The Evolution of Shock Cavalry - From Antiquity to the Middle Ages DOCUMENTARY 

Great! I also got involved recently in some discussion on the importance of stirrup and high saddles, probably in SandRhoman's video on "the infantry revolution" but can't find it. It is a most important topic, especially as heavy cavalry (cataphracts) appear without apparently any stirrup to give them the extra push but still being quite effective since at least the battle of Carrhae (and much more clearly since the Sassanids).

This is a great video! I'm glad you made it. It is such an interesting topic. :D

@@LuisAldamiz No stirrup is necessary for a massed cavalry charge when you have mass on your side. Most cavalry formations when charging infantry adopted a wedge formation to punch a hole in the formation.

@@weirdofromhalo The Parthians, Romans, Sassanids, Han Empire, etc were known to have used specialized saddles (in some cases even tying the rider to the horse) for stability during a heavy cavalry lancer charge.

One interesting part of Xenophon's manual is the part where he urges the Greeks to adopt Persian style heavy cavalry. "Xenophon watched as the Persian heavy cavalry charged in column formation and caused massive damage to the unprepared Greek horsemen....The Persian heavily armoured cavalrymen made such as impression upon Xenophon that in the years between 367 and 365 BC, he wrote two treatises, The Cavalry Commander and On Horsemanship, in which he advised the Greek heavy cavalrymen to not only attack in the column formation of their Persian counterparts, but also to adopt similar weaponry and heavy armour for both rider and mount." -Cataphracts Knights of the Ancient Eastern Empires by Erich B Anderson

Crazy, but isn't he in good company? A bunch of the history channels started as Total War-related channels.

DarkGhost89 And many others used or are using total war for thier history docs

Yeah I remember watching THFE back then, he was the one that got me into total war games.

If you consider most of his viewers are total war players , It is not so surprising .

Even before that he used to do Halo Reach custom games reviews

what a fucking legend

Dam he was savage

Was World War 1 the last time cavalry had an impact on the battlefield?

@@dylandoh6495 Sort of… It was the last time cavalry was deployed effectively in a major war. It should also be noted cavalry was made largely useless on the Western Front by trenches but the Eastern Front was too large to fortify and cavalry remained a legitimate force there. However, cavalry did see limited use at the start of WW2 on the Eastern Front. It was used mostly as mobile infantrymen rather than shock cavalry, but afterwards it was replaced by motorized infantry. Horses were also used in Afghanistan a couple of decades ago. Basically, after WW1 cavalry became the poor man’s motorized infantry and cars have replaced horses wherever they were available and affordable. The closest thing to shock cavalry today is a tank assault with mobile infantry riding in support.

@QualityPen That is an excellent answer.

idk, stirrips i know are usede for deep swipes and allow the rider to lean more outward of the saddle,

Great Stirrup Debate. Historians debate heavily over the stirrup, for a long while it was considered that only the stirrup allowed cavalry charges, but that has changed heavily in the last few decades. Stirrups increase left-right stability, but not the front-back stability to the level that is required to withstand and deliver a spear thrust in a charge. The Roman 4 horn saddle, and a the medieval high-back saddle serve to increase front-back stability. But no matter the specifics of techniques or technology, being in and executing a cavalry charge is just such and weird and fascinating concept.

Have you ever ridden a horse? It's really not that hard to maintain stability forward and back- even while hardly using the stirrups. It's side-to-side stability they really help with...

Love this stuff! American Indians did not use stirrups or saddles, as a rule. When I didn't have lots of time but wanted to work in a ride at 5 AM, I would ride bareback. It's actually easier to do! Of course, we weren't charging into battle!

Well put! Perhaps someday a trip to the moon will be as easy.

@@Inquisitor6321 I bet that you're right. It will probably be much easier and widely accessible in the futher.

Eventually outdated, but it had some amazing longevity for sure. Even in WW1, the eastern front was a frequent scene to light cavalry clashes between Russia and their opponents, Germany and Austria-Hungary.

It was due to technological advances behind it like stirrup or saddle that allowed that equipment to become normal. Tl dr, technology

That's amazing, any updates on the book?

I mean to be fair the Romans and the later Persians did have really good saddles. Matter fact the Roman Saddles so good that there was a study done where a man joust with it with no Stirrup and I was able to joust just fine with the Roman for horn saddle. Sure the Stirrup does help but it's not needed with the Roman four horned saddle.

@Kshitij Raj An easy shortcut would be to prevent the horse from seeing forward at all, and only see to the sides. It would be simple enough to teach a horse to trust the rider in that case, and historically this was also a thing.

