11th C horses.

[Redleg]

So, no, I don't think these big work horses were war horses. They don't even gallop all that fast (take the Belgian for instance), being so bulky. And speed was an important part of the couched lance charge. If anything, these horses were stronger, faster and had more endurance than any step mount (hence the known fact that every Mongol had four to five horse with him).

Oh the stepp mounts had lots of endurance - the reason the Mongols had four to five of them is because they often moved at a fast pace - horses can only cover so much ground at a run or canter with weight. To move faster then their enemies could possibly plan on - the Mongols would switch horses - giving the loaded horse a breather from the weight - all this while moving at a pace that if you had just one horse it would kill the horse and leave the rider on the ground - as an infantry soldier with no experience fighting on the ground.

So with 4-5 horses moving at different speeds walk, trot, canter, and run - the mongols moved - allowing a horse to walk provides it sufficent rest for the type of warfare the Mongols practiced - all this allowed the Mongols to move faster, farther, and with horses that could function in battle - then what they could of done with one horse.

[The Wizard]

I know this. Just realize that the steppe pony is smaller and therefore less strong and physically capable than, for instance, a Friesian.

Still, even a horse like the Friesian can't keep charging all day up for a long while. As a result, knights had three mounts, not one.

[Watchman]

"Civilized" cavalry tended to have one horse for battle and another for getting into the battle; no point in tiring the warhorse until necessary, after all. Plus pack horses, but those weren't good for much else. AFAIK only rather rich/well equipped types could afford spare war-mounts. Nomads normally had so many remounts they could afford to tire a few by galloping all over the place shooting arrows, switching to a fresh pony once one tired. "Settled" forces were by necessity more static; they had to judge how to most effectively expend the energy reserves of their few horses. The Egyptian Mamluks (or for that matter the earlier Faris freeman professionals, who fought in the same manner) illustrate the point perfectly. Regardless of the nigh invariably nomadic (Turkic) origin of the slave-soldiers, they did not employ the nomadic swarming skirmish tactics - for the simple reason their horse base was "settled". Their horse-archery was of the much more static sort characteristic of "settled" mounted archers since God knows when, preferring to fire standing still (which improved accuracy in any case) and maneuvering far more like normal cavalry, not delivering endless hit-and-run attacks from clouds of skirmishing light horse like the nomads characteristically did.

That's simple economics really. Settled folk simply could not keep a huge horde of ponies roaming around the way the steppe nomads did (heck, those guys based about *everything* on their herd beasts anyway), not in the least simply because suitable grassland is geographically limited. To understand *how* limited, remember that every single nomad people who settled on the Great Hungarian Plain (which is in practice the westernmost tip of the Great Eurasian steppe belt) was forced to abandon true pastoralism inside few generations... Similarly all the various steppe folk who conquered China or parts thereof at various times were very soon forced to abandon nomadism as bluntly impossible.

Conversely the nomads had their vast herds by definition of their lifestyle; they didn't have to expend resources to raise and maintain mounts like settled folk (who otherwise used horses mostly for labor), the mounts very much were their basic resources. In their case it was quite literally quantity over quality; their grass-fed ponies could not compete with grain-fed larger breeds in strenght, speed or raw stamina, but there was a lot of the little buggers (enabling the "swap on the fly" trick to a fresh mount) and so long grass was available the critters largely maintained themselves. Conversely the "civilized" warhorses, although pound for pound faster ans stronger (and for that matter possessing rather more of said pounds) were few in number, expensive, and highly dependent on feed which was a major logistical problem.

Where there was enough grassland, the nomads could roam quite freely. Where there wasn't, they soon ran into the same supply problems as settled folk - further exaceberated by the huge number of their mounts. For example one of the strategies the Mamluks employed against the Ilkhanids in Syria was scorced earth - they destroyed or carried off so much of the grain in the region that passing Mongol armies had a very difficult time feeding all their mounts. Mamluk armies were presumably less troubled, being a "settled" force mounted on a much smaller number of high-performance steeds. And since the region didn'y have all that much grass, and few lakes or rivers, the considerations of being able to water the mounts cut down the nomads' strategic mobility...

When you think about it, lack of suitable grazing grounds was likely a rather important reason the Turks never pushed past Syria either when they drifted into Middle East.

In estimating the load a warhorse had to deal with, remember that there was also the saddle and suchlike - and I understand those specialiced war-saddles tended to be pretty heavy. The beast might also well be required to carry its own armour, which by the necessity of sheer size was heavier than human harness of the same construction.

The Turks and Arabs had experienced massed lance charges before, and actually been able to meet them to a degree, victory was not certain by a longshot, but they could meet them head on. Here I'm talking about the Byzantine and Khazar heavy cavalries. Sure we remember Manzikert where the avoidance won, but that was just the perfect battle for them, which is partly why we remember it so good.

