+Cáca Milis sa Seomra Spraoi Imagine seeing an elephant for the *first time*; your culture and country is unaware that they even exist, and now this foreign army shows up with these *enormous beasts* with great tusks and a strange appendage where its nose should be... I'll bet there was some superstition early on about them being "demons" or something like that. But yeah, as far as I've heard, war elephants weren't terribly effective throughout history. A peasant militia might flee in terror from half a dozen of them, but an experienced legion with good discipline and motivation might stick around long enough to find out "Hey, it's just like everything else we've killed, but bigger. Stab it a few more times!"
+B DeWit Historically, that was basically there best use, first contact incidents. If you never saw an elephant before that first battle, you panic and freak out, but it doesn't take long to realise how to beat them. The money and resources was usually better spent on more soldiers.
***** I don't disagree with them being useful, I'm saying that given the cost of supplying them (and generally owning them) compared to the arrows or javelins that could take them down pretty easily (they are a big target after all), you would be better off with an extra load of troops.
***** The Carthaginian elephants were relatively small compared to their eastern cousins, so they were beaten by Roman javelins quite easily. It was the armoured Eastern elephants that were a real threat, as they basically ignored everything, but then the people who owned them were generally rich and in lands that could easily supply them so they were worth it in that case.
Hittite chariots were two wheeled (and two horsed too). They differed only in the addition of a crew-member (so three men, not two as in Egypt). Four-horsed chariots only appear in Assyrian times (c. 8-700 BC). A chariot by definition has two wheels--never four. What you're thinking of are battle-carts. These were last used IIRC in the Akkadian period, and this tech was more popular in Sumerian times (so before 2000 BC). They were also driven by onagers, not horses; they were also pretty slow compared to chariots. Which is why when chariots appeared, they quickly replaced the battle-carts.
A chariot that big would be quite difficult to engineer in the bronze age. The larger the cart is the more difficult it is to manufacture. The axle between the wheels will have to be much stronger. Plus, one advantage of elephants is that they can walk in swamps & jungles. You basically remove its terrain adaptability advantage to horse chariots by attaching a chariot to them.
I'm sure they were used to transport heavy equipment on the way to the battle at first, like their civilian use, hauling logs and stuff (not in pairs, obviously) Since elephants aren't nimble, you wouldn't get them to move sideways quickly to shoot or throw stuff. So charioteers would always have their big ass between them and the enemy. But maybe they were made to push wooden ramps, siege towers etc. before actually charging people. I think their last use in war was dragging heavy cannons into position, so that may be a bit back to the roots^^
@@donaldconklin5537 You're thinking of tanks in WW1. Premodern warfare was a totally different beast. Although I suppose if you don't have good shields and the enemy has good archers or javelineers having elephants in front of you while charging to physically block some of them might not hurt (assuming getting javelinned doesn't make them panic and run back through your own troops)
That is hard to do in Bronze age. It is much easier for a horse to pull than to push as controlling the direction of movement will be very difficult when pushing. When we humans push a heavy box for example, we control its direction by applying forces of different strength on the box with our left & right arms. Horses can't do that.
A brilliant idea! With a single problem.What if it catches on a rock? There's no horse there to pull it... Unless we put a horse to Pulling the cart! But then we've gone back to square one, haven't we?
This is wat it says about chariots in civ 5: "Before the invention of the stirrup, it was virtually impossible to fight from horseback. There was no way to brace oneself, and the slightest push could unhorse the warrior, with disastrous results. Horses first appeared on the battlefield pulling chariots. A chariot team usually consisted of one or two horses, a driver, and an archer. The chariots' mobility made them especially dangerous to infantry: they could rush within range, fire off a volley, then escape before the foot-bound soldiers could close with them. The greatest weakness of a chariot archer team was its inability to deal with difficult terrain. On open plains they were the kings of the ancient battlefield; in hills or woods they were at a significant disadvantage." Seems reasonable to me.
Indeed, although the part about stirrups were wrong, or at least heavily exagerated. One of the reason cavalry increasingly took over the role of chariots (already by the Assyrian era of the 7th century BC, and certainly by the Persian empire of the 5th century BC, a milennia before the adoption of stirrups) was because they could negotiate difficult terrain much more easily. Sun Tzu even mentioned that, and Assyrian records of the campaign against Urartu also described their chariots being left behind when the army has to cross rough mountain passes, while the horsemen pressed ahead. Plus, with cavalry you could put two archers on the field for every two horses, instead of just one. And you could skip the troublesome cart.
jarik9 Yes the famous four horned 'Roman' saddle. It was widespread among the Gauls at least by the 1st century BC, also among the Persian armies in the east. It may have allowed the cataphract cavalry to evolve as it gave so much more stability when fighting on horseback.
