Cavalry

[English assassin]

I've gathered from posts elsewhere that people are not too happy with the treatment of cavalry in RTW, (too fast and too powerful) and some of the threads on, say, napoleonic warfare have touched on the effectiveness of cavalry.

I'd be interested if anyone can post any good material on the relative effectiveness of cavalry vs infantry? (I think we would have to say, battlefield tactically. On a wider scale the uses of cavalry in recon, harrassing foragers and baggage trains, etc, are clear).

From my own limited knowledge I can't think of many battles where cavalry was the decisive arm, I seem to remember one of Alexanders, Granicus maybe, and I suppose in a sense Hastings (though equally you could say that illustrated the ineffectiveness of cavalry just as much). Steppe armies were cavalry heavy I gather, and the Corsican himself is supposed to have regarded cavalry as the decisive arm (especially telling from an artilleryman, too).

It seems to me that cavalry is too expensive, and too easily affected by less than ideal terrain, to have been dominant in western Europe. But I don't know much about it and I'm hoping someone else does.

[cegorach]

I believe that, when it comes to Western Europe, cavalry was almost always supporting infantry. Only in a part of Medieval ages and maybe during the fall of Roman Empire it was really more important than infantry.
The problem is that in Western Europe armies didn't have to march for hundreds of miles to achieve their goals, especially in densely populated areas such like the Netherlands or Italy.
It was very different in the Eastern Europe - for example in one cavalry raid ( in the XVIIth century) Polish light cavalry of colonel Lisowski travelled for the distance between, let's say, Budapest and Madrid.

But still cavalry could fight suprisingly well in some battles, especially when armies of the East were fighting armies of Western Europe - Mongol, Polish or Ottoman armies and units have achieved great victories fighting vs. western style, infantry-heavy, armies.

Regards Cegorach/Hetman

[TinCow]

There are plenty of battles that have been decided by cavalry throughout history, but they are certainly a fraction of those decided by infantry. My understanding is that during Roman times cavalry were used on the flanks (usually just one) of the infantry line. The cavalry clashed when battle started and the winner then flanked the opponent's infantry line.

As such, for me cavalry seem correctly balanced in RTW. The main problem we see is that the AI doesn't use good battle tactics. It pretty much just rushes with everything its got... cavalry being just another unit in the line. If the AI were to actually assemble a proper battle line and use its cavalry to intercept the player's cavalry and then to flank, you would see much more accurate battles.

[metatron]

Given the speed a horse is traveling and the weight of it's rider, the horse itself, and armor for both and that likely targets are in fact moving and not bracing for an assault, I'd say simple physics is going to tell you that the sheer momentum of a well placed cavalry assault can rout even the toughest infantryman.

[Theodoret]

Cegorach1 mentions Poland-Lithuania. This site gives a lot of good information on them. Both the Polish/Lithuanian armies and those of their intermittant enemies the Tartars of the Crimea and the Cossacks were very cavalry heavy. Interestingly there is mention of Tartar allies giving the Swedes a bit of trouble in one of the campaigns towards the end of the 17th century. Rather strange to have a modern (for the time) European army being taken apart by something as archaic as a horde of horse-archers.

[cegorach]

Cegorach1 mentions Poland-Lithuania. This site gives a lot of good information on them. Both the Polish/Lithuanian armies and those of their intermittant enemies the Tartars of the Crimea and the Cossacks were very cavalry heavy. Interestingly there is mention of Tartar allies giving the Swedes a bit of trouble in one of the campaigns towards the end of the 17th century. Rather strange to have a modern (for the time) European army being taken apart by something as archaic as a horde of horse-archers.

The Cossacks were not very good cavalrymen at that time, the Tatars were.

And the Tatars shouldn't be underestimated, even when their forces were pretty small - no hordes.
These guys were the best cavalrymen at that time and the most agile.
The Swedes were really scared because of them.

