Horse archers - the unbeatable troops?

years ago I was sitting in the lecture theatre hearing a lecture about prehistoric forts and we were shown lots of slides and a lot of them showed vertical walls with a sort of sloping bit at the bottom of them on the outside like that and the lecturer was saying so you can see that what this is forests for stopping horsemen getting close to the walls and I interrupted and I said why would they be frightened of horsemen getting close to the walls what's the horsemen meant to do when he gets quite close to a fortress wall hit it with his sword why would that be a threat to the castle and ten marks for the lecturer he said yeah yeah very low I think it was a good point there and he accepted it and carried on um you see horse archers and wallowed cavalry in general completely rubbish at taking fortifications now another conversation I was having with someone about wargaming many years ago he just said Paul just get an army of path Ian's his idea is he was that path Ian's were just invincible on the battlefield because there's nothing you can do to them path is he had lots and lots of horse archers and if you charge low the Parthian they're on light horses they just fall back and they can fall back faster than you can charge particularly for heavy infantry or something and all the time they're twanging arrows at you wearing you down you can't catch them and they can just ride up to you whenever they want twang twang time time train ride off and with a passing shot ring even trying at you over the shoulders as they were treating all the big cheats and remember remember care I you know so yeah and so this is an idea that got internal people's heads about which I think a lot of rubbish was written which was that the horse Archer was completely dominant the invincible force on the battlefield except they weren't I put it to you that in fact the horse Archer just as the horse Archer like lots of cavalry is pretty useless for taking a fortification the horse archer is actually pretty useless for lots of other applications as well so for instance there's a hill for some reason you want to hold that hill okay so for defending a point your load of horse archers on that hill okay great and then a load of heavy infantry come trundling up the hill and one of the horse archers can do well they they could of course slaughter all they ever hit all the heavy infantry to a man just by trying in loads of our adapt them but in fact archery was not that effective okay so what are they going to do now then the heavy infantry is coming really close well they can fall back I didn't get us well no the heavy which we doesn't get the light cavalry the light cavalry gets away but the heavy infantry secures the position it was after it captures the hill for defending a hill or almost any point against determined enemy horse archers are a bit rubbish really so you can't defend stuff with them okay what if you need to take a position quickly so the the horse Archer commander is told quickly we need to take that Hill off the enemy you know you see is on top of the hill with loads of let's make it heavy infantry again okay and how do you do it quickly I mean yes you could ride around on the round and around the enemy and eventually either cause them so many casualties that they run away or you actually shoot them all but that's pretty unlikely to happen so if you want to take any position quickly off the enemy now horse archers really aren't the thing either so you can't defend and you can't attack quickly with them okay um what it might defeat horse such as well um how about foot archers you see if I got a bow and I'm standing on my own two feet on the ground there can be another guy just there another guy just there and several guys behind me as well and they can be shooting over my head and we can all be shooting loads and loads and loads of hours really dense storms of arrows far far denser than you can ever manage or with off a horse because the horses is there galloping around need a lot of room and so they're not going to be shooting quite as fast and then not be creating anything like the density of arrows in the air and a horse is quite a big target and very difficult to armor so will be very vulnerable to arrows itself and if you're galloping along on a horse then your accurate range honor or with your bow is not going to be as good as the range of a foot archer so the foot archers will out range you and I'll shoot you and you are more vulnerable to their weapons because of this law expensive largely unarmored horse that you're riding so in fact horse archers are not that great yes they did occasionally prove themselves extremely useful and though there are victories to the Huns and the Mongols and the Parthians and so forth but if they were really so utterly dominant why didn't everyone just use horse archers all the time they didn't there were quite a few solutions to the problems of enemies having horse archers now of course the horse Archer as part of an army was very useful because you could use them first Scouts of her harrying the enemy and for slowing him down and wearing him down attacking him on the March there are loads of useful things that horse archers could do but the idea that horse archers were this super dominant type of soldier is I think a bit I think it's wrong lyndie Bay you

Channel: Lindybeige

Views: 613,964

Rating: 4.8593068 out of 5

Keywords: Mounted Archery (Armed Force), horse archer, horse, archers, bow, arrow, shooting, mounted, ancient, medieval, warfare, battle, troops, cavalry, archery, ride, rider, equestrian, Horses, Riding, tactics, battlefield, role

Id: d4b5IclFJ8Q

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2015