I've sometimes read that cavalry charges were used as "shock tactics." Does this mean that they were employed only to hope the enemy would rout? if an enemy did rout to a heavy cavalry charge, that would be ideal. But what if the charge trampled and impaled the first few men, the defending formation lost cohesion, but were still fighting just as a mob of armed men instead of an organized unit. If the charge is a "shock tactic" then that would imply this would result in a failure of the charge. The Battle of the Golden Spurss an example where the infantry stood its ground against heavy cavalry. In that case however, the infantry formation was able to withstand the charge. The cavalry failed to kill a significant number of defenders in the charge. In a case where cavalry do manage to annihilation the first 3 ranks in the charge, that's about as well as they are going to do. What if they get such a result and the surviving defenders continue to fight? On one hand, an army in antiquity that had its formation ruptured is vulnerable to routing. On top of morale reasons, it is simply easier to kill an armed mob, even one that is fighting back, as opposed to an organized army. But on the other hand, if the charge is a "shock tactic" that would imply that failing to get the survivors to back off would be a failure and that trying to fight off the survivors would be futile even if the initial charged killed a lot of defenders with little initial cost to the attackers.
Cavalry Charge Described as Shock Tactics
- Thread starter Alex Zetsu
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The first charge a cavalry force undertakes was, as a rule, its most effective one. Subsequent charges would have diminishing returns as horses and horsemen get exhausted and enemy troops gain confidence. That is in large part why people refer to cavalry as a shock force on the battlefield; it has to be timed correctly to achieve maximum effect. Such can be seen, for example, in the Crusades (although to an especially extreme extent due to the asymmetrical warfare of the Levant); the cavalry when unleashed would either win the battle immediately, or not at all.
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And this is the point to "shock" here - not that it's a failure if any enemies are still fighting back at all.
A charge does not look like what Hollywood shows us, at all. In fact, most charges never even make contact with the enemy. Whether on foot or on horseback, you have to be suicidal to physically smash into a well formed enemy line at speed, and horses are quite fearful animals as well.
So, if the enemy does not show any sign of budging, you simply....stop your charge (supposedly does not even require a conscious decision by the officer in charge, but often happened on its own), retreat to a safe distance if missile weapons are involved, then wait for another opportunity or until your side or the other loses patience and gives a charge another go.
If the enemy does yield ground, but in an orderly fashion, you still don't press the charge (still suicidal), but do keep 'possession' of the ground yielded by the enemy (major factor in moving battle lines).
If the enemy and you are equally stubborn bastards, fed up with waiting, fine, you do make contact, but ,by the gods, not at a gallop or sprint like in Hollywood (again, suicidal), and both sides start poking each other with pointy things. Since pretty much everyone involved is more interested in avoiding to get poked by the other sides' pointy things than in succeeding to poke an enemy, casualties usually remain pretty light (on a "per round" basis) until everyone gets tired(IIRC, based on f.e. boxing and LARP, about 15-20minutes, tops), and one or both sides retreats a bit (outside of the biggest danger zone for whatever missile weapons are around). The non-retreating side, if any, is usually too tired to go in much of a pursuit, and needs a drink just as much as you do, so you can repeat this back and forth a couple times, just like the previous 2 stages (that can all be mixed up in any order, going both ways).
This can go on for hours and hours with fairly equal (having further reaching pointy things than the other side, or armour that can resist heavier blows, is very helpful in making this part less equal*) single-digit percentage total casualties on both sides, until, finally, one side is suddenly heavily demoralised by seeing a leader fall, or maybe just plain exhausted (or is a Macedonian phalanx and finally ends up sufficiently disrupted from accumulated small losses and terrain features, despite having forced the enemy back the entire battle up to this point), and then on the next charge they receive they will break, run in sheer terror while losing formation, and be hunted down and slaughtered by the new victors who just got an extra adrenaline rush.
You can, of course, reach the final stage in the first 15 minutes of a battle, if, say, you have an unexperienced, ill equipped peasant militia being charged by a famous heavy cavalry force, known for its numerous victories.
OTOH, if you have experienced, veteran Swiss pikemen in their underwear, without armour, but with their pikes, against heavy lancers in full plate armour (and for some strange reason zero missile troops around), the lancers, whose pointy sticks have a shorter reach than those of the Swiss, will fail as long as the nerves of the Swiss hold out.
Or, both sides have highly motivated, high quality troops and stubbornly refuse to break until both armies are well into double digit percentage casualties, and that's where you get your "costly victories", "hard fought victories" and "Pyrhic victories".
