"Charles Oman: "No Cavalry in the Middle Ages"?" Topic

I'm working on a paper for school and am in Asia with no access to libraries or Amazon.com or anything like that.

I have Oman's "The Art of War in the Middle Ages: Volume II" here, but somehow in the back recesses of my mind I have the vague idea that he said something like that there was no cavalry in the middle ages in one of his works, and i think it was in the fist volume (because a collection of individual warriors isn't cavalry and all that)

I would love to quote this for my paper (I'm not going to over stress the point mind you, but I like nice and provocative quotes all the same).

If I'm not imagining things, could someone quote the passage here? And the page number too?

If others want to argue about the point here, that's fine too, but I'm not jumping into that scrum ;o)

Thanks much!

Seems unlikely. Perhaps he was referring to the Dark Ages, but even then there were plenty about (if not in Western Europe). The Byzantines had a cavalry arm, and the Steppe Warriors were nothing if not organised cavalry.

Thanks for the feedback!

The volume II book starts in 1278, so he likely would have covered the dark ages in the first book. I think it's in regard to western Europe and the Knight, your right about the Easterners.

Even if the quote is false, it's still of use to the paper though.

I found another quote from somewhere else that ties into the idea though (this is about really ancient eastern peoples who first tamed the steed)

"Technical advances were meaningless without a matching change in mentality, in the identity of the fighter, from a heroic single warrior to a nameless soldier. The defining feature of cavalry was that it attacked and retreated as a body in which individual riders became anonymous. An ideological model of fighting that was appropriate for a state, under the leadership of a general, was grafted onto tribal horseback riders."

Oman's view of medical warfare & cavalry is in many instances both outdated and inaccurate. For a better supported view you'll want to read JF Verbruggen's "The art of warfare in Western Europe"

Sometimes the most inaccurate quotes are the best ones for the purpose of essays.

In any event, as I'm in Asia, there is no way I can get that book unless it happens to be on my university digital library (which is a 1000 to 1 longshot).

Thanks though.

Daniel (medical?), Oman's extreme thesis, that infantry went through a centuries-long decline during the "Middle Ages", and knightly cavalry ruled the battlefield, is really the only thing about his research that is successfully discounted in modern scholarship on medieval warfare. He quoted his sources copiously; he even disproved his own extreme "eclipsed infantry" thesis in many places, without seeming to realize it. When Oman was done, he had given so many examples of exceptions to his thesis -- that during the Middle Ages infantry was an undisciplined mob that the knights slaughtered at will -- that the thesis formed the minority of times and places where that was true: in fact, primarily in France, and nowhere else!

Barmy, I think your memory is going through a dyxlesic spasm, there: If there was one thing Oman did not say, it was that there was no cavalry during the Middle Ages! It was effective infantry that he was talking about.

Oman begins the superiority of cavalry over infantry by citing the battle of Adrianople where the Goth cavalry killed a Roman emperor on the field and crushed his legions of infantry. That is the earliest dating for "medieval" cavalry I have ever seen.

I have both volumes right in front of me. Barmy, if you have a specific need, sing out, I will do my best to look it up for you….

I've just had a boo at the limitted preview on google Books, and he certainly spends a lot of time talking about cavalry with a straight face.

This was, unfortunately, the one-volume edition. The absense of the exact quote you seek is not proof of its non-existance in the proper volume.

Horses hadn't been invented yet, and people didn't learn to sit until the Peace of Westphalia.
-Kle.

Oman's view of medical warfare & cavalry is in many instances both outdated and inaccurate.

Unfortunately, there are also very few rule sets out there depicting it accurately.

However, I have heard rumours that Warlord Factory Games is working on a new set of rules entitled "Hospital Wars – Medical Warfare". Apparently the cavalry rules are based on extensive research of articles from the "Nurses and Horses" magazine.

Griefbringer

Ok, well thanks much everybody, it looks like that one is a dead end.

I'm sure someone said that. Maybe I should try and track down the collected works of Soupy Sales….

Here's what I ran across with a quick flick through Volume One: Page 3: "In A.D. 250 it was still the heavy-armed infantry of the empire which formed the core of battle, and was the hope and stay of the general. By A.D. 450 the cavalry was all in all, the foot-soldiery had fallen into disrepute, and the very name of legion was almost forgotten."

Page 42: "The true interest of the centuries of the early Middle Ages lies in the gradual evolution of new forms of a military caste as the chief power in war, and in the decay among most races of the old system which made the tribe arrayed in arms the normal fighting force. Intimately connected with this change was an alteration in arms and equipment which transformed the outward appearance of war in a manner not less complete. The period of transition may be considered to end in the eleventh century, when the feudal knight had established his superiority over all descriptions of troops pitted against him, from the Magyar horse-bowmen of the East to the Danish axemen of the North. The fight of Hastings, the last notable attempt of unaided infantry to withstand cavalry in Western Europe for two hundred years, serves to mark the termination of the epoch."