[Krusader]

Some battles by my knowledge where cavalry played an important part:

Hydaspes river - 327 BC
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...0of%20Hydaspes

Greek cavalry played a major role in securing Alexander a victory!

Adrianople 378 AD.
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/titl...=S1478&ser=CAM
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...0Adrianople%20

The Roman legions were routed, when the Gothic cavalry surprised them. The Romans hadnt thought of them at all. Roman historian said it was the worst Roman defeat since Cannae.


Liegnitz 1241
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...20of%20Legnica

The Poles,Germans and Bohemians + Templars and other orders faced the Mongols for the first time. The Mongol Horse Archers fired volley after volley against the enemy and withdrew, luring the enemy after them, before springing the trap at hills or other terrain where Mongol heavy cavalry was hiding. The European Knights didn't catch the Mongols, and the infantry were mostly shot to pieces, and when they withdrew or routed they were charged.

[Ironside]

During the 30-years war, cavalry became more and more important, making the armies very cavalry heavy, but infantry was needed for sieges, so it was impossible to get an all cav army. And artillery isn't easy to move fast either.

The cavs importance lowered when the infantry got better to stop the charges.

[Watchman]

A Swedish-Prussian allied army under the overall command of Carolus X did indeed run into a force of Tatars allied with the Polish in the late 17th century. Alas, the Tatars didn't last too long in a straight fight against the cuirass-wearing, pistol-toting, hyper-disciplined regular cavalry neverming their infantry support (who not too long afterwards tore the valiant but futile charge of the Polish Hussars to pieces with murderous volumes of fire) and were quickly chased off the field.

Such "irregular" light cavalry forces had considerable military value in Early Modern and later warfare, but usually not in pitched field battles. They made far better scouts, harassers and ravagers than line troops, the exception perhaps being Napoleonic-era Russian Imperial Guard Cossacks who could take on and rout armored cavalry with their long lances. (Though Napolonic heavy cavalry had just a helmet and a breastplate...)

Now, one thing all sources I've seen agree on is that when cavalry attacks infantry in close combat the single most important thing for the infantry is to stand fast or even counter-charge should they be (over)confident enough to do so (most weren't, and for a good reason). This has more to do with the nature of horses than anything else - the beasts are very careful about their footing and will pretty much flat out refuse to run full tilt into what to them appears like a solid, immobile obstacle in their path. I've been told horses can "brake" awfully fast in a pinch, and by most accounts it seems that if the infantry held ranks and didn't begin to scatter the most of the horses would pull short before impact and the horsemen would have to "duke it out" the old-fashioned way.

Of course, having a long spear or lance means the cavalryman can hit the infantry when the horse/rider pair still has momentum left and can better attack them without risking himself or his mount - for example the Swiss halberdiers with their three-meter shafts turned out to have a major problem with the four-meter chivalric lances in an open-field battle and as a result were integrated into the pike squares.

If the infantry loses its nerve and begins to waver, nevermind run away, then the cavalry can charge home for full effect. Once this happens the infantry are in serious trouble, as then the horsemen can ride over and amongst them with relative impunity and make full use of their weight, speed and height advantage. Around Napoleonic times it was observed that even relatively small cavalry forces could utterly obliterate even large ifantry concentrations in a matter of minutes should they catch them unformed, and the same seems to have been the case since humans learned to use horses in war (chariots obey the same basic principles).

If the infantry stands and fights (if only because the pressure of the back ranks keeps them from going anywhere), however, it becomes less important what they're armed with. Pikes, spears, polearms and anything else which grants great reach and/or killing power are obviously advantageous, but for example Roman legionaires could and did beat Persian cataphracts with just their short swords so it's not really required.

Be that as it may, where cavalry was used it usually made up the specialist attack arm of any army well into the 19th century and the appereance of
rapid-fire rifles and machineguns. There were exceptions naturally, usually bought about by geographical constraints - many parts of the world are quite simply ill suited for raising horses or have large amounts of terrain where cavalry loses much of its power (Scandinavia has both, which gave the Swedes a bit of a problem to overcome when they started building their Great Power status in the 17th century).