This is a long winded way of saying that "a case where cavalry do manage to annihilation the first 3 ranks in the charge, that's about as well as they are going to do", is actually not very likely to happen, not in one charge at least.
This also ignores things like flanking, surprise attacks in the rear, unusual fanaticism, the effect of the terrain etc...
Oh, and "Does this mean that they were employed only to hope the enemy would rout?" Well, only is certainly an exaggeration, but in a way...yes, totally. Because being conceptually aware of the fact that a cavalry charge pretty much never succeeds against infantry holding firm (preferably with longer spears than the cavalry) is a very different thing from actually having the balls to stay put. A charging mass of heavy cavalry must be an absolutely terrifying sight if you have never seen it before, or worse, did when the result was the annihilation of the regiment next to yours.
Part of this from the excellent A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog (sorry, can't find the most relevant blog posts, there's several involving Romans, Spartans, Gondorians or Dothraki, amongst other examples, the guy is rather...productive)
For the morale & repeatedly charge back-and-forth on the battlefield parts, also "collective impressions" so to speak, from various pages on Napoleonistyka, as the Napoleonic Wars are one of the first of which truly large numbers of letters and memoirs are still available, not only from generals, but also from common soldiers.
* Most famously, the Greek hoplites in the Persian Wars both had that longer reach and more resistant armour than the Persians, with the known results.
So, if the enemy does not show any sign of budging, you simply....stop your charge (supposedly does not even require a conscious decision by the officer in charge, but often happened on its own), retreat to a safe distance if missile weapons are involved, then wait for another opportunity or until your side or the other loses patience and gives a charge another go.
If the enemy does yield ground, but in an orderly fashion, you still don't press the charge (still suicidal), but do keep 'possession' of the ground yielded by the enemy (major factor in moving battle lines).
If the enemy and you are equally stubborn bastards, fed up with waiting, fine, you do make contact, but ,by the gods, not at a gallop or sprint like in Hollywood (again, suicidal), and both sides start poking each other with pointy things. Since pretty much everyone involved is more interested in avoiding to get poked by the other sides' pointy things than in succeeding to poke an enemy, casualties usually remain pretty light (on a "per round" basis) until everyone gets tired(IIRC, based on f.e. boxing and LARP, about 15-20minutes, tops), and one or both sides retreats a bit (outside of the biggest danger zone for whatever missile weapons are around). The non-retreating side, if any, is usually too tired to go in much of a pursuit, and needs a drink just as much as you do, so you can repeat this back and forth a couple times, just like the previous 2 stages (that can all be mixed up in any order, going both ways).
This can go on for hours and hours with fairly equal (having further reaching pointy things than the other side, or armour that can resist heavier blows, is very helpful in making this part less equal*) single-digit percentage total casualties on both sides, until, finally, one side is suddenly heavily demoralised by seeing a leader fall, or maybe just plain exhausted (or is a Macedonian phalanx and finally ends up sufficiently disrupted from accumulated small losses and terrain features, despite having forced the enemy back the entire battle up to this point), and then on the next charge they receive they will break, run in sheer terror while losing formation, and be hunted down and slaughtered by the new victors who just got an extra adrenaline rush.
You can, of course, reach the final stage in the first 15 minutes of a battle, if, say, you have an unexperienced, ill equipped peasant militia being charged by a famous heavy cavalry force, known for its numerous victories.
OTOH, if you have experienced, veteran Swiss pikemen in their underwear, without armour, but with their pikes, against heavy lancers in full plate armour (and for some strange reason zero missile troops around), the lancers, whose pointy sticks have a shorter reach than those of the Swiss, will fail as long as the nerves of the Swiss hold out.
Or, both sides have highly motivated, high quality troops and stubbornly refuse to break until both armies are well into double digit percentage casualties, and that's where you get your "costly victories", "hard fought victories" and "Pyrhic victories".
This is a long winded way of saying that "a case where cavalry do manage to annihilation the first 3 ranks in the charge, that's about as well as they are going to do", is actually not very likely to happen, not in one charge at least.
This also ignores things like flanking, surprise attacks in the rear, unusual fanaticism, the effect of the terrain etc...
Oh, and "Does this mean that they were employed only to hope the enemy would rout?" Well, only is certainly an exaggeration, but in a way...yes, totally. Because being conceptually aware of the fact that a cavalry charge pretty much never succeeds against infantry holding firm (preferably with longer spears than the cavalry) is a very different thing from actually having the balls to stay put. A charging mass of heavy cavalry must be an absolutely terrifying sight if you have never seen it before, or worse, did when the result was the annihilation of the regiment next to yours.
