Slitherine

The development of infantry weapons and tactics in Pike & Shot and the rest of the blackpowder era seems pretty straightforward. So long as infantry could protect themselves against cavalry, the trend was toward more and more firepower - more shot, fewer pikes, shallower formations, etc.

But cavalry tactics seem to go around in circles, particularly the best weapon to use against other cavalry. To whit:

1) At the beginning of the period, most Western European states make use of lancers
2) The Dutch win some battles with pistol-armed cuirasseurs. So everyone learns the caracole.
3) Gustavus Adolphus develops a more aggressive charge, in which cavalry fire their pistols before closing in with the sword
4) In the 18th century, armies decide that the pistol prelude is really a distraction. Better for cavalry to charge with the sword alone.
5) Napoleon starts using Polish lancers. Everyone rushes to adopt the lance, which remain in vogue throughout the 19th century, until no one uses cavalry in a shock role any more. Back to #1.

Pike and Shot illustrates steps 1, 2, and 3 but not really step 4 and 5, because that's when its historical focus ends.

What went on here? I don't think the changes were driven by cost-effectiveness, because the price of any weapon was dwarfed by the cost of equipping and feeding and replacing all those horses.
So...

1) Was there a scissors-paper-stone dynamic, in which sword-beat-pistol-beat-lance-beat-sword?
2) Did some armies use weapons requiring a higher degree of skill because they had a more solid tradition of horsemanship? Ie, a good lancer beats a good swordsman, but a bad lancer gets beat by a bad swordsman?
3) Was this just trend-chasing? The Dutch beat the Spanish so everyone imitates the Dutch. Hussars win a battle so everyone adopts hussars.
4) Was this driven by other technological developments? Ie, pistols lost some of their effectiveness vis-a-vis swords when everyone discarded their armor. A lance can outreach a bayonet-equipped musket but not a pike.

This is a interesting topic, however, I don't know nearly enough. I do think the main determinant of the quality of cavalry at any time is the ridership of the riders (did they come from a horse culture, were there subsidies to take up riding, or were they from a sedentary, agricultural, defensive minded society)? Once a culture goes sedentary, it is hard to get back horsemanship skills, since there is a skills gap with no one to teach it. I would postulate that the choice of weapons was determined by cost and availability, and weapons played a very small part in cavalry effectiveness, compared to the ridership culture. Within a rider culture, everyone has easy access to horses. Feed horses? We eat the horses! While guns and lances would be relatively expensive compared to the bread and butter bows and swords. The opposite is true for sedentary cultures.

Case in point the Sich Cossacks. Now different historians say different things about the relative quality of their infantry versus their cavalry, with some praising their fine foot while deriding their dodgy cav in the face of winged hussars. Others say EXACTLY the opposite, praising their fine riders while bemoaning their unreliable foot.

However, the Cossacks, once they started building and holding garrisons in forts, rapidly (2 generations) lost any semblance of cavalry. My theory you give a rider culture (nubians, hungarians, mongols) ANY weapon, and they will do fine, while you can dress up a sedentary culture in the finest armor and weapons and they will still do poorly.

I won't see too much in the weapons evolving, since they sometimes go in weird direction. I know within Pike and Shot certain eastern european lists actually move from guns and crossbows to bows since that is what happened, while one expects the opposite. In a sense, once armour is discarded, a good rider can fire several shots for each carbine shot, with no problems reloading, so bows would eventually get an unexpected bump in effectiveness.

Within the Pike and shot System I am not too sure what impact mounted is supposed to be, but the lancers pistol impact is the rock paper scissors if I recall right.


PS.
Nijis, are you from the mount and blade community? If I recall correctly, there was a Nijis that made the extremely well made, historically consistent and thought out mod Empires of Faith, hands down one of the best treatments of History as an understanding of multiple influences (cultural, religious, military, economic) to grace digital media.