***** They were actually from a Germanic tribe across the Rhine, these horsemen reportedly considered any trooper riding with a saddle to be effeminate and would recklessly attack the latter no matter the numerical odds. The famous Numidian cavalry utilized by Hannibal as well as many Roman commanders after him also rode without saddles (nor bridles!), and they were regarded as some of the finest light cavalry force of the ancient world. According to Ann Hyland, a famous writer and researcher of medieval horsemanship, fighting bareback on a horse was not really a big problem for an experienced rider, until you started putting on substantial metal armor. Then keeping your balance during a pass started to become really challenging. Mrs Hyland found even a simple mail hauberk difficult, although perhaps one could get used to it over time. Alexander's Companions and Cyrus' persian Kinsmen before him did after all wear helmet, breasplate and greaves, despite riding on a simple saddlecloth.
+Sander I was riding horses since i was 8 and nope, you could definitely fight on a horseback without stirrups, even without a proper saddle. Why i am so sure? I did trick riding, so i encountered saddles only years after i was sitting on horsebacks regularly xD
Sander. you are putting effect before cause, its silly to assume people waited for the stirrup to be developed before considering a use for the thing. in fact the stirrup is technogically more basic cheaper and easier to develop than a chariot, so it only makes sense that people didnt ride horses into battle (then improve the method with stirrups) simply because it wasnt practical. and it likely wasnt practical because the horses available were unsuited to the work.
This is why I'm always so disappointed with my fellow Canadians. They all say, "you can't ride moose." Goddamnit, it needs to be done. Don't tell me we don't need moose cavalry.
+fitzitz234 nice info, it shows that when moose was domesticatable it would have happened long before the 18th century, like the reindeer. the Sowjet Union experimented with domesticating moose too.... (and eland) didn't seem succesful either.
I have to point out that the equine physiology is much more equipped for pulling than for being ridden. Having a rider is actually not good for a horse and can be quite destructive to them over time (leads to swaybacked horses, etc). Certainly, on the smaller horses of the ancient era this would have been noticed even more and the ancient civilizations might have figured (correctly) that the most efficient use of a horses' strength is to have it engaged in a pulling activity.
Emus are hardier, easier to break, and require less fodder, but they don’t have the strength and endurance of a well-drilled ostrich team. And when was the last time someone looked regal pulling up in an emu-mobile?
Re: Thor he did indeed. They also magically reincarnated if he got peckish which is handy. Re: ostrich chariotry. Good luck, if the ostriches give their usual response your chariot would be going nowhere whilst you enjoyed the view of a pair of ostrich bums with the ostriches having stuck their heads in the ground.
You say a lot about showing off, but zooming around the battlefield would've been very useful for organizing the battle. Officers/messengers can view, report and relay commands much quicker. Basically a mobile command platform.
Lindy is wrong about a lot of things. Chariots were not around because they were "for showing off" they were battlefield weapons. the fact that Chariots largely disappeared from warfare as True Cavalry appeared shows that this was the case. People don't invest vast amounts of resources in weapons of war that are for nothing other than "showing off" there is unfortunately a lot of modern archeologists who like to dismiss anything they don't easily understand as "symbolic"
@@williamt.sherman9841 I know this is a two year old comment, but hey. Lloyd was talking about outside of battle when talking about showing off. So you know... YOU'RE wrong there.
i feel like cavalry was a sort of accident, imagine a beseiged town or castle or something panicing, throwing whatever ideas they've got out, until somebody says "let's all get on some horses and get the fuck out of here!" and then found out that it was fairly effective.
The Numidians did, yes, many centuries later. Yes, a hardy pony can carry a man in armour, but is not suitable for heavy shock cavalry. I think at 7.5 mins, it is as well that I didn't talk about the archery as well. Chariots, though, have to be so dispersed that the density of archery would always be low.
You neglected to point out that chariots , as depicted by the Egyptians and Assyrians particularly , carried archers and didn't have to penetrate the enemy formation. And delivering an elite champion to the battlefield was a concept of the Greek heroic age cf. The Iliad.
it is some times thought that the ancient Greeks came up with the idea of Chariots as battle taxis because they did not know how they were really used.
