Wallhausen in his book about mounted warfare states that the lanciers can be used offensive as well as defensive. The cuirassier on the other hand can only be used defensive. He states one should go through the trouble of raising lancier units as it is worth doing. The lancier had a 18 to 21 roman foot long lance about 5,30m to 6,20m, as long as a pike! He specifically points that out. Additionally he wore a 3/4 armour with a sidearm as well as two pistols. The cuirassier did the same but had no lance and a "less noble" horse. He writes the lance is better than pistols but harder to learn how to handle and since the young ones don't bother training it is increasingly difficult to find people that can use the lance.
Yeah, as I understand it, the heavy lancer and the cuirassier with pistol were both used on the battlefields of the 16th century, one didn't simply replace the other.
It's interesting you mention the training. I've heard one of the issues with lancers in the Napoleonic Wars was to find people qualified for the role, and that a reason for the success of the Polish lancers was that they were already trained in their upbringing, compared to many Western cavalrymen only learning the basics of riding and swordsmanship in the army.
Finally. I often feel like I'm banging my head against the wall while trying explain those misconceptions. Lance were great weapons. It took great and *motivated* men to learn how to use them.
Problem was cavalry was not used in defence but in attack and pursuit. There was no point in heavy lances once armour became less important due to guns improving.
As a soldier I think the one thing people don't realize is how much convenience takes precedence in your personal combat equipment. You wouldn't believe how inconvenient something like a modern rifle or LMG at about 8 and 15 pounds respectively are when you have to carry them around 8-12 hours a day 7 days a week for a year. Most people will settle for pretty good and convenient over the best and unwieldy. So I can see why the lance would be less favored than a sabre by the people that actually had to carry them around
Yeap. During medieval era knights went for a war with few servants, which cared about their stuff. So in fact knight put on his armour (with a help of his servant), took lance and went fighing. Later, during era of mercenary armies everyone need to take care of his stuff alone....
In the US Civil War, the Union tried to field Rush's Lancers, a single lance-equipped cavalry unit. Most of those men abandoned their lances due to inconvenience in the wooded terrain they were often operating in, before they ever met the enemy, and thus weren't very combat effective when they finally did.
One thing to keep in mind is that, at least in the 16th century, the caracole approach of cavalry shooting pistols & riding away to reload had a dubious reputation. It was effective against infantry at times, but it lacked the immediate impact of a committed charge by lancers or by cuirassier. In battle, committed cavalry charges were a risky but a potentially potent tactic. It seems like using the lance aligned with this all-in, conquer-or-die mindset that sometimes served cavalry well in pitched battles. The Polish winged hussars exemplify this attitude, though their very long hollow lances were surprisingly light (& rather pricey) by some accounts. I'm not sure that the pistol was better at piercing armor exactly, but it was at least much easier to use a pistol to target the thinner areas of a harness.
Agreed. There were a few instances in the early modern period where Polish lancers managed to exploit a gap in reorganizing pike formations and caused the enemy to rout. I mean, what else are you going to do when a dense group of heavily armed dudes on horses are riding around behind your lines unchallenged?
I always find it strange that cavalry did not seem to train troopers to perform the shock charge AND the caracole. Seems to be logical to teach two tactics, one for use on musketeers, the other for pikemen. Were horsemen in the 17th century that hard to train, or was it a horse training issue/ Anyone have thoughts?
" *the caracole approach of cavalry shooting pistols & riding away to reload had a dubious reputation* " Exactly. It looked good "on paper". " *committed cavalry charges were a risky but a potentially potent tactic* " Incorrect. The loses were *low* . Albeit expensive, since most of them involved losing or wounding a warhorse. Not so fun fact: In the sources they treat losing a horse or a retainer rider with equal importance. "Such and such lost a 'boy' and they shot his horse." At some point I thought they were somehow losing the non-combat servants, but no. Those were the people with the wings on their backs.
@@TheWhiteDragon3 I think there is sometimes an overestimation of pike vs cavalry, just like gun vs armor. Pike formations could become disordered, distracted or outmaneuvered, or caught off-guard, by cavalry or other units.
I would like to highlight the fact of the usage of cavalary in WW1 too, especialy on the eastern front. There was less of the (kind of lame) tipical trench warfare. We have tons of record about the clashes of hungarian hussars and emperial russian cossaks caseing eachother, setting up traps for eachother, hitting and running all the time. It is really a shame that this is not talked about what so ever.
This reminds me of Alternate History Hub's video on Knights with Guns. I liked his point (and the one made here, honestly) that time periods are not entirely distinct, with totally separate elements. There's so much bleed over and hold over from one historically delineated era to another.
Some Winged Hussars also carried a koncerz, a sword that in all respects was used like a light lance. They would have a normal saber as well if they had a koncerz. It's very easy to see the depictions with the heavy armor, heavy lances, and swords in their scabbards and conclude, as a casual observer, "Ah, they didn't use light lances!". They had the heavy lances, they drilled with them, they charged with them, but they were not the only lance in use by the Hussars.
The main problem with cavalry working with tanks in WW1 was actually the tanks. Cavalry were able to achieve their objectives, but the tanks were not able to support them effectively, mostly due to reliability issues with the engines and treads.
@@satyakisil9711 Tanks tend to be supported by a lot of infantry. Having them on horses instead just means they can carry more stuff. Equip them the same but the horse is carrying some extra things. Same roll.
WW1 tanks were basically just a mobile pill box. If you can move the pill box close to the enemy, even it breaks down, it's basically (very roughly) analogous to a hammer and anvil (envelopment with cavalry). The enemy will have to move out of its position, and when infantry is on the move, they're more vulnerable to cavalry. It's very abstract though - infantry squads could still leap frog to new pre-arranged positions that cavalry might not break into. And leap frogging is basically a turtle tactic, which can make it difficult for cavalry, especially if the infantry have good bases of fire (ie. man portable automatic weapons of their own, which many did by the end of WW1).
I think there was a training issue too. It must be much easier to train a Pistolier and his horse than a heavy lancer and his. And possibly it was easier to find a horse capable of doing the job for a pisto;ier.
It was due to the pike and well-drilled infantry formations. The cumbersome heavy lance no longer provided the shock that was its sole purpose, so why bother with it? For a time heavy cavalry tried to compete with the infantry over whether or not heavy lances could still break enemy formations on their own, but gunpowder eventually put the final nail in that coffin. From that point onward, cavalry stopped being the all-deciding force on the battlefield, and started to work together with the artillery and infantry to break enemy formations. This meant that the heavy lance could be dropped in favor of something more practical like a sabre and pistol or normal lance/spear, since the heavy cavalry no longer had to do all the heavy lifting by itself.
While later limited in use, the lance was and still is a valuable training aid. It requires a greater level of horsemanship. In civilian use, they were used to manage livestock including bulls, making it a practical skill, about the manor. Also, thrown from horseback, at the gallop, into a formation and going back for another, was a common tactic and required even more skill.
In the American Civil War, cavalrymen did most of their fighting dismounted. They typically carried a saber, a revolver and a carbine. The latter were often breech-loading single shots like the Sharps, although there were also some older muzzleloaders and new breech-loading repeaters like the Spencer and Henry. Also, some confederate cavalrymen used shotguns when carbines were unavailable.
A lot of cavalry units, particularly western units, discarded their sabers or cut them down to being a sort of trench knife, because they never used them in combat. Melees between mounted troops were almost unheard of, one notable exception being at Brandy Station.
@@brucetucker4847 To have a mele fight on a horse you need a loot of skill and a loot of training... you are literally talking about people that got none of that. Polish soldiers in 1939 got no issue with cuttting German soldiers in half from a horse with a sabre. Was that a main tactic? Nope, but if you use cavalrymen with skill and with proper tactic then it is giving drastic effects against infantry units that do not expect cavalry charge from side because humans have no chance against a galloping horse, and at that time the rider could instantly make deadly wound to a soldier standing right next to the soldier that was abut to die under horse hoofs. There was Polish partisan cavalry units that was very effective against German and Red Army units even late stages of WW2. From wikipedia article about A. Plich codename "Góra" later "Dolina": "After Soviet partisans became hostile towards Polish units loyal to the Polish government in exile, the Soviets dealt several blows to the Poles, arresting most of the local Polish commanders. In December 1943 Pilch reorganized the Polish partisans in the Nowogródek area. He made a controversial decision to accept a ceasefire with the Germans, and concentrated solely on engaging the Soviet partisans. The ceasefire with the Germans had been criticized by the high command of the Armia Krajowa, which ordered Pilch to renounce it; he, however, chose to ignore those orders. In June 1944 his unit, numbering about 1,000 men, retreated west in face of the Soviet Operation Bagration. At that time, Pilch negotiated an agreement with the command of the Armia Krajowa, which accepted him back into its ranks in return for the end of the ceasefire between Pilch forces and the Germans. He continued fighting in the ranks of the AK against the Germans, primarily in the Kampinos forest area, supporting the Warsaw Uprising. On the night of 2 September 1944 his partisan group carried out a successful attack on formations of SS RONA stationed in the village of Truskaw. The SS battalions were defeated and scattered; 250 SS soldiers were killed and 100 wounded, while "Dolina"'s unit suffered only ten killed and ten wounded." I never heard about Polish soldiers making knifes from sabres, that is just ridiculus and breaking in half a well made sabre is not easy as it should be made from good quality spring type of steel. For Polish sabre from 1934 to be allowed to be used by Polish army: "In order for a saber(model from 1934) to be qualified for "service" in Polish army, it had to meet the following conditions: - pierce a 2 mm thick sheet of metal with a point by dropping the blade from 2 m - cut a 5 mm diameter steel bar on a lead backing five times without damaging the blade - withstand the test of hitting the back and face of the blade against a rounded hardwood trunk without cracking the lining or damaging the blade - the blade based on wood and subjected to manual pressure several times on both sides could not deform - the scabbard placed flat on two sleepers, loaded with a weight of 120 kg, could not show any deformations or cracks.
Heres a question for Zac.. I live in US, born in the state of Maryland. The state's official sport is still jousting. Of course its for the ring. So, the question is when did ring jousting come about and why?
I am adding a comment just so I might hear the answer to the question. I am also a Marylander and remember watching a ring joust when I was a kid in the late 50s in Millersville, MD. I'm not sure what drew my parents there, was it on going and attracted them as we drove by or maybe a friends kid was participating? I don't know. However, I do remember seeing that arena still standing for years as we drove by often , but later, about the time I started driving, that land was developed as a minimall. I was never a part of Maryland's horse culture, but I am curious about it and would love to hear from anyone who knows more about the jousting arena that I mentioned. It was located at the intersections of the currant Benfield Blvd, Veterans Hwy and rte 97 in Milletsville, right about where the Benfield Pines ice rink is now located, thanks.
@@richardelliott9511 we had a horse in the 70's when I was a kid and I would find a long stick and pretend I was a knight. Of course I would lol. I did find out it takes an eye and strong hand to hit anything. My dad caught me at it and gave me a hollering, saying I'd end up putting the stick into my own chest. Probably right too, but that's the extent of my lance experience. The horse got old eventually and I had other things to do (like school and work lol). But there were times when I remember the feeling of getting it just about right too. Was always sorry I couldn't find a way back to it. But those ring jousters are pretty cool imo.
Medieval lances weighed upto 14kg. The Polish husaria lance (kopia) was designed to outreach infantry pikes. It was upto 6.2m long and weighed only 3kg. It was used in a very tightly controlled charge where the horses were approaching at a trot, then canter and finally galloped in the final 100m to crash into enemy infantry pikemen and arquebusiers. The kopia would be left embedded in the enemy and husaria would then use their sabres and pistols. Ultimately , in the 18th century the kopia was replaced by lances used by light cavalry.
Medieval lances did not weigh up to 14 kg. They were much lighter. Also the kopia was not designed to outreach pikes, and in most cases in which husaria attacked infantry with pikes the pikes were longer - and even then the husaria were succesful in many cases.
I dont know much medieval weaponry, but from my experience as a technician using ladders to climb places, my educated guess is that a 14 kg 6.2 m long lancer would be impossible to lift with one arm if you tried to lift from one of the ends 14kg may not sound like a lot, but if its a long object, like a ladder or in this case a lance, it can become very heavy, especially if you try to lift it from one of the ends instead of the center of gravity Ofcourse the lance would have been heavier at point of pickup, so to help with the center of gravity, but still, 14 kg lance sounds so heavy to me and I am a big guy 240 pounds. I dont think I'd be able to hold something like that even with both hands let alone manuever on a horse My guess is that these lances would have to be no more than 7 kg in weight, and up to 5 meters in length, in order for the strongest of the soldiers to properly wield them on horseback. But something like 4 kg weight, and 3 meter length sounds alot more realistic for the average guy. But thats just my couch expert opinion from constantly working with ladders...
