Why were Horse Archer so effective?

So what you're saying is... It's like an archer. But on a horse.

>Be heavy infantry with shields.
>Form shield formation and let the archers fire until they run out of arrows

Some historical references:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthian_shot
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae

Massed longbowmen were often effective, but longbows have a pretty high skill ceiling and they're phenomenally vulnerable to flanking maneuvers and the like. They're better as support to a larger combined arms force than a primary attack unit. Peeps fighting in the shade and all that.

Because they harass your troops, and when you try to stop them they run away. They were typically used against people who had no idea of how to deal with them, so they were successful.

The problem is that you can't just do that, as the horse archers could just as easily be supported by javelins. Which wreck shieldwalls hard and punch holes in them.

The best and only true counter to horse archers besides seeking safety in a castle is combined arms.

This is a shitty video game meme and has been proven wrong time and time again by actual history, a soldier with a bow and a shield will do as much with a sword as a soldier without the bow

Why is tg the worst board when it comes to history?
This is nearly as bad as your retarded discussions about armour, swords or ancient cultures

>as the horse archers could just as easily be supported by javelins
As javelins have lower range than a longbow the horse archers would get ducked long before that, especially since they can't use heavy armour on themselves or their horses because they need to be mobile

What all you faggots seem to forget is that horse archers were effective quite early in history and fell off hard in medieval times already

because this has literally nothing to do with history

the best counter for anything is knowing you're gonna face them and preparing accordingly
Also the Romans absolutely destroyed Parthian ass

>fell off hard
>they were used by the Saracens, Mongols, and Ottomans for centuries

Notice how they never succeeded at taking over Europe even though they tried often enough, got fucked in most battles and when they won it had nothing to do with their archer Cavalry

Horses run real fast, and arrows fly even faster

Hi,
The best counter to horse archers historically (As used by the Georgians, and Byzantines at least) Was masses of light infantry who hold their line to prevent flanks on equally large masses of missile troops. Stationary missile troops are more accurate but less mobile than horse archers, and could take them but were exceptionally vulnerable to cavalry and flanking. When alone, horse archers pull out spears and light swords and generally just charged these formations. That's why the light infantry was neccessary to prevent such flanking maneuvers, as they were more effective against those on horseback in melee range due to their sheer numbers advantage. Discipline is neccessary amongst these light troops thogh, as they are like to be pelted quite bad and serve as a buffer, and rely on missile troops to actually deal any damage. The feeling of powerlessness they experienced often caused them to rout, which when fighting horse archers is an obviously awful idea.

The only other "counter" is to swamp them with light cavalry and horse archers. Against a mongol horde, good luck matching their numbers.

Simple logic should suffice
>hurr durr peasants with bows are worse at close combat because reasons

Dumb cunts

>Also the Romans absolutely destroyed Parthian ass
And it was several wars going back and forth with no clear winner at the end when one of them collapsed first.

Romans sacked the Parthian capital multiple times while the Pathians never even got close to Rome

True that, however I'd argue that horse archery parallels the long bow in terms of training required to be effective with it; though I'll admit it would be easier to hit a dense square of archers from horse back rather than the inverse.

Just for curiosity's sake, was there a formation that horse archers were typically disposed in, or does it vary by culture?

That's when they simple ride behind you rape your women burn your town to the ground steal your crops and fuck off some where else to come back next year and repeat all over again

>kill people from a distance from different directions without being caught
Don't forget that the Mongols had a lot of their forces devoted to cavalry charges to follow up on the archers.

What? Mongols were very successful, they just stopped at Hungary because they were recalled due to inside problems, not warfare.

I could see them falling off only in the sense of "Goddamn it takes a lot to train a dude to shoot a bow and ride a horse. Fuck that shit give more peasants spears."

Aside of Ottomans they didn't take over Europe because Western/Central Europe is mountainous and bad for horse archer tactics.

I agree just because you can shoot doesn't automatically lower your Melee skill, shit most of the time the two go hand in hand.
Good hand eye coordinator
Judgement
Dexterity
Strength

While the necessary training is still necessary a clutz is a clutz a skilled person is a survivor no matter what you give them or what they need to win a fight or live.

They have a great reputation because they only ever fought against shitholes
That's like the brits being proud of winning so many "battles" against muggers with spears when they had guns

The implications you imply are silly
They also lost aplenty on their own turf

go back to /v/

Fucking obviously, the Parthian capital was much closer to the border and Rome was protected by a gigantic ass mountain.

Awesome, doesn't change the fact that it was several wars that never changed much, because whatever one of them, even the romans, conquered could not be keeped in the long run, and the parthians beat roman armies as well.

They fell off because regular bows became better, discipline was a thing in most civilized countries and armour got better too
Those are 3 big reasons, but one is enough to fuck them

Ah, the ol' "they got gud"

>China
>Persia
>Arabia
>shitholes
>13th century

Most of the Mongol advantages were strategical rather than tactical.
Each mounted soldier had 2 or three spare horses that he switched between which allowed the army to move very fast, and also the soldiers could drink the blood/milk from the horses in a pinch so they weren't as depended on supplies.
The army was also very well organized.

>armour got better too
This. Horse archers couldn't carry particularly strong bows. It's still debated, but the survival of the Marshal Boucicaut and a number of other French nobles who were the first wave charging into presumably the thickest arrow-fire at Agincourt is a solid argument for solid plate armor holding up against even longbows, never mind that properly tempered "armor piercing" bodkins may have been in short supply.
That coat of plates or other transitional armor could have stopped lesser draw-weight arrows is plausible, and that was making it's way into the ranks of the common footman.

Also, crossbows.

>It's like an archer. But on a horse.
And with those words, a scientist sets to work on modern warfare's latest weapon.

The cavalry scout?

No, silly. A scientist has cast away his common sense. A Centaurminator. That shoots archers out of its mouth, who shoot arrows mid-air.

On the other hand, the Parthians captured the Roman Emperor Valerian at Edessa, which was something of an upset for the Romans, as you might imagine. The Romans never really managed to humiliate the Persians in quite the same way.

Peasents with bows are worse at close combat because up until now they were peasents with nothing and they only had time to train them in one weapon.

Anything more and they're not a peasent with x they're now effectively a town militia.

A fast jeep with a .50 cal?

That's the Sassanids, they were a lot more trouble.

No, a fast .50 cal that shoots jeeps!

...what if we mounted it on a horse?

>Also, crossbows.

Didn't some kingdoms sign a paper to limit how many crossbows they could have?

this, there were knights with DOZENS of arrowmarks on their armour, I even heard "hundreds" but that is probably an overexaggeration
And those knights survived the charge and fought

Horse with a .50 cal....

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear...

>Peasents with bows are worse at close combat because up until now they were peasents with nothing and they only had time to train them in one weapon.
When was this ever true you historically illiterate idiot?

>Anything more and they're not a peasent with x they're now effectively a town militia.
Peasentry has nothing to do with sword skills and in war times you learned that shit
Bow-training was the extra stuff you had to learn on the side in pretty much all cases, not sword fighting

>When was this ever true you historically illiterate idiot?

Yo chill dude.

>Peasentry has nothing to do with sword skills and in war times you learned that shit

Last I checked spears were the way to go with "make a fuckton and give them to the shitters we pad our armies with"

Most peoples didn't train peasants for warfare at all.

["Not enough gold" intensifies]

youtube.com/watch?v=Ml2VJXSDn3g

>Also, crossbows.
They sure took a long time to be effective, seeing how they've been in use since bronze age.

>crossbows since the bronze age
wut

But we say that all the time.

You're new here, aren't you?

>Most peoples didn't train peasants for warfare at all.
You what?

Yes, they did. Although at that point they kind of stopped being peasants and started being soldiers. The peasant levy thing is for the most part bullshit.

>a scientist sets to work on modern warfare's latest weapon.
Bikers with machine guns?

>Last I checked spears were the way to go with "make a fuckton and give them to the shitters we pad our armies with"
When the fuck did you check? The Victorian period?

WHITE SCARS

Jesus Christ, Veeky Forums is shit at history.

What does that have to do with Veeky Forums?

OP, you know we have a dedicated board for history now, right?

>peasants started being soldiers
There were no standing armies in the Middle Ages. Peasants were never "soldiers".

Veeky Forums was a mistake.

The Chinese were very early adopters of the crossbow. It was probably invented there in the bronze age. A light crossbow by Medieval standards, but one none the less.

Horse archers are light cavalry that can also shoot. A very useful thing to have. On the one hand, fearsome armies like the mongols were packed with heavy lancers as well. On the other, horse archers were so hard to deal with that that cultures that had to face them had to organize armies specifically to fight them, such as the Chinese and Eastern Romans. Pretty much all the upside of light cavalry as well as that of archers.

Isn't Veeky Forums the new /pol/? Why would anyone want to post there? To learn how to suit history to your political cause?

Confirmed for summer.

The Late Medieval period absolutely did have professional armies, not least in the form of the Turks, but also in the form of mercenaries ex. the Condottieri (many of which came from lower-class burgers and peasantry).

48737566
With some /leftypol/ thrown in, last time I checked.

It's more /int/, /gsg/, /leftypol/ and Veeky Forums.

All land-owning peasants in England were obligated by law to train with arms and armour one day every week. Dutch burghers were obliged to own a set of armour and weapons equal to their social standing and train with them. The shooting guilds of Flemish cities were used as personal bodyguards of the Burguandian dukes while on campaign and in the field. Should I go on, or are these enough examples of peasants fighting and training? Peasants definitly were soldiers. Serfs hardly ever were. Peasants were though.

I think the confusion comes from the idea of raising a levy of peasant farmers and handing them weapons (terrible idea on many fronts). There's only 4 classes in medieval Europe, the nobility, the clergy, the peasants, and the burghers of free cities. So obviously many soldiers had to come from the peasant class. Once trained and armed and equipped they were then simply soldiers, but of the peasant class.

If you are talking about classes most people lump in the burghers as a sub-class for peasant-dom, because the most common definition of peasant is not a noble and not a clergymen.

Because...it's the board for discussing history? And history threads on Veeky Forums should be considered off-topic and moved/deleted, but are not because we have no moderation?

>inb4 but I can use this in muh setting!!!
You can also make 3d models of historical things, why don't you go make some history threads on /3/?

Yess. Bikers abducted and implanted with machine guns. Two machine guns will protrude from their abdomen when they sense danger.

Many bikers are also implanted with bikes implanted with machine guns. Yessss.

Fair enough. And likewise, clergy is both noble and non-noble.

>3d models of historical things

Are you aware we have a general about that sort of thing on Veeky Forums?

Mercenary bands aren't standing armies.

They were trained to very occasionally be raised as levies which only happened when strictly necessary. That only started in the late Middle Ages though, and not everywhere. They were not soldiers, they were still peasants and spend their lives working on peasants duties. Peasants only really fought when there was little option, you need them to work otherwise you won't even have a way to feed your own men.

>Mercenary bands aren't standing armies.
Ignoring everything else, you were the first person to mention standing armies. I said professional.

And what do you think mercenaries did when they weren't being mercenaries? Farming?

Medieval Europe didn't have standing armies. They couldn't be afforded. When they did raise armies, they were, none the less, professional. In the sense that they were trained men who's job it was to fight.

Fuck off, user, we've always had history threads.

Because there was no other board for that, yes.

You called me Summer because I said Medieval Europe had no standing armies. I stand by my point.

Shame the pistoleers didn't last as long as horse archers.

You don't go to /pol for serious discussion, you go there to get riled up and shitpost about your political enemies.

Likewise, you wouldn't go to /histpol/ to have a serious history discussion.

But that's not true.

Veeky Forums was the "humanities" board.
You're admitting that you suck at comprehension, then.

In any case, see the rest of my comment.

Matter of doctrine. A pistolier doesn't want to engage the enemy. Commanders wanted their cavalry to engage the enemy swiftly, so eventually they stopped equipping them with pistols because it encouraged them to fight defensively.

Remember they made a big comeback int the American Civil War, though.

Hey, don't tell me to fuck off, I actually like having history threads on Veeky Forums I was just telling that other guy that we allready have a /historical wargames general/ so you don't have to go to /3/ for that kind of thing

They were payed when they were called on, that sounds pretty proffesional if you ask me. And when is strictly necessary? When the English want to raid some French towns? That happened quite a lot in the 100 years war. We have Dutch writing from just after the 1100's stating that every village must send out a ship full of men when called upon for war by their sovereign.

What the fuck are Peasant duties? Peasant do all kinds of things. Working the land, sure. Trading, all guild-related crafts were done by peasants as was most other work.

Peasant =/= serf. Peasants are EVERYBODY in medieval Europe, who wasn't a noble, and wasn't a clergyman.

Most cavalry during the Napoleonic wars carried pistols.

Burgers aren't peasants. It's a farmer thing.

>What the fuck are Peasant duties? Peasant do all kinds of things. Working the land, sure. Trading, all guild-related crafts were done by peasants as was most other work.

I never restricted them to one or another sort of work, but most work helped in a way or another. The bulk were still farmers, and the bulk of medieval forces was always either minor nobility or mercenaries.

> Two machine guns will protrude from their abdomen when they sense danger.

Oh god I love the image of a biker sniffing the air and perking up with two machine guns popping out of their chest, and then slowly receding back in as they realize nothing is around

Carbiniers were also still sporadically deployed in that time, too, I believe. Because, like cavalry armed with pistols, they were still effective in a sense. Its simply that they mostly didn't mesh with the sort of military doctrine of the day.

Cavalrymen carrying small pistols as sidearms is different than every man carrying a brace of pistols or a carbine as their primary arm, though. As different in practical terms as every footman fighting with a rifle and bayonet as opposed to an arquebus and sidesword, wouldn't you agree? There's a difference in effectiveness and doctrine.

Horse AC is additive with rider AC, so Horse archers are super hard to hit, at the same time early editions of warfare had no penalties for archers with ++ proficiency in archery while on horseback.

the earliest pistol duels were also done on horseback.

Sounds safer than a regular duel. They're much less likely to actually hit the other guy and kill someone.