How much of an advantage is being on horseback? Was it more for intimidation?

>When you're on horseback you really don't ever want to be in a situation where the enemy can focus on you.

Which is what the horse is for - dictating engagement situations.

So medieval Calvary charges are a Hollywood thing?

I'll give you $10 to approach a horse from the rear. I'll give you $20 to approach it from the front. The whole time you must be screaming and pointing a sharp object at it. If you come out of the coma, I'll suck your dick.

No, the user you replied to has no idea what he's talking about.

Charging into well-ordered massed infantry formations?

It happened, but with results opposite to what hollywood suggests.

youtube.com/watch?v=1uUk5WGAydI

This is probably why the thread was started in the first place.

Lindyposters are a plague.

>How much of an advantage is being on horseback? Was it more for intimidation?
horses are much faster than a man
i'm sure you can figure out how speed can be an advantage in battle

OP here. Actually my first time posting on this board, I had no idea who this guy is either. Very cool though thanks for linking me to this

It's kind of like driving a small car into people.

That much of an advantage.

Horses are really hard to kill, they're big heavy animals. You'll need to stab it in the heart or smash its brain to outright kill it, otherwise you can stab away all day and it isn't going to die.
It didn't really get written about, but the Napoleonic wars give us some insight into horses in war, there's stories of their running around still being ridden with their intestines hanging out or stomachs on the floor, or going on after being shot several times.

is this true?

They'd be trained to do that yes. If a horse gets itself surrounded by enemy infantry its going to be an easy target so it needs to kick, bite, whack and everything else.

What a sight it would be to see.

Horses can be like that.

A small car made of flesh into people with weapons.

reminds me of that webm where a zebra gets its entire nether regions torn out and is able to jump out of a river away from the gator and just hang around with its intestines hanging out

yeah, people forget war horses were bred for hundreds of generations for the sole purpose of riding into battle. they were fearsome beasts.

You know what happens when you attack the horse?

The guy on top of it buries his weapon in you.

Enough that it was the standard and most desirable role in warfare for thousands of years.

Cavalry is less useful for open battle and more useful for engaging isolated or broken units.
Heavy cavalry of course could engage in open battle effectively, although anti cavalry units well organized would still likely fuck them up.

What you lost in tactical options you gained in strategic options with cavalry. They can engage largely on their terms. Avoiding the nasty pikes to charge into a group of archers, or to swing around behind already engaged infantry to scatter and disorganize the back line.
And most importantly, to run down routed infantry and kill them.
The vast majority of casualties in antiquity were caused by horsemen running down fleeing men who had dropped their weapons and scattered. You can outrun that guy lugging around his sword and shield, but nobody can outrun a horse.

Cavalry moves faster than infantry... That's the main factor, higher speed to move around on the battlefield. Our modern equivalent is mechanized infantry battalions who drive around in IFV's (infantry fighting vehicles).

There are other reasons to ride a horse in battle as well of course, you sit higher up which makes you harder to reach for an enemy infantrymen. This is why weapons such as the halberd and the billhook evolved, to fight mounted riders. The rider in turn would use a longer sword than usual, to reach down and strike at enemy infantry.

Then there's the speed factor, you can strike at an enemy in passing and deliver a much more lethal blow than if you would have stood still. You can ride past a guy and use your momentum to chop his head off, or pierce him straight through with a lance.

So there's major advantages to fighting on horseback. The negatives are that you need a well trained horse and rider, and you present a bigger target. The horses also need a lot of fodder. And a horse + rider presents a bigger target to gunfire and artillery, which is why we have armored vehicles today instead of horses.

HAYAYE!!

You get a charge bonus

Large and heavy, most are taller than the average man, so like above 6'2".
Go to a farm and see the work horses, you can also compare to competition horses, you'll find that all of them are large, the ones bred for work and discipline are the largest many breaking 8' feet tall.

Not only would a knight have a literal unstoppable machine under him, but he would be able to deliver that speed and force into his lance (provided he held it right).
A horse can also knock someone over quite easily and your not going to want to be trampled by a 1.1 ton beast of war, even with armor, his hoof is going into your chest.
The thing is unstoppable, the only thing that can stop it is itself, hence why spears are effective (distinct sharp and pointy objects, horses aren't stupid) spears can also more easily reach the rider, but polearms can knock him off better.
A sword and a spear are the same in effectiveness against a horse (assuming the spear isn't a pike) the only difference being a spear is more likely to get the horses attention.
They'd get hit mid stab and most horses can take a beating, one stab (barring its eyes or neck) isn't going to down it.
Besides, you go for the horse, the knight goes for you, or you get knocked over and trampled.
precisely
>t. someone who hasn't fallen off a horse
It isn't that bad, you're not dazed or anything, you can even get bucked off and get up like nothing happened. Now imagine a knight who prepared for that his whole life, how do you think he could take it?
nope, fairly accurate to a degree.
Doesn't matter how well ordered you are, unless your 50 tons of man going at 25 mph, you're not stopping anything.
"flesh" you've never actually seen or touched a horse have you?
rippling muscles and quite able to take a beating, they aren't down and out with the first injury....
You'd only enrage them.
my man.
t. Beigeman