@@artyomarty391 : You are absolutly right. It would not be possible to use a weapon with this weight, even for very strong persons. And to be even more specific: there was of cause not only one type of medieval lance. Over the middle ages, the length and the weight of lances varied. In the earyl medieval times lances of knights were for example in the average shorter and lighter than the lances of the polish hussaria. Because of the differences within this time, it is very difficult to compare the lance of the hussaria with the "medieval lances", because the later varied so much. So one should compare them to late medieval lances for knights. But even then, this lances did never weight 14 kg. Never.The longest and heaviest lances used were 5 - 6 m long and had a weight of 5 - 7 kg. But this there the heaviest ones. For a comparison: lances of norman knights in the early middle ages had a length of for example 2,5 m and a weight of 2 kg. And this were also medieval lances. But from weight to length they were much nearer to the later polish lances which were shorter and lighter than to the hussarias lances. In the average even late medieval lances were shorter and not heavier than the hussarias lances. For example they reached 4 - 4,5 m length in the high middle ages and were even then shorter than the hussarias lances, at around the same weight or slightly more weight.
Another excellent discussion between two men who actually know what they are talking about. Also, as an old soldier it was refreshing to see good trigger discipline.
I’m pulling this quote directly from David Kenyon Ph.D thesis, and was introduced to the quote from a Brandon F. video: >> Albert Turp, a Farrier Sergeant with the Royals was a participant in this charge, he later recalled: We had of course been taught that a cavalry charge should be carried out in line six inches from knee to knee, but it didn’t work out like that in practice and we were soon a pretty ragged line of horsemen at full gallop. We took the Germans 234 quite by surprise and they faced us as best they could, for there can’t be anything more frightening to an infantryman than the sight of a line of cavalry charging at full gallop with drawn swords. ...I remembered my old training and the old sword exercise. As our line overrode the Germans I made a regulation point at a man on my offside and my sword went through his neck and out the other side. The pace of my horse carried my sword clear and then I took a German on my nearside, and I remember the jar as my point took him in the collarbone and knocked him over. As we galloped on the enemy broke and ran... The line about the sword going through his neck makes sense, especially considering how the movement of the horse “carried the blade free.” It also clarifies why Napoleon famously shouted to his cavalry, “By the point!”
Regarding the term dragoon: though the nomenclature seems to be a bit variable, dragoons were often trained to operate both as heavy cavalry and light infantry. Though this wasn't always the case, a big difference between hussars (and similar light cavalry) and dragoons is that hussars were usually armed with carbines that (in the days of muzzleloaders) could be reloaded while mounted. Dragoons were sometimes armed with full size muskets (in addition to sabers and sometimes pistols), which, though they can't be reloaded from horseback very well, are far more accurate (relatively speaking). Accuracy isn't particularly important for line infantry (not that it doesn't matter), but it's crucial for light infantry. Mounted infantry on the other hand, aren't particularly well trained at fighting from horseback. They can be used as light cavalry, but they are (usually) more accurately thought of as light infantry that can operate independently.
This reminded me of the quote from a British officer at Waterloo that the sound of bullets hitting the French cuirrasses was like, "Hailstones hitting a windowpane".
A point I remember reading about lances being abandoned during the English Civil war due to the rush to train up raw recruits (in both sides) it was considered better to focus on just pistol and sword as lances required a greater level of drill to be effective. This would have been from a secondary text but perhaps there are Eastern Association or Royalist sources to be researched.
I think another issue was training. In my nonexpert opinion the lance require more training. During the Napoleonic Wars they needed a rapid expansion of cavalry and there just wasn't the time to train lancers. The Poles had a larger recruiting pool of horsemen with lance training and Napoleon used as many as he could get.
Caracole tactics (the main way that cavalry would attack pike squares with pistols) ultimately weren't usually all that effective against pike squares, or against infantry with muskets, and were especially not all that cost effective, if/when that was the main thing that you were using your cavalry for in an army, which is not to say that it wasn't still a useful tactic to use, once a general found themselves with a bunch of cavalrymen armed with pistols, in a battle during the pike and shot era. The value of cavalry during the pike and shot era was their ability to threaten or attack any unit that wasn't a well-ordered pike square, or fortification (but cavalry probably needed to actually charge units of musketeers rather than only shoot them with pistols), and their general operational mobility was a huge advantage as well. Their speed allowed them to avoid most unfavourable engagements, and the various other advantages of high mobility (such as being able to threaten enemy supply lines, unprepared units of infantry, smaller or weaker units of enemy cavalry, etc.). Cavalry remained extremely useful during the age of pike and shot, even if their main armament was lances, as long as they were equipped, trained, and utilized in an appropriate way.
Absolutely. Also, I think the very fact that pikes became so prominent on the battlefield in the 16th century, is testament to just how powerful and devastating heavy cavalry had become, and continued to be, by that time.
Good explanation but like many things there are always exceptions I suppose. The winged Hussars managed to use them with quite good effect in the 17th century. Battle of Kircholm was a spectacular success in tactics and success for heavy cavalry. A feat the Hussars were able to repeat many times in the 17th century.
Hi Matt, I suspect that the fact that the lance can snap or get stuck, and so get lost, after a hard impact contributed to making it unpopular at the HQ level, because it is a logistical nightmare to have lance replacements for all the men who lost theirs, on a long campaign. You cannot leave the field to get a new lance but you can ride back and reload your carbine and it is much easier to transport powder and balls, on the company and regiment level, than it is to transport spare lances.
6:00 using Polish hussars as example for heavy Lancers is kinda misleading, Polish hussars were a modern formation just like Cuirassiers, they simply had a different approach to gunpowder age than the western militaries, they aren't medieval heavy knights
One more point: as far as I know, it also had to do with the available horses and the costs for them. In order to really use heavy lances effectively, you need heavier and more expensive horses. If you do without heavy lances, you can also use worse and/or lighter horses and still have the same effect against armor with pistols and carbines as you mentioned. Ultimately, this means that when using heavy lances, you can field fewer cavalry for the same cost and effort compared to cavalry without heavy lances. So it also had something to do with the the necessary amount of cavalry and the fact that armies quickly grew larger in the renecaissance. Larger armies required more cavalry and continuing to equip them with heavy lances would have been detrimental to the quantity (or the quality in the context of armour piercing). Lighter horses combined with heavy lances did not produce the same performance. The Husaria in particular demonstrated this several times. In the cases where she herself rode down pikemen, these were units with particularly high-quality and heavy horses.
Polish husaria used hollow lances upto 6.2m long weighing only 3kg. Body armor weighed a further 12-15kg. Thus , large, heavy horses were not a precondition as a husaria rider would weigh only about 100kg with his armor and weapons.
@@michaelmazowiecki9195: Heavy horses are not needed because of the weight of the lances, but to generate power in the attack and to increase the close combat value of the lance. It does not matter if the lance weighs 3 kg oder 4 kg or 5 kg. Any horse can carry a rider with a lance, the weight of the lance is irrelevant for the horse. But with a lighter and smaller horse the heavy lance has a much smaller combat value, as the power for the thrust does not result from the lance itself, but from the weight and speed of the horse, therefore a thrust with a heavy lance is much more effective from an heavy horse. Also 100 kg is a heavy weight for an horse. If you have an heavy strong horse, it can carry that weight much more easily. Especially for the horses of the husars it is interesting imo, that they were used in battle only if they are at least 5 years old, and usual after an rigoros training of 7 years. Also every husar had around 3 - 6 fighting horses (and additionally further more transport/draught horses). Every of this 4 warhorses (average) was worth between 5 to 10 times the anual income of the husar, so overall in the average the horses alone represent up to several decades of income. No wonder hussars were in the noble class. They were the only ones who could afford such expenses. Good thing money wasn’t what motivated a hussar to fight. He did it for country and glory. I will end with an old polish saying from this period: “A Pole without a horse is a body without a soul.”
@@ulrichreinhardt8432 horses for rhe husaria were specially bred from crossing Polish tarpans which were very fast and resilient but small, with breeds from the Balkans and Caucasus but not Arabs. The resulting horses were relatively light compared to western heavy cavalry horses, tall, fast, strong and resilient, able to survive on poor quality fodder. Their export was strictly illegal, forbidden and severely punished. Due to the period of the Potop, the nobility became much poorer and could not finance the production of the Polish cross breed so there was a decline in the quantity and quality by the end of the 17th century. Carrying a weight of 100kg was relatively not extreme when compared to western armored cavalry such as Swedish Rajtars or French Cuirassiers who used more massive horses closer to the western tradition of medieval heavy cavalry.
@@michaelmazowiecki9195 : The battle horses for the husaria were not bred from crossing tarpans with eastern horses, alhthough this is claimed sometimes today in the net. This is a missunderstanding because at the height of the polish republic it became usual to name native polish horses tarpans, despite them beeing not of the tarpan wildhorse origin. They were in the average smaller than western heavy cavalry horses, but not that much lighter and quite near to medieval destrier horses. Moreover the size of an horse is not the main criteria that make it an heavy cavalry horse. The battle horses of the husaria were very strong and muscular, and as you said it, resilient, able to survive under harsh conditions and they were by all acounts quite remarkably agile for such a strong muscular horse race. Also one have to mention, that not all horses of an husaria were battle horses. Like medieval knights centuries before him they had always several horses with them, and some of them of another kind of race, for specialised tasks. Usually they had at least one courser with them and in many cases the rode their coursers into battle instead of their battle horses, especially against lighter and more agile enemies. So the polish husaria were much more in the western tradition of medieval heavy cavalry than the heavy cavalry in western european countries at this time. Moreover even french cuirassiers were not that heavy if you look at the equipment. They for example did not weight 100 kg. By the way: rajtaria (reiters) were used in sweden, but were an typical german cavalry, even in foreign countries quite often from german origin and they were not an heavy cavalry! They used lighter horses than the husaria (Ringerpferde). So this is completly wrong. An better example and comparison would be lancers and especillay demi-lancers. But Reiters used smaller horses and were lighter than the husaria. You can read here about them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiter
PPS: I did some research about the use of the word reiters / rajtars in poland in this time. The word was used for every kind of western style cavalry! So it could mean Heavy Cavalry and also Light Cavalry. In this time many germans fought in the polish armies as cavalry, which is unknown today in poland and germany too. Some of them fought as typical german reiters, but others were for example lancers, demi-lancers oder Cuirassiers. There are explicit historical sources in which persons of this time for example named a german unit of cuirassiers as reiters. That is the resaons why today sometimes reiters are thought to be heavy cavalry in poland. But any western style cavalry would be called reiters. Also about the polisch horses: according to all historical sources the battle-horses of the hussaria were described as big, muscular and strong. Authors from this time said, that they were bigger than turkisch horses, much stronger but not as fast. Because of that the poles did beginn to cross there horses with turkish and especially with arab horses to make them faster. This mixed horses were called Turks and were more expensive im comparison to the ordinary hussars horse.
People need to keep in mind that equipping an Army is determined to a large degree by the equipment and tactics of the enemy. Your tactics and equipment need to adjust based on the enemy, a point missed by many modern military. Still, lancers came back into vogue several times between the Renaissance and WWII. Bengal lancers, Polish lancers, Hungarian lancers, even Prussian lancers.
As far as I'm aware, the Australian Light Horse charge at Beersheba is the only example of mounted infantry conducting a cavalry charge, using their bayonets in place of swords. Ironically, a weapon designed to defend infantry from cavalry was used from horseback against infantry who had not been ordered to fix their own bayonets (as the German and Turkish commanders expected the light horsemen to dismount rather than carry the charge through).
Brings us back to the advantage of pistols being easier kit to equip a unit with that they can carry themselves. The Hussar often carried two pistols to use after breaking the lance, multiplying the impact of the charge significantly.
The Savoy Cavalry against the Soviets used swords, that was later than the Polish Lancers en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Savoia_Cavalleria_at_Izbushensky#:~:text=The%20Charge%20of%20the%20%22Savoia,the%20Don%20and%20Khopyor%20rivers.
I am quite interested in knowing more about the heavy lancers, the gendarmes, of the 16th century. I know they were still being used during the French Wars of Religion from the 1560s to 1590s.
In early stages of Thirty Years War last german heavy lancers appeared. A note: When there was a war against the Turks, up to 1790s german heavy cavallymen weared all Armour pieces, still remaining in arsenal, as protection against the arrows of turkish/ tartaric mounted archers.
