Quote Originally Posted by MeroFromVero
It read to me like "Keegan" was a response to your comment: "Interesting to know which is right."

I could be wrong though.
That's what i meant. By the way, for anyone reading this - if you haven't read "Face of Battle", BUY IT!!!! Just top notch. Before he writes about them Keegan walks the physical battlefields he's about to describe, and does a superb job with his first hand sources. Unlike many, Keegan doesn't just refer to them in the footnotes and give you his take on the battle, rather he quotes his sources and then describes why he believes their words mean "x".

So. In the context of Waterloo, the facts are there were multiple French cavalry charges, and in almost every case, the participants agree that these mass charges flowed around the British squares, not through them. And whatever people may say about the French military, these cavalrymen were fantastically brave. They rode into a hail of fire, multiple times, and made every effort to engage the infantry, but the Brits wouldn't break square (and if you think standing upright in a square for hours on end was a picnic, examine Keegan's description of "Artillery vs. Infantry" in this battle - one of the most chilling things you'll ever read). A man willing to ride a horse for a quarter mile into oncoming artillery and musket fire is not going to quail at the sight of a thin red line a few men deep - men who are NOT carrying long pikes, I might add - no, he would ride right through it except for one small detail. His horse will not go there.

One final comment. If you read the ancient authors, the sad truth is that most were not present at the battles they describe - and thus we hear through them the second and third hand description of events. So when you hear of cavalry successfully attacking a phalanx, keep in mind that we often don't know (and probably never will) the true reason for success. Did the infantry - or at least some - turn and run? Was it a flank attack. Did something disrupt the line, thus gving the cavalry access to the interior of the unit? In most cases, it's impossible to say. So we must rely on examples nearer to our time, and those are pretty close to unanimous that a cavalry charge against a solid, disciplined line of men almost never ends well for the guys on horseback.