So turns out horses make shit combat mounts in settings with guns and such

There is no recorded cavalry charge in history where the cavalrymen broke a line of firearm-equipped infantrymen that weren't already broken by infantry-fire or artillery-fire.

>This angers the horse-fuckers

Really it was around the time of rifling being common place. In the half century between the American Civil War and the Napoleonic wars cavalry really saw its downfall. Napoleonic era Cavalry was very effective at skirmish and flanking maneuvers. It wasn't so much the widespread implementation of fire arms to the rank and file, but the increased speed at which armies could deploy that led to horse cavalry's obsolescence

What is the Battle of Eylau?

Russian lines were broken by Russian Cavalry retreating through friendly lines, and the infantry didn't have time to reform before the French cavalry were upon them.

They were already "Broken" when they were charged.

>Sure, they were still the best scouts
>Scouting isn't important to warfare
Also, dragoons are a thing, and their spiritual successor won the West in the nineteenth century, which is pretty damn recent

Dragoons don't take their mounts into combat.

magic horses

Magic in a post-gunpowder revolution setting?

I've wanted to run this campaign for a long time. Elves return to conquer our world. They ride enchanted fey steeds, magic wards off steel, bullets and cannonballs, heavy steel armor protects them against iron.

Do they have magic wards against LRADs?

youtube.com/watch?v=QSMyY3_dmrM

Battle of Hohenfriedberg

Yes, they do, all the time. In fact, the traditional tactic of dismounting and skirmishing with the enemy on foot was totally phased out of general dragoon doctrine by the start of the 18th century.

The charge on the camp was a charge on infantry attempting to create a line, not infantry in a line. There was no line to be broken.

Unless you're talking about Fredrick's dragoons, in which case they never charge on their horses, they used their horse to achieve superior firing positions from which they fought on foot.

Ward against unpleasant sounds. It's a very common trick.

The attack of the Bayreuth Dragoons was very much a direct and close quarters attack. They did attack on their horses. They weren't even carrying firearms at that point.

Ah, you mean the attack on the rear of a unit already engaged with Infantry? Got it, but it's still infantry first being engaged by infantry, then having cavalry come in while distracted.

How far are you going to narrow this argument? The dragoons charged, they hit the infantry in their flank (hardly their rear), and then broke through the lines to attack several other companies. If what you actually meant to say was "a cavalry charge never broke a line of infantry if that infantry was not already exchanging fire with enemy infantry and also the cavalry attacked head-on", then you can amend that. You'd still be wrong.

All's I'm trying to say is that a Horse will not charge a Bayonet. You can whip and prod it all you want, but the fact remains it will no more charge a bayonet than it will charge into a brick wall. And this very fact means that once Infantrymen became more professional Cavalry were on the downfall. Firearms were nails in the coffin.

Not him, but I'm interested in any example of cavalry charging a infantry unit head on and defeating them. I'm also assuming here that you mean the infantry didn't waver and start to run before the cavalry physically hit them.

Horses will not charge into a bayonet, yet your argument is about firearms. Well you're correct, they won't charge into a bayonet. Nor would it charge into a brick wall, or a spear, or a line of pikes or shortswords. But this didn't stop cavalry from being an essential part of any dedicated fighting force for the greater part of recorded human history. If, as a commander, you knew how to use horses to combat the enemy, then they didn't just become effective, but decisive.

>I'm also assuming here that you mean the infantry didn't waver and start to run before the cavalry physically hit them.
I mean, this is pretty much a prerequisite for any sort of melee attack in the modern era, so that would be difficult.
That aside, probably "the" iconic cavalry charge, the charge of the allied cavalry at Vienna in 1683, involved a head-on attack. There was also an engagement in Spain during the Peninsular War which I forget the name of, but in which French heavy cavalry broke through the facing ranks of infantry squares before the squares were properly formed.

The Last successful Cab Charge was in WW2 by Italien cavallary on soviet troops

Just do what the pollacks did and grab a spear longer than a pike.

>Dragoons fight like regular cavalry
Then they aren't dragoons anymore, you complete moron. That goes without mentioning the obvious fact how fucking out of place cavalry was around 1850s and only got more and more obsolete from there. By Franco-Prussian War cavarly in Napoleonic sense was all but done with.
And by the time machine guns were introduced into militaries, cavalry was not just obsolescent, but obsolete

Hussars were breaking line of pikemen with PISTOL FIRE the moment they've figured out firearms are ten times more effective than a lance. Then just grab a sabre and fuck up what's left of formation.