@@williamt.sherman9841 "because they did not know" - How so? Indo-Europeans were inventors of war chariots. Greeks being their descendants. Plenty of barbarians were still using chariots as "tanks" in the first century BC. Its just that Greeks figured out, that it is not effective against phalanx, or even trained skirmirshers.
I always got the impression they were a bit like our modern helicopter gun ships in that they swooped around hurling missiles. It seems like a lot of the illustrations and bas relief show archers on light chariots. Considering that archery range was a lot shorter then-- it seems like a good way to quickly get in range with a healthy sheath of arrows, then get out of range before they could cover the distance to reach you. Maybe go back to your main army to get some more javelins and arrows, and swoop back in for another pass.
You are not mistaken, the range of archers was far shorter so chariots were an effective method of getting in range. Yet we have records from the Hittites which show a driver, an archer and a spear-man riding in the same chariot. This is very different from Egyptian chariots which only carried a driver and archer. This is down to the unique and advanced design of Hittite Chariots, they were more balanced than their Egyptian counterparts and only slightly larger so that you could fit more people in. So it makes sense to have an archer to engage your opponent from a distance and at speed, but also to ferry melee troops quickly without exhausting them. So overall you are correct about chariots being used in 'hit and run tactics' but were also used as troop transports. Should also add that the Hittites were master charioteers and were the dominant force in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
Captain Kraken The overall importance of the three-man Hittite chariot is, in my opinion, overestimated. First, there are no descriptions of such chariots before Kadesh. Second, the Hittite army consisted of not just the Hittite troops proper, but also the troops from their many vassal states. Certainly not all of those vassal states would be using three man chariots. Even in the Kadesh reliefs, both two-man and three-man Hittite chariots are shown. The third man appears to simply be a guy who held a shield to protect the driver and archer. Some scholars have speculated that these are "runners", who could potentially dismount during a chariot charge. But that is fairly speculative, and simply considering them shield-bearers is the safest conclusion for the time being.
I don't buy that. It would be cheaper, and far lighter simply to mount three shields onto the cart itself rather than have a man holding one.. Less in the way too. Having the weight and nuisance of a 3rd guy to do almost as well as a few pieces or cord doesn't make much sense unless he has other tasks.
GunFun ZS Hi. *It would be cheaper, and far lighter simply to mount three shields onto the cart itself rather than have a man holding one.* But they didn't do that. We have lots of visual representations of chariot warfare, including the Kadesh reliefs where the three man chariot is depicted, and they didn't do that. *Less in the way too* I can't imagine that. If you're going to mount shields onto the cart for protection, then they would have to be high enough to interfere with both the driving and the shooting/throwing. Chariots weren't tanks where you could shoot through holes. *unless he has other tasks* He might very well have. But the artistic depiction is what matters most. The Kadesh reliefs leave some ambiguity due to different depictions between temples, but by far the majority of three man chariot depictions consist of this: One man holding the reigns, one man holding a shield, and another man appearing unarmed or with a javelin. The "unarmed" man is certainly the archer/"chariot fighter"; Egyptian art would sometimes "neutralize" the power of an enemy by depicting them without their weapons. There are no depictions that would correspond to the third man having dismounted from the chariot to fight, either. Now, I'll grant the fact that the Egyptians didn't like to depict their enemies with weapons means that the shield bearer might have had weapons, like javelins, that just weren't depicted. However, I looked at a few post-Hittite Assyrian three-man chariots, and they also depict the third man as just a shield bearer without additional weapons. So the only solid evidence that we have as far as I know is that the third man was the shield bearer.
From my own research the light chariot was quite devastating, not for shock value but for missile value, early sources especially Egyptian and canaanite, show massed chariots driving in loops, literally in circles around infantry firing volumes of arrows from recurve bows, similar tactics were used by the turks, huns and mongols several thousand years later. Moreover at that time even mildly effective armor was rare and shield were not made of very good materials, in all have massive numbers of missiles hurl upon you is unpleasant enough no matter what era you are in but now imagine that the source of this barrage is a system too fast to be caught or attacked and too expensive for you to have, not unlike the effect of a fighter-bomber on modern insurgencies.
@@thedarkmaster4747 Stable? Have you ever ridden a vehicle with no shock absorbers cross country? Even a modern vehicle with advanced suspension is massively detrimental to any sort of accuracy when moving cross country.
