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[Lyn Farel]

The problem is that by using terms lile "that's why you are getting frustrated" isn't going to help in any way.

Reading what you say I still think there is a few misconceptions and a tendency to be rather too uncompromising on complex matters with a clear will to simplify all of it to serve your point, which is "the longbow put knights to an end", which I still strongly disagree with. Some of your arguments are sensible, like it is probably true that the rise of the weight conscripts had on war played a role. Some others like machine warfare suddenly made its appearance here sounds rather far fetched to me.

What made knights all powerful before that was already machine warfare. They were not powerful only because of their martial training, they were powerful because they had the tools and the means to be so, like expensive armour, weapons, and horses, all of which required knowledge  to design and produce (it just takes a look at the specific design of any armour piece of the time to understand that it was not just steel bits put together). That longbow, like the crossbow, or especially gunpowder after, are part of the emergence of an even more technological laden machine warfare which then never stopped to increase over the next years up until nowadays, yes. What i'm saying since the beginning is that everything is relative, and you seem to speak in absolutes.

I wouldn't define a "knight" as just a guy in heavy armor that rode a horse, but as a noble, politically invested landowner or vassals who followed the code of chivalry.

Me as well.

More importantly, I think you define chivalry as just a code of polite conduct, which is true.  You're probably talking about chivalry as a system of social etiquette, like Confucianism, and so it is.  But that is not what chivalry was.  Chivalry was a martial discipline, more akin to Bushido, and the majority of it was laden with rules about who could fight who, for how long, when, under what circumstances, what was allowed and what was not allowed.  It dealt with gems like how much you could demand in ransom for a captured knight, what weapons you were permitted to duel with, and who or what it was acceptable to kill and die for.  It essentially dictated politics and historical events in Europe for hundreds of years.

I am pretty sure that I referred to it as a warrior code somewhere above. I may have explained it badly, but similarly to what brought Samurai down in the end was gunpowder and a whole new combat warfare in which they were not the direct answer anymore, but also the whole modernization of their society.

[Lyn Farel]

Now though I think I fell into the same trap as usual and I came rather confrontational when actually trying to have an interesting discussion, which is the genuine goal since otherwise I wouldn't bother... Sorry about that.

[Desiderya]

Doesn't the quality of steel go both ways?

Anyways, my two cents regarding the longbow:
Not every knight was wearing top-grade armor, open helmets were common.
If longbow arrows were so deadly (trained troops firing around 10-12 arrows per minute) how could these knights enter english emplacements repeatedly (And not just die harder the closer they came).
After the hundred-years-war, a lot of these archers were looking for new employers - and seemed to have failed to achieve any successes, just like in the later battles of the war.

So, I kind of share the opinion that the main weight of these troops was not in annihilating anything, but in shaping the field of battle in their favour, combined with the arrogance of french nobility that ended up in these desasterous charges against a presumably weak opponent.

[Vic Van Meter]

Now though I think I fell into the same trap as usual and I came rather confrontational when actually trying to have an interesting discussion, which is the genuine goal since otherwise I wouldn't bother... Sorry about that.

Not a problem, trust me.  If it's any consolation, I really don't try to come across as confrontational.  I get my decisions and explanations challenged on a pretty much daily basis at work, so I really have a hard time recognizing I'm in an argument until someone says so.  I think people also get the vibe that if I'm contradicting them, it's because I'm attacking them personally or even their whole argument.  Which maybe isn't helped by my language; I just get into interesting debate mode and question things.  It's only later that I tend to realize people are taking it personally.

I think that's a 'me' issue instead of an 'everyone else' issue, since this isn't the first time that's happened.  I think that essentially living in a world of criticism has desensitized me.  I'm sort of an intellectual sociopath.

On the subject, I think the point I was making was that machine warfare didn't exactly make knights all-powerful, it was chivalry and the politics behind it.  Indeed, some knights were absolutely terrible at fighting, but they were all given martial training that tended to trump your ordinary peasant.  What made knights so powerful was the reason they could afford that technology and had all the time in the world to be educated and learn to fight each other.  It was all centered in political power.

