Mongol and European comparitive tactics?

[TimSheetz]

HI Jeanry,

I don't doubt that at the right times Infantry got crushed by Cavalry...

But as you mentioned in an earlier Post (maybe on a different thread?) that there is a lot of variance in foot troops.

I would bet that the events where the Cavalry charged and crushed infantry formations had a lot of other factors influencing the outcome.

Like the example cited up in the thread is an example where a commander used feints and other actions to bait the infantry out of their massed formations and spread out. OK, well if they are spread out then they are vulnerable to cavalry. I do not consider this to fit my description of massed infantry and a wall of spears.

I will agree that obviously longer spears lend hemselves to being more effective at stopping a cavalry charge! Hey, who said size didn't matter? It is something that puts more in favor of the infantry troops.

Competition drives the technology to greater heights. I agree with that, but anytime we start comparing modern wapon systems with the past, I can only really compare it with principles. Now we MASS FIRES, not MASS PEOPLE to stop the enemy... so it is different.

It also puts us in an era where we are logistically able to keep fighting 24/7 in stead of a primarily daytime activity.

Peace,

Tim

[Filip Pobran]

If you like to think that mounted archers of Tatar were not real mongols (whatever it might mean) I can do nothing about it.

in croatian history we learned that we were attacked by tatars (which were under mongols) not the mongols. even in books from that period, they were named tatars. (yes, i know... names in old books...)

[Andrzej Rosa]

Surely you realise that there are numerable examples where spear armed
infantry was smashed by heavy cavalry with longer spears (lances). This is a
principle reason why the Swiss for example switched from 7' halberds to 18'
pikes in the 14th century...

You got a point here. Lances were considered so important, that they were
the only part of the equipment the state provided for them. All the rest
they bought themselves.

It was 18' long shaft hollow inside for lightness.


Here is some rendering which try to show how it might look like.

And some painting from the Olde days, just for kicks.


I was often thinking why hussaria never developed in the west and have some
speculations of how and whys.

Hussaria is the only cavalry I'm aware of which managed to break pikemen
regularly. They were elite. Their equipment was very expensive.
They made financial sense in specifics of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and
quite probably nowhere else.

And of course, there was a culture of horsemanship and young nobles trained
and competed in "chasing a ring", which means that they trained in using the
lance. Also we had higher percentage of "nobles", who as a rule were poorer
than your western contemporaries and more numerous.

Regards.

[Andrzej Rosa]

I would bet that the events where the Cavalry charged and crushed
infantry formations had a lot of other factors influencing the outcome.

And you would be quite right. In real battles always something goes
wrong.

The problem remains how to seize this opportunity and make use out of it.

I wrote lengthy and hardly readable post with plenty of quotations, but I
scratched it. Makes no sense to post something like that.

So let's concentrate on few, but illustrative examples and make some sort of
"textbook battles" out of "real battles". I guess, it will serve better at
passing a point about what could have been expected from infantry and good
cavalry at different conditions.

There was a battle were infantry did nothing wrong, stood ground, withstood a
charge of hussaria and lost badly anyway.

Here is a description of battle of Kokenhausen where Polish cavalry dealt with
Swedish cavalry and was not able to break pikemen ranks, but virtually
immobilised and unsupported infantry was no threat to anyone, so they simply
took time to gather some cannons.

Point is that if infantry must remain in favorable position to successfully
oppose cavalry it becomes some sort of fortification, fearsome in its own
way, but no real threat to mobile forces of cavalry.

Could hussaria break their ranks if really forced to do that? Possibly.
They could charge time after time and did so on different occasions, but it
was simply not needed this time.

Other example shows, that even successful charge can be withstood and battle
lost. During the battle of Warsaw.
Swedes did some things wrong, which Poles did not use against
them and Poles did some things brilliant, did not use it rightly and still
lost a battle. Determined charge of hussaria broke through ranks of Swedish
infantry to a point when life of their king was in danger, but due to no
follow-up this charge is just some curiosity.

Yet, battle was lost but largely indecisive. We were able to retreat in
order with fighting ability of most of our troops untouched. Would we win,
there would be some serious slaughterhouse.

I will put just this one quote from the above link. Description touches my
heart, so maybe it will not be too boring for others too.