Part of this from the excellent A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry blog (sorry, can't find the most relevant blog posts, there's several involving Romans, Spartans, Gondorians or Dothraki, amongst other examples, the guy is rather...productive)
For the morale & repeatedly charge back-and-forth on the battlefield parts, also "collective impressions" so to speak, from various pages on Napoleonistyka, as the Napoleonic Wars are one of the first of which truly large numbers of letters and memoirs are still available, not only from generals, but also from common soldiers.
* Most famously, the Greek hoplites in the Persian Wars both had that longer reach and more resistant armour than the Persians, with the known results.
Or if you are an idiot and fall to, let's say, a feigned retreat, lose your cohesion in pursuit and then the enemy suddenly turns back and stomps you down
Much of the warfare was and is a game of rock-paper-scissors, like:
cavalry beats the line
square beats the cavalry
line beats the square
Although in the case above swiss would likely fail and be cut down to a man, since standing in your undies against heavy horse is really bad for morale.
I mean, it wasn’t their undies, but Swiss pikemen in the period of their dominance were rarely in armor because they were obsessed with moving FAST. Which was part of what made their pike tactics so terrifying: a bunch of mountain dudes moving quickly towards you with really long pointy sticks aimed right at your formation.
For some reason the Normans were able to do this in Hastings (after one panicked real retreat when William was thought to be dead) and the Anglo Saxons fell for it hook line and sinker every time. The Mongols also did this against the Poles and Hungarians. They found the castles were rough to crack and it was very annoying to stand in one spot and feed horses, so they would "give up" after a short period and sure enough most of the time the garrisons would think they won and peruse the retreating armies. So many castles fell this way it's funny. Most of the Polish and Hungarian strongholds that remained were ones that didn't fall for this trick and easily outlsted the Mongols. I don't know why they didn't go to Italy, I'm sure the garrisons of the Holy Roman Empire would also probably obligingly fall for the same trick.
Years ago this was one of the favorite topics among the professional medievalists on soc.history.medieval and, if you have absolutely nothing to do you probably may still find a lot of information there but I would not recommend this course of action. 😉
To start with, I’m afraid that you are putting to much credit to the term. The whole thing was intended to describe pretty much the only thing that the heavy medieval cavalry (knights and their followers) could do: ride straight ahead: in an absence of a collective training above the level of a feudal’s personal band anything more complicated would result in a bloody mess. At least to some degree the term was used just to distinguish the western tactics from an alleged “hit and run” tactics of a light eastern cavalry. The notion was born somewhere in the XIX century due to a blissful ignorance of the European authors about the things “eastern”.
Then, the term “cavalry” is misleading because it somewhat assumes the modern cavalry with the uniform equipment, units and training, which was not the case in Medieval Europe. A feudal had been coming to service with his band or the bands of his vassals and had a great freedom of actions on a battlefield. The same was going for an individual knight. In most cases the other side had exactly the same composition so you can assume, if you wish, that each knight on each side was going to “shock” his opponent on the other side. Of course, an impact of being hit by a huge mass (fully armored person on a huge horse so even if the speed was low, m*v was still great) had been causing shock. Probably to both participants.
In most cases the medieval battles, unlike those of the later times, were deteriorating into the series of the individual encounters: a knight was there for glory and loot (ransom) so the whole thing was rather tricky.
This is not a good example by a number of reasons:
- Battles with the Flemish militia were not typical for the knightly warfare because they were among the first examples of “shock” <whatever> facing a good quality infantry and finding out that the usual tactics is not working.
- Actually, the French side started correctly by sending the crossbowmen and other infantry. The second stage, cavalry attack, was a classic class-based arrogance: we, the nobles, can’t afford our own lowly infantry to win a battle. Charge!
- The headlong attack against the front of infantry phalanx armed with the spears and goddendags was a pure stupidity. The error was fixed at Roosebeke where the French infantry tied the Flemish front and the knights attacked unprotected flanks.
- There was no real charge, anyway. The Flemish had the numerous ditches at the front forcing cavalry to move slowly and impact of a clash was minimal.
This depends upon the numerous factors including weapons and formation. Flemish phalanx was vulnerable on the flanks. Scottish shiltrons did not have flanks but could be destroyed by a coordinated action of the archers and repeated charges of the knight units upon “softened” formations (Falkirk). If, however, you are talking about the Swiss columns, the most prudent thing would be to flee as fast as possible at the sight of the enemy’s force, as Burgundians at Grandson. 😉
Parallels with the antiquity or modern times are risky because the “classic” medieval armies were quite different in composition, training and social attitudes.
