Armies of the ancient Roman-Germanic wars made use of light cavalry as patrolling squads, or armed scouts, and often had them in the front lines during regional battles.
During the Punic Wars, one of Carthage's main advantages over Roman armies was its extensive use of Numidian light cavalry. Partly because of this, the Roman general Scipio Africanus recruited his own cavalry from Sicily before his invasion of Tunisia during the Second Punic War.
Medieval period
Mongol soldier on horseback, preparing a mounted archery shot
Several types of light cavalry were developed and used in medieval armies.
Hobelar: Originally Irish, later popular in English and Scottish armies of the 14th and 15th centuries.
Koursores: Byzantine light cavalry. The name derives from the Latin term cursor meaning 'runner'.
Jinete: Spanish light horsemen, particularly popular during the Reconquista of the 8th to 16th century. They wore leather armor and were armed with javelins, a spear, a sword, and a shield.
Stradiot: Of Albanian and Greek origin, used as mercenary light cavalry in Italy in the later 15th century.
Turcopole: A light mounted archer used extensively during the Crusades in the Middle East but also found among the Teutonic Knights in their Baltic campaigns.
Horse archers: Light or heavy cavalry primarily armed with bows. This allowed the Mongols to conquer large parts of Eurasia in the 13th century. Horse archers were also used extensively in steppe warfare throughout Central Asia and Eastern Europe, including the North American Great Plains.
Light cavalry played a key role in mounted scouting, escorting, and skirmishing during the Napoleonic era. Light horse also served a function in major set-piece battles. While lacking the sheer offensive power of heavy cavalry, light cavalry were still extremely effective against unprepared infantry, cavalry, and artillery. All infantry commanders were forced to respect the danger any cavalry presented to their forces, and light cavalry were effective at changing the movement of enemy forces simply through their presence. In the aftermath of battles, light cavalry were used to press a victor's advantage or to screen retreating forces from further attack.
Akinji: light cavalry, scout divisions, and advance troops in the Ottoman army. unpaid and lived as a raider in the frontiers. lightly armed and mounted on horseback sometimes carrying melee weapons too. they mounted on special horses to outrun the enemy
Hussar: distinctively dressed light cavalry of Serbo-Hungarian origin.[2][3] Locally recruited Hussar regiments were incorporated in most Napoleonic armies although by this period their functions and equipment were the same as other categories of light horse.
Uhlan: Originally Polish light cavalry armed with a lance as their primary weapon, in addition to a saber and pistols. Locally recruited lancer regiments with this designation were later also used by the Russian,[4] Prussian,[5] and Austrian[6] armies. The long reach of the lance made them an effective shock force against dispersed infantry.
Carabinier: A mounted soldier armed primarily with a carbine, in addition to a saber and pistols. The carbine was considered a more appropriate firearm for cavalry use than a full-length musket or rifle, since it was lighter in weight, shorter in length, and easier to manipulate from horseback during combat. Carabiniers differed greatly between militaries, but were generally regarded as medium cavalry that used weapons and tactics that were complementary to mounted infantry.
Dragoon: Originally a type of mounted infantry armed with a musket or lighter firearm and sword, dragoons had by the late eighteenth century evolved into heavy and light dragoon classes. The latter performed the usual functions of light cavalry, although they might undertake dismounted action using their firearm.
Lancer: A mounted soldier armed primarily with a lance and tasked with charging enemy infantry, cavalry, and artillery formations on the battlefield. They also served in the light cavalry roles of scouting, screening, and skirmishing.
Mamluk: A slave soldier, mercenary, or warrior that originated from Levantine and Egyptian peoples that served between the 9th to 19th century in the Islamic world with a higher social caste than most free peoples or citizens. They fought mostly as light horsemen armed with a lance, saber, javelins, pistols, or carbine.Painting of a Sowar from the 6th Madras Light Cavalry of British India in 1845
Sowar: Indian light horsemen usually armed with a lance, sword, or musket. Cavalry with this designation had comprised the bulk of Indian cavalry forces from the 16th to 19th century. Regiments of sowars designated as light cavalry were subsequently widely employed by the British East India Company.[7]
Chasseurs à cheval: the main element of the French light cavalry that performed the same functions as hussars.[8]
Spahi: were light-cavalry regiments of the French army recruited primarily from the indigenous populations of North Africa.
Cossack: Member of a Slavic-Russian ethnic group famous for their irregular light horsemen armed with a lance, sword, bow, pistols, and musket and recruited on a semi-feudal basis from frontier communities. Required to provide their own horses and equipment and meet long-term service obligations in return for land grants. They played a major role in harassing the French and allied armies during the Retreat from Moscow of 1812.[9]
Soldado de cuera: Spanish light horsemen also known as the "leather-jacket soldiers" that served in the frontier garrisons of northern New Spain, the Presidios, from the late 16th to the early 19th century. They were armed primarily with a carbine, pistols, bow, lance, sword, and dagger. They also carried a bull-hide shield (adarga) or a small round metal shield (rodela) for defense against weapons such as swords, spears, javelins, and arrows.
