horses crashing into soldiers like tanks

[World's Coolest Old Guy]

Mental gymnastic is rather trying to turn military disaster done by accident in to "viable tactic".

Why do you keep saying it was a military disaster? The charge ended successfully with minimal losses. You keep conflating "disaster" with "unnecessary risk". I also want to note that the charge wasn't accidental. It was an ambush. In fact, they could have still averted the charge when the ambush revealed itself and deliberately chose not to. Here are some takes on the battle from more than just your source (who himself doesn't say that the charge was a disaster, only that it was considered by many to be a strategic misstep).

News of this heroic charge against appalling odds captured the imagination of the public at home. Newspaper headlines in Britain read 'Gordon Avenged', and based on their reports, artists such as Edward Matthew Hale, raced to complete paintings of the victory to feed the public demand for images of the battle.

(Interestingly, the same source cites another charge - specifically Waterloo - as more proof of my claim as to the purpose of a charge and how it was executed by noting that momentum was not easy to halt, as you claim.)​

​

The force of the British charge smashed through the French infantry. But the lack of control meant the British heavy cavalry rode too far and were eventually destroyed when French cavalry counter-attacked.

​

They were as thick as bees and hundreds must have been knocked over by our horses. My charger – a polo pony – behaved magnificently, literally trampling straight through them.

A polo pony - a polo pony! - trampled straight through hundreds of infantry who were "thick as bees" at Omdurman. This is why it pays to be thorough when you're looking for historical accounts, and make sure you have the whole picture.​

​

Half the 447 horses on the charge were also killed or hurt. But the lancers regrouped and proceeded on foot, using their carbines to drive off the enemy.

Just a bit more proof there that your numbers weren't researched heavily enough. The official count from the National Army Museum is 447 horses, which means 447 riders, which means at 73, only 16% of the Lancers were wounded or killed in the charge.​

​

It was there that the full regiment charged with lances in the classic cavalry style during the Battle of Omdurman in September 1898. Of less than 400 men involved in the charge 70 were killed and wounded[3] and the regiment won three Victoria Crosses. These three were Private Thomas Byrne,[4] Lieutenant Raymond de Montmorency[4] and Captain Paul Kenna.[4] This spectacular encounter earned considerable public attention and praise for the regiment, though it was also criticized as a costly and unnecessary anachronism - since the 2,000 Dervish spearmen dispersed by the 21st Lancers could have been destroyed by rifle fire with few if any British losses.[3]

Two things to note here. First, that this front-on charge, lance to foot, was "in the classic cavalry style". Second, that the regiment was praised for how it conducted itself during the charge, and that the criticism came because it was unnecessary, not because it failed. It didn't fail. 2,000 Dervish were dispersed. It did its job. It was merely stated to be costly because ~70 Lancers were made casualties, and arguably a line of infantry could have done the job with less losses. If you can disperse the enemy with zero losses, a single casualty out of 5,000 would be considered costly.​

​

As my horse leapt in among them, my lance entered the left eye of a white-robed figure who had raised his sword to strike. The impact shattered the lance and I quickly drew my sword as another man pointed his flintlock. I struck him down and blood splattered his robe.

The private's horse "leapt in among them".​

​

The regiment fought its way through the packed enemy and moved away, dismounted and opened a withering fire using carbines, forcing the Dervishes to withdraw.

I'm not saying the gunfire from the Lancers didn't contribute to the Dervish withdrawal, by the way. I'm merely saying that the charge phase was a tactical success, despite overwhelming differences in numbers.​

​

Though three men were awarded Victoria Crosses for courage in the action, and it was praised in the press, in reality it was a needless waste of lives.

It was criticized because it was unnecessary, not because it failed or was executed in an improper way.​

​

After a bloody clash, the lancers, who had not experienced a fight before then, successfully drove the Mahdists back. Winston Churchhill, then a lieutenant, was a participant of this charge.

Although the action of the 21st Lancers was seen by some as reckless, there’s no disputing the fact that in the event of their action, the power of a cavalry charge was still useful.

1. These men did all this despite having no combat experience, such is the power of the charge.​

2. It was, again, viewed as reckless. Not as a failure.​

3. "Still useful", coming from someone whose job is to research military history and write about it, suggests that he's well aware this was the normal way to conduct a cavalry charge throughout history.​

​

Unbeknown to the British cavalrymen, the khor was both wider and deeper than previously thought. If this was not bad enough, as the lancers drew closer to Abu Sunt they suddenly saw a number of warriors and banners unexpectedly rise up from the ground. The position was more heavily defended than anticipated, with over 2,000 Mahdists now awaiting their attackers. The lancers were galloping directly into what was later learned to be a carefully laid ambush!

A key thing to note about this whole affair is that the difficulty was not because they were charging packed infantry head-on. There were a number of things contributing, such as the fact that it was a damned ambush and the fact that it all took place in a khor, both wider and deeper than expected. A khor is a ravine, which means they were charging through water. This is a massive mitigating factor on a charge if it's deep enough.​

​

The entire clash of arms lasted less than two minutes, and resulted in the loss of one officer and twenty men of the 21st Lancers killed, while another four officers and forty-six men were wounded. Of the 320 horses engaged in the charge, 119 had been either killed or wounded. Yet the charge had achieved little, and is largely viewed as a near disaster and a terrible mistake by military people of the day and historians ever since.

Oh hey, I found your source. And notice again how he says "near" disaster. When he says "achieved little", I presume he means strategically, though it's unclear as he doesn't state that the Dervish were scattered, either. Could be he legitimately thinks the charge failed, but as various other sources above have told us, that would be inaccurate.​

​

-----

Now people who believe this myth of course have to somehow explain how can you collide horse on to a pike planted in to the ground and not impale it, and they usually do so by saying that horse is "heavily armored".

That reminds me. You never addressed my math.

You have a spear made of white ash. Spear shafts were commonly made of rather sturdy ash wood. White ash - the strongest type of ash - has a parallel-to-grain compression strength of 7,410 pounds per square inch and a perpendicular-to-grain compression strength of 1,106 pounds per square inch.

Now let's look at the average war horse. We can surmise that on the smaller side of the estimate, war horses weighed around 1,700 pounds, plus another 50 or so for their barding (which protects them from thrusts, by the way!). That's 1,750 pounds or 793.78 kg, and that's not even accounting for the rider. Just the horse. The average horse bred for long-distance running (which war horses often were) clocks around 40 miles per hour, some faster. This equates to 17.8 m/s.

Stop distance must be determined. Let's assume the horse running through is the stop distance. There are no hard numbers on this, so let's just assume it moves about two ranks past the man whose spear hits him. (Before you protest, the shorter the stop distance, the greater the impact.) With a braced stance, we can put the "depth" of a footman at around two and a half feet, maybe three, plus another five feet or so for the amount of spear out in front of him. That's a total of 11 feet or 3.35 meters.