It is even easier to kill an unarmed mob. 😂
But, as far as the “organized army” is involved, the things are getting tricky because the feudal militia generally was not a very good material for creation of an organized army, especially if you allow it just to ride ahead.
You are talking in such generalities that it is impossible to say something coherent. Are you still in a medieval world or already moved to the modern times? Do you have in mind some geographic/period specifics? What army compositions are you talking about?
In the Napoleonic Wars, sure, but in premodern battles, it was a lot more about timing, positioning, and morale.
Antiquity to medial times. The terms "shock tactics" seem to imply the effect is psychological as opposed to tactical. I quick check on Wikipedia and... although most of the examples are not mevidial nothing seems to dissuade my impression. Tactically speaking, the best you are going to get out of a charge is eliminating a bunch of men in the front. If there are holes in the enemy ranks, maybe you kill a bunch of people on your right side as you ride through. Maybe that is the value of the charge. But if cavalry are supposedly using "shock tactics" and described in many history blogs, these very forums, or Wikipedia, then most of the value comes from getting the survivors to bugger off.
Well, wiki sometimes is very good in bypassing the toxic points. 😂
Now, here is an “average” medieval battle (*). On one side you have a bunch of the mounted feudal bands sometimes augmented with the crossbowmen, etc. And on the other side you have another bunch of the feudal bands with or without the hired units. In which feudal band there is one or few “lances” and each lance consists of a heavily armored knight riding a specially breed heavy horse (barded or not).
These bands sometimes are arranged in the bigger units, if the armies are big enough. In which case these units may enter a battle not all at once. The point is that on both sides most of the front is composed of a heavy (“shock”) cavalry and they start riding at each other. Which of the sides is going to produce a psychological effect on another unless there is a great difference in the numbers?
________
(*) I’m skipping the “English system” because it was not based upon the “shock tactics” and the Flemish/Swiss/German infantry period: the headlong cavalry charges usually were failed.
Well, if the knights on one side are better equipped and more experienced than the knights on another side, they may manage to unhorse more opponents than the other side. But, unless there are some specific considerations, the victors of these duels would stop to receive a submission of defeated enemy and give somebody in their retinue an order to escort prisoner into a camp. Ransom is a very important part of a medieval warfare - it helps to maintain an armed band and, with luck, even to build a new castle.
Now, in a more or less modern warfare it was different because cavalry moved from a set of the individual fighters into the more or less trained units with a different motivation and behavioral model. But then, again, a cavalry unit attacking another cavalry unit is not the same as cavalry unit attacking an infantry. Cavalry vs. cavalry may be a matter of heavier vs. lighter or some other considerations. Cavalry vs. infantry, depends upon period, infantry formation, quality, etc. By the early XIX cavalry attacking infantry in the square formations was, generally, a lost case but there were numerous exceptions.
The best you are going out of a charge is complete destruction of the enemy army. The perfect charge will break through enemy lines and shatter the entire formation, resulting in rout and a general slaughter of the fleeing side.
The wiki definition of shock tactcs doesnt particulalry differ form definition of a charge, btw. And before reading it, I was sure that the shock part in shock tactics meant just contact at high speed...
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It's the effect of the tactic changing from collective to individual "save your own ass"
Really, because people are not zombies or robots, it's the same thing.
Sadly, what most people tend to consider 'medieval' lies at the tail end of the Middle Ages if not early in the Modern Era, from the onset of the Hundred Years War to the Reformation, with at the best a small allowance for Crusader battles.
Which is tactics. Tactics often have at the very least the psychological aspect as one facet.
You use your 'shock tactics card', so to speak, to either rebuff the enemy or attain the desired disgregation of parts of the enemy army through discipline failure.
No it's not. A "shock tactic" (at least going what people on these forums, the PI forums when people talk about actual history instead of the games and Wikipedia go by) has its main value of getting the enemy to retreat. If the main value is getting a rout, then no matter how many you kill in the charge and how few men you lose, you've failed if the survivors don't bugger out. If the charge gets actual value out of killing a bunch of enemy with the momentum, then a charge can lead to success even if the enemy doesn't break on the charge.
And also tend to consider 100YW as a “typical” in the terms of the tactics. Hence, the countless questions about the longbowmen vs. pretty much everything.
What? The point of charge is either to rout or destroy the enemy (which in practical terms is the same thing) or achieve a breakthrough, no to kill a bunch of people. Generally, in warfare killing people is a mean not an aim. Yes, if the survivors don't bugger off, you failed to achieve your objectives.
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