@@killerkraut9179 : As far as i , Brittas boyfriend, know , at start of Thirty Years War the very last ones appeared , but only in small numbers, and came out of service very fast. Also at start of Thirty Years War still a number of Bidenhänder was used, they had been still in inventory. When a war starts there still some soldiers with dated Equipment , which is replaced by modern one or given to rearline auxillaries.,
A lance can harm a man flat on the ground, whether wounded, or shamming, or just taking evasive action, whereas a sword cannot. Napoleonic era lancers worked that way.
There are feats where people show off by riding past something on the ground and stabbing it with a sword as they go. It's absolutely possible if more difficult.
Polish Hussars solved this problem by using very long thin swords (koncerz). Some of them carried both a saber and a koncerz that was really meant as a backup lance.
A perfect discussion, well done. The lance was described as the perfect cavalry weapon by Napoleon and he converted a large number of chasseurs to lancers. Lancers could reach over a hedge of bayonets and in the peninsula during a rain storm destroyed an English square. One thing not mentioned was that the lance required a lot more training as it was very difficult to manage in a melee. Well done Matt! 🏆
Lances largely disappeared because infantry mostly stopped wielding spears and pikes. yes they still had bayonets on long guns but since you have to grip the gun with one hand up near the forestock was you're only really getting a 2-3 feet of extension with the bayonet. and a cavalry sword is at least 3 feet. lances when away because spearing weapons went away, it wasn't the other way around.
Good vid. Only point (sic) not teally discussed was training and cost. The earlier pistoleers did nt need too much training once mastered the basics of riding and firing, en masse. The lancer needed alot more training in both horsemanship and handling the lance. That costs more. The lancer continued in Eastern Europe, where more people were bred to the saddle !?
The Swedish Carolean army under Charles XII in the early 18th Century used military rapiers for charging (at least that's the term "värja" to my knowledge used by the Army Museum at Stockholm). Also, in Swedish schools, what in English is known as the Age of Pike and Shot (17th Century), is in the schoolbooks described as an era of predominantly three troop types: pike-men, cavalry and musketeers.
To be frank ulans (lancers) survived well into ww1, fought in sovjet-polish war and met with german tanks in ww2, and the results were not always bad, maybe not because of lances, but it has nothing to do with swords either. Not to mention that there were a lot of lancers (ulans and cossacs) in the ww1, and they were even used.
No Polish cavalry charged German tanks in 1939! That was a Fascist propaganda myth. Polish cavalry at that time was mostly horse mounted infantry for rapid movement, but fighting on foot.
Curious about of a couple of thing; the amount of training for a heavy lance in a large army, as opposed to a knight with financial abilities and just the plain logistics of carrying heaven know how many replacement lances for the one-and-done weapon. I learn a lot from your presentations, thanks.
It seems that at the end the cavalry returned to its roots. The very first "cavalry", the charioteers of the bronze age, used exactly the same tactic. Charging towards the enemy, shooting arrows, retreating. Again and again and again.
One side factor relating to the increased use of firearms might have been the decline in use of heavy armor. The heavy lance simply may not have been needed as cavalry moved over to buff coats.
This might warrent a follow-up on why horse archery fell out of use in western Europe. We know that Roman equites frequently used bows on horseback, and that still during the Carolingian period it was a popular cavarly weapon. The famous Norwegian kings mirror suggest bows or crossbows as cavalryman's weapon in the 13th century. But despite Gaston Foebus mentioning horse archery for hunting in late 14th century France, it seems that by the high medieval period it was a lost skill. Why might this be?
It probably didn't, they've just mostly shifted to crossbow, just like on foot. Mounted crossbowmen were very common kind of troops in Central Europe in particular.
I am Korean. Even in Northeast Asia, archer cavalry was widely used, but lancer does not seem to have been widely used, perhaps because it is not very useful. It is more efficient for a rider to shoot an opposing cavalryman's horse with a bow than to use a spear while on horseback. Even when cavalry was dealing with infantry, it was safer and more efficient to fire arrows from a distance and roam around the infantry until the infantry formation collapsed, rather than charging into the infantry formation with spears. Even in Northeast Asia, barricades and infantry square formations were used during battles, so it was suicidal for a cavalryman holding a spear to jump into an infantry square formation. I think that lance cavalry has declined worldwide since the emergence of the Mongolian cavalry, which conquered the world using archery cavalry. And the cavalryman's bow was replaced by a gun.
I remember reading an account of the Polish hussars at Vienna from a contemporary author- he essentially compared the hussars to siege artillery, in that they are really good at doing one thing but not that useful for other roles. I suppose the lance fell into this type of trap- it was great for skewering enemy infantry on a charge, but there were a lot of other roles cavalry needed to do that other tools were better suited for.
Hussars were elite, absurdly expensive, but universal troops (heavy-armed horsemen with a lance, saber, pistol and bow must be universal). However, due to their price, most Polish cavalry units (unlike in the movies) were troops other than hussars. The hussar was usually used like a fist blow, , breaking the enemy ranks at the climax of a battle. EDIT: Hussar units were dismantled mostly because of their price, not prowess.
Interesting to see the photo of the 20th century cavalry firing with one foot on the stirrup and one on the saddle - they must have had horses that were very calm around gunfire to do that!
General Piccolomini, of thirty years war fame, wrote (iirc) that nothing has a shock effect like a well-delivered charge by heavy lancers. I guess he knew what he talked about, considering how lances were still used in places, even as swords and pistols became the main cavalry weapons, and the versatility of the pistol is a clear advantage. After all, the pistol isn't dependent on the ground being nice and flat, and doesn't depend on you being able to coax your horse into ramming the enemy formation.
Since you mention that lances were impractical for scouting, policing, and other non-combat tasks, I wonder whether this was also done in the middle ages where lances were more widespread? Was there a medieval equivalent to the later light cavalry? Usually medieval forces are described as the heavily armoured mounted nobles and men-at-arms, and lighter levy infantry etc. Did the knights just wear less armour and do scouting, or were there dedicated troops for that purpose like there was later? What about infantry spears? You mention lances were impractical etc. but weren't spears and polearms the standard infantry weapon for most of the period, and wouldn't they be just as cumbersome? Am I missing something or are the roles of infantry and cavalry just so different that impractical weapons are less of a problem for the infantry? I really appreciate that both of you tried to answer my question in detail.
If we are going to use only western europe there are a couple examples : Hobilars-mounted infantry, would usually dismount to fight , used short spears , welsh were paticularly adept at this Mounted archers-early on they were actual archers , fought dismounted , later on they evolved into light cavalry (armoured and carrying lances) even later they became indistinguishable from the gendarmes Mounted Crossbowmen-popular in germany , italy and poland , fought on horseback Border horse-border between england and scotland , light cavalry , used lances
I have limited riding experience, but I did ride to an overnight camp with the Boy Scouts and a lance would have been super annoying in the forest. I'm not surprised they dragged them on the ground. Otherwise you'd get them tangled in every plant and shrub. Which would be a really bad place for the lance to be located in an ambush!
This issue of lance vs pistol was explained by Francois de la Noue, a French military commander during the French Wars of Religion in the late 16th century: "Whereupon I will say that although the squadrons of lancers do give a gallant charge, yet it can work no great effect, for at the outset it killeth none, yea it is a miracle if any be slain with the spear. Only it may wound some horse, and as for the shock, it is many times of the small force, where the perfect Reiter do never discharge their pistols but in jointing, and striking at hand, they wound, aiming always either at the face or the thigh. The second rank also shooteth off so the forefront of the men-or-arms squadron is at the first meeting half overthrown and maimed. Although the first rank may with their lances do some hurt, especially to the horses, yet the other ranks following cannot do so, at leas the second or third, but are driven to cast away their lances and help themselves with their swords. Herein we are to consider two things which experience hath confirmed. The one, that the Reiter are never so dangerous as when they be mingled with the enemy, for then be they all fire. The other, the two squadrons meeting, they have scarce discharged the second pistol but either the one or the other turneth away. For they contesteth no longer as the Romans did against other nations, who oftentimes keep the field fighting two hours face to face before either party turned back. By all the afore-said reasons, I am driven to avow that a squadron of pistols, doing their duties, shall break a squadron of lancers."
I'd love for you to explain the battlefield mechanics of a knight. I've never understood how they're employed and especially supported on the battlefield
When Wood composite, Aluminium, Kevlar and Carbon finally became available to the average blacksmith it superseded the old heavy timbers, reducing the workload and exhaustion level of the _common_ noble. Also, Cavalry advanced to the tactic of riding around the defensive square in a circle, much like The American Indians (who only used cavalry) always did to well-armed settlers and small squads of isolated Army units. This tactic used a mix of lance, bow, rifle and war hammer. Sometimes a shaken fist was used to great advantage.
I think that 16th and early-mid 17th century battles are massively misunderstood by the wargamer/military history afficionados. On the continent (can't speak for the British niche), battles in this age were decided by cavalry. So in contrast to what the "pike & shot" era seems to imply, it was cavalry - not the pike square - that dominated. The pike square was the only means to hold the ground against cavalry domination. I'd say that the main battlefield role of the pike squares in this age war to provide shelter and to serve as anchor points for their own cavalry. Cavalry battles are fluid and chaotic affairs (note how many generals died on the battlefields in this age!). Cavalry is quick to retreat and quick to rally UNLESS pursued. And this was exactly the role of infantry: To fend off pursuing enemy cavalry, to allow their own cavalry a safe space to rally and re-engage. That's not to say that infantry - and preserving one's infantry - wasn't important. Infantry was needed to conduct sieges - just as important as open field battles in the operational sense. Also, a cavalry without infantry support will not win a pitched battle. But infantry alone is not a decisive arm in a pitched battle. Pike squares don't win battles. If threatened by cavalry, they're unmanoeuverable, they don't pursue a routing enemy, they don't dissolve the opponent's army. I'd also like to point out that pike squares have plenty of problems when engaged closely by cavalry. 1) They can't send out their musketeers as skirmishers any more - which is probably how musketeers prefered to engage most of the time, i.e. as skirmishers. 2) If the cavalry is venturing really close, the musketeers are forced under their pikes. This process alone could cause plenty of confusion in a pike square, as noted by contemporary treatises. 3) And being forced under the pikes must have drastically decreased the fire volume of the square (no more infantry caracoling, musketeers squished together uncomfortably under pikes...). I would not rule out that a caracoling cavalry unit might well have generated a higher volume of fire than these compromised musketeers. That's why pike squares and the arrangement of muskets around them seem to have focused quite a lot of thought on "cover by fire" (overlapping arcs of fire). If one part of the formation came under pressure, other parts remain unengaged and can still fire at the enemy to ease the pressure. Thanks to the pike-formations' depth, there were always some musketeers who were not forced under the pike and could keep up their fire. 4) I'd also like to point out what a horrible morale effect a caracole must have had on the infantry. Whereas a cavalryman takes his chance (of getting shot) every 5-10 minutes or so for a few seconds (riding close to the formation), a relatively small number of men in the square find themselves under continous fire. I wouldn't want to stand there!
Logistics. 1) Carbine ball & powder easily transported vs spare Lances. 2) Heavy horses cost more to field, require more feed & water vs lighter horses. A cavalry man with a carbine rifle & sword, will do the job of breaking lines better and sustained (reloading vs broken lances).
its not the same thing but I always think its the Longbow stuff all over again. Heavy Cav lancers were very useful but other technology came about that made getting more troops available for combat with less training but close to equal or better effectiveness. A trained Longbowmen/ trained Lancer were hard to come by to recruit and replace from losses.
A knight was what we today call a weapon system. the man itself, the Armour, the horse had to fit together, being fine tuned. You missed out the horse in your presentation. Good trained horses for the knightly charge were rare and high prized, not easy to "reproduce" in case of losses. and with the armies getting bigger in the 15th century they made an ever smaller percentage of them. and beeing on the tip of the attack the losses on pikes and muskets were high and not at all easy to replace. And by the way: "the Lance" was the smallest unit of a mediavial army. normally the knight and one or two men of arms on horse, an horse archer, several infantry men, and servants (exact combination differs through countries and centuries)
Yup. To give an example, in XVIIth century Poland, a battle horse could cost as much as a few villages including all of the buildings and peasants living there.
The thing that I find interesting about lances and lancers was that during their heyday the US never really got into lances and lancers. I think that the US briefly toyed around with the idea of lancer regiments but uktimately never adopted the idea or adopted it for very long. At the same time, from what I've read, the US never adtopted many of the types of cavalry that were used in Europe stcking with only dragoons and regular cavalry before eventually merging the 2, and after the Civil War, having the cavalry act more like dragoons (riding into battle and dismounting to fight) than traditional cavalry.