@@ourvaluesarewhoweareinadem4093 Stable: Context - can fire a bow from it/can throw a javalin. You cannot do this in an earthquake. Relatively speaking chariots have always been one of the most unstable platforms of conflict and can be undone at speed by riding over a free standing or embeded humble rock. Ridding a horse is detrimental to accuracy and your ballistic stance when using archaic ranged weapons(It's an inferior thing to do within the realms of precision, range and accuracy.). However the point is that you can use this, weapon in that arrangement, effectively. With speed, mobility and elevation as advantages. A generals job is to manuvertheir forces and their enemy into an ideal strategic possition on the battlefield, before the battle starts. A chariot archers job is to follow orders and larp out bravardous childhood fantasies of martial prowess, after the battle starts. Back then it wasn't about rifle snipers assassinating enemy commanders from atop tanks invisibly ramping through heavily wooded hilly swamps. Although a guy getting lucky with a chackram on a war elephant from 30 meters away did happen from time to time. Also not all chariots lacked "suspension". They were the flashy, guady audacious egocentric cars of their day. Infact you could make a modern comparison to the gangsters driveby.
Horses were used from pretty near the start, and perhaps the very start.. Yes, there are depictions of battles involving carts/chariots pulled by asses and the like, but these might not have been the first choice of animal. A ass-cart pressed into military service out of desperation might not really be a 'chariot'.
I was at a re-enactment event once, where they had a 24 horse cavalry charge. With a ditch between them and the audience, I still had the urge to get up and run when they came running right at me through the gun smoke. I can imagine a chariot attack would do the same.
Those are scythed chariots, and they are a very different weapon. They didn't so much add scythes to chariots as create a new form of chariot and a new battlefield role for the chariot.
Two important points you seem to have overlooked (or passed up in favor of brevity): First, chariot *archery*. Terribly popular, especially as the mobility allows you to move around an enemy formation while raining projectiles in on them. Second: chariots among the Celts. The Celts adored single combat, even on the battlefield. Chariots were used to bring two men close together, who then dismounted for single combat -- win, rinse, repeat. Much more efficient than, say, walking around looking for the next guy you're going to fight. In this sense, the chariot is basically a tiny, bronze-age APC.
I can imagine a battle between the celts and people of the middle east, just a series of single battles going for ages until one army decided it had suffered enough losses.
Could you , some day , talk about Chariots in the Indian context?... As far as I have read , mostly heavy chariots were used as a mobile missile platform mostly in ancient India. Ajatashatru of the Hiranyaka dynasty made some interesting modifications with his chariots.. But I was wondering if you would,maybe,go into a little more detail and come up with a video? I really like your style of presentation! I also made a comment on such an old video thinking it might be more easily noticed! :)
i think what lindybeige was implying is that cavalry troops and especially cavalry archers were first to appear in nomadic cultures such as mongols which already depended heavily on horses in their daily lives and lived in grassy plains.
Battle Goats, eh? Now there's an idea. Get a gaggle of rams, even. Ornery li'l bastards... buckin' an' kickin' an' tramplin' on folks, eating their clothes and any crops an' grass they can find... give some "eh" quality fur an' decent milk... plus you can use the horns as... well, horns, I guess. And those eyes, to boot.
Chariots were also used as mobile shooting platforms, bows or spear throwing were common, might depend about area but i am sure it worked as hit and run attack.
Oliphants in LOTR - they were not about speed of advance on the battlefield, but they were big and swung their spiked teeth. Also they had thick skin which made them majorly immune to ground troops. Weak spots were speed, neck, eyes, riders, limitation to relatively even terrain.
A point about the chariot charge: Couldn't they be used to shear off the corners or sides of a formation? If you swoop by at high speed with short bows or longer spears, couldn't just keep shaving off soldiers at the edge like a cheese grater?
Toussaint Gervais True. Thanks for the advice. Still, would it be any more difficult than other hit-and-run maneuvers, which were pretty much the staple of light cavalry?
You see, what you do is you get the four or six goats, put them in two lines, and put a saddle on each. Each line of saddles has then a board on it, and in the middle is a very sturdy wooden shoe fit perfectly for you. You can then get on the goats by sitting a few feet off the ground, putting the shoes on, and slowly standing up. You train the goats to speed up if they feel you push down on their board, and stop when you make some kind of clicking noise. This will allow you to turn by leaning with your knees, putting pressure on the goats, as well as speed up by bouncing. As long as you're able to keep balance, you'll be at some speed between a light chariot and a foot soldier, if you have well trained goats, and you'll be the most awesome person on the battlefield. As well as having invented goatboarding. You might also consider putting wheels on the boards, while training them to carry the weight of a person. You might call them 'training wheels'.
