Back in December 2006 I posted about cavalry charges. Inspired by John Keegan and Frank Tallett, I argued that the idea that cavalry horses crashed into each other in a “shock” charge was completely spurious because horses won’t willingly crash into a solid object, and if they could be made to the outcome would be disastrous because they would be killed or seriously injured by the impact. Physics and common sense are both on my side, but empirical evidence of horse collisions is very difficult to get. The best I could do back then was the footage of Anmer hitting Emily Davison in the 1913 Derby.

Now Peter at That’s Pretty Lame has found exactly what I needed: YouTube footage of two horses colliding head-on at a full gallop. According to the commentary this happened at Prescott Downs, Arizona on 26 August 2000. Both horses were killed and jockey Stacy Burton suffered severe brain injury. I shouldn’t be pleased about such a tragedy, but it’s the perfect empirical evidence to prove my point.

If only I’d thought of searching YouTube for horse collisions, but I assumed they were so rare that I wouldn’t find one. In fact that isn’t the only one. This is another – it looks like the collision is at a slower speed than the Prescott Downs accident but both horses are brought down. In this one the collision is at a very slow canter – looks like no-one was hurt but the riders only just stayed on. This is about as close as you can get to knocking the enemy out of the way with your momentum, but I think it supports my point that the effects of a collision are equally bad for both parties (just as Isaac Newton predicted – who’d have thought it?). So the bay barged past the grey and kept going, but if this was a cavalry charge I don’t think you could really say that the bay won. Both sides would be disordered and neither would have gained an advantage.

In the last post, I looked at “shock”, a common myth in the historiography of cavalry tactics. Having established that it’s unlikely that cavalrymen would have been able (or even willing) to crash their horses into the enemy, I now want to look at where the idea came from, and how common it was in seventeenth-century drill books.

(Warning: this post is very long and esoteric. Having managed to keep myself down to 1,000 words yesterday I’ve now come out with nearly 3,500, although a lot of that is blockquotes from the books.)

I’ll be referring to books written by Gervase Markham (1625), John Cruso (1632), Robert Ward (1639), and John Vernon (1644). You can find more background on the authors and some observations about their styles and influences in my previous post Which War Horse. The most important things to remember are that these are prescriptive books which claimed to set out how things should be done, and that they are not necessarily based on any practical experience. In the next post I’ll be trying to get at what really happened in practice and whether it was influenced by any of these books, but for this post I’ll be taking a more literary and intellectual approach. This is about the idea of “shock”, more than the reality.

If shock was a spurious idea, these authors would be prime suspects for perpetuating it. John Cruso seems to confirm my suspicion, using the word “shock” in four places:

This kinde of arming [the lance] was first invented to pierce and divide a grosse body, and therefore requires force and velocitie for the shock. (p. 28)

presenting his lance (from the advance) at the half of that distance, and charging it for the shock as occasion serveth (p. 37)

Some authors (for the disposing of the Cuirassiers for fight) hold that they ought to be ordered in grosse bodies, that so (by their soliditie and weight) they may entertain and sustain the shock of the enemie. They are also fit for troops of reserve, to give courage to the other Cavallrie, and to give them opportunitie to re-assemble themselves behinde them (p. 42)

If the Lances were to fight against Cuirassiers, they were (by two ranks together) to fetch their careers, and so to charge them, especially on the flanks and reare: every second rank forbearing the shock, till the first had done it, and was wheeled off. (p. 97)

But my expectations are confounded here. Three out of four times, Cruso is explicitly talking about lancers, and for lancers shock was a real physical thing. While the horses themselves were not missiles or battering rams, the point of the lance would collide with enemy men or horses, and the force of the collision would be mostly determined by the momentum of the horse. Where Cruso mentions cuirassiers, they are only receiving a charge, never giving one. If lancers charged cuirassiers, the Newtonian physics of the collision would work largely in favour of the lancers, as long as their great saddles held them in place (the great saddle was designed primarily for lancers/men-at-arms, having a very high pommel and cantle to support the rider during a charge). So Cruso is not really inventing or perpetuating a spurious idea. Shock logically follows from use of the lance, and Cruso never explicitly claims that any other troop types can or should charge and shock the enemy. He acknowledges that lancers are no longer in use, and apparently writes about them more because of his interest in Classical culture (ironic, since the kind of lance charge he describes, relying on stirrups and great saddle to support the rider during impact, belongs firmly in the post-classical period usually denigrated by Renaissance men as “medieval”!).

