Skill and the arms race
Only an extraordinarily skilled horseman could ride while shooting, throwing, or striking effectively at the same time. Skill takes lots of practice which, in turn, is costly. Keeping hordes of horse warriors required a large support population. Alternatively, the horse soldiers needed to withdraw resources from someone else’s bank. Both strategies would be employed enthusiastically for the next few thousand years.
There were ways around the cost problem. Animal carts had been around down in Sumaria since 3500 BC, but around 1600 BC a Hurrian in Syria hitched a cart to a couple of horses, and the chariot was born. This may have predated mounted warriors. Even though a village elder could ride in a chariot, it wasn’t used much on the steppes. Perhaps this was because of the culture’s long tradition of horse-mounted skills. The Egyptians, on the other hand, were overrun by a mysterious people called the “Hyksos” who used battle chariots and cavalry. The Egyptians eventually adopted horse and chariot warfare and kicked the Hyksos out; the invaders were never to be heard from again. The Egyptians would be credited with creating the first disciplined cavalry units, which were later perfected by the Persians around 600 BC.
The chariot had almost the speed of the horse, plus it had the carrying capacity of a cart. It was, in many ways, a study in efficiency. While cumbersome compared to a man on a horse, it could carry two. This allowed separation of driver and shooter (or chopper) skills. This division of labor made for easier and cheaper training, an efficiency gain.
A cost/benefit breakthrough
Many major innovations are efficiency breakthroughs. Business refers to this as the cost/benefit balance. While the chariot was more efficient, the mounted horseman was more mobile and flexible. Around 1000 BC, someone came up with a really elegant breakthrough that tipped the scales to mounted horsemen for the next two thousand years.
The Synthians in the Altay Mountains on the Chinese border added a bit of extra leather to their horses’ saddles to ease mounting. It was probably only a single loop on one side of the horse. You can still buy mounting stirrups for those of us not quite as athletic as young Tarth. Don’t laugh, remember Cambyses, the king of Persia? But soon another someone created a saddle with two. Early on, these were simple loops of leather for hanging on with one toe. Not a great cold weather solution, but the advantage was clear. The Sarmatians, next door to the Synthians, also began using this trick. Something this cheap and good spreads fast.
Now here’s a true cost/benefit efficiency. Stirrups cost next to nothing, yet make a huge difference. The stirrups are solidly attached to the horse, thus eliminating the muscle strain of holding on with your legs. The stirrup stabilizes the rider, allowing him to couple (and decouple) with the horse at will. This, in turn, allows for dramatically better control. It gives the rider a much firmer base to push against when swinging a sword or axe, significantly increasing the power behind the weapon. The stirrup also allows a significantly less skilled rider to stay in the saddle while taking advantage of the horse’s speed and agility. It turns a rider’s legs and trunk into shock absorbers that steady him for more accurate distance weapons such as spears and bows. If you’d like a demonstration, try throwing a spear while sitting on a stool. All this for the price of a couple pieces of leather and metal.
Historically a man who could ride and shoot bareback had to be a wonderful athlete. With the stirrup, this was no longer true, and the less-than-athletic were its first users. The stirrup is so effective that some modern riding instructors insist on bareback riding so that their students develop a “feel” for the horse and their own balance.
China takes a beating
Mounted archery began early in the third century. With the adoption of the stirrup, by 317 AD all of China north of the Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) had been overrun by Xianbei nomadic peoples from the steppes. (Probably decedents of our Tarth.) They were skilled at light and heavy cavalry and became the ruling elite of this part of China. They used stirrups. The Chinese could mobilize untold numbers of foot-solders but these typically had little affect on battle outcomes. The horse soldiers ruled.
Like the Egyptians, the Chinese were no fools. By 415 AD the use of two riding stirrups was popular throughout China. And with them, heavy armor, horse bardings (armor) and mounted archery came into use. The stirrup spread quickly through Asia, all the way to Korea and into Japan. It evolved from large toe loops on the side of a saddle to the flat, oval bronze or iron designs recognizable today. The face of warfare had changed forever.
The Chinese, by the way, never did overcome these horse soldiers. Instead, they infiltrated into the Xianbei ranks by joining them to the point that eventually they were running the show. But it was the horse soldiers from the North, such as Genghis Khan, who spread out to the rest of the world. Gu Zhun, a modern Chinese historian, suggests that “stirrups … immediately made hand-to-hand combat possible, and this was a revolutionary new mode of combat … very seldom had there been an invention as simple as the stirrup, but very seldom did it play the kind of catalytic role in history that this did.”
Europe gets the stirrup
By 600 AD, the Avars had been pushed west from the steppes by the Turks, introducing the stirrup to Europe. They were one of many hordes encroaching into the remains of the collapsed Roman Empire. These horse soldiers, including Attila the Hun, were the cultural sons and daughters of Tarth. So strong were their horse warrior traditions and skills that some even eschewed the use of their own invention, the stirrup. As usual, they excelled at hit and run tactics, although they often did it en masse, overwhelming opponents. The European armies, primarily foot soldiers, had difficulty combating these fast-moving forces. Probably only the disciplined Roman phalanxes would have stood a chance had they still been around. Even they could not match the mobility of these mounted warriors.
By 700 AD European nobility began to combat these and the Nordic encroachments by developing a new kind of social structure, the feudal system. Faced with experts in mounted warfare, they adapted. Combining the best ideas of the enemy with their own, they integrated mounted warriors, stirrups, saddles with high pommels and cantles, and lances into a new fighting system that was co-dependent on the economic structure of the society. The result was not just a warrior. It was a fundamental escalation in warfare. Rather than adapting a society to a particular weapon, as the mounted warrior had done, they simultaneously evolved a way of life and a weapons system.
A shocking experience
Imagine Tarth’s great, great, great, (you get the point) grandson sitting astride a tough little steppe pony on the edge of some French meadow. He carries a recurved bow or a spear, and is probably wearing leather armor. If he carries a spear, it would be roughly six feet long and he would hold it in the middle, at the balance point. This gives him a striking range of eight feet, which is well outside the axe range of these European “freemen.” He wears his hair long. We’ll call him Barth the Evader.
Barth and his friends snort with excitement and bravado as they look at the unsuspecting French just outside a fortified town. They have done this before, a quick rush, surprise and speed overwhelming slow-footed soldiers, then rape, pillage and back to their camp. It has worked countless times.
Taking a deep breath, Barth charges with a piercing yell and swift kick in his pony’s side. Clearing the woods, he sees woodsmen and armed guards alike running for their lives. He looks into gloom of the keep’s entrance and abruptly pulls up and stops. Coming out of the entrance is the biggest horse he has ever seen, and it’s wearing armor! A growing unease comes over Barth.
On this large horse is a large man, also wearing armor, but it’s metal armor rather than the leather kind Barth has. It gets worse: this man is carrying the biggest spear Barth has ever seen. The French call it a couched lance and it’s over ten feet long from its vamplate, the funnel shaped handle, to gleaming iron tip. He is carrying it under his arm (couched) at its end. This gives him a five-foot reach advantage over Barth’s two pound lance. That is, if Barth were to stand and fight. However, this is not going to happen because Barth is now running for his life. Rapid retreat is a tradition Barth learned from his ancestors.
In full pursuit of Barth is a troop of fully armored, superbly trained, beautifully equipped, mounted warriors. These are the edge of Europe’s weapon system, the shock troops of the seventh century. These are mounted knights. Chivalry has arrived and it isn’t all poetry and fair ladies. These guys are professional killers. They will dominate European warfare for the next six hundred years.