A knight could be poor, just like anyone else, and be forced to sell his land holdings and armor and all else he had, but he could eventually get it all back simply because knights were in charge.  As far as Europe at the time was concerned (for the most part, for instance there was a more populist system working in England before the Norman conquest), it was the nobility that mattered.  Peasants were simply there to fuel the lifestyles of nobles.  Even the Magna Carta focused a lot on the issues that nobles had with the king, not all men in general.  It was just their world and they could claim that it was that way because they were the ones who went to war and fought to defend the country.  My how things change...

The longbow changed that fairly intrinsically because it wasn't a bevy of knights firing the volleys that essentially won the battles of the Hundred Years War.  It was the peasantry essentially rinse-repeating with the bows.  Suddenly, knights weren't the most important part of their army; they were used primarily to protect the archery line.  Chivalry didn't apply to the longbowmen and many of its tenets didn't work in that manner of warfare.  Worse, for the nobles at least, it became apparent that they hadn't won that war.  It didn't help that Britain had a much deeper populist streak than elsewhere at the time (which may have been why the tactic was first used by them).

In a way, that was really the beginning of the end, stripping away that mythic aura of demigodhood that the knights had previous to that.  From then on, war was won much more regularly on technical and tactical innovation, and was won much more often by commoners and mercenaries who had no land holdings or political power.  Most of the code of chivalry, the martial bits, fell off piece by piece until it became what we largely have today.  You can't tell peasants you're a superior caste when your warfare tactic relies on peasants essentially winning battles against them while you protect them.

That's why the longbow and by extension the Hundred Years War essentially ended the age of chivalry.  It suddenly didn't matter anymore who you were or who your parents were.  In days of knight-on-knight combat, people knew and had strict rules about how they could and could not engage and kill you.  Peasants with longbows firing in indiscriminate volleys didn't know and, even if they did, didn't care.  The arrows certainly didn't.

I mean, is it what I'd try and use to single-handedly kill a mounted knight on my own?  Definitely not.  They had hooked polearms at the time that were much more effective at that.  But in machine warfare, it's not even necessary.  To win, as long as you don't care much about renown and just about winning, you don't need more than a handful of knights on foot to handle anyone who makes it to your line if you're pounding them with longbow fire.

[Vic Van Meter]

Doesn't the quality of steel go both ways?

Anyways, my two cents regarding the longbow:
Not every knight was wearing top-grade armor, open helmets were common.
If longbow arrows were so deadly (trained troops firing around 10-12 arrows per minute) how could these knights enter english emplacements repeatedly (And not just die harder the closer they came).
After the hundred-years-war, a lot of these archers were looking for new employers - and seemed to have failed to achieve any successes, just like in the later battles of the war.

So, I kind of share the opinion that the main weight of these troops was not in annihilating anything, but in shaping the field of battle in their favour, combined with the arrogance of french nobility that ended up in these desasterous charges against a presumably weak opponent.

Steel quality does go both ways, but matters most in tension (deflection).  The quality of the steel is more important when it's a thin, hollow veneer trying to stop penetration than when it's a sharp, solid mass attempting to drive through.  Steel isn't the most potent compressive force on the planet, but it's a lot easier.  This is as long as it's metal-on-metal.  Firing it into something more solid, like a rock, is when you actually need high quality steel to keep it from shattering.  Armor just doesn't provide resistance throughout.

As far as formations go, longbow volleys were devastating but weren't a carpet of death (it was pure luck being hit in a vital place or not, after all).  Longbow archers actually held their own in previously French fortifications until later in the 15th century when they were eventually driven out by precisely what Lyn was talking about, cannons.  Cannons became reliable siege equipment during this time instead of novelties and were used to simply blow the doors open.  If longbows essentially ended the age of chivalry, cannons ended the age of longbows.  Also, small arms were beginning to be developed.  Right when better armor finally came around to defend someone against arrow volleys, in a few decades they were facing the aforementioned small arms fire.  It was definitely the nail in the coffin for the heavily armored soldier, but also for the longbow archer.  Why get a longbow volley line together when a line of firearms actually does turn steel armor into swiss cheese?

War technology made a leap in that hundred years that put previous centuries to absolute shame.  It certainly stripped the place in war of nobles directly out of the line of danger.  In a few years time, your average army was made up almost entirely of commoners.  Chivalry, the martial code, was pretty much gone, replaced by a vestigial code of behavior.