Hakkapeliitta: Finnish light horsemen from the 16th to 18th century. They were armed with pistols and a sword and wore a helmet and either a cuirass or leather armor. They played a vital role during the Thirty Years' War, serving King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and were highly praised for their skirmishing, raiding, and reconnaissance skills, as well as shock tactics.
As late as the early 1900s, most European armies still retained a nominal division of mounted troops according to the size and weight of the men,[10] into light cavalry (raiding, reconnaissance, and screening), medium cavalry (offense or defense), and heavy cavalry (direct shock).[11] While colonial warfare had led to a blurring of these distinctions in the British army, tradition remained strong in the cavalry arm of some other nations. As an example, the Imperial German army maintained a marked difference between the sizes and weights of the men and horses allocated to the hussar regiments that made up its light cavalry and those of the other two categories.[12] The early weeks of World War I saw light cavalry attempting to continue its long established function of being the "eyes and ears" of the respective main armies. However, despite some early success, the advent of trench warfare and aircraft observation quickly rendered this role obsolete, except to an extent in the Middle East in 1917, and in Eastern Europe where light cavalry mounted actions on a diminishing scale continued to occur until the revolution of 1917 took Russia out of the war.[13]
During the Vietnam War, the US Army converted parts of the 1st Cavalry Division for heliborne tactics with a concept known as air cavalry. Helicopters were used to insert troops and support them. They were also used for suppression fire, search and rescue, medical evacuation, scouting and resupply. This concept was first tested at the Battle of Ia Drang Valley.[14][15] Modern tactics call for the use of gunships to dominate the airspace and provide fire support while transport helicopters ferry ground forces and supply them.
Light reconnaissance vehicles (LRV) are also being used by cavalry squadrons and infantry scout units for scouting, skirmishing, and providing light fire support.[16]
Historically, cavalry are groups of soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Until the 20th century, cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, screening, and skirmishing, or as heavy cavalry for decisive economy of force and shock attacks. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as a cavalryman, horseman, trooper, cataphract, knight, drabant, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, samurai or horse archer. The designation of cavalry was not usually given to any military forces that used other animals or platforms for mounts, such as chariots, camels or elephants. Infantry who moved on horseback, but dismounted to fight on foot, were known in the early 17th to the early 18th century as dragoons, a class of mounted infantry which in most armies later evolved into standard cavalry while retaining their historic designation.
Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat with swords and firearms from horseback. While their use goes back to the late 16th century, dragoon regiments were established in most European armies during the 17th and early 18th centuries; they provided greater mobility than regular infantry but were far less expensive than cavalry.
The English term lance is derived, via Middle English launce and Old French lance, from the Latin lancea, a generic term meaning a spear or javelin employed by both infantry and cavalry, with English initially keeping these generic meanings. It developed later into a term for spear-like weapons specially designed and modified to be part of a "weapon system" for use couched under the arm during a charge, being equipped with special features such as grappers to engage with lance rests attached to breastplates, and vamplates, small circular plates designed to prevent the hand sliding up the shaft upon impact. These specific features were in use by the beginning of the late 14th century.
A hussar was a member of a class of light cavalry, originally from the Kingdom of Hungary during the 15th and 16th centuries. The title and distinctive dress of these horsemen were subsequently widely adopted by light cavalry regiments in European armies during the late 17th and 18th centuries. By the 19th century, hussars were wearing jackets decorated with braid plus shako or busby fur hats and had developed a romanticized image of being dashing and adventurous.
The Polish cavalry can trace its origins back to the days of medieval cavalry knights. Poland is mostly a country of flatlands and fields and mounted forces operate well in this environment. The knights and heavy cavalry gradually evolved into many different types of specialised mounted military formations, some of which heavily influenced western warfare and military science. This article details the evolution of Polish cavalry tactics, traditions and arms from the times of mounted knights and heavy winged hussars, through the times of light uhlans to mounted infantry equipped with ranged and mêlée weapons.
La Grande Armée was the main military component of the French Imperial Army commanded by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1804 to 1808, it won a series of military victories that allowed the French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered enormous losses during the disastrous Peninsular War followed by the invasion of Russia in 1812, after which it never recovered its strategic superiority and ended in total defeat for Napoleonic France by the Peace of Paris in 1815.
