It was not his choice,but it did show that horse archers can have the capacity to be highly devastating in Western Europe,that is of course assuming that the Huns in Aetius' army are mostly horse archers as opposed to 'Huns' who are simply Germanic infantry/heavy cavalry in the confederation.
AHC:Light cavalry tactics more favoured than heavy cavalry tactics in Europe by 1000.
- Thread starter darthfanta
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Bows were not especially ignoble outside the Feudal culture anyway, even among people who were not initially heavy bow users (such as the Norse peoples).
And yes, good cavalry terrain and exposure to Steppe contact gave rise to a fully European gentry of horse archers and comparable troops time and again. It was a good idea and it worked too well in some parts of Europe to ignore, while other parts got around it somehow, and I guess that's where the question lies, what's special about those parts of Europe?
Compare it to the rise of the reiter cavalry: as much as Bayard may have complained about firearms, the next generation of French horsemen was already pretty serious about their pistols and the generation after that was busy abandoning the lance.
So what kept them from taking up the bow? They were all deeply exposed to it, after all, through hunting and other activities.
And yes, good cavalry terrain and exposure to Steppe contact gave rise to a fully European gentry of horse archers and comparable troops time and again. It was a good idea and it worked too well in some parts of Europe to ignore, while other parts got around it somehow, and I guess that's where the question lies, what's special about those parts of Europe?
Compare it to the rise of the reiter cavalry: as much as Bayard may have complained about firearms, the next generation of French horsemen was already pretty serious about their pistols and the generation after that was busy abandoning the lance.
So what kept them from taking up the bow? They were all deeply exposed to it, after all, through hunting and other activities.
Would more successful Avars or Magyars actually help horse archery become more widespread in Western Europe?IIRC,Chinese armies at one point had cavalry consisting of mostly cataphract like horsemen,but had to scrap that and adopt horse archers and other types of light cavalry subsequently to fight nomads on more equal terms.
Assuming Hunnic armies were only horse archers, which is not supported by either archeology or historical sources.
Germano-Sarmatian features, were extremly present among Huns themselves (that barely form 1/5 of the Hunnic armies) and even more among the peoples they dominated (as Ostrogoths).
As in, mostly an infantry based army, with cavalry on which javelineers and bowmen had a more or less important role.
You had such defiance in Western Arabo-Islamic culture, actually (and a common defiant on crossbow including Byzantines which may have some soft defiance as well on a noble use of bow).
As said above, development of heavy cavalry from heavy infantry, poor western perception of the bow (even during Roman times), no military need for a mounted archery on what was mostly a siege warfare.
For Avars, it would ask them to be far more present in Europe they did IOTL. Most of the forces encountered by Franks were actually Slavs dominated by Avars, and there wasn't much important conflict before Carolingians crushing Avars in the late VIIIth century.
Basically, you'd need to prevent Avar decline due to their incapacity to take Constantinople : let's say it's going to be hard.
As for Hungarians...They did so, as much as it was possible in a geopolitical situation where nomadic warfare wasn't really an immediate threat. Military features don't just get develloped by sheer transmission : you need an incitative.
The wikipage only points to the fact that there exists in Japan a history of mounted archery. Not particularly distinct from other East Asian nations.
If you lose enough times to the same group,surely you would adopt some of their features.The Chinese as mentioned dropped most of their cataphract-like heavy cavalry and adopted horse archers and other light cavalry in their armies while the Romans trained horse archers of their own despite being a mostly infantry force to begin with.Knighthood actually became increasingly irrelevant due to gunpowder and better infantry tactics.
RodentRevolution
Banned
That would be the key point, time and time again Western European cavalries found themselves winning against Steppe horse archers. It is worth noting that the Germans are still here, the French are still here here of the Huns, Avars and Magyars only the latter are still here and they survived by adding ever increasing western war making options to their tool kit in addition to horse archers until horse archers went out of fashion.
To my understanding,the nomads,especially the Magyars,looted and ransacked Western Europe for more than a century and crushed most attempts by the heavy cavalry centered European armies to defeat them until Lechfeld.
But again, you treat horse archers as it was kind of genetic weaponry of steppe peoples. It's not : Huns, Avars, Bulgar heavily relied on different features themselves and even more on different peoples.
"Some of their features" could be as well javelineers, German or Slavic organisation, etc. There's nothing pointing that horse archery had that of an edge militarily speaking (or was used as a prime feature) by these peoples.
Yes, because you had a nomadic pressure that existed on Romans, and that didn't on Romano-Barbarians. It's pretty much what I said above.
That said, Romans AND Huns, Avars, etc. were both mostly infantry forces to begin with.
Making Huns or Avars sort of proto-Mongols looks really weird, to say the truth.
Heavy cavalry (that shouldn't be confused with knighthood at this point, as it's confusing military matter with political/social matters) became less important with the appearance of gundpowder hand weapons, but survived trough gendarmes, which had a real importance as points the Battle of Ravenna (which is arguably its final gala).
More than gunpowder alone, it's the handweapon that eventually gained a reach (and strategical use) with tercios that made it outdated.
As noted above, not only infantry rise of the XIVth didn't crushed cavalry, but you had a revival of heavy cavalry in the XVth that concerned even regions with an urban militia tradition, as Italy.
Which is more than respectively TWO and THREE centuries after gunpowder and heavy infantry became a thing in Europe.
I'm afraid that I have to strongly disagree with all your affirmations, there.