>Our modern equivalent is mechanized infantry battalions
nope.
Infantry are on equal terms with other infantry, Horsemen are on inherently better terms than their footmen counterparts.
The modern equivalent would be something like tanks or lightly armored assault vehicles.
I mean, sure those modern conceptions are more deadlier, but then, I wouldn't say an M4 isn't the successor of the sling merely because an M4 has more killing power.

I have to correct you on one point here: cavalry charges into disciplined, massed infantry, aside from flanking or rear charges, were always disastrous, unless said infantry was completely without polearms. Provided the infantry doesn't break morale immediately, cavalry are forced to charge and retreat multiple times, never charging deeper than a rank or so into the formation, because doing so would slow them down to the point where this mass of men could pull them down.

>Doesn't matter how well ordered you are, unless your 50 tons of man going at 25 mph, you're not stopping anything.

Well, that makes it a formation of 1000 men (assuming 100kg man+equipment per person), and relative velocity is the same no matter who does the running. Brace the pikes and see whether the cavalry really want to charge right into that front.

Correction for my derp; 500 men. 500 men times 100kg should sum up to 50 tons.

>always
Aside from the times the gendarmes rode THROUGH swiss pike squares, sure.

>provided the infantry doesn't break
good luck with finding men willing to stand still against charging knights

What a lot of people don't realise is that Medieval horses were no larger than modern pigs.

It was really just a social hierarchy thing.

Didn't you know? Cavalry is a stupid idea.
youtube.com/watch?v=1uUk5WGAydI

I challenge anyone to try and get more than one stab off at a charging horse without either getting buried by the weight of the charge or fucked up by its rider. The thing is Calvary never engaged alone, so behind one horse and rider were normally 50 others barreling down on your dumbass

Can horses be forces to run into a group of people?

I find it hard to believe they can, especially if this group of people is pointing sticks at the horse.

How can you successfully charge if the horse wont actually charge into the enemy formation?

Protip:
You're wrong.

Talk to me in 10 years.

Protip: pretty much everything you think you know about food are wivestales.

Depends on era and culture used. Stallions (non-castrated males) were often used as cavalry horses because they were more bolder and faster; and if you know how to properly train horses, it was often redundant not to use them over mares or geldings. Stallions themselves are in general just harder to train and more aggressive (especially with mares in the picture). But they weren't train to deliberately attack enemies like a dog would, but just be brave enough for charging against them, or (in the Middle Ages and onwards) push through infantry ranks. The downside of them was that they were more economical costly, harder to maintain, and less generally useful outside of the field compared to geldings or mares, which can function well as being pack animals or wagon pullers. They didn't work that well with other horses, and owning one usually pertained to you as being someone who has other horses to your disposal for work or general use.

it's very hard to kill a horse
that's why koreans developed taekwondo, to kick people off horses in battle

>mfw imagining a manlet Korean trying to kick a Persian cataphract rider or European knight off their horses
>and failing with it ending up with the Asian getting trampled to death instead

How can you get men to stand in a block and march forward toward each other to stab the shit out of each other?

Training, training and more training. Warhorses were trained from birth and bred to charge and not waver, plus a lot of them had blinders

That's why cavalrymen rarely charged head on into spearwalls / disciplined formations. They flank, they harass, etc.

They were most effective at breaking undisciplined formations, because it takes balls of steel to see a row of warhorses barreling towards you and think "I can take 'em."

If you're on the receiving end of a cavalry charge, let's say you're the guy in the front and you put your spear right through the horse's heart. Now you've got a dead horse with a lot of momentum that's still going to collide with you, and more cavalrymen running into you. Shit's scary, it takes a very disciplined soldier not to scatter.

>this picture
Armour made by a master armourer, shield painted by a 9 year old.

>stab your horse

historical illiterates stop posting REEEEEE

not all horses used in battle were armored
it's just the ones that weren't probably wouldn't be charging into an infantry formation head on until around the napoleonic era when armor didn't matter anymore

It could chomp a foot soldiers face like an apple

This.

Also, considering contemporary logistical capabilities, most battles would involve no more than 5-6 men, making the the man on horseback a rather obvious target.

WILLBURRR

DEUS VULT, WILBURRR

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