Page 167: (After relating the fate of infantry at Hastings and Dyrrhachium) -- "Such was the fate of the last important attempt made by infantry to face the feudal array of the eleventh century. We shall find, it is true, some instances in the twelvth century of cavalry being withstood by dismounted troops. But these were not true infantry, but knights who had sent their horses to the rear in a supreme moment of peril, and stood firm to fight out the battle to the end. Well-nigh three centuries were to elapse before real foot-soldiery, unaided by the cavalry arm, made another serious attempt to stand up in the open against the mailed horseman. The superiority of the feudal horseman was finally established."

Obviously, the battles of Tinchebrai, The Standard, Legnano, Steppes, Bouvines, virtually all the crusader battles in the Levant, the battles of the wars of Stephen versus Matilda, the battles in Spain (e.g. Las Navas De Tolosa), the battles of the Norman conquests and wars of rebellion in southern Italy and Sicily (e.g. Civitate, Nocera), ALL predate Courtrai (1302) by many years, even centuries: and they all disprove Oman's own thesis, that Western Europe produced no effective infantry to withstand mounted knights for "well-nigh three centuries."

Ah yes, Adrianople, that one is right in there with my paper, there's a couple of primary accounts floating around….

link

Thanks a lot everyone, and Doug, that is above and beyond sir!

Thanks much for those passages. I have lot's of reference material for 14th-15th-16th actions, but those early ones are a big help.

Cheers!

Perhaps you have mis-remembered something from his work on the 16th C. – which he regarded as the 'rise of the infantry' back to 'Roman' style domination; he also puts this forward then contradicts himself several times.

For all of his faults, I still regard his works as very useful – for his historical narrative rather than conclusions.

Well, i had wanted to get his work on the 16th, but it has been well over $200, so I never read it unfortunately (I got volume II of the Medieval series for $12).

I definitely agree about value of his narrative, I'll take nice sweeping prose in the service of a fine yarn every time. He's sort of like Livy in that regard.

Agreed: Oman conclusions, of very limited value: Oman narrative, very good. And I add to what I already said: Oman sources, first rate; as he often provides the original passage and the translation.

I seem to recall a similar quote, and, whether or not Oman was indeed the author, I believe the point was that the military discipline demanded of modern cavalry and infantry place them in a different category from the miles and cniht of the Middle Ages.

The question of soldiers vs. warriors, I believe.

Might the author not have been Delbruck?

Now that sounds possible!

Unfortunately, I don't have any access to Delbruck here….

But thanks much, I feel better anyway.

Well, if it was Delbruck, it would have to be in this one:

link

Well as a matter of fact, one of the reviews makes mention to this very idea. Ok, lets see how much I can pilfer just 'touring' the book for free on Amazon….

Ok, well, looking at the index, it seems the quote is on page 649.

On pages 276-77 there is something about the differences between Knights and Cavalry…..

I see, knights were not cavalry. A pointless distinction, imho.

By this line of reasoning, Anglo-Saxon "cavalry" were more like "cavalry"! Because they used the horse to provide mobility and pursuit, but didn't try to use it alike a battering ram!

This denigration of the heavy cavalry lance charge is modern conceit. Just because simple ways existed to thwart it as a viable tactic does not make the mounted knight any less a cavalryman. His training was extensive, complex and effective under the limited conditions required.

And besides, Delbruck, Oman, et al. the "19th century" military scholars, apparently did not appreciate that medieval knights (men at arms, really), did not collect as a mob of individuals: more modern research has revealed the conroi as the core unit in massed battalions of mounted chivalry: and the conrois were anything but an individualistic approach to fighting.

Well I don't know.

I have read that work on the life of Bayard ("Loyal servitor" or something like that).

When he decided to charge into Milan by himself in a show of bravado and got captured, that was definitely not the work of 'Professional Cavalry' per se.

Of course, I seem to recall Caesar and Livy complaining about impetuous Cavalry too. Maybe it's just the nature of being on a horse to be rash. I wouldn't know as I'm terribly allergic.

Anyway, they're just words which are used to classify concepts. We often don't have enough words to classify all our concepts and then get into disagreements over which concept owns the rights to a given word. Those are roundabout ventures at best.

For the purpose of essays though, quotes don't need to be taken at face value, they serve to offer a doorway to exploring issues from differing points of view.

Interestingly we now have this thread running in parallel to this one:

TMP link

It would almost be impossible even come up with a thesis statement if there were not a fertile field of diverse, objectionable opinions to make pasture upon.

Hah!

But I don't pretend to be any expert on medieval cavalry matters. My paper is actually on the renaissance and is basically a more measured (non sensationalist) look at how the idea that cavalry was marginalized is over stated. Not wrong, just over stated and incomplete.

I think that the larger armies put more demand on the light horse for scouting and foraging for one thing (I'm exploring the idea of maps playinginto this).

Then a lot of effort was put into making the field and designing weapon systems that were designed to counter cavalry. There's a lot more meat on the interplay of the issues here, but no time to write now.

Then of course there are also scattered examples of very decisive uses of heavy cavalry in spots (as it happens my teacher is Polish American, so we have nice serendipity there).

So don't worry, I wasn't just going to take that quote and try to turn the world on it's ear with some wild, willy-nilly over statement ;o)

Whew! that's a relief. We have enough loose nuts on TMP already.