Palubinski began the charge on receiving fire from the Swedish
artillery. The distance from the enemy was about 500 meters. To avoid tiring
them, the hussars trotted their horses until they reached a distance of 200
meters. Thereafter they advanced in a controlled canter to approximately 80
meters (the edge of effective musket range) when they began to gallop. 80
meters in a gallop takes about 10 seconds - only enough time for the opponent
to fire one salvo. In that moment, if the majority of the men and horses fall
than it could lead to failure of the attack; this time this attack did not
falter. Hussars in full impetus struck their 'iron fist; at the center of the
left Swedish wing, consisting of the elite Uplandder infantry regiment and
the Smalandder cavalry. (Commanded by Planting and Rosen); these broke
almost immediately. This first charge also routed the reiters of the Queen's
lifeguards under Col. Anhalt. The riters of the Swedish King's own lifeguard
under Sulzbach also suffered heavy losses, as they were driven back. At that
moment came an event pregnant in potential, as King Charles Gustav narrowly
avoided death at the point of the lance of the legendary James Kowalski. Only
thanks to iron discipline was total panic avoided among the Swedes. Meanwhile
the hussars pressed through the second line where 4 squadrons had
intermingled, but still pressed on. To this point the plan of the Poles had
been realized. The hussars had deeply shattered the Swedish
formations.

Best regards.

[TimSheetz]

Andrzej Rosa,

You are a very highly motivated by your subject, that is certain.

Obviously these were, as you said, elite troops, raised in the saddle.

But in receiving the charge they did this: "these broke
almost immediately." The 'elite' infantry broke as the charge hit. The quotes also refernce musket range... so were the infantry carrying muskets? If so, I guess there wasn't a wall of spears... just a 'hail Mary' one shot and then a fight wth an extremly heavy weapon or a secondary one... this is not fitting what I described... However, what I just sad does not diminish the valor of the charge.

We are discussing battles that fall at the very latest end of the things we study. For me, I mean to discuss periods prior to massing firearms on the battlefield. Firearms and cannons is a huge change that affects everything.

Peace,

Tim

[JeanryChandler]

I know I'm being devils advocate all over the place here, but I have to agree with Tim on this one. When did hussars ever smash a trained army of pikemen in a direct charge?

Jr

[JeanryChandler]

From what I have read, including two biogrophies of Ghengiz Khan which I still have (saved from the Katrina flood) and a book about the battle of Leignitz (sp), the mongols did have foreigners in their armies but these were predominantly restricted to specialists used for siege warfare. In fact, during one major campiagn IIRC when the mongol Army finally decided to turn back and return to Mongolia they systematically slaughtered all of the foreigners in their column before beginning the march.

I think there is some confusion between the Mongols and the Huns here. The Huns of several centuries earlier by contrast, included all kinds of foreign troops among their regular forces such as Ostrogoths and Sarmatians etc..

Jr

[JeanryChandler]

HI Jeanry,
(snip) there is a lot of variance in foot troops.

Without a doubt, and with Cavalry as well. The somewhat sobering truth is that the kit could make as much of a difference as the level of training or motivation.

(snip) where the Cavalry charged and crushed infantry (snip) a lot of other factors influenced the outcome. the example cited up in the thread a commander used feints and other actions to bait the infantry out of their massed formations and spread out. (snip)I do not consider this to fit my description of massed infantry and a wall of spears.

Yes but my point is, walls of spears were ridden down regardless, even while tightly packed, when they weren't properly equipped. If the kinghts lance is longer than your spear, it's a simple matter of physics. Just as cavalry itself, regardless of how motivated, brave or well trained, was completely hopeless against Tanks in the early days of WW II.

I will agree longer spears more effective It is something more in favor of the infantry.

The surprising thing is how long it took them to figure out how to properly implement this. Part of the reason is that the really long spears require really special training to use them properly, training we still emulate in our obsolete parade ground drill in boot camp in todays army.

Competition drives technology (snip)...Now we MASS FIRES, not MASS PEOPLE to stop the enemy... so it is different.

Again, not necessarily. Consider the importance of mass fires at Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt....

It also puts us in an era where we are logistically able to keep fighting 24/7 in stead of a primarily daytime activity.

They did plenty of night fighting in the Renaissance!

Ok, please forgive me another long winded rant, but I want to paint this picture clearly at least as I understand it, because in considering European history I think you have to really have a nuanced sense of how it changed, flowed and ebbed.

There was of course this see-saw between technologies, just like that between guns and armor in the 20th century. Infantry vs. Cavalry has been one of the most ancient of these struggles, ofen a bitter one as different classes of society tended to prefer one over the other.