Outside the battlefield, on campaign, the role of the cavalry concentrates on its mobility. Mounted men are simply far better at longe-range reconnaissance, foraging and devastation than the poor footsloggers can ever be, and naturally the best way to keep enemy cavalry from tearing up your hapless foragers is to screen them with your own cavalry. Ditto for skirmishers, though foot archers backed up by spearmen or similar anti-cavalry troops also work (the "Franks" mostly used this technique down in the Middle East). The superior mobility of mounted men also enables them to carry out surprise attacks or secure strategic bottlenecks away from the main force, which is naturally highly useful.

On the downside horses are a pain on logistics. This is particularly the case with the grain-fed, stable-bred warhorses "civilized" nations used, as fodder had to be brought along or scrounged up and the beasts could not subsist for long on just grass, but also afflicted the steppe nomads and their vast herds of grass-munching ponies. Grasslands to graze on are anything but a certainity outside the steppe, and even there they're a bit season-dependent and quickly exhausted by a passing army.

It's probably not exactly a coincidence the Mongols never proceeded too far outside the Great Eurasian Steppe, and certainly the nomadic conquerors who did (Hungarian-Magyars, Avars, Toba, Huns, you name it) soon had to give up the pastoral life and start feeding their horses from the peasants' larders...

[cegorach]

"A Swedish-Prussian allied army under the overall command of Carolus X did indeed run into a force of Tatars allied with the Polish in the late 17th century. Alas, the Tatars didn't last too long in a straight fight against the cuirass-wearing, pistol-toting, hyper-disciplined regular cavalry neverming their infantry support (who not too long afterwards tore the valiant but futile charge of the Polish Hussars to pieces with murderous volumes of fire) and were quickly chased off the field."

I guess you mean the battle at Warsaw in 1656 ? Rather bad example. Tatars ( 2000-3000 of them) attacked Swedish supply wagons, but cause it was to difficult ( Swedish firepower) retreated as usual which Swedes counted as complete victory over them.

Tatars were really dangerous e.g. at Prostki during the same campaign they caused mayhem which was the major factor to the Polish victory.
Their major weakness was the fact that they were vulnerable to massive gunfire, although even this shouldn't be over estimated.

'pistol-toting'

Against Tatars it didn't matter much - pistols and muskets were very inaccurate, although western commanders were often obsessed with firepower, they believed it is able to stop everything and everybody - one of reasons why HRE and Swedish armies were rather not very successfull in battles against Turkish and Polish armies.

'tore the valiant but futile charge of the Polish Hussars to pieces with murderous volumes of fire'

The charge was badly prepared ( 1500 Winged Hussars vs. 18 000 Swedes and Brandenburgians) and not supported ( Jan Kazimierz was a weak commander).
This battle was rather close to a draw ( Poles lost 2000 men, Swedes and Brandenburgians almost 1000)and really lossess caused by gunfire were not so serious as many believe.

BTW - I hope you didn't use 'The Age of Wars' ( or similar) written by a swedish author ( I don't remember his name) who wrote 'Poltava' as well. In Poland we consider this one of the funniest historical books written about Poland ( prologue) by a foreign writer.
Especially the description of elite Winged Hussars is incredibly stupid.




About the rest I agree, generally. But again I repeat gunfire was rather ineffective - in Napoleonic time it is counted that about 300 - 3000 muskets were required to kill one man in one salvo.

Regards Hetman/Cegorach

[econ21]

Hetman - I am not sure you are right about musketfire in Napoleonic times. At close range, I suspect a volley could be decimate an approaching close ordered formation. My reading of encounters between French and British infantry in that period is that firepower was sufficiently effective to make melee with the bayonet very rare. Typically, British musketry would halt a French infantry advance - the French would try to respond in kind rather than charge home - and often could be sufficiently effective to make the French break in the face of a subsequent British charge.