@@SnarkyZazu "Guerilla" style tactics were employed by European Settlers of N.A. - from the 1600's as they adapted to the environs & martial tactics of N.A. Indigenous peoples.
@@SnarkyZazu Well documented from early settlers/colonizers through the North American War For Independence from England. Significantly Pre-Dating your statement.
I remember drawings on military history books fromm my childhood showed the wingued hussars with the following offensive armament: - heavy lance - koncerz - saber - pistol or bow I imagine the armament changed across time and even depending on the individual soldier and situation, but even if it seems a bit much, I don't totally discard that at some points and certain situations, as the most elite of the elite of a relativwly powerful country, the polish hussars could have carried so many weapons... What do you think? Would it be possible and practical to carry so many offensive weapons + the heavy cuirass?
Well, I disagree with some of your assessments of why (heavy) lances disappeared from use in the XVII century (gradually might I add, Austrains/Germans and Hungarians used lances all the way up to the siege of Vienna in 1683, Poles weren't the only people around using lances at the time). 4:30 All the treatises from the period that I know of outright state that a lancer is superior in comparison to a cavalryman armed with a pistol.John Cruso in his *"Military instructions for the cavallrie, or, Rules and directions for the service of horse"* explained why lancers were gradually disapearing from battlefields. Namely lance is harder to master and also more expensive to use. A lance can cost a lot of money, certainly even as much as a pistol but you usually use it only once and then it gets destroyed. Therefore pistol, although worse and doing the job of the lance, is a much cheaper substitute. The best way I can describe it is to compare it to the use of the Welsh/English longbow versus the crossbow in the Middle Ages. Crossbows were certainly way more popular across Europe but that doesn't mean they were superior in every aspect to the longbow. The English had the social and economic structure (and they placed a lot of effort into keeping it) that allowed them to filed longbowmen while other European kingdoms lacked and weren't willing to invest since crossbows worked just fine. The same can be said about heavy lancers. Most European states lost the ability to field them because of changes to economic and social structures within their societies that came with the Age of Discoveries and because of the changes in how the state was participating in war and how it was financed. I also don't agree that the main role of a heavy lance is armour piercing. That's just one of many advantages it gives but I don't have a time to address it now. Cheers, and thanks for this interesting and thought-provoking video.
Why would lances be so expensive? Spears are often mentioned as being cheaper than swords in the Middle Ages, and lances seem far less complex compared to pistols. Maybe fancy ones like the hollow Polish lances were expensive, but why wouldn't a simple spearhead on a wooden pole be relatively inexpensive?
@@fridrekr7510 If we are speaking of what was referred to in this video as heavy lances then even the Western European ones were partially hollowed, glued, painted et cetera. In general making one is quite labour intensive. And you need lots of them for every lancer. Even if individually they are cheaper than pistols they end up more expensive in use as one rider can go through multiple lances in one battle. Also, lances are anything but simple pieces of wood. That's probably one of the biggest misconceptions about them.
Yep, my impression reading some contemporary treatises was also that the authors lamented the decline of the lance. It's a skill issue. It's hard to use a lance and most aristocrats (let alone commoners...!) did not have sufficient training anymore. Apart from that, authors also agree that a lancer needs a better (more expensive) horse than a lowly cuirassier. There were no real drawbacks to lancers. A lancer without a lance (or who has broken his lance) is still a cuirassier...
@@MaximilianM-eg2zg You are absolutely right. While writing my original comment I didn't have enough time to touch all those points. Thanks. To address another point from the video. Range. Pistols didn't really offer a greater range than lances. The effective range of an XVII century pistol was only about three meters. Some cavalry lances in the XVI and XVII centuries exceeded 6 meters. Both Polish and German sources state such numbers.
I find the whole lance thing both interesting (I'm descended from infamous Border horsemen) and confusing - the one thing that confuses me - how do you use it? Presumably it's like a bee's sting once it's stuck in your opponent, you're lanceless. With the sword you can use it again and again. I know this is a dumb question, but I have read many books and sources on the 'prickers', as they were called, and it's never clear what happens at the point of engagement.
I'm no expert, but it seems your question assumes a lance point always ends up transfixed in an opponent, which may have happened on occasion but was not the case in many instances. Most of the time the point just slashed or ripped through only part of the target, or just grazed them.
Well, if all of your guys kill one each of their guys, in an even fight that's their army gone. Since most forces will rout way before you get to that point, this strikes me as one of those problems that seems bigger than it is. And lancers would have swords or whatnot as sidearms, which they would take out after the lance is stuck in someone.
Cavalry is a shock unit, and the single shot pistol employed as a carracole may damage a square, but will not break one because of the lengthy time required to reload. The horse and rider are more more expensive, more vulnerable to gun fire, and much larger in cross section, than the infantry. What do you do with a lance as you reload? You stick it into the ground. The large caliber revolver was revealed during the American Civil War as the weapon of choice for Cavalry, and 4 revolvers on the saddle were a desirable load out.
13:50 seems to me javelins from horse back would work quite well too maybe one of them old time cast iron hand grenades but with a handle add that to the momentum of the horse fling it in and ride off
The Polish, who used the heavy lance perhaps for the longest time, considered it requiring extensive training both for the horsemen, as well as the horses. This training seems to have largely disappeared in the West by the beginning of the 17th century. Some Poles who traveled the West and entered or just watched jousting competitions wrote how inadequate the skills of Western lancers were. Pistols were easier to use effectively.
So here we've described the heavy lance as armor-piercing or armor-defeating. How? Wouldn't the curvature of any good armor glance and redirect the head of any blade to the path of least resistance? What types of heads would these heavy lances sport? This is worth testing in its own right. I can easily see a couched lance being extraordinarily powerful, but I can't see any "blade" puncturing armor.
Nicely curved armour will redirect the enemy's point significantly more than non-nicely-curved armour. That doesn't mean it's going to work anything like all the time. "Worth doing" is not the same as "foolproof". And a lancer is going to know how that stuff works--he's wearing it himself, he practices with people wearing it all the time, he's going to try to aim to minimize the effect.
What I don't understand is why there wasn't a resurgence of light lances when the bayonet did away with pikes. I would have thought that lancers with lance a bit longer than a bayonet musket would just roll over infantry.
The heavy and long lance was disproportionate to the cost of maintaining such formations. The heavy cavalryman with the long lance was damned expensive to produce and its effectiveness diminished with successive decades. This can be seen very well on the example of the Polish hussars (probably one of the last countries to have this type of unit) at the end of this formation, during their charges against Russian infantry formations, they had to attack 5-6 times to finally smash the enemy infantry and despite the fact that, in addition to the lance, they had a special sword (koncerz - used instead of a lance when lost), a sabre and pistols. Although I honestly don't know whether, with the disappearance of pikemen formations in favour of infantry with muskets and bayonets, a Polish hussar with a 5-metre lance wouldn't have wiped out a quadrilateral of infantry - just a question of whether the losses during a charge would opt for maintaining a formation in which even the horse must be of a special breed and very well trained. And I am not talking about the First War, because there the mobility and possible surprise attack already counted, otherwise you would have been swept away by repeating rifle or machine gun fire. If I have a linguistic bush, I apologise, I was typing from the translator
+scholagladiatoria *Notwithstanding the bullpup rifle as the ideal firearm for today's Mountain Cavalry, the tricorn lance was a consistent **_coup de grâce_** for horsemen.* The 侍 _Samurai,_ retainers to the nobles o' the 大日本帝国 Greater Japanese Empire, used spears that could slash after a fashion as well as deliver a fatal thrust.
It's wild to think about the possibility of a 1918 Lancer wielding a cavalry receiver, a Colt 1911, and potentially a Winchester 1897 or a Browning BAR. I know they didn't, but they are contemporary.
It's a point I hadn't really thought about until I watched this video, but it was only a little more than a decade between the end of the second Boer war and the beginning of WW1. So no doubt there was a lot of cavalry / mounted infantry thinking still in the army in 1914 and beyond.
I feel like literature (and modern cinema) has taught us that a cavalry charge will "sweep away" a enemy like the Riders of Rohan and orcs...but after initial impact with an enemy in a charge...how useful is a heavy lance? A Napoleonic light lance can be used to thrust repeatedly at a variety of angles, but what happens to the heavy lance after the first one or two enemies are impaled? Would a sword become preferred simply because of the variety of attacks possible? If a heavy lance is rendered useless...would the time it takes to draw a sword in a melee be a question of life or death that can simply be answered by starting with the sword to begin with?
Really, anything after your guys have killed an opponent each is kind of first world problems. But the thing is that a lance charge against non-pike infantry will tend to do a lot of concentrated damage in a short time and a small space, breaking the enemy's formation. Once their formation is broken they are very very vulnerable and will tend to start routing, making them even more vulnerable. A sword charge is not as effective in those all important minutes of impact; it's less likely to break the formation and penetrate deeply enough to just keep going out the other side. And a cavalry charge which does not penetrate deeply enough or break the enemy's formation completely enough will tend to get bogged down; once the horses slow down to walking pace a lot of your advantage is gone, and your guys are just sitting there on immobile horses, surrounded on three sides. In fact I think if I had a force of sword-only cavalry I'd tend to go for an oblique charge, to just cruise along the front slashing and then keep going--but again, that's not going to break the enemy formation and win the battle right there.
8:57 when you put it that way you would have thought that grenadiers on horse back would be a better option ride up light the fuse toss it into the pike square and hoof it the other way
2:51 This photo shows that the British also used a red and white pennant on their lances. This is new for me. What this is about? Is this some international symbol?
Without seeing the video, my first responce was that the lance is a cumbersome thing to carry around all day. In a charge they have value, in every other duty that cavalry can do its a nuisance to carry it with you.
In WW1 German cavalry also used lances, at least in 1914 (recce role). I remember stories from my grandmother, who was very frightened (born 1904, in Belgium)
6:36 Bang and bang? This was exactly the tactic used by the heavy cavalry. She struck in formation, returned, took new lances and struck again. At a time when heavy cavalry was the queen of the battlefield, the lance was more dangerous than the gun.
How does level of armor correlate to the use of lances, especially heavy lances? At some point there was a transition to much less armor, especially on the extremities, which also would make slashing attacks and less-powerful thrusts more effective again?
Wallhausen in his book about mounted warfare states that the lanciers can be used offensive as well as defensive. The cuirassier on the other hand can only be used defensive. He states one should go through the trouble of raising lancier units as it is worth doing. The lancier had a 18 to 21 roman foot long lance about 5,30m to 6,20m, as long as a pike! He specifically points that out. Additionally he wore a 3/4 armour with a sidearm as well as two pistols. The cuirassier did the same but had no lance and a "less noble" horse. He writes the lance is better than pistols but harder to learn how to handle and since the young ones don't bother training it is increasingly difficult to find people that can use the lance.
Awesome info, thanks!
Yeah, as I understand it, the heavy lancer and the cuirassier with pistol were both used on the battlefields of the 16th century, one didn't simply replace the other.
It's interesting you mention the training. I've heard one of the issues with lancers in the Napoleonic Wars was to find people qualified for the role, and that a reason for the success of the Polish lancers was that they were already trained in their upbringing, compared to many Western cavalrymen only learning the basics of riding and swordsmanship in the army.
Finally. I often feel like I'm banging my head against the wall while trying explain those misconceptions.
Lance were great weapons. It took great and *motivated* men to learn how to use them.
Problem was cavalry was not used in defence but in attack and pursuit.
There was no point in heavy lances once armour became less important due to guns improving.
As a soldier I think the one thing people don't realize is how much convenience takes precedence in your personal combat equipment. You wouldn't believe how inconvenient something like a modern rifle or LMG at about 8 and 15 pounds respectively are when you have to carry them around 8-12 hours a day 7 days a week for a year. Most people will settle for pretty good and convenient over the best and unwieldy. So I can see why the lance would be less favored than a sabre by the people that actually had to carry them around
Yeap. During medieval era knights went for a war with few servants, which cared about their stuff. So in fact knight put on his armour (with a help of his servant), took lance and went fighing. Later, during era of mercenary armies everyone need to take care of his stuff alone....
As a tanker it was indeed giant relief not having to carry assault rifle with you, just pistol in the pocket
In the US Civil War, the Union tried to field Rush's Lancers, a single lance-equipped cavalry unit. Most of those men abandoned their lances due to inconvenience in the wooded terrain they were often operating in, before they ever met the enemy, and thus weren't very combat effective when they finally did.