This being the case, I would expect Gervase Markham, with his apparent nostalgia for “the old ways, speed of horse”, to be equally enthusiastic about shock. My expectations were confounded again. Although he devotes several pages to lancers and men-at-arms, and even mentions tournaments, he doesn’t seem to use the word shock at all (there’s always the possibility that I missed it). John Vernon doesn’t use the word either, and Robert Ward only uses it once, in a passage that is probably derived from Cruso or a common source (p. 302):

Our Moderne Generalls thinke it best to order the Cuirassiers in grosse Bodies, by which meanes they are more powerfull and strong, against the shocke of the enemie, they are for the most part reserved to second the light armed; so that when they are broken they may have shelter, and time to reunite themselves behinde the Cuirassiers.

So none of the theorists envisaged the modern types of cavalry (cuirassiers, arquebusiers, and carbines) battering their enemy down with shock. How did they think charges were supposed to work? We have a problem here, because the word charge could have several different meanings in seventeenth-century military terminology. The meaning we’re most familiar with is the one associated with shock, but the verb to charge could also mean to load or fire a firearm, or to level a pike or lance. The noun charge can refer to a particular duty or task, so that “it was a most desperate charge” might just mean “it was difficult to accomplish” without giving any clue about what was accomplished or how. This potential for ambiguity hasn’t often been recognised. Robert Ward’s assertion that “a Cuirassiere usually giveth his charge upon the trot and very seldome upon the Gallop” (p. 301) has usually been taken refer to a shock charge carried out at slow speed. Things are not so clear cut when you put the sentence in context:

you are also to observe that the armes of the Cuirassiers are Pistoll proofe; wherefore that Souldier that incounters against them must bee sure not to shot until he be within three or foure paces: the Hollanders use to discharge their Pistols at the enemies eare, as a place most certain to speede them; others at the lower part of the Belly, or his arme Pits or about the necke or throate; a Cuirassiere usually giveth his charge upon the trot and very seldome upon the Gallop, if you misse the speeding of the man, then you are to direct your next charge against the Horse, where you shall be sure to speed him either upon the head or brest; the sword is to be managed after you have done your indeavours with the Pistoll

It looks to me like “giveth his charge” is more likely to mean “fires his pistol”. Here the cuirassier is expected to fire both his pistols at close range and then start using his sword in close combat, but elsewhere, Ward is much less equivocal (p. 315):

But our manner of charging the Enemy differs from theirs [ie ancient cavalry]; for wee are to give fire upon the Enemy by Rankes, and so fall off into the Reare, so that all the Rankes shall come up and give fire by degrees upon the Enemy, whereas their Troopes gave a firme close charge, and wheeled off together; this was the use both of their Archers and Spearmen.

Note that firing pistols and falling to the rear is still counted as a “manner of charging”. Ward, Cruso, and Markham all seem to see modern cavalry relying almost entirely on firepower. For Markham, the increased firepower of modern weapons, particularly the infantry musket, is the main reason why lancers and men-at-arms have fallen out of use (p. 41, see Which War Horse for quote), and “Now for as much as the principall Weapons on Horsebacke, are Pistolls, Petronells, or Dragons” (p. 53). Cruso (p. 98) and Ward (p. 317) both instruct arquebusiers to give fire by ranks and don’t even mention the possibility of them getting into close combat. This kind of thinking is usually associated with the Dutch school of tactics. Dutch tactics, based on firepower rather than shock, are sometimes seen as an old fashioned way of doing things, which was swept away by the new Swedish shock tactics. However, Markham, Cruso, and Ward all consider firepower to be thoroughly modern and shock to be obsolete! Nevertheless, they might have been a bit too optimistic about the new tactics and technology. Ward did acknowledge some potential problems (p. 315):