Even today Americans estimate many hundreds of rounds are fired off for every enemy killed - but that does not mean modern firepower is ineffective.

[Watchman]

By early 1600s a pair of wheellock pistols backed up with a sword was the cavalry weapon in most of Europe. And why not ? In the average soldiers' hands it may not have been accurate beyond much beyond five meters, and could only penetrate decent armor at about five meters or closer, but unlike the earlier lance (which had at best the same reach) it didn't occupy hands or get in the way when not in use. And of course firearms are kind of scary even for veterans.

'Course, the things were pretty darn expensive too, what with being mechanically fairly complex and all - for example the Swedish had to import most of theirs, and official records suggest a pair was about as expensive as a cavalryman's armor...

[Watchman]

A close-range salvo discharge from a massed infantry unit was a nasty thing. Very nasty. The musketeers would of course be kind of screwed if the foe didn't falter and break off and they lacked close-in defenses (like pikemen or cavalry of their own - later on bayonets simplified matters), but that wasn't actually too common of an occurrence.

Or, well, depends on definitions. When infantry attacked infantry there tended to happen a queer version of the game "chicken" - as the discharge was only really effective from fairly close in each commander had to hold his fire as long as possible, to maximise the effect and avoid the nasty case of the foe marching right next to you to fire his own salvo while your guys are helplessly reloading, but if they held it for too long...

Well, at close distances those volleys tended to cut people down like so much grass. It took a pretty determined unit to continue advance in the face of the heavy casualties in the front ranks and the psychological impact, and most had to pull back to reform.

The same more or less applies to cavalry, who had the added problem of the horses being big and squishy targets, and duly tried to avoid head-on clashes with well-ordered infantry. If they had to attack, it usually happened (assuming the infantry officers knew their stuff and the men followed orders) they'd get a point-blank volley in the face which usually made the first wave of horsemen break off the charge. The second and later waves had a better change of charging home, but that was not something to count on either.

Around Napoleonic times cavalry avoided head-on collisions with steady infantry if at all possible, and let artillery and skirmishers to "soften up" the line before attacking. The same more or less worked with infantry - the deep assault colums the French used early on, mostly because they didn't have the time to drill their troops in the volley-countermach routines, were frightfully vulnerable to volleys but almost unstoppable if they could get into close combat (due to local numerical superiority and the advantage of momentum and determination attacker has - though usually the defender broke and fled before the actual contact). Hence the voltigeurs, loose-order light infantry who screened the line troops, sniped at the enemy and if possible drew their fire (whose effect was much reduced against such dispersed targets).

As such loosely ordered units could not rely on the "giant shotgun" principle of the mass salvo to have an effect they naturally had to be better shots on the individual level.

And then there were the light regimental guns. The nasty little buggers had a far longer accurate killing range than musketry, could especially in a pinch fire several times faster than muskets, and normally switched over to grapeshot once the enemy was within about hundred meters. I assume imagination can supply the idea of what those could do to massed formations.

Proper artillery batteries tended to need only a handful of infantry as close guard - their firepower was so staggering they could usually fend for themselves right well for entire battles.

[Mount Suribachi]

2 excellent posts Watchman. I see you're new round here, with posts like that I hope we see a lot more of you

[Watchman]

Gee, thanks. Though be warned - I have a tendency to ramble off topic...

Oh yeah, I've also gotten the impression that toward the end of the 17th century the pistol fell from its exalted position as the primary shock weapon of mounted men, and until about mid-1800s or so "cold arms" (ie. swords) were the main weapon of close-combat cavalry. The pistols (now flintlocks, both cheaper and more reliable than wheellocks) were still carried, and dragoons (who were really just glorified musketeers on nags as far as real cavalrymen were concerned) had their carbines, and some little more specialized forces (around Napoleonic times known as uhlans) had lances, but on the whole a spirited charge with cold steel was the thing.

