How Terrifying is it to fend off elite heavy cavalry (such as Knights,Samurai,dragoons) with Spears?

[Griffith]

As I stated in my other thread, I started playing Shogun:Total War for the first time in years and one in-game description always intrigued me.

The Takeda are masters of the traditional arts of war and are ruthless in their quest to overcome their enemies by any means necessary. Facing a charge from the Takeda Cavalry will test the will of even the bravest warrior.

This really got me wondering. Usually Medieval Movies like Bravehart and RTS games like Age of Empires always show infantry with spears have a huge advantage over heavily armored cavalry elites like Knights and Samurais. As shown in Bravehart, all you have to do is wait for the Knights to charge than you pull your spears and hit the horses. In games like Rise of Nations and Age of Empires, its even more brutally easily to slaughter heavy cavalry-all you have to do is basically have the spearman attack the knights and they should be able to slaughter them with ease.

In fact this easy countering of Knights and elite heavy cavalry by spear infantry as portrayed in movies and games has become so imprinted into popular culture, that many people who don't study Medieval History into detail think that you just have to wait for the Knights to charge your spears and boom they'll get slaughtered as they hit the spears. Basically in their view you just need to hold the spear steadily and you'll be able to slaughter elite knights just like that,

However the quote from Shogun:Total War about the fending off the charge of the Takeda Cavalry(which are the best heavy mounted Samurais in the game) being the ultimate test of courage (even assuming you have spear men), made me wonder-is Heavy Cavalry as easy to destroy with spears as Bravehart and PC games portray?

I read of cases in Medieval Warfare were spearmen-and we're talking about well-trained ones with long spears- would panic and run away even though they assume those killing positions with the spears (like how the Scotts angled their stakes upward) easily. Or if they do hold it off at first, it seems that as the Knights keep coming, there are times when they would just panic and run away (even if it looks like they did slaughter Knights like in the movies and games).

Is it really that terrifying? So many people in today's world-including Military Historians who don't study Medieval Warfare in details and impose modern concepts on the past-think that with basic Discipline and the right position, the elite heavy cavalry should be easy to kill!

I mean things I read in the Napoleonic Warfare states that Horses would not charge at men with mere bayonets that are only add 2-3 inches to the rifles they're attached to.And these rifles with their bayonets are much shorters than the spears traditionally used in Medieval and Ancient Warfare!

So wouldn't the horses be too scared to charge at the Medieval Spearmen?

What exactly made the Knights (and other elite heavy cavalry like the Takeda Samurai) so scary to fight against, even if you're using anti-cavalry weapons that disciplined and trained spearmen would panic and abandon their formations?

 

[Avrorrange]

I mean things I read in the Napoleonic Warfare states that Horses would not charge at men with mere bayonets that are only add 2-3 inches to the rifles they're attached to.And these rifles with their bayonets are much shorters than the spears traditionally used in Medieval and Ancient Warfare!

So wouldn't the horses be too scared to charge at the Medieval Spearmen?

What exactly made the Knights (and other elite heavy cavalry like the Takeda Samurai) so scary to fight against, even if you're using anti-cavalry weapons that disciplined and trained spearmen would panic and abandon their formations?

I'm actually quite confused about that one as well.A lot of people have said that cavalry don't charge into solid blocks of men like in movies,but at the same time,if that's true,why the heck is cavalry such a fearsome tool of war?In otl,the Romans actually transferred from a military emphasis on professionally trained infantry to cavalry,so there must be merit of cavalry over well-disciplined infantry,given cavalry's much more expensive to equip and train than infantry and on a much smaller scale.

 

[The Undead Martyr]

Cavalry versus heavy pikes/Spearman is basically a game of chicken. It resolves in one of three ways: the cavalry go around the formation (turn a flank), the cavalry go through (force a breach) or the cavalry die.

For pikes to work effectively requires armor and discipline, armor to prevent them from dying to arrows (as you want both hands free for a good pike or polearm, rather than wasting time on spear and shield) and order to remain coherent. If there's a gap in the formation, because of casualties, terrain, movement or just bad order then the whole thing falls apart.

