Lance&Bow

This is my first post in the EB subforum so first of all I`d like to thank the EB-team for making the best mod ever!
Please forgive me in advance as I will bother you with some silly and unimportant questions every now and then.
My first silly question is:
Where would cavalry-units eqipped with lances and bows keep their lances while using their bows?
I know that historically it has been a popular choice of cavalry armament but I just can`t figure out where one could keep a 4 metres long kontos-lance without it beeing in the way while arching or even worse it getting between the horse`s legs.
Does anybody know where they carried them?
A special type of quiver attached to the saddle?Leather straps to fix it to the left shoulder?

I've often wondered about that. Wouldn't mind knowing what happens after you skewer someone in a lance charge, either. If you're on a horse that's going at 30kph, how are you going to pull the lance back out before it's ripped out of your hands?

Actually, thats a very good question. I have a bit of experience with horses and personally, I don't think a good lancer can be a good bowman? I'm sure someone will find something, but I just think because of the nature of the weapons, its one or the other, but not both. Plus, the horses need to be trained very differently, as its a weapon as well. This has to do with temperament, aggressiveness, understanding attack angles/speeds, commands, certain types of quick high-G movements, and all the other whatnots.

If the lance was short and designed to throw, then they could be carried in a case like arrows. In this case it would just be a short range dart tosser, much like a longer-ranged archer?

This may have been one reason the Kimmeri fled before the Scyths? Lancers vs Bowmen? But, as I said I'm sure someone has something.

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Originally Posted by mrtwisties

I've often wondered about that. Wouldn't mind knowing what happens after you skewer someone in a lance charge, either. If you're on a horse that's going at 30kph, how are you going to pull the lance back out before it's ripped out of your hands?

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That's a good question. I know that this isn't the same as using a lance, but maybe their are similarities between the two. U.S. Cavalry tactics dictated that when using a sabre several precautions must be taken to keep hold of your weapon when you stab someone with your right hand. First hold you sword with your hand twisted to where your pinkie finger is facing up towards the sky. This keeps your wrist from moving up when you hit your foe. Upon doing this you are leaning forward on your mount with your butt off the saddle while staning up a bit in your stirrups. Since their were no stirrups back in ancient times, this posture is probobly irrelevent. Upon contact, you pull your sabre in a counter-clockwise direction out of your foe to allow your blade to pull up and out of him while causing the maximum amount of damage. When using your left hand, you put the pommel on your left shoulder and use it like a lance. The other two methods for attacking the enemy is in a downward slashing method when your enemy was on the ground and you were passing by him. Slashing is conducted in a whirling method. I assume these attacking methods came from the French as they all had French names which in fact I can not remember. I hope this helps. If this doesn't, please don't talk trash because these tactics are two thousand years out of the time frame of the game.

It's all very interesting. I'm trying to imagine how the sabre guy manages to pull his sword out in time.

I don't think the kontos was used in conjunction with a bow. The kontos is a very specific weapon as I see it, only in use with the quintessential Parthian kataphraktoi (which doesn't include the early bodyguard). The lances used by the bow/lance cavalrymen is, I think a lot shorter. That would seem to be the only possible explanation. A 4m kontos simply CANNOT be placed anywhere except in your two hands, to be gotten rid of at the earliest opportunity, which just doesn't work out for a bunch of people who have to shoot off their quivers before charging, and whose primary weapon in the first place was the bow.

The charge values for horse + bow guys is pretty low...

</using EB as a source>

The later Romans for example seemed to have no particular trouble wielding "composite" cavalry armed with both lance and bow. The scheme turned up commonly enough anyway. I understand some kind of strap/loop arrangement was used to suspend the big thing, leaving the arms free to use the bow.

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This may have been one reason the Kimmeri fled before the Scyths? Lancers vs Bowmen?

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Extremely unlikely. The steppe nomads were big on archery from the moment they figured out how to ride a horse, and nigh certainly even earlier. Throwing-spears have their uses, even for horse-archers, but precious few steppe cavalry ever lacked a bow (as you may note in EB, even those capable only of close combat due to engine limitations are modeled with bows).

Besides, the nomads kept pushing each other around even with functionally identical equipement anyway.

"Pure" lancers were always more of a sedentary-folk thing, partly due to the different character of their warfare and partly as they had a harder time developing and maintaining horse-archery skills than the steppe guys (who learned it in everyday life).

