade's backs.

Cannae is the dream battle for a brilliant commander of a great army. The Wehrmacht pulled off a "super Cannae" at Kiev in 1941 (well over half a million killed) and planned another at Kursk in 1943. In the intervening period the Soviets had improved doctrine, command and equipment, and the result changed. Double envelopments are very risky.

Cannae could easily have been a disaster for Hannibal. Had Varro held his second line back, allowing a little more wiggle room then he may have been able to adjust his flanks and "noob box" to avoid defeat: if he made it a battle of attrition thats a strategic win fro Rome because hanibal has little manpower and Rome has buckets.

If the Punic centre had broken at just one point the Roman plan would have continued, the legions pouring through the centre and facing out to role up the Punic line. Once a legion got behind a phalanx it was curtains, as proved at Cynoscephalae and other battles in the East. At best Hannibal would have been left with some cavalry, some skirmishers and one elephant.

[Swaeft]

I think your problem lies in overestimating the common soldier. They knew nothing of the battle but what they could see, and even if they did, they usually couldn't think straight enough to make a decision based on it in the stress of battle. Contemporary authors describe symptoms akin to PTSD as quite common among the warrior elites like medieval knights, and those were people that prepared all their lives for battle. Imagine how much worse it had to be for a common soldier who never held a weapon until few weeks before battle and was never in anything even remotely as traumatizing as battle. Quite often it was only the tight formation and presence of comrades in arms that kept them from breaking and running, and when that starts to crumble, the instincts take over and it's fight or flight. Most people tend to run.

That's one of the reasons for all that shouting in boot camps. To desensitivize the recruits. Another is to make them obey instinctively and kill the enemy before they have time to think that they're killing another person, but that's a different matter...

Well, I counter that your problem lies in underestimating the common soldier . If I'm in the first line fighting hand to hand, or the second or third line, yeah, I'll be focusing fully on what's in front of me, lest I get stabbed while looking away. But everyone else will occasionally glance left and right, and if I were at the sides and saw an enemy coming at me, order or not, I'm going to turn and face them before they hit me if I'm not engaged at the front/not about to be engaged. And that's assuming the local commander is brain dead and doesn't order his men to move.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PTSD a condition you get after the battle, not during?

Sure, when you're suddenly being flanked you'll be scared wubless and try to run. But if you see the enemy coming, even if they are two or three minutes march away, much of the 'surprise' factor is gone. Not to mention if you are engaged and you hear the roar of your own reserves' counter charge, you won't be believing that all is lost.


@Cyclops jeeeezus that's way beyond anything I expected. I'll read that when I have the time, but bravo for making a post that detailed, though I'm mildly annoyed you keep pointing out the musket era when that's not what I'm looking for. I know why the morale shock is greater when guns came about!

[Sar1n]

Well, I counter that your problem lies in underestimating the common soldier . If I'm in the first line fighting hand to hand, or the second or third line, yeah, I'll be focusing fully on what's in front of me, lest I get stabbed while looking away. But everyone else will occasionally glance left and right, and if I were at the sides and saw an enemy coming at me, order or not, I'm going to turn and face them before they hit me if I'm not engaged at the front/not about to be engaged. And that's assuming the local commander is brain dead and doesn't order his men to move.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PTSD a condition you get after the battle, not during?

Sure, when you're suddenly being flanked you'll be scared wubless and try to run. But if you see the enemy coming, even if they are two or three minutes march away, much of the 'surprise' factor is gone. Not to mention if you are engaged and you hear the roar of your own reserves' counter charge, you won't be believing that all is lost.

PTSD is a reaction to traumatic event. That was my point. Battles are very traumatic, even for the prepared. You cannot expect those in the thick of battle to act and think rationally.

[Cyclops]

Well, I counter that your problem lies in underestimating the common soldier . If I'm in the first line fighting hand to hand, or the second or third line, yeah, I'll be focusing fully on what's in front of me, lest I get stabbed while looking away. But everyone else will occasionally glance left and right, and if I were at the sides and saw an enemy coming at me, order or not, I'm going to turn and face them before they hit me if I'm not engaged at the front/not about to be engaged. And that's assuming the local commander is brain dead and doesn't order his men to move.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't PTSD a condition you get after the battle, not during?

Sure, when you're suddenly being flanked you'll be scared wubless and try to run. But if you see the enemy coming, even if they are two or three minutes march away, much of the 'surprise' factor is gone. Not to mention if you are engaged and you hear the roar of your own reserves' counter charge, you won't be believing that all is lost.

Individuals can experience shock immediately or as a delayed response, in WW1 it was called "shell shock" and often men would freeze in battle as a result of the psychological effect of shelling, or seeing awful events around them.

Groups behave differently (and in many ways much more predictably) than individuals. Just getting men to line up and agree to fight is a huge effort, now you want some of them to turn about and face another way? Takes a lot of experience training and skill to do that in battle.