One thing to keep in mind is that, at least in the 16th century, the caracole approach of cavalry shooting pistols & riding away to reload had a dubious reputation. It was effective against infantry at times, but it lacked the immediate impact of a committed charge by lancers or by cuirassier. In battle, committed cavalry charges were a risky but a potentially potent tactic. It seems like using the lance aligned with this all-in, conquer-or-die mindset that sometimes served cavalry well in pitched battles. The Polish winged hussars exemplify this attitude, though their very long hollow lances were surprisingly light (& rather pricey) by some accounts.
I'm not sure that the pistol was better at piercing armor exactly, but it was at least much easier to use a pistol to target the thinner areas of a harness.
Yeah, I think it is often underestimated just how protective armor could still be against firearms, in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Agreed. There were a few instances in the early modern period where Polish lancers managed to exploit a gap in reorganizing pike formations and caused the enemy to rout. I mean, what else are you going to do when a dense group of heavily armed dudes on horses are riding around behind your lines unchallenged?
I always find it strange that cavalry did not seem to train troopers to perform the shock charge AND the caracole. Seems to be logical to teach two tactics, one for use on musketeers, the other for pikemen. Were horsemen in the 17th century that hard to train, or was it a horse training issue/ Anyone have thoughts?
" *the caracole approach of cavalry shooting pistols & riding away to reload had a dubious reputation* "
Exactly. It looked good "on paper".
" *committed cavalry charges were a risky but a potentially potent tactic* "
Incorrect. The loses were *low* . Albeit expensive, since most of them involved losing or wounding a warhorse.
Not so fun fact: In the sources they treat losing a horse or a retainer rider with equal importance. "Such and such lost a 'boy' and they shot his horse." At some point I thought they were somehow losing the non-combat servants, but no. Those were the people with the wings on their backs.
@@TheWhiteDragon3 I think there is sometimes an overestimation of pike vs cavalry, just like gun vs armor. Pike formations could become disordered, distracted or outmaneuvered, or caught off-guard, by cavalry or other units.
I would like to highlight the fact of the usage of cavalary in WW1 too, especialy on the eastern front. There was less of the (kind of lame) tipical trench warfare. We have tons of record about the clashes of hungarian hussars and emperial russian cossaks caseing eachother, setting up traps for eachother, hitting and running all the time. It is really a shame that this is not talked about what so ever.
Yes indeed-is there a book on the subject available?
Forget about the eastern front. no one cares about russian human wave "tactics" that result in defeat or pyrrhic victories.
This reminds me of Alternate History Hub's video on Knights with Guns. I liked his point (and the one made here, honestly) that time periods are not entirely distinct, with totally separate elements. There's so much bleed over and hold over from one historically delineated era to another.
Some Winged Hussars also carried a koncerz, a sword that in all respects was used like a light lance. They would have a normal saber as well if they had a koncerz. It's very easy to see the depictions with the heavy armor, heavy lances, and swords in their scabbards and conclude, as a casual observer, "Ah, they didn't use light lances!". They had the heavy lances, they drilled with them, they charged with them, but they were not the only lance in use by the Hussars.
The main problem with cavalry working with tanks in WW1 was actually the tanks. Cavalry were able to achieve their objectives, but the tanks were not able to support them effectively, mostly due to reliability issues with the engines and treads.
Not a problem anymore, tanks can keep up with horsemen just fine now.
So, did stand around waiting for tanks everything they saw barbed wire or heard a machine gun?
Why would tanks and cavalry have the same objectives in the first place? Tanks are meant to breach trenches and small fortitifactions.
@@satyakisil9711 Tanks tend to be supported by a lot of infantry. Having them on horses instead just means they can carry more stuff. Equip them the same but the horse is carrying some extra things. Same roll.
WW1 tanks were basically just a mobile pill box. If you can move the pill box close to the enemy, even it breaks down, it's basically (very roughly) analogous to a hammer and anvil (envelopment with cavalry). The enemy will have to move out of its position, and when infantry is on the move, they're more vulnerable to cavalry.
It's very abstract though - infantry squads could still leap frog to new pre-arranged positions that cavalry might not break into. And leap frogging is basically a turtle tactic, which can make it difficult for cavalry, especially if the infantry have good bases of fire (ie. man portable automatic weapons of their own, which many did by the end of WW1).
I think there was a training issue too. It must be much easier to train a Pistolier and his horse than a heavy lancer and his. And possibly it was easier to find a horse capable of doing the job for a pisto;ier.
It was due to the pike and well-drilled infantry formations. The cumbersome heavy lance no longer provided the shock that was its sole purpose, so why bother with it?
For a time heavy cavalry tried to compete with the infantry over whether or not heavy lances could still break enemy formations on their own, but gunpowder eventually put the final nail in that coffin.
From that point onward, cavalry stopped being the all-deciding force on the battlefield, and started to work together with the artillery and infantry to break enemy formations. This meant that the heavy lance could be dropped in favor of something more practical like a sabre and pistol or normal lance/spear, since the heavy cavalry no longer had to do all the heavy lifting by itself.
While later limited in use, the lance was and still is a valuable training aid. It requires a greater level of horsemanship. In civilian use, they were used to manage livestock including bulls, making it a practical skill, about the manor. Also, thrown from horseback, at the gallop, into a formation and going back for another, was a common tactic and required even more skill.
In the American Civil War, cavalrymen did most of their fighting dismounted. They typically carried a saber, a revolver and a carbine. The latter were often breech-loading single shots like the Sharps, although there were also some older muzzleloaders and new breech-loading repeaters like the Spencer and Henry. Also, some confederate cavalrymen used shotguns when carbines were unavailable.
A lot of cavalry units, particularly western units, discarded their sabers or cut them down to being a sort of trench knife, because they never used them in combat. Melees between mounted troops were almost unheard of, one notable exception being at Brandy Station.
@@brucetucker4847 To have a mele fight on a horse you need a loot of skill and a loot of training... you are literally talking about people that got none of that.
Polish soldiers in 1939 got no issue with cuttting German soldiers in half from a horse with a sabre.
Was that a main tactic? Nope, but if you use cavalrymen with skill and with proper tactic then it is giving drastic effects against infantry units that do not expect cavalry charge from side because humans have no chance against a galloping horse, and at that time the rider could instantly make deadly wound to a soldier standing right next to the soldier that was abut to die under horse hoofs.
There was Polish partisan cavalry units that was very effective against German and Red Army units even late stages of WW2.
From wikipedia article about A. Plich codename "Góra" later "Dolina":
"After Soviet partisans became hostile towards Polish units loyal to the Polish government in exile, the Soviets dealt several blows to the Poles, arresting most of the local Polish commanders. In December 1943 Pilch reorganized the Polish partisans in the Nowogródek area. He made a controversial decision to accept a ceasefire with the Germans, and concentrated solely on engaging the Soviet partisans. The ceasefire with the Germans had been criticized by the high command of the Armia Krajowa, which ordered Pilch to renounce it; he, however, chose to ignore those orders. In June 1944 his unit, numbering about 1,000 men, retreated west in face of the Soviet Operation Bagration. At that time, Pilch negotiated an agreement with the command of the Armia Krajowa, which accepted him back into its ranks in return for the end of the ceasefire between Pilch forces and the Germans. He continued fighting in the ranks of the AK against the Germans, primarily in the Kampinos forest area, supporting the Warsaw Uprising. On the night of 2 September 1944 his partisan group carried out a successful attack on formations of SS RONA stationed in the village of Truskaw. The SS battalions were defeated and scattered; 250 SS soldiers were killed and 100 wounded, while "Dolina"'s unit suffered only ten killed and ten wounded."
I never heard about Polish soldiers making knifes from sabres, that is just ridiculus and breaking in half a well made sabre is not easy as it should be made from good quality spring type of steel.
For Polish sabre from 1934 to be allowed to be used by Polish army:
"In order for a saber(model from 1934) to be qualified for "service" in Polish army, it had to meet the following conditions:
- pierce a 2 mm thick sheet of metal with a point by dropping the blade from 2 m
- cut a 5 mm diameter steel bar on a lead backing five times without damaging the blade
- withstand the test of hitting the back and face of the blade against a rounded hardwood trunk without cracking the lining or damaging the blade
- the blade based on wood and subjected to manual pressure several times on both sides could not deform
- the scabbard placed flat on two sleepers, loaded with a weight of 120 kg, could not show any deformations or cracks.
Really love when you collaborate w8th anyone, but Zac is particularly great, as you two have a great chemistry i think.
Heres a question for Zac..
I live in US, born in the state of Maryland. The state's official sport is still jousting. Of course its for the ring.
So, the question is when did ring jousting come about and why?
I am adding a comment just so I might hear the answer to the question. I am also a Marylander and remember watching a ring joust when I was a kid in the late 50s in Millersville, MD. I'm not sure what drew my parents there, was it on going and attracted them as we drove by or maybe a friends kid was participating? I don't know. However, I do remember seeing that arena still standing for years as we drove by often , but later, about the time I started driving, that land was developed as a minimall. I was never a part of Maryland's horse culture, but I am curious about it and would love to hear from anyone who knows more about the jousting arena that I mentioned. It was located at the intersections of the currant Benfield Blvd, Veterans Hwy and rte 97 in Milletsville, right about where the Benfield Pines ice rink is now located, thanks.
@@richardelliott9511 we had a horse in the 70's when I was a kid and I would find a long stick and pretend I was a knight. Of course I would lol.
I did find out it takes an eye and strong hand to hit anything. My dad caught me at it and gave me a hollering, saying I'd end up putting the stick into my own chest. Probably right too, but that's the extent of my lance experience. The horse got old eventually and I had other things to do (like school and work lol).
But there were times when I remember the feeling of getting it just about right too. Was always sorry I couldn't find a way back to it.
But those ring jousters are pretty cool imo.
@@Book-bz8ns it sounds like you had quite a good time facing that challenge.
@@richardelliott9511 I'll never forget it. Was every kids dream.
Medieval lances weighed upto 14kg. The Polish husaria lance (kopia) was designed to outreach infantry pikes. It was upto 6.2m long and weighed only 3kg. It was used in a very tightly controlled charge where the horses were approaching at a trot, then canter and finally galloped in the final 100m to crash into enemy infantry pikemen and arquebusiers. The kopia would be left embedded in the enemy and husaria would then use their sabres and pistols. Ultimately , in the 18th century the kopia was replaced by lances used by light cavalry.
Medieval lances did not weigh up to 14 kg. They were much lighter. Also the kopia was not designed to outreach pikes, and in most cases in which husaria attacked infantry with pikes the pikes were longer - and even then the husaria were succesful in many cases.
I dont know much medieval weaponry, but from my experience as a technician using ladders to climb places, my educated guess is that a 14 kg 6.2 m long lancer would be impossible to lift with one arm if you tried to lift from one of the ends
14kg may not sound like a lot, but if its a long object, like a ladder or in this case a lance, it can become very heavy, especially if you try to lift it from one of the ends instead of the center of gravity
Ofcourse the lance would have been heavier at point of pickup, so to help with the center of gravity, but still, 14 kg lance sounds so heavy to me and I am a big guy 240 pounds. I dont think I'd be able to hold something like that even with both hands let alone manuever on a horse
My guess is that these lances would have to be no more than 7 kg in weight, and up to 5 meters in length, in order for the strongest of the soldiers to properly wield them on horseback. But something like 4 kg weight, and 3 meter length sounds alot more realistic for the average guy. But thats just my couch expert opinion from constantly working with ladders...
@@artyomarty391 : You are absolutly right. It would not be possible to use a weapon with this weight, even for very strong persons. And to be even more specific: there was of cause not only one type of medieval lance. Over the middle ages, the length and the weight of lances varied. In the earyl medieval times lances of knights were for example in the average shorter and lighter than the lances of the polish hussaria. Because of the differences within this time, it is very difficult to compare the lance of the hussaria with the "medieval lances", because the later varied so much.
So one should compare them to late medieval lances for knights. But even then, this lances did never weight 14 kg. Never.The longest and heaviest lances used were 5 - 6 m long and had a weight of 5 - 7 kg. But this there the heaviest ones. For a comparison: lances of norman knights in the early middle ages had a length of for example 2,5 m and a weight of 2 kg. And this were also medieval lances. But from weight to length they were much nearer to the later polish lances which were shorter and lighter than to the hussarias lances. In the average even late medieval lances were shorter and not heavier than the hussarias lances. For example they reached 4 - 4,5 m length in the high middle ages and were even then shorter than the hussarias lances, at around the same weight or slightly more weight.