It actually took the First World War to persuade military thinkers to accept the fact that thing was seriously obsolete, but a lot of men and horses died pointlessly before the idea took ground.

[econ21]

Americans learnt that cold steel was no longer the thing, even with the cavalry, before the Europeans. Confederate cavalry - e.g. Mosby's raiders - found two six-guns to be far more effective in a melee than a Union sword. Later on Union cavalry, with its early acquisition of repeating rifles, were devastatingly effective as mounted infantry.

I'm not sure about the British - yes they developed the wonderfully obsolete 1912 cavalry sword (I have one at home and it is like the bad robot's spiked arm from Terminator 2), but surely they must have learnt something about appropriate tactics for cavalry from the Boer War?

[Watchman]

Sadly, no. The really scary thing about World War One is that not only did people march cheering to sign up and get slaughtered, on the actual battlefield they marched head high in close order and in several cases wearing pretty gaudy and colorful uniforms right against massed rifle fire, machineguns and artilery barrages. Many cavalry forces in all seriousness did not even carry rifles.

The results are well known, and at least the basic lessons were learned inside the first six months or so. As you can imagine both contemporaries and today's historians were and are fairly interested in how such bloody and utterly wasteful stupidity was even possible.

One reason I've seen cited is sheer pig-headed romanticism of the higher officer corps, the last refuge of the decaying military aristocracy, who could not mentally accept the idea that modern war was a war of machines and men operating like machines, not of heroes, individual valor and dramatic cavalry charges. Plus the poor schmucks had been raised up and conditioned to a severely idealized and romanticized version of Napoleonic warfare (the sort of idea involving rearing horses and severe-looking heroic officers in impresssive uniforms you see in old paintings) and actually hadn't experienced a major war fought with modern weaponry firsthand.

Both the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian War had been fought more or less by the old methods and weaponry, and between those and the Great War there were little but colonial brushfire wars whose lessons were, in the spirit of the arrogant racism so prevalent during the Age of Empire, not assumed to apply to "white" armies. Or, the machinegun might be fine for mowing down angry natives and Ethiopian dervishes but surely Western soldiers would be of better stuff...

The American Civil War seems to have been a fair bit more modern in character, in many occasions involving extensive field fortifications and trenchworks as well as (primitive) automatic weaponry, so it's perhaps not that surprising they learned at least some of the lessons sooner. Plus the sabre was of little use fighting Indians - most cavalrymen left theirs at the base when going out, for the thing was just extra encumberance and a general pain in the butt.

[cegorach]

1.

Hetman - I am not sure you are right about musketfire in Napoleonic times. At close range, I suspect a volley could be decimate an approaching close ordered formation.

2.Even today Americans estimate many hundreds of rounds are fired off for every enemy killed - but that does not mean modern firepower is ineffective.

1. This is the average - sometimes more sometimes less bullets were necessary.

2. Yes, but presently 10 men have the firepower of an entire regiment and nobody is using close formation as Napoleonic line or column.

[Watchman]

AFAIK modern military studies suggest it's actually quite unlikely to be hit by shrapnel if you're so much as, of five meters or so away from most handgrenades at the time of the detonation, or something along those lines.

Which isn't exactly something anyone counts on, now is it ?

Anyway, the massive expenditure of ammunition per kill in modern-day armies most likely has a whole lot to do with the way burst fire is used to suppress the enemy ("the first two or three bullets might hit, the rest are just to scare and threaten the enemy" is about how the innish army teaches it) nevermind what dedicated support machineguns get used for. Ergo, you end up with a lot of spent casings for every casualty.

Things were probably a little more accurate back when people fought with magazine-fed bolt-action rifles and the like - you actually need to aim more with those things to get anything done, the range is better and recoil is less of a problem. And having a pansy five to ten rounds at your disposal probably does wonders to fire discipline anyway.