" 5) Napoleon starts using Polish lancers. Everyone rushes to adopt the lance, which remain in vogue throughout the 19th century, until no one uses cavalry in a shock role any more. Back to #1."

The French had in their service 1 Polish lancer regiment, serving with the Vistula Legion, and 1 in the Guard (classified as chevau-legers) which was only given the lance after Wagram. The 6 or 7 French lancer regiments (converted from dragoons and chasseurs a cheval) were created to serve as light cavalry, each regiment was assigned to each of the heavy cavalry division (cuirassiers and carabiniers a cheval) of the cavalry reserve.

this is hardly a return to the lance considering the French fielded 14 cuirassiers and 2 carabiniers regiments as their shock cavalry and that the lancers are used as light cavalry (the official denomination is chevau-legers). The lancers regiments were created to counter enemy irregular cavalry, specifically cossacks, and to screen in front of the heavy cavalry divisions. this is a far cry from the lance-carrying super heavy gendarmes companies of old.

Hi Kongxinga! I remember you from the forum. I really appreciated your support for the mod, and thanks very much for the kind words! Alas, a persistent multiplayer mod turned out to be very high maintenance, but I hope to use some of the principles in games and mods in the future.

Good point about "rider cultures" - I suspect, as with the Cossacks, that when you're drawing irregulars from a frontier area, you'll let them use the weapons with which they are most comfortable. States will micromanage weapons systems when the army itself provides the bulk of their training.

I very much agree with your point about the quality of the riding mattering more than the weapon - in skirmishing and screening. But there is a lot of evidence that doctrine and drill made a big difference in battle, where so much depends on cavalry's psychological impact. It's my understanding that Napoleonic French cavalry had the reputation of being rather poor riders, particularly in comparison with the Austrians (who of course ruled over Hungary.) But French drill and doctrine allowed the use of much larger masses of cavalry than their opponents. Shock substituted for skill, in other words. (Source: http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/French_Cavalry.html).

this is hardly a return to the lance considering the French fielded 14 cuirassiers and 2 carabiniers regiments as their shock cavalry and that the lancers are used as light cavalry (the official denomination is chevau-legers). The lancers regiments were created to counter enemy irregular cavalry, specifically cossacks, and to screen in front of the heavy cavalry divisions. this is a far cry from the lance-carrying super heavy gendarmes companies of old.

Okay, fair enough. But the lance did make a comeback during the post-Napoleonic era among regular cavalry. According to Wiki, for example, the German army at the start of WWI deployed 26 uhlan regiments. Their entire cavalry force was 10 divisions * 3 bde/div * 2 reg/bde = 60 regiments, so lancers make up nearly 50 percent of their force. So lances don't supplant sabres, but they're certainly considered a lot more useful then they were during the 18th century.

If the role of the lancer is to counter light cavalry in loose formation, while the sabre-armed heavies provide the shock, then you're right - 19th century lancers are very different than the old gendarmes. Some of the quotations provided by napoleonistyka however suggest that lancers were preferred so long as the men were fit enough to handle the exercises, with sabres being the "safe" choice if recruits were of uneven quality.

I would argue the lance was a very difficult weappon to use and required extreme "horsemanship" as well as profiency in the weapon itself to be effective.. at least the Poles under Nap. said as much.
Not sure if it was nafziger whom said implied/said it, but in 1813 the prussians armed their large contingents of Landwher cavalry with lances to give them a moral boost (hastily raised conscripts) but were likly better off without them...

As Fogman implies, it wasnt until after the Nap wars that some nations reequipped some regiments with lances, but by then it hardly mattered as single, then multi shot cartridge carbines were coming on line anyhow,.

Speaking generally, it would appear all the societies that were 'famous for the lance appear to have been countries / tribes with social systems that kept such martial skills in place due to a class sytem: warriors, knights, Polish nobility 17th c etc...

Also one needs high esprit de corp as to use a lance is commiting to offense at a GALLOP with little recourse to defense( if one misses on a pass) , especally when little to no arnour was worn.

