Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. VI

[MickJay]

An off-topic aside, why in the world are you using Roman numerals?!

On-topic: I question how useful cavalry was in the 19th century. Mounted infantry (dragoons) were fairly common, England maintained a 'House Guard' of heavy cavalry, and several national armies did maintain regiments of light cavalry and lancers. But were they useful as cavalry or simply as transportation for infantry? If they were useful, in what battles were they decisive?

Lord Cardigan's charge at the Battle of Balaclava shows how field artillery made cavalry charges obsolete. Many cavalry 'battles' of the century seemed to be irregular warfare such as that used by the Boers.

In Poland, using Arabic numerals for centuries is not commonly accepted, especially in academic works. It's probably got something to do with snobism. It took me some time to get used to the monstrosities like, e.g., "19th century", instead of "XIX century" as well.

As for Polish lancers, mentioned by Spiryt, they indeed made quite a reputation for themselves while serving under Napoleon. A particularly well-known episode comes from Napoleon's Spanish expedition: the uphill charge at Somosierra, during which less than 200 lancers cleared the artillery defences, positioned there to defend the main route to Madrid and considered by the French commanders to be unassailable (the casualties amounted to about 2/3 of the volunteers who participated in the charge, but the road was opened). Cavalry remained a useful tool for well-timed charges and pursuit throughout most of the century, though admittedly, improvements in the infantry rifle designs and field artillery did eventually make frontal charges (something that was still a viable, and often effective, option in Napoleonic times) more and more risky. Charge of the Light Brigade is a good example of that, but a frontal assault at a well-positioned artillery was generally considered insane even before 19th century.

While as the century progressed more and more of the mounted forces were such only for the mobility, actual cavalry skirmishes survived into the 20th century (less so in the Western Europe, where the onset of the trench warfare effectively eliminated opportunities for such engagements). Last major battles where cavalry was used are considered to have occured during the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1921.

[firechicago]

On-topic: I question how useful cavalry was in the 19th century. Mounted infantry (dragoons) were fairly common, England maintained a 'House Guard' of heavy cavalry, and several national armies did maintain regiments of light cavalry and lancers. But were they useful as cavalry or simply as transportation for infantry? If they were useful, in what battles were they decisive?

Lord Cardigan's charge at the Battle of Balaclava shows how field artillery made cavalry charges obsolete. Many cavalry 'battles' of the century seemed to be irregular warfare such as that used by the Boers.

First, it should be noted that the Battle of Balaclava proves very little, given that the charge of the Light Brigade was based on a horrible miscommunication which sent the English cavalry directly into the teeth of a fortified Russian position. One might just as easily argue that the battle of Falkirk proved that pike tactics were entirely ineffective against mounted knights. All that's really proved in either case is that any weapon system used poorly and without support will perform poorly against an opponent who is more skillful and has a more diversified force.

Secondly, I think your distinction between cavalry and dragoons becomes less relevant over the course of the 19th century, as cavalry are increasingly trained to do both. It's true that cavalry rarely met in head-on conflicts with infantry, but the tactical and strategic mobility granted by cavalry remained invaluable in any fluid campaign situation (i.e. anywhere that wasn't Northern France between 1914 and 1918) right up until they were replaced with motorized vehicles. It's true that artillery, rifling and bayonets reduced cavalry's shock value against well prepared infantry, but there were still critical roles for cavalry:

a) Reconnaissance (not terribly glamorous, but extremely important.)
b) Use as mounted infantry to occupy vital points in advance of the main army. (Think Buford's cavalry defending the approaches to Gettysburg long enough for the Army of the Potomac to start arriving.)
c) Raiding enemy supply lines and communications.
d) Falling on a retreating, disorganized or otherwise ill-prepared enemy (this is what the Light Brigade was supposed to be doing.)
e) Catching and driving off the other guy's cavalry to deny him a through d.

So these missions may or may not be "decisive" in your thinking, but they're the types of things that win campaigns. I know that if I were commanding in the Crimea or in the American Civil War I'd take 9 divisions of Infantry and a brigade or two of cavalry over 10 divisions of infantry any day.

[Raum]

It's late so I'll simply point out a couple of items.

@Thane: Even at Eylau where the charges were effective and decisive enough to keep Napoleon from losing, they weren't enough to turn the battle itself into a decisive defeat. But you do have a point. Borodino did see heavy cavalry used decisively. Though casualties were heavy. I'm less impressed with the Polish cavalry charges you point out. Even on the page you linked, few were successful and those which were dismounted to attack or were successful at fleeing capture more often than they pushed home a successful cavalry charge.

@MickJay: Thanks for the info on Roman numeral usage! I did not know that. :)

@firechicago: If you'll look back you'll note I was responding to Spiryt's assertion that lance charges were still effective in the 19th century. Thane and MickJay pointed out a couple of examples. I did not question any of the other purposes you've asserted.
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Going back to the question, when was the latest battle where a cavalry charge was decisive? Are there any examples post Napoleon?

[Norsesmithy]

Wait, wait, isn't stoping power just the probability of a bullet to stop the target from shooting bullets back at you if you hit them in a nonvital site?

Because I seem to remember stories about weapons whose bullets had so litle cinetic energy that you could empty your cartridge on the target and he wouldn't stop.

Sure, then some people claim that big is best, or that speed is best, but then the money starts talking and you want to spend both as little lead and gunpowder in the weapons as possible so you can make more weapons!

Kinetic energy alone will not ever stop something from moving. A single atom moving a high fraction of C would have a tremendous amount of energy, but wouldn't have the momentum to affect your personal momentum hardly at all. And no cartridge fired from a man portable weapon has the momentum required to move a human body much more than an inch or so, if one did, the shooter would have an awfully rough time of firing the weapon (equal and opposite reaction and so on).

"Stopping Power" is a very vague way of saying more powerful weapons are more powerful. Where the target is hit is the biggest factor of all in stopping power, and there are lots of other factors such as psychology, target mass, as well as the physics of the bullet itself.

Ultimately the bullet with the most stopping power is one the user can most accurately place in a vital area.

The problem with using the term stopping power is that you are trying to measure the capacity to induce shock. And shock is not something controlled by measurable physical factors, it is a psychological effect. Further, shock is not more effectively induced by a larger bullet than a smaller one.

