The general consensus seems to be that until the development of gunpowder, horse archer based armies are superior to any other type, mainly thanks to their ability to inflict casualties from a distance and withdraw at will. Significant mounted archery traditions emerged in a diverse range of peoples and geographies from the Eurasian steppes to Persia and Japan. However, to my knowledge Western Europe never utilized horse archery to a significant degree and instead stuck with heavy and light melee cavalry. Why did the warrior class of medieval Europe not adopt horse archery? They had a tradition of highly trained mounted warriors, and were familiar with horse archery and its devastating effects thanks to encounters with the Huns, Mongols, and Persians. Did Europe's geography make horse archery unfavorable? Perhaps specific features of war in Europe such as the level of fortification or reliance on peasant levies made them less effective or difficult to introduce? Could there have been a sort of cultural blind spot to using mounted archers thanks to the legacy of Greece and Rome's infantry based armies? Or perhaps my initial premise is wrong and horse archer based armies are not as formidable as I have been lead to believe?
Why Did Western Europe not use Horse Archery?
- Thread starter Dr. Hochmeister
- Start date
Lack of pasturage, too many forests and mountains, and castles were built specifically to counter mounted nomads like the Avars and the Magyars. Europeans themselves also didn't have the tradition of being nomadic herders like the Mongols. And I don't know how necessary they were, but I notice that a lot of these peoples used compound bows, which fall apart in the rain.
RodentRevolution
Banned
Well it is not so much composite bows fall apart in the rain as it really helps to have the right kind of weather when setting the glue which holds them together. However some crossbow prods were essentially short but powerful composite bows. Castles however can stand up to horse archers just fine as pointed out by TRH but so too can armies of crossbowmen protected from close assault by men armed with metal pointed sticks of one kind or another (spears, pikes, war bills, halberds, glaives Europe does a good line in metal pointed sticks) and those armies are cheaper.
The attraction of melee cavalry is that when they hit hard they can beat a large number of enemy troops very quickly. Horse archers are not rubbish and places like Hungary and Russia used them not to mention horse archery came back into fashion several times in the Byzantine armies. There may have been a cultural aversion among the mounted classes further west though it is perhaps significant that England's yeomanry who had once provided hobilars (a kind of lance armed cavalry) largely converted to mounted longbowmen (who fought dismounted due to the nature of their particular warbow) and that even folks who had the money to serve as men at arms (the chaps we often think of as knights but only the knights got to be called Sir Name) sometimes served as longbow archers.
Likely a combination of culture, together with terrain both natural and man made and the fact that a properly disciplined Western European style medieval army could stand up to horse archers just fine meant there was no great urgency to take up the idea.
The attraction of melee cavalry is that when they hit hard they can beat a large number of enemy troops very quickly. Horse archers are not rubbish and places like Hungary and Russia used them not to mention horse archery came back into fashion several times in the Byzantine armies. There may have been a cultural aversion among the mounted classes further west though it is perhaps significant that England's yeomanry who had once provided hobilars (a kind of lance armed cavalry) largely converted to mounted longbowmen (who fought dismounted due to the nature of their particular warbow) and that even folks who had the money to serve as men at arms (the chaps we often think of as knights but only the knights got to be called Sir Name) sometimes served as longbow archers.
Likely a combination of culture, together with terrain both natural and man made and the fact that a properly disciplined Western European style medieval army could stand up to horse archers just fine meant there was no great urgency to take up the idea.
Horse archers aren't the be-all end-all of warfare.
First, of course, they are terrible at taking fortifications (they tend to lack range compared to foot archers, and forts make it MUCH worse because they're also large targets). Second, they are terrible at holding ground. Third, they have issues using their mobility in broken terrains (i.e. most of Germany, at least).
So on come your horse archers, against an equal number of archers backed by an equal number of spearmen with shields (because archers and spearmen are far cheaper to maintain). Good luck to the horsemen.
First, of course, they are terrible at taking fortifications (they tend to lack range compared to foot archers, and forts make it MUCH worse because they're also large targets). Second, they are terrible at holding ground. Third, they have issues using their mobility in broken terrains (i.e. most of Germany, at least).
So on come your horse archers, against an equal number of archers backed by an equal number of spearmen with shields (because archers and spearmen are far cheaper to maintain). Good luck to the horsemen.
IIRC, the mongol children were virtually raised on a horse. The skill required to fire a bow and arrow while riding a mount might come with training but will never equal someone doing it from early childhood.
They were terrible holding ground but excellent at harassing and drawing troops out of formation via a feigned retreat where the enemy would be exposed.
This is quite true and holds true in the Arab world as well. Arab armies pre Abbasid did not use horse archers (skirmishes yes, with javelins) and during the Abbasid period, only Turkish Mamluks practiced horse archery.
However the Abbasids even in their weakened states, recognized the weakness of horse archers. Such as the Zanj rebellion where the Mamluk General Ju'lan al-Turki, who with a large assortment of cavalry was outmaneuvered by Zanj light infantry in the swamp lands and forced with little casualties to retreat to Basra. Or the Saffarid defeats against both Zanj and Abbasid armies.
longsword14
Banned
Regarding horse archer's usefulness: No method of war can be judged without considering the general context. They were seldom used in straight-up fights, they were used as part of a larger cavalry force and they fought in a war of movement.
Europe did not have communities based around pastoral horse riders. They had their own methods of war which did not need them.
A good cavalry army in its proper place would ensure that infantry on the march is harassed, isolated into blind pockets or ready the heavy punch coming in to deliver the blow.
