DBWI: Horse Cavalry

Jobiwan7

I know that most people say that horses are too skittish and impossible to tame, but what would it be like if ancient man had managed to domesticate them? Could they have been used to the same effect as, say, elephants?

OOC: After so many WI cavalry threads, I thought this was appropriate (and yes, I realize that the word “cavalry” doesn’t really work if horses aren’t domesticated, but I wanted parallelism with the other threads).
 
Kevin in Indy

Kevin in Indy

OOC: :D

IC: The biggest problem with horses is that they're so fragile. They seem to do okay in the plains, but I am amazed they haven't gone extinct just because their lower legs break too easily.

That said, adding 150-200 lb of soldier and gear to the load, and requiring it to cover long "marches" with an army, seems to point to too many horse-soldiers (equery?) being on foot. I cannot begin to imagine actually fighting from the back of a horse - if it steps on a loose helmet, or gets spooked by a gunshot, you're on the ground and lucky if you're not partially under your former mount.

Maybe you could ride the horse to a battle - not unlike some armies used trucks - making a "mobile infantry" force. But then you have to keep all the mounts together until the fight is over (heaven help you if you need to retreat).
 

Dave Howery

First, you'd have to breed them up in size; they're way too small for modern men to ride. Hell, it was easier with cattle, they were big enough to ride when first domesticated; IIRC, they actually had to breed them down in size to make them managable, or so the theory goes. Second, horses have a decidedly male dominated culture, with stallions lording it over a bunch of mares and fighting each other at the drop of a hat. But then, gelding might cure them of this, as it has with cattle.
on a related topic, if horses had been domesticable, maybe that extinct relative of theirs from the middle east, the burro, would have been too. They had a pretty vile reputation before they went under in the 18th century, but if they were domesticated, they might have been a useful critter in the deserts around the world; eating less than a camel, and hopefully with a better temper...
 
Kevin in Indy

Kevin in Indy

OOC: Dave, I like your implied divergence better than mine. "Smaller" is more plausible than "more fragile." So, to redact and expand...

IC: Maybe you could use horse-mounted soldiers in auxilliary roles. Go back a thousand or so years, and look to the Asian militaries, and you might find a large enough population of sub-five foot tall, sub-100 pound soldiers who could ride some slightly larger breeds. Perhaps they could be archers or scouts. You couldn't afford the weight of armor, so they could not go hoof-to-toe against contemporary infantry.
 

Dave Howery

OOC: well, the real wild horses of Asia are too small to ride; if they'd never been domesticated, I figured they'd have stayed that way...
 

tormsen

I wonder what kind of effect that kind of mobility would have on the steppe. There were some periods of history where dromedary-riding nomads were quite troublesome to settled cultures, could something comparable be seen with horses? Perhaps it would have made it less likely for Central Asian kingdoms to have endured as long as they have.
 

Maniakes

The big problem with horse cavalry, beyond the already-mentioned size problem, is that horses are much more sensible than OTL cavalry mounts. Stampeding wild aurochs will ride right over anything in their path, so of course domesticated cattle can be trained to do the same. But horses instinctively avoid obstacles. All an infantry force would need to do to break a cavalry charge is to stand firm shoulder-to-shoulder, presenting a forest of obviously-pointy weapons which horses are too smart to impale themselves upon.

Horses also startle easily, and would be completely worthless on the battlefield once gunpowder arrives on the scene.
 

Elidor

Horses, even if domesticated would be trampled underfoot by Elephant Armies. Heck, the camel armies of Babylon, even while twice as numerous were completely destroyed by the Elephant armies of the Elamo-Harrapan Empire in classical times.
 

ninebucks

Banned
Actually, before everyone goes off saying that the horse is undomesticatable, bare in mind that there is some evidence that some pre-Qulimbaian tribes in North America trained the (now extinct) North American Horse. Although granted, that was for meat, not for riding. But what can you expect from the continent that never invented the wheel or the lid!
 

LordMoogi

Your proposition is ludicrous, at best. Horses? Replace the ostrich? My dear sir, this is real life, not Final Fantasy. While a humourous and entertaining notion, this has no place in a serious discussion.
 

metalstar316

The horse riders would have gotten pwned the minute they came up against a regiment or two of our TL's bear cavalry. (OOC- don't know the correct term for bear riding cavalry)
 

AirshipArmada

As mentioned above, horses live in female groups with a male stallion as the lead. The mares (females) are used to being lead, so they just might be domesticatable. The male horses could never be put to good use, I'm afraid.

Encampments would learn to dig a trench around themselves - say 2' deep and 1' across. Horses attempting to attack the encampment would break their legs in this trench.

Horses are also pyrophobic. Anyone facing horse troops need only wave a few lit touches around to scare the creatures off.

The gait of a horse would also make using bows from their back almost impossible - they are just too bouncy. This means you could only use melee weapons from their backs - either very long swords or spears (the weapons would have to be able to reach past the horse's head). The horse would have to be trained to stand absolutely still in battle of they would become too much of a hindrance to be useful.

If horses were domesticatable it really wouldn't change things much in the long run.
 
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Kevin in Indy

Kevin in Indy

AirshipArmada said:
The gait of a horse would also make using bows from their back almost impossible - they are just too bouncy. This means you could only use melee weapons from their backs - either very long swords or spears (the weapons would have to be able to reach past the horse's head). The horse would have to be trained to stand absolutely still in battle of they would become too much of a hindrance to be useful.
Click to expand...

Do you think it might be useful to ride the horses to a decent position for archery, dismount, fire several rounds, then mount up and head to another position? Biggest drawback I see is that you either need to stake the horses or appoint some of the troops to hold them in place. (I think I would prefer the former - I don't know if I would want to be holding several easily-spooked wild animals with ropes.)
 

ray243

Someone is forgetting the fact that Mongols managed to create an empire using the horse distant cousins, the Pony.

Pony Express!
 

ac220v

ray243 said:
Someone is forgetting the fact that Mongols managed to create an empire using the horse distant cousins, the Pony.
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You mean takhi? (OOC: Or Przhawalski horse, as they're known IOTL)
Well, maybe they were fine for a medieval Mongol... But still too small for most humans. And they were used mostly as draft animals even by them.

AirshipArmada said:
Encampments would learn to dig a trench around themselves - say 2' deep and 1' across. Horses attempting to attack the encampment would break their legs in this trench.
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Won't work. Such a ruse may work once or twice, but once everyone starts doing this...

Palisade 3 or so feet high might be sufficient obstacle, horses can jump, but aren't great at it. (OOC: not really...)

AirshipArmada said:
Horses are also pyrophobic. Anyone facing horse troops need only wave a few lit touches around to scare the creatures off.
Click to expand...
Most wild animals are. Wolf is easily scared by fire but feral dog, or dog-wolf hybrid, even wild, are attracted to it. So, that isn't insurmountable obstacle. I bet that if you catch a wild foal as it is, and keep it around fire for a while, it would learn to not to be afraid of fire that much.
 
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