Tag: war

A brief explanation regarding the ranks of Mamluke ameers [sic] may here be useful. The government was divided into two distinct classes, “men of the pen” and “men of the sword,” civil servants and soldiers. The men of the sword at this period consisted solely of Turkish Mamlukes born on the steppes….

When the sultan wished to promote an efficient soldier to officer rank, he was given a commission and the rank of “an ameer of ten,” corrosponding, let us say, to a lieutenant. He was obliged to maintain ten mamlukes of his own, and was given a small fief of government land, on the income from which he had to live and maintain his ten mamlukes. In the event of war, the officer and his ten men served in the army, providing their own horses, weapons and supplies.

Next above an ameer of ten was an ameer of forty, who maintained forty trained mamlukes. We may compare this officer to a captain. At this stage, he was allowed to have a tablkhana, a small military band, consisting of drums, and possibly also cymbals, oboes and trumpets. The essential component was the drums, which were used in battle.

…The drums were not merely a military ritual, but played a vital part in battle. An ameer of forty was consequently often called “an ameer of drums”….

The next rank above ameer of drums was that of ameer of one hundred, whom we may liken to colonels. The establishment of ameers of one hundred under Baybars was twenty-four. These senior ameers were each supposed to have one hundred private mamlukes. They had larger bands than those of the ameers of forty. The sultan’s own band was larger still, and was commanded by a band-master. The drums were presumably side-drums or kettle-drums, for they were beaten on horseback.

Ameers of one hundred are often described as “commanders of one thousand.” The one hundred were the ameer’s personal retainers, always under arms. In war time, when the reserves were mobilized, the ameer commanded a thousand troopers. All real Mamluke units were mounted. They had no infantry and disliked fighting on foot.

In peace time, the sultan and all ameers of a hundred were entitled to have their bands play outside their houses at sunset. History does not explain what happened if several ameers lived next door to one another in the same street, for in Egypt all ameers seem to have had houses in Cairo. The resulting evening cacophany must have been trying for civilian neighbours….

Reasonably enough, the right to beat drums was a military privilege….

— Soldiers of Fortune, pp. 77-80

Unlike modern “blue-water” naval squadrons, triremes were linked logistically to the coasts. There were no sleeping quarters on board, and the light ships could not carry much food. Thus, the Persian ships were beached every night, so that the oarsmen could eat and sleep in relative comfort. Owing to these logistical factors, the Grand Army [of Xerxes] and the Persian navy were mutually supportive and could not operate independently of each other. The army needed the food carried by the merchant marine, the merchant marine needed the protection of the battle fleet, and the battle fleet needed the secure beachheads established by the army. This web of interdependence was a major weakness of the Persian strategic plan: not only did it limit the tactical maneuverability of the various branches, but it meant that even a temporary collapse in the operational effectiveness of any one of the branches would fatally compromise the goals of the entire expedition.

— The Anatomy of Error, p. 36

The military system of a state is explained by its resources, principally financial, the structure of its government and administration, the level of its technology, the organization of its society and the nature of its economy, but one must also take into account its objectives and strictly military imperatives. Every state in effect seeks to raise armed forces adapted to its ambitions and to its own fears. This was the case in England at the end of the Middle Ages when military institutions were founded as a result of the interaction of several factors. First, it was a society where the feudal regime had changed almost completely into a system of land tenures, creating the need to establish new personal ties between those who governed and the men who were capable of serving them in war—’bastard feudalism’. Secondly, the fact that the principal English strength lay in the massive use of the longbow, a weapon which was popular rather than aristocratic, led to the need to draw on the resources of every level of society, independent of juridical status, in order to recruit a sufficient number of highly qualified archers. Finally, the adoption of a deliberately aggressive and expansive foreign policy implied the sending of forces against Scotland, Wales and Ireland, but above all across the sea. These expeditionary corps had to be capable of waging war away from their base for six months, a year, two years or even more. Garrison troops, intended to hold permanently a certain number of places on the continent and also, if the need arose, capable of turning themselves into a proper army of occupation, were vital.