Possibly, at least for the bigger ones, you leave the lances with an attendant while you use your bow. The big problem with this is that most steppe nomads wouldn't have attendants just looking on while their masters fight, though.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Extremely unlikely. The steppe nomads were big on archery from the moment they figured out how to ride a horse, and nigh certainly even earlier. Throwing-spears have their uses, even for horse-archers, but precious few steppe cavalry ever lacked a bow (as you may note in EB, even those capable only of close combat due to engine limitations are modeled with bows).

"Pure" lancers were always more of a sedentary-folk thing, partly due to the different character of their warfare and partly as they had a harder time developing and maintaining horse-archery skills than the steppe guys (who learned it in everyday life).

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Right, That is what I thought too. I'm not completely sold on this idea yet, but the archaeological and textual evidence of steppe horse archery is lacking before the Scyths. I know it doesn't make much sense but sometimes these things are cultural and not logical, like the Mexica's continued use of the Atlatl and dart over the bow and arrow. Also a lancer can just be a form of light to medium cavalry.

There was actually perfectly good sense in the retention of the atl-atl there, chiefly related to the power of the local bows (reads as "not so hot"). The darts had some pretty nasty penetrating power I understand, but the device was tricky enough to use that it was something of an "elite" weapons used by nobles and such who could spare the extra practise hours.

Which is around the same reason horse-archers might have found throwing-spears useful; the range may not be much, but by what I've read of experiments conducted with thrown spears from horseback at speed they have some scary punch.
Plus of course they make a much better hand-to-hand weapon than a bow...

The steppe nomads were so universally fond of the point out of what might be termed purely Darwinian military reasons - namely, if you didn't have one and your opponent did, he'd make a pincushion out of you without much fear of reprisal. And the average piss-poor tribal horse-archer was rather ill suited for close-combat duty anyway, that's for sure. The armoured aristocrats were of course another thing, but were AFAIK pretty faithful to that bendy piece of wood and horn too.

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Originally Posted by ferrizuel

This is my first post in the EB subforum so first of all I`d like to thank the EB-team for making the best mod ever!
Please forgive me in advance as I will bother you with some silly and unimportant questions every now and then.
My first silly question is:
Where would cavalry-units eqipped with lances and bows keep their lances while using their bows?
I know that historically it has been a popular choice of cavalry armament but I just can`t figure out where one could keep a 4 metres long kontos-lance without it beeing in the way while arching or even worse it getting between the horse`s legs.
Does anybody know where they carried them?
A special type of quiver attached to the saddle?Leather straps to fix it to the left shoulder?

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A special type of quiver attached to the saddle?

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https://i122.photobucket.com/albums/...usCalliope.jpg

:yes:

The Romans started using something similar, I understand.

Dunno if it works with a four-meter spear, but the practice of Medieval Middle Eastern "composite" cavalry was to keep their spears held between their thigh and the horse's flank when it wasn't immediately needed.

With the Mexica not really. Thats one reason they couldn't expand into the Tarscan territory to the northwest. Yet, maybe you're right in the case of rate of fire vs knock down?

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Originally Posted by mrtwisties

It's all very interesting. I'm trying to imagine how the sabre guy manages to pull his sword out in time.

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It's all pretty simple, since your right wrist is inverted, when you pass by your target, the hilt pushes forward with the rider and the tip of the blade turns down in a counter-clock wise direction which rips up the target even more and allows you to extricate your sabre from the victim. While you are passing by your target, you rotate your right arm backwards and twist your wrist to its normal position which helps you to be able to xtract your blade from your victim.

...okay that's confusing.

A thought about the lance-sheath shown on the coin though, wouldn't that mean the sheath would have to be very deep, deep enough that pulling it out may be slow, or that the lance was short and therefore didn't have that much penetrating power/range? I get thepicture from the coins that the Romans never adopted the kontos, but I know pretty certainly they did adopt some long lances...

What's shown on the coin is a quiver/sheath for short-ish throwing-spears, presumably also useful as a melee weapon if necessary.
Obviously.

Watchman's right, its like a long rife sheath that sets behind the leg.

this might be a bit off topic, but it seems pointless to make a whole new post...

was the composite bow or long bow more powerful? and, could you use a longbow from horseback (seems to me you would need stirups to stand up)?

Composite bows, by the virtue of cleverly making use of the qualities of their component materials (wood, horn and sinew) put as much or more power into a smaller package than an all-wood ("self") bow can even hope to (due to raw structural limitations).

Longbows as such are too large to be effectively used on horseback - but the Japanese dai-kyu is an example of clever use of asymmetrical shape to get around that.

well if you look at the sarmatian koisaka vessels, you clearly see a armoured lancer with a bow and gorytos slung at his side. so yes they did use the combo in some form of another in battle.