Really cool site that has a LOT of interesting bits
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/web2.airm ... oleon.html
(note, one has to explore all th evarious links to make the most, cavalry tactic link is way on the bottom of the page..)

Good to see you Nijis! I liked Empires of Fatih because it is among the few digital works that properly takes the big picture view of history. History should not be learned by memorizing useless, unconnected facts, but understanding cause and effect. IE "The Vandals moved into Rome because they themselves were fleeing from other tribes, and that other tribe was migrating because of x". The vast majority of people think history is arguing whether French Hussars had 3 buttons or 4 buttons on their coat, or memorizing useless numbers and names. I read your alternate history empires and their specified divergence points and found myself nodding enthusiastically, and thinking, this must have come from someone with historical knowledge. It also helps the mod itself was technically impressive, and especially enjoyed the set piece battles, and the caravan raiding. You know where to find me if you ever pursue something similar.

Back on the main topic, I am in full agreement that doctrine trumps raw training and skill, which is why a native warrior would probably out shoot and out fight a soldier, since the native does it all day as part of his daily life. However, pair a company of soldiers versus a company sized mob, and the situation reverses. I wasn't aware on the French cavalry doctrine front, but thanks on informing me on that. I do know that the French were poor shooters (relative to say german Jaegers, line Red Coats etc), but were high in elan, which led to the development of the deep formations like mixed order or battle columns to use that elan to charge into the enemy for melee and break them. Because it is very demoralizing for an opponent, whose only escape from having to melee some mad French soldier with a bayonet is to shoot them all down, since the French are unlikely to give up unless you do shoot them down, and your fusil only fires twice a minute, and there are X of them, so maybe I need to make plans to move away since the French are determined to invade my personal space. I would say this is another instance of doctrine and tactics trumping skill deficiencies.

I would also like a shoutout to another post Napoleonic lance comeback in the form of Santa Anna's Mexican lancers, which were pretty instrumental in the final storming of the Alamo, among other battles. However, I think in this case the lancers came about from the residual French military influence, which can be seen in a lot of other parts of Santa Anna's army. So perhaps weapons were cultural in the sense that you use what the surrounding institution or people use, and people don't think too much about it. In short, I think familiarity bias and "This is the way we do things", which is very prevalent in militaries, explain most weapon choices. I don't know or think there was any explicit thought or reasoning given to the use of lances in this case.

Only when there is a rude shock from the effective use of a weapon that the military is jolted from their slumber, and they rapidly COPY what the enemy does. We see that all the time in history, say Romans adopting stabbing swords after fighting Iberians, or even a lot in this period, with the copy cat in the form of shallower formations, reserving pistols for a charge. I don't even think the copy cats need a deep understanding on why a certain use of a weapon is effective past superficial thinking that the enemy is using A and winning, we need to do A too!

I would say "This is the way we do things here, recruit." and "Help, they are killing us, copy what they are doing" probably explains 80% of weapon choice for any army. For the rest where true innovation was the reason, we probably know of that since those were the game changers that get recorded in history (the club, the bow, the penetrating bronze axe, man on horse etc).

Another thing, and I think this point is insufficiently represented in Pike and Shot, are maces. These are used in a swath from East Asia through much of Russia and Eastern Europe. The fact these were used in that contiguous area seems to imply some cultural reason, or I use it because my neighbour uses it. I can't think of much use elsewhere, and I can't think of a good cause for that.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=EPQtAA ... 11&f=false

letter 18366, 25 december 1811, to general Clarke, the minister of war, tells you what Napoleon thought of the use of lancers.

it is the order to assign lancers regiments to cuirassiers divisions; and directives on doctrine pertaining to them: what is their non battle role (scouting, escort, screening, communication), and battle role (pursuit after the cuirassiers have routed the enemy).

