Cavalry Spears

[ivoignob]

I don't know, if this is the right place or if this question has been asked before...

My question is, what are cavalry riders doing with their spears after the charge, when changing to melee weapons? AFAIK, these things are really long and have a holder, attached to the body armor to take the rider some of the weight... But when using there hands for melee weapons, do they throw them off??? If not, how can they be attached?

Thank you in advance!

[Kraxis]

Well, if they connect with a target the spear/lance would quite often break, especially later on when the lances were designed for that. And since you mention lance mounts on armour then we are indeed talking about lances that should break on contact.
Should the lance/spear survive for one reason or the other, it would not be a bad weapon if the enemy is infantry. The reach wold be good at keeping them at a distance. Throwing down the weapon would at this point be a bad choice (as you would possibly give the infantry a weapon that could outreach your own). If we are talking about cavalry then the spear/lance could be used, but the sensible thing would be to throw it and use the secondary weapon. This way you get rid of a cumbersome weapon while not giving the enemy the chance to hit you with a weapon of superior reach.

[orangat]

I doubt a cavalryman would continue using a spear in a melee what with all the pivoting. Weilding a javelin or spear while mounted would be very cumbersome. The only sensible thing to do is to use a melee weapon like a sword or mace.

[Kraxis]

Of course he would. Many cavalrymen have only had spears as their weapon.

If the spear has been properly balanced it is easy to use overhanded on both sides of the horse. Swinging it over the head and neck of the horse should be no problem.
With a lance it might be more of a problem as it couldn't be used overhanded, but unless he was completely alone it was still useable, perhaps more in an intimidating sense that real practical one.
An armoured man on a great angry warhorse poking at you with a nasty pointed lance is not something you would just attack. And going on the other side of the horse would not be very useable either as he would be making sure the horse would be spinning around, kicking and biting, thus not only woud you have to contend with the lance but also the horse itself.
And anyone who has seen a horde get angry will know that it is no trivial mater.

[orangat]

I'm no historian but do the spear only cavalry stay in a melee? I would guess not.

The raison d'etre of any cavalry especially lancers is to charge withdraw charge and keep charging. A lance is close to useless in a melee. A shorter spear is more manageable but in a melee, a cavalryman would break out a sword, mace or axe or withdraw to charge again.

[Kraxis]

Those spear cavalry were often employed as skirmishers, foragers and scouts. The last two roles often saw them involved in small skirmishes where they would be forced to use their spears in melee.

Sure, for a protracted melee the lance is not a good weapon, but then again the charge was the central aspect. A horseman with a sword would be at a destinct disadvantage against spearmen or halbardiers (or any polearm for that matter). With the lance he could hopefully keep them at a distance until he got himself out of the mess he had ended up in, either to retry the charge or to dismount.

[orangat]

In a melee, a cavalryman would have already closed the gap where the greater reach of his spear is nullified. I still feel a short spear(a long lance in melee is simply out of the question) is too cumbersome and unweildy in melee for cavalry and exposes the rider to being unhorsed by being pulled down or by grabbing on the spear.

[Kraxis]

Well, history has proven that spears (normal sized ones) are the most successful ever, both among infantry and cavalry. Everybody carried them. Even today most martial arts that deal with weapons consider the spear to be the ultimate weapon, in that swordsmen in particular needs to be much better to take on a spearman.

If you are armed solely with a spear you will of course be trained to use the sper in a mannner where it isn't easy to get hold of. Think something akin to what Eric Bana and Brad Pitt do with their spears in Troy. Spears are much more than sticks with a point, they can also act as staffs and leverage. This makes them fairly versatile.
The spear will not lose its advantage in length as the horseman also controls his horse, and he will use it to keep the perfect distance to his foes as best possible. The image of the immobile horseman is very wrong. There would be no sitting in the saddle and chappong/stabbing down as we see in movies, but for obvious safety reasons the horses need to be standing fairly still. A testament to the actual trouble of cavalry, the horse itself.