Another excellent discussion between two men who actually know what they are talking about.
Also, as an old soldier it was refreshing to see good trigger discipline.
I’m pulling this quote directly from David Kenyon Ph.D thesis, and was introduced to the quote from a Brandon F. video:
>> Albert Turp, a Farrier Sergeant with the Royals was a participant in this charge, he later recalled:
We had of course been taught that a cavalry charge should be carried out in line six inches from knee to knee, but it didn’t work out like that in practice and we were soon a pretty ragged line of horsemen at full gallop. We took the Germans
234
quite by surprise and they faced us as best they could, for there can’t be anything more frightening to an infantryman than the sight of a line of cavalry charging at full gallop with drawn swords.
...I remembered my old training and the old sword exercise. As our line overrode the Germans I made a regulation point at a man on my offside and my sword went through his neck and out the other side. The pace of my horse carried my sword clear and then I took a German on my nearside, and I remember the jar as my point took him in the collarbone and knocked him over. As we galloped on the enemy broke and ran...
The line about the sword going through his neck makes sense, especially considering how the movement of the horse “carried the blade free.”
It also clarifies why Napoleon famously shouted to his cavalry, “By the point!”
Thank you Matt! You are one of the few proper history channels!!
Regarding the term dragoon: though the nomenclature seems to be a bit variable, dragoons were often trained to operate both as heavy cavalry and light infantry. Though this wasn't always the case, a big difference between hussars (and similar light cavalry) and dragoons is that hussars were usually armed with carbines that (in the days of muzzleloaders) could be reloaded while mounted. Dragoons were sometimes armed with full size muskets (in addition to sabers and sometimes pistols), which, though they can't be reloaded from horseback very well, are far more accurate (relatively speaking). Accuracy isn't particularly important for line infantry (not that it doesn't matter), but it's crucial for light infantry. Mounted infantry on the other hand, aren't particularly well trained at fighting from horseback. They can be used as light cavalry, but they are (usually) more accurately thought of as light infantry that can operate independently.
This reminded me of the quote from a British officer at Waterloo that the sound of bullets hitting the French cuirrasses was like, "Hailstones hitting a windowpane".
I wish Zack Evans would make an in-depth video about heavy lances warfare on his channel. I was surprised not to find such a video.
A point I remember reading about lances being abandoned during the English Civil war due to the rush to train up raw recruits (in both sides) it was considered better to focus on just pistol and sword as lances required a greater level of drill to be effective. This would have been from a secondary text but perhaps there are Eastern Association or Royalist sources to be researched.
I think another issue was training. In my nonexpert opinion the lance require more training. During the Napoleonic Wars they needed a rapid expansion of cavalry and there just wasn't the time to train lancers. The Poles had a larger recruiting pool of horsemen with lance training and Napoleon used as many as he could get.
Polish hussars lance was drilled inside so it could still be relatively light and while its length was increased.
I really enjoyed hearing you bounce your ideas off each other!
You're both clearly super-knowledgeable.
Caracole tactics (the main way that cavalry would attack pike squares with pistols) ultimately weren't usually all that effective against pike squares, or against infantry with muskets, and were especially not all that cost effective, if/when that was the main thing that you were using your cavalry for in an army, which is not to say that it wasn't still a useful tactic to use, once a general found themselves with a bunch of cavalrymen armed with pistols, in a battle during the pike and shot era.
The value of cavalry during the pike and shot era was their ability to threaten or attack any unit that wasn't a well-ordered pike square, or fortification (but cavalry probably needed to actually charge units of musketeers rather than only shoot them with pistols), and their general operational mobility was a huge advantage as well. Their speed allowed them to avoid most unfavourable engagements, and the various other advantages of high mobility (such as being able to threaten enemy supply lines, unprepared units of infantry, smaller or weaker units of enemy cavalry, etc.). Cavalry remained extremely useful during the age of pike and shot, even if their main armament was lances, as long as they were equipped, trained, and utilized in an appropriate way.
Absolutely. Also, I think the very fact that pikes became so prominent on the battlefield in the 16th century, is testament to just how powerful and devastating heavy cavalry had become, and continued to be, by that time.
I would also point out that with the decline of armor, the penetration advantage of a lance compared to a sword had become less relevant.
Good explanation but like many things there are always exceptions I suppose.
The winged Hussars managed to use them with quite good effect in the 17th century.
Battle of Kircholm was a spectacular success in tactics and success for heavy cavalry.
A feat the Hussars were able to repeat many times in the 17th century.
Hi Matt, I suspect that the fact that the lance can snap or get stuck, and so get lost, after a hard impact contributed to making it unpopular at the HQ level, because it is a logistical nightmare to have lance replacements for all the men who lost theirs, on a long campaign. You cannot leave the field to get a new lance but you can ride back and reload your carbine and it is much easier to transport powder and balls, on the company and regiment level, than it is to transport spare lances.
Yes another collaboration between you geniuses! Thanks a million Matt!!
6:00 using Polish hussars as example for heavy Lancers is kinda misleading, Polish hussars were a modern formation just like Cuirassiers, they simply had a different approach to gunpowder age than the western militaries, they aren't medieval heavy knights
Thank you both for the video
One more point: as far as I know, it also had to do with the available horses and the costs for them. In order to really use heavy lances effectively, you need heavier and more expensive horses. If you do without heavy lances, you can also use worse and/or lighter horses and still have the same effect against armor with pistols and carbines as you mentioned.
Ultimately, this means that when using heavy lances, you can field fewer cavalry for the same cost and effort compared to cavalry without heavy lances. So it also had something to do with the the necessary amount of cavalry and the fact that armies quickly grew larger in the renecaissance. Larger armies required more cavalry and continuing to equip them with heavy lances would have been detrimental to the quantity (or the quality in the context of armour piercing). Lighter horses combined with heavy lances did not produce the same performance. The Husaria in particular demonstrated this several times. In the cases where she herself rode down pikemen, these were units with particularly high-quality and heavy horses.
Polish husaria used hollow lances upto 6.2m long weighing only 3kg. Body armor weighed a further 12-15kg. Thus , large, heavy horses were not a precondition as a husaria rider would weigh only about 100kg with his armor and weapons.
@@michaelmazowiecki9195: Heavy horses are not needed because of the weight of the lances, but to generate power in the attack and to increase the close combat value of the lance. It does not matter if the lance weighs 3 kg oder 4 kg or 5 kg. Any horse can carry a rider with a lance, the weight of the lance is irrelevant for the horse. But with a lighter and smaller horse the heavy lance has a much smaller combat value, as the power for the thrust does not result from the lance itself, but from the weight and speed of the horse, therefore a thrust with a heavy lance is much more effective from an heavy horse.
Also 100 kg is a heavy weight for an horse. If you have an heavy strong horse, it can carry that weight much more easily. Especially for the horses of the husars it is interesting imo, that they were used in battle only if they are at least 5 years old, and usual after an rigoros training of 7 years. Also every husar had around 3 - 6 fighting horses (and additionally further more transport/draught horses). Every of this 4 warhorses (average) was worth between 5 to 10 times the anual income of the husar, so overall in the average the horses alone represent up to several decades of income. No wonder hussars were in the noble class. They were the only ones who could afford such expenses. Good thing money wasn’t what motivated a hussar to fight. He did it for country and glory. I will end with an old polish saying from this period:
“A Pole without a horse is a body without a soul.”
@@ulrichreinhardt8432 horses for rhe husaria were specially bred from crossing Polish tarpans which were very fast and resilient but small, with breeds from the Balkans and Caucasus but not Arabs. The resulting horses were relatively light compared to western heavy cavalry horses, tall, fast, strong and resilient, able to survive on poor quality fodder. Their export was strictly illegal, forbidden and severely punished. Due to the period of the Potop, the nobility became much poorer and could not finance the production of the Polish cross breed so there was a decline in the quantity and quality by the end of the 17th century. Carrying a weight of 100kg was relatively not extreme when compared to western armored cavalry such as Swedish Rajtars or French Cuirassiers who used more massive horses closer to the western tradition of medieval heavy cavalry.
@@michaelmazowiecki9195 : The battle horses for the husaria were not bred from crossing tarpans with eastern horses, alhthough this is claimed sometimes today in the net. This is a missunderstanding because at the height of the polish republic it became usual to name native polish horses tarpans, despite them beeing not of the tarpan wildhorse origin. They were in the average smaller than western heavy cavalry horses, but not that much lighter and quite near to medieval destrier horses. Moreover the size of an horse is not the main criteria that make it an heavy cavalry horse. The battle horses of the husaria were very strong and muscular, and as you said it, resilient, able to survive under harsh conditions and they were by all acounts quite remarkably agile for such a strong muscular horse race.
Also one have to mention, that not all horses of an husaria were battle horses. Like medieval knights centuries before him they had always several horses with them, and some of them of another kind of race, for specialised tasks. Usually they had at least one courser with them and in many cases the rode their coursers into battle instead of their battle horses, especially against lighter and more agile enemies. So the polish husaria were much more in the western tradition of medieval heavy cavalry than the heavy cavalry in western european countries at this time.
Moreover even french cuirassiers were not that heavy if you look at the equipment. They for example did not weight 100 kg. By the way: rajtaria (reiters) were used in sweden, but were an typical german cavalry, even in foreign countries quite often from german origin and they were not an heavy cavalry! They used lighter horses than the husaria (Ringerpferde). So this is completly wrong. An better example and comparison would be lancers and especillay demi-lancers. But Reiters used smaller horses and were lighter than the husaria. You can read here about them: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiter
PPS: I did some research about the use of the word reiters / rajtars in poland in this time. The word was used for every kind of western style cavalry! So it could mean Heavy Cavalry and also Light Cavalry. In this time many germans fought in the polish armies as cavalry, which is unknown today in poland and germany too. Some of them fought as typical german reiters, but others were for example lancers, demi-lancers oder Cuirassiers. There are explicit historical sources in which persons of this time for example named a german unit of cuirassiers as reiters. That is the resaons why today sometimes reiters are thought to be heavy cavalry in poland. But any western style cavalry would be called reiters.
Also about the polisch horses: according to all historical sources the battle-horses of the hussaria were described as big, muscular and strong. Authors from this time said, that they were bigger than turkisch horses, much stronger but not as fast. Because of that the poles did beginn to cross there horses with turkish and especially with arab horses to make them faster. This mixed horses were called Turks and were more expensive im comparison to the ordinary hussars horse.
People need to keep in mind that equipping an Army is determined to a large degree by the equipment and tactics of the enemy. Your tactics and equipment need to adjust based on the enemy, a point missed by many modern military. Still, lancers came back into vogue several times between the Renaissance and WWII. Bengal lancers, Polish lancers, Hungarian lancers, even Prussian lancers.
Meanwhile I've got lego knights with revolvers and lances.
I would love to see a deeper dive into the differences between heavy and light lances, and how they both originated and evolved over the centuries.
As far as I'm aware, the Australian Light Horse charge at Beersheba is the only example of mounted infantry conducting a cavalry charge, using their bayonets in place of swords. Ironically, a weapon designed to defend infantry from cavalry was used from horseback against infantry who had not been ordered to fix their own bayonets (as the German and Turkish commanders expected the light horsemen to dismount rather than carry the charge through).
Thank you for sharing these conversations
Polish Husaria indeed did have pistols. They used both, depending on the context.
Sometimes they were even equipped with long guns.
Brings us back to the advantage of pistols being easier kit to equip a unit with that they can carry themselves. The Hussar often carried two pistols to use after breaking the lance, multiplying the impact of the charge significantly.
The Savoy Cavalry against the Soviets used swords, that was later than the Polish Lancers
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Savoia_Cavalleria_at_Izbushensky#:~:text=The%20Charge%20of%20the%20%22Savoia,the%20Don%20and%20Khopyor%20rivers.
I am quite interested in knowing more about the heavy lancers, the gendarmes, of the 16th century. I know they were still being used during the French Wars of Religion from the 1560s to 1590s.
In early stages of Thirty Years War last german heavy lancers appeared. A note: When there was a war against the Turks, up to 1790s german heavy cavallymen weared all Armour pieces, still remaining in arsenal, as protection against the arrows of turkish/ tartaric mounted archers.
@@brittakriep2938 That's very interesting. I suspected that there were still heavy lancers deployed in the early 1600s, but I wasn't sure.
@@brittakriep2938 Was the Wallhausen hevy Lanzierer not more are theoretical thing?
Or where they realy used in the 1600s ?