— War in the Middle Ages, p. 150

Greece and Rome are the only ancient European nations that had soldiers with all that such a word implies in matters of organization and coordination and discipline. The fighting men of other nations were merely warriors, men with as much strength and heroism and perhaps as much patriotism as the Greeks and Romans, yet for want of training unable to use these qualities to the greatest advantage.

— Warfare by Land and Sea, p. 5

[Parthian] Cataphracts or clibanarii were heavy enough to break any other type of cavalry which opposed them; they were reasonably immune from hand-propelled missiles and arrows, less so from sling pellets or machine weapons. Their attack would be carried out at an ambling trot in close order, and was often only a feint to cause infantry to regroup into close formation to enable the mounted bowmen to create havoc, thus producing a close order/open order dilemma in the ranks. If the charge was pressed home against infantry who had ben subjected to prolonged missile attack, who were suffering from lack of food, water, or rest, or who were already disorganized, the chance of success was high. Good, fresh, well-prepared infantry in dense formation were difficult if not impossible to break and could prove disastrously lethal.

Horse-archers were almost impossible to destroy; however, they could be dispersed by good light cavalry, who might in turn be open to eventual counterattack. Enemy cavalry could be attacked while the bowmen’s own cataphracts threatened any enemy counterattacking. The effect on heavy infantry was more demoralizing than destructive.

— Rome’s Enemies 3, p. 9

The dominant theme of the half millennium which began about the year 1000 [C.E.] was the outpouring of Turkish and Mongolian peoples from the Eurasian steppe. Infiltration or conquest by these barbarian nomads affected almost the entire civilized world. Only the poor and peripheral areas, scarcely worth the exertions of conquest, such as Japan or the medieval European west, escaped political dominion by steppe warriors. In geographical scope only the conquests of the bronze-working charioteers of the eighteenth to fifteenth centuries [B.C.E.] can compare with this ethnic inundation.

— The Ottoman Impact on Europe, p. 11

As the size of armies and the scope of battles increased, ancient armies had to master the task of logistically supporting these armies in the field. The logistical feats of ancient armies were often more difficult and often achieved more proficiently than in armies of the nineteenth century [C.E.], when the railroad, mass production of weapons, standard packaging, and tinned and condensed food made the problem of supply considerably easier. The need to support armies in the field for months, sometimes years, was a function of the rise of the imperium. Armies now had to conduct combat operations over far wider areas for longer periods than ever before.

Changes in the composition of military forces also added to the logistics burden. The development of the chariot required that the Egyptian forces maintain repair depots and special mobile repair battalions to ensure that the machines remained functional on the march. The Assyrian invention of large cavalry squadrons brought into existence a special branch of the logistics train to ensure that the army could secure, breed, train, and deploy large numbers of horses to support these new forces. This special logistics branch, the musarkisus, was able to obtain and process 3,000 horses a month for the Assyrian army. It was not until the time of Napoleon that Western armies could once again equal this logistical feat. The integration of chariots with cavalry also forced the Assyrian army to become the first to learn how to sustain 2 types of transport. Advances in siegecraft required that armies transport siege towers and engines within their baggage train, and artillery, introduced under the Greeks and brought to perfection under the Romans, added yet another requirement to transport catapults and shot. The need to manufacture, issue, and repair the new iron weapons in unprecedented numbers required yet more innovations in logistics. In the Assyrian army the production and storage of weapons became a central feature of the army’s logistical structure. A single weapons room in Sargon’s palace at Dur-Sharrukin contained 200 tons of iron weapons, and similar weapons warehouses were scattered throughout the empire. Of all the achievements of the ancient armies, those in the area of logistics often remain the most unappreciated by modern military planners.