From at least 1066, (some would say from the battle of Adrianople in 378 AD) until the 14th century, Heavy Cavalry was for the most part very dominant over infantry. Whats more, in this period, you really didn't have proper armies (except for maybe the Byzantines). The European Heavy Cavalry had such an advantage in training AND kit, that they often (though not always) exchewed strategy altogether and operated more like gangs, often disregarding any infantry on their own side, not at all like a combined arms army we can think of today. Nevertheless, sometimes in spite of an often stunning lack of tactical preperation or even basic caution, they won battle after battle against everyone they faced trained or untrained, frequently against superior numbers. Imagine the frustration felt by well trained professional armies in the Orient for example, utterly unable to stop this "Barbarian" menace (without resorting to complex tricks like feigned retreats, and even then victory could turn to defeat in an instant if the Franj could come to grips!)

Of course, not everybody had Heavy Cavalry. The idea seems to have come from Iran originally but by this time, only the Europeans had it. Light cavalry by contrast was ineffective against well trained, well equiped, well led and motivated heavy infantry. This is well proven by the "Thermapolae of the West", the battle of Tours in 732 AD, when Charles "The Hammer" Martel and 15,000 -30,000 Frankish heavy infantry stood fast against day long attacks by an estimated 150,000 -400,000 light and medium cavalry of the Saracen army.

And as both the Byzantines and the Mongols demonstrated, a well (heavily) equipped combined arms army could defeat relatively unorganized, undisciplined Heavy Cavalry.

By the end of 13th century, cracks in the foundation of Knightly power were starkly outlined in the European Homeland by the stunning defeats in Scotland, Flanders, and Switzerland. Motivated, disciplined armies of commoners, both rural and urban, began to dominate the battlefields, and the Heavy Cavalry was ultimately relegated to it's role as ole as just another branch of the combined arms force, as is traditionally understood in modern military theory.

Jr

[Andrzej Rosa]

You are a very highly motivated by your subject, that is certain.

Sorta, I guess. But my reaction is not much different than "many respected
others", who go to strange lengths to fight a myth about how much some pieces
of steel weighted or if a guy could mount a horse in full plate.

The quotes also refernce musket range... so were the infantry carrying
muskets? If so, I guess there wasn't a wall of spears... just a 'hail Mary'
one shot and then a fight wth an extremly heavy weapon or a secondary
one...

Well, they had both muskets and pikes. I assumed this to be sorta obvious,
but well, they had pikes to protect musketeers from a charge. Proportions of
both in one regiments varied slightly over time, but in general it was
something like 1/3 pikemen and 2/3 musketeers.

We are discussing battles that fall at the very latest end of the
things we study. For me, I mean to discuss periods prior to massing firearms
on the battlefield. Firearms and cannons is a huge change that affects
everything.

But those things changed for worse when it comes to charging infantry.

At Crecy, for example, archers and infanterised men-at-arms had to protect
each other. Later ranged units just sorta took care after themselves by
having pikemen within their own formations.

If every man in some unit carried a pike then, of course, things would become
more difficult but such an unit would be very vulnerable to other, more
"normal", infantry units with typical proportions of ranged to pikes.

I consider musket to be sort of cross-bow (but often worse than longbow).
Simply cheaper to produce then cross-bow and more deadly at typical range.
Sure, it could penetrate quite thick steel, so infantry could leave their
pavices home. Also any sort of maile armor was not worth an effort of paying
for it, wearing it and letting it be pierced by lance or bullet.

Also, sometimes muskets were better against charge than pikes. At Gniew, for
example, musket fire slain remarkable number of cavalry-men who had to charge
against bad strategic positions and so on.

I do not see any reason to believe that gunpowder helped hussaria somehow in
breaking pikemen. Excluding of course some instances when they used pistols
reiter fashion, of course.

Regards.

[Andrzej Rosa]

I know I'm being devils advocate all over the place here, but I have
to agree with Tim on this one. When did hussars ever smash a trained army of
pikemen in a direct charge?

To the best of my knowledge - every time they successfully charged western
infantry.

Cossacs relied on fortifications, our own infantry relied on lances of
cavalry, janissaries on Allah, probably, but western units preferred to have
pikemen.

Regards.

[JeanryChandler]

Ok Andrzej, can you be at least a bit more specific as to which time period you are discussing? From your description above it looks like you are describing battles from the 17th cenutry...

Jr

[Andrzej Rosa]

Ok Andrzej, can you be at least a bit more specific as to which time
period you are discussing? From your description above it looks like you are
describing battles from the 17th cenutry...

Actually yes.