[ivoignob]

So if I understand right, the option to ALT-Attack with spear cavalry in the game is historically not correct!? There was a thread about ALT attacks in the colloseum but since I wanted to know its historical aspect I asked here. In the game we see cavalry using their swords in melee while the spears are vanished. But Kraxis, you say, they wouldnt use swords in a melee, if that is right, then my question is answered. If not, then again, what are these people doing with their spears afterwards, orangat??

[Kraxis]

No... Of course they would use swords in melee, but it is not a specific case of whenever melee was engaged they would drop their spears. They might drop it, and they might not. But the fact is that swords and the like were secondary weapons. The spear would likely be used as much as possible. So the switch to swords/secondary weapons would not be a doctrinal thing.

If they dropped their spears, they wouldn't be likely to have any afterwards. Seems logical enough.

[orangat]

Well, history has proven that spears (normal sized ones) are the most successful ever, both among infantry and cavalry. Everybody carried them. Even today most martial arts that deal with weapons consider the spear to be the ultimate weapon, in that swordsmen in particular needs to be much better to take on a spearman.

If you are armed solely with a spear you will of course be trained to use the sper in a mannner where it isn't easy to get hold of. Think something akin to what Eric Bana and Brad Pitt do with their spears in Troy. Spears are much more than sticks with a point, they can also act as staffs and leverage. This makes them fairly versatile.
The spear will not lose its advantage in length as the horseman also controls his horse, and he will use it to keep the perfect distance to his foes as best possible. The image of the immobile horseman is very wrong. There would be no sitting in the saddle and chappong/stabbing down as we see in movies, but for obvious safety reasons the horses need to be standing fairly still. A testament to the actual trouble of cavalry, the horse itself.

As I said, even if every cavalry unit carried spears, their function was to use them in a charge and not in a melee.

The Chinese longsword was regarded as being potentially the most dangerous among the 4 classical weapons and the hardest to master.

Then your example of spear twirling in Troy is flawed because it is fancy choreography and even minus twirling the there is a big difference between mounted combat where the rider is essentially rooted to the horse while a footman has the necessary mobility to execute footwork.

And in both points above, there is a difference between a 1-v-1 duels/skirmishes and battlefield conditions in a melee against crowded opponents who are armored and shielded making the spear cumbersome and unwieldy.

In the classical period of RTW, stirrups were not yet invented making the spear twirling on horseback even more highly improbable so switching to a sword or mace in a melee seems more historically accurate.

[KrooK]

Polish heavy cav husaria is best example what to do with spear after charge.
They were charging, those who still got spears were withdrawing and charging one more time (others egaged pikes). Many times all units withdrawed, took new spears and charged one more time. There were a battle when they did it 10 times.

[Kraxis]

My point about Troy was not to say that it was how it was, only that the use of spears is much more complicated that people go around thinking. A master with a spear is, as I mentioned earlier, in most martial arst considered superior to others. And it is proven time and again in combined events.

Since you now bring in the stirrup you have dug your own grave, so to speak. Yes, sitting in a stirrupless saddle and leaning back and forth in it is not going to be the best, but the fact of the matter is that you need to lean a whole lot more with a sword. It's length and shape quite simply forces you to lean further, and put a lot more weight and force into each attack. With a spear you do not need to do this nearly as much. Particularly attacks on the rider's left will leave the swordman (talking horsemen) at a disadvantage while the spearman an still reach fairly easily without leaning over.
But then again, whenever ancient cavalry charged and the infantry held firm, the cavalry broke. Simple as that. Even the vaunted Parthian cataphracts got their hind quarters handed to them by Roman legionaries. Swarming cavalry will lead its demise. Even more mangeable weapons will not help the rider then.

A few times though, infantry seems to have held for a while before breaking, such as at Magnesia where the Seleucid cataphracts broke a Roman legion after a while seemingly.

