"Period term for cavalry moving quickly?" Topic

Is there a term similar to "double-timing" or "quick step" or similar, but specifically applicable to cavalry?

Moving at an increased pace, but not charging/engaging.

I always thought it was to "trot"…

Or 'Canter'

A trotting horse can move at approximately 8-10 mph over an extended time.

Agreed, herkybird.

Canter sounds good. Thanks guys. I had a stupid.

Weasel…You're not the first person in history to have this happen to them!

trotting or cantering is like saying "jog" though, right? Not that it's wrong, but i my men to "double time", not jog, to the crossroad, you know?

…. Halt or standing still in place, then walking pace, to trotting pace, to canter pace, then the charge. The five stages of cavalry movement for what I remember.

TMPWargamerabbit

Yup: that has always been my understanding too… though I have no idea where I first 'learned' it from.

In the U.S. Cavalry manuals, there is no "canter" pace, however the gallop gait was actually a fast canter. It was a 2 part command, the first part was the gait such as "At the Walk" & the second part was the action, such as "March". If the command was given without a gait, then the "walk" gait was used. For example, Carter writes that when the camp was threatened by a prairie fire, Mackenzie gave the commands "Pack Up!" "Stand to Horse!" "Mount!" "Forward!" in rapid succession.

The U.S. Cavalry used 3 gaits – walk, trot, & gallop.

Oh, I forgot about the speed of the gaits. I don't know which one would be the closest to "quick time."

The "walk" took 16 minutes to cover a mile; the "trot" took 8 minutes to cover a mile; the "gallop" was supposed to cover a mile in 6 minutes.

If the period you are wanting to use is the Plains Wars or the American Civil War, there were two manuals. One called the "Poinsett" manual was an 1861 reprint of a manual from the 1840s and was used by both Confederate and Union troops. The other is "Cookes" manual printed in November 1861, which was used only by the Union troops