Cavalry

An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as a cavalryman, horseman, trooper, cataphract, knight, drabant, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, samurai or horse archer.

[5] The chariot was quickly adopted by settled peoples both as a military technology and an object of ceremonial status, especially by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom of Egypt from 1550 BC as well as the Assyrian army and Babylonian royalty.

Nonetheless, there are indications that, from the 15th century BC onwards, horseback riding was practiced amongst the military elites of the great states of the ancient Near East, most notably those in Egypt, Assyria, the Hittite Empire, and Mycenaean Greece.

[18] The cavalry in the early Roman Republic remained the preserve of the wealthy landed class known as the equites—men who could afford the expense of maintaining a horse in addition to arms and armor heavier than those of the common legions.

[22] The relatively low ratio of horsemen to infantry does not mean that the utility of cavalry should be underestimated, as its strategic role in scouting, skirmishing, and outpost duties was crucial to the Romans' capability to conduct operations over long distances in hostile or unfamiliar territory.

[31] Xiongnu, Tujue, Avars, Kipchaks, Khitans, Mongols, Don Cossacks and the various Turkic peoples are also examples of the horse-mounted groups that managed to gain substantial successes in military conflicts with settled agrarian and urban societies, due to their strategic and tactical mobility.

As European states began to assume the character of bureaucratic nation-states supporting professional standing armies, recruitment of these mounted warriors was undertaken in order to fill the strategic roles of scouts and raiders.

[33] The handheld pistol-and-trigger crossbow was invented in China in the fourth century BC;[34] it was written by the Song dynasty scholars Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and Yang Weide in their book Wujing Zongyao (1044 AD) that massed missile fire by crossbowmen was the most effective defense against enemy cavalry charges.

To mark the victory, General Yun built nine fortresses to the northeast of the Goryeo–Jurchen borders (동북 9성, 東北 九城).The ancient Japanese of the Kofun period also adopted cavalry and equine culture by the 5th century AD.

[51] Similarly, the men of the Mountain Land from north of Kabul-River equivalent to medieval Kohistan (Pakistan), figure in the army of Darius III against Alexander at Arbela, providing a cavalry force and 15 elephants.

The Himalayan alliance gave Chandragupta a formidable composite army made up of the cavalry forces of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Kiratas, Parasikas and Bahlikas as attested by Mudra-Rakashas (Mudra-Rakshasa 2).

Infantry that lack the cohesion and discipline of tight formations are more susceptible to being broken and scattered by shock combat—the main role of heavy cavalry, which rose to become the dominant force on the European battlefield.

[71] In any case, warfare in the Middle Ages tended to be dominated by raids and sieges rather than pitched battles, and mounted men-at-arms rarely had any choice other than dismounting when faced with the prospect of assaulting a fortified position.

Trained to rapidly disperse, harass and regroup these flexible mounted forces proved capable of withstanding the previously invincible heavy knights of the western crusaders at battles such as Hattin in 1187.

[75] Originating in the 9th century as Central Asian ghulams or captives utilised as mounted auxiliaries by Arab armies,[76] Mamluks were subsequently trained as cavalry soldiers rather than solely mounted-archers, with increased priority being given to the use of lances and swords.

During the 8th century Islamic conquest of Iberia large numbers of horses and riders were shipped from North Africa, to specialise in raiding and the provision of support for the massed Berber footmen of the main armies.

With the rise of drilled and trained infantry, the mounted men-at-arms, now sometimes called gendarmes and often part of the standing army themselves, adopted the same role as in the Hellenistic age, that of delivering a decisive blow once the battle was already engaged, either by charging the enemy in the flank or attacking their commander-in-chief.

Even then light cavalry remained an indispensable tool for scouting, screening the army's movements, and harassing the enemy's supply lines until military aircraft supplanted them in this role in the early stages of World War I.

[97] Cavalry found a new role in colonial campaigns (irregular warfare), where modern weapons were lacking and the slow moving infantry-artillery train or fixed fortifications were often ineffective against indigenous insurgents (unless the latter offered a fight on an equal footing, as at Tel-el-Kebir, Omdurman, etc.).

[107] Following the experience of the South African War of 1899–1902 (where mounted Boer citizen commandos fighting on foot from cover proved more effective than regular cavalry), the British Army withdrew lances for all but ceremonial purposes and placed a new emphasis on training for dismounted action in 1903.

The massive cavalry charge in three waves which had previously marked the end of annual maneuvers was discontinued and a new emphasis was placed in training on scouting, raiding and pursuit; rather than main battle involvement.

On the outbreak of war in 1914 the bulk of the Russian cavalry was deployed at full strength in frontier garrisons and, during the period that the main armies were mobilizing, scouting and raiding into East Prussia and Austrian Galicia was undertaken by mounted troops trained to fight with sabre and lance in the traditional style.

[124] On 21 August 1914 the 4th Austro-Hungarian Kavalleriedivison fought a major mounted engagement at Jaroslavic with the Russian 10th Cavalry Division,[125] in what was arguably the final historic battle to involve thousands of horsemen on both sides.

[126] While this was the last massed cavalry encounter on the Eastern Front, the absence of good roads limited the use of mechanized transport and even the technologically advanced Imperial German Army continued to deploy up to twenty-four horse-mounted divisions in the East, as late as 1917.

There was a general reduction in the number of cavalry regiments in the British, French, Italian[139] and other Western armies but it was still argued with conviction (for example in the 1922 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica) that mounted troops had a major role to play in future warfare.

[145] Dragoon regiments were converted to motorised infantry (trucks and motor cycles), and cuirassiers to armoured units; while light cavalry (chasseurs a' cheval, hussars and spahis) remained as mounted sabre squadrons.

All British Army cavalry regiments had been mechanised since 1 March 1942 when the Queen's Own Yorkshire Dragoons (Yeomanry) was converted to a motorised role, following mounted service against the Vichy French in Syria the previous year.

Cavalry or mounted gendarmerie units continue to be maintained for purely or primarily ceremonial purposes by the Algerian, Argentine, Bolivian, Brazilian, British, Bulgarian, Canadian, Chilean, Colombian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Indian, Italian, Jordanian, Malaysian, Mongolian Moroccan, Nepalese, Nigerian, North Korean, Omani, Pakistani, Panamanian, Paraguayan, Peruvian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Senegalese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Tunisian, Turkmenistan, United States, Uruguayan and Venezuelan armed forces.

It included detailed displays of the horsemanship required to manage animal and weapons in large numbers at the gallop (unlike the real battle of Waterloo, where deep mud significantly slowed the horses).

A smaller-scale cavalry charge can be seen in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003); although the finished scene has substantial computer-generated imagery, raw footage and reactions of the riders are shown in the Extended Version DVD Appendices.