Explain to me like I'm 5 the difference between cathapracts and heavy cavalry in general and knights

Explain to me like I'm 5 the difference between cathapracts and heavy cavalry in general and knights.

About 1 thousand miles

I don't have to explain anything to you you little shit. You're 5. Go play in your room and don't make any more fucking noise or im throwing all of your shit out.

Cataphracts seem to have been raised as part of a standing army paid for by a ruler whereas knights had to fulfil feudal obligations.

They also had different equipment, in the 11th and 12th century Frankish knights generally did not have horse armor and in the 11th century javelins and short spears were apparently more common than lances.

Though these aren't strict definitions.

Why didn't Europe have standing armies instead of a bunch of snot nosed whiny nobles who could or could not listen to their king?

Money.

Why was Europe poorer?

Why Romans had proffesional armies but others couldn't afford it?

All Iranian cataphracts were based off low level nobles who were feudally obligated to serve higher ranking nobles and the king to give military service. It wasn't until the late Sassanid period under Khosrau I that they were formally turned into a professional army of dedicated soldiers but those were derived from the Aztan (freemen) and not noble class.

As I said they are not strict definitions. Often Kings would have both a small standing army and could call upon their vassals and allies in an emergency, they could pay them or grant them tax breaks or they might be obliged to provide military service. It is not like a meme video game where economics is simplified.

Generally though western and central Europe gravitated towards feudalism leading to the class of knights. Their different environment gives us clues as to why. At the time new innovations in agriculture and the medieval warm period led to a population boom, they were surrounded by Catholics (except the Spanish Kingdoms) and the last major disruption was the Vikings. Very different from the ERE and the Sassanids. I imagine regional magnates had everything they needed in their local area and there was little need to unify against an outside threat. There may also have been a need to encourage landowners to put aside land as pasture for horses.

Stirrups and heavy lance.

Trade collapsed after the fall of the Roman empire. People were tied down to their land and became less productive due to shitty diets from being tied down to their local farms, causing the medieval world to be generally poorer.

>Why didn't Europe have standing armies instead of a bunch of snot nosed whiny nobles who could or could not listen to their king?

because of tradition.

post-roman nobility developed from tribal and clan affiliated structures. it was easier to unite the clans under one strong leader under the premise of mutual benefit, than for the one strong leader to conquer all the lands and install own rule (not only was it hard, but in post-roman era noone had the resources for such a large operation). thus from those families of the clan elders nobility came to be, those clan elders that had the most resources and the strongest position became the first kings. in the strive for more organisation they adopted the old roman structures as much as they could, by embracing by a degree culture, religion and nomenclature.

As for Cataphracts, it seems to cover 2 definitions really.
1) A Classical term denoting extremely heavily armored cavalry (for the time).
2) Cavalry from Eastern Europe and Asia where both horse and rider are extensively armored.

Not all Cataphracts in history were part of a state's standing army.

You had cataphracts that were (Byzantine and Chinese Cataphracts).
You had cataphracts that were pretty much feudal knights (Sassanid Cataphracts- the Savaran- were basically Iranic Proto-Knights)
And then you had Steppenigger nobles who went Cataphract simply because they can afford it (Everyone from nomadic Central Asia).

Because society was feudal and tribal. So they simply couldn't.

>in the strive for more organisation they adopted the old roman structures as much as they could, by embracing by a degree culture, religion and nomenclature.
Feudal armies had shit all to do with embracing "Roman" structures.
Society was as basic as it gets back then, and having vassals was the only way to organize a fighting force at all.

Cataphracts existed solely as shock cavalry. They were heavy as shit, and in the arid east that armor acted as an oven for both horse and rider, so all they were good for before tiring out was to charge into a line then get the fuck out before it devolved into a melee. Non-super armored heavy cavalry could be more versatile. They could charge a line but they could also stick around in the engagement for a bit before getting too tired.

why didn't Russians have knights? Is it because they were Orthodox?

Boyars were feudal nobles so pretty much knights except they favoured eastern fighting style

Wrong. Cataphracts were usually nobles....like most heavy cavalry from Hellenistic, Anatolian, and Middle Eastern armies.

he's not talking about armies you fagget, but generally about the tribal europeans embracing Roman structure, like religion (christianity) and language (latin vocabulary).

>because they were orthodox
Serbs had heavily armored knights, they were called vitez. Russians probably too.

this , boyars filled a similar niche, also the later pomestie system under Ivan III whereby a family would gain rights to land if their young men served in the cavalry
I didn't say they weren't nobles. Just looking at the general differences between them.

Dad?

the fuck is ''eastern fighting style''?

fpbp

horse archery (some cataphracts also trained as horse archers)

Martial arts traditions are different in western and eastern Europe