BarbikaPahor And then put a board on it, and stand on the board? Camelboarding! Significantly more dangerous, as you must keep the board balanced, as well.
keep in mind that stirrups had also not been invented. cavalry could not do as much damage without using the stirrup. chariots solve the problem by giving you a nice platform to put your swing into
Actually thats not true at all, check out this site www.comitatus.com, the Greek and Roman reenactors there rode horses without stirrups and even without saddles and were able to wield their weapons just fine. The arrows they shoot and the spears they throw and thrust pierced boards and the swords they swung split target in half just fine, without the men getting dismounted in the effort as many armchair historian insisted. Of course our historical narratives were also full of instances of men without stirrups or saddles fighting very effectively on horseback. At the battle of Granicus Alexander the Great were recorded impaling his opponent through his breastplate with his spear. His bodyguard Cleitus also hacked off the arm of another opponent, after said opponent sheared off the crest of Alexander's helmet with his axe. The Roman consul Marcellus equaled Alexander's feat with a Celtic opponent during a single combat preceding the battle of Clastidium, hurling his wounded opponent off his horse to the ground with the impetus of his charge. None of these people were using stirrups or even saddles, and yet they all sounded plenty deadly to me on horseback!
You are both right and wrong. Melee weapons using kinetic energy from the wielder's arm weren't hindered by the lack of stirrups that much. Your swings aren't as powerful without stirrups, but they still reach diminishing returns; it didn't matter if you could cut the guy in half as long as you could hit him hard enough to kill him. However, what stirrups did allow were weapons like lances that use the kinetic energy of the moving horse. Using a lance without stirrups will actually dismount you upon impact.
Lovro Maretić Check out this article, written by a real life jouster: www.classicalfencing.com/articles/shock.php It seemed that rather than the stirrup, it was the saddle that really helped in helping the rider retain his seat during a lance impact. And even without either (in other words riding bareback), a skilled rider could still manage it.
+John Huang Romans didn't have stirrups, but they did have wooden four-horned saddles that helped keep the rider solidly planted on the horse's back as well as putting less strain on the horse. Cavalry without saddles may not be entirely unheard of, but it was certainly never widespread. Which to me means it couldn't have been terribly effective.
The first person who went into battle riding a horse, probably had a lot of his mates riding alongside him, and they all had a lot of practice from when they used the horses to heard their cattle or sheep.
there he is, getting closer now EDIT : This is the one. I FOUND IT ! Ladies and gentlemen, i proudly present you: the first appearance of the Dalek on the wall. Exterminate, annihilate, DESTROY!
I bet cavalry developed through a natural progression. The first logical use of a horse and ride would be a scout. Perfect for keeping tabs on the enemy, beating a hasty get away and timely reporting back to HQ. Then one day the scout thought, "this is kind of boring, I think I will take my son's bow." It's just an arms race from there.
This was a massively useful explanation. I've been wondering about the use of chariots vs mounted troops for a while, but haven't been able to pull together a 'why.' This is terrific. I'm looking forward to future chariot discussion down the (ugh) road.
I'd imagine that all of these things developed for peacetime applications first. I seriously doubt anyone came up with chariots just to go to war in, they were probably already using wagons for moving goods around. Same for cavalry. It didn't start with some guy saying, "hey, let's just hop on." It was probably kids messing about then getting good at it, then gradually using it for more and more things, then eventually using it for war several generations later after it was already established.