None.
The time you have post-Napoleonic firearms (still muzzle-loaded smoothbore) and tactics for those, cavalry is obsolete. It might still appear to be viable, but the moment widespread introduction of rifling happens, cavalry is just fucking dead. And then there are of course breech-loaders, magazines, breech-loaded artillery...
Why do you think cavalry was reduced to what dragoons historically were doing all around the world?

the first british/german engagement in ww1 is cav vs cav and is fought with melee weapons. get out.

Yeah, a lot of retarded shit happened during WWI

Doesn’t make it any less retarded

>I'm also assuming here that you mean the infantry didn't waver and start to run before the cavalry physically hit them
That's pretty much the only time where you'd want to charge. A perfect usage of cavalry would be stuff like Le Marchant's brigade at Salamanca, where you hit infantry that's already about to break and use cavalry to press the advantage.

I guess von Bredow's charge during the Battle of Mars-la-Tour counts. The charge of the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman is worth looking into, though the I'm not sure how well armed the Mahdist infantry were.

Battle of Komarów, or the Polish–Soviet War in general.
Semyon Budyonny's horse shenanigans did actually matter, you know.

Just jump straight to machines.

Can you imagine actually being this stupid?

Not as stupid as charging a line of firearms while mounted on the largest single target on the battlefield.

Fuck that, a machine won’t bond with you for life.

From what shit hole do you get your history?

Except cavalry was still extensively used in the late 19th century both in Europe and in colonial conflicts.

Bullshit it won't.

>Then they aren't dragoons anymore, you complete moron

The vast majority of dragoon regiments fought in this way from the turn of the 18th century up through the 1850s. Are they not dragoons because some user 150 years later decided that's not how dragoons work?

And for your other arguments, cavalry was anything but obsolete by the Franco-Prussian War. It was still essential for scouting and disrupting minor operations.

For the first two decades, after which, for the greater majority of the 19th century, Cavalrymen were either scouts, mounted infantry, or dead.

> It was still essential for scouting and disrupting minor operations.

My bad.

It was obsolete as a direct combat force.

No. They were used throughout the late 19th century.

Hell, even on the Eastern Front and the Russian Civil War cavalry was used extensively by both sides.

As scouts and mounted infantry

27 cavalry divisions in the Red Army in 1920 for example.

If it didn't work, they wouldn't have increased the amount of cavalry they used.

>b...buht cavalry wouldn't stupidly charge straight into a line of pikes, CAVALRY WASNT USED GUYS
Imagine having this little understanding of how combat works

Imagine thinking horses were used in direct combat after the rise of the Infantry

I'm not grabbing every action report that shows cavalry as an offensive striking force on horseback post 1914 to prove you wrong, go and read up on it yourself.

You can start with White Eagles, Red Star: The Polish-Soviet War 1919-1920 which gives several accounts of cavalry actions during the conflict between cavalry using sabres, lancers and pistols versus other cavalry and infantry.

>ctrl+f dragons
>zero results
It's the obvious choices. Allows you to attack from another vector and is relatively quiet. Scales are probably tough enough to handle a few bullets, and they come built in with their own ranged attack with breath weapons and all.

Black powder guns punch through even the thickest animal hide without much difficulty, on account of their massive caliber. Bigger animal = bigger target and more food requirements. Horses are superior to them in every way once you get gunpowder.

>history says this
>nuh uh history says this
>no one posts any sources to back up their claims

>cavalry is effective against untrained mobs

Wow, someone tell the Pentagon to fire up that remount service

They were, just not often. Why do you think most empires kept a few units of heavy cavalry lying around if not to crash them into enemy lines?

Bulette

Cav didnt even charge straight into infantry during antiquity you moron, it was used for flanking and running down infantry

Why you keep arguing with this strawman is beyond me

Slap a brainless wojack on it and this is Veeky Forums in a nutshell

I was so excited when Hiroshimoot introduced that board.

>Cavalry weren't used after 1850s in any real combat function!
>Er, yes they were, here's some examples and here's a book that accounts some of them.
>WOW YOU MUST THINK CAVALRY ARE GREAT HUH.

Moving goalposts as usual.

Here's another account: In the Russian Ranks which was written by an Englishman attached to a Cossack regiment in the Eastern Front.

>I’m not going to make an arguement, so you go ahead and research my arguement for me

Ahahahaha

>moving the goal post
Go ahead and tell me the point you think we’re arguing over

OP thinks 19th century cavalry works like the english charge in braveheart apparently

It doesn’t work at all anymore actually, unless we’re considering mounted riflemen to be cavalry.

