Cavalry in Middle Ages
by Soldiers who fought from horseback, not dragoons who rode to battle but dismounted and fought on foot. There were several great cavalry empires in antiquity, notably the Parthians and Persians.
The great innovator was Gustavus Adolphus, who modeled his cavalry reforms on the Polish style, reducing armor in favor of leather (buff coats) or plain uniforms, and replacing the ineffective pistol and caracole cantor with the slashing saber and fullspeed charge. This change was captured in the fierce and merciless battle cry of his feared Finnish horse: ”hakkaa paalle!” (”cut them down”). Sweden’s success provoked imitators throughout Germany and as far afield as England, where at mid-century Cromwell and the cavalry of the New Model Army adopted the proven Swedish tactics and training and drove the individually more skilled horsemen of the Cavaliers from the field. On the continent, the ratio of cavalry to infantry increased dramatically after 1635, to 50 percent or more. This was largely due to logistical problems: horsemen could forage more widely, which was necessary in lands burned and eaten out over several decades of war.
In Eastern Europe, things were very different. Light cavalry hussars and medium cavalry of the Polish Army dominated, fighting against vast horse armies of Tatars and Cossacks, as well as against Swedish horse and Russian servitor cavalry. The most probable explanation of this significant difference was topography rather than ”inferior” or ”backward” military culture, as too many Western European histories have suggested. The need for infantry in chronic warfare with mounted nomads, other than in garrisons armed with firearms, was minimal. Instead, eastern armies properly recognized that foot soldiers, other than dragoons, could not yet make up in firepower on the vast eastern plains what they lacked in mobility, even when protected by pikes. And since infantry was mostly ineffective in Eastern Europe and on the Ukrainian and Russian steppes, cavalry remained the principal arm. Likewise, light cavalry could not operate as well as infantry in the densely populated, heavily forested, and riverine geography of Western Europe (or the mountains of Japan), so that infantry over time became the preferred arm in those areas, with archers and gunmen protected by pikemen or ashigaru.
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