Popular imagination only has set piece battle in mind.
Europe did not have communities based around pastoral horse riders. They had their own methods of war which did not need them.
A good cavalry army in its proper place would ensure that infantry on the march is harassed, isolated into blind pockets or ready the heavy punch coming in to deliver the blow.
Popular imagination only has set piece battle in mind.
Athens had horse archers, though of course that was supplemental to the infantry arm.
The Late Romans had a whole lot of horse archers, which I think might indicate a level of military organization and infrastructure necessary that wasn't common in feudalism.
Besides that well, the reasons people listed. Crossbows, castles, and heavier cavalry makes it nonintuitive to raise that kind of force from scratch.
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I also think horse archers need to be very skilled horsemen and very skilled archers and have a large supply of remounts. These criteria pretty much limit horse archers to nomad armies where those three things are valuble for other reasons. In europe horses are too valuable and you are better investing in heavy horses, while training archers who can also ride well there. would be expensive. They would effectively replace knights who are probably better value for money
Yeah. Common among those kinds of cultures, but that doesn't describe Western Europe. And as @cerebus just mentioned, you need remounts, or else you run into the problem that over a distance of hundreds of miles, a human will actually be faster than a horse. That multiplies the pasturage problem I mentioned already. I'm not sure the Mongols could have supported much more than the four tumen that they invaded Hungary with IOTL, not past the Carpathian Basin, at least.
longsword14
Banned
A horse would still be faster, but an army would have its advantage blunted.Probably, a nomad army starts integrating more infantry to adopt to new lands the further to the west they go.
Stuff, nonsense, stuff and nonsense, and did I mention nonsense?
It's all very well to compare horses vs. humans on tracks designed to make humans wearing nothing beyond running shorts even be competitive with a horse in a straight up race (and even then, horses mostly win anyway) - but please, I beg you, name me an infantry force that actually carries its own supplies, with a mobility range of hundreds of kms that horse archer armies could cover routinely? You don't have to be faster than the horsemen, even, just actually able to cover the distance.
Or, you know, don't bother, because there are none. The things that come closest are armies that marched from well-supplied fort to well-supplied fort along paved roads and even so it took them weeks to do it.
Russia's a great example by the way of a place that always had both cavalry in the eastern style as well as a sizable infantry component. Well, the infantry used boats to get around on the major rivers. They had do, otherwise they'd be strategically useless. The cavalry? The cavalry walked. And kept pace.
Of course, we have plenty of information that suggests that when confronted with archers in defensive positions, horse archers simply use their common sense, dismount and use heavier bows (horse bows also come in different draw weights, the heaviest ones are only slightly lighter than the heaviest infantry bows). The Ilkhanids did that, the Seljuks did that, the Crimeans did that, the Russians did that, the Qing did that. It's very well recorded.
It didn't always work against a determined defender but it wasn't a turkey shoot for the infantry force.
Naturally, Silesia and the Yangtzi Valley and Zalesye are presumably all open flat steppes oh wait no.
So basically exactly the setup at Mohi, right? We actually do know how that one ended. Not the way you suggest.
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Yeah, and with the example of the Magyars settling down in Hungary, you could say we have OTL precedent for that.
I keep hearing this thing, but I don't see any proof for it. No primary sources, no technical studies, nothing.
I guess you presume that central Europe (where compound bows were in fact used) is dramatically continental and that as soon as you cross the Elbe (and thus into crossbow country) it suddenly gets all Atlantic and the moisture gets too much for the glue? Obviously a raintight bowcase would shield the bow from actual water in most cases, so it has to be the moisture that's the problem.
How about non-steel crossbow bows, did those also fall apart in the rain? There are plenty of those.
I've read it in more than one place, I couldn't say where the claim originates, though. For what it's worth, a precipitation map shows that central and southern Europe are generally rainier than the east, although I don't know how dramatic that is. Anyways, I only edited that bit in a minute after as an addendum, I always assumed pasturage was the main limitation.
Pasturage is a major point, yes. Burning the grass to deny fodder and thus logistics was something the Mamluks and the Ilkhanids did to each other in Syria, as did the Crimeans to deny the Russians as late as the 1680s. Russian cavalry typically had no more than two horses per soldier but even that was enough to deny them a couple of campaign seasons.
And yes there isn't a tremendous amount of grass outside Hungary in Europe - so probably no long-term campaigns are possible, although short raids certainly are (the Magyars and Avars did it, the Mongols certainly could too). After that you need to get allies or subjects that can provide you with different kinds of troops.
Once you stop needing to live off the grass and can provision your horses differently, things do change even in Europe. The Spanish used harassing cavalry, of course, and mounted crossbowmen WERE in fact used in Europe as well, and the lancers did get displaced by large troops of cuirassiers and harqueboussiers and other types of firearm-bearing cavalry that didn't always need to engage with swords.
Admiral Beez
Banned
What about chariot archers? Surely it's a form of horse archery. IIRC, the Romans used them in Western Europe.
I might be wrong but wasn't part of the reason related to the way warfare developed in the West? By that I mean the typical kind of conflict in the west were sieges. Horse archers would be good for harassing supply lines but not for attacking castles/ walled cities. By the time that pitched battles became the norm gunpowder had began to become widely used, so no need for mounted archers.
Dragos Cel Mare
Banned
It said elsewhere on the site that the Mongols did have Infantry and Medium/Heavy Cavalry.