Even though back in the 17th century horses were capable of charging straight at literal pike blocks? (Winged Hussars used in the wars against Swedish Empire and the Russian Empire in early 17th century)
I'm not going to say those charges were 100% successful, but they happened. So saying that a horse will never, ever do it is contrary to historical events that transpired.
i don't know a lot about 17 century warfare. i know tho that the lances carried by the winged-hussars were
a lot longer than most cavalry units in history. so thatat least the mount 'felt' the distance of reach above it's head.
are you sure that the horses charged straight a t lances? in my understanding that would
be a excellent way to destroy your cavalry forces.
now we go to historic sources. it's a huge topic. who wrote them, why, was something he needed
to report or something he wanted to report.
anyway in the 1700's, a strategy that was used by the cavalry, if the ennemy infatry was
coherent, was that they would gallop near the ennemy infantry, shoot them with pistols.
and then retreat.
battles were fought for hours, maybe to make the matter more clear. it probably
happened to give the general's more time to hit, at weak points, such as a disrupted formation.
@Askorti napoleonic war, is the first war that has the priviledge to be documented so well,
from multiple and different sources, that most of the academic community has found itself
unable to contribute much more, after the original plethora of original texts.
the fact that the cavalry force was unable to break a square, is documented so many
times that you have to instead search the times a square was broken, you have to dig up the times a cavalry square
was indeed broke.
in my reading of napoleonic warfare i have yet to find more than 5 to (max) 10, 'squares'
being destroyed while beinging tp form square.