A person who chemically, or otherwise, isolates himself from the effects of shock can continue to fight as long as 30 seconds after his brain has been completely drained of blood.

If you want a man out of a fight RIGHT NOW, the only two things that you can to to instantaneously end a person's ability to fire at you with a firearm are to disrupt his Central Nervous system above the Brachial Plexus, or destroy the musculature and bone of both his arms.

Major destruction of the circulatory system pretty much guarantees that he will quit fighting within a minute or two, but never faster than 30 seconds or so.

Anything else is the target's mind causing him trouble, and there are enough ways to master/override those circuits that such effects cannot be considered dependable.

Except I'm fairly certain that the biggest of two-handed swords was actually used at the same time as the light rapier. Also, the bidenhander's were used by people not wearing armor (or at least not the heavy kind). The deference really is that rapier's were a gentleman's weapon, it is useful in single combat among duelists and is reasonable to be carried around in public and almost useless in a pitched battle. The bidenhander was pretty much the opposite, useful in pitched battles against formations, could not be reasonably carried in public, and was a sign of a mercenary.

It is a mistake to think that the Landesknects were not users of armor, because of all the the froofy outfits one sees in woodcuts or prints depicting them. Those fashionable outfits were designed to be worn over plate harnesses.

[Storm Bringer]

while cav may not have been decisive on thier own, the threat of cav could change a battles progress. the standard Nepleonic responce to horsemen trying to close to sabers reach was to form square. These squares were effectivly invunable to mounted troops, barring a few freak incdents, but they were also very vunerable to cannon and musket fire, being a nice, big, deep formation that was relativly unmanuverable. One tactic used was to threaten a foot battlion with cav, then when it formed square, draw up cannon and infantry in line to blast the formation to pieces. as the men in the square couldn't leave it without being killed by the cav, you could move the guns right up to the edge of musket range, and then use canister shot to decimate the square.

as for the Dragoon/cavalry split, as time went on the differences in training and equipment grew a lot less. In the british army, they did away with non dragoons entirely, though they brought in hussars and lancers towards the end of the nepoleonic wars. I far as i know, the brits just used the dragoons as normal cav rather than mounted infantry. I can't comment on how the other armies of that time used them, but most likey they served in pitched battles as light cav.

[Yora]

I think one very important aspect about cavalry is their speed and mobility. You can get them in position and attack very fast, while an infantry formation can be much easier seen in advance, which allows you to prepare for them.

[Dienekes]

It is a mistake to think that the Landesknects were not users of armor, because of all the the froofy outfits one sees in woodcuts or prints depicting them. Those fashionable outfits were designed to be worn over plate harnesses.

Thanks, I suspected something like this, but I didn't actually know (though I did think the frilly outfits were immensely idiotic). But, I'm still fairly sure that they were not wearing the full plate armor that stenver was describing as necessary for larger weapons to be useful. Do you have any sources for good landsknect information? i always found them interesting.

[Tyndmyr]

Minor correction on the otherwise good summary of shock: Brain shutdown due to lack of oxygen would happen only six seconds after the flow of blood to the brain ceases. Yes, this isn't instant...but it's still pretty fast.

On cavalry, it's still used today, for mobility in areas where vehicles cannot go. Special ops stuff, mostly. Heck, horses played a huge role in ww2 still. At the invasion of poland, half the german artillery was still horse drawn. Everyone gives credit to the tanks, and while yes, they were awesome, a huge amount of stuff required to support them ran the old fashioned way.

Remember, no matter what the weapon, if it's not in position to fire at the required time and place, it's not much good. Cavalry is about maximizing the use of your best troops via mobility.

[Brainfart]

Actually, two handed weapons are surprisingly fast. If you've ever seen two proficient longsword wielders go at it, you'll know this isn't hyperbole. Forget the nonsense the katana plonkers tell you, even a dirty great zweihander can be used with speed.

Another point on cavalry: they're very useful for screening. I believe the Roman light cavalry was primarily used for this function.

[Matthew]

Another point on cavalry: they're very useful for screening. I believe the Roman light cavalry was primarily used for this function.

Roman cavalry were used exactly the same way as every other cavalry; it is something of a modern myth that has arisen around the Romans that their cavalry was poor quality or only used for skirmishing. Much has to do with the assumption that because ancient cavalry lacked stirrups they could not be used to deliver a "shock" charge, the belief being that a "pole vault" would be the result. In the last few decades this has been shown to completely wrong, and our ideas about ancient cavalry have been utterly reformed (along with our view of the "stirrup revolution"), largely through investigation of ancient cavalry saddles.

[Mr. Mud]

Roman cavalry were used exactly the same way as every other cavalry; it is something of a modern myth that has arisen around the Romans that their cavalry was poor quality or only used for skirmishing. Much has to do with the assumption that because ancient cavalry lacked stirrups they could not be used to deliver a "shock" charge, the belief being that a "pole vault" would be the result. In the last few decades this has been shown to completely wrong, and our ideas about ancient cavalry have been utterly reformed (along with our view of the "stirrup revolution"), largely through investigation of ancient cavalry saddles.

This.

While stirrups probably greatly enhanced the "shock" factor, and probably the overall effectiveness of mounted warfare, Roman cavalry was used just as all others were.... if not more effectively.

[Dervag]

The usefulness of a weapons depends on the age it was used.

During medieval times, knights were heavily armored, so no light sword could hurt them effectively. You had to beat that tin can until your hands were hurting you and he still was standing. Thats why there were so many prisoners at that time as well. People just didnt die. They got exhausted and fell over from the blows, not from severe wounds.

Heavy armor (in the sense of "steel plates") wasn't introduced until very late in the medieval period, long after the practice of taking enemy knights prisoner was in place.

Combat became fast and bloody. So obviously you didnt want to be the 2 handed sword wielding guy, who could make 1 attack in 6 seconds.

People who are actually any good with large two-handed swords can attack much more frequently than that... you don't just swing the thing back and forth like a giant club. For that matter, you don't use it to chop through armor, either; that's what polearms and blunt weapons are for.

The fact is, that throughout history, swords kept getting bigger and bigger.