Earlier on, back in the musket-and-bayonet period, the sad fact was that aside from light-infantry sharpshooters and the like most line troops barely knew to shoot. Armies tended to consider the gunpowder that went for marksmanship practice to be an unnecessary expense, and the soldiers were in any case more automatons than warriors - they were drilled to obey orders posthaste, change formations, ready weapons (ie. point them at the indicated direction; calling that "aiming" would be overly generous), fire, and reaload. This in the face of a more or less steady stream of messy casualties in the ranks from artillery fire and enemy shooting.

Nevermind that the accuracy of the smoothbore muskets was a bit so-so in any case. Skilled shots could hit man-sized targets more often than not from as far as about fifty meters, but past that it was pure luck and most soldiers weren't that good shots anyway.

Ergo, the infantry blocks often ended up marching almost next to each other and firing volleys in each others' general direction. It was anything but uncommon for the poor dragooned bastards in the ranks to close their eyes when they fire (partly also as protection against the flash of the priming powder), which naturally resulted in a fair number of shots sailing off to the great blue sky, Momma Earth's bosom or the back of the unlucky fellow in the front rank...

Aside from assorted carbine-toting support cavalry (whose main job was to "shoot in" assault cavalry), dragoons and irregular tribesmen (Cossacks, Indians, Turco-Mongol nomads etc. - these folks tended to be pretty crack shots even from horseback and undoubtly considered the casualty-heavy tactics of the "regular" troops rather stupid) cavalry didn't really do firefights at all and the shooting tended to be of the point-blank pistol kind. On the other hand the sort of cavalry who were supposed to shoot at folks were likely rather better trained to do it than line infantry...

[sharrukin]

Watchman, you sound like you really know what your talking about, so I would like to ask a question thats been bothering me for a long time. Given what you've said wouldn't disciplined bowmen be capable of defeating the same quality musket (not rifle) armed hostile infantry. A composite bow can fire at least 8-12 arrows/minute and it should be as close to accurate if not more than a musket and this at longer range. I believe Benjamin Franklin made a similar point. What is your opinion?

[Bob the Insane]

IMO the archers could well be victorious... But the whole point of firearms is the extension of the use of the crossbow... Archers require way more weapon training to be proficient and effective than a firearm carrying man...

Being a good archer require skill, practice and some pyhsical strength... Using a musket require you to be able to stand, walk, run and see...

Is the musket any more or less effective than the crossbow?? Easier and faster to reload I imagine...

[Watchman]

A decent arquebus and a late-end steel-stave crossbow ("arbalest") are about equals in killing power and armor penetration, and the crossbow actually has a longer accurate range. However, an arquebus is slimmer and takes up less room, is mechanically simpler and more reliable (it's undamentally nothing more than a metal tube plugged at one end), makes for a better club in a pinch, punches through cover better and is, quite frankly, scarier. Both people and animals are simply scared of the loud noise, flame and smoke it produces - I've read that in the first battle in which the Russians used firearms against the Golden Horde the nomads were so shocked by the first discharge (which didn't even cause any meaningful casualties) they simply rode off the field...

This is probably the key to the comparative efficiency of firearms - not so much the killing power as the psychological effect, especially of volley firing.

On the whole an arquebus can do most of the things a crossbow can, and enough of them better that it eventually replaced it.

Now, archers are nice and ones with composite bows even nicer; the problem tend to be the availability, as barring more or less full-time profesional troops who train diligently the about only way to get them is to have a populace who uses them matter-of-factly in their everyday lives. Steppe nomads and assorted hunters are a good source. The English yeoman system was an attemp at "artificially" producing a pool of skilled archers, and while it worked fairly well it was anything but an ideal solution and there were constant issues in making the peasants actually fulfill their training quota in tha practice butts - most of them frankly had better things to do. Medieval Scandinavia (and presumably East Europe) had it better, having vast stretches of sparsely populated woodlands the peasants could hunt in and hence a decent pool of skilled archers who could be enrolled into the military.