— From Sumer To Rome, pp. 22-23

Toward the end of the second millennium [B.C.E.], however, this humble weapon seems to have enjoyed a brief prominence. For the ‘hunting’ of chariot horses the javelin must have been ideal: although it would seldom have killed the horse that it hit, the javelin would surely have brought it to a stop, thus immobilizing the other horse, the vehicle, and the crew. Composite bows were appropriate for the chariot warrior, but for a runner a far preferable long-range weapon would have been the javelin. Javelins are thrown on the run, whereas an infantry bowman would have to shoot from either a crouching position or a flat-footed stance (in either case offering chariot archers a stationary target). In addition, the javelineer could carry a small shield, whereas the archer had to use both hands to work his bow. That javelins were in fact used against chariots in the Late Bronze Age is clear from Ramesses the Great’s account of his valor at Kadesh: in the ‘poetic’ inscription Ramesses boasts that the Hittites were unable either to shoot their bows or to hurl their javelins at him as he charged against them in his chariot.

— The End of the Bronze Age, pp. 181-82

Uninterrupted conquest was the law of life of Turkish society; the sultans emerged into the light of recorded history as leaders of a ghazi horde. Even when the empire had acquired a metropolis and was governed through a formal and elaborate administrative system, it remained almost continuously at war, a vast encampment rather than a state in the European sense. Until the advent of a succession of luxurious and fainéant rulers in the later sixteenth century [C.E.], sultans were active field commanders, usually quitting Istanbul with the army each spring and campaigning throughout the summer.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 34

The tactical use of elephants, originating earlier in India, was brought forcibly to the Western military mind at the Hydaspes, where both the potentialities and the limitations of the war elephant were demonstrated. Alexander’s horses refused to face the beasts, yet his disciplined phalanx, despite initial surprise and dismay, eventually turned the elephants back in panic-stricken flight. Seleucus’ impressions, however, were sufficiently favorable for him—20 years later—to cede substantial territory to Chandragupta in exchange for 500 elephants, which he proceeded to use to advantage in his victory at Ipsus. After that time the use of the war elephant spread rapidly to Greece and Carthage. That the beast was a valuable weapon is clear from its use by such objective warriors as Hannibal and Pyrrhus….

As proven at Beneventum and Heraclea, elephants were most successful when used against troops unacquainted with them. Disciplined and resourceful opponents, however, could stampede the elephants, which then became more dangerous to friend than foe. For this reason, the war elephant’s mahout (driver) carried a steel spike to hammer into the beast’s brain should he stampede.

— The Encyclopedia of Military History, p. 40

The most potent weapon in any soldier’s arsenal is deception. That you don’t hear much about deception in warfare tells you something about how elusive and apparently rare this item is. Yet, as the ancient Chinese adage puts it, “There can never be enough deception in war.” Sun-tzu went further, saying, “All warfare is based on deception.”

— Victory and Deceit, p. 1

Consider a commander before 1800 [C.E.], sitting in his capital and preparing to launch a war. The sources of strategic intelligence open to him included books—Napoleon, for example, is known to have read every available description and military history of Italy before setting out to conquer it in 1796, and Caesar…probably did the same—as well as maps, however primitive; from these and from the newspapers that began to be published early in the seventeenth century one could glean general information concerning the theater of operations, its resources, it climate, and the nature of the people inhabiting it. This written information was supplemented—or in some periods (such as the almost bookless early Middle Ages) replaced—by oral sources, the tales of traveling merchants, artists, pilgrims. To obtain more specific geo-military information about such things as roads, fords, bridges, and fortresses and about the enemy’s moves and intentions, it was necessary to rely on diplomats and spies. The two were often indistinguishable, and still are.

As even a cursory glance will reveal, each of these sources had its own strengths and weaknesses. Some were insufficiently specialized to bring in the specific information that a commander might need, while others were of questionable reliability. Intermittent at the best of times… the flow of information was likely to be reduced still further upon the actual outbreak of hostilities, thought the absence of continuous front lines and the inability of armies to police extensive tracts of territory meant that it was unlikely to dry up altogether.