[Desiderya]

Since I don't know much about material science I'll take your word for it. However, I'm not convinced of the conclusions you're drawing as contemporary sources regarding the early battles seem to describe the efficiency of plate armor, the effectiveness of continuous volley fire against morale and how sound strategical decisions can turn the tide of battle. If you want to swoon for archers, look to the east and their mounted archers.
So far so good, I wasn't there and I can only base my opinion on the works of historians, which are mostly stricken with not very precise sources and therefore prone to a lot of interpretation.

[Lyn Farel]

Apparently all the documentation left over that time period is rather accurate considering the sheer amount of contemporary written texts that have been made on the matter. Especially on how turned most battles.

Not every knight was wearing top-grade armor, open helmets were common.

From what I read they actually wore bascinets for most of them, not just nose helmets like infantry.

Though well, theorically it was effective against arrows considering its deflective angle properties, but they often wore it above a more compact helmet and used to discard it once the first shock was done since it was highly cumbersome in the middle of melee.

Not a problem, trust me.  If it's any consolation, I really don't try to come across as confrontational.  I get my decisions and explanations challenged on a pretty much daily basis at work, so I really have a hard time recognizing I'm in an argument until someone says so.  I think people also get the vibe that if I'm contradicting them, it's because I'm attacking them personally or even their whole argument.  Which maybe isn't helped by my language; I just get into interesting debate mode and question things.  It's only later that I tend to realize people are taking it personally.

I think that's a 'me' issue instead of an 'everyone else' issue, since this isn't the first time that's happened.  I think that essentially living in a world of criticism has desensitized me.  I'm sort of an intellectual sociopath.

I didnt took it personally... That's a me issue in my case too since I always forget the form when really immersed in the content.

On the subject, I think the point I was making was that machine warfare didn't exactly make knights all-powerful, it was chivalry and the politics behind it.  Indeed, some knights were absolutely terrible at fighting, but they were all given martial training that tended to trump your ordinary peasant.  What made knights so powerful was the reason they could afford that technology and had all the time in the world to be educated and learn to fight each other.  It was all centered in political power.

A knight could be poor, just like anyone else, and be forced to sell his land holdings and armor and all else he had, but he could eventually get it all back simply because knights were in charge.  As far as Europe at the time was concerned (for the most part, for instance there was a more populist system working in England before the Norman conquest), it was the nobility that mattered.  Peasants were simply there to fuel the lifestyles of nobles.  Even the Magna Carta focused a lot on the issues that nobles had with the king, not all men in general.  It was just their world and they could claim that it was that way because they were the ones who went to war and fought to defend the country.  My how things change...

The longbow changed that fairly intrinsically because it wasn't a bevy of knights firing the volleys that essentially won the battles of the Hundred Years War.  It was the peasantry essentially rinse-repeating with the bows.  Suddenly, knights weren't the most important part of their army; they were used primarily to protect the archery line.  Chivalry didn't apply to the longbowmen and many of its tenets didn't work in that manner of warfare.  Worse, for the nobles at least, it became apparent that they hadn't won that war.  It didn't help that Britain had a much deeper populist streak than elsewhere at the time (which may have been why the tactic was first used by them).

In a way, that was really the beginning of the end, stripping away that mythic aura of demigodhood that the knights had previous to that.  From then on, war was won much more regularly on technical and tactical innovation, and was won much more often by commoners and mercenaries who had no land holdings or political power.  Most of the code of chivalry, the martial bits, fell off piece by piece until it became what we largely have today.  You can't tell peasants you're a superior caste when your warfare tactic relies on peasants essentially winning battles against them while you protect them.

That's why the longbow and by extension the Hundred Years War essentially ended the age of chivalry.  It suddenly didn't matter anymore who you were or who your parents were.  In days of knight-on-knight combat, people knew and had strict rules about how they could and could not engage and kill you.  Peasants with longbows firing in indiscriminate volleys didn't know and, even if they did, didn't care.  The arrows certainly didn't.