Now we can plug these values into the equation for solving impact from a horizontally moving object: Work = Kinetic Energy is Force × stop distance = 0.5 × mass × velocity^2. Therefore, so F = (0.5 × m × v^2) ÷ d. For us, that's ((0.5 x 793.78 ) x (17.8 ^ 2)) / 3.3, which equates to 37,537.5 Newtons of impact force, or 8,438 pound-force.

What this means is... If you managed to point the spear directly at the horse and hold it perfectly steady, the spear might not break from the weight of one horse and its panoply alone. If you're lucky. That's assuming you can keep it in your hands with 8,438 pounds of force trying to drive it through your hands and into your hip (the high end of the normal range for handgrip strength in a 25-29 year-old male is about 126 pounds). If you're just a little shaky and that spear pushes up, down, left, or right at all, it's going to snap no questions asked.

My explanation is in the numbers. Your explanation seems to be drawn primarily from - in a grand stroke of irony - video games like the earlier Total War titles, which provided an increased damage value to braced pikes to explain their effectiveness against horses. If I'm not mistaken, Thrones of Britannia corrected this by making horses reluctant to want to collide with spears, which would have been the more historical reason frontal charges against pikes failed.

Bannockburn, one of the most famous examples of pikes vs. cavalry, tells it as such:

The Scots began the second day of the battle by holding mass. Edward supposedly delayed the engagement, initially confused by the disposition of Scottish infantrymen wielding long spears. Nevertheless, he still ordered an attack against the Scots with his cavalry. Upon the initial charge, the English avoided the anticavalry ditches, but they were unable to penetrate the Scottish lines. After multiple cavalry charges failed to break the Scottish defenses, Robert began to move his infantry forward. As the English backed up, the ditches hindered them after multiple horsemen fell in and could not escape. The battle transformed into an all-out rout, with many of the English being slaughtered. Edward himself barely escaped.

Notice that if the charge was delayed, it was because Edward was trying to divine the purpose of the massed formation, not because it was considered a death sentence to charge.

Notice that Edward II, then a veteran military leader, ordered the charge anyway.

Notice that it failed because they were unable to penetrate the Scottish lines. This must mean that the goal was to penetrate.

Notice that multiple charges were attempted. If the first impact slaughtered half the horses, how or why would this be possible?

Notice that after many charges, the cavalry was able to be pushed back.

Notice that it was the ditches, which they hand initially avoided, that killed most of the English cavalry. Not the braced pikes. It wasn't until the Scots started advancing and bullying the horses, then lacking forward momentum, into the ditches that it started to get shaky for the English.

-----

Reality is of course that 99% of the horses that did charge infantry did not had any armor protection. You can look Bayeux tapestry for example if in doubt.

Please don't throw out percentages from nothing. The evidence doesn't exist to prove that 99% of horses were unprotected throughout history. The data is insufficient. Beyond that, horse armor existed before Christ, why would you claim that a full 99% of all horses to ever execute a charge had no armor? There's no reasoning behind that claim, particularly when you realize that High Medieval knights - who regularly barded their horses - were the ones who preferred the charge most.

But that's only part of the reason whole horse as a battering ram myth falls apart. Other part is that while you can put armor on a horse, it's very difficult to protect horse legs. They are for most part unprotected:

Here is a horse running at 38 MPH. Warhorses, it's suggested, went as high as 40 to 43. How easy do you reckon it would be to hack its legs at that speed? Even if we don't account for the vertical motion of the legs, how easy do you think it would be to stand your ground and piece the headlight of a car speeding towards you at 40 miles per hour without dying? Nevermind that if you're armed with a spear, as you keep saying makes you invincible to horses, you'd be piercing. You'd have to put the head of a spear on a constantly displacing limb that's about what, 3-4 inches wide? You'd have to do that while it's advancing towards you at 40 miles per hour and the ground is shaking beneath you.

And then you'd have to pierce the bone, which is another thing I'll address.

And computer games unfortunately add to the mess. Way too many people here base their believes on what they learned playing the Total War games. Hence inability to realize that "charge" in real world literature does not mean head on collision and real soldiers, horses and weapons does not have "shock attack value" and "hit points". Horse with broken leg is written off and it's HP is not 90%.

A horse's hit points in a video game are a mechanical representation (granted, not a scientifically accurate one) of the size of a the horse. Warhorses were big, powerful creatures with dense musculature and dense bones sufficient to carry loads of nearly one ton. "Shock attack value" is derived from the horse's impact force. Again, it's not mathematically sound, but it's a representation. My point is that these values aren't just imagined from nothing, they represent science in a shallow, game-balancey way.

All that said, I don't take my stance from video games at all. Everything I've argued with has been scientific. It would not be half as easy to kill a horse as you think, barring a lucky stab to just the right spot. It would not be as easy to maim a horse as you think, barring hamstringing it, which would have to be done after the charge while it's stationary. The only time a horse would have been a logical target was when it was stationary. This is exactly why your theory of "they ran into melee range, stopped, an then poked the footmen to death" is so ridiculous. You're essentially arguing against yourself with these most recent posts. This fellow explains it quite well.

 

[manuelcipo]

Man do you even whatched the video? 2:56 He is saying what we say, he said that if the infatry hold steady the cav would almost never try to smash in cause they would not live long, his words " if you could persuade your horse to do that," already doubting of this himself from how he say this "it would be certainly fatal for the person you hit, but you wouldn't live much longer, neither would your horse after that, for reason which i think are fairly obvious", now remember the word i used, "Suicidal", "blood bath for both side", "hours long battles", remeber the 15% casualty statistically with 9% of this during the chase do you think now with the istant death for both party at the beginning of a battle this statistic can be possible?
Cav charge was very effective i never said it wasn't the problem is, it wasn't effective for the phisical damage, it was effective cause it would usually make the unit lose formation and run for it and when they are running away in a disarrayed manner you could just trample and hit them as much as you want, but if the enemy held their ground cav would, as the video said, just retreat, they wouldn't engage, cause this is the advantage of cav, mobility, they could choose when and where to engage, they could go in and out as they want, infantry can't, cav could go around a formation and attack the enemy from the back or the flank when the enemy is focused on the front(there is a reason why in chess, a game made by commander, the horse move like an L it's to simulate a flank manuver) why do you think almost every battle ever fought had cav on the side and infanty in the middle cause so they could go around, as i said almost no battle ever ended cause one army killed all the other, it was easy spark a mass reatreat, many battle ended just cause an army got outflanked and lost will to fight thinking the battle was lost, some battle ended for a unit repositiong and the other thinking they were running away and so every other unit started running, sometimes when they were actually winning.
Using cav like a battering ram would be really dumb for obvious reason first of all like many have said and me too, they were luxury, why do you think the norm was 10 to 1 infatry/cav ratio, they were costly, raising them was costly and so provide for them, and if you have enough horse for 2 thousand horseman and make a couple of battering ram experience now you have 500 hundred more infantryman cause all the horse died or got hurt and in the middle age veterinary medicine was putting down hurt animal and 1500 horseman died with them in suicidal attack, now good luck breeding raising AND DON'T FORGET TRAINING another 2000 an another 1500 men and be fast cause even if you have may have won the battle but still not the war.
Funny thing now, knight in middle age were noble they were the one that would risk less in a fight they would charge at the troops that would usually run and then kill them in the chase, but if they would stay and fight they would send in their troops and try to flank them.

