I had ridden for years and read about cavalry engagements when I first climbed on a horse with a sword belted on.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought I knew what it would be like to knock various objects off the tops of fence posts.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m sure that back in the day youngsters learned from experienced elders (by watching or by direct instruction)\u00a0 some of the things that a few sessions with horse, sword, and fence-posts taught me. \u00a0\u00a0 And ritual disclaimer here:\u00a0 I’m not an expert in this stuff.<\/p>\n
When you’re up on a horse, you’re immediately aware that a horse is fundamentally different from a wheeled vehicle.\u00a0\u00a0 Though mammalian body shapes are mostly bilaterally symmetrical, in practice we mammals nearly always start out with “handedness”\u00a0 and slightly unequal development to left and right–that includes hoofed mammals and horses are no exception.\u00a0\u00a0 And horses, like us only more so, change shape with movement.\u00a0\u00a0 The bulk of the body bulges more on one side than the other with every step, exaggerated in trot as the spine flexes first to one side then the other;\u00a0 the head, nodding up and down at walk, tenses and relaxes muscles along the spine, where the rider sits;\u00a0 at canter, the whole body rotates fore and aft on a moving axis.<\/p>\n
For the mounted warrior, this presents a complex problem.\u00a0 Not only are you using a moving weapon (the sword or lance)\u00a0 to hit a probably moving target (be it human mounted or afoot, or a monster of some kind)\u00a0 but the platform from which you strike\u00a0 is both moving along the path you chose (you hope!!) and moving under you in a way characteristic of its gait–walk, trot, canter, gallop.<\/p>\n
Horses are able to change direction, gait, and variations in stride length and speed of gait with rider-astonishing speed when it’s their idea.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had an Arab mare once who could disappear from under me and reappear six feet away in any direction, already zipping off in another direction.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I never came completely off her, but it was a near thing.\u00a0\u00a0 Once I saw her when she was loose in the pasture and something scared her.\u00a0\u00a0 From standing attentive and interested,\u00a0 she pulled up all four feet at once, repositioned her legs to thrust her somewhere else, and then “bounced” from a fully-folded position when her hooves touched ground again.\u00a0\u00a0 (And wondered in that moment how I’d ever stayed on her!)<\/p>\n
If you watch loose horses, you’ll notice how rarely they go straight for long, in any gait (and thus why straightening a horse in its early training is important and takes time.)\u00a0 They are prey animals, with a very wide angle of vision; they naturally move slightly sideways, haunches offline, to keep watch for danger.\u00a0\u00a0 Even in a herd galloping together, even in dominance disputes,\u00a0 only for short distances is there straight movement.\u00a0\u00a0 Although in early training, this is a challenge, in practice it suggests possibilities that our vehicles cannot match…if you can put those possible movements under human command (and the human can stay on during them.)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Horses can pivot in place,\u00a0 move diagonally,\u00a0 change speed, etc. in ways that are very useful in battle.<\/p>\n
What you want is the most secure platform you can get, that puts you at the right distance and direction from your enemy (or prey, if you’re hunting from horseback) for the weapon you’re using.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re hunting buffalo with bow and arrow, that means you want to gallop (a smoother gait than canter) alongside the buffalo at approximately the same relative speed–giving you a more stationary target–at a distance that allows your bow to deliver maximum force.\u00a0 Pretty close, in fact, and it helps if your horse will maintain a constant distance for repeated shots.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If you’re a Parthian acting as cavalry in an ancient army,\u00a0 about to deliver the famous “Parthian shot” over the rump of your horse while galloping away,\u00a0\u00a0 then you want that galloping away to be smooth (allowing you to twist in the saddle and shoot) and then you want the distance to open up, so the enemy is less likely to hit you.<\/p>\n
If you’re closing in with a weapon you’ll hold (spear or stabbing lance or sword) than how you approach will be determined partly by the weapon.\u00a0\u00a0 Imagine yourself on the back of a horse, weapon in hand, and imagine moving that weapon around to determine your arc of effective attack.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Right away, you run into the imagined horse neck in front of you.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 \u00a0 Stab or slash your own horse and you’re in big trouble.<\/p>\n
Now a\u00a0 lance can be held alongside the horse’s neck (but you’re in trouble if who you want to hit is on the other side of the neck when you get there.)\u00a0\u00a0 In tournament jousting, with the paths of horses determined by the list, it’s still possible to get it all wrong–in combat, in the open, even more so.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A lightweight lance that you can handle one-handed easily was effective in the ancient world and has been used with some good effect since.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has only one point and no long edge, so the horse is at less risk than with a sword.\u00a0\u00a0 If the lance is l0ng enough, you can reach the enemy directly ahead, as well as those diagonally on either front, and at any height from ground to mounted on a taller horse. \u00a0 \u00a0 (“Tent-pegging,” once a popular sport, derived from the military use–plucking the pegs of an enemy’s tent out of the ground with a lance while galloping past, so the tent would collapse on those inside.) \u00a0 \u00a0 The one right beside you is more difficult, as it requires you to twist\u00a0 your upper body to deliver a thrust, and you no longer have the strength of your back into the blow.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And behind–you’re out of luck.\u00a0\u00a0 Xenophon says the Greek cavalry carried two lances, which could be thrown or held to stab an enemy, and the lance was a common cavalry weapon into modern times.<\/p>\n