@@killerkraut9179 : As far as i , Brittas boyfriend, know , at start of Thirty Years War the very last ones appeared , but only in small numbers, and came out of service very fast. Also at start of Thirty Years War still a number of Bidenhänder was used, they had been still in inventory. When a war starts there still some soldiers with dated Equipment , which is replaced by modern one or given to rearline auxillaries.,
@@michaeljfoley1 : See my second comment.
A lance can harm a man flat on the ground, whether wounded, or shamming, or just taking evasive action, whereas a sword cannot. Napoleonic era lancers worked that way.
That's not exactly true. You can reach to the ground with a sword.
A hoof can. ;)
There are feats where people show off by riding past something on the ground and stabbing it with a sword as they go.
It's absolutely possible if more difficult.
@@101Mant ye i wanna see u pull that off reliably on a battlefield
Polish Hussars solved this problem by using very long thin swords (koncerz). Some of them carried both a saber and a koncerz that was really meant as a backup lance.
A perfect discussion, well done. The lance was described as the perfect cavalry weapon by Napoleon and he converted a large number of chasseurs to lancers. Lancers could reach over a hedge of bayonets and in the peninsula during a rain storm destroyed an English square. One thing not mentioned was that the lance required a lot more training as it was very difficult to manage in a melee. Well done Matt! 🏆
For some reason,the way you are holding that pistol raises my hackles, even though it is perfectly correct as far as I can tell.
Lances largely disappeared because infantry mostly stopped wielding spears and pikes. yes they still had bayonets on long guns but since you have to grip the gun with one hand up near the forestock was you're only really getting a 2-3 feet of extension with the bayonet. and a cavalry sword is at least 3 feet. lances when away because spearing weapons went away, it wasn't the other way around.
Good vid. Only point (sic) not teally discussed was training and cost. The earlier pistoleers did nt need too much training once mastered the basics of riding and firing, en masse. The lancer needed alot more training in both horsemanship and handling the lance. That costs more. The lancer continued in Eastern Europe, where more people were bred to the saddle !?
Love it when you team with Zack
Has any cavalry ever softened the enemy lines with gunfire for then charging in sword in hand?
That was explicitly the goal for Gustavus Adolphus' cavalry. Armed with pistols for the charge, or during the ensuing melee.
Some years ago there was a period when the Norman pil (a type of quarterstaff lance) was spoken of. I haven't heard anything about it recently.
The Swedish Carolean army under Charles XII in the early 18th Century used military rapiers for charging (at least that's the term "värja" to my knowledge used by the Army Museum at Stockholm). Also, in Swedish schools, what in English is known as the Age of Pike and Shot (17th Century), is in the schoolbooks described as an era of predominantly three troop types: pike-men, cavalry and musketeers.
To be frank ulans (lancers) survived well into ww1, fought in sovjet-polish war and met with german tanks in ww2, and the results were not always bad, maybe not because of lances, but it has nothing to do with swords either.
Not to mention that there were a lot of lancers (ulans and cossacs) in the ww1, and they were even used.
No Polish cavalry charged German tanks in 1939! That was a Fascist propaganda myth. Polish cavalry at that time was mostly horse mounted infantry for rapid movement, but fighting on foot.
@@michaelmazowiecki9195
Yes that was nazi propaganda see Charge at Krojanty .
Polish cavalry used also light anti tank guns in WW2.
Curious about of a couple of thing; the amount of training for a heavy lance in a large army, as opposed to a knight with financial abilities and just the plain logistics of carrying heaven know how many replacement lances for the one-and-done weapon. I learn a lot from your presentations, thanks.
It seems that at the end the cavalry returned to its roots. The very first "cavalry", the charioteers of the bronze age, used exactly the same tactic. Charging towards the enemy, shooting arrows, retreating. Again and again and again.
One side factor relating to the increased use of firearms might have been the decline in use of heavy armor. The heavy lance simply may not have been needed as cavalry moved over to buff coats.
A fair amount of cavalry never made that transition.
This might warrent a follow-up on why horse archery fell out of use in western Europe. We know that Roman equites frequently used bows on horseback, and that still during the Carolingian period it was a popular cavarly weapon. The famous Norwegian kings mirror suggest bows or crossbows as cavalryman's weapon in the 13th century. But despite Gaston Foebus mentioning horse archery for hunting in late 14th century France, it seems that by the high medieval period it was a lost skill. Why might this be?
It probably didn't, they've just mostly shifted to crossbow, just like on foot. Mounted crossbowmen were very common kind of troops in Central Europe in particular.
I am Korean. Even in Northeast Asia, archer cavalry was widely used, but lancer does not seem to have been widely used, perhaps because it is not very useful. It is more efficient for a rider to shoot an opposing cavalryman's horse with a bow than to use a spear while on horseback.
Even when cavalry was dealing with infantry, it was safer and more efficient to fire arrows from a distance and roam around the infantry until the infantry formation collapsed, rather than charging into the infantry formation with spears.
Even in Northeast Asia, barricades and infantry square formations were used during battles, so it was suicidal for a cavalryman holding a spear to jump into an infantry square formation. I think that lance cavalry has declined worldwide since the emergence of the Mongolian cavalry, which conquered the world using archery cavalry. And the cavalryman's bow was replaced by a gun.
I remember reading an account of the Polish hussars at Vienna from a contemporary author- he essentially compared the hussars to siege artillery, in that they are really good at doing one thing but not that useful for other roles. I suppose the lance fell into this type of trap- it was great for skewering enemy infantry on a charge, but there were a lot of other roles cavalry needed to do that other tools were better suited for.
Hussars were elite, absurdly expensive, but universal troops (heavy-armed horsemen with a lance, saber, pistol and bow must be universal). However, due to their price, most Polish cavalry units (unlike in the movies) were troops other than hussars. The hussar was usually used like a fist blow, , breaking the enemy ranks at the climax of a battle. EDIT: Hussar units were dismantled mostly because of their price, not prowess.
Interesting to see the photo of the 20th century cavalry firing with one foot on the stirrup and one on the saddle - they must have had horses that were very calm around gunfire to do that!
cavalry charges are such a nebulous topic its actualy beyond belief , and yet regardless of our confusion they somehow made it all work
General Piccolomini, of thirty years war fame, wrote (iirc) that nothing has a shock effect like a well-delivered charge by heavy lancers. I guess he knew what he talked about, considering how lances were still used in places, even as swords and pistols became the main cavalry weapons, and the versatility of the pistol is a clear advantage. After all, the pistol isn't dependent on the ground being nice and flat, and doesn't depend on you being able to coax your horse into ramming the enemy formation.
Great discussion.
Since you mention that lances were impractical for scouting, policing, and other non-combat tasks, I wonder whether this was also done in the middle ages where lances were more widespread? Was there a medieval equivalent to the later light cavalry? Usually medieval forces are described as the heavily armoured mounted nobles and men-at-arms, and lighter levy infantry etc. Did the knights just wear less armour and do scouting, or were there dedicated troops for that purpose like there was later?
What about infantry spears? You mention lances were impractical etc. but weren't spears and polearms the standard infantry weapon for most of the period, and wouldn't they be just as cumbersome? Am I missing something or are the roles of infantry and cavalry just so different that impractical weapons are less of a problem for the infantry?
I really appreciate that both of you tried to answer my question in detail.
If we are going to use only western europe there are a couple examples :
Hobilars-mounted infantry, would usually dismount to fight , used short spears , welsh were paticularly adept at this
Mounted archers-early on they were actual archers , fought dismounted , later on they evolved into light cavalry (armoured and carrying lances) even later they became indistinguishable from the gendarmes
Mounted Crossbowmen-popular in germany , italy and poland , fought on horseback
Border horse-border between england and scotland , light cavalry , used lances
I have limited riding experience, but I did ride to an overnight camp with the Boy Scouts and a lance would have been super annoying in the forest. I'm not surprised they dragged them on the ground. Otherwise you'd get them tangled in every plant and shrub. Which would be a really bad place for the lance to be located in an ambush!
This issue of lance vs pistol was explained by Francois de la Noue, a French military commander during the French Wars of Religion in the late 16th century:
"Whereupon I will say that although the squadrons of lancers do give a gallant charge, yet it can work no great effect, for at the outset it killeth none, yea it is a miracle if any be slain with the spear. Only it may wound some horse, and as for the shock, it is many times of the small force, where the perfect Reiter do never discharge their pistols but in jointing, and striking at hand, they wound, aiming always either at the face or the thigh. The second rank also shooteth off so the forefront of the men-or-arms squadron is at the first meeting half overthrown and maimed. Although the first rank may with their lances do some hurt, especially to the horses, yet the other ranks following cannot do so, at leas the second or third, but are driven to cast away their lances and help themselves with their swords. Herein we are to consider two things which experience hath confirmed. The one, that the Reiter are never so dangerous as when they be mingled with the enemy, for then be they all fire. The other, the two squadrons meeting, they have scarce discharged the second pistol but either the one or the other turneth away. For they contesteth no longer as the Romans did against other nations, who oftentimes keep the field fighting two hours face to face before either party turned back. By all the afore-said reasons, I am driven to avow that a squadron of pistols, doing their duties, shall break a squadron of lancers."
I'd love for you to explain the battlefield mechanics of a knight. I've never understood how they're employed and especially supported on the battlefield
When Wood composite, Aluminium, Kevlar and Carbon finally became available to the average blacksmith it superseded the old heavy timbers, reducing the workload and exhaustion level of the _common_ noble.
Also, Cavalry advanced to the tactic of riding around the defensive square in a circle, much like The American Indians (who only used cavalry) always did to well-armed settlers and small squads of isolated Army units. This tactic used a mix of lance, bow, rifle and war hammer. Sometimes a shaken fist was used to great advantage.
Damn I love when you focus on history.
'Horsemen in no mans land' by David Kenyon is an excellent book that shows how cavalry did in fact play a large contribution in WW1.
Great video lads
I think that 16th and early-mid 17th century battles are massively misunderstood by the wargamer/military history afficionados. On the continent (can't speak for the British niche), battles in this age were decided by cavalry. So in contrast to what the "pike & shot" era seems to imply, it was cavalry - not the pike square - that dominated. The pike square was the only means to hold the ground against cavalry domination.
I'd say that the main battlefield role of the pike squares in this age war to provide shelter and to serve as anchor points for their own cavalry. Cavalry battles are fluid and chaotic affairs (note how many generals died on the battlefields in this age!). Cavalry is quick to retreat and quick to rally UNLESS pursued. And this was exactly the role of infantry: To fend off pursuing enemy cavalry, to allow their own cavalry a safe space to rally and re-engage.
That's not to say that infantry - and preserving one's infantry - wasn't important. Infantry was needed to conduct sieges - just as important as open field battles in the operational sense. Also, a cavalry without infantry support will not win a pitched battle. But infantry alone is not a decisive arm in a pitched battle. Pike squares don't win battles. If threatened by cavalry, they're unmanoeuverable, they don't pursue a routing enemy, they don't dissolve the opponent's army.
I'd also like to point out that pike squares have plenty of problems when engaged closely by cavalry.
1) They can't send out their musketeers as skirmishers any more - which is probably how musketeers prefered to engage most of the time, i.e. as skirmishers.
2) If the cavalry is venturing really close, the musketeers are forced under their pikes. This process alone could cause plenty of confusion in a pike square, as noted by contemporary treatises.
3) And being forced under the pikes must have drastically decreased the fire volume of the square (no more infantry caracoling, musketeers squished together uncomfortably under pikes...). I would not rule out that a caracoling cavalry unit might well have generated a higher volume of fire than these compromised musketeers. That's why pike squares and the arrangement of muskets around them seem to have focused quite a lot of thought on "cover by fire" (overlapping arcs of fire). If one part of the formation came under pressure, other parts remain unengaged and can still fire at the enemy to ease the pressure. Thanks to the pike-formations' depth, there were always some musketeers who were not forced under the pike and could keep up their fire.
4) I'd also like to point out what a horrible morale effect a caracole must have had on the infantry. Whereas a cavalryman takes his chance (of getting shot) every 5-10 minutes or so for a few seconds (riding close to the formation), a relatively small number of men in the square find themselves under continous fire. I wouldn't want to stand there!
I just published an article on this in Medieval World Magazine!
Logistics. 1) Carbine ball & powder easily transported vs spare Lances. 2) Heavy horses cost more to field, require more feed & water vs lighter horses. A cavalry man with a carbine rifle & sword, will do the job of breaking lines better and sustained (reloading vs broken lances).
its not the same thing but I always think its the Longbow stuff all over again. Heavy Cav lancers were very useful but other technology came about that made getting more troops available for combat with less training but close to equal or better effectiveness. A trained Longbowmen/ trained Lancer were hard to come by to recruit and replace from losses.