I mean, is it what I'd try and use to single-handedly kill a mounted knight on my own?  Definitely not.  They had hooked polearms at the time that were much more effective at that.  But in machine warfare, it's not even necessary.  To win, as long as you don't care much about renown and just about winning, you don't need more than a handful of knights on foot to handle anyone who makes it to your line if you're pounding them with longbow fire.

I think though that your point has different meaning and values of scale depending on the nation you speak of. I'm pretty sure that for the brits it was a clear confirmation of their doctrines and a real comfort for the men at arms and conscripts against aristocratic warfare. I'm somewhat more mitigated how it turned in the case of the french. When Joan of Arc came they still were heavily relying on knights and chivalry. Chivalry, as you said above, was not totally fitting to modern warfare emerging from the use of the longbow and other ensuing tactics. But instead of choosing to do the same as the brits, they never chose to use the longbow themselves since they

1) Had no expertise of doing so and longbow use required a long time of practice and training, as the brits had plenty of time to do after their misfortune at the end of the welsh, the first to use these against them, to a point where longbow practice became almost a "national" pride on this side of the Channel.

2) Had more "refined" technology, like crossbows that could be used by anyone or any peasant, which was rather well spread. However, that weapon was not the most useful against what they faced, that didnt really need lot of piercing power.

So they chose to capitalize on their strengths, which means heavy cavalry, heavy infantry. They just had to use them in a different fashion. Which they did at the battle of Patay, for example, even if a bit of luck helped them. The correct answer anyhow, was mobile warfare and aggressive tactics (=/= mindless leeroy). And of course, when it came to cities defended by longbows, field artillery and gunpowder.

In any case the short appearance of Joan seemed to have been one of the first sparks of nationalism in the middle of feudal wars, between lords and knights. It was not duke x against duke y, but rather "us vs the english invaders".


By the way this bit of wiki article seems to add credit to your steel quality argument :

The Welsh & English longbowman used a single-piece longbow (but some bows later developed a composite design) to deliver arrows that could penetrate contemporary plate armour and mail. The longbow was a difficult weapon to master, requiring long years of use and constant practice. A skilled longbowman could shoot about 12 shots per minute. This rate of fire was far superior to competing weapons like the crossbow or early gunpowder weapons. The nearest competitor to the longbow was the much more expensive crossbow, used often by urban militias and mercenary forces. The crossbow had greater penetrating power, and did not require the extended years of training. However, it lacked the rate of fire of the longbow.
At Crécy and Agincourt bowmen unleashed clouds of arrows into the ranks of knights. At Crécy, even 15,000 Genoese crossbowmen could not dislodge them from their hill. At Agincourt, thousands of French knights were brought down by armour-piercing bodkin point arrows and horse-maiming broadheads. Longbowmen decimated an entire generation of the French nobility.
Since the longbow was difficult to deploy in a thrusting mobile offensive, it was best used in a defensive configuration. Bowmen were extended in thin lines and protected and screened by pits (as at the Battle of Bannockburn), staves or trenches. The terrain was usually chosen to put the archers at an advantage forcing their opponents into a bottleneck (at Agincourt) or a hard climb under fire (at Crécy). Sometimes the bowmen were deployed in a shallow "W", enabling them to trap and enfilade their foes.
The pike and the longbow put an end to the dominance of cavalry in European warfare, making the use of foot soldiers more important than they had been in recent years. Knights began themselves to rather fight dismounted, using two-handed swords, poleaxes and other polearms, as the improved knightly plate armour made them fairly immune to arrows. Gunpowder eventually was to provoke even more significant changes. However, a mounted reserve was often kept, and the heavy cavalry continued to be an important battlefield arm of European armies until the 19th century, when new and more accurate weapons made the mounted soldier too easy a target, with WWI being the last instance where cavalry played a major role in the war.

Which is also why I said that as much as the longbow seriously questioned the use of heavy cavalry as a remedy for everything, and the status of knights on the battlefield, and as much as it was already more or less fully integrated in the english doctrines, the french continued to fight with knights until the end of the war, and that with more and more success. Which is why I said that what really killed them on the battlefield eventually, was like for the Samurai : cannon and arquebuses. And those also seriously threatened plated men at arms that were more and more common in use.

[Vic Van Meter]

As far as the nationality goes, I can't claim to be much but an European-American, so my entire native military history is neatly contained in the machine war era.

