Charge Bonus??

[Fenrhyl]

Ah the Great Stirrup Controversy...

The problem about this controversy is that the ones who say the stirrup wasn't acquired before Charlemagne became emperor use as an argument the fact that no stirrup is found before his time (roughly.)

It is a sound argument as long as you decide you

A) trust the written accounts of the clerics who had absolutely no knowledge about warfare and basically lie when they need to push christian value down the throat of their readers

B) assume a stirrup is made of metal and nothing else

C) assume the stirrups will be put in the tomb of their owner (concerning franks it is not a sound belief after the 7th century.)

That said, rope or leather stirrups did and still exist. Such items of low value would not be deemed fit to figure in a tomb deposit and even if they actually did end up in a tomb 13 centuries of rot and decay would not leave a single trace of them.
When it comes to having a clear view of what the franks used as weapons and what their methods of fighting both tactical and strategic where you have no options to consider what is a reasonable picture and what hard facts you have to support it.

What we witness at the end of the merovingian period is a shift in tactical approach. The franks rely more and more upon cavalry and progressively discard those two fantastic weapons, the francisca and the angon, that require complex infantry training and impressive coordination to use (two characteristic the romans noted about franks early and could witness first hand both fighting against and alongside them.) On the other side cavalry becomes proheminent and drawings of franks horseman, scale-clad and using the draco as an insigna are numerous. It even goes as far as calling them paladins (frank deformation from the latin palatinus.)
You can then just assume that contact with the arabians had the franks realize the advantage of heavy cavalry and use the Loire valley sarmato-alan folks knowledge of horsemanship to expand upon (hence the draco insigna.) That is just a guess, but a persistant one these days, wich could be linked to some hard facts but i require more documentation about this.

Edition : i just forgot to mention that such a shift is impossible (because shifts do not happen without reasons) without the acquisition of stirups. If the franks had wanted to shift to cavalry before they could have done so with ease, given the power, wealth and agricultural ressources they enjoyed. What happened during the 8th century is just a shift in warfare habits after a major clash with another fighting method that poves to be efficient (like the english after Bannockburn or the french after Azincourt, or to stay in line with this forum, the romans after Cannae.)