Invicta did say Horses wont charge without extensive training: Which Destriers received in the Middle Ages. You folks need to LISTEN BETTER. Im not sure you understand the difference between the Lance/Spear of Antiquity and the Spear/Lance of the Middle ages. The invention of stirrups and more importantly: the lance rest and frankly, the heavy heavy armor they wore allowed Middle age charging.

Shock cavalry rarely charged headfirst into infantry. However, it did occasionally happen, especially often with cataphracts. But of course, cavalry charged into infantry from the rear all the time.

@Kshitij Raj many medieval chanfrons cover the horses eyes to an extent which does impede vision therefore they see could end up seeing less. One thing people tend to forget is that a horse has a HUGE field of vision. One pointy stick aimed at the horses front might simply not be noticed or ignored. There are innumerable videos on the internet where you can see horses that are not trained at all simply not caring one bit and just charging right into stuff. My favorite example is a video where two horses trot on a street and just run straight into an approaching car (and they did see it coming for a long time). Head on charging infantry was done a lot. Sure you try to get them from the sides (why shouldn't you? It makes absolute sense) but we have dozens of examples where the cavalry just ploughed through the enemy lines and nobody really cared since it is the norm, rather then the exception. Cavalry getting stopped and beaten back is the exception, which is why there are so many sources about those battles. "Hey did you hear, XXX managed to stop and repel an YYY's cavalry charge at the battle of ZZZ." While the other sources regarding the successful charges are more like "and then they charged and won." Take Verneuil 1424 for example, the Italian cavalry just obliterates the English infantry at the beginning and then continuing further to the baggage train. When the Italian later come back to see how the battle went they found out that the English reformed and beat the French. But the Italians were rather happy, they got to plunder and only lost 16 men or something like that out of their 2000 guys that charged. And the sources are rather silent about them. They only care about the French being defeated. But the Italians did their job with near perfection.

How about we build a freaking tower on top of an animal, and fill it with other animals who hurl sticks at other animals with tension from animal intestines.

@@JasonKifner how about we get another animal, set it on fire and send that at the animal with the tower

I didn't know you're into that!

@@heroscapewarrior4217 That’s actual fantasy right there.

@@QualityPen That was actually a legit battle tactic against elephants

this is the first thing to make me laugh since i heard my cat got hit by a car thank you

The first stirrups were probably two balls that hung by the sides of the horse.

@@samwessels8216 Hold up?

Greatest comment in history

except it actually will do that , a war horse to be more specific , this idea that a horse simply wont do it is mainly true for modern horses which are simply used for riding around and jumping while being cute at the same time , people werent dumb enough to ride skittish horses into battle , wouldnt be bad if modern horse owners realised that and stopped spreading rubbish all over the internet , i might add that a good example were the winged hussars which charged into pikemen headlong , often breaking them and other times failing

@@mcsmash4905 then by that logic, how did formations such as the Napoleonic Squares or Tercios work at all. Because by that definition, it like running small cars into a formation. This is also not taking into considering that the horse or the rider is insane or suicidal enough to preform that action in the first place.

@@steelydan3263 the fact that cavalry broke pike squares doesnt mean the square didnt work like what kind of logic is that? And dont forget that this is war if you are ordered to charge at a square you **will** do it and if not someone else will horses and humans are expendable , either way sometimes the pike broke sometimes it didnt it depended largely on the men forming it , veteran troops with nerves will hold , rookies will be scared shitless and will freeze in place or run away and on top of all that you have half dead horses falling on top of you and making a breach with their own bodies which is what happened when a british light cavalry unit did in persia during thr anglo persian war , they made a gap with their bodies and broke thr square apart , several VC's were won that day (ignore the typos)

The last time I was this early Napoleon was admiring you at your grave

too soon :(

Yeah, try getting on top of an unsaddled horse. Quite a bit more athletic than climbing a stirrup, isn't it.

@@talknight2 Modern horses are significantly larger than ancient ones, though. Iron Age horses were 12 hands tall, while anything shorter than 14.2 hands today is a pony. The average horse today is 15.2 hands and get as tall as 18 hands.

@@QualityPen People were also smaller back then too and maybe even more so than horses.

Kislev

😂

That was a horrific sight to remember. ;-;

Crab people, crab people!

The chariot was fully replaced by the time of the Qin Dynasty, actually. The Qin also fought many horse riding peoples and embraced cavalry quite quickly.

@@weirdofromhalo Actually, we have accounts of the Han Dynasty using armored chariots against the Xiongnu at the battle of Mobei. It was after 133 BC when the Han Dynasty decided to finally phase out chariots, and even then they would see some usage. Cavalry had certainly become a dominant force by the late Warring States era, but the chariot's phase-out was gradual rather than a sudden shift. But the Qin, too, were extensively skilled horsemen, considering their supposed origins as horse-breeders for the Zhou, and their extensive battles against the nomads from further west.