In the middleages European cavalry finally got stronger. Not that it was differently equipped in any great degree (or even heavier, in fact they were often lighter than eastern heavy cavalry), but it seems their tactics while stuck into infantry that fought back had changed. The use of the horse itself seems to have increased, and the flail seems to have been adapted from a simple peasantweapon to the famous weapon we know. It was used not as seen in movies, swinging like a bola, but rather like ball on a rope when you rotate yourself. The rotating heavy horse would be dangerous to appraoch by itself, and with a flail striking down any who tried it can be considered quite good. The same could be done with swords, but after the first hit the rider should consider himself lucky if he hit the next straight on, if at all.

But up until then cavalry, not even knights fared well against dense infantry in firm blocks (in fact they didn't afterwards either). And cavalrymen had plenty of different secondary weapons.
The famous Byzantine cataphracts had as their main secondary weapon a fairly short mace, woefully short for striking down infantry. Some carried swords, but not all apparently, and from the reproductions I have seen, they weren't even very long. Clearly the short mace can't have been for use against infantry. It's reach and properties clearly indicate it was for use against armoured riders. They did however fight infantry often enough, and well enough. Only one proper candidate left, their trusty spear.

Now, I do not say that lances would not be discarded, but then again with an unbroken lance the rider should have retreated to make another charge.
Spears is another matter entirely. They are very much viable melee weapons. Fast, good reach, easy to handle, not tiring and devastating hits and penetration.
They would not be discarded if not broken unless absolutely pressed for mass hitting. But in such a position the rider would be on the defensive, and not likely to make it.
The Bayeux Tapestry clearly shows that the spear was retained. Riders going in, riders fighting and riders going out almost all use the spear (indicating that the spear was important to keep hold of, even when retreating). As time passes fewer use it, but we must assume that they broke fairly often, and thus the rider has lost his. A few might have discarded it, but I doubt it.

[Atilius]

My suspicion is that it was rare for most cavalry to engage in extended melee.

Against infantry, a cavalry charge would most likely be followed by fighting free of the melee in order to re-form and charge again. The main problem for a horsemen in melee with infantry would be the vulnerability of his mount, so it would make little sense to stay put. Heavy cavalry might be an exception here, but even Alexander, no stranger to headlong charges into strong infantry, usually wished to fight through the line and charge engaged infantry from behind.

When cavalry was attacking cavalry, both sides would charge (it makes no sense for a horseman to stand a charge in a stationary position), pass through one another, wheel, and charge again. This is an accurate description of cavalry on cavalry combat from ancient times to the gunpowder era, and melee has little place in it.

Consequently, it makes sense for a cavalryman to hang on to his spear. Depending on its design, even a broken spear could be an effective weapon. Polybius, who was a hipparch (cavalry commander) before becoming a hostage of Rome, explains why the Romans abandoned their cavalry spears for a spear of Greek design in his Histories (6.25):

...the butt end was not fitted with a spike, so that they could only deliver the first thrust with the point, and if the weapon then broke it became quite useless.

[Turin]

Cavalry are meant to be charged; a melee only happens between cavalrymen. Most cavalrymen had retainers who carried extra lances should they need to charge again.

Cavalry swords and maces were only used in cavalry-cavalry melees, or when the cavalryman dismounted, and yes, cavalrymen did often dismount.

Weapons like flails were meant to be used against infantrymen from horseback, but they were only effective against poorly trained or fleeing infantryman, a flail is no match for a spear on a foot soldier.

[Watchman]

I suspect an individual cavalryman would fight with his spear or lance as long as it was sensible for him to do so. This of course would depend very heavily on the specifics of equipement, opponent, tactics used, tactical situation, and not in the least personal preferences. However, methinks most cavalrymen through history who carried such weapons - and the majority did, aside from most horse-archers - also preferred to use them as long as it was possible particularly when facing infantry. Just about the single greatest inherent advatage of a spear-type weapon is after all its sheer reach, which is quite useful for a horseman and probably further reinforces the positional advantage he has over an infantryman. Be that as it may aside from pikes cavalry spears and lances were usually able to rival (or sometimes exceed) their infantry kin in size, so a horseman finding himself in a slugging match with spearmen would naturally prefer to employ his equally long weapon to fight them evenly.