EDIT P.S. I had already saw this video years ago.

 

[FBohler]

Hruza's a massive troll.

I'm not sure if he's that big.


As for being a troll, yeah, you got it ?

 

[World's Coolest Old Guy]

(Just click the arrow next to my name and you'll see the post.)

Man do you even whatched the video? 2:56 He is saying what we say, he said that if the infatry hold steady the cav would almost never try to smash in cause they would not live long, his words " if you could persuade your horse to do that," already doubting of this himself from how he say this "it would be certainly fatal for the person you hit, but you wouldn't live much longer, neither would your horse after that, for reason which i think are fairly obvious", now remember the word i used, "Suicidal", "blood bath for both side", "hours long battles", remeber the 15% casualty statistically with 9% of this during the chase do you think now with the istant death for both party at the beginning of a battle this statistic can be possible?
Cav charge was very effective i never said it wasn't the problem is, it wasn't effective for the phisical damage, it was effective cause it would usually make the unit lose formation and run for it and when they are running away in a disarrayed manner you could just trample and hit them as much as you want, but if the enemy held their ground cav would, as the video said, just retreat, they wouldn't engage, cause this is the advantage of cav, mobility, they could choose when and where to engage, they could go in and out as they want, infantry can't, cav could go around a formation and attack the enemy from the back or the flank when the enemy is focused on the front(there is a reason why in chess, a game made by commander, the horse move like an L it's to simulate a flank manuver) why do you think almost every battle ever fought had cav on the side and infanty in the middle cause so they could go around, as i said almost no battle ever ended cause one army killed all the other, it was easy spark a mass reatreat, many battle ended just cause an army got outflanked and lost will to fight thinking the battle was lost, some battle ended for a unit repositiong and the other thinking they were running away and so every other unit started running, sometimes when they were actually winning.
Using cav like a battering ram would be really dumb for obvious reason first of all like many have said and me too, they were luxury, why do you think the norm was 10 to 1 infatry/cav ratio, they were costly, raising them was costly and so provide for them, and if you have enough horse for 2 thousand horseman and make a couple of battering ram experience now you have 500 hundred more infantryman cause all the horse died or got hurt and in the middle age veterinary medicine was putting down hurt animal and 1500 horseman died with them in suicidal attack, now good luck breeding raising AND DON'T FORGET TRAINING another 2000 an another 1500 men and be fast cause even if you have may have won the battle but still not the war.
Funny thing now, knight in middle age were noble they were the one that would risk less in a fight they would charge at the troops that would usually run and then kill them in the chase, but if they would stay and fight they would send in their troops and try to flank them.

EDIT P.S. I had already saw this video years ago.

How to reveal a troll:

Step 1: Write a long post intricately dismantling every one of his points piecemeal.

Step 2: Include a video that supports this post, but has a few seconds of statements that, if one tilts their head and squints, can be misconstrued into support for the troll's stance.

Step 3: Tell yourself, "He's going to zero in on that."

Step 4: Watch him zero in on that, make four paragraphs out of it, and completely ignore the rest of the post.

I can think of no other reason that much content would be completely ignored expect that this is, for true, a great big attempt to troll the lot of us. They kept telling me and I kept giving you the benefit of the doubt, but lucky for me I have a keen mind that can reveal such things as absolute truths. My work here is done. Good day, sir.

(PS: No, he was not saying that. He said - as I too believe - that most charges did not end up being executed against a wall of spears, because the horses were too worried about self-preservation for the entire charge to drive home at speed. He did not say that running onto spears would be a death sentence. He said that standing still - what you've been arguing the charge is meant to achieve in the end - and engaging infantry is a death sentence. He said that getting bogged down in infantry, because your horse was unsure and didn't keep going with sufficient speed to smash the enemy's lines, was a death sentence.

But you already know this. You're a sharp fellow, you don't actually think the point of galloping at 40+ miles per hour towards entrenched infantry is to stop short and let them mob your horse. You've only been taking this stance in an attempt to get us engaged. I suppose if nothing else, I can thank you for a few days worth of distraction from the wait for Bannerlord.)

 

[nekc]

Horses should be able to charge through a couple men but in turn they should take damage. Horses are strong but that doesn't mean they are durable enough to continuously charge through 150 pound+ armored warriors and not feel anything.

 

[World's Coolest Old Guy]

Horses should be able to charge through a couple men but in turn they should take damage. Horses are strong but that doesn't mean they are durable enough to continuously charge through 150 pound+ armored warriors and not feel anything.

Agreed. As far as I can tell, this is how it is, too, when the infantry's ready for you. If they get attacks off, the horse is the likely target (since it's much bigger than the rider), and those attacks will absolutely harm the horse ingame. You might knock them down, but if they manage to poke or slash your horse, it's gonna be at a cost.

 

[manuelcipo]

look how trying to jump obstacle made to flex to make easier to the horse not to trip if they make mistake still trip and break bones



Go at 9 seconds, this would be your "charge" only with 100 knight flyng and if you want to see how many horse trip or break their leg without any hinderence not crushing into human shieldwall and pike you just need to go on, most of these horses get put down cause they can't afford to keep them when they get injured and can't heal, now and with modern veterinary medicine.



Look how many horses just decide they don't want to jump an obstacle they have jumped over and over in training and know will fall if they can't make the jump and think MAYBE just MAYBE when people say horses won't smash into pikewall.




Look how easily a horse get cut just by touching a metal barrier if you can't spot when it's cause it barely touch it between 0:34 and 0:35 seconds but surely three pike firmly held to the ground won't do much to them, as the impact with a 10 rank deep human wall with one man supporting the one in front practically making a block with the resistive force of the men in front plus the 9 behind and when the first horse hit the wall and trip the other behind won't trip on him, sure like hell.

Maybe this is the origin of the myth:



hruza comments are very reasonable to me. Clone accounts are not necessary when someone is arguing his point. Only those who want to troll a thread would do it.
Why not agree on this: cavalry is able to smash into an infantry formation but it will be costly.

Costly would be an euphemism for one and cause it would be so much costly it could happen only by accident, and if you mean smash saying break from one side to the other no, we do not agree, if we are speaking of unit at least 5-6 rank deep i think there aren't istance with unit less of these before the black powder age, it just isn't the way cav was meant to be used and even if, is like if you said to me you could fight in meele with a bow, yeah you could hit someone in the head with a bow using it like a stick, would it be something someone would do?
We are obviously two different person and a intelligent person would notice it just cause we write in a total different way, my account is new i have seen some of his post after reading him here cause he seem to be the only one here who have knowledge on the matter, i think more than i do, and he have post from 2013 he waited a long time for a double account, beside this is earthflatter talk, and saying these kind of thing when we gave a lot of material on the matter make them seem troll to me.