In the absence of…regular mail service…the speed at which information was able to travel varied greatly. Rumor, especially concerning ‘great events’ such as a battle won or lost, moved fastest of all—speeds in excess of 250 miles a day are on record—but only at the price of the subject matter being neither selective nor reliable. On the other hand, books, maps, and travelers could hardly be expected to move at more than a walking pace, say ten or fifteen miles a day over extended periods. Somewhere in between these extremes came the reports that agents, stationed in friendly or hostile territory or else reporting on the moves of some neutral ruler, sent back to their employer. When properly utilized and taken together, such sources were often able to present a commander with a fair basis for strategic planning. But their limitations—especially in regard to speed—were such that their usefulness for operational purposes in the field was always questionable.

If obtaining long-range enemy intelligence always constituted a problem, so did communicating with one’s own forces. In the present day of radiotelephone and data links it is difficult to recapture the sort of utter isolation that ensued until about 1900 whenever detachments were sent out or an army was separated into several forces. Hannibal in Italy, to cite one extreme example, is said to have had no idea of what the second Carthaginian Army under his brother Hasdrubal was up to until the Romans informed him by tossing Hasdrubal’s severed head into his camp. Napoleon at Bautzen in 1813 could do nothing to communicate with Ney, on whose advance the outcome of the battle depended, even though their respective headquarters were less than ten miles apart…. For thousands of years before that, the speed at which field armies could communicate with each other was essentially limited to the speed of the horse—say no more than ten miles per hour on the average, given conditions that were not too unfavorable and over comparatively short distances.

The fact that communications were slow and insecure explains why commanders were always reluctant to send out detachments (the term, remaining in usage until the middle of the nineteenth century, speaks for itself); once detached, they would become all but impossible to control. Nor does the remedy—the establishment of proper strategic units capable of independent action—appear to have suggested itself before the end of the eighteenth century….

— Command In War, p. 19

The Assyrian chariot was a large and heavy vehicle that was pulled by 3 horses[, had 4 wheels,] and carried a crew of 4. The Assyrian chariot’s tactical role…maximized the role of shock. The idea was to attack enemy infantry formations from as many directions as possible to deliver maximum shock. Once engaged, the crews dismounted and fought as infantry. The Assyrians were the first to introduce the use of mounted infantry, and their use of the chariot strongly paralleled the use of armored personnel carriers in modern armies.

— From Sumer To Rome, p. 32

Nothing epitomized the outlook and performance of the [nineteenth-century C.E.] German General Staff, and of the German Army which it coordinated, more than this concept of mission tactics: the responsibility of each German officer and noncommissioned officer—and even Moltke‘s ‘youngest soldier’—to do without question or doubt whatever the situation required, as he saw it. This meant that he should act without awaiting orders, if action seemed necessary. It also meant that he should act contrary to orders, if these did not seem to be consistent with the situation.

To make perfectly clear that action contrary to orders was not considered either as disobedience or lack of discipline, German commanders began to repeat one of Moltke’s favorite stories, of an incident observed while visiting the headquarters of Prince Frederick Charles. A major, receiving a tongue-lashing from the Prince for a tactical blunder, offered the excuse that he had been obeying orders, and reminded the Prince that a Prussian officer was taught that an order from a superior was tantamount to an order from the King. Frederick Charles promptly responded: “His Majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.” This simple story became guidance for all following generations of German officers.

— A Genius For War, p. 116

Emphasis mine.