From the Shortsword to the Spatha, to the Longsword, to the Zweihander.

But it wasn't really a linear evolution. Whenever you had large polearm formations (be they ancient Greek phalanxes or Renaissance pike blocks), you saw short swords reappearing to arm them with. Whenever you didn't have large polearm formations, you saw people going straight to the 'large one handed' sword types*, rather than messing around with stuff in the eighteen-inch range.

*I'm not good enough with the terminology to use the strictly proper names.

An off-topic aside, why in the world are you using Roman numerals?!

On-topic: I question how useful cavalry was in the 19th century. Mounted infantry (dragoons) were fairly common, England maintained a 'House Guard' of heavy cavalry, and several national armies did maintain regiments of light cavalry and lancers. But were they useful as cavalry or simply as transportation for infantry? If they were useful, in what battles were they decisive?

Lord Cardigan's charge at the Battle of Balaclava shows how field artillery made cavalry charges obsolete. Many cavalry 'battles' of the century seemed to be irregular warfare such as that used by the Boers.

...Not exactly. The real trick to 19th century cavalry warfare was that you didn't try to break formed infantry or dug-in, deployed artillery by a frontal attack. But then, nobody particularly bright had been trying to do that for the past several hundred years, so that wasn't a new development. The situation got more extreme than in previous wars; you lost more men charging deployed 19th century artillery than you would a hundred years ago. But it was at least as much a change in degree as in kind.

The cavalry still could fight from horseback, and it was often convenient and wise to do so in situations where tactical mobility mattered and you weren't attacking a prepared, heavily armed opponent. At this point, infantry still needed to deploy before they could repel a cavalry attack reliably.

The tipping point at which cavalry became useful only as mounted infantry came starting in the late 19th century (breech-loading long range rifles), and was just about past by 1900.

Early in the 19th century, cavalry charges could still shatter units of infantry which had not managed to form square. To some extent the threat of a cavalry charge was also effective, as infantry in square were very vulnerable to artillery fire.

For a good example of their use, see Eylau.

While I can't think of any decisive uses of cavalry later in the century, it should be noted that even in early WWII, the Polish cavalry managed some successful cavalry charges.

As another example, we have the charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba during World War One. This was fought in the Middle East, where the troops and firepower were more spread out, so the cavalry didn't have to deal with as much concentrated firepower as they would have faced on the Western or Eastern fronts.

On cavalry, it's still used today, for mobility in areas where vehicles cannot go. Special ops stuff, mostly. Heck, horses played a huge role in ww2 still. At the invasion of poland, half the german artillery was still horse drawn. Everyone gives credit to the tanks, and while yes, they were awesome, a huge amount of stuff required to support them ran the old fashioned way.

There's a difference between horse-drawn supply wagons and horse-drawn guns on the one hand, and cavalry on the other. Mounted infantry lie somewhere in between the two extremes.

[fusilier]

One more thing: it's an oft-repeated myth that gunpowder caused the 'disappearance' of armor, or at least the disappearance of suits of plate armor. There's no basis for this in fact.

The emergence of 'personal' firearms actually coincided with the height of plate armor, overlapping by at least a couple of centuries. Armor could be, and was, made with gun-shot in mind; and better armors were proofed against it. If you're going to be shot by a heavy, low-velocity 80-caliber musket ball, wouldn't you rather be wearing a heavy cuirass than nothing at all?

Not necessarily. Muskets are not quite as low velocity as people tend to think they are. The ball was soft lead and it was usually pretty easy to slow it down. Unfortunately this sometimes meant that the ball had enough power to puncture the front armor and travel through the body, but then lacked the power to puncture the back armor. This meant that it bounced back into the body!!

"Bullet-proof" armor was usually tested by shooting a pistol at it at around 20 paces. This would leave a dent on the breast-plate indicating that it had been proofed. However, even the large horse pistols of the day could not compare to a musket in terms of penetration, and 20 paces is somewhat long range for a pistol. That's not to say that such armor was useless against bullets, but it's main value was still in hand-to-hand combat. Well into the 1600s you could still find the occasional swordsman in three-quarters plate.

I think that during the 17th century the usefulness of marching everywhere with "heavy" armor declined, as more and more battles were decided by musketry and not the pike. Cavalry continued to wear armor (at least sometimes) because they were still expected to mix it up in hand-to-hand with the saber or lance.

Armor never really died out completely. Horsemen continued to wear armor even as late as 1914. Siege armor was available during the 19th century. World War One saw the resurgence of armor for specialized purposes (German sentries, and sometimes machine gunners, Italian pioneers, and of course helmets). Flak armor in WW2, and I think the early versions of modern ballistics armor start showing up during the Korean war. However, it was not nearly as widespread as it is today.

[Oslecamo]

One more thing: it's an oft-repeated myth that gunpowder caused the 'disappearance' of armor, or at least the disappearance of suits of plate armor. There's no basis for this in fact.

There is actually.

The emergence of 'personal' firearms actually coincided with the height of plate armor, overlapping by at least a couple of centuries. Armor could be, and was, made with gun-shot in mind; and better armors were proofed against it. If you're going to be shot by a heavy, low-velocity 80-caliber musket ball, wouldn't you rather be wearing a heavy cuirass than nothing at all?

It worked for some time. But as the gunpowder weapons became better and better, the armors needed to be heavier to have the tickness to resist the bullets, and soon it simply became too heavy for anyone to be able to wear it.

That's when strategists started to position soldiers in lines. No use giving them armor since they would be pierced anyway, but at least try to make that as few of them get shot by the heavy canons wich could easily butcher concentrated masses of infantry.

What actually happened was the rise of professionally-trained, classically inspired infantry formations. For much of the European medieval period, heavy cavalry (the armored knight or man-at-arms) could rout infantry, not because no one had heard of pikes, but because no one could field units of polearm infantry that had drilled to march and fight in close order, protecting themselves. The Scots famously used pikes against English cavalry; and then, not quite so famously, got butchered by English archers, because when they did so they were stuck in a fixed line. So, as a well-armored, well-trained professional knight, you had good reason to be confident in your ability to destroy infantry with a massed charge, butchering the peasant rabble before you. It was the heavy cavalry on the other side that posed a threat. [Or, if you were fighting in the East, the light, archer cavalry. But that's a different discussion.]