I'm more impressed by the return of armour (the french cuirassiers of 1914 don't look different from the ones of 1814) and FRONTAL & CENTRAL shock tactics (rather than probing flank envelopment tactics), especially the mass charges led by a purposely constituted cavalry reserve, that go with it, than the reintroduction of the lance in the napoleonic period.

I have a couple projects in the pipeline, Kongxinga. They're a bit different than EoF, but I'll definitely send you a message when I'm ready to test them!

a native warrior would probably out shoot and out fight a soldier, since the native does it all day as part of his daily life. However, pair a company of soldiers versus a company sized mob, and the situation reverses.

Exactly. It occurs to me that one reason for the rise and fall of the cavalry pistol - main weapon in the late 1500s, supplementary weapon in the 1600s, and useless distraction to military planners in the 1700s - is because 18th tacticians placed less focus on the mechanics of sticking steel into flesh than on using one formation to rout another formation. For an individual soldier, a pistol is clearly an asset. For a formation, it distracts from the momentum of the charge.

Only when there is a rude shock from the effective use of a weapon that the military is jolted from their slumber, and they rapidly COPY what the enemy does. We see that all the time in history, say Romans adopting stabbing swords after fighting Iberians, or even a lot in this period, with the copy cat in the form of shallower formations, reserving pistols for a charge. I don't even think the copy cats need a deep understanding on why a certain use of a weapon is effective past superficial thinking that the enemy is using A and winning, we need to do A too!

Romans adopting the Iberian sword is a good example. I think there's definitely a lot of "imitate what just beat you."

letter 18366, 25 december 1811, to general Clarke, the minister of war, tells you what Napoleon thought of the use of lancers.

Thanks for the citation! It does seem to clearly assign lancers to supporting roles when charging infantry, with the sabre-armed heavies providing the shock. But unless I misunderstood it it's awfully brief, and does not address how they would be used against other cavalry.

Not sure if it was nafziger whom said implied/said it, but in 1813 the prussians armed their large contingents of Landwher cavalry with lances to give them a moral boost (hastily raised conscripts) but were likly better off without them...

Really cool site that has a LOT of interesting bits
http://www.napolun.com/mirror/web2.airm ... oleon.html
(note, one has to explore all th evarious links to make the most, cavalry tactic link is way on the bottom of the page..)

That's quite interesting re the Landwehr - failed experiments are arguably more interesting than the ones that worked.

I think the link is the same as the napoleonystika - quite an amazing and comprehensive site!

I only gave it a quick read-through, but I got the impression that Napoleon's intent was to preserve the integrity of his heavy cavalry. Big men on big horses are kind of slow and lumbering anyway, so you don't really want them skirmishing and acting as vedettes.

In the back of my mind is the notion that, especially in the later years, there were several mixed forces of lancers and light cavalry, often in the same unit (and I think they were always referred to as cheveau-legers). But here I think what may be going on is he wants to preserve the heavy cavalry for shock action, and use lancers for normal cavalry functions.

So the next question that comes to mind is why lancers and not chasseurs? If a unit of cuirassiers is used for heavy shock action, perhaps a normal chasseur unit wouldn't pack enough of a punch, so to compensate he wanted to replace his chasseurs with lancers.

Another possibility is that lancers are more effective against formed infantry than chasseurs (horses don't like to impale themselves on bayonets, and a lance has a longer reach than a musket). I can imagine that cuirassiers and lancers would be complementary in an anti-infantry role. But against routing troops any type of cavalry would probably do.

But in spite of that (or maybe I'm just wrong) Napoleon doesn't talk about using lancers and cuirassiers the way I would expect him to in letter 18366:

"When the cuirassiers charge columns of infantry, the cheveau-legers (i.e. lancers) should be placed in the rear or on the flanks in order to pass through the intervals between the regiments and fall on the infantry when it is routing, or, if one is dealing with cavalry, to fall on the cavalry and pursue it with a sword in their backs".

So the cuirassiers are supposed to do the hard part, but the lancers are there for the pursuit.

This is just a thought ( although I do believe contemporary accounts give it some meat) is that lancers were much better in the pursuit of routed troops , terrorizing them because of the lance ( thus keeping them routing) but also they caused alot of causalties. (stab wounds being much more deadly than sword slashes.) Light cavalry generally used curved weapons not so good for the thrust.

It interesting about the integration between heavies and lancers, and I always assumed it was done in the French army in 1812 to provide protection from the swarms of cossacks the French woudl have been facing. However, Austrian and Russian armies often had regiments of mixed units, Ie Russian Hussars squadrons where the ist rank actually had lances... I cannot find any accounts of how effective this was ( and why or why not it wasnt copied/used more often..)

on a side note and more specific to the era of this game, an interesting and illuminating discussion regarding the rather blurred lines between Reiters, Aquebusiers and Kuriassiers in the 16thc :

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=266148

One of the chaps seems highly knowledable and appears to be using sources that likly are not readily available for the average enthusiast.

Napoleon's sword in their backs comment in the passage I quoted gave me pause.

Why would lancers pursue fleeing cavalry with 'swords in their backs' (lit.: lower backs/kidneys) ?

Not being as familiar as I should be with the language of the period, I am assuming that it's just a contemporary idiom I'm not familiar with and shouldn't be taken literally.

Can anyone shed light on that?

Philippe_at_bay wrote:Napoleon's sword in their backs comment in the passage I quoted gave me pause.

Why would lancers pursue fleeing cavalry with 'swords in their backs' (lit.: lower backs/kidneys) ?

Not being as familiar as I should be with the language of the period, I am assuming that it's just a contemporary idiom I'm not familiar with and shouldn't be taken literally.

Can anyone shed light on that?

I think its just a figure o speach with perhaps a little bit of practicality:
I have read that cavalry chasing routing infantry would ride by their left or right and swing a vicious backhand swipe into the face as they rode past... being more effect than chopping down into a thick colback or backpack etc
This wouldnt work as well vs fleeing cavalry ( cannot easily ride past something that has close to the same speed, and thus a swing or stab into the back would make more sense)
This is really just a guess on my part!

De Brack's influential 'Avant Postes de Cavalerie Legere' on the lance, p. 61-66.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=iEhKAA ... ie&f=false

De Brack who served with the 'Red' Lancers of the Guard considered the Cossacks the best light cavalry in Europe (p. 91-92) and a model for French lancers.

------------------------

He refuted the idea that Frenchmen cannot make good lancers or that the skills come naturally to Poles (as exemplified by the Guard Polish Lancers) p. 236-241.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=l5wBAA ... rs&f=false

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nice english translation with lots of pictures (incomplete).

https://books.google.ca/books?id=_RMwhA ... ck&f=false

The impetus for the reiter was the wheelock pistol, which could be used and reloaded on horseback. Since reiters were effective against both traditional heavy gendarme cavalry, while being cheaper, and also against pike units which they could blast from close range they quickly became indispensable. Old school heavy cavalry was still effective, as evidenced by Polish successes long into the 1600s, but the price/performance equation simply did not favour it anymore.

As already mentioned reiter cavalry could charge with swords as well, but the impetus for the sword-first shock approach was the better disciplined Swedish units (who were conscripts with decent peacetime training, at least until the prewar batch got killed). The best cuirassier units also seem to have been able to pull this off with regularity, with Piccolomini's coming in for regular praise, but the quality seems to have been more uneven. The "Swedish school" also spelled the end of the cuirassier when the economising Gustavus found out that lighter armoured shock cavalry provided more bang for buck.

With that the end point was pretty much reached as far as cavalry was concerned. There were some small developments and fads, like the hussar craze in the 1700s and the lancers in the 1800s, but they were not fundamental changes. Also the Napoleonic lance was, as already mentioned, a light one and not the reappearance of the old heavy shock version used by knights and gendarmes.

Thanks for the link to TMP by the way, very interesting facts and discussion.