Meanwhile Maurice said, "Drills should be done according to the movements explained earlier..." And this was in a section entitled "Points to be Observed on the Day of Battle." There is no way to interpret this as training recruits or getting them accustomed to new commands.
Drills are also done to maintain and reinforce the already known maneuvers and commands. Same as with sports a skill that isn't practiced regularly decreases in performance.
Furthermore, as I said prior, he included the training portions in another section entirely and even then used the term "exercises" was used to indicate things done for training purposes only, not suitable for use in battle.
Don't mix exercises and drills, the author separated them for a reason as well.
That was a rhetorical question. The answer is literally in the first sentence.
If we assume that you're right, then he separates drills from drills for actual use, which goes against your narrative that the aforementioned drill we've been discussing was used "as is".
I ignored it because Napoleon's own tactics (generalizing) were to put infantry squares into disarray before committing his cavalry in a charge. Reminder of my actual claim: cavalry that charged into well-formed infantry did so at a trot.
That's your initial claim, which lies on another claim that a cavalry charge can't be done at a gallop in a tight formation, and it's exactly what they describe there. Also they did charge into well-formed unbroken infantry as well, however the success rate wasn't exactly high, since a single cavalryman had to face 6 muskets if cavakry, even tightly formed, charged a square of infantry.
- In 1813 at Dresden the Austrian square repulsed French cuirassiers but surrendered without a fight to lancers. Another square also repulsed cuirassiers but broke when 50 French lancers attacked them. The frustrated cuirassiers joined the lancers and together finished off the enemy.
- In 1813 at Katzbach the lancers were called after the 23rd Chasseurs was repulsed. The lancers came and broke the square, inflicting heavy casualties on the Prussians.
- In 1813 at Dennewitz one squadron of Polish 2nd Uhlan Regiment attacked Prussian battalion of 3rd Reserve Infantry Regiment. The infantry was formed in a column with skirmishers as its screen. The uhlans routed the skirmishers killing several and attacked the column. The Prussians were "savagely handled". The 2nd Uhlans also broke 2 other squadrons at Dennewitz
And as an aside, you ignored four posts where I mentioned that if a horse collides with something at high-speed, the rider will probably fall off. If they were to gallop into a formed block of infantry and actually hit one of those infantry, the riders would be very likely to be unhorsed.
Yeah I did ignore that since considering that if we manage to come to a conclusion that high speed charges were done(and I think it should be obvious by now that they were) this statement will be proven wrong as well.
Then you did not read carefully:
But it is against the nature of a horse to ride into a solid obstacle, so the cavalry attack took one of two forms: Either the horse did a turn (a rollback, demi-pirouette or volte-face) before it met the target, or it passed the target.47 There is no tactically correct third choice – crashing into the target, with horse and rider being cast down, is documented, but can hardly be called “tactically correct” as the fighter is rendered hors combat.
I have marked for you part that you have missed.
And what did I miss exactly? The author clearly says that if it's against the nature of a horse, therefore it either turned or passed the target and the third choice is "incorrect". And we can clearly see that this logic is flawed through and through, looking at all the provided arguments.
You may reconsider if you want to argue in a bad faith.
You did admit that they collided, right? Or are you arguing that they collided "abstractly" but not "physically"? How do you imagine then the cavalry
penetrating a formation and
pushing through to the rear without a physical collision with the infantry?
As for the first vid, the easiest moment to pick up is probably at around 1:52. When you look at the white horse, there are three distinct beats, with hind and fore legs grounding together, making it a canter.
The first obvious gallop I see (I don't claim to be an expert of any kind) is around 2:35, most easily distinguishable on the leftmost horse of the front row - you can see all four legs grounding separately. At this point there isn't much of a formation to speak of.
The second video doesn't show galloping horses, I think.
Thanks for the input, I'm not a cavalry expert either, but it did seem to me like a gallop. And if I'm wrong and it's not a gallop, then it's clearly a gait faster than a trot, meaning that at least charging at a faster rate than a trot is possible. But I won't push it, if it's not obvious that it's a gallop to people, then I can't press you to believe otherwise. I tried to find a more obvious example but wasn't lucky so far.