This was just due to the big losses of knowledge. The romans created a fearsome disciplined infantry army wich hardly had any cavarly yet could crush bigger disorganized mobs. And they wore armor.

What eventually happened was the rise of prosperous, mercantile cities, with a wealthy burgeoisie who didn't see themselves as 'property' of noblemen. And the re-discovery of Classical texts on subjects like warfare. And the boom in population, and the subsequent available supply of disposable young men. And a whole lot of other social factors. But the end result is, you begin to see formations of professional halberd or pike-soldiers, often intermingled with crossbowmen, who could maneuver as a unit. They could hold their ground against heavy cavalry charges, and could inflict losses in return, either by dismounting the knights or (more likely) by crossbow-fire at close range.

And guess what? That infantry used armors also. Untill canons started to become a common sight in the battlefield. No armor will save your ass when a cannon ball comes screaming at your face with enough strenght to rip it off whitout even slowing down. And the mens behind you.

That's what killed the fully-armored knight. More precisely, that's what killed heavy cavalry as an offensive force against heavy infantry. Heavy cavalry was relegated to using pistols or carbines to fire at infantry from a distance--usually ineffectually--or to attack other cavalry, or light infantry. And noblemen, facing the prospect of being skewered by filthy peasants instead of being honorably captured and ransomed by other noblemen, began to find better things to do than lead cavalry charges. So by the 17th century, you have cavalry who have given up on using steel armor except for helmet, cuirass, and maybe gauntlets; and who used pistols and sabers instead of the couched lance.

Still, it was an effective tactic all the way to WWI. Because the massed infantry necessary to repel a cavarly charge is useless against cannons wich can easily kill several humans standing near to each other.

The comanders needed to keep their infantry in lighter formations, wich could be broken by cavarly charges if you knew what you were doing. In the napoleonic wars cavarly charges were an essential part of every major batle.

What finally killed cavarly was rapid fire weapons like the machine gun, wich allowed a small amounts of soldiers to spray an area with bullets. This way they're not specially vulnerable to artilery, yet can kill the cavarly fast enough, and the cavarly can't really take cover in the terrain like normal infantry.

Also takns. The polish still had a big cavarly force by the time of WWII, wich was butchered by the german tanks.

[fusilier]

That's when strategists started to position soldiers in lines. No use giving them armor since they would be pierced anyway, but at least try to make that as few of them get shot by the heavy canons wich could easily butcher concentrated masses of infantry.

I'm a little bit confused by what you are saying. Pikes were being put into formations (although usually columns not lines), long before armor died out. So there had already been a return to fighting in formation. Musketeers started to deploy in lines when they started using the volley system of fire. Prior to that, they tended to deploy in deeper formations, where they could rotate to keep up a constant rate of fire. Obviously, deeper/denser formations had a greater disadvantage when faced with artillery. Nevertheless, Napoleon was able to revive columns during his time (at least briefly).

This was just due to the big losses of knowledge. The romans created a fearsome disciplined infantry army wich hardly had any cavarly yet could crush bigger disorganized mobs. And they wore armor.

Well, it's not just the loss of knowledge. The fact of the matter is that the Roman soldiers themselves were looking like mobs of barbarians by the end of the empire. The Anarchy pretty much destroyed the discipline of the Roman army. The infrastructure to support well disciplined and trained armies had disappeared - the knowledge was "lost" because it could no longer be applied. The point about armor is a good one. Simply having a well disciplined army, doesn't mean you abandon armor.

Generally speaking, throughout history, well disciplined infantry that had it's act together had little to fear from cavalry. It's when their formations were already disrupted that you wanted to throw cavalry against them. Successful cavalry charges usually followed a successful infantry charge, that dispersed the opponent's formation. Then the cavalry could ride in and sweep up the fleeing survivors. Infantry that stood its ground (even in small groups), could be annoying to cavalry.

Also takns. The polish still had a big cavarly force by the time of WWII, wich was butchered by the german tanks.

There was an Italian cavalry charge during WW2 that captured a Russian artillery battery. Those were rare. Machine guns also made old-fashioned infantry charges practically suicidal too. As the nations involved in WWI figured out the hard way.

[MickJay]

Also takns. The polish still had a big cavarly force by the time of WWII, wich was butchered by the german tanks.

Oh let's not perpetuate those myths, nobody was charging tanks with cavalry, by the time of WW2, Polish army used horses for transporting some of the light artillery, scouting and moving troops quickly (these "cavalrymen" usually fought dismounted). The few skirmishes where someone actually fought on horseback occured during sudden developments and/or ambushes (the results varied, but were generally good). There was a particularly successful engagement during which a detachment of dismounted cavalry held off an armored division roughly ten times their strength for almost a day, inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans, then safely retreated.

[Diamondeye]

Also takns. The polish still had a big cavarly force by the time of WWII, wich was butchered by the german tanks.

This isn't exactly true. There was only one instance of Polish cavlary being engaged by armored vehicles; at Krojanty hidden German armor fired on Polish cavalry after it had charged at German infantry.

Polish cavalry also was not unequipped to fight tanks; it used the "UR" antitank rifle and Bofors 37mm antitank gun towed by horses. While inadequte, they are far better than sabres or lances.

For the most part however, polish cavalry acted as a reconaissance force and mounted infantry; charges against even enemy infantry were rare.

It should also be noted that the German and Soviet armies also still had large horse-drawn or -mounted components in 1939.

The myth of Polish cavalry being butchered by German tanks is a relic of Nazi propaganda that has somehow survived in popular conciousness. Like the assertion that the Polish Air Force was mostly destroyed on the ground, it was a product of Hitler's propaganda machine based on a minor element of truth (the Polish did lose a few recon aircraft on the ground.)

[Edmund]

I have many opinions to express today!

Roman cavalry were used exactly the same way as every other cavalry; it is something of a modern myth that has arisen around the Romans that their cavalry was poor quality or only used for skirmishing. Much has to do with the assumption that because ancient cavalry lacked stirrups they could not be used to deliver a "shock" charge, the belief being that a "pole vault" would be the result. In the last few decades this has been shown to completely wrong, and our ideas about ancient cavalry have been utterly reformed (along with our view of the "stirrup revolution"), largely through investigation of ancient cavalry saddles.