It's si cute how you still adress to your own two accounts as "we"
Now jokes aside, if you are actually two different members, ignoring other ppls proof (such as the most obvious bayeaux tapistery) in plain sight, by simply saying "i don't see that there, no proof" will just confirm that hruza being a ridicule for the forumites is justified. People are making jokes for quite some time on his expense, and i start to see why. I'm really sorry to see he has no intention of changing his attitude, pull together and normaly converse with others, because otherwise it will never end.
I suggest finding a hobby or something, 'cause history , observing or proving points is just something he is awfully bad at.
This is the last time i log in to write, tought it might be worth a shot to let him realise whats going on. Nor will i read this thread anymore, its stressful to me seeing anyone being ridiculed, even him.

Without making name, people that think that very represententive tapestry (go look at it, it really does not prove anything not for my point not for anyone else point really)that can be interpreted in many way is more reliable than EVERY HISTORIAN EVER AND EVERY COMMANDER JOURNAL EVER is really objective, plain sight, yes.

Notice that it failed because they were unable to penetrate the Scottish lines. This must mean that the goal was to penetrate.

Penetrate the enemy line like the infantry try to do too?
[/QUOTE]
Notice that multiple charges were attempted. If the first impact slaughtered half the horses, how or why would this be possible?
[/QUOTE]
If they smash in to the enemy and couldn't break "penetrate" then what happened they hit the shield wall or pike stopped and just got back?
And maybe happened what we are telling would happen in the case of a cav frontal charge?
The cav saw the enemy not yelding and called the attack off multiple time before even getting to an impact and before you say stupid thing like "so they would just go back and forth without doing anything" yes they probably did, cause as i said multiple time a battle lasted hours it wasn't 5 minute like in warband, their middle and left made of infantry in the battle got stuck in meele for a long time the enemy knowing the presence of the enemy cav put unit on their left just to prevent a flanking manuver and so they had to try to take them by surprise with a charge multiple time during this hours, how do you picture the cav impacting the shield wall over and over with minimal casualty on either side, whatch the video i posted up and tell me how an horse could hit against a shield wall multiple time while sprinting, it doesn't make any sense, they ****ing trip on obstacle made to fall with a light touch and flexible things they sometime decide to don't even try do that when they know well it isn't dangerous and are trained to do that.

(PS: No, he was not saying that. He said - as I too believe - that most charges did not end up being executed against a wall of spears, because the horses were too worried about self-preservation for the entire charge to drive home at speed. He did not say that running onto spears would be a death sentence. He said that standing still - what you've been arguing the charge is meant to achieve in the end - and engaging infantry is a death sentence. He said that getting bogged down in infantry, because your horse was unsure and didn't keep going with sufficient speed to smash the enemy's lines, was a death sentence.

But you already know this. You're a sharp fellow, you don't actually think the point of galloping at 40+ miles per hour towards entrenched infantry is to stop short and let them mob your horse. You've only been taking this stance in an attempt to get us engaged. I suppose if nothing else, I can thank you for a few days worth of distraction from the wait for Bannerlord.)

Ok, enough it's enough, you are just plain stupid and make no sense your theory are a+b+c where non of the point make sense with one another, "no he was not saying that", on a direct quote, not worth my time anymore, only one last thing
"They were as thick as bees and hundreds must have been knocked over by our horses. My charger – a polo pony – behaved magnificently, literally trampling straight through them. " If you for a single moment believe to what a man who is clearly bragging says and not historian, then you can believe the viking saga where viking said they cut man in half with one hit from their sword. As this most of the thing you say make no sense it's why i deliberatly just don't answer them.

Now to more interesting conversation.

Hruza, i have one point in disaccord with you, from what i know wedge formation has nothing to do with shape were done mainly for one reason, cause so all the horseman on the front of the formation could see the one in the middle that was ahead of everyone and when he changed direction all the formation could follow easily, if they were in line changing direction or recevieng order without losing formation would have been much harder cause they had to look to the side while riding forward.

 

[paladinx333]

There is like three hours of reading in just one page of this thread...

 

[World's Coolest Old Guy]

There is like three hours of reading in just one page of this thread...

I'm gonna have fun just watching Hruza and manuelcipo communicate from here on. I've done my part in exposing the troll, I have nothing more to say to him. I do, however, have to give him credit for going hardcore: He's utilizing some next-level subterfuge by openly disagreeing with the main account at the end of his post - the one place it's most likely to be seen - and that's incredibly clever. Had he done this before five people called out the clone, the truth of the alt would have been considerably tougher to pin down. (Though it'd still be quite suspect that every one of his posts are in the same thread over the course of like four days.)

I mean I've literally got the fellow telling me that a historian writing about a charge more than a century after the fact is more to be believed than one of the soldiers who actually fought there on the day, because the soldier was clearly just bragging (about his horse, not himself). He speaks for himself at this point.

 

[hruza]

Why do you keep saying it was a military disaster?

Yet the charge had achieved little, and is largely viewed as a near disaster and a terrible mistake by military people of the day and historians ever since.

Ambush at Abu Sunt: The 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman

Oh hey, I found your source. And notice again how he says "near" disaster. When he says "achieved little", I presume he means strategically, though it's unclear as he doesn't state that the Dervish were scattered, either. Could be he legitimately thinks the charge failed, but as various other sources above have told us, that would be inaccurate.

That's just speculation. Unless you have evidence that Mark Simner meant something else then what he wrote, I'll go with what he wrote, not what presumably could or would.

That reminds me. You never addressed my math.

What math?

Please don't throw out percentages from nothing. The evidence doesn't exist to prove that 99% of horses were unprotected throughout history. The data is insufficient. Beyond that, horse armor existed before Christ, why would you claim that a full 99% of all horses to ever execute a charge had no armor? There's no reasoning behind that claim, particularly when you realize that High Medieval knights - who regularly barded their horses - were the ones who preferred the charge most.

Data is perfectly sufficient. There are plenty of depictions and descriptions of cavalry horses from antiquity up until the last cavalry charges of WWI and WWII. And wast majority of them did not had any armor. Again, you can look at the Bayeux tapestry and count all the armored horses you can find. And we know for a fact, that Norman cavalry charged Saxon infantry several times, it's recorded from several historical sources. Which according to your theory was impossible, because their horses were not armored.