Now our moderne Captaines, although they have abandoned the use of their Speares, yet they have detained their forme of ordering their Troopes, five deepe in file; and because each horseman hath two Pistolls, therefore they suppose that they may charge and discharge as well as the foote Troopes that are tenne deepe (with one Musquet for their armes) but let the ablest horseman of them all say what he please; he shall finde it another businesse, especially if both sides stand to their tackling, untill all the Rankes have given fire; for the small distance of time, and the ordering of their unruly horses, will make them fall short of their expectations: but indeede our horse Troopes, seldome stand so long in competition for the victory; but that one side either retreates, or doe worse; for if they should, it should be easily seene that that Troope whose Files were ordered sixe in deepth, would soone weare through the adverse part, whose extent is but five.

So he realises that keeping up constant fire was unrealistic because of the problems of reloading, but his only solution is to have more ranks than the enemy! The system of firing by ranks and retiring to reload is usually referred to by historians as a “caracole”, but Markham, Ward, and Vernon don’t use the word at all. Meanwhile, Cruso uses it for something very different (pp. 97-8):

If one companie of Cuirassiers be to fight against another, your enemie charging you in full career, you are to make a [note b: so Walhausen would have it] Carracoll, that is, you divide your body by the half ranks, and so suddenly open to the right and left; so as the enemie passeth through you, and you (facing inward) charge him on the flanks, as is shewed in Fig. 6. Part. 4. Or if two companies fight against two other, then they observe the same manner, but keeping each companie entire, as may be seen in the same figure. It is also to be done by the Carracoll first, and then (the enemie being within you) to wheel to the right and left inward, and so to charge him on the reare, in full career. These forms (in Walhausens opinion) are of [note c: So the said author conceiveth; but it is very doubtfull. For by this opening to the right & left, you must turn troop, and then make a whole turn again, & so give advantage to your enemie... ] speciall advantage, for the enemie (having charged you in full carrere while you went on upon the trot, onely on the sudden opening to the right and left) either (saith he) must run through and effect little or nothing, or (staying himself in the career) [note d: The principall strength of Cuirassiers consisteth in keeping themselves close serried together; for this the Germanes are commended.] disorder his troop, and loose the force of his charge: as by Fig. 7. part. 4. appeareth.

Once again, charging at a gallop is not something to be initiated: it’s something the enemy might do, and which might need to be countered, although in this case a countercharge at the gallop is recommended once the enemy has passed through the gap. It should be noted that Cruso is very sceptical about Walhausen’s idea. Robert Ward was much less critical when he repeated the same thing in 1639:

If it should so happen that one company of Cuirassirs should be to fight against another, if the enemy doth charge you in full carriere, your safest way is to devide your Troope by half rankes, opening a large distance to the right and left hand, so as the Enemy may passe through: then facing your Troope inwards, you are to charge them upon the Flankes; you are to performe the like if you have a Battalia made of two Troopes; and being charged by the Enemy, they are to divide themselves as before, but keepe each Troope whole and entire;

John Vernon, writing in 1644, might be expected to have more practical experience and/or be more heavily influenced by the newer Swedish tactics, and yet he repeats the same old idea even more credulously (pp. 43-4):

If one single Troop met another, your Enemy charging you in full career, you are sodainly to divide your Troop in the middle: on Flank from the other, and so the Enemie being in his full career, must either passe through and effect little, or else stopping sodainly disorder his Troops, and thereby give you a fit occasion to wheel both your Flanks inward, to charge him in the Reer. In full career, and then in all probabilitie, you will utterly rout him.

This casts some doubt on the assumption that Vernon was an experienced cavalry officer, and that his writing was a break from the more esoteric and impractical ideas of earlier years, although there were some significant differences. Vernon is the only one of the four authors to recommend a charge at the gallop as a standard tactic for both cuirassiers and arquebusiers, rather than firing by ranks or waiting to be charged, but this is not quite a radical break from the books of the 1630s, nor an attempt at reviving the idea of shock (p. 43):