Skirmishers are light infantry or light cavalry soldiers deployed as a vanguard, flank guard or rearguard to screen a tactical position or a larger body of friendly troops from enemy advances. They are usually deployed in a skirmish line, an irregular open formation that is much more spread out in depth and in breadth than a traditional line formation. Their purpose is to harass the enemy by engaging them in only light or sporadic combat to delay their movement, disrupt their attack, or weaken their morale. Such tactics are collectively called skirmishing.
A lancer was a type of cavalryman who fought with a lance. Lances were used for mounted warfare in Assyria as early as 700 BC and subsequently by India, Egypt, China, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The weapon was widely used throughout Eurasia during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by heavy cavalry, but fell out of general use by the late 16th century, before its revival by light cavalry in the early 19th century.
Mounted infantry were infantry who rode horses instead of marching. The original dragoons were essentially mounted infantry. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition (1910-1911), "Mounted rifles are half cavalry, mounted infantry merely specially mobile infantry." Today, with motor vehicles having replaced horses for military transport, the motorized infantry are in some respects successors to mounted infantry.
The American Civil War saw extensive use of horse-mounted soldiers on both sides of the conflict. They were vital to both the Union Army and Confederate Army for conducting reconnaissance missions to locate the enemy and determine their strength and movement, and for screening friendly units from being discovered by the enemy's reconnaissance efforts. Other missions carried out by cavalry included raiding behind enemy lines, escorting senior officers, and carrying messages.
The Coalition forces of the Napoleonic Wars were composed of Napoleon Bonaparte's enemies: the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, Kingdom of Spain, Kingdom of Naples, Kingdom of Sicily, Kingdom of Sardinia, Dutch Republic, Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Portugal, Kingdom of Sweden, and various German and Italian states at differing times in the wars. At their height, the Coalition could field formidable combined forces of about 1,740,000 strong. This outnumbered the 1.1 million French soldiers. The breakdown of the more active armies are: Austria, 570,000; Britain, 250,000; Prussia, 300,000; and Russia, 600,000.
Heavy cavalry was a class of cavalry intended to deliver a battlefield charge and also to act as a tactical reserve; they are also often termed shock cavalry. Although their equipment differed greatly depending on the region and historical period, heavy cavalry were generally mounted on large powerful warhorses, wore body armor, and armed with either lances, swords, maces, flails (disputed), battle axes, or war hammers; their mounts may also have been protected by barding. They were distinct from light cavalry, who were intended for raiding, reconnaissance, screening, skirmishing, patrolling, and tactical communications.
For much of history, humans have used some form of cavalry for war and, as a result, cavalry tactics have evolved over time. Tactically, the main advantages of cavalry over infantry were greater mobility, a larger impact, and a higher riding position.
There are 13 cavalry Regiments of the British Army each with its own unique cap badge, regimental traditions, and history. Of the currently nine regular cavalry regiments, two serve as armoured regiments, three as armoured cavalry regiments, three as light cavalry, and one as a mounted ceremonial regiment. There are also four yeomanry regiments of the Army Reserve, of these, three serve as light cavalry and one as an armoured regiment. Each yeomanry light cavalry unit has been paired with a regular unit of the same role, the armoured yeomanry unit is paired with the two regular armoured units. All except the Household Cavalry are part of the British Army's Royal Armoured Corps.
The types of military forces in the Napoleonic Wars represented the unique tactical use of distinct military units, or their origin within different European regions. By and large the military forces during the period had not changed significantly from those of the 18th century, although their employment would differ significantly.
The Éclaireurs of the Guard was a Corps of cavalry scouts of the French Imperial Guard, which included three cavalry regiments created by Napoleon when he reorganised the Imperial Guard following the disaster of the French invasion of Russia. The Corps was created in Article I of the decree of 4 December 1813.
A pistoleer is a mounted soldier trained to use a pistol, or more generally anyone armed with such a weapon. It is derived from pistolier, a French word for an expert marksman.
The British cavalry were the first British Army units to see action during the First World War. Captain Hornby of the 4th Dragoon Guards is reputed to have been the first British soldier to kill a German soldier, using his sword, and Corporal Edward Thomas of the same regiment is reputed to have fired the first British shot shortly after 06:30 on 22 August 1914, near the Belgian village of Casteau. The following Battle of Mons was the first engagement fought by British soldiers in Western Europe since the Battle of Waterloo, ninety-nine years earlier. In the first year of the war in France, nine cavalry brigades were formed for three British cavalry divisions. Other regiments served in six brigades of the two British Indian Army cavalry divisions that were formed for service on the Western Front. Three regiments also fought in the campaign in Mesopotamia, the only other theatre of the First World War where British cavalry served.
"New order regiments"(Russian: "Полки иноземного строя"), also known in the literature as "foreign formation regiments", were professional military units formed in Russian Tsardom in the 17th century, armed and trained in line with the Western European armies.
The French Imperial Army was the land force branch of the French imperial military during the Napoleonic era.
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