The Spartans drew up for battle in the conventional phalangial line, the best troops on the right, a few cavalrymen and light troops covering the flanks. They expected the Thebans to form in similar fashion. In such a battle the Spartans, superior both in numbers and in fighting quality, would unquestionably have been victorious. Epaminondas, however, refused to fight on Spartan terms. He quadrupled the depth of his left wing, forming a column 48 men deep and 32 wide. The remainder of his army, covered by a cavalry screen, was echeloned to his right rear in thin lines facing the left and center of the Spartan army. This is the first known example in history of the deep column of attack and of a refused flank, prototype of the holding attack and main effort of more modern times. Epaminondas personally led his left-wing column in a vigorous charge against the Spartan right, while his cavalry and the infantry of the refused center and left advanced slowly, occupying the attention of the Spartans to their front, but without engaging them. The Spartans were hopelessly confused by these novel tactics. The weight of the Theban column soon crushed the Spartan right. Epaminondas completed the victory by wheeling against the exposed flank of the remaining Spartans, who promptly fled when simultaneously engaged by the Theban center and right. The Spartans lost over 2,000 men; Theban casualties were negligible. Spartan military prestige was shattered forever.

— The Encyclopedia of Military History, pp. 42-43

By Kirke L. Simpson

Washington, November 11, 1921 (UP) —

Under the wide and starry skies of his own homeland America’s unknown dead from France sleeps tonight, a soldier home from the wars.

Alone, he lies in the narrow cell of stone that guards his body; but his soul has entered into the spirit that is America. Wherever liberty is held close to men’s hearts, the honor and the glory and the pledge of high endeavor poured out over this nameless one of fame will be told and sung by Americans for all time.

Scrolled across the marble arch of the memorial raised to American soldier and sailor dead, everywhere, which stands like a monument behind his tomb, runs this legend: We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

The words were spoken by the martyred Lincoln over the dead at Gettysburg. And today with voice strong with determination and ringing with deep emotion, another President echoed that high resolve over the coffin of the soldier who died for the flag in France:

There must be, there shall be, the commanding voice of a conscious civilization against armed warfare.

Far across the seas, other unknown dead, hallowed in memory by their countrymen, as this American soldier is enshrined in the heart of America, sleep their last. He, in whose veins ran the blood of British forebears, lies beneath a great stone in ancient Westminster Abbey; he of France, beneath the Arc de Triomphe, and he of Italy under the alter of the Fatherland in Rome.

And it seems today that they, too, must be here among the Potomac hills to greet an American comrade come to join their glorious company, to testify their approval of the high words of hope spoken by President Harding. All day long the nation poured out its heart in pride and glory for the nameless American. Before the first crash of the minute guns roared its knell for the dead from the shadow of Washington Monument, the people who claim him as their own were trooping out to do him honor. They lined the long road from the Capitol to the hillside where he sleeps tonight; they flowed like a tide over the slopes about his burial place; they choked the bridges that lead across the river to the field of the brave, in which he is the last comer.

As he was carried past through the banks of humanity that lined Pennsylvania Avenue a solemn, reverent hush held the living walls. Yet there was not so much of sorrow as of high pride in it all, a pride beyond the reach of shouting and the clamor that marks less sacred moments in life.

Out there in the broad avenue was a simple soldier, dead for honor of the flag. He was nameless. No man knew what part in the great life of the nation he had filled when last he passed over his home soil. But in France he had died as Americans always have been ready to die, for the flag and what it means. They read the message of the pageant clear, these silent thousands along the way. They stood in almost holy awe to take their own part in what was theirs, the glory of the American people, honored here in the honors showered on America’s nameless son from France.

Soldiers, sailors, and marines—all played their part in the thrilling spectacles as the cortège rolled along. And just behind the casket, with its faded French flowers on the draped flag, walked the President, the chosen leader of a hundred million, in whose name he was chief mourner at his bier. Beside him strode the man under whom the fallen hero had lived and died in France, General Pershing, wearing only the single medal of Victory that every American soldier might wear as his only decoration.

Then, row by row, came the men who lead the nation today or have guided its destinies before. They were all there, walking proudly with age and frailties of the flesh forgotten. Judges, senators, representatives, highest officers of every military arm of government, and a trudging little group of the nation’s most valorous sons, the Medal of Honor winners. Some were grey and bent and drooping with old wounds; some trim and erect as the day they won their way to fame. All walked gladly in this nameless comrade’s last parade.