Essentially it comes found to logistics- raising and equipping professional infantry force costs a lot of money. Moreover kingdom aren't inclined to arm their populations, and certainly not train them in how to defeat knights in battle, hence the heavy reliance on mercenaries.

Do note that heavy cavalry is basically the medieval version of a main battle tank. Several thousand pounds of man, horse and steel armor moving upwards of forty miles per hour in the final stretches of a charge and focusing all that energy into a tiny little twenty foot lance.... imagine rounding up a bunch of football players to stop a car (or a few dozen of them in formation) and you see why this was so terrifying. Anything less than a deep formation of armored pikemen literally braced for impact would get rolled over if only from the natural tendency to run away from the impending wave of death.

 

[PhilippeO]

in tactical question, asking someone who participated in Re-enactment might be useful, they experience similar situation in mock combat.

in historical battle, many things also affect armies: leadership (reputation of general), experience (whether the troop had succeed in past battle, whether or not they have old veterans), overall morale (religious fanaticism, local pride, how tired troops, etc). They are large uncertainties. Even if soldier 'know' they can hold a cavalry charge or arrow barrage, they didnt always capable of pulling that in battle. people panic for various reason in battle.

 

[ennobee]

As for the question 'how terrifying' it is to fend off elite cavalry with a spear- or shield-wall? Terribly terrifying, P___ in your pants terrifying. If you're in a pike formation you are typically a green conscript with just a basic training and typically no battle experience. Knights, samurai or horse-lords are trained for battle and you spent all your life looking up to them with a mixture of awe ans fear. (If not, you wouldn't follow your own lord into battle, you wouldn't have a lord to demand you follow him into battle in the first place...)
Still you got a spear and you got a shield and your drill sergeant did a good job of beating it in to you: "You hold the line whatever happens. If we all stay together and keep our lances straight, we have a fighting chance. If but one of us breaks ranks and runs, the whole line breaks apart and you're all goners. Therefore I will personally drive my own spear through the first of you sorry sods that just as much as glances backwards. So here is your choice. You don't know what will come riding towards you, but you know who will be standing behind you: ME"

So there you are. Suddenly you are lined up with shields and spears at the ready. Suddenly you see those knights, those marvelous fantastic knights that you might have seen on tourneys or hunts, galoping toweards you. You know you can not run. Standing still and doing your drill is the only chance you have. If you run, you will ruin the chances of the guys next to you as well. you will ruin the chances for the whole line. so you can not run. Besides, those horsemen are much faster then you. They will just chase you down. That is if your drill sergeant doesn't get to you first... so you grind your teeth, mumble a prayer and hope..... that the guy next to you, or the ones three places over has his nerves under control just as good as you do.

Terrifying indeed.

 

[Balaur]

I'm actually quite confused about that one as well.A lot of people have said that cavalry don't charge into solid blocks of men like in movies,but at the same time,if that's true,why the heck is cavalry such a fearsome tool of war?In otl,the Romans actually transferred from a military emphasis on professionally trained infantry to cavalry,so there must be merit of cavalry over well-disciplined infantry,given cavalry's much more expensive to equip and train than infantry and on a much smaller scale.

Heavy cavalry could and did charge straight into solid blocks of men. It wasn't done often because unless the cavalry was heavily armoured it was mutually assured destruction-many of the horses and riders would be impaled, or knocked down by the impact, but the infantry would also suffer horrific casualties. For example, see Winston Churchill's charge at Omburdan. Pike blocks would have men armed with shorter weapons like Goedenags or Halberds in reserve to finish off any riders who managed to bulldoze past the pikes.
Because of the fear of this mutually assured destruction, cavalry or infantry would often break off before the charge actually hit. If the infantry run, they're finished, but if the cavalry rein in, they can regroup and try again. Cavalry can also use their mobility to hit enemies on the flanks while they're engaged frontally, in which case they can't put up a proper defensive formation and are dogmeat.

in tactical question, asking someone who participated in Re-enactment might be useful, they experience similar situation in mock combat.

in historical battle, many things also affect armies: leadership (reputation of general), experience (whether the troop had succeed in past battle, whether or not they have old veterans), overall morale (religious fanaticism, local pride, how tired troops, etc). They are large uncertainties. Even if soldier 'know' they can hold a cavalry charge or arrow barrage, they didnt always capable of pulling that in battle. people panic for various reason in battle.