These raids were mostly espaced : we're not talking of a "non-stop" raiding party from Pannonia, there, neither consistently crushed Eastern Franks or Slavs (you had Hungarian defeats before Lechfeld, Hungarian victories after Lechfeld).
The main problem for Eastern Franks, or Franco-Italians, was essentially having Hungarians showing up after a huge desorganisation of their society since the previous century, rather than military matters.
Not that they didn't used, partially so, some Hungarians tactics (as many people said in the previous posts you certainly read at this point), but giving the political nature of the crisis rather than military, it wasn't going to end as a massive use of light cavalry.
EDIT : I'll try to get some material on medieval light cavalries if you're interested, but I can't guarantee you these were translated.
takerma
Banned
It is quite weird that european cavalry in raiding, scouting and foraging and other situations did not adopt bow. Horse archer best asset is that they can kill and wound horses quite easily. Men are harder since they tend to armour themselves. When doing skirmish type fighting, shooting opposition horses whoever possible seems like a no brainer. You don't even need a composite bow for this, composite bows biggest advantage is shooting heavy war arrows to punch through armour at decent range. Firing light broadheads to wound and kill horses you don't need a particularly high pull weight bow.
If you think about it clash between two cavalry armies that utilized bow a lot must have been a horrible horse slaughter.
If you think about it clash between two cavalry armies that utilized bow a lot must have been a horrible horse slaughter.
... if the opposing cavalry is patient enough to wait while your poorly trained horse archers take their time to kill/wound all their horses
In most cases the enemy cavalry just charge and tear your "poorly trained peasants with bad bows on cheap horses" into pieces.
That's assuming they are poorly trained horse archers.... if the opposing cavalry is patient enough to wait while your poorly trained horse archers take their time to kill/wound all their horses
In most cases the enemy cavalry just charge and tear your "poorly trained peasants with bad bows on cheap horses" into pieces.
On the other hand it did adopt crossbow in several occasion, especially auxiliary.
But, basically, as long heavy cavalry is the marker of social distinction, using a weapon as poorly considered socially as the bow isn't really going to be a thing.
Mongol horse archery (which quite perfected it) was more about saturation than searching individual targets.
For an horse archery to be that efficient on battle, you need not only huge discipline (would it be to pull tactic such as feigned flight without the whole thing going to an actual flight) but huge numbers to saturate the battle.
Even there, Mongols suffered important losses at Legniz, even in face of tactical and numerical superiority, so the "quite easily" may have to be really nuanced.
Horses tented to be armoured themselves, at least since the XIth century and the rise of siege/raid warfare (first leather parts, with more important armours and protection being adopted in the XIIth century, after the Crusades' experience of light cavalry harassing).
Training a massive horse archery is quite hard actually, critically without such military tradition.
First you'd have to make it the main military force (would it be only to allow saturation tactics) against the aformentionen cultural/social bias (to say nothing of the absence of a real motivation in a warfare essentially based on sieges)
Then training the main part of your army to fight on horse : even in medieval armies, it never represented more than half and in pretty exceptional conditions. And that while training to use a bow skillfully in the same time. (There's a reason why horse cranequiniers were a thing, while mounted bowmen were essentially mounted infantry)
Of course, it requires enough discipline to allow basic tactics (as "feign flight" not actually turning in a full-fledged retreat) and to keep the cohesion of your army.
So, I really think it would require much focus (without actual motivation doing so) to properly train a useful western horse archery that would replace heavy cavalry and that without social, tactical, traditional support (at the contrary : pulling it out of nowhere have really few chances to ever works)
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By the way,would a system where granting land to men to be equipped as horse archers instead of heavy cavalry be able to yield a larger number of cavalry since the troops won't have to buy heavy armour?
Not much.
Again : social bias on the bow would definitely prevent that; western high medieval warfare didn't favoured field battles; requires enough troops to be tactically interesting.
Basically what was said about sipahi-equivalent you proposed earlier.
Heavy cavalry was the "natural" outcome of the heavy infantry (mounted or not) that dominated the social elites in western Europe at this point. Horse archery elite became a thing in steppe and after migrations due to "traditional" warfare or direct copycat (as with Byzantine cavalry), but it simply wasn't the case for post-Roman armies.
It should be noted that milites weren't created trough a social program of "landing" everyone, but that's quite the contrary.
Military elites (noble, and initially non-noble as Carolingians landowners), that became growingly distinct from the "freemen-in-arms" for aformentioned reasons, gained more and more political power up gaining (legally or from their own) landed autonomy/independence.
Would a sipahi styled class be more likely be created in Hungary and Bulgaria instead?
Possibly for Hungary (I'm not sure Bulgaria, but I could be convinced otherwise by someone knowing about Old Bulgarian/First Bulgarian Empire militaries)...but it would be hard, asking a continuation of the military "gyuldoms", rather than an dynastical unification as historically.
Which could eventually mean too weakened Hungarian entities to resist a too strong imperial influence, that would treat them as they did with Wendes.
That said you can get around it (non exhaustive) :
- A more "balkanic-danubian" Hungary (maybe replacing Bulgars) could be used as a specialized force by Byzzies
- No Ladislau's crushing victories, meaning a continued Pecheneg threat (asking for some earlier form of integration à la Ladislaus IV)
- Hungarians being unable to get on a stronger Great Moravia (or rather serving as a political military elite) and being integrated distinctivly.
It wouldn't be exactly be a landed horse archery (rather a political integration of horse archery within a landed structure), and would probably won't stop a "westernisation" of Hungary at middle-term but could allow a Central European horse archery tradition to be partially maintained (not as a main or dominating feature, at least on a general scale).