True enough - heck, they used spear-armed shock cavalry quite enough themselves. That's not the point. From varius accounts it's clear that there was definitely something qualitatively different in the massed lance charge of the "Franks" - I understand one major point was the difference in how the cavalry was committed to the assault. The "eastern" technique was more controlled, with units delivering controlled successive charges against the enemy and pulling back to regroup and reassess the situation; conversely the "western" method was to deploy the more or less the entirely cavalry force in a single, massed charge hopefully to smash apart the enemy line and then rout it in the ensuing melee. Obviously it tended to be rather difficult to call it off once the charge was committed, or pull them out of a fight in a controlled manner if necessary - battlefield controllability remained was after all a mjor shortcoming of Europen heavy cavalry until the end of Middle Ages (even if those spending any time facing the "eastern" method tended to become more manageable rather quickly).

In terms of pure shock power the "Frankish" approach seems to have been superior - while it usually took a fair while of further fighting to decide the issue one way or another, being able to succesfully deliver a lance charge seems to have been a major initial advantage for the knights if only through the distruption and damage it caused in the first ranks of the enemy. It wasn't some sort of "wonder weapon" of course - they got theior asses kicked in enough straight collisions to prove that - but it was something of a "special weapon" of theirs all who encountered it learned to be vary of and neutralize if at all possible.

Well, I think we all know the problems of the "western" approach - it's probably telling that the Europeans themselves eventually abandoned it in favour of the rather more manageable, disciplined and mobile "eastern" technique.

Incidentally, I understand that back at the 11th century and thereabouts the Byzantines considered Norman mercenary cavalry to be one of the better to deploy against the Turks. Go fig.

[The Wizard]

Whoops, did not express myself correctly. By the running around I meant carrying the knight to and from the battlefield, as well as carrying him during the fight. Which is not what they did, obviously.

Concerning this, I wonder if knights participated in skirmishes? I think not, considering they had only one fighting horse and this was destined for a pitched battle, correct? This would be a good explanation as to why Latin armies were so vulnerable to effective skirmishing on a strategical level (harrying by parties of roaming horse archers etc.).

And, yes, the Byzantines rather admired the Normans/Franks for the power of their charge. Anna Comnena, not known for her love of these 'barbarians', remarked that their charge could bring down the walls of Constantinople.

[Watchman]

Well, her dad had almost been killed by Italo-Norman lances back when Robert Guiscard tried to expand across the Adriatic. The Byzantines were enough on the receiving end of "Frankish" lances to have a healthy respect for them (curio detail: conversely the heavy maces of some Byzantine cavalry were apparently widely respected and feared).

One would assume that at least the early-pattern knights (you know, the ones who weren't much more than lords' household mercenaries) were by necessity heavily engaged in scouting and skirmish duties - there normally weren't too many other decent mounted troops beside them available anyway. And let's not underestimate the ability of knights to make themselves troublesome to horse-archers - after all, the Templars started out as volunteer guards for pilgrim caravans against "Saracen" raiders, many of whom were no doubt enterprising Turkic tribesmen out to improve their finances (not that horse archers were rare mong the more settled peoples of the region either)... A mail-clad fellow with a big shield is apparently annoyingly resistant to arrows, although his horse may be another story.

[The Wizard]

Indeed, and that may all well be, but this is still all on a rather small scale. The lordly infighting -- these 'wars' on a ridiculously small scale were no more than ordinary raiding -- and the Templars' forces numbered from tens to a couple hundred men. No more than a Germanic comitatus, if not less.

I'm talking large-scale warfare, those not so very frequent campaigns involving thousands of men when the kings of Western Europe went to war against the Oriental rulers.

[Watchman]

If you're referring to the Crusades to the Middle East (the Baltic ones wer eobviously rather different), the scouting and skirmishing duties were usually left to the Turcopoles who were rather better suited to it in the context given that they could more or less take on the Turks on their own terms.

Medieval campaigns, however, were overall mostly affairs of maneuver, skirmishing, siege and ravaging the enemy lands, with decisive field battles being rare - this both East and West. Obviously mounted forces were of prime importance due to their sheer mobility (and hitting power particularly in small-unit encounters), and while a lot of it was on the shoulders of assorted lighter cavalry and irregulars the chivalric heavies and their colleagues from other cultures were doubtless heavily involved, both as a sort of heavy reserve and as the "officer class" of the armies.

Nomads, naturally, could just sends some of their tribal cavalry before the main host to do reconnaissance and try to keep enemy scouts and harassers at an arm's lenght.