Here is a horse running at 38 MPH. Warhorses, it's suggested, went as high as 40 to 43. How easy do you reckon it would be to hack its legs at that speed? Even if we don't account for the vertical motion of the legs, how easy do you think it would be to stand your ground and piece the headlight of a car speeding towards you at 40 miles per hour without dying? Nevermind that if you're armed with a spear, as you keep saying makes you invincible to horses, you'd be piercing. You'd have to put the head of a spear on a constantly displacing limb that's about what, 3-4 inches wide? You'd have to do that while it's advancing towards you at 40 miles per hour and the ground is shaking beneath you.

You don't have to do anything. All you need to stand among your comrades and wait till cavalry collides in to you.

And then you'd have to pierce the bone, which is another thing I'll address.

For what reason?

A horse's hit points in a video game are a mechanical representation (granted, not a scientifically accurate one) of the size of a the horse. Warhorses were big, powerful creatures with dense musculature and dense bones sufficient to carry loads of nearly one ton.

No they were not. They were small and of medium build. I am not going to repost sources as I already did several times before.

"Shock attack value" is derived from the horse's impact force. Again, it's not mathematically sound, but it's a representation. My point is that these values aren't just imagined from nothing, they represent science in a shallow, game-balancey way.

Well then show us the scientific formula to calculate those values.

All that said, I don't take my stance from video games at all. Everything I've argued with has been scientific. It would not be half as easy to kill a horse as you think, barring a lucky stab to just the right spot. It would not be as easy to maim a horse as you think, barring hamstringing it, which would have to be done after the charge while it's stationary. The only time a horse would have been a logical target was when it was stationary. This is exactly why your theory of "they ran into melee range, stopped, an then poked the footmen to death" is so ridiculous. You're essentially arguing against yourself with these most recent posts. This fellow explains it quite well.

I newer said they stooped and kept standing on the spot. They stopped to deviled weapon blow. Like knight in this panorama of the battle of Pavia:

Or like these Polish hussars at the battle of Kircholm:

That video refutes everything you just said.

Hruza, i have one point in disaccord with you, from what i know wedge formation has nothing to do with shape were done mainly for one reason, cause so all the horseman on the front of the formation could see the one in the middle that was ahead of everyone and when he changed direction all the formation could follow easily, if they were in line changing direction or recevieng order without losing formation would have been much harder cause they had to look to the side while riding forward.

I agree with you. This is what I wrote about wedge formation:

Point of the wedge was to increase controlability of the cavalry unit as all horseman simply follow lead of the man on the point. Colliding in to line of infantry will only send the men and horses flying to the ground, and the only thing it will break is riders neck, if they were lucky enough not to land on the lance or spear before that.

It's the same with diamond formation that was also popular with cavalry for the same reason. It's simpler to control as it can be led by a single man.

 

[GitiUsir]

... and if you mean smash saying break from one side to the other no, we do not agree

We are saying the same most of the time. From early roman empire to the 20th century Churchill's report, cavalry and infantry changed a lot. In late medieval and later eras couched lance charges were more frequent for lancers. I.e. polish hussars attempting to crush pike and shot formations, I imagine many horses were injured by musket fire, many others by collisions and many others were injured by pikes, either by rider misscalculation or by being unable to avoid the pikes due to high speed and massed horses around him. But the charge probably aimed for the flanks because being entangled in dense formation was suicidal like you say.

... As for being a troll, yeah, you got it

This is a troll to me, someone who doesn't say anything interesting and tries to laugh down other comments. Not saying he is always a troll, just this time. I try to write my comments concise to avoid boring other readers, and I try to quote only those parts relevant for the same reason. But it's hard and takes time nevertheless.

... It wasn't considered a tactical disaster, it was considered a strategic mistake.

Michael Bolton comments are a pain to read for me because he often assumes something wrong and then proceeds to build a long argument based on it ignoring all evidences people highlighted from their previous posts. And let's forget about his maths. Maybe he enjoys discussions or maybe he is a thought provocateur. At least he must have been working hard to write them.

I.e. the 21th lancers charge was not an ambush and was not an intended full attack. There were some dervishes shooting (I suppose aroung 100) and the colonel ordered the whole regiment to charge. When they saw there were 2000 down there it was too late, they were fully commited to the charge, maybe at the last 1 or 2 seconds.

If the dervishes were laying in ambush why they gave away their position so easily and why they weren't aligned in line at the reverse slope. Instead I think they were resting, sitting in the dip with some troops on guard duty at the top. They were surprised as much as the lancers, Churchill saw how the flag bearer and HQ staff barely had time to mount their horses.

After the collision officers urged to press on but when they arrived at the other side of the formation horses were moving at a pace. I suppose most men died after being dehorsed, while many injured horses were able to carry men to safety but died from their wounds later (or they were sacrified).

I suppose dervishes were armed with obsolete guns, how many I don't know but if there were dervishes wielding javelins as melee weapons, I can imagine the percentage of firearms was not high. They were no match for the modern rifles, and the swords and javelins are useless in the 20th century, hence the conclusion it was an unnecessary charge because they had the firepower and the mobility. The fact that they committed the whole regiment to attack probably avoided more casualties.

Nowhere in the writing I found any mention to water. Maybe it was an empty riverbed, or maybe it was an old riverbed and the river deviated a long time ago.

Funny thing is the colonel was so busy commanding the regiment he didn't even draw any weapon and he and his horse made it to the other side unharmed. I think he must have been at the center, where the dervishes were overwhelmed by hundreds of horses, while those in the flanks had more trouble crossing the crowd.

 

[Varrak]

I remember one TW member saying that "Bannerlord won't be like you take bunch of knights and win the game", so i'm confident that they will weaken cav against spearmen during EA. My impression is that, balance in MP has nothing to do with the balance in SP.

astrokingkastro tested bunch of battle scenarios during his stream, where somehow peasants were able to defeat most infantries including sergeants, and legionaries were able to defeat sergeants, and knights were able to defeat few times more legionaries-with-spears. Pretty sure this is not the deal in SP

 

[manuelcipo]

We are saying the same most of the time. From early rom an empire to the 20th century Churchill's report, cavalry and infantry changed a lot. In late medieval and later eras couched lance charges were more frequent for lancers. I.e. polish hussars attempting to crush pike and shot formations, I imagine many horses were injured by musket fire, many others by collisions and many others were injured by pikes, either by rider misscalculation or by being unable to avoid the pikes due to high speed and massed horses around him. But the charge probably aimed for the flanks because being entangled in dense formation was suicidal like you say.

This is a troll to me, someone who doesn't say anything interesting and tries to laugh down other comments. Not saying he is always a troll, just this time. I try to write my comments concise to avoid boring other readers, and I try to quote only those parts relevant for the same reason. But it's hard and takes time nevertheless.

Michael Bolton comments are a pain to read for me because he often assumes something wrong and then proceeds to build a long argument based on it ignoring all evidences people highlighted from their previous posts. And let's forget about his maths. Maybe he enjoys discussions or maybe he is a thought provocateur. At least he must have been working hard to write them.