@@brokensky2378 I believe those "chariots" are actually war wagons, used as mobile cover on the steppe. It's a similar tactic that's popped up all around the world where wagons were a common means of transport.

@@Crinjal_2611 Elephants would be more like the air strike equivalent but not that effective against infantry the second the time you use them.

Rough riders in 2nd edition work a little like infantry with a longer charge. I think they got their explosive lances later on, in here they got normal lances. Close combat weapons with a big initiative bonus on the charge. Double the cost of an infantry squad though, even more expensive than stormtroopers (who to be fair are just BS 4 Ld 8 guardsmen with lasguns and flak).

The Hetairoi and similiar Hellenistic heavy cavalry (Xystophoroi, Lonchophoroi, ect) used the Xyston, a 12ft lance that was held with two hands and at a slight downward angle. Kontos lance is the successor of this, which was primarily used by Kataphraktoi. Basically, they dealt with enemy cavalry first and then charged into the pinned down enemy infantry line with Xystons angled, per Hammer and Anvil. Atleast that's what the source material is telling us. Macedonian styled heavy cav changed the role of cavalry and made a distinction between normal, skirmish and heavy. Kataphraktoi are a further distinction, namely heavy shock cav. Their whole point being breaking up already engaged and damaged formations to cause a mass route. Usually the mere sight of them was enough already to cause a drop in cohesion. And it's all about cohesion in infantry combat.

@Wind Rose Actually, inequalities were really high. Meaning that the 5% to 10% top had ok to great living conditions (for that time) while 95% of the population were poor farmers. Remember that a kid out of 3 died during his first year at the time though. Being adult means you're already lucky.

This brings up a good point, which is sometimes overshadowed by current view on the lives of the past. Human beings are adaptable and will try and find rewarding and enjoyable experiences with what they have regardless of other circumstances. Leisurely horsemanship would have been a perfectly common and even encouraged pastime for nomadic populations. Sedentary antique civilizations loved all kinds of different parties, festivals and holidays. The Greeks were massive fans of professional sports and even the poorest would have had access to communal sports (It's obvious, of course, that the representatives a city state would send to panhellenic Olympics would have been healthy, wealthy freemen, not some random slaves).

The maneuvers and the suitable size of the horse varied with the intended role. 17.1 is indeed on the tall side for any role, but early renaissance heavy cavalry that delivered formed charges tended to use the largest and strongest horses available, as it was easier for them to maintain formation while in armor and being ridden by a soldier in armor. The late shock cavalry didn't need to be particularly agile for their role, especially as the infantry formations begun to transform into massive pike blocks that were positively glacial in movement and reaction ability. The natural consequence of this specialized superheavy shock cavalry was, of course, the (re)introduction of light and intermediary cavalry that would be used against field cannons and other cavalry as well as targets of opportunity and out-of-battlefield harassment of the opponent and these groups would indeed have wanted smaller, nimbler steeds.

Early Muslim conquests feel a lot like the great Conquests of Alexander the Great or the expansion of the Roman Republic/Empire. .

@@zippyparakeet1074 They rely heavily on clever tactic and patience, not superweapons unlike those armies you mentioned. On paper, Roman Cataprachts and Persian Asawiran should be able to defeat them. Their archers were equipped with self bow, kind of inferior to their enemies composite bows. I honestly don't buy the idea that Persian and Romans were too exhausted because history is never that simple. Their feats should be even harder to recreate in games. Perhaps there are so much we don't understand about historical warfare and the importance of morale. Maybe armors are just facade, maybe some bedouin spearmen in loose formation could truly defeat tight bodies of Scutatoi and Cataprachts.

Salut à toi vieil empereur.

The Assyrians were known for using horses at all, while others used them only with chariots. But "shock cavalery" is kinda exagerated. There is pictures showing 2 guys on the same horse's back. Charging without saddle is already hard enough with one guy, imagine with two.