You can't actually go "damn the pikes" and run someone over with a half ton destrier in re-enactment. Although I've never actually faced cavalry(my group does 16th century fencing and occasionally melee fighting) I have been close to galloping horses-only two-and the ground does shake. It's very easy to see why hundreds or even thousands of galloping horses could make someone panic. Add in a bit of game theory-if no-one runs you can hold, but if a few people run, they will likely escape while the people who stand and fight will be killed with a compromised formation, so then everyone starts running...

 

[LSCatilina]

As other people said, it really goes down tactically to how much disciplined, trained and motivated enough your spearers are. If it's Macedonian phalanx or Swiss mercenaries quality, it can be attempted without much randomness (that they would be able to hold and stand doesn't mean at the latest victory, but it's still a huge asset); if it's more or less quickly raised levies, it's much less certain.

That said, we have to take in consideration the strategical part : open field battles are fairly rare in Middle-Ages, and generally non-decisive* : it's not a matter of having infantry or not (if something you may had have more cavalry part in the Late Middle-Ages, altough High medieval infantry tended to be of not-that-good quality), but that most of the conflicts involved sieges (and even there, you had often a negociation under the form of "Hey, buddy : I'm going to besiege you next month or so") on which infantry basically set down waiting for surrender, and cavalry plundering the land or making sure no reinforcement could reach the besieged place.

Infantery had a better role with the growth of urban communities since the XIIth, but then it was more used as a infantry vs. infantry feature or to serve as complementary force among besieegers (to run sorties, for instances). You really need to wait the XIVth to see infantry directly opposing cavalry, such as in the Battle of Golden Spurs, and it's the result less of a big strategical chance (altough the situation was pregnant with this) than grand strategical issues tied to politics (french aristocracy not willing to give their own infantry and archery the big tactical role during battles, in this case). Eventually the XIVth and the XVth really saw the systematisation of charges against spears, or rather, in a meaningul way.

Long story short, the existence of an heavy cavalry and a spear infantry doesn't automatically mean a tactical conflict, as the latter can be (as Macedonian phalanx) pretty much, and successfully so, used against other infantry.

*Even Crecy and Poitiers, held in honour by a chest-thumping historiography and sometimes even for good reasons, didn't led to decisive outcomes.

 

[Derek Pullem]

The key to any spear based formation is training and experience. Untrained and inexperienced troops will turn and run under a cavalry charge. Best story of this is during the filming of the 1970 film version of Waterloo where thousands of Russian conscripts who were playing the British turned tail and ran when facing a staged cavalry charge!

 

[Gasmask134]

Well since you play total war, next time you have a unit about to be charged by cavalry select the unit then use the unit camera by pressing insert to watch things from their perspective.

Then put yourself in the shoes of the guy about to get bowled over.

 

[Shinsu]

Horses don't like to run head-long into pointy, stabby objects just like any other creature. They can be trained to force their way through and actually run head-long into it (A lot of the time, the riders would have the horses head up in the air, since horses only have lateral vision, they can't see what is below them, just directly in front of them).

It would normally be a very "chicken" style of game. Having dozens if not hundreds of horses charging straight at you is a very nerve racking thing. I've been in re-enactments myself and it is truly terrifying. On top of that though, if the Spearmen don't have any backing units like base line infantry, or Calvary of their own. Then all they need to do is have part of the unit go around the flank of the spear-wall and one of the two groups would be able to smash into their rear. Spear-men also wouldn't be carrying a shield on their person (more then likely) as the weapon simply would not have allowed it. Spears (or pikes, whatever you want to call them) cannot be handled with one hand, ones that are specially made for one handed use can be, but a regular spear is simply too long and heavy to be wielded with one hand effectively.