I.e. the 21th lancers charge was not an ambush and was not an intended full attack. There were some dervishes shooting (I suppose aroung 100) and the colonel ordered the whole regiment to charge. When they saw there were 2000 down there it was too late, they were fully commited to the charge, maybe at the last 1 or 2 seconds.

If the dervishes were laying in ambush why they gave away their position so easily and why they weren't aligned in line at the reverse slope. Instead I think they were resting, sitting in the dip with some troops on guard duty at the top. They were surprised as much as the lancers, Churchill saw how the flag bearer and HQ staff barely had time to mount their horses.

After the collision officers urged to press on but when they arrived at the other side of the formation horses were moving at a pace. I suppose most men died after being dehorsed, while many injured horses were able to carry men to safety but died from their wounds later (or they were sacrified).

I suppose dervishes were armed with obsolete guns, how many I don't know but if there were dervishes wielding javelins as melee weapons, I can imagine the percentage of firearms was not high. They were no match for the modern rifles, and the swords and javelins are useless in the 20th century, hence the conclusion it was an unnecessary charge because they had the firepower and the mobility. The fact that they committed the whole regiment to attack probably avoided more casualties.

Nowhere in the writing I found any mention to water. Maybe it was an empty riverbed, or maybe it was an old riverbed and the river deviated a long time ago.

Funny thing is the colonel was so busy commanding the regiment he didn't even draw any weapon and he and his horse made it to the other side unharmed. I think he must have been at the center, where the dervishes were overwhelmed by hundreds of horses, while those in the flanks had more trouble crossing the crowd.

You are someone who can make an argument and have a real discussion, yes i agree that all of what you have written is really plausible and as you say at the beginning things changed a lot during centuries, if we speak about greek and romans who made almost no use of cavalry compared to the XV centuries it's a totally different argument no doubt, one of the obvious factor for which cav was on the flanks of the formation was cause so if they, as many time probably happened, called off a charge they could make a turn and reatreat, if they were in the middle of a formation on the side there would be other unit in the way.
For the 21th lancers charge i think you probably got it right too, i didn't think what could have happened in detail about the context but what you propose is something plausible and even likely but to be fair an ambush can be made luring enemy into thinking you have a much smaller and vulnerable force, still it much more likely what

I remember one TW member saying that "Bannerlord won't be like you take bunch of knights and win the game", so i'm confident that they will weaken cav against spearmen during EA. My impression is that, balance in MP has nothing to do with the balance in SP.

astrokingkastro tested bunch of battle scenarios during his stream, where somehow peasants were able to defeat most infantries including sergeants, and legionaries were able to defeat sergeants, and knights were able to defeat few times more legionaries-with-spears. Pretty sure this is not the deal in SP

As shown in the mp it isn't bad is as shown in the singleplayer battle the problem, beside all this historically accurate thing, that really is something a game should care about only until a point,.
On my first post i wasn't trying to debunk all this charge myth cause in a game i understand that we can't represent very well a real battle, and it wouldn't be fun either cav charge can stay in the game they just has to be made so that you don't use them against tight infantry unit, maybe against archer that need to stay larger to shoot their bow or charging in the flank or the back of enemy line.

Well, i think they should be able to barge 2-3 line deep slowing down after each slodier knocked down but surely not go through 5-6 men it is in fact one of the thing i was worried about when seeing some singleplayer gameplay, they just seem to swarm through and even if we forget about realism or immersion the thing i'm most worried about it's that doing so ruin strategy behind the positioning of troop, why put my archer behind some footman if the cavalry will pass trough my soldier like they are not even there, why wait and try to find an opening through the ranks for a charge or a flank manuver with my cav if i can just pass trough them all,or why put my soldier uphill to slow the cav down if that won't help stop them by slowing them down, where is the meaning of adding shieldwall formation and everything else if the base strategy won't be in the game.
For this reason i think cav should work based on mass and speed of itself and the object(soldier) it impact slowing based on it until a stop, heavy horse have more mass, heavy infantry too,a charge uphill would be slower so less momentum, so let's say i place a 1 rank deep line heavy infantry, if charged by a heavy cav should go down, but if the cav is slowed should stop it, maybe throwing the soldier down but still stopping it, this way having the big map that we will have we could make use of the terrain maybe having swamp zone, or snow in some area that slow down too, and not only cav, but infantry too, so placing archer behind someting like that could give it time to throw in some more shot before entering meele.
Said that, seeing in captain mode it doesn't seem bad how cav works.

Beside, where is the fun in having a mass of cav and pressing F1 and F3, every battle, cause this is what would be like only hundreds of cav charging at whatever formation, no strategy at all, you wouldn't even get infantry and ranged unit cause they would be useless.

 

[GitiUsir]

@manuelcipo Cavalry in early roman times, I remember reading how light infantry and skirmishers had the upper hand in broken terrain, hilly or wodded areas, while cavalry was better in open terrain, but they never attacked heavy infantry, though cavalry could skirmish and harass infantry lines. The reason they were in the flanks was because their main mission was to prevent their lines being flanked, and once the enemy cavalry was defeated to outflank the enemy lines. Often when an army was flanked and their rear threatened everyone wanted to retreat because they were afraid of being surrounded and not being able to return to their camp.

I agree, calling of a charge would be difficult in line formation which is the most convenient for lancers but with wedge formation it would be possible to move through tight spaces maneuvering at a good speed. So wedge would be better for harassing,causing chaos between formations and they would still have a punch with lances long enough to poke at enemies while moving. Alexander the great probably did this, put yourself in the shoes of a persian levy when there is enemy cavalry moving around your flanks, and there is a phalanx with pikes moving towards your front. Guaranteed panic.

One of the few Warband modules I finished I did it using heavy cavalry exclusively. They moved fast, they stomped everything and they were not difficult to get. But like you said where is the fun, it was boring. So let's hope there will be more challenge in single player like Varrak said.

 

[manuelcipo]

@manuelcipo Cavalry in early roman times, I remember reading how light infantry and skirmishers had the upper hand in broken terrain, hilly or wodded areas, while cavalry was better in open terrain, but they never attacked heavy infantry, though cavalry could skirmish and harass infantry lines. The reason they were in the flanks was because their main mission was to prevent their lines being flanked, and once the enemy cavalry was defeated to outflank the enemy lines. Often when an army was flanked and their rear threatened everyone wanted to retreat because they were afraid of being surrounded and not being able to return to their camp.

I agree, calling of a charge would be difficult in line formation which is the most convenient for lancers but with wedge formation it would be possible to move through tight spaces maneuvering at a good speed. So wedge would be better for harassing,causing chaos between formations and they would still have a punch with lances long enough to poke at enemies while moving. Alexander the great probably did this, put yourself in the shoes of a persian levy when there is enemy cavalry moving around your flanks, and there is a phalanx with pikes moving towards your front. Guaranteed panic.

