Historically, cavalries were military forces that traveled and fought on horseback, unlike mounted infantrymen, who traveled on horseback but fought on foot, and charioteers, who fought from carts pulled by horses.
Historically, cavalries were military forces that traveled and fought on horseback, unlike mounted infantrymen, who traveled on horseback but fought on foot, and charioteers, who fought from carts pulled by horses. Cavalry was less expensive and more mobile than was chariotry and could move two to three times faster than could infantry, covering at least 30 to 40 miles a day for an indefinite period. The physically and psychologically imposing combination of man and horse made resistance difficult for foot soldiers.
Cavalry in antiquity fell into two basic categories: light
The first known cavalry appeared in the Near East, around 1200
The
After the collapse of the Greek and Near Eastern Bronze Age civilizations (around 1200
Like most cultures in and after the ninth century
To protect horses’ hooves from the wet conditions of the northwestern European climate, the
The earliest known
A Parthian horse archer of the third century
By around 1100
There were two general lines of development in cavalry: that of the civilized nations of the Mediterranean and that of the steppe nomads and those who imitated them. For the first group, the problem was in integrating cavalry into armies that were composed predominantly of
The
Alexander’s “combined arms”
The
Parthia, not Rome, influenced the development of cavalry over the next millennium. In the late Roman Empire and its Byzantine successor in the East, the balance tilted in favor of the horse, with infantry forming a defensive body in battle and serving chiefly as a refuge for the cavalry. Others who adopted this pattern were the Indians; the Chinese; the Arabs, who quickly moved from
lems until they suffered their first defeat in 1260
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The True Story of Hannibal. Documentary. History Channel, 2004.
Knights to Cavalry
Cavalry: Modern
Armies and Infantry: Ancient and Medieval
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Violence in the Precivilized World