I recommend John Keegan's book The Face of Battle which outlines the common experiences and differences in three famous English/British battles: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. It gives an idea how difficult it is to get bodies of men to obey in battle. The description of the human traffic jam in the French centre at Agincourt is sickening.

@Cyclops jeeeezus that's way beyond anything I expected. I'll read that when I have the time, but bravo for making a post that detailed, though I'm mildly annoyed you keep pointing out the musket era when that's not what I'm looking for. I know why the morale shock is greater when guns came about!

Another book is Battle Tactics of Napoleon by Nosworthy which talks about how coming under fire can often "pin" a unit (they take cover, return fire etc) rather than make it run, whereas a charge quite often results in one side or the other running away before contact is made. Shock, that is hand to hand clashes, forces a test of morale in a very different way to casualties from a distant source.

I know it sounds anachronistic to reference musket era examples vs medieval warfare but its not. There are most of the same elements present: spear/pike and shock infantry, heavy and light cavalry, fragile missile units (archers and crossbows) and siege artillery. Horse and Musket era warfare relies heavily on cold steel right up to Waterloo: it is the battles of Solferino and the ACW that show the bullet and shell in the ascendant.

[Dick Cheney.]

Indeed, I was thinking speed might have been the main factor - but if the infantry was massing, it wouldn't have been that effective. Many historians say that the effectiveness of the cavalry charge was a result of troops routing as well - if the lines did not waver and the cavalry got bogged down, they would have been the ones slaughtered instead. We have to remember that in the time period I'm talking about, cavalry were vastly outnumbered by infantry.

Cavalry could still expect a numerical advantage over infantry when attacking the flanks - which goes along with principles of concentration of forces and attacking an enemy where they are weakest. Successful flanking maneuvers were also many times accompanied by a pinning force (aka Hammer & Anvil) which made adjusting formations and massing men to new locations virtually impossible. Beyond that, many users have argued convincingly how difficult command & control was in the ancient & medieval world. There were no radios, no binoculars, no accurate maps, noise and crowds were horrendous, most orders were done either by runners or primitive signaling, most soldiers were unprofessional or seasonal militia, and many times the commander himself was too engaged in combat to even give any new orders.

But I’ll try playing devil’s advocate; if successful flanking attacks were really only a byproduct of surprise and not being able to adjust formation in time, why couldn’t highly trained infantry -when anticipating envelopment- perform a noob box? Such as the Battle of Ruspina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ruspina




Here's why the argument fails:

In the above example Caesar is actually extremely fortunate (as usual) that Labiniues did not press an attack on all sides while he surrounded Caesar. His goals were to actually immobilize Caesar enough for his lighter missile units to finish him off – which was still an effective strategy, and with no retreat option open shows just what kind of dire predicament a surrounded force could be in.

Caesar escapes the turkey shoot (and a repeat of Carrhae) through blind luck -literally by sniping the enemy general- and by some heavy/courageous fighting made possible by his heroic presence and veteran legions. But make no mistake, in the battle above Caesar had lost the initiate, lost freedom to maneuver, control of the field, line of retreat, and ability to concentrate force. Had Caesar not had an advantage in quality of men, and the advantage of a flexible cohort system, heavy infantry, and terrain that favored visibility and easy redeployment, the results of Ruspina would have been very different.

Even so Ruspina was not a win for Caesar, but a very chaotic withdraw.

Flanking was and still is an effective strategy for the following reasons:

Concentration of Force – Attacking a flank created a mismatch where a flanking general could expect numerical superiority over an opponent unless his opponent could quickly adjust formation or dedicate reserves. Ex. Battle of Leuctra

Surprise – Attacking a flank is usually unexpected and creates morale problems when units become surrounded and lose their line of retreat or ability to communicate or coordinate with other units.

Maneuver – Attacking a flank allows an attacking force to avoid attacking a heavily fortified center in favor of a portion of a line where -by definition- less men and resources are deployed. Attackers can thus expect to take on fewer casualties when compared to a frontal assault.

Initiative & Operations Tempo – Attacking a flank forces the defender to quickly change formation or suffer casualties. Changing formations opens up opportunities for the attacker elsewhere and allows him to seize the initiative. Ex. Hammer & Anvil.

Encirclement – When surrounded, flanked units lose the ability to retreat, maneuver, or gain reinforcements. They also become more vulnerable to missile units. Units are forced to fight on multiple sides simultaneously and lose the ability to concentrate.

Complexity – The more irregular formation a unit needs to adopt to defend itself, the less likely it will be carried out. Especially in the thick of battle or under time constraints.

Over-extension – Attempting to guard/prepare too much against flanking attacks creates extension problems for a defending force.

You’ll notice many of these arguments are also principles of war and have been proven true throughout the centuries.