With the sword–a sword you can handle one-handed–you’ll find that you can’t, without sitting on the horse’s neck (for frontal attacks) or rump (for those behind) reach an enemy directly in front or behind, and in front you’ve got that horse-neck.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cavalry swords are usually edged weapons more than stabbing weapons, for the very practical reason that delivering a cut is much easier from the back of a moving horse.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And thus, many through history have been curved–allowing the delivery of a long and deep\u00a0 cut with a relatively short (in straight-length) blade that’s quicker to move from side to side over the horse’s neck.\u00a0\u00a0 (Shorter lever arm means less force required to move it. )<\/p>\n
But still–attacking someone directly in front of you with a sword, while mounted on a horse, means that your enemy can hit the horse before you hit the enemy.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Your greatest reach beyond the horse is to the side–farther on your sword-arm side, less on your other side.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Without bending low in the saddle (something your armor, if you wear it, can make difficult to perilous), you can’t reach low to the ground.<\/p>\n
You want to arrive at a mounted enemy at the side–with the rider at a point where the swing of your sword will do the rider the most harm, or with the rider’s horse at a point where your sword will damage the horse and make it uncontrollable.<\/p>\n
And now we get back to that overly detailed paragraph I edited the other day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A very skilled rider can feel, through the body’s contact with the horse, exactly which hoof or hooves are on the ground, and knows the sequence of hoof-falls for each gait.\u00a0\u00a0 And paired with a well-trained horse, this very skilled rider can “place” the horse so that the each hoof falls where the rider wants it to, by signalling the horse at the right phase of each gait sequence.\u00a0\u00a0 Top dressage riders make transitions and halts exactly on the marks set in the test.<\/p>\n
Consider the cantering horse.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A canter begins with a strike-off–one hind leg comes forward under the horse’s body, providing a powerful upward and forward force; the horse bends the other three legs, lifting the diagonal foreleg higher and for a moment the horse is resting all weight on that one leg.\u00a0 The front end is up; the hindquarters relatively down.\u00a0\u00a0 The body then levels, and the opposite diagonal pair of legs straighten and those two hooves strike the ground simultaneously–the horse is now supported on three legs with the back level, a solid foundation for anything the rider needs to do.\u00a0\u00a0 Then the strike-off hind leg loses contact with the ground, the horse’s weight shifts more forward, the foreleg diagonal to that strike-off leg comes to the ground as the previous diagnonal pair comes up.\u00a0 Now the back slants a little downward.\u00a0\u00a0 That last leg comes off the ground: the moment of suspension, all four legs up and bent, and then the strike-off hind leg reaches forward again.<\/p>\n
A “flying change” is when the horse changes “leads” without breaking the canter (without dropping to trot or walk).\u00a0\u00a0 (Previously available link to horse performing flying change removed because it now links to sex site, not equestrian site.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Each phase of the gait presents opportunities and limitations.\u00a0\u00a0 The horse can change leads or prepare to pivot only when all four legs are in the air, and the impetus for that must come before all the legs are up (there not being time for the horse to get the signal if you wait too long.)\u00a0\u00a0 Your well-trained battle mount will figure some of this out for itself, but even so you need to know when to anticipate such a move.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The back is level at only two moments during the stride, and in one the horse is well-supported; in the other, it’s hanging in the air.<\/p>\n The horse’s instinctive reaction to off-balance weight on its back (you leaning to the side to deliver a stroke, for instance) will be different in each phase and will also depend on which “lead” it’s on.\u00a0\u00a0 (Though the strike-off hind leg starts the canter sequence, leads are named for the last leg–the foreleg that lands last, because it always looks “in front of” the other.)\u00a0\u00a0 If you lean out to the side when the horse doesn’t have a leg already there to support you,\u00a0 its attempt to correct its own balance can dump you on your head.\u00a0 Horses react to changes in the joint center of gravity of horse and rider.\u00a0 Training can partially overcome this, but not completely.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, when a predator jumps onto a horse’s back, the ability shed it means life or death.<\/p>\n So…the horse doing half-pass faces 12 o’clock but travels diagonally.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In both trot and canter, horses trained to do this learn to zig-zag.\u00a0\u00a0 In canter, they change leads (do a flying change) at each change of direction.\u00a0\u00a0 This allows the rider to come at an enemy and (with very good judgment of the enemy’s movement–they don’t stand still with a “Hit Me” sign on them like the fence posts I used) place the horse in the best possible spot for an attack.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Moreover, you can appear to be aiming to ride by out of reach, and then–with a judicious shift of weight and use of leg–dance over a couple of strides and zzzzzipppp!<\/p>\n Video of canter half-pass with one change of direction<\/a>.<\/p>\n