Well now wait a minute. From resources which I've read (and I'll name for you when I can manage a trip to the library!) the indigenous Roman cavalry was, like Southern Greek cavalry, notoriously bad. Maybe there was something wrong with the horses, or there weren't the social or environmental factors in place for the creation of effective cavalry, but until the Romans acquired auxiliary cavalry they were largely better off on foot, especially if facing someone as competent on horseback as the Numidians or Thessalians. It's also worth mentioning that although stirrups, high-backed saddles, horse shoes, and any other things that Medieval kit had which the Roman did not, did not create 'revolutions' in themselves, they weren't there just for decoration. It might, of course, have been revolutionary in the same way that guns were, in that you can arm someone, with a horse in this case, with a lower level of training but still reaching a baseline of adequate lethality.

What actually happened was the rise of professionally-trained, classically inspired infantry formations. For much of the European medieval period, heavy cavalry (the armored knight or man-at-arms) could rout infantry, not because no one had heard of pikes, but because no one could field units of polearm infantry that had drilled to march and fight in close order, protecting themselves. The Scots famously used pikes against English cavalry; and then, not quite so famously, got butchered by English archers, because when they did so they were stuck in a fixed line. So, as a well-armored, well-trained professional knight, you had good reason to be confident in your ability to destroy infantry with a massed charge, butchering the peasant rabble before you. It was the heavy cavalry on the other side that posed a threat. [Or, if you were fighting in the East, the light, archer cavalry. But that's a different discussion.]

What eventually happened was the rise of prosperous, mercantile cities, with a wealthy burgeoisie who didn't see themselves as 'property' of noblemen. And the re-discovery of Classical texts on subjects like warfare. And the boom in population, and the subsequent available supply of disposable young men. And a whole lot of other social factors. But the end result is, you begin to see formations of professional halberd or pike-soldiers, often intermingled with crossbowmen, who could maneuver as a unit. They could hold their ground against heavy cavalry charges, and could inflict losses in return, either by dismounting the knights or (more likely) by crossbow-fire at close range.

I disagree with aspects of your post, but there are a few things here in particular that no-one has elucidated upon, though I will obviously repeat some things to get to those points.

Good, tight infantry formations can be seen consistently from the early 11th century onwards, though not before due most likely to a dearth of sources! Famous examples can be found at Hastings with the Saxons, Bremule with the Normans (dismounted knights in this case), Jaffa and Arsuf in Richard's forces, and in Byzantium with the much-beloved Varangian Guard. It is thus obviously not the case that fighting on foot suddenly became a good idea, but that there was a much larger issue going on. First of all, the centralization of power and wealth in the hands of kings, and the burgeoning concepts of royal infallibility (not terribly applicable prior to the 14th century!) gave the capability for unprecedented planning and organisational capabilities and allowed for such things as national armies and the large-scale training of longbow men seen in England. The Black Death also created a huge gap in the ownership of territory which was by and large not filled by the landowning peasantry, but rather by the surviving nobles and the royalty! You thus end up with a gap in those with sufficient wealth to own a horse and live comfortably while devoting themselves solely to a martial lifestyle, the milites. The population gap, on the other hand, was of course filled in by the third estate, a point where we agree. Your point about cities (though it's worth noting that serfdom was rare until the late middle ages) is also well taken. I do not think, however, that gunpowder should be pushed out of the picture, since although what you are saying so far certainly killed the knight as a rank of nobility, it did not kill the heavily armoured cavalryman as a tool. Only gunpowder would prove adequate for that task.

One other point: Classical texts of war were fairly consistently used throughout the Middle Ages. El Cid used them, and read them to his men, as did fighters in Lombardy in the first half of the 11th century, and the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings of England certainly made war in the style advocated by Vegetius, even if they did not necessarily read him (though the highly literate Henry I almost definitely did).

There is also one other last worth mentioning. Talking about battles is all well and good, but one should always remember that the fearsome conjoined twins, Siege and Ravaging, were far and away the dominant paragons of medieval warfare, from Charlemagne to Ivan IV. To put it poetically, everyone remembers Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, but no-one forgets that France won the war.

Moving on,

There is actually.


It worked for some time. But as the gunpowder weapons became better and better, the armors needed to be heavier to have the tickness to resist the bullets, and soon it simply became too heavy for anyone to be able to wear it.

That's when strategists started to position soldiers in lines. No use giving them armor since they would be pierced anyway, but at least try to make that as few of them get shot by the heavy canons wich could easily butcher concentrated masses of infantry.

I largely agreed with you to this point.

This was just due to the big losses of knowledge. The romans created a fearsome disciplined infantry army wich hardly had any cavarly yet could crush bigger disorganized mobs. And they wore armor.

The Romans often had fairly substantial cavalry support in their auxilia, the huge part of the army that everyone forgets because it doesn't have enough cool points (CPs). Of course, the Post-Marian legions were really more of a glorified police force than an army. They excelled in siege against a few centres of power, and in pitched battle (sometimes, lol Carrhae) but failed miserably in Germany, where the lighter, javelin-armed infantry were unwilling to fight on the Romans' terms, and instead, for a good while, waged a very effective hit-and-run style war. It was not until Germanicus goaded Arminius' army into attacking his forces head on that Arminius was defeated, and even then inner Germania was never pacified, and thus never defeated. The Romans were unwilling to devote enough troops to wiping out the Germans, especially since moving that many troops into the reason would almost certainly have caused an empire-wide revolt. The Spanish, the Syrians, the Gauls, and most notably the Pannonians were rather upset with them around this time.

a) Reconnaissance (not terribly glamorous, but extremely important.)

Since when has Reconnaissance not been glamorous? Look at this badass.

[Fhaolan]

IWell now wait a minute. From resources which I've read (and I'll name for you when I can manage a trip to the library!) the indigenous Roman cavalry was, like Southern Greek cavalry, notoriously bad. Maybe there was something wrong with the horses, or there weren't the social or environmental factors in place for the creation of effective cavalry, but until the Romans acquired auxiliary cavalry they were largely better off on foot, especially if facing someone as competent on horseback as the Numidians or Thessalians.