Spears and lances have an unhappy tendency to break in combat though, and some lances were intentionally made to be "one shot" weapons for one reason for another - I understand Early Modern Polish lances intentionally traded sturdiness for lightness, in order to make their unusual lenght more maneuverable, for one example. Obviously when this happened the horseman would revert to other weapons, or turn his spear around if he was using one of those "double-ended" types. Should the tactical situation require it I suspect most would have no compunctions about simply dropping the spear in favor of another, presumably handier, weapon - another big plus in spears was that they were from the cheapest end of weapons, and nobody shed too many tears when a shaft splintered or the weapon got stuck in someone.

When cavalry was attacking cavalry, both sides would charge (it makes no sense for a horseman to stand a charge in a stationary position), pass through one another, wheel, and charge again. This is an accurate description of cavalry on cavalry combat from ancient times to the gunpowder era, and melee has little place in it.

Huh. Most descriptions I've read suggest the usual result (assuming one side wasn't broken on impact) was a big messy melee with the formations more or less entirely mixing together; the degree to which individual "squads" of horsemen (usually about five men or so) could maintain cohesion and support one another was apparently of considerable importance in deciding the outcome. 'Course, partly depending on the tactical doctrines involved they might pull back to regroup and catch breath several times before the matter was fully settled. The "pass through and charge again" thing sounds more like what you get with looser-order light cavalry facing each other; I understand the heavies normally operated in too dense formations (and were too willing to get stuck in) to be really able to "penetrate" each other like that, unless of course one side was able to simply hack their way through but in that case odds are the other side was already routing by that point...

[Kraxis]

I think Watchman explained what I tried to say... I guess I just got caught up in the particulars to explain the surrounding requirements.

[Lord Winter]

http://historynet.com/mhq/bl-lancers/index1.html
this is an interesting article. Lances were really only effective against infantry or in the first couple charges against calvary then the calvary would close to the point were the spears became a obstacle against a more mobile sword.

[Ianofsmeg16]

Cavalry Lances do have a problem, many cavalrymen may be trained to use them as melee weapons, but once you get passed the spear point, what else is there?

[Kraxis]

Sure enough, but the discussion was when facing infantry. Ans the same article clearly indicates that lances would have been superb, even against spears (comparable length to a musket with bayonet).

Now don't confuse the napoleonic lance with the lance we talk about here. The napoleonic lance was more like a spear than the one-shot lances of the 13th-17th centuries. It would be far more handy than the old lance.

When facing cavalry a lancer would face an opponent who not only was at the same hight as himself, very fast, but also possibly much closer (basically knee to knee if extreme). Of course a spear or lance would be hard to use in such a case. Clearly the sword, mace, axe or whatever the rider might have at hand would be preferable. As mentioned before medieval heavy cavalry did have weapons for such fights.

[R'as al Ghul]

Here's an interesting article on cavalry warfare in the Napoleonic Era:

http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/cavalry_tactics_2.htm

[Rodion Romanovich]

Polish heavy cav husaria is best example what to do with spear after charge.
They were charging, those who still got spears were withdrawing and charging one more time (others egaged pikes). Many times all units withdrawed, took new spears and charged one more time. There were a battle when they did it 10 times.

Cool, do you know which battle it was?

[Kagemusha]

Here's an interesting article on cavalry warfare in the Napoleonic Era:

http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/cavalry_tactics_2.htm

Great article R'as al Ghul! I dont know why people tend to think novadays as the spear being a poor weapon and the sword being superior then it,While in history it has been the standard weapon of many armies in the past.

[KrooK]

It was Kluszyn battle 1610
6500 Poles vs 35000 Russians with swedish, french and english merceniaries.
Poles won because husaria's charges completely broke russian cav causing chain rout.