You said that cavalry wasn't used in direct combat past the 1850s, I said it was; you've failed to provide examples that prove your case, I've given you a book that shows it being used by regular soldiers in conflict after the First World War.

Here's another that collects various accounts of the use of sabres and charges in combat both from within and citing period sources and first hand accounts: The First Cavalry Army in the Russian
civil war, 1918-1920

ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2442&context=theses

That cavalry was not used after 1850 except in recon and dismounted infantry as a mainline fighting force. This is untrue by any metric; cavalry fighting on horseback with sabres and lancers continued to persist until the Second World War. It was only during and after this conflict that it was no longer employed in any real capacity by organised rational militaries.

This thread reminds me of a film
youtu.be/c1un_wilpfg

Fine, I can see where I said that direct cavalry didn’t exist and that’s my fault.

What I was trying to say is that direct contacts cavalry, if it did exist, would be so ineffective as to either never be used in the intended role or to not survive as a unit after their first real engagement

I’ll admit that perhaps cavalry units were raised after 1850 with the idea of them getting stuck in with the infantry, but they either never did so or were destroyed in the attempt.

>Cavalry were useless after the invention of gunpowder
>No they weren't
>Well they were only used as scouts
>No they weren't
>Well they only engaged broken enemies or attacked from the flanks or rear
Goddamn you are a stupid nigger

Goddamn, those are some sweet fucking sources, my dude!

Wait, you think Cavalry in the 19th century didn’t, as a rule, only attack flanks or already broken enemies?

People have already mentioned battles where cavalry engaged infantry and routed them. That is acting as a combat mount. Of course cavalry didn't charge headlong into a row of muskets and bayonets, because that is retarded and never the role of cavalry.

Using your logic cavalry are just bad mounts period because they dislike being ordered to skewer themselves on spears.

My point is that he is moving the goal posts you retard
>Cavalry are bad after gunpowder
>Well okay they weren't bad but they were only used as scouts
>Well okay they were used in combat but they didn't charge into organized enemy infantry

>engaged already broken or similarly engaged infantry

FTFY

the point is he or (you) moved the goalposts a hundred times then said basically proving he is a moron with some autistic anti cavalry agenda for no historical reason whatsoever

homepages.paradise.net.nz/rsutton/Special Features/Cavalry in WW1/german_cavalry_in_flanders_1914.html

Shows several incidents of cavalry engaging infantry, often successfully.

>Meanwhile the Germans were attacking along the canal; but the Dorsets checked them most gallantly, loosing poor Roper, killed in leading a charge, and a number of men.

There's also a good account of Indian Cavalry destroying Ottoman infantry at Shaiba in 1915 in A.J. Barker's The First Iraq War, 1914-1918, Britain's Mesopotamian Campaign.

I also found an extract from that book I mentioned earlier: homepages.paradise.net.nz/rsutton/Special Features/Cavalry in WW1/an_englishman_in_the_russian_ran.htm

>The Cossacks spread themselves out like a fan, a movement which is as old as the force itself. They then rushed in on the jagers, and, though suffering severely, occupied the attention of those men, while we tackled the dragoons and guns. The latter did not do so very much execution, but the cuirassiers, big, heavy men, broke through our dragoons, who are classed as light cavalry. The Germans, however, are not good swordsmen, and while they were in some disorder, occasioned by the shock of their first charge, our hussars got amongst them and sabred them right and left in fine style.

>The Uhlans remained in support of the guns, another mistake of theirs: for before they could come to the rescue of the cuirassiers, our dragoons had rallied, and met them in a charge that badly routed them. They fled right off the field, leaving behind about 200 of their number killed. The Cossacks were equally successful. They nearly annihilated the jagers, and the six guns fell into our hands. The cuirassiers, too, were nearly all destroyed: for on account of their weight they could not escape from our light horsemen; the Cossacks in particular showing them no mercy.'

Here we have not only Russian cavalry engaging other cavalry units but ALSO engaging infantry and guns.

Narrowing the arguement to direct combat is not moving the goal post, unless you want to say scouting and rout-clean-up are direct action.

>There is no recorded cavalry charge in history where the cavalrymen broke a line of firearm-equipped infantrymen that weren't already broken by infantry-fire or artillery-fire.
AND DID THEY HELP OR DID THEY DO NOTHING

Goddamn next you'll say there's no recorded beach landing done by infantry that was entirely unsupported by naval units because they didn't fucking swim over the ocean.