Honestly, I'm not disputing much that you said, Lyn, but I wasn't saying that longbows ended the idea of armored cavalry.  It did essentially end the era where they completely dominated battle, though.  In fact, the cavalry charge was still in use long after guns and cannons came along, and was still populated disproportionately by members of the upper classes.  One of the nice things about being on a horse in the early era of small arms without the pike formations is that you could cross intervening terrain before the enemy could reload.  Napoleon was a famous master of directing cavalry.

The issue was that chivalry was essentially done even by Joan of Arc's time, though they definitely reduced it at a slower boil in France.  This gets more into the specifics of chivalry.  Chivalry was a bit more "civilized" as far as warfare goes... as much as it could be.  Knights tended to be a lot more kind to each other.  They liked taking each other hostage and demanding ransoms, capturing flags, and the like.  It was almost like a game to the nobility of the time.  Being hit by a shower of longbow arrows doesn't give you any of those chances until everyone's dead.  The game was over.

The reason the French did finally prevail at Patay was partly that tactical blunder by the Brits you mentioned, which sort of negated the machine warfare model and also partly done with guns becoming a larger part of the military.  What this meant, though, was more a shift away from the knight as an unstoppable force.  This forced a shift from heavily armored cavalry to heavily armored infantry and the lightening of cavalry units to something we'd think today of as a rapid assault force.  In fact, cavalry at the time began wearing lighter armor simply because they knew armor wouldn't necessarily save them, it was speed that did that.  They even broke up into very small, highly drilled groups which even then didn't cover their needs until they started using field artillery to shoot back.  Chivalry might have made a comeback, but the French resurgence included things like cannons and they were seeing the first of the small arms.  Heavy infantry struggled to keep up, but couldn't.  As soon as the French adopted the British standard of combat, chivalry began to die as a political force.

One of the things I haven't really brought up that essentially ended the age of chivalry was associated costs.  Processes were developed that made steel for armor not only better quality, but a lot cheaper to produce in bulk.  The longbow, for all its amazing potential, cost next to nothing to make in comparison.  Firearms were expensive at first, but became much less expensive than the armor they defeated.  Common people could own all the tools they needed to be as valuable, if not more valuable, than the nobles who used to ride at the heads of their armies.  By the time everyone owned the armor you'd need to regularly withstand a longbow arrow, they were on to the next innovation.  This led to knights becoming sideline warriors while commoner mercenaries like the Landsknechte became the dominant military force.

I grabbed a quote on the significance of the Hundred Years War that sums it up from Wikipedia.

The Hundred Years' War was a time of rapid military evolution. Weapons, tactics, army structure and the social meaning of war all changed, partly in response to the war's costs, partly through advancement in technology and partly through lessons that warfare taught.

Before the Hundred Years' War, heavy cavalry was considered the most powerful unit in an army, but by the war's end, this belief had shifted. The heavy horse was increasingly negated by the use of the longbow (and, later, another long-distance weapon: firearms). Edward III was famous for dismounting his men-at-arms and have them and his archers stand in closely integrated battle lines; the horses only being used for transport or pursuit.[68] The English began using lightly armoured mounted troops, known as hobelars. Hobelars tactics had been developed against the Scots, in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the 14th century. Hobelars rode smaller unarmoured horses, enabling them to move through difficult or boggy terrain where heavier cavalry would struggle. Rather than fight while seated on the horse, they would also dismount to engage the enemy.[69][70][71]

By the end of the Hundred Years' War, these various factors caused the decline of the expensively outfitted, highly trained heavy cavalry and the eventual end of the armoured knight as a military force and of the nobility as a political one.[71]

The longbow didn't erase knights entirely from existence.  The idea of armored cavalry on horseback survived well into the last century and it wasn't like the military tradition of nobles ended there.  But the era of chivalric warfare was essentially gone by the time of Patay.  France was always much more conservative and traditional, but they knew they had to adapt their warfare methods, tactics, and technology or Britain was simply going to choke them to death with cheaper and more effective technology at the expense of being tactically polite.

