No Replacement For Displacement

The Battle of Adrianapole. Gothic heavy cavalry crushes Roman legions.

http://www.roman-empire.net/army/adrianople.html

Posted by: Henry Shieh on January 3, 2003 11:19 AM

The battle of Adrianople doesn't show that at all. First of all, the Gothic cavalry are not operating alone. By the account you give, the cavalry engaged the Romans infantry in their unprepared flanks, while the legionaries were already engaged w/ the Gothic infantry. I don't see any lesson here other than the folly of leaving an inadequately protected flank.

Posted by: John Bono on January 3, 2003 04:08 PM

The problem commanders had was getting most medieval (or earlier) infantry to NOT break ranks in the face of cavalry charges. Except for the few professional armies, cavalry could rule the battlefield because most infantry of the ages could stand up to them psycologically (sp - I know, but my spell checker's, the wife, is asleep).

Posted by: Alex on January 4, 2003 12:01 AM

Change "most infantry of the ages could stand up" to "most infantry of the ages could not stand up."

Sorry for the goof.

Posted by: Alex on January 4, 2003 12:12 AM

Horses are VERY difficult to convince that they should impale themselves. An unbroken square never died by cavalry alone. I thought I was the only geek that cared about this bs......

Posted by: Larry on January 4, 2003 02:04 PM

Even with well trained proffessional infantry there was always the chance that they would be in such a state of disorder, from having holes punched in their line by cannon balls, moving in formation over uneven ground, or a hard day of fighting, that they might not respond quickly enough to the order to form a square. If that was the case, a cavalry charge was deadly.

Of course, the cavalry suffered similar limits to their ability to charge effectively.

Posted by: etc. on January 6, 2003 06:00 PM

Cavalry did occasionally break infantry, even when that infantry was disciplined and in the proper formation. During the Peninnsula War KGL heavy cavalry broke a French square after the Battle of Salamanca. The cavalry was unsupported by infantry or artillery, so in theory it should not have broken that square.

Posted by: D Newton on January 7, 2003 07:26 AM

Cavalry may or may not have been king of the battlefield when armies contended.
The real reason for the beginning of the mounted, armored fighting man was after the fall of Rome.
The mounted, armored fighting man was superior to the raiders which plagued the countryside. The raiders might have been Vikings, Magyars, or Saracens on the coast of the Med. Or they were homegrown out of the broken societies left over.
Additionally, even travel by individuals or in small groups was perilous because of epidemic brigandage. The mounted, armored fighting man was able to face the perils of the road. He could escape, could charge, carry armor he couldn't wear if walking, carry a selection of weapons he couldn't carry if walking, and even see farther from a position eight or nine feet in the air.
The mounted, armored fighting man was an individual originally, not a member of a formation of similarly-equipped men. That's why the connection between the horse and minor nobility (caballo and cheval, caballero and chevalier)and his individual position in society. He wasn't a mounted private soldier.
That came later, and came at a time when cavalry was not at all undisputed king of the battlefield, but an indispensable part of the combined arms.
Churchill, writing about his ancestor Marlborough, refers to a battle in which the victorious Allied cavalry pursued the broken French through the night, and the survivors were so mentally unhinged that they could not be, upon returning to French control, reassigned to field units. They had to be put into fortress units until they got their composure back.
That's where cavalry makes their money.
But it's not the knights of the Middle Ages.

Posted by: on January 7, 2003 03:01 PM

Um, if you want to argue that cavalry had little success in frontal attacks, that's one thing. But the poster's citation of Adrianople (he could have cited any of hundreds of others... Cheronea, Issus, Hydaspes, Cannae, Zama, need I go on?) of cavalry's ability, due to its speed, to capitalize on tactical or operational advantage, to attack infantry from the flank, the rear, or just before they were ready, is a valid example of the entire raison d'etre of the horseman, one that you shouldn't dismiss so easily. He's right, and your original post is, at best, oversimplified...

Adrianople and all those other battles were not just a matter of keeping an open flank... lacking surprise, footmobile infantry can't take advantage of open flanks, let alone penetrative, or envelopment attacks: the defender can always get his own infantry into the breach first. Cavalry can, though. That's sort of the whole point.

Look at Granicus, where Alexander's cavalry routed the Persian cavalry, then surrounded all the Persian infantry on a hill, and trapped them there until the phalanx managed to catch up. Which arm won that battle? Does it even matter that Alexander never wasted men and horses charging the infantry from the front?

And since we're on examples... Hastings in 1066. Classic defeat of infantry by cavalry in a prepared position (possibly accomplished by luring them out of that position by low-cost feints... again only a tactic cavalry can perform effectively).

Posted by: BruceR on January 12, 2003 01:13 AM

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