One of the few Warband modules I finished I did it using heavy cavalry exclusively. They moved fast, they stomped everything and they were not difficult to get. But like you said where is the fun, it was boring. So let's hope there will be more challenge in single player like Varrak said.

I am making a run now in a mod called natvie gold edition waiting for bannerlord, it has formation and other tweaks and make you gain 50 more troops per leadership point so you can start fast, you can create the troop tree of your kingdom too when you have one.
I play with 600 unit on the field and my party have 125 heavy infantry 125 skirmisher/pikeman and 50 cav, i give time to my infantry to close the distance when they are in formation if cav attack they wreck them, when they are about to engage i use my cav to circle the battlefield hitting the flank of the enemy and making them follow me and then attacking the ranged unit always trying not to stop, in a few word i harrass them making my soldier fight less possible soldier at one time it is fun but IA even with formation mod is pretty stupid , with the cav even more, so my strategy is always the same, i routed an army of over 1700 enemy with 300 men and it wasn't a 300 vs 300 with reinforcement, the game in the mod seem to be taking into account the difference and spawn army balanced with the numbers so it was like 475 vs 125 at the beginning, maybe less, of my 50 cav spawned onlys 10 or so i really had few soldier to work with, my troops was almost all elite(20k gold for week for the party), and in the mod you can have in your tree, 3 unit type max rank 4, 2 max rank 5 or 1 max rank 6, i have the 2 type tree with skirmisher and heavy infantry and use cav from other faction or mercenary cav so my infantry does not go down easily.
In the end of the first encounter, of around 900 enemy 270 killed 80 wounded and 560 routed(i send the screen to a friend of mine some days ago), then we fighted again against 1400 enemy(i think the routed rejoined the force cause they usually run back to the closest castle or city and you can chase them, maybe they can join army too) but i had more soldier this time, i think i lost only like 50 cause i had the most op thing of the game, surgery level 10.

 

[Honved]

Note that the description of the Battle at Omdurman is as a "near disaster", not a "disaster". It ALMOST failed, was costly, and was heavily criticized as an unnecessary risk. With the circumstances already weighing against it, it was attempted anyway, and despite the conditions suddenly being revealed to be far worse, still managed to inflict around 200 casualties for the loss of a few dozen men and horses. Thanks to the presence of a gully and 12-20 ranks of spearmen, the horses were slowed to a walk by the time they reached the opposite side. Very significantly, even under "ambush" conditions and a serious terrain obstacle, they were NOT stopped.

Note also that a spearman standing and/or bracing to stop a horse would be struck by the horse at high speed, whether he killed it or not. Most people are instinctively going to try to dive to the side at the last second, so impaling the horse on those spears is only going to happen in a few cases, and you're still going to lose a lot of spearmen in the process even where it does succeed in injuring the horse.

The deeper ranks means more impacts as the horse charges forward through them, and each of them is going to slow the horse, which will already be slowing down due to the treacherous footing over the trampled front rank of defenders. A deep enough formation WILL stop the horse, but you're going to lose a lot of infantry and have a lot more bowled over in the process, some of whom will end up injured.

In essence, the charge was a gamble. IF the infantry broke and ran, the cavalry would sufferer hardly any losses, and butcher the fleeing defenders. IF the infantry stood firm and the cavalry was able to break off before impact, the charge could be repeated. IF the infantry stood firm and the cavalry didn't break off, the losses on both sides would be significant, but the infantry would generally take a lot more damage than the cavalry from the weight of the falling horses crashing into them. Yes, many of the riders would likely suffer injuries or death in the fall, but each horse might crush or bowl over half a dozen infantrymen or more in the process. In short, if the charge drove home, it was a guaranteed loss for the infantry either way, and a risk for the cavalry.

There's also a major difference between ancient or dark ages cavalry charges and high medieval charges. In the earlier period, you had lighter saddles, the absence of stirrups until fairly late, and hand-held spears by the cavalry, facing spears by the infantry. By the high medieval period, you have high-backed saddles, stirrups in wide use, and couched lances by the cavalry, facing pikes by the infantry. The ability to deliver shock by crashing the horse into the enemy line still makes sense in the early period. Advancing and then NOT crashing into them makes zero sense, because poking someone with a spear from horseback offers no advantages over doing so on foot, and a stopped horse is extremely vulnerable. In the early period, cavalry lined up on the flanks, because charging a line of spears from the front was risky, while getting behind them to charge from behind was lethal to the infantry.

Once pikes became widespread as a counter to cavalry shock tactics, barded horses, couched lances, and plate armor became much more important. You don't need a high-backed saddle to poke someone with a spear or lance, unless it's couched and you're concentrating hundreds or thousands of pounds of force at speed behind that lance. Some armies, such as the French, put their cavalry at the center of the line, to break the opposing line with a frontal charge. That makes zero sense unless you're intentionally driving those horses straight into the opposing line at speed, and fully expecting the opposing line to falter at the prospect of being overrun. The times it was NOT done was apparently when the opposing cavalry was situated nearby to interfere, and deliver a flank counter-charge on the chargers.

Example: battle of Mohacs. French knights hurried to the field and charged the Turkish center unsupported, before their Hungarian allies could form up for battle. The charge failed, and the French retreated, leaving the Hungarian foot troops to be butchered by the much larger Turkish army. You don't do a frontal charge unless you expect it to work, but the results are costly if/when it fails.

 

[GitiUsir]

In essence, the charge was a gamble...

Or if they had dismounted suppressing them with modern rifles, and flanking them with one or more squadrons in enfilade fire they could have spotted the formation, routed them, and then they could finish them with lances.
I don't know if they were spearmen, I mean really I don't know. I just read the Churchill narration and there is a mention to javelins used in melee. But I think noone ever said here that a spear would be used that way, only pikes. Spears and any other weapon would be used at passing by horses if possible, because being hitted and pushed by galloping horses wouldn't allow it.
When charges failed, at least before the full couched lance era, it was because the defenders stood firm and the knights didn't saw any gap to exploit, or the horses refused to collide. As hruza showed in a video, horses can use the brake to stop.
When I said advancing and poking I was talking about wedge formation used by Alexander to infiltrate into enemy lines. And as the book about lances say, there are many other ways to use a lance other than couching. There were many different tactics for different situations.
When I said cavalry was at the flanks I was talking about early roman era.
Finally, think about crashing a jet fighter into a formation of bombers. Maybe it makes sense in a desperate situation, maybe.

@manuelcipo It looks like an interesting mod. The Warband balancing system is really bad. When an army was outnumbered in the past, they anchored one flank to impassable terrain, like the sea, in order to reduce the chances of being flanked. Or they could fight in a river ford, or in a mountain pass and the difference in numbers wouldn't matter. In Warband if you are greatly outnumbered you have less troops to fight even if you are inside a fortress so it's like saying wait, don't go to the walls yet or the balance will be different. When supposedly they are fighting for their lives in the best terrain possible, and that's precisely the point, because the enemy can't bring their numbers to bear.

