Weak cavalry?

[Furious Mental]

"i never have seen that surviving a battle in middle Europe."

I actually just gave you an example of frontal cavalry charges being explicitly stated to be useless against a solid wall of humans by a contemporary source.

[Da_Funkey_Gibbon]

Yeah, that was interesting, but it raises the question of how far tactics changed from the mid 11th century to the mid 15th century in terms of calvary tactics in north west Europe. Specifically the influence of the classical knight in full plate armor, which I believe deleloped throughout the middle ages.

[Orb]

I think cavalry should roll over most infantry on a bowling green, but when it comes to the misfortunes of grapevines, hedges, woods etc. they should have more trouble.

[andrewt]

It isn't easy for cavalry to charge, circle around and charge again. After a charge, horses need a wide area to turn around and run away so they can charge again. Even if they knock over humans, there's still the matter of them tripping over. Try running over something half your height and a tenth your weight. You'll knock it over but you'll probably trip, too. Physically, the difficulty of knocking down humans rises exponentially the more there are behind them, especially if they have a low center of gravity and are braced for impact. Hitting them would mean the horse would stumble.


Frontal charges just don't work against experienced, high-morale troops in a tight, deep formation, pike or no pike. Obviously, the Mongols had lots of success but horse archer combat is vasltly different from charging knights.