It's great to see a video on a topic I love; the light chariot. I'm going to jump in with some additions and counter-suggestions because, when you love something, you have to talk about it. :-) Riding on horses: This actually was done, just not for battle. Spies and messengers would sometimes ride on horseback. But your core point about horses is absolutely correct: their biggest limitation is that they were tiny by today's standards. As you say, the size of ponies. You see this really clearly in some Assyrian reliefs; the horses almost look comical to us. Speed: How fast these things actually were is a bit of an uncertainty. Chariots were sometimes accompanied by "runners". Although all in all, I think speed was one of their primary advantages. "A chariot most of the time is of no real purpose at all, other than for showing off in and proving your status." "You can't really do much practical in your chariot other than zoom about and show off. This is where I have to mostly disagree with you. Light chariots were not simply status symbols and "battle escape pods" and elite platforms. I think you are being overly influenced by Greek Dark Age depictions of chariot usage. Your understanding may have been more true of the Greeks, where terrain is far less suitable to chariots (although since the Mycenaean palaces (governments) built and maintained chariots, this is unsure even there), but is by no means true of the Near East, where the light chariot developed and was most extensively used. Charioteers were certainly among the elite units, but they were only one part of the army, and they had specific roles within it. Chariots fought in formation. The chariots were built and maintained by the state. The charioteers were trained by the state. It's true that there were certain types of chariots that could serve as transportation (not only can you read this in the texts, but you can also see different types of chariots from King Tut's tomb.) But it's also true that - at least sometimes - chariots were carried by people when the army was on the march. You can see them slung over men's shoulders in Assyrian reliefs. Using your chariot between battles could be bad because, for one thing, a definite concern about chariot horses was that they would be fatigued during the battle, so you don't want to wear them down during the march. For another, the damn things were always breaking down. To give you an idea about how far more professional chariot troops were than merely as "battle taxis", you can look at Chinese treatises from roughly the same period, which seem to support and shed light on what we can glean from Near Eastern sources. Chariots had divisions. They had formations. They advanced on the enemy, fired their weapons (i.e. the bow and arrow, with the occasional javelin), pivoted about and retreated, while the next row of chariots advanced behind them. No one stepping off of their chariot here! (And no charging into the enemy troops. Get within range, fire, retreat.) Chariots were also used for spying and patrolling - not particularly glamorous activities. You made an important point about chariotry as a weapon of intimidation, but I would express it differently. As evidenced from the Near East, and as explicitly stated in Chinese war treatises, the best time to use your chariots is in a surprise attack, when your enemy's troops aren't in formation. The Battle of Kadesh is a good example of this: the Hittite king launched a surprise chariot attack on the Egyptians while they were still crossing a river and setting up camp. "You could take on the chariots of the competition" (plus the Kadesh statistic) As mentioned above, the target of the Hittite chariotry wasn't the Egyptian chariotry per se, it was the whole Egyptian army in an unordered state, including their chariotry. Once the enemy chariotry gets themselves organized, then you're going to have some trouble maneuvering around each other. Horse breeding: As for the transition from chariots to cavalry, just as an interesting note, we have documents from Bronze Age kingdoms where rulers were specifically trying to get their hands on larger horses. So we can actually witness the breeding selection taking place that ultimately led to the possibility of cavalry forces. Cavalry battle: An interesting and amusing note here is that, in the first cavalries (Assyrian), cavalrymen rode in pairs, and acted just like chariot teams. One man rode and fired his arrows, while the other guided not only his own horse, but also the archer's horse. The first cavalries were basically chariotry without the chariots! And chariots were still used, too. Just like guns didn't immediately replace bows and arrows, it took some time for cavalry technology advance far enough to make the chariot obsolete.
Thiago Kurovski I wouldn't have anyproblem accepting that there were nomadic predecessors of the Assyrian cavalry. I looked online and saw lots of references to it, but they were all vague. No specific culture (historical or archaeological) is mentioned, or any particular archaeological site, so I can't confirm or reject the idea either way.
***** Yes, that's the word. Even when I was writing that, I knew "technology" wasn't the word I was looking for. "Techniques" is the word. But every so often the brain gets stuck on a word and you just have to soldier on. :-)
Sort of like ships-of-the-line firing, where the ships line up single file and then a single ship at a time turns and broadsides the enemy and turns around as another ship behind it broadsides, so forth and so on as they rotate in a circle. The difference being that chariot archers can shoot overhead their fellow charioteers, as well as turn back and fire from behind, allowing all of them the ability to constantly shoot a ceaseless barrage.
I apologize if any one has mentioned this. But, with chariots the horses would be primary targets. You'd need a string of horses and riders, sort of a pit crew, to replace dead horses. Of course, with chariots predating cavalry would it not make sense that cavalry descended, so to speak, from the strings of replacement chariot horse riders?
Maybe first time the horse was used as "cavalry" was for hunting. and then when bigger group of hunters used it successfully in some smaller battle more and more people tried it and developed their own cavalry
The horse was first used as cavalry when some breeder said "I can tame my baby horse to be a war horse." *cue theme from the movie warhorse* "By being exceptionally cruel to it until it becomes so obedient that it will listen to my every word and even run off a cliff if I forget to tell it not to." *music halts abruptly* I think achaemenid persians were the first to use cavalry.
Also, in a charriot you can carry a lot more javelins than if you went by foot. If you can afford a charriot, affording a bounch of javellins isn't too much of a problem, so you can just fill it up with javellins.