Longbows did begin the demise of the chivalric knight in combat and proved common people with cheap technology could be more than a match for the traditional rulers of Europe.  They didn't go down without a fight, and you're right that the era of heavy chivalric cavalry was probably completely finished when the Europeans began developing relatively accurate, pitched gunfire.  That was all simply part of the process the longbow volleys started, though, as those gun-toting infantry were hardly nobles schooled in traditional courtesy in cobmat.  It essentially neutralized the standards of warfare people had used for hundreds and hundreds of years that, in a way, bound European governments.

[orange]

Charge at Krojanty - 1 Sept 1939



German Cavalry, invading Poland - Sept 1939.

It is just mounted infantry 

[Vic Van Meter]

Charge at Krojanty - 1 Sept 1939



German Cavalry, invading Poland - Sept 1939.

It is just mounted infantry 

Hell, they were still trying to do it in 1942 during the second war.  It's a romantic notion and was more affordable than buying an armored division.

It's like people didn't get the hint.  The longbow, then the pike formation, then the firing line, it finally took the goddamn machine gun to convince people that charging on horseback had finally become untenable.

My favorite story was a contingent of Soviet cavalry in Moscow who charged the German line.  They were mowed down and didn't kill a single German.  It was an ignominious end to a tactic of such longevity.  Unless you count current armored divisions.  The role of a knight on a 11th century battlefield is now taken up by thinks like main battle tanks.

[Vikarion]

It's like people didn't get the hint.  The longbow, then the pike formation, then the firing line, it finally took the goddamn machine gun to convince people that charging on horseback had finally become untenable.

They didn't get the hint because, until the first world war, cavalry were still indispensable. Take a look at the American Civil War, for example. Both mounted and dismounted cavalry not only managed to change the results of infantry battles, but also to have strategic effects on campaigns - for example, Grant's first attempt to take Vicksburg was frustrated by a cavalry raid on his supply base.

One of the mistakes people make is in thinking of older methods of warfare in modern terms. The reason cavalry continued to be used so much isn't that it was so romantic, but that, until the advent of the WW2 tank, truck, and half-track, (and I do mean World War 2) there simply wasn't any way to move fast around the battlefield. Even in World War 2, the Germans often relied on horse transport. The Russians would have had to as well, save for the industrial might of the United States, which shipped them thousands of vehicles. And the Japanese just marched everywhere, for the most part.

If you want to understand why people stuck to cavalry, study the American Civil War. Using Cavalry, mounted or dismounted, provided a singular benefit: that of getting there first, with the most. In days before our own, transit times were measured in weeks, and your estimate of when you might get there could be off by as much as a week. In that situation, four-legged transportation could ride around an army, cut supply lines, charge a vulnerable flank, or hold a position until reinforcements arrive - as Buford did at Gettysburg, holding the Confederates until Meade brought his army up.

And don't knock medieval cavalry too much. Yes, pikemen could hold a charge. If they stood firm. But I've been around the kind of animals that knights rode. They are not the sleek thoroughbreds that everyone thinks of when they think of a horse. They are more like draft horses, huge, bulky animals - and when one of them gallops by, the earth shakes, from fifty feet away. I should know, I've been around them and my family owned horses - still does, although I don't. It is one thing to talk about pikemen in a comfortable chair in front of a screen - it is another thing to stand, shivering on a field, as you hold a thin pole between your hands, as the charge in front of you grows to fill the horizon, and the earth itself betrays your feet.

The reason Swiss Pikemen were so remarked upon is because they wouldn't run. Most did. And most knights were not fighting Swiss Pikemen.

People in the Middle Ages and the Victorian Era were not stupid. They used cavalry because, on the whole, it worked. The reason we remember things like Crecy is because battles like that were the exception, not the rule. Two thousand years from now, historians may be chuckling over how the idiotic Chinese Republic thought tanks could defeat Korean mech infantry armed with railguns. But the reality will have been that the reason those hypothetical future Chinese Republicans used tanks is that, until the advent of the infantry-portable railgun, tanks worked.

[Lyn Farel]

Charge at Krojanty - 1 Sept 1939



German Cavalry, invading Poland - Sept 1939.

It is just mounted infantry 

Hell, they were still trying to do it in 1942 during the second war.  It's a romantic notion and was more affordable than buying an armored division.

It's like people didn't get the hint.  The longbow, then the pike formation, then the firing line, it finally took the goddamn machine gun to convince people that charging on horseback had finally become untenable.