In grosse bodies if you have field room enough, all the Troops are to be drawn up into battalia, each being not above three deepe, likewise each troop must be at least a hundred paces distance behind each other for the better avoiding of disorder, those troops that are to give the first charge being drawn up into battail as before, are to be at their close order, every left hand mans right knee must be close locked under his right hand mans left ham, as hath bin shown before. In this order they are to advance toward the Enemy with an easie pace, firing their Carbines at a convenient distance, always aiming at their Enemies brest or lower, because that powder is of an elevating nature, then drawing neere the Enemy, they are with their right hands to take forth one of their Pistols out of their houlsters, and holding the lock up are most firing as before, always reserving on Pistoll ready charged, spann’d and primed in your houlsters, in case of a retreat as I have shown before, having thus fired the troops are to charge the Enemy in a full career, but in good order with their swords fastend with a Riband, or the like unto their wrists, for feare of losing out of their hand, if they should chance to misse their blow, placing the pomel on their thigh, keeping still in their close order, close locked as before.

This is not so very different from Ward’s cuirassier trotting up, firing his pistols at close range, then using his sword. The main difference is that the horses are to accelerate to a gallop after the first two shots, which could imply firing slightly further away than Ward’s three or four paces. The three deep formation suggests a Swedish influence and is in contrast to Ward’s preference for six ranks. Vernon is also notable for specifying a tight knee to knee formation, which is a standard part of the shock myth, although he doesn’t say anything about why he thinks such close order is necessary. Ward doesn’t say anything similar, but Cruso mentions cuirassiers “close serried together” (p. 98, see above), and Markham is more explicit (p. 55):

Close order in Fyles, is Cuish to Cuish, or knee to knee, and Open order in Fyles, is six foote (which is accounted an Horse length)

This predates the widespread fame of Gustavus Adolphus. Although Markham accepts (perhaps with some regret) that firearms now rule the battlefield, he also includes instructions on how to train a horse to charge at the gallop (p. 52):

Passe a Cariere and stop close: This the Souldier shall doe by thrusting the horse violently forward both with his legs and bodie, and giving libertie to the Bridle. As soone as the Horse is started into his Gallop, hee shall give him the even stroake of his Spurres, once or twice together, and make the Horse runne to the hight of his full speede, then being at the end of the Cariere (which will not bee above sixe score or eight score yards) he shall then draw up his Bridle-hand very hard and constantly, and laying the calues of both legges gently to the Horses sides, make the Horse stop close to the ground, with onely a comely Advancement. And this serveth for all manner of Charges, whether it bee Horse against Horse, or Horse against Foote.

I’m not sure what this passage is for. It comes after he says that lancers and men-at-arms are no longer in use because of modern firearms, but a few pages later he re-emphasises that firearms are the main weapons of the cavalry. On p. 54 he goes on to say that pistols are presented during the charge and fired in the face of the enemy. It could be that stopping at the end of the gallop is meant to allow pistol shots at close range. That the rider has to make the horse stop certainly doesn’t imply any attempt to create a physical shock.

This doesn’t lead to a simple picture, and four books is too small a sample to be the basis of generalisations, but the are some common themes in English writing on cavalry before the First Civil War. Shock was seen as an old idea associated with heavy lancers, which were no longer in use. Markham, Cruso, and Ward all looked to the past in their own ways, but also acknowledged that, whether they liked it or not, current practice was based on firearms. There was a consensus that in practice recent improvements in firepower had brought about a significant break with the past even though Markham might have regretted this, and Cruso tried to gloss over it in places. Charging is something that the enemy might do to you, but which you aren’t supposed to do yourself.

There is a paradox here, because on the one hand pre-war theorists seem to have enough confidence in firepower that they don’t recommend charging, but on the other hand they seem to have a certain anxiety about what happens if the enemy charges. You shouldn’t use lancers because nobody uses them any more, but you might still get charged by them! There seems to be a fear of shock which gets more intense as the lancer becomes a more distant memory. This comes out most clearly in the reappearance of Walhausen’s implausible manoeuvre in which the troop is divided to make a gap in the centre through which the enemy can pass harmlessly. Although shock isn’t explicitly mentioned in any of the recurring descriptions, it seems likely that the idea is to avoid a head on collision at all costs. As the idea is repeated in subsequent works, the authors get less and less sceptical about it. Cruso is doubtful, Ward accepts it but also suggests Cruso’s alternative, and John Vernon seems to be the most enthusiastic exponent, despite also being the only exponent of charging the enemy first rather than relying solely on firearms. Each author affects confidence in his chosen tactics, but doubts show through the cracks. Reading the texts against themselves reveals the shock charge as a potent and threatening other, which is to be avoided more than harnessed.