A knight was what we today call a weapon system. the man itself, the Armour, the horse had to fit together, being fine tuned.
You missed out the horse in your presentation. Good trained horses for the knightly charge were rare and high prized, not easy to "reproduce" in case of losses.
and with the armies getting bigger in the 15th century they made an ever smaller percentage of them. and beeing on the tip of the attack the losses on pikes and muskets were high and not at all easy to replace.
And by the way: "the Lance" was the smallest unit of a mediavial army. normally the knight and one or two men of arms on horse, an horse archer, several infantry men, and servants (exact combination differs through countries and centuries)
Yup. To give an example, in XVIIth century Poland, a battle horse could cost as much as a few villages including all of the buildings and peasants living there.
The thing that I find interesting about lances and lancers was that during their heyday the US never really got into lances and lancers. I think that the US briefly toyed around with the idea of lancer regiments but uktimately never adopted the idea or adopted it for very long. At the same time, from what I've read, the US never adtopted many of the types of cavalry that were used in Europe stcking with only dragoons and regular cavalry before eventually merging the 2, and after the Civil War, having the cavalry act more like dragoons (riding into battle and dismounting to fight) than traditional cavalry.
considering they mostly fought guerilla style raiding wars with the Native tribes between the civil war and WW1, that is not too surprising
@@SnarkyZazu "Guerilla" style tactics were employed by European Settlers of N.A. - from the 1600's as they adapted to the environs & martial tactics of N.A. Indigenous peoples.
@@SnarkyZazu Well documented from early settlers/colonizers through the North American War For Independence from England. Significantly Pre-Dating your statement.
Perhaps but the plains natives used lances.
@@rachdarastrix5251 No. Not Perhaps. Well Documented Fact.
Good discussion.
I remember drawings on military history books fromm my childhood showed the wingued hussars with the following offensive armament:
- heavy lance
- koncerz
- saber
- pistol or bow
I imagine the armament changed across time and even depending on the individual soldier and situation, but even if it seems a bit much, I don't totally discard that at some points and certain situations, as the most elite of the elite of a relativwly powerful country, the polish hussars could have carried so many weapons... What do you think? Would it be possible and practical to carry so many offensive weapons + the heavy cuirass?
I mean, i think that being on horseback definitely helps with carrying all that stuff, especially since they had ways to mount lance for charges iirc
Well, I disagree with some of your assessments of why (heavy) lances disappeared from use in the XVII century (gradually might I add, Austrains/Germans and Hungarians used lances all the way up to the siege of Vienna in 1683, Poles weren't the only people around using lances at the time).
4:30 All the treatises from the period that I know of outright state that a lancer is superior in comparison to a cavalryman armed with a pistol.John Cruso in his *"Military instructions for the cavallrie, or, Rules and directions for the service of horse"* explained why lancers were gradually disapearing from battlefields. Namely lance is harder to master and also more expensive to use. A lance can cost a lot of money, certainly even as much as a pistol but you usually use it only once and then it gets destroyed. Therefore pistol, although worse and doing the job of the lance, is a much cheaper substitute.
The best way I can describe it is to compare it to the use of the Welsh/English longbow versus the crossbow in the Middle Ages. Crossbows were certainly way more popular across Europe but that doesn't mean they were superior in every aspect to the longbow. The English had the social and economic structure (and they placed a lot of effort into keeping it) that allowed them to filed longbowmen while other European kingdoms lacked and weren't willing to invest since crossbows worked just fine.
The same can be said about heavy lancers. Most European states lost the ability to field them because of changes to economic and social structures within their societies that came with the Age of Discoveries and because of the changes in how the state was participating in war and how it was financed.
I also don't agree that the main role of a heavy lance is armour piercing. That's just one of many advantages it gives but I don't have a time to address it now. Cheers, and thanks for this interesting and thought-provoking video.
Why would lances be so expensive? Spears are often mentioned as being cheaper than swords in the Middle Ages, and lances seem far less complex compared to pistols. Maybe fancy ones like the hollow Polish lances were expensive, but why wouldn't a simple spearhead on a wooden pole be relatively inexpensive?
@@fridrekr7510 If we are speaking of what was referred to in this video as heavy lances then even the Western European ones were partially hollowed, glued, painted et cetera. In general making one is quite labour intensive. And you need lots of them for every lancer. Even if individually they are cheaper than pistols they end up more expensive in use as one rider can go through multiple lances in one battle.
Also, lances are anything but simple pieces of wood. That's probably one of the biggest misconceptions about them.
Yep, my impression reading some contemporary treatises was also that the authors lamented the decline of the lance. It's a skill issue. It's hard to use a lance and most aristocrats (let alone commoners...!) did not have sufficient training anymore. Apart from that, authors also agree that a lancer needs a better (more expensive) horse than a lowly cuirassier.
There were no real drawbacks to lancers. A lancer without a lance (or who has broken his lance) is still a cuirassier...
@@MaximilianM-eg2zg You are absolutely right. While writing my original comment I didn't have enough time to touch all those points. Thanks.
To address another point from the video. Range. Pistols didn't really offer a greater range than lances. The effective range of an XVII century pistol was only about three meters. Some cavalry lances in the XVI and XVII centuries exceeded 6 meters. Both Polish and German sources state such numbers.
I find the whole lance thing both interesting (I'm descended from infamous Border horsemen) and confusing - the one thing that confuses me - how do you use it? Presumably it's like a bee's sting once it's stuck in your opponent, you're lanceless. With the sword you can use it again and again.
I know this is a dumb question, but I have read many books and sources on the 'prickers', as they were called, and it's never clear what happens at the point of engagement.
I'm no expert, but it seems your question assumes a lance point always ends up transfixed in an opponent, which may have happened on occasion but was not the case in many instances. Most of the time the point just slashed or ripped through only part of the target, or just grazed them.
Well, if all of your guys kill one each of their guys, in an even fight that's their army gone. Since most forces will rout way before you get to that point, this strikes me as one of those problems that seems bigger than it is. And lancers would have swords or whatnot as sidearms, which they would take out after the lance is stuck in someone.
Cavalry is a shock unit, and the single shot pistol employed as a carracole may damage a square, but will not break one because of the lengthy time required to reload. The horse and rider are more more expensive, more vulnerable to gun fire, and much larger in cross section, than the infantry. What do you do with a lance as you reload? You stick it into the ground. The large caliber revolver was revealed during the American Civil War as the weapon of choice for Cavalry, and 4 revolvers on the saddle were a desirable load out.
13:50 seems to me javelins from horse back would work quite well too maybe one of them old time cast iron hand grenades but with a handle add that to the momentum of the horse fling it in and ride off
The Polish, who used the heavy lance perhaps for the longest time, considered it requiring extensive training both for the horsemen, as well as the horses. This training seems to have largely disappeared in the West by the beginning of the 17th century. Some Poles who traveled the West and entered or just watched jousting competitions wrote how inadequate the skills of Western lancers were. Pistols were easier to use effectively.
So here we've described the heavy lance as armor-piercing or armor-defeating. How? Wouldn't the curvature of any good armor glance and redirect the head of any blade to the path of least resistance?
What types of heads would these heavy lances sport?
This is worth testing in its own right. I can easily see a couched lance being extraordinarily powerful, but I can't see any "blade" puncturing armor.
Nicely curved armour will redirect the enemy's point significantly more than non-nicely-curved armour. That doesn't mean it's going to work anything like all the time. "Worth doing" is not the same as "foolproof". And a lancer is going to know how that stuff works--he's wearing it himself, he practices with people wearing it all the time, he's going to try to aim to minimize the effect.
What I don't understand is why there wasn't a resurgence of light lances when the bayonet did away with pikes. I would have thought that lancers with lance a bit longer than a bayonet musket would just roll over infantry.
The heavy and long lance was disproportionate to the cost of maintaining such formations. The heavy cavalryman with the long lance was damned expensive to produce and its effectiveness diminished with successive decades. This can be seen very well on the example of the Polish hussars (probably one of the last countries to have this type of unit) at the end of this formation, during their charges against Russian infantry formations, they had to attack 5-6 times to finally smash the enemy infantry and despite the fact that, in addition to the lance, they had a special sword (koncerz - used instead of a lance when lost), a sabre and pistols.
Although I honestly don't know whether, with the disappearance of pikemen formations in favour of infantry with muskets and bayonets, a Polish hussar with a 5-metre lance wouldn't have wiped out a quadrilateral of infantry - just a question of whether the losses during a charge would opt for maintaining a formation in which even the horse must be of a special breed and very well trained.
And I am not talking about the First War, because there the mobility and possible surprise attack already counted, otherwise you would have been swept away by repeating rifle or machine gun fire.
If I have a linguistic bush, I apologise, I was typing from the translator
+scholagladiatoria *Notwithstanding the bullpup rifle as the ideal firearm for today's Mountain Cavalry, the tricorn lance was a consistent **_coup de grâce_** for horsemen.* The 侍 _Samurai,_ retainers to the nobles o' the 大日本帝国 Greater Japanese Empire, used spears that could slash after a fashion as well as deliver a fatal thrust.
0:55 “we’ve got some ideas. You hit me with one”
* *Gets hit by a lance* *
It's wild to think about the possibility of a 1918 Lancer wielding a cavalry receiver, a Colt 1911, and potentially a Winchester 1897 or a Browning BAR. I know they didn't, but they are contemporary.
Well, i have heard of british-indian cavalry using machineguns around that era
@@juncheok8579 I had no idea, but that seems reasonable. Thanks for that info!
It's a point I hadn't really thought about until I watched this video, but it was only a little more than a decade between the end of the second Boer war and the beginning of WW1. So no doubt there was a lot of cavalry / mounted infantry thinking still in the army in 1914 and beyond.
I'd like to hear about why throwing javelins went out of favor
I feel like literature (and modern cinema) has taught us that a cavalry charge will "sweep away" a enemy like the Riders of Rohan and orcs...but after initial impact with an enemy in a charge...how useful is a heavy lance? A Napoleonic light lance can be used to thrust repeatedly at a variety of angles, but what happens to the heavy lance after the first one or two enemies are impaled? Would a sword become preferred simply because of the variety of attacks possible? If a heavy lance is rendered useless...would the time it takes to draw a sword in a melee be a question of life or death that can simply be answered by starting with the sword to begin with?
Really, anything after your guys have killed an opponent each is kind of first world problems. But the thing is that a lance charge against non-pike infantry will tend to do a lot of concentrated damage in a short time and a small space, breaking the enemy's formation. Once their formation is broken they are very very vulnerable and will tend to start routing, making them even more vulnerable. A sword charge is not as effective in those all important minutes of impact; it's less likely to break the formation and penetrate deeply enough to just keep going out the other side. And a cavalry charge which does not penetrate deeply enough or break the enemy's formation completely enough will tend to get bogged down; once the horses slow down to walking pace a lot of your advantage is gone, and your guys are just sitting there on immobile horses, surrounded on three sides. In fact I think if I had a force of sword-only cavalry I'd tend to go for an oblique charge, to just cruise along the front slashing and then keep going--but again, that's not going to break the enemy formation and win the battle right there.
8:57 when you put it that way you would have thought that grenadiers on horse back would be a better option ride up light the fuse toss it into the pike square and hoof it the other way
2:51 This photo shows that the British also used a red and white pennant on their lances. This is new for me. What this is about? Is this some international symbol?
Without seeing the video, my first responce was that the lance is a cumbersome thing to carry around all day.
In a charge they have value, in every other duty that cavalry can do its a nuisance to carry it with you.
In WW1 German cavalry also used lances, at least in 1914 (recce role). I remember stories from my grandmother, who was very frightened (born 1904, in Belgium)
6:36 Bang and bang? This was exactly the tactic used by the heavy cavalry. She struck in formation, returned, took new lances and struck again. At a time when heavy cavalry was the queen of the battlefield, the lance was more dangerous than the gun.
How does level of armor correlate to the use of lances, especially heavy lances? At some point there was a transition to much less armor, especially on the extremities, which also would make slashing attacks and less-powerful thrusts more effective again?
They made lances out of bamboo? Maybe you should do a lance comparison video with different lance materials.
To paraphase: To a man with a lance every engagement looks like a cavalry charge.
Matt looks like he’s trying not to laugh when the other guy is talking about alarms, but he’s obviously thinking something else 🤣🤣🤣
The pike made the lance obsolete. The lance became useful again when the bayonet replaced the pike.
Main reason was like you said, there weren't big cavalry charges anymore. And a lance (certainly a heavy lance) is only usefull for that I guess...