No, cavalry can't do everything. But they can still do a hell of a lot.

That account is especially important as it not only shows Russian cavalry attacking modern infantry and field guns but also the Germans using cavalry to screen their infantry and guns from a direct charge of Russian horseman.

Except that this guy just posted a ton of them.

>checked them

Meaning what? They were stopped for as long as it took them to kill the cavalry that charged them?

How about the famous fucking Siege of Vienna?

>implying USSF don't sometimes ride horses into the afghan hinterlands to carry out operations

Good thing the Pentagon doesn't listen to you.

As mounted infantry, not cavalry

Every time we have this thread it goes the same way; people come in saying 'CAVALRY DIDN'T GET USED PAST THE ACW" and we walk them right up to the 1940s showing cavalry being used in direct combat as they persistently go NUH UH.

We are not arguing that horseborne cavalry using lances and sabres were especially effective or make sense today; however they were used successfully throughout the period and were kept in service for a reason. In hindsight, perhaps not as effective but that's not the point, the point was they were used.

Checked them in this context meant push them back from the position they were trying to take.

>Germans moving infantry up along a canal
>British cavalry charges, pushing them back.
>Canal in British hands, cavalry still combat effective and can continue fighting, as they did.

If you looked at the page, it gives the regimental record afterwards.

>General advance of Dorsets ordered in conjunction with French on right and 1/Bedford Regiment on the left. A Coy moving on the south bank of the canal and D Coy on the north forming the firing line, B & C Coy forming the reserve. The machine gun was ordered to support the attack. A Coy moved up the south bank under cover of a high bank and did not come under fire from Cuinchy (although held by the enemy) and subsequently inflicted severe loss on Germans south of Cuinchy.

>Meanwhile D Coy advancing from a factory towards a small farm 200 yards east of it came under heavy crossfire from snipers on the high canal bank (south side) and suffered casualties. Major Roper was killed at this farm about 4.30 pm.

>Attack had made excellent progress and a line had been established from La Bassée Canal to a large farm north of Givenchy. B & C Coys entrenched on rise upon which above mentioned farm stood.

So we're pushing up into the 1980 to prove that cavalry weren't used as a direct attacking force except as mounted infantry past the mid-19th century?

Well over a century beyond your initial assertion that no one used cavalry in an offensive role as horse-borne shock troops using lances and sabres?

Can you admit that you were wrong in your assertion and that cavalry in this role only really faded away for good during the Second World War or will you continue to insist you're right in the face of direct evidence and first person accounts?

What the fuck does this all have to do with OP’s question

>So turns out horses make shit combat mounts in settings with guns and such.

Except that in reality horses were used as combat mounts up until about eighty years ago and guns were around in Europe from the late 13th/14th centuries.

>I'm not aware of military terminology
>But I'm going to keep acting like an authority who can make sweeping statements
It's an anonymous image board user, you can just say you were wrong no one will ever know it was you.

Threads derail. Nothing wrong with that.

That said, this discussion is inane.

I say steampunk horse automatons.

Basically this; they were used around guns all the time until recently (and even past the 1940s still used as mounted infantry) so for fantasy, heroic roleplaying/gaming purposes, having guns and horses is absolutely fine.

You know police forces still keep cavalry around to directly charge rioters and such?

Have this video from 2014.

youtube.com/watch?v=ccvwGYO1KwU

So if you wanted a game set in a modern city hell yes there could be people with horses and guns about.

That’s an incredibly cringey Mary Sue setting. I hope the PCs are the elves. Otherwise you’ve made a literally invincible army that can’t even be hurt by swords and spears.

In fairness most rioters don't use guns

This is something that's really under-utilised in gaming; horses charging at you is still very scary and are persistently used by law enforcement to help disperse crowds.

youtube.com/watch?v=_qhUTF4hOp8

I'm not really sure what scenario you're imaging where you need to have combat mounts and. It's not like people ride motorcycles into battle these days. Hell, even pre-gunpowder, calavary charges were en-masse. Just one dude on a horse would result in his horse gettin' killed. It's the thunder of thousands of horses rushing forward and a wall of flesh and steel that would break lines.

The thing with gunfights is that while your horse is a weak fleshy beast, so are you. Even if you had some mount that shrugged off bullets, it'd only take one hitting you. Much wiser to simply hitch your animal and take cover.

That or get some sort of giant iron-skinned kangaroo that you can ride around in cover.