I was under the impression that it was mostly social, with the training for both horse and rider seriously lacking. Even the auxilaries from the Celtic regions, who were reasonably serious horse-people, couldn't really budge the Roman mindset until the 3rd and 4th century when the high-mobility Huns basically stepped (pun intented) on the Eastern Roman Empire.

EDIT: Okay, my wife (who's the horse historian in the house) just turned around and hit me for the pun. Ah well. I suffer for my art.

[Norsesmithy]

While there is something to be said for the improvement of guns making "bullet proof" armor less and less practical, I think that the primary reason why firearms made armor obsolete was an economic one.

As gun powder made it cheaper and easier to turn a conscripted peasant into an effective soldier, and land is concentrated in a smaller and richer nobility/national government, the size of the army that could raised increases dramatically.

And armor worth a damn is expensive and time consuming to manufacture.

So armor became a poor investment, militarily.

[fusilier]

While there is something to be said for the improvement of guns making "bullet proof" armor less and less practical, I think that the primary reason why firearms made armor obsolete was an economic one.

As gun powder made it cheaper and easier to turn a conscripted peasant into an effective soldier, and land is concentrated in a smaller and richer nobility/national government, the size of the army that could raised increases dramatically.

And armor worth a damn is expensive and time consuming to manufacture.

So armor became a poor investment, militarily.

Agreed. Armor, even something as simple as a breast-plate, needs to have some degree of fitting/sizing. Helmet/breast plate combination survived for cavalry (for the elite forces, in relatively small numbers), and until the end of the pike, circa 1700. Also, what did armies spend most of their time doing? Marching!! Battles were rare. Asking peasants to lug around heavy armor that they never use was a bit much. Even during the age of Pike and Shot, pikemen were known to cut a couple of feet off their pikes to make them lighter -- a potentially disastrous practice, if battle did occur, and the enemy pikemen hadn't taken the same economy. We know that they did this, because there are regulations forbidding it, often with severe penalties.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be a correlation between armor, and whether or not the troops were expected to get into hand-to-hand combat. Pikemen continued to wear armor for decades after musketeers had abandoned it completely (leather buff-coats were still popular in the mid-17th century, but gone by the end of the century). Siege armor seems to be the only armor that survived that was designed specifically for troops not expected to be in hand-to-hand combat.

[Matthew]

I have many opinions to express today!

Well now wait a minute. From resources which I've read (and I'll name for you when I can manage a trip to the library!) the indigenous Roman cavalry was, like Southern Greek cavalry, notoriously bad. Maybe there was something wrong with the horses, or there weren't the social or environmental factors in place for the creation of effective cavalry, but until the Romans acquired auxiliary cavalry they were largely better off on foot, especially if facing someone as competent on horseback as the Numidians or Thessalians. It's also worth mentioning that although stirrups, high-backed saddles, horse shoes, and any other things that Medieval kit had which the Roman did not, did not create 'revolutions' in themselves, they weren't there just for decoration. It might, of course, have been revolutionary in the same way that guns were, in that you can arm someone, with a horse in this case, with a lower level of training but still reaching a baseline of adequate lethality.

Nah, Roman Republican cavalry was perfectly good. In your average Polybian legion of the second century BC you would have 2,800 Roman Heavy Foot, 1,200 Roman Light Foot, 300 Cavalry, 4,000 Italian Foot and 900 Italian Cavalry. By the late republic and early empire they had reorganised the legion so that it was comprised of something like 5,000+ Heavy Foot and 120(ish) Cavalry, allied and auxiliary cohorts supplying the cavalry (usually led by Romans).

Polybius puts the biggest defeat against Hannibal (Cannae, maybe?) down to the numbers of cavalry, and not the quality.

The stirrup was certainly an improvement, in that it allowed the rider to stand and deliver attacks with weapons, or more importantly to deliver the couched lance attack, which was the big change. Nonetheless, it was slowly adopted and a refinement, rather than a revolution.

Good, tight infantry formations can be seen consistently from the early 11th century onwards, though not before due most likely to a dearth of sources! Famous examples can be found at Hastings with the Saxons, Bremule with the Normans (dismounted knights in this case), Jaffa and Arsuf in Richard's forces, and in Byzantium with the much-beloved Varangian Guard. It is thus obviously not the case that fighting on foot suddenly became a good idea, but that there was a much larger issue going on. First of all, the centralization of power and wealth in the hands of kings, and the burgeoning concepts of royal infallibility (not terribly applicable prior to the 14th century!) gave the capability for unprecedented planning and organisational capabilities and allowed for such things as national armies and the large-scale training of longbow men seen in England. The Black Death also created a huge gap in the ownership of territory which was by and large not filled by the landowning peasantry, but rather by the surviving nobles and the royalty! You thus end up with a gap in those with sufficient wealth to own a horse and live comfortably while devoting themselves solely to a martial lifestyle, the milites. The population gap, on the other hand, was of course filled in by the third estate, a point where we agree. Your point about cities (though it's worth noting that serfdom was rare until the late middle ages) is also well taken. I do not think, however, that gunpowder should be pushed out of the picture, since although what you are saying so far certainly killed the knight as a rank of nobility, it did not kill the heavily armoured cavalryman as a tool. Only gunpowder would prove adequate for that task.

One other point: Classical texts of war were fairly consistently used throughout the Middle Ages. El Cid used them, and read them to his men, as did fighters in Lombardy in the first half of the 11th century, and the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings of England certainly made war in the style advocated by Vegetius, even if they did not necessarily read him (though the highly literate Henry I almost definitely did).

There is also one other last worth mentioning. Talking about battles is all well and good, but one should always remember that the fearsome conjoined twins, Siege and Ravaging, were far and away the dominant paragons of medieval warfare, from Charlemagne to Ivan IV. To put it poetically, everyone remembers Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, but no-one forgets that France won the war.

Yes.

