The Myth of the Cavalry Charge

[MajorFreak]

*bump* it's such a cool thread. (10 pages long. you can find the first page here (http://www.totalwar.org/ubb/Forum7/HTML/002606.html))

I was thinking of this game again when i saw TheTwoTowers (LOTR) and the bit where Gandalf leads Eomer's cavalry into the Uruk-hai's pikemen.
http://www.numenoreen.com/Images/wizardryindeed.jpg
rummaging around i found a cool pic about an old battle people debates lots about in that archived thread.
http://www.scotlands-war.com/images/battle_charge.jpg
http://www.scotlands-war.com/bannockburn.html

Ooooh. here (http://users.bigpond.net.au/ozoneocean/knights.html)'s an artist concept of heavy cavalry charge (medieval)

Well, please don't flame me for resurrecting an old thread (if it's been moved here i'd appreciate a link)

[Kraxis]

When I saw the Trialer where you don't see the full charge I thought Peter Jackson had made a massive mistake in letting the light/medium cav they are run straigth into the pikes with no visible effect on the cav.

Then I saw the movie and was already very biased against the scene... But to my great enjoyment the pikeuruk-hai were blinded by the light of the morningsun. So they lowered their pikes and thus the cav was able to get among them. GREAT And then we all know that pikes are worth nothing.

BTW, the Rohan cav are very similar to the cav the vikings used. Light lances and scalemail or light chainmail, but most notable are the helmets, they are very similar to vikinghelmets.
Now people will say that the vikings didn't use cav. But that is wrong, they just didn't use them in their raids, imagine having several horses on small open boats for a week perhaps... nahhh that won't go well.
When at home they used cav in their own battles and did so too in Russia. The difference was just that the nobles didn't fight that much mounted and it was every mans right to dismount. But the vikings were very capable riders on their stocky little ponies.
Theose horses are very similar in size to Mongol ponies but they have an advantage in having five gaits compared to the normal three. You can still see them in Iceland. The two extra gaits are the Tølt and Pas. Pas have the legs going in pairs on either side, slightly faster than trot and somewhat slower than gallop.
Tølt is a bit slower than trot, but is remarkably steady. I have seen a man holding a full beerjug and only losing about 2cm from the top after having ridden a few hundred meters. In both Trot and Pas they lost more than half.
A perfect platform for attacking moving targets.

[Ligur]

After the patch I had a very mythical feeling when a formation of Armenian Hvy. Cav. smashed against my Feudal Sgt's and pushed them back half the field while messing up my horseshoe formation real bad while at it.