[pannonian]

Individuals can experience shock immediately or as a delayed response, in WW1 it was called "shell shock" and often men would freeze in battle as a result of the psychological effect of shelling, or seeing awful events around them.

Groups behave differently (and in many ways much more predictably) than individuals. Just getting men to line up and agree to fight is a huge effort, now you want some of them to turn about and face another way? Takes a lot of experience training and skill to do that in battle.

I recommend John Keegan's book The Face of Battle which outlines the common experiences and differences in three famous English/British battles: Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. It gives an idea how difficult it is to get bodies of men to obey in battle. The description of the human traffic jam in the French centre at Agincourt is sickening.



Another book is Battle Tactics of Napoleon by Nosworthy which talks about how coming under fire can often "pin" a unit (they take cover, return fire etc) rather than make it run, whereas a charge quite often results in one side or the other running away before contact is made. Shock, that is hand to hand clashes, forces a test of morale in a very different way to casualties from a distant source.

I know it sounds anachronistic to reference musket era examples vs medieval warfare but its not. There are most of the same elements present: spear/pike and shock infantry, heavy and light cavalry, fragile missile units (archers and crossbows) and siege artillery. Horse and Musket era warfare relies heavily on cold steel right up to Waterloo: it is the battles of Solferino and the ACW that show the bullet and shell in the ascendant.

The Ghosts of Cannae by Robert L O'Connell has a section on the likely experience of the troops involved on both sides, including the mechanics of killing that many men. AFAIK The Face of Battle is the seminal English language work on the experience of battle though.

[Morifea]

Well, I counter that your problem lies in underestimating the common soldier .

Well, I´m afraid you`re overestimating the common Soldier
Most participants in Battle were simply some guy with a pointy stick, nothing more... and even experienced and trained soldiers have their issues.
A definitve Eyeopener on that part is Imo "On Killing" by Dave Grossmann. John Keegan is also a MUSTREAD if your interested in military History.

Re Musketera: As Cyplops has already pointed out, up to 1850 there are not sooooo much differences (maybe Artillery). If I remember correctly, In the Franco-Prussian war for examble the consumption of small arms munition was 30 shot per Infantrymen. For the whole war. (Source: van Creveld: Logistics, another MUSTREAD).
Most Fights were done on short range, where you have to look in the enemies eyes while killing him, while most kills occured when one army routed.

Good Points Sar1n and Dick Cheney, Rep will follow

[Swaeft]

I've been away for a while, but damn! Great replies guys, I had fun reading them all. I'll stop pressing the issue because there are many factors that I didn't take into account when I phrased my question, that you guys have pointed out correctly, though I still severely dislike the notion that soldiers cannot do basic maneuvers in battle.

Thank you guys for the lovely responses!

[Love Mountain]

To add a little bit to the discussion, here is an interesting thread to read when we talk about cavalry charges and flanking. I'm not sure how accurate that discussion is, so I think it'll be interesting to continue it.

The gist of the thread is essentially that cavalry don't "break through" masses of people through physical impact, but rather the psychological fear of getting trampled by giant masses of horse, armor, and man would break the nerve of even the most disciplined infantry in the right circumstances. The routed masses would then be rode down. The discussion goes on to argue that men who didn't break inflict powerful casualties onto the horsemen, or the horseman simply do not commit to the charge. Later on as very long lances, and organized standing armies developed, heavy cavalry would rely on extremely long spears and not the horse itself. In addition to that, the horsemen would charge in an organized way with a low number of ranks. That way the cavalrymen in the back don't hit the cavalrymen in the front. Etc.

It's a pretty length discussion that I'm not sure whether it's factual or not. I think the argument is very convincing from what I can tell, but I'd love it if you guys could weigh in.

[95thrifleman]

Bear in mind that discipline weighs in on these situations.

A classic example is the Battle of Alexandria, 1801. The French cavalry broke past the British line and formed up to attack the rear, the 28th (North Gloucestershire) regiment formed their rear rank to face the cavalry with their forward rank still engaging the main French line.

They fought back to back like this and held their ground. This was due to training and discipline.

Another example is the Battle of Gettysburg in which Chamberlain was successful in holding his nerve and turning a potential loss of the flank into a masteful counter-charge.

[Swaeft]

A classic example is the Battle of Alexandria, 1801. The French cavalry broke past the British line and formed up to attack the rear, the 28th (North Gloucestershire) regiment formed their rear rank to face the cavalry with their forward rank still engaging the main French line.

They fought back to back like this and held their ground. This was due to training and discipline.

I am heartened to see that this actually happened. Take that you flankers!

To add a little bit to the discussion, here is an interesting thread to read when we talk about cavalry charges and flanking. I'm not sure how accurate that discussion is, so I think it'll be interesting to continue it.

Interesting, I'll peruse it when time permits. Thanks for the link.