I chimed in when I read some quite general statement, that disciplined and
drilled infantry is invincible to cavalry. So I used examples when well
equipped and trained (though not necessary extremely disciplined ) cavalry
broke ranks of pikemen. Most of such battles happened in 16 and 17 century.

Hussaria was at its best through 16 century, when between 1500 and 1625
Poles won all battles, often against crazy odds, where hussaria took part.
Later things evened out somehow, mostly due to the fact that good leaders, like
king of Sweden Charles Gustav, started to drill their infantry specifically
against hussaria.

But some things at least theoretically carry over to late middle ages, when
cavalry was not valued so high any more.

For once - hussaria was rather light cavalry, by western standards. Their
armor was substantially lighter and less complete than even reiter armor.
Armor of late middle ages knight would be much stronger than that. Earlier
hussaria was less uniform in equipment and there were some full-plate
"comrades" and lightly armored guys (potchtovy) with just shield and lance,
but generally they had better armor later.

Second - fire weapons did not make things easier for chargers. Musket can
kill a horse on the spot, which is very hard to do with a cross-bow
bolt or an arrow. Horse shot in the heart will run still until it is
completely dead, but not some even hundred meters later. Musket shot could
probably kill it faster, due to different way a bullet and an arrow kills.

I mean, medieval knights were not really good at what they did. If you have
loosely connected bunch of knights, who rarely if ever train how to deliver
coherent charge and hit with all the horses at the same time, and you put them
against well drilled, trained and disciplined infantry unit the outcome tells
more about discipline and training than about relative qualities of cavalry
and infantry.

Were they training daily how to deliver good charge, like our guys used to
do, things might be looking different.

Regards.

[Justin Lompado]

"Do you include Poland or Hungary into Europe?"


-->No, you misunderstood. I was thinking you'd mention Poland and Hungary in a reply when I wrote this, but I didnt include them because I do not feel they are representative of the whole of Europe's military inclination for the past 2,500 years, not that no effective calvalry ever existed in Europe. Perhaps I should have been clearer. I meant that never did Europe as a whole develop a horse culture that would allow it to field vast amounts of cavalry like, say, the mongols, so that mounted soldiers would be he vast majority of the military. To do so there would need to be a topography more suitable to horse-raising, and while there are areas suitable for and successful at horse-raising, there would need to be such land across national boundaries, and because Europe is so intensly divided into many nations, and considering its mountainous and forested landscape in some places, establishing a cavalry-based military is not practical. They obviously did quite well without it. Hungary and Poland are in some parts the perfect place for cavalry, but combined the plain-like areas of both nations are only about 90,396 square miles in size. Contrast that to the size of the plains of Asia, which easily exceed 1 million square miles in size. Even if you multiplied the European value by up to 10 times in a best-case scenario, in order to make possible a European equivalent, it would still be smaller and would cross numerous national boundaries. In fact, that very fragmentation prevents any single, large cavalry army comparable to the size of those of Asia from forming.

"I guess that Turks would have differrent opinion about this supposed European predominance. "

-->Lepanto, Jannissaries

Sorry for the miscommunication

[JeanryChandler]

Actually, with all due respect, I believe the La Tene era Celts had something of a horse culture... at least according to the Romans and the best archeological evidence we have.

Jr

[JeanryChandler]

Andrej,

Thats what I thought. The vastly different time periods make this an apples and oranges discussion here, the issue is in fact the increasing importance of guns and cannon, and the arms of the pike squares. As you mentioned in the example you cited, in the 16th and 17th centuries the ratio of lances to guns dropped considerably in favor of the guns, for a wide variety of reasons. This made the infantry correspondingly more vulnerable to cavalry charges.

Gustavus Aldophus of Sweeden, who you mentinend carried things yet further in this direction with his innovations with grapeshot and ritter knights..

The hussars were a great, fearsome form of cavalry. I will definately grant you that. And they certainly had their day. (By the way, I believe this form was eventually adopted in the West, at least nominally. IIRC there are still regiments to this day in England for example which call themselves Hussars...)

Where we disagree is how this would have translated into earlier battlefields in the Medieval period and the Renaissance. I think Hussars vs Say the 15th century Swiss Reislauffer, Bohemian Hussites, or German Landsknechts or for that matter English combined army of dismounted knights and yeoman archers, would have had the same result as the huge Arab army did against the hardened infantry of Charles Martel in the battle of Tours; i.e. no luck.

But on this I suspect we may have to agree to disagree. At least I think we clearly can see the point of contention now.

JR