My favorite story was a contingent of Soviet cavalry in Moscow who charged the German line.  They were mowed down and didn't kill a single German.  It was an ignominious end to a tactic of such longevity.  Unless you count current armored divisions.  The role of a knight on a 11th century battlefield is now taken up by thinks like main battle tanks.

They rarely used horses and cavalry to charge in the XXth century. It is true that Poland did that here and there because they just lacked everything else, but otherwise they still had armour and airplanes as well... It was not the rule.

Cavalry got replaced by cavalry tanks mostly, a concept that mostly disappeared over the years though.

Horses were used mainly as a logistical mean in itself. When Germany invaded Poland, then France in 1940, they still had 75% of their army that was unmechanized and still using horses and carts to tow their AT guns and field artillery, or just for various logistics.

Also, I wouldnt be so hasty on the so called supremacy of contemporary MBTs compared to knights.

[Vic Van Meter]

Charge at Krojanty - 1 Sept 1939



German Cavalry, invading Poland - Sept 1939.

It is just mounted infantry 

Hell, they were still trying to do it in 1942 during the second war.  It's a romantic notion and was more affordable than buying an armored division.

It's like people didn't get the hint.  The longbow, then the pike formation, then the firing line, it finally took the goddamn machine gun to convince people that charging on horseback had finally become untenable.

My favorite story was a contingent of Soviet cavalry in Moscow who charged the German line.  They were mowed down and didn't kill a single German.  It was an ignominious end to a tactic of such longevity.  Unless you count current armored divisions.  The role of a knight on a 11th century battlefield is now taken up by thinks like main battle tanks.

They rarely used horses and cavalry to charge in the XXth century. It is true that Poland did that here and there because they just lacked everything else, but otherwise they still had armour and airplanes as well... It was not the rule.

Cavalry got replaced by cavalry tanks mostly, a concept that mostly disappeared over the years though.

Horses were used mainly as a logistical mean in itself. When Germany invaded Poland, then France in 1940, they still had 75% of their army that was unmechanized and still using horses and carts to tow their AT guns and field artillery, or just for various logistics.

Also, I wouldnt be so hasty on the so called supremacy of contemporary MBTs compared to knights.

Sort of the same concept, that it was faster, more heavily armed, more heavily armored, impossible to stop, but inordinately expensive to field.  I mean, don't get me wrong, armor wasn't completely arrow-proof, but you're totally right in saying that knights suffered less than everyone else because they were, at least, wearing plate armor.  I think longbows might have started the decline of the knight and ended the age of chivalry, but the tactic of advancing with your unit of battlefield supremacy backed by infantry support to protect it from being surrounded and disabled is as old as time.  Really, the Abrams is doing just about what knights did a thousand years ago, breaking up lines and killing other tanks to gain ground supremacy.  And as knights even in later centuries, they may not have been invincible, but you'd rather be in one of them than in a Chevy S-10 with an M2 on the back.

Warfare is just a lot more asymmetrical now than it was then.  Even archers had to be fairly close and reasonably visible to operate.  Now, just because you've got the biggest, fastest, most invincible thing on the ground doesn't mean you can win a war.

[Lyn Farel]

Modern MBTs (or even WW2 MBTs) are far from being unstoppable. Any proper artillery round or airbomb coming directly on top and it's the end, any good AT rocket (RPG-29 Vampir, Eryx, etc) and that's over, any good ATGM, and that's over...

I heard recently that the survival probability for infantry in a theorical symmetrical all raging battle these days is a lot higher than the one for a tank crew.

[Nmaro Makari]

Modern MBTs (or even WW2 MBTs) are far from being unstoppable. Any proper artillery round or airbomb coming directly on top and it's the end, any good AT rocket (RPG-29 Vampir, Eryx, etc) and that's over, any good ATGM, and that's over...

I heard recently that the survival probability for infantry in a theorical symmetrical all raging battle these days is a lot higher than the one for a tank crew.

Not strictly true, some MBTs are pretty durable, Merkeva and Challenger 2 particularly. I recall stories of Challenger 2s shrugging off multiple AT rockets, but I'm not sure about a bombing from the air or heavy artillery.