The problem, even with composite bows, seems to have been that even the Janissary foot archers do not seem to have had enough drill to reach the sheer volume of fire necessary to stop an armored cavalry charge. You had to pour a pretty serious amount of arrows into the assault line to cause enough casualties and chaos for the charge to falter, and it appears even elite archers rarely achieved this.

The Mamluks apparently managed to drill their horse-archers (who shot standing still, as "regular" horse-archers of settled nations are wont to) to the degree where these could stop a Crusader charge on sheer firepower alone, though.

Infantry makes much smaller targets than horsemen and get more cover out of their shields, but on the other hand are slower moving; it seems to have been a bit case-by-case how well archery worked against such troops, especially if they were armored.

[Krusader]

Wow. Is it just me or did this topic totally derail?

[Watchman]

Not really. The importance of cavalry can only be understood in the context of the other "arms of service" of a particular period, and especially the means the footsloggers used to avoid getting squashed by the horsemen.

[Mr Frost]

At 100 meters a ball from a smoothbore musket will land anywhere {random dispersion} within a {roughly} 20 meter diameter circle reguardless of how good the shooter is .

At that same 100 meters , a truely expert archer can place his arrow into a man sized stationary target with a fair degree of confidence .



Steppe horsearchers like those Tartars learned to ride and use a bow as soon as they could walk and practiced constantly in work {hunting and war} , earnest and play throughout their lives thus were truely master archers .

The typical Napoleonic line infantryman had a few months of training and then most of his drill/practice was in marching , not shooting {even the superior Brittish system focused on loading drills rather than shooting for smooth bores , logical given that the maximum range you can actually be sure your shot goes where you want it is so close that any fool could hit one of a solid line of several hundred men , thus rate of fire becomes more usefull} .
Only rifle regiments focused on accuracy to any extent {there have been mentions in some publications that a British soldier was expected to hit a man sized target at 200 yards , this would only be possible for rifles though some clearly ignorant authors have suggested it refered to regular smoothbore musket armed troops , which would have resulted in about 99 percent of all such troops failing to qualify :P} , thus with little attention paid to line infantry developing accuracy with their smooth bore muskets , bullet drop {notable with those weapons} adversly effect their accuracy at longer ranges even more than most would think . Basically , at any decent range , the broad side of a barn can relax and feel safe from a Napoleonic line infantryman , but the horse archer should make the infantryman sweat blood



Realistically , a loose ordered troop of genuine Steppe horse archers {which the Tartars would have had} would be vastly superior in a "fire" fight to a typical Napoleonic line regiment . They would have only been hit at 100 meters by pure chance {loose order , and accuracy at that range with smoothbores is only possible if the target is 20 meters wide and taller yet again !} yet considered hitting several hundred stationary men in neatly ordered tight formation litterally childs play {their 10 year old sons could have done it , their grandmothers too no doubt} .


I remember reading that Wellington wished England still had {fully skilled} longbowmen as they would have been murderously effective against the large infantry columbs the French deployed {though the Rifle regiments would have had longer range and better accuracy , the Longbow would have had far greater rate of fire -20 seconds+ for loading a Baker Rifle , 4 seconds rapid or 8 sustained for a longbow in a prepared possition that takes less than 60 seconds an a handy cowpat to ready} .

The Problem is , ofcourse , a Napoleonic line infantryman took mere months to train {even Rifleman took little longer} whereas a truely skilled archer like a Steppe Horse Archer or British Longbowman took over a decade starting from earliest childhood .
The Golden horde {if somehow shifted through time enmass into the Napoleonic era} would still have been able to conquer Europe , and with medical advancment of that time , Ogadi might have survived his alcholicism long enough to finish the job

[CBR]

At 100 meters a ball from a smoothbore musket will land anywhere {random dispersion} within a {roughly} 20 meter diameter circle reguardless of how good the shooter is.