Ahead, the white marble of the amphitheater gleamed through the trees. It stands crowning the slope of the hills that sweep upward from the river and just across was Washington, its clustered buildings and monuments to great dead who have gone before, a moving picture in the autumn haze.

People in the thousands were moving about the great circle of the amphitheater. The great ones to whom places had been given in the sacred enclosure and the plain folk who trudged the long way just to glimpse the pageant from afar were finding their places.

Faint and distant, the silvery strains of a military band stole into the big white bowl of the amphitheater. The slow cadences and mourning notes of a funeral march grew nearer amid the roll and mutter of the muffled drums.

And the arch where the choir waited the heroic dead, comrades lifted his casket down and, followed by the generals and the admirals, who had walked beside him from the Capitol, he was carried to the place of honor. Ahead moved the white-robed singers, chanting solemnly. Carefully, the casket was placed about the banked flowers and the Marine Band play sacred melodies until the moment the President and Mrs. Harding stepped to their places beside the casket; then the crashing, triumphant chords of The Star-Spangled Banner swept the gathering to its feet again.

A prayer, carried out over the crowd by amplifiers so that no word was missed, took a moment or two, then the sharp, clear call of the bugle rang Attention! and for two minutes the nation stood at pause for the dead, just at high noon. No sound broke the quiet as all stood with bowed heads. It was much as though a mighty hand had checked the world in full course. Then the band sounded and in a mighty chorus rolled up the words of America from the hosts within and without the great open hall of valor.

President Harding stepped forward beside the coffin to say for America the thing that today was nearest to the nation’s heart, that sacrifices such as this nameless man, fallen in battle, might perhaps be made unnecessary down through the coming years.

Mr. Harding showed strong emotion as his lips formed the last words of the address. He paused, then with raised hand and head bowed, went on in the measured, rolling period of the Lord’s Prayer. The response that came back to him from the thousands he faced, from the other thousands out over the slopes beyond, perhaps from still other thousands away near the Pacific, or close packed in the heart of the nation’s greatest city, arose like a chant.

Then the foreign officers who stand highest among the soldiers or sailors of their flags came one by one to the bier to place gold and jeweled emblems for the brave above the breast of the sleeper. Already, as the great prayer ended, the President had set the American seal of admiration for the valiant, the nation’s love for brave deeds, and the courage that defies death, upon the casket.

Side by side he laid the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. And below, set in place with reverent hands, grew the long list of foreign honors: the Victoria Cross, never before laid on the breast of any but those who had served the British flag; all the highest honors of France and Belgium and Italy and Rumania and Czechoslovakia and Poland.

To General Jacques of Belgium it remained to add his own touch to these honors. He tore from his own tunic the medal of valor pinned there by the Belgian king, tore it with a sweeping gesture, and tenderly bestowed it on the unknown American warrior.

Through the religious services that followed, and prayers, the swelling crowd sat motionless until it rose to join in the old, consoling Rock of Ages, and the last rite for the dead was at hand. Lifted by his hero bearers from the stage, the unknown was carried in his flag-wrapped, simple coffin out to the wide sweep of the terrace. The bearers laid the sleeper down above the crypt on which had been placed a little of the soil of France. The dust his blood helped redeem from alien hands will mingle with his dust as time marches by.

The simple words of the burial ritual were said by Bishop Brent; flowers from war mothers of America and England were laid in place.

A rocking blast of gunfire rang from the woods. The glittering circle of bayonets stiffened to a salute to the dead. Again the guns shouted their message of honor and farewell. Again they boomed out; a loyal comrade was being laid to his last, long rest.

High and clear and true in the echoes of the guns, a bugle lifted the old, old notes of Taps, the lullaby for the living soldier, in death his requiem. Long ago some forgotten soldier poet caught its meaning clear and set it down that soldiers everywhere might know its message as they sink to rest:

Fades the light;
And afar
Goeth day, cometh night,
And a star
Leadeth all, speedeth all,
To their rest.

The guns roared out again in the national salute. He was home. The Unknown, to sleep forever among his own.