I’ve presented a more nuanced reading of the texts here, but overall I’d agree with the majority of historians who see pre-war theory in England being dominated by firing rather than charging, a doctrine usually associated with the Dutch. This is usually said to have been swept away by the experience of war, in which Swedish shock tactics proved more effective. It’s true that John Vernon, writing in 1644, had more noticeable Swedish influences (or at least what are usually characterised as Swedish influences — I don’t have the language skills to check for myself), but he was hardly an unequivocal exponent of aggressive charges. I even have some doubts about whether Vernon really was an experienced cavalryman as has often been assumed. These books give an interesting insight into how their authors imagined war, and how ideas could be transmitted from text to text, but I don’t think that they represent contemporary reality. However, as prescriptive literature, they might have been intended to influence reality. In the next post I’ll be trying to assess what cavalry did in practice.

Bibliography

1. John Cruso, Militarie instructions for the cavallrie: ([Cambridge] : Printed by the printers to the Universitie of Cambridge [[i.e. Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel] and are to besold [sic] by Ni: Alsope at the Angell in Popes Head Alley [, London]], MDCXXXII. [1632], 1632).
2. Gervase Markham, The souldiers accidence ([London] : Printed by I. D[awson] for Iohn Bellamie, and are to be sold at his shop at the three golden Lyons neere the Royall Exchange, 1625., 1625).
3. John Vernon, The young horse-man, or, The honest plain-dealing cavalie (London : printed by Andrew Coe, 1644., 1644).
4. Robert Ward, Anima’dversions of vvarre; (London : Printed by Iohn Dawson [, Thomas Cotes, and Richard Bishop], and are to be sold by Francis Eglesfield at the signe of the Marigold in Pauls Church-yard, 1639., 1639).

This is the first part of an analysis of the way cavalry fought in battles. It mostly focuses on the English Civil War, but I’ll be drawing some examples from other places and periods. To start with, I’m going to discuss a concept known as “shock”, which is very frequently mentioned in histories of cavalry tactics.

There are many variants of this concept, but they all generally imply that cavalry charges resulted in a collision between two tightly packed bodies of men and horses, with the losers ridden down by the speed and/or weight of the winners. This kind of thinking is very noticeable in one of the most recent military histories of the civil war, Malcolm Wanklyn and Frank Jones, A Military History of the English Civil War (2004; ISBN: 0582772818). This is how they describe the Swedish tactics associated with Gustavus Adolphus (p. 34):

The charge was always made in a tightly packed formation… Close order turned the whole squadron into a single missile, maximising the shock of impact and preventing individual horses from turning away before contact.

The context makes it clear that Wanklyn and Jones believe this is how it actually happened. They use an even more emphatic metaphor to describe Oliver Cromwell’s tactics (p. 272, my emphasis):

At the next engagement, at Gainsborough two months later, both sides charged, but Cromwell’s men, although surprised, were able to deploy quickly from column into line while ‘keeping close order’, that is each man keeping cheek by jowl with his neighbour, thus creating an equine battering ram that would gain momentum as the horse picked up speed in the charge.

Time for my favourite Wick Murray quote again:

There is only one problem with this theory. It is wrong.

It’s really quite worrying that anyone could be repeating those old myths and cliches in 2004, because John Keegan convincingly refuted the whole idea of shock in The Face of Battle (first published 1976; I’m working from the 1978 Penguin paperback, ISBN: 0140048979). Jeremy Black has a point when he says we need to move beyond Keegan’s horizons, but there are apparently some military historians who haven’t even caught up with him yet. (I realise that I’m appealing to a metanarrative of progress in which some points of view are delegitimated just because they’re old, but in subsequent posts I’ll be showing that the shock issue isn’t really a simple binary opposition between new and old.)