For centuries, Calvary were used more as a secondary arm then anything. Infantry was (generally) the cream of any army as they were the main sluggers and the most numerous to have in a battle. The Calvary role was normally meant as a skirmisher, recon, supply, turning flanks etc. But could also be used to prevent enemy Calvary from coming on your flank, as a way to counter archers (From what I've read, it was seldom that archer units would be giving any direct protection by another unit. It seems rather odd to me that it would be the case but I've yet to find any direct evidence that it was the norm.) and their main advantage is being able to be used as a highly mobile unit to exploit a break in the enemy lines (a gap between two infantry units more often then not)

 

[avernite]

As other people said, it really goes down tactically to how much disciplined, trained and motivated enough your spearers are. If it's Macedonian phalanx or Swiss mercenaries quality, it can be attempted without much randomness (that they would be able to hold and stand doesn't mean at the latest victory, but it's still a huge asset); if it's more or less quickly raised levies, it's much less certain.

I think even for Swiss mercenaries, it's not so much that they would always stand firm, but that their enemies saw it enough times to expect them to stand firm, and rather not try crashing into that block of pikes where half your heavy cavalry is likely to die. At that point it becomes self-reinforcing (Swiss expect charges not to hit home so don't run, enemies see them not running so belief in Swiss pikemen standing firm is reinforced, Swiss see charges not hitting so don't run, etcetera).

 

[DominusNovus]

Did pikemen ever have any equipment to help them brace themselves? Even something simple like a wooden board with a hole in it, to help plant the pike in the ground and keep it in place.

 

[Gasmask134]

it's not so much that they would always stand firm, but that their enemies saw it enough times to expect them to stand firm

I certainly feel that this was part of reason for the success the Swiss saw, they had a reputation of being unbreakable badasses regardless of the actual quality of Swiss troops, a fear factor of sorts.

Of course not that their reputation is completely unwarranted, it certainly came from somewhere.

 

[Saphroneth]

I certainly feel that this was part of reason for the success the Swiss saw, they had a reputation of being unbreakable badasses regardless of the actual quality of Swiss troops, a fear factor of sorts.

Of course not that their reputation is completely unwarranted, it certainly came from somewhere.

If the Swiss have a reputation, that will affect even the Swiss! It's why elite units tend to get better performance even from new recruits - now they have a reputation to uphold. (This happens at e.g. Waterloo, where some of the Guards IIRC are actually recently inducted militia! They still stand.)

 

[Gasmask134]

If the Swiss have a reputation, that will affect even the Swiss! It's why elite units tend to get better performance even from new recruits - now they have a reputation to uphold. (This happens at e.g. Waterloo, where some of the Guards IIRC are actually recently inducted militia! They still stand.)

Did Napoleon have Swiss units at Waterloo? I'm afraid I am not too familiar with the order of battle of the French army in 1815.

 

[Saphroneth]

Did Napoleon have Swiss units at Waterloo? I'm afraid I am not too familiar with the order of battle of the French army in 1815.

No, I mean British guards - sorry, that wasn't too clear now I look back at it. (There were some Surrey militiamen, still in their old unifoms, forming part of the 3rd Guards.)

 

[Gasmask134]

No, I mean British guards - sorry, that wasn't too clear now I look back at it. (There were some Surrey militiamen, still in their old unifoms, forming part of the 3rd Guards.)

So basically we have an endless cycle of people trying to uphold a reputation of being unstoppable set by their predecessors.

I think we've cracked the code on elite armies.

 

[Saphroneth]

I think we've cracked the code on elite armies.

It's not all of the story, but it's certainly some of the story. Morale is important in warfare, both national and individual.

 

[GeneralBoomstick]

It would certainly be terrifying, but a cavalry charge straight into a line of spear/pikemen or what have you isn't a terribly intelligent decision even with shock cavalry as you're going to take a lot of losses (many historical examples of it succeeding though), but it's typically better to flank with them.
That being said, a lot of popular culture (like a number of the video games mentioned) doesn't do cavalry charges correctly. Hell, Age if Empires doesn't even have cavalry charges at all. I think the idea is that massed spear formations are much better at stopping the cavalry charge than other infantry and when that happens, the cavalry is kind of fucked.

 

[Gasmask134]

It's not all of the story, but it's certainly some of the story. Morale is important in warfare, both national and individual.

Of course! Soldiers are still human, if they don't want to fight then why should they give it their all?