— A Soldier Home From the Wars – The Pulitzer Prizes

Armies that were fed from an agricultural surplus and limited in range of maneuver by their pace and endurance on foot simply could not undertake free-ranging campaigns of conquest. Nor did they need to; enemies similarly constrained could threaten them with defeat in battle but not by Blitzkrieg. The horse people were different. Attila had shown an ability to shift his strategic center of effort between fronts 500 miles or more apart. No such strategic maneuver had been attempted or had been possible before. Freedom of action on this scale lay at the heart of the ‘cavalry revolution.’

The horse people fought unconstrained in another sense. They did not seek to inherit or adapt to the half-understood civilizations they invaded. Nor did they seek to supplant others’ political authority with their own. They were warriors for war’s sake, for the loot it brought, the risks, the thrills, the animal satisfactions of triumph; all the spoils with strings.

— A History of Warfare, p. 188

Emphasis mine.

Henry, Duke of Lancaster, called the “Father of Soldiers,” was England’s most distinguished warrior, who had not missed a battle in his 45 years. He was a veteran of the Scottish wars, of Sluys, of Calais and all the campaigns in France, and when his country was quiescent he rode forth in knightly tradition to carry his sword elsewhere. He had joined the King of Castile in a crusade against the Moors of Algeciras and journeyed to Prussia to join the Teutonic Knights in one of their annual “crusades” to extend Christianity over the lands of Lithuanian heathen. In 1352 [C.E.], while the truce still held between England and France, he was the star of a remarkable event in Paris. On returning from a season in Prussia, he had quarreled with Duke Otto of Brunswick and accepted his challenge to combat, which was arranged under French auspices. Given a safe-conduct, escorted by a noble company to Paris, magnificently entertained by King Jean, the Duke of Lancaster rode into the lists before a splendid audience of French nobility; but his mere reputation proved too much for his opponent. Otto of Brunswick trembled so violently on his warhorse that he could not put on his helmet or wield his spear and had to be removed by his friends and retract his challenge.

— A Distant Mirror, Chapter 6

The role of cavalry had declined in the Spanish army because the Spaniards had increased their infantry partly at the expense of it. Since a properly armored heavy cavalryman could cost four times as much as a pikeman or arquebusier, a small decrease in heavy cavalry could finance a huge addition to the infantry and bring about a dramatic alteration in the proportions between infantry and cavalry. Though a large part of their cavalry consisted of traditional full-armored lancers, the Spanish did have cavalry that performed a light cavalry’s strategic duties of reconnaissance and attack on the enemy’s stragglers, foragers, convoys, and logistic installations. Usually mounted arquebusiers filled this role. Because of the difficulties involved in using the arquebus while mounted, these horse arquebusiers were really mounted infantry. They usually dismounted to use their weapons. But on at least one occasion, after the battle of Ceresole in 1544 [C.E.], mounted arquebusiers pursued retreating heavy infantry and, by dismounting to shoot and remounting to continue the pursuit, managed effectively to simulate the traditional Parthian or Turkish tactics of light cavalry.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 192

The rest of western Europe copied this change from the Spanish, leading to the permanent decline of “pure” cavalry in warfare there.

The arquebusiers, belonging to the same unit as the pikemen, did not operate completely independently…. In the absence of obstructed terrain, the square of pikemen provided the only place of safety where the light infantry might take refuge from the enemy’s heavy cavalry. They could take a position on the flank of or behind the square, or, should the cavalry attack in flank or rear, many could find safety in the front ranks where the wall of pikes would protect them. In turn, the arquebusiers’ fire could support the pikemen’s defense, and the masses of the enemy’s heavy infantry or the horses and men of the attacking heavy cavalry would provide fine targets for arquebus balls. The Spaniards gradually increased the proportion of arquebusiers to pikemen until, by the end of the 16th century [C.E.], their regiments approached equal numbers of light and heavy infantry.

— The Art of War in the Western World, p. 191