I have no idea where you got that from but that is definitely not true. Muskets where not very precise weapons but the theoretical performance was a lot better than what you describe. Back in the 18th/early 19th century several tests and calculations were made. You can find out more in the book "Firepower" by Major-General BP Hughes

The mean error at 150 meters, from a musket fired from a rest, is mentioned as 75cm in height and 60cm laterally.

In battles no one came near these results as human error as well as battlefield conditions would reduce it. IIRC US Civil War was about 25% efficiency compared to theoretical performance.

Realistically , a loose ordered troop of genuine Steppe horse archers {which the Tartars would have had} would be vastly superior in a "fire" fight to a typical Napoleonic line regiment . They would have only been hit at 100 meters by pure chance

Well actually the French did encounter Tartars and we can look at their experiences with bow armed loose order cavalry.

Arrows v French cavalry
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Book_3/V2C38.html

Their efforts were chiefly directed against Sébastiani's cavalry, and in a moment the barbarians surrounded our squadrons with loud shouts, letting off thousands of arrows. The loss these caused was slight, for the Bashkirs are totally undrilled and have no more notion of any formation than a flock of sheep. Thus they cannot shoot horizontally in front of them without hitting their own comrades, and are obliged to fire their arrows parabolically into the air, with more or less elevation according to the distance at which they judge the enemy to be. As this method does not allow of accurate aiming, nine-tenths of the arrows are lost, while the few that hit are pretty well spent, and only fall with the force of their own weight, which is inconsiderable; so that the wounds they cause are usually trifling. As they have no other weapons, they are certainly the least dangerous troops in the world. However, as they were coming up in myriads, and the more of these wasps one killed the more came on—the vast number of arrows with which they filled the air were bound sooner or later to inflict some severe wounds. Thus one of my non-commissioned officers, named Meslin; was pierced from breast to back by an arrow. Seizing it in both hands he broke it and drew the two portions from his body, but died a few minutes later. I fancy this was the only case of death caused by the Bashkirs' arrows: but I had several men and horses hit, and was myself wounded by the ridiculous weapon.


Muskets v Tartars
http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Book_3/V2C37.html

During our stay at Pilnitz, the enemy was receiving strong reinforcements, notably 60,000 Russians under Benningsen. These came from beyond Moscow, and included many Tartars and Bashkirs, armed only with bows and arrows. I have never understood with what object the Russian Government brought up from so great a distance these masses of irregular cavalry, who could be of no use against troops armed in the modern fashion, and only made food more scarce for the regular troops. Our soldiers were in no way impressed by the sight of these half-savage Asiatics, whom, from their bows and arrows, they nicknamed ' the Cupids.' The newcomers, however, who had never seen Frenchmen, encouraged by officers nearly as ignorant as themselves, expected to see us fly at their approach. The very day after their arrival they assailed our troops in countless bands, but were received with musketry-fire, and left many of their number dead on the ground. Their losses seemed only to excite them further; and as any ground suited them they began wheeling round us like swarms of wasps, and it was hard to catch them. When our troopers did get at them, the execution was considerable.

Overall they were not that impressed by bow armed cavalry. They might not have had the best discipline but muskets did seem to do the job.

We can also go back to the Crusades and find that crossbowmen could keep enemy horsearchers at a distance and cause big losses too. And crossbows didnt have a high rate of fire or were very accurate.

An archer who spends all day shooting at a target at a certain range will develop a high skill and might end up being able to hit a target with his eyes closed but battlefield conditions will reduce the efficiency considerably.

Long rang shooting is basically plunging area fire which is not very accurate and even at shorter range the archer cant be certain of the precise range which will hurt his accuracy as low velocity arrows are more dependent on knowing the exact range than guns are.


CBR

[Watchman]

Let's remember one thing - it was after the Russians got their mitts on guns that they in time conquered most of Asia right until the border of China. Firearms were more or less what broke the military advantage of the steppe peoples for good - those guys were really good at what they did, and supremely adapted to their environment, but in some rather important ways their culture was a technological dead-end. Once their neighbors got past a certain point they simply had nothing to mobilize in reply...