Nomadic armies must be understood as more holistically strategic entities than the infantry-based sedentary armies. The importance of a pitched battle, or the threat of such, is much less of a point with a cavalry army. Instead, skirmishing, controlling the general area and raiding is the name of the game with their usage. The point would be to relentlessly harass infantry-based armies on the march where they are vulnerable to sudden attacks and unable to respond quickly and prevent efficient foraging by keeping constant contact with the foraging parties and killing off any such group that's unable to protect itself. The idea was to essentially keep any stationary army under soft siege and attrition any marching army. Against each other, cavalry armies would have largely done the same and a large, pitched battle, would have been more an accident or an exploitation of sudden opportunity than an actual goal. If you look at Parthian-Roman conflicts, this is exactly what they did and in both Anthony's and Crassus's case, the Romans ultimately couldn't deal with the inability to forage and the inability to fend off the Parthian forces, while the Parthians were hard-pressed to crack the Roman fortifications and couldn't pursue Romans to the Armenian mountains that the Romans used as a refuge in Anthony's retreat. In Crassus's case, the pitched battle saw extensive use of horse archers with the Parthian forces replenishing their arrows on the go, with the core of cataphracts being used to give short, focused strikes against the parts of Roman forces that were especially badly affected by the constant arrow fire. The weaknesses would be dealing with especially difficult terrain, such as mountains, or dealing with long, stationary conflicts such as sieges as the mobility of the cavalry couldn't be properly utilized in the first case and in the second, the cavalry would eat through the fodder quickly and exhaust the nearby grazing grounds too, which would force the army to abandon siege.

Because no expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Horses aren't predators. Their instinct when encountering weird sounds, people, odd smells etc is to get out fast. They are social and can work with a group they recognise, which can extend to humans. It's easy to catch and raise them with primative means.

Of course horses charge at walls of spears. They can't see directly in front of them. Put blinkers on their bridle, and they can't see much out of the sides either. They'll go right off a cliff or anywhere you point them. They trust YOU , the rider, to see directly ahead of them. Riding is a bond of trust. When Hannibal's father Hamilcar was ambushed, his bodyguard cut down - he rode his horse directly off a cliff - rather than be taken alive, or have his body despoiled.

@@SusCalvin it’s a joke, but it’s also kind of true. Humans are the ones who organize themselves to kill each other with spectacular violence at massive scales.

a war horse would charge at infantry with spears , a normal riding horse (the type of horse people have experience with today) wont , any animal can be trained/broken to suit the needs of its rider , and the war horses were often violent as well

Somewhat varied. Antique superheavy cavalry, such as cataphracts, would have cantered into the enemy as a solid formation in charge and then continued in melee. High medieval knights would have had a notably more aggressive stance where they'd have advanced at canter and completed the charge in trot. This would have rather resembled the animation which M2TW cavalry performs if you give them the order to charge in slow speed (With the obvious problem being that M2TW doesn't actually feature trot, cavalry can only canter or gallop in it). The modern shock cavalry, such as uhlans, would have charged in gallop but in loose formations and avoid direct attacks on line infantry. Much of what the charges looked like was dependent on what the cavalry expected would happen with a successful charge. Antiquity featured large, highly professional contingents of infantry which would have been resilient to shock, so the cavalry had to operate in the expectance that the infantry would have a high likelihood of withstanding a charge. On the other hand, the political and economic degeneration from the antiquity meant that the medieval armies mostly had relatively poorly trained and equipped infantry that was likely to break in contact with knights, which, in combination with equipment more suitable for aiding the rider to remain mounted when receiving large impacts, encouraged aggressive charges. It was additionally beneficial that the less professional medieval infantry couldn't use as tight formations, which meant that there was more room for the cavalry charge to penetrate into and therefore the cavalry formations were less likely to tie themselves up with the backside of the formation trying to press into the front when there was no space for them to do so. The likes of uhlans and hussars, on the other hand, would have advanced in gallop and didn't intend to so much collide with their target than ride through it and strike targets in passing, which is why regiments of line infantry were largely inassailable for them if not otherwise occupied or disorganized. My understanding is that Napoleonic era heavy cavalry would have advanced and made contact in trot, somewhat like medieval knights in this specific aspect, though their usage was as much against light cavalry as infantry and they were well suited for staying in melee once they made contact. This is to say, they didn't necessarily expect to break the infantry immediately on contact.

Because you don't need them. If you have a smaller horse they are usually easier to sit. When traveling you go in walk all the time and let your horse rest as much as possible. Xenophon even writes about it that half of your troops should always be dismounted and the other half mounted and then they switch so you can also let some horses rest while the others are mounted so you can defend yourself from an enemy attack. If you go faster than walk you loose cohesion. Rising trot, light seat and all that stuff only came about in the last two hundred years. Before that even with stirrups people would always stay seated. Where it does not make a difference whether you have a stirrup or not. The only big advantage from a riders perspective is that it keeps you upper leg at a steadier position making it easier to ride from your thighs. Something you need for the high school stuff we see in the high middle ages and later on.

Your almost to a mill

Fun fact: he will never read this comment.

What? Ok the SS are from WW1 but who thinks they're the first shock troops?

No time for techs when your on a quest for a knight rush!

If you look at the original polo ponies of Manipur, ponies that are still used today in the original Manipuri version of polo, you will get corroboration of your point above. Those ponies are nowhere near the 14-hand/15-hand monsters charging around Hurlingham.