In his analysis of Waterloo, Keegan points out that getting two solid walls of cavalry to collide with each other at speed would have been impossible for a number of reasons (pp. 147-151). Although I’m now suspicious of his appeal to “common sense” (at best intellectually lazy, and at worst a cover for insidious ideology), some rational deductions based on my empirical experiences (which include years of riding horses and watching equestrian sports, as well as studying documents which recount early modern battles) lead me to the same conclusion. Even at the best of times it’s incredibly difficult to arrange large numbers of horses into a solid straight line. When horses are packed close together and under stress, they are likely to kick and bite each other or back away. The more stressful the situation, and the more highly strung the horses, the worse it gets. The start of the Aintree Grand National, especially the notorious fiasco of 1993, would be a good example here, but I can’t find any video footage online. While 40 horses is a large field for a horse race, it’s a trivial number compared to civil war armies. The New Model Army had an establishment of 6,000 cavalry (not including officers), divided into regiments of 600, which were then divided into troops of 100. Imagine trying to get all of them into textbook formations.

You might get your horses standing more or less still in something like a line while waiting for the order to advance, but things would get even more tricky once you started to move as you would have to keep every horse going dead straight at exactly the same speed. From the mid-eighteenth century well-drilled infantry were capable of doing this by marching in step to the beat of a drum, but cavalry almost certainly didn’t have the necessary degree of control over their horses. Well trained horses and riders can do dressage to music, but getting that kind of skill and experience in a force of 6,000 on top of weapons training and with constant attrition seems unlikely, and being able to carry it out under fire seems even more unlikely. Terrain would further disrupt charges. Going uphill would tire the horses more quickly, while walls, hedges, ditches, sunken roads, furze bushes, and even rabbit holes were all potential obstacles. Many horses might be tired from marching, poorly fed, and suffering from diseases.

Assuming the two bodies of cavalry even got near each other and were going at any kind of speed, shock obsessed cavalrymen could have tried to steer their horses towards enemy horses in order to batter them down. But horses aren’t like cars or tanks, they are living creatures with minds of their own. They tend to have a strong and justifiable fear of crashing into solid objects, causing them to try and lunge away from threatening objects or stop dead before they get to them (I once had to go to hospital with concussion because of this, but anyway…). In any case, if horses could be made to crash into each other head on, it would just end up with both horses dead or crippled (which basically means being shot anyway). More speed or weight wouldn’t increase your chances of survival, it would just make the collision more deadly for both sides. This bit isn’t conjecture: it’s basic Newtonian physics.

The idea that fleeing infantry could be “ridden down” is no more plausible. When Anmer collided with Emily Davison during the 1913 Derby, he fell over (watch film of the incident). His jockey was injured in the fall, and the horse was lucky to escape with only bruised shins. This is not really what you want to happen to your cavalry if you’re trying to win a battle.

Considering that the best case outcome would be equal losses on both sides, shock starts to look undesirable as well as unattainable. Maybe you could pursue an attritional doctrine of a horse for a horse, but that would be counterproductive. During the First Civil War, troop horses usually cost between £5 and £10 each (some were even more valuable), with saddles starting out at £2.10s in 1642 and falling to 15s by 1646. In contrast the price of an infantry musket went from £1 to 10s in the same period (see Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death, 2000, ISBN: 0750914963, p.72). Frank Tallett wasn’t exaggerating when he said that cavalry were “ruinously expensive” (War and Society in Early Modern Europe, 1992, ISBN: 0415024765). Civil war armies didn’t always have the money to pay for enough remounts, and schemes to get them without paying proved unsustainable. Losses of horses from gunshots, disease, starvation, exhaustion, lameness, and theft were difficult enough to make up.

You have to wonder how many people with military experience actually believed that shock could and should happen. Was it just something that was made up by theorists who were out of touch with reality? In the next post I’ll be looking at how drill books said cavalry should fight.

Bibliography

1. Peter Edwards, Dealing in Death (Sutton, 2000).
2. John Keegan, The Face of Battle (Penguin Books Ltd, August 1978).
3. Frank Tallett, War and Society in Early Modern Europe (Routledge: London, 1992).
4. Maclolm D. G. Wanklyn and Frank Jones, A Military History of the English Civil War (Pearson: Harlow, 2005).