Could Carthage have developed horse archers?

[Morte66]

This is a question which occasionally tickles me.

ISTM they don't particularly suffer the "rain on the bowstrings" problem. They had suitable horses. But horse archery never made it to the west. I guess they never had neighbours to copy them from, and their existing javelin cavalry weren't too shabby, so it didn't happen under its own steam.

But I wonder could some enterprising Safot have taken it into his head to hire a load of Scythians and get it done? Such things to did occasionally seem to happen -- the Ptolemies got their Galatians, for example. I'm wondering if there's something fundamentally stopping it (can't get the glue for the laminated bows or whatever), or it just never came to pass.

Thoughts welcome.

[Cute Wolf]

Well, 2 practical reasons :
1) Scythians are too far away to be contacted, especially before you got some aeroplane to go to Russia, and if they did have some contact, Carthaginian merchants are more interested in buying ambers and spices, rather than copy horse archery tactics.
2) Horse Archery tactics are something that was very hard to be practised, not every people, even who had neighbours that practice horse archery, could develop a horse archery corps of their own. You need to have pretty good light cavalry tradition to do that.

[Lazy O]

But the carthaginians had a cavalry tradition, and so did the numidians...

[anubis88]

But the carthaginians had a cavalry tradition, and so did the numidians...

Yes but not a Horse-Archer cavalry tradition. Horse-archery was extremly difficult. The Sarmatians, Parthians, Scythians were tribes who lived with the horses, and they were all nomads, so this is how this tactic evolved. The Carthaginians were far from nomads.

[Cute Wolf]

Yes but not a Horse-Archer cavalry tradition. Horse-archery was extremly difficult. The Sarmatians, Parthians, Scythians were tribes who lived with the horses, and they were all nomads, so this is how this tactic evolved. The Carthaginians were far from nomads.

You need to either nomads or had nomad bloodline to archeve that

[bobbin]

They already had an excellent tradition of light cavalry in the form of the numidians (who were nomadic btw) and used the composite bow so I can't think of anything that would have physcially prevented them, if they had the will to do so.

The main problem is that AFAIK no one ever adopted a fighting style without contact with someone who used it, the galatians are a bad example to use as they had already been in direct contact with the successor kingdoms and were notorious mercenaries at the time.

[Arjos]

Concerning the hiring of steppe nomands one could imagine something like the Sultans of Egypt with the Kipchaks.
But as bobbin said the Numidians where closer, I'd say that they didn't adopt it because their interest laid in regions where Mounted Archery was difficult to fully employ at its best...

[Zarax]

Let us also remember that it is only under the barcids that the carthaginians started developing a "professional" army closer to successor style rather than the previous mix of city-state and eastern models (meaning a citizen "elite" augmented by mercenaries and local levies).

Also, "arming" the numidians with horse archery tactics could have been a very risky option, as while allies they were not exactly beyond turning on the Carthaginians if a substantial enough gain could be made (Massinissa should be a good example, even Syphax was at times on the brink of allying with the romans as told by Livy).

[WinsingtonIII]

But as bobbin said the Numidians where closer, I'd say that they didn't adopt it because their interest laid in regions where Mounted Archery was difficult to fully employ at its best...

I'm assuming you mean the Carthiginian's interests? I guess I would agree that Italy (with its mountains) and Iberia were not necessarily the best regions to employ horse archer tactics in (although the central plains of modern-day Spain would seem to be decent for horse-archer tactics...)

If you mean the Numidians, I'm not sure what you mean. I don't see why the North African scrub would be so bad for horse-archery, it certainly worked well enough for skirmisher cavalry.

[Ludens]

Horse-archer armies require enormous amounts of pasture to feed the horses. This is not a problem on the steppe, so a steppe warrior always would bring a string of horses to serve as remounts. This made it possible for them to employ a terrifying cycle of rapid attacks followed by a quick retreat that would quickly exhaust a normal cavalry army. The key to this tactic is mass: a continuous, short-distance assault by numerous horsemen that are continually supplied with remounts. Yes, steppe tribes could not field as many men, but all were mounted, mobile, and could keep going for a long time.

Armies of settled nations often couldn't bring as many cavalry, and certainly didn't have as many horses, so this is not feasible for them. IIRC Watchman mentioned that the horse-archer corpses of the Mamluks and the Byzantines used stationary rather than mobile horse archery, presumably because the high-speed, short-range attacks would exhaust their horses too quickly (and you don't want to do this at low speeds if the enemy can shoot back).

[Burebista]

The maurs used HA on the same terrain that Carthage once owned , so it is not impossible to maintain. the problem is that they are not that effective in non-steppe lands . Couple that with a lack of tradition or even a lack of defeats against someone using HA explains why HA was considered useless there.
If you are talking about Camel Archers...now that's feasible. those are effective units especially when combating lightly armoured numidians in desert regions. Carthies didn't use them , but ithey definately should have.

[Arjos]

I'm assuming you mean the Carthiginian's interests?

I meant Carthaginian's interest ^^

[Cute Wolf]

Junguruntha will ultimately pwn the Romans, and sack roma if he employed horse archery tactics.

[Zarax]

Unfortunately for him Jughurta tried romanizing numidia, which would have made harder to pull off HAs.

[Iain.]

The maurs used HA on the same terrain that Carthage once owned , so it is not impossible to maintain. the problem is that they are not that effective in non-steppe lands . Couple that with a lack of tradition or even a lack of defeats against someone using HA explains why HA was considered useless there.
If you are talking about Camel Archers...now that's feasible. those are effective units especially when combating lightly armoured numidians in desert regions. Carthies didn't use them , but ithey definately should have.

I don't think that the camel had been introduced to Africa at that point. I'm not sure though.

[Olaf The Great]

The camel came from Baktira, right? Or was it Arabia?