I'm not sure if it's documented, but I always envisioned chariots as units that were used to strike at the enemy's lifelines - their supply convoys and reinforcement columns, much like airstrikes are used today. A dozen chariots that could suddenly appear, kill a few soldiers with javelins, bows, whatever, and then scarper just as quickly, removing your capacity to strike back, would be effective not only in reducing the support that the field army gets, but also in lowering the morale of the troops before they get to battle - the threat of an unpredictable attack at any time whilst on the march through allegedly friendly territory would be a massive strain on their mental state.
Battles weren't really fought like that, I am not saying it never happened but I have never seen any documented evidence of that. Armies pretty much took everything they needed with them and lived off the land as much as they good, supply lines really didn't exist in that fashion where you would have to have them for a fluid battle field that stretched hundreds of miles over days, months, or years.
If that's the case Evirthewarrior, then why did Alexander the great say, "My logisticians (supply officers) are a humorless lot. For if I ever lose a campaign they know they will be the first ones to be executed." Though every army lived off the land. Even back then, there were still some things you could not get in theatre (i.e. in a desert, how are you going to find wood to fletch more arrows?). Yes, sometimes chariots were used to strike an enemy in a weak spot to throw them off balance, reduce moral or kill an important enemy officer.
The major advantage of a chariot in my view was the ability to carry a large number of arrows. An infantry man may carry at most two quivers - say 100 arrows; or even a headload of arrows - say 200. But a chariot archer can easily carry thousands. Then you can give a chariot to your best archers whose competence gets multiplied. Chariots - in Hindu Indian epics & stories - also carried multiple weapons like a spear, a sword, and a mace to fight different categories of warriors. Interestingly, epics & stories also depict as war-ethic that the charioteer was never attacked, only the warrior.
I have to say, battle-goats sound a lot less enticing than showing off in my sports-cart. Maybe we can have them pull it? That will be a fearsome combination!
Putting lights on your chariot seems like a really bad idea. Especially at night where you would attract a lot of attention from the enemy's you would be facing.
Well just a little fact check the Hittites and the Egyptian actually both had there own organized cavalry core that were trained in different chariot tactics and took a lifetime to train. They famously clashed at the battle of Kaddish witch was the largest bronze age battle and both sides clamed victory.
With out stirrups riding a horse is a pain in the ass. That makes a nice chariot easier to use. Maybe you can do a video about how the invention of the stirrup changed calvery.
WillRipDime I can't find any reference to whether or not they had saddle or stirrups but I do know they had no shield so they had at the very least not yet developed the technique for directing a horse using their legs.
WillRipDime I think the Companion Cavalry's use as shock cavalry is a little overblown. There is only one recorded instance of an actual cavalry charge (i.e., from the front) in Alexander's wars, and that was against a lightly armored Central Asian army. When fighting the Greeks and Persians, Alexander's cavalry was used to flank, harass, and make reconnaissance. The dedicated shock arm of his army was still the heavy infantry, just like in the Greek and Roman armies. In Europe, the first people to use cavalry as a shock weapon ON PURPOSE were probably the Franks and Byzantines, who both got the stirrup right around the year 700.
I share your opinion about the heavy infantry being the backbone of his army. On the other hand, greek armies have seen/heard of the Persian cataphracts and knew they could be deadly. Copying the ideas of his opponent is frequent in a time of constant war. This is why I think it started being used in the west quite a long time before 700.(maybe not as popular as light cavalry.) But, I may be wrong.
They probably developed riding, before they developed riding into combat. And riding was probably not deviced as a means to make war. On a diferent note, The swedes was back in the day experimenting with moose cavalry (It didn't go verry far)
Closest thing I've ever played to that description are a couple mods for the Mount & Blade games set around that time period. Have yet to encounter any standalone's with that setting completely in mind.
Another reason for not developing cavalry, in addition, is because children would ride horses (well, ponies) and pretty much only children. For a nobles man do indulge in such a childish pursuit would not have sat well with his fellows.
ChristophInns Well, exactly. Stirrups weren't available at the time we are discussing. I guess you may be trying to make the argument that there was a gap between horseback fighting starting, and stirrup use starting. For that to be relevant, I'd have to be saying that the lack of stirrups was the one big thing making mounted combat impossible. I obviously said nothing like that. And Lindybeige's video details various other things that made mounted combat difficult, some of which were never overcome, let alone overcome by AD 600.
I wouldnt say awkward, just different. Less effective? Perhaps slightly, but certainly plenty of ancient horsemen were recorded spitting people through their breastplates, cutting their heads or limbs off or shot them with arrows through their armor (Battle of Carrhae anyone?) without stirrups just fine. Check out this site www.comitatus.com, the Greek and Roman reenactors there showed just how effective cavalry could be without stirrups or even saddles.