Yes the real unbalancing issue is the player skills and troops equipment. But I don't want to deviate this thread too much.

 

[World's Coolest Old Guy]

That reminds me. You never addressed my math.

You have a spear made of white ash. Spear shafts were commonly made of rather sturdy ash wood. White ash - the strongest type of ash - has a parallel-to-grain compression strength of 7,410 pounds per square inch and a perpendicular-to-grain compression strength of 1,106 pounds per square inch.

Now let's look at the average war horse. We can surmise that on the smaller side of the estimate, war horses weighed around 1,700 pounds, plus another 50 or so for their barding (which protects them from thrusts, by the way!). That's 1,750 pounds or 793.78 kg, and that's not even accounting for the rider. Just the horse. The average horse bred for long-distance running (which war horses often were) clocks around 40 miles per hour, some faster. This equates to 17.8 m/s.

Stop distance must be determined. Let's assume the horse running through is the stop distance. There are no hard numbers on this, so let's just assume it moves about two ranks past the man whose spear hits him. (Before you protest, the shorter the stop distance, the greater the impact.) With a braced stance, we can put the "depth" of a footman at around two and a half feet, maybe three, plus another five feet or so for the amount of spear out in front of him. That's a total of 11 feet or 3.35 meters.

Now we can plug these values into the equation for solving impact from a horizontally moving object: Work = Kinetic Energy is Force × stop distance = 0.5 × mass × velocity^2. Therefore, so F = (0.5 × m × v^2) ÷ d. For us, that's ((0.5 x 793.78 ) x (17.8 ^ 2)) / 3.3, which equates to 37,537.5 Newtons of impact force, or 8,438 pound-force.

What this means is... If you managed to point the spear directly at the horse and hold it perfectly steady, the spear might not break from the weight of one horse and its panoply alone. If you're lucky. That's assuming you can keep it in your hands with 8,438 pounds of force trying to drive it through your hands and into your hip (the high end of the normal range for handgrip strength in a 25-29 year-old male is about 126 pounds). If you're just a little shaky and that spear pushes up, down, left, or right at all, it's going to snap no questions asked.

What math?

Oh, you know, just the math I literally quoted from my original post in the post you just replied to with this question. Nothing says "I'm trolling you" quite like a bad faith question like this. At this point, I'm just glad to know you weren't serious about any of this. I was about to have legitimate questions about how you intended to manage a kingdom in Bannerlord while believing medieval warfare wasn't built around the knightly charge.


And you, sir...

I.e. the 21th lancers charge was not an ambush and was not an intended full attack. There were some dervishes shooting (I suppose aroung 100) and the colonel ordered the whole regiment to charge. When they saw there were 2000 down there it was too late, they were fully commited to the charge, maybe at the last 1 or 2 seconds.

If the dervishes were laying in ambush why they gave away their position so easily and why they weren't aligned in line at the reverse slope. Instead I think they were resting, sitting in the dip with some troops on guard duty at the top. They were surprised as much as the lancers, Churchill saw how the flag bearer and HQ staff barely had time to mount their horses.

History.net calls it an ambush. ("Ambush at Abu Sunt: The 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omudurman")

War History Online calls it an ambush. ("Martin charged a thin line of Dervishes, only to find a larger Sudanese force waiting in ambush behind them.")

The UK National Army Museum calls it an ambush. ("Although the 21st Lancers had not seen battle before, they managed to cut their way out of the ambush.")

British Battles calls it an ambush. ("One explanation is that Grenfell’s patrol saw a group of Dervishes standing on the lip of the khor and missed the mass hiding in ambush in the khor itself.")

Compass Library calls it an ambush. ("What the Lancers didn't know was that the enemy was luring them into an ambush: more than 2,500 Dervishes were waiting for them, hidden from view at the bottom of the sunken lane.")

It was an ambush. Even Churchill stated that their flags "rose up from the earth as if by magic", accompanied by a "high-pitched yell". If they were just lounging, they wouldn't have been prepared. They wouldn't have stood their ground. They wouldn't have had ground to stand on. Their cavalry wouldn't have been mounted and ready for a counter charge. They would have been rushing into formation as the Lancers charged home if they didn't just scatter immediately, and that's not how any account tells it. It was certainly an ambush.

As for "the last 1 or 2 seconds"...

The Dervish skirmishing line was 250 yards away, but as the 21st covered half the distance, a wide khor opened in front of them and out of it leaped a dense mass of sword and spear wielding Dervishes, with horsemen and flags among them.

As 250 yards of distance was covered, the Dervish ambush sprang up out of the khor. These are light cavalry, so let's assume they could gallop pretty damn fast. About 40 MPH. 40.9 miles per hour is equivalent to 20 yards per second, meaning they had 12.5 seconds to reconsider the charge. Even if we assume they sprang up halfway into the charge (as it suggests here), that's a good six seconds worth of time to reconsider.

Churchill instead states that they had no intention of stopping, and make the decision to forge ahead without fear. Further evidence of this is that after the charge, after blood had been split and casualties had been sustained, the regiment reformed and was ready to make another charge before higher command waved them off.

I appreciate your candor. I do. Unlike the other fellow, I truly believe you look into your arguments before you make them, and you've generally made them within reason. It's for that reason that I'm all the more disappointed when I see accusations such as...

... he often assumes something wrong and then proceeds to build a long argument based on it ignoring all evidences people highlighted from their previous posts.

I've made no incorrect assumptions, sir. I've done my research, and I stick to that research. Plenty of my facts have been ignored as well (though I've recently discovered why), by the way. The only time I deliberately ignore "evidence" provided by other users is when it clearly contrasts my research, current or prior. I came into this knowing full well how charges worked. I've studied military history obsessively for the better part of 20 years, with a particular interest in pre-gunpowder warfare.

But beyond that, on the matter of Omdurman specifically, that research has been very recent. I did the research because I wanted to make sure I had my facts straight before I countered statements I knew sounded like twists of logic based on that prior knowledge I spoke of. I did that research, and I've found it proves my presuppositions correct. That is why I ignore the "evidence" in some of these posts. When the words of a stranger contradict research, it's generally best to trust research.

 

[FBohler]

Looks like we got dual alts here

 

[Kreu2009]

I have read a lot of this threat but for sure not everything.
So here is my opinion.
I can't really tell how cavalry charges were in reallity. I read different things in different sources.
But honestly i don't think it really mathers. A lot of things in M&B aren't realistic. You can't make only one aspect of a game realistic.
For example soldiers moral isn't portrayed realistic at all. The Physics of horses bumbing into obstacles or friendly infantry neither.
Also the consequenzes of injuries aren't realistic.
So i think the only thing that really mathers is balancing.
How do we want Heavy cav to be balanced in Singleplayer and in Multiplayer.
If heavy cav again dominates everything in Singleplayer i won't have much fun in Bannerlord.