Charles Martel - The battle of tours

[Randarkmaan]

ARGH! It's a great read and for a reason nobody has even touched yet... It showed that given the right terrain, an army that was largely infantry could in fact defeat a numerically superior force of light cavalry and horse-archers. I find that aspect of Tours (or Poitiers) fascinating.... in game turns... imagine taking on the Golden Horde with feudal swordsmen and milita sergeants.

It was not an army of light cavalry and horse-archers, it was an army of mailed horsemen with stirrups and infantry...
And the whole thing about numbers on Tours is rather debated it seems, some say the Muslims had a great large army, others say they were simply a raiding force.
But, anyway it was a great accomplishment, for a band of, largely unarmoured infantry (though with relatively large shields) to defeat soldiers who had just conquered Iberia, beating armies outnumbering them by up to 3-1. They used the right terrain and they used the right tactics to beat such heavy cavalry, yes, they were heavy cavalry. Muslim cavalry had a lot of influence on later Frankish cavalry, who were generally less important than the footmen and rode without stirrups for faster mounting and dismounting.

And the Arabs, by the way, (the Moors used basically the same tactics) did not use horse-archers, their armies were made up of mostly camel mounted infantry (spearmen and archers, who could move fast and long through the deserts because of the camels) and cavalrymen who rode what, often relatively few and valuable, horses they had (the horses were only ridden in battle, out of battle camels were normally ridden), though the proportion of cavalry to infantry was higher at the time of Tours. Armour was not as uncommon as is often thought. Both infantry and dismounted horsemen sometimes fought in formations which could be described as shield walls or phalanxes. Their greatest strength was however their mobility, as the whole army was camel-mounted and they could basically appear and disappear out of the deserts at will (this is not talking about Spain) and they also possessed a remarkable morale and martial pride.

That Charles Martel were able to beat such fighters rather than just a horde of light horsemen relying on numbers (which is also an inadequate description for the Mongols) is all the more testaments to what he achieved at this battle.