Just a thought maybe no true. But you could use them to transport fresh troops into battle. Then tired/wounded troops drive it out. This could keep your front line more fresh then a force who doesn't employ them.
I heard that cavalry originated in the steppes of Asia, which is mostly grassy hills. I don't think chariots would suit their environment and type of tribal warfare. If they didn't use chariots then would it be possible that chariots and cavalry have separate origins?
We have to remember they didn't have stirrups yet, and the saddle itself probably wasn't much sofisticated. The back of a moving horse would be a very unstable place to try to fight on.
I remember a Special on TV about reconstructing a Pharao's chariot, and how it could be used. This was essentially it- it was a stable platform where an archer could be highly mobile without having to worry about the business of getting himself about, and focus on shooting the enemy.
From my reading of the Iliad, I do believe that the dragoon version was widespread in early Mycenaean and Achaean warfare. The elite, the heroes Homer describes, would use the chariot to meet their social equals and face off in one to one pairings. As stupid as that sounds in the context of the modern world, from what we know of their society and the later Dorian and Sea People warfare it seems plausible. One thing I wonder about, however, is Mycenaean armor. The depictions I have most often seen show something like bronze half circles, overlapping and held together with leather straps to create what seems like a mightily inflexible and stiff protection. How on earth did they move in that? Throw javelins with any accuracy? Not to mention use swords?
Really, you'd probably just drive up, throw a couple of javelins and drive away. As for using swords? Perhaps if they got off, or if they say...leaned off the sides, maybe?
Well, the armour wouldn't have been that problematic. Generally, speaking, up to the late-medieval period, armour was relatively light. Even the armour the traditional, knights in shining armour would have worn weighed less than the equipment modern soldiers lug.
I read in a book on ancient Chinese military tactics that a chariot was equal to eight horsemen, each of which equaled ten footmen, so that a chariot was the equivalent of eighty infantry.
It's even easier than that, real stirrups wasn't invented until at least 324AD so in the age of chariots horsemen went into battle on just a saddle. One good knock with a pole weapon and they go flying... However if memory serves the book he was referring to was discussing the cost of fielding such troops, not their effectiveness on the battlefield. Fielding a chariot is very expensive, and often kings would measure the military might of a kingdom by counting how many war chariots they can field.
mux020 Yes, the spring and autumn warring states perod of china is exactly like what you described. Kingdoms and states compared to each other by counting how many chariots they have, and the written records of the period talked an army size only in units of chariot ( eg, kingdom chu attacked kingdom wu with 500 chariots ), so the people of this period must understood in logistical term the supply needed for one chariot and how much that equate to footsoldiers. It wasn't until much later chinese records developed the habit by counting army size in pure units of man, ( even cooks and merchant suppliers included to boast their size )
mux020 One good cut and infantrymans head go flying as well and the horseman can already be well ahead. Facing enemy dismounted means already starting from hugely disadvantageous position, it doesnt require anything special for opposition to surround a lonely man, on the other hand its basically impossible with a horseman. The difference is in mobility and a good rider is able to hold on a horse without any saddle and stirrups, manage it so he evades enemy strikes and even be able to defend himself from getting pulled off saddle, or hurled from it by being hit - many self defence for horse riders videos are good for reference, basically all rely on using horse movement and body positioning and balance, so sitting tight in a high saddle locked in stirrups might only be taken as a little bonus to ability to stay on a horse for a fighting horseman. So all in all its rather a question of many against many in tight masses involving thousands, not of 20 men fending off single horseman - still 1v20 is well comparable to many vs many Id say - in both cases infantrymen without missile weapons are basically powerless to inflict any injury to a horseman, unless his movement options are severely restricted and in both cases he does have thoeretical chance to defeat them, if theyre not organized well, or panick, while hes basically harmless, if a group works well together.
I've read somewhere that the elite were riding the charriots to find the enemy elite, then leave the charriot, then throw some javlins and rocks and then sometimes charge them with a sword or a spear.
I believe chariots where also used for the hot and run tactic, ride/drive in close fire a few arrows, sling a few stones or throw a few spears/ javelins and ride out of range of the enemies projectiles and repeat
Battle goats, eh ? Might fnd you some divne customers to draw their chariots. If I recall Helios and Thor, two distnguished and well off gods from very different pantheons both had fashionable battle goats to propell their vehicles. So, where can I purchase some stock options into BATTLE GOATS INC. ? take care silk ;))
