Are catholics invincible?

[Askthepizzaguy]

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Thats simply not true. History proves that even men armed with a bayoneted muskets can stop a cavalry charge. In fact, the weapon is irrelevant, as it isn't the weapons that stop the charge, its the density of the obstical presented by a formed unit of infantry.

Tests conducted with the Household Cavalry prove that even a solid wall of hay bales will stop a mass of charging horsemen simple because horses are not stupid and will not run into an apparently solid object. This is particulary awkward for men armed with couched lances who need their chargers to keep moving forward in order to use their weapons.

There is also a wealth of anecdotal evidence confirmng that medieval knights and mounted men-at-arms were not able to charge headlong into steady bodies of dismounted men.

If reality, the only thing which made mounted men more effective in the medieval period was the tendency for troops armed with melee weapons to deployed in more dispersed formations which left gaps into which horses could push. But a densely packed unit of spearmen who stood their ground would have little to worry about from a mounted charge.

All right. I'm no expert and I'll certainly admit to being wrong, but if this is the case, why were heavy cavalry the dominant force on the battlefield for a hundreds of years, if stopping them were simply a matter of standing together in dense formation? In fact, couldn't you just lie on the ground packed tightly together so the horses wouldn't even try to gallop over you?

There seems to be an incongruity here. If you could stop a full cavalry charge with something as small as a musket, then why were pikemen specifically developed to fight cavalry?

I know for a fact that longer weapons were used to fight cavalry because shorter ones were ineffective for some reason.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikemen seems to suggest that shorter weapons were ineffective.

Now you could be right, of course. But then it would seem that for thousands of years of history, people were too stupid to stand tightly together. Which also doesn't make sense because they did that, and often.

I'm puzzled. I don't know whether you are right that it is impossible for cavalry to charge into densely packed people with short weapons or not. There seems to be evidence for both sides. I'm not convinced either way.

Please don't think me dumb. I just don't always accept what I am told at face value. I have to weigh everything I've ever been taught about medieval history, which states that heavy cavalry was nigh invincible on the battlefield unti they re-invented the phalanx, which had been rarely used since the days of the Roman legion who would decimate the phalanx; and compare that with the plausible statement you just made.