The Romans often had fairly substantial cavalry support in their auxilia, the huge part of the army that everyone forgets because it doesn't have enough cool points (CPs). Of course, the Post-Marian legions were really more of a glorified police force than an army. They excelled in siege against a few centres of power, and in pitched battle (sometimes, lol Carrhae) but failed miserably in Germany, where the lighter, javelin-armed infantry were unwilling to fight on the Romans' terms, and instead, for a good while, waged a very effective hit-and-run style war. It was not until Germanicus goaded Arminius' army into attacking his forces head on that Arminius was defeated, and even then inner Germania was never pacified, and thus never defeated. The Romans were unwilling to devote enough troops to wiping out the Germans, especially since moving that many troops into the region would almost certainly have caused an empire-wide revolt. The Spanish, the Syrians, the Gauls, and most notably the Pannonians were rather upset with them around this time.

Another issue occasionally touched on for the conquest of Germany was the cost versus value aspect. If it was not worth the resources required to secure a conquest, then better to build a wall and trade. It is interesting that an army supposedly developed for dealing with rough terrain, failed so dramatically in Germany.

I was under the impression that it was mostly social, with the training for both horse and rider seriously lacking. Even the auxiliaries from the Celtic regions, who were reasonably serious horse-people, couldn't really budge the Roman mindset until the 3rd and 4th century when the high-mobility Huns basically stepped (pun intented) on the Eastern Roman Empire.

EDIT: Okay, my wife (who's the horse historian in the house) just turned around and hit me for the pun. Ah well. I suffer for my art.

Heh, heh. Well, it is hard to say for sure, because levels of expertise differed over the empire. By the 4th century Roman cavalry tactics were supposedly well developed and infantry tactics mostly neglected (according to the not always reliable Vegetius). During the reign of Constantine there were military reforms to divide the army into "garrison" and "field" units, with the field units being deployed from the centre to areas of trouble as rapid reaction forces. These were supposedly well furnished with cavalry. Much earlier than that Scipio, Caesar and Pompey seem to have all valued cavalry (Caesar apparently mounting an entire legion, possibly for mobility), but there had always been a heavy emphasis on foot troops as the mainstay of the army.

On the other hand, the Adrianople (AD 378) is no longer regarded as the watershed infantry/cavalry moment it once was.

[Diamondeye]

Part of the armor problem at the time was also the protection-to-weight ratio. Armor that would protect against firearms needed to be thicker, and thicker steel gets heavy very fast. It was much easier to put more power behind a shot that to wear ever-heavier armor, even if it was feasible from a cost standpoint in the first place.

That's why bulletproof armor has made a resurgence recently. Materials such as Kevlar and various ceramics etc. that go into ESAPI and other modern armors that can stop rifle fire are much much stronger than steel armors against that sort of force, but still only weigh, for the complete equipment set, about as much as a knight would expect to wear and carry.

The same effect is seen in armored vehicles and ships: as armor-piercing weapons developed from the high-velocity guns of WWII to the HEAT/chaped charge warhead and long-rod penetrator (SABOT) rounds, RHA steel was no longer effective; it had to be too thick and heavy. Modern tanks use composite armors that are much more effective per unit thickness. Ships simply abandoned armor in favor of SAM and gun defenses; missiles can be shot down, and if they do hit their shaped-charge warheads and leftover rocket/jet fuel render WWII-style steel armor pretty useless. Composite armor for ships would be prohibitively expensive and heavy, requiring far larger power plants and fuel supplies, so most ships are left unarmored.

[Edmund]

Nah, Roman Republican cavalry was perfectly good. In your average Polybian legion of the second century BC you would have 2,800 Roman Heavy Foot, 1,200 Roman Light Foot, 300 Cavalry, 4,000 Italian Foot and 900 Italian Cavalry. By the late republic and early empire they had reorganised the legion so that it was comprised of something like 5,000+ Heavy Foot and 120(ish) Cavalry, allied and auxiliary cohorts supplying the cavalry (usually led by Romans).

Polybius puts the biggest defeat against Hannibal (Cannae, maybe?) down to the numbers of cavalry, and not the quality.

This may be perfectly correct, but I'm slightly skeptical of straight-up believing Polybius on this issue, since he was related to Scipio Africanus through his patron. In my mind he suffers from the same problem as Thucydides. His history looks so good, and is so good, that mistakes become tough to spot, especially without anyone of equal quality to contradict him, something that bothers me about using him as a source.

The stirrup was certainly an improvement, in that it allowed the rider to stand and deliver attacks with weapons, or more importantly to deliver the couched lance attack, which was the big change. Nonetheless, it was slowly adopted and a refinement, rather than a revolution.

From my understanding what was even more helpful than the stirrup for the couched lance was the high-backed saddle, which basically welded the rider in place when the actual impact came.

Another issue occasionally touched on for the conquest of Germany was the cost versus value aspect. If it was not worth the resources required to secure a conquest, then better to build a wall and trade. It is interesting that an army supposedly developed for dealing with rough terrain, failed so dramatically in Germany.

Haha, right. Of course, the army was developed for dealing with rough Mediterranean terrain. The wet, thick forests of Germania, and the javelins that fly through them, provided a new set of challenges.

While there is something to be said for the improvement of guns making "bullet proof" armor less and less practical, I think that the primary reason why firearms made armor obsolete was an economic one.

As gun powder made it cheaper and easier to turn a conscripted peasant into an effective soldier, and land is concentrated in a smaller and richer nobility/national government, the size of the army that could raised increases dramatically.

And armor worth a damn is expensive and time consuming to manufacture.

So armor became a poor investment, militarily.

This is in mostly true, but it is worth remembering that there would always be those who could afford armor for themselves. The fact is that armor would be so utterly abandoned by its few remaining users, as it was in the 19th century, shows it no longer served to protect the wearer.

[Matthew]

This may be perfectly correct, but I'm slightly skeptical of straight-up believing Polybius on this issue, since he was related to Scipio Africanus through his patron. In my mind he suffers from the same problem as Thucydides. His history looks so good, and is so good, that mistakes become tough to spot, especially without anyone of equal quality to contradict him, something that bothers me about using him as a source.

Absolutely, and this is a problem with all sources. Livy is pretty much your best bet outside of Polybius, but he is writing a long time afterwards. At any rate, the Romans never despised cavalry, and their most wealthy citizens made up their cavalry arm, but Italy offers only slightly better terrain for cavalry than Greece, so the emphasis is typically on infantry actions. On the other hand, one of the themes of that set-piece in Polybius is that Scipio reformed the Roman cavalry as a direct response to the lessons learned at that battle. It would perhaps have been in his interest to claim that the Roman cavalry were inferior both in quality and quantity.

From my understanding what was even more helpful than the stirrup for the couched lance was the high-backed saddle, which basically welded the rider in place when the actual impact came.

Hmmn. I think you may need to look into the work that has recently been done on the Roman cavalry saddle, if you are unfamiliar with it. The bottom line is that this is exactly the purpose the Roman saddle served. Peter Connolly is the man behind this advancement in our understanding. Been a while since I was acquainted with this stuff, but you may find some useful reading here: The Roman Cavalry (1992), and more recently here: The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (2002) or Warhorse: Cavalry in Ancient Warfare (2006).

Haha, right. Of course, the army was developed for dealing with rough Mediterranean terrain. The wet, thick forests of Germania, and the javelins that fly through them, provided a new set of challenges.

Indeed; perhaps adherence to an unsuitable military doctrine, and thus failure of leadership, was the cause of defeat at a tactical level, but it seems on the whole that the Germans responded to Roman military techniques in a very effective way.

[Dervag]

This is in mostly true, but it is worth remembering that there would always be those who could afford armor for themselves. The fact is that armor would be so utterly abandoned by its few remaining users, as it was in the 19th century, shows it no longer served to protect the wearer.

Not quite; it shows that it was no longer effective enough at preserving life for soldiers to make a conscious decision to keep wearing it. Look at soldiers during the World War era who had to be threatened with punishment to get them to wear a helmet and you'll see how this can happen.

Here's an example taken from Hard Tack and Coffee, a book written in 1888 about the Civil War by John Billings, a Civil War veteran. Note that the general tone of the work is light and humorous...:
_______

"There was another invention that must have been sufficiently popular to have paid the manufacturer a fair rate on his investment, and that was the steel-armor enterprise. There were a good many men who were anxious to be heroes, but they were particular. They preferred to be live heroes. They were willing to go to war and fight as never man fought before, if they could only be insured against bodily harm. They were not willing to assume all the risks which an enlistment involved, without securing something in the shape of a drawback.

"Well, the iron tailors saw and appreciated the situation and sufferings of this class of men, and came to the rescue with a vest of steel armor, worth, as I remember it, about a dozen dollars, and greaves. The latter, I think, did not find so ready a market as the vests, which were comparatively common.

"These iron-clad warriors admitted that when panoplied for the fight their sensations were much as if they were dressed up in an old-fashioned air-tight stove; still, with all the discomforts of this casing, they felt a little safer with it on than off in battle, and they reasoned that it was the right and duty of every man to adopt all honorable measures to assure his safety in the line of duty.

"This seemed solid reasoning, surely; but, in spite of it all, a large number of these vests never saw Rebeldom. Their owners were subjected to such a storm of ridicule that they could not bear up under it. It was a stale yet common joke to remind them that in actions these vests must be worn behind. Then, too, the ownership of one of them was taken as evidence of faint-heartedness. Of this the owner was often reminded; so that when it came to the packing of the knapsack for departure, the vest, taking as it did considerable space, and adding no small weight to his already too heavy burden, was in many cases left behind. The officers, whose opportunity to take baggage along was greater, clung to them the longest; but I think that they were quite generally abandoned with the first important reduction made in the luggage."

(end of quote)
_______

Now, some of this armor was fairly effective; I've heard accounts of pieces with several bullet dents in them where stuff failed to penetrate.* But it didn't matter, because your typical soldier (or, for that matter, officer) wouldn't keep lugging the thing around for months before his first battle.

*Can't find any images online; the American Civil War armor hits are swamped by English Civil War armor hits for any Google search I can come up with...

[Thane of Fife]

Now, some of this armor was fairly effective; I've heard accounts of pieces with several bullet dents in them where stuff failed to penetrate.* But it didn't matter, because your typical soldier (or, for that matter, officer) wouldn't keep lugging the thing around for months before his first battle.

*Can't find any images online; the American Civil War armor hits are swamped by English Civil War armor hits for any Google search I can come up with...

Like this?

[Mike_G]

Later still, in Vietnam and even in Somalia, American troops often tried to leave their heavy body armor behind. Since this was forbidden, and easy to notice, many would just remove the heavy plates from their body armor, sometimes replacing it with cardboard to retain the boxy look without the weight.

Or the protection.

It's not easy to get soldiers to wear uncomfortable gear. Even the stuff that works is heavy all the time and useful once in a great while, so it will always be a struggle.

[Edmund]

Hmmn. I think you may need to look into the work that has recently been done on the Roman cavalry saddle, if you are unfamiliar with it. The bottom line is that this is exactly the purpose the Roman saddle served. Peter Connolly is the man behind this advancement in our understanding. Been a while since I was acquainted with this stuff, but you may find some useful reading here: The Roman Cavalry (1992), and more recently here: The Cavalry of the Roman Republic (2002) or Warhorse: Cavalry in Ancient Warfare (2006).

Ah, cool. Cheers for this.

Indeed; perhaps adherence to an unsuitable military doctrine, and thus failure of leadership, was the cause of defeat at a tactical level, but it seems on the whole that the Germans responded to Roman military techniques in a very effective way.

Well, from my research on the Varian disaster it seems to have been a failure in Rome from Augustus all the way down, and a success in Germania concentrated entirely in the body of Arminius [editor's note: <---- Mad hyperbole, but Arminius was a lot more competent than the Romans give him credit]. It basically is a combination of gross misunderstanding of the situation of Germania in Rome itself (they treated it as a conquered, pacified territory), Varus' inadequacy as a leader (which is relatively minor) and Arminius' own superb leadership and tactical qualities, including the fact that he had spent much time in the Roman army, and even been made a Roman citizen in the years before he destroyed the legions. The actual tactics he used during the attack, as far as we can tell, (no written sources survive but the archaelogical evidence in the Kalkriese tells a fairly good story) show a pretty good understanding of what disadvantages the Roman army had.

[Dervag]

Like this? (image)

Yes; that's the ONLY image I found, and it doesn't have the dents I was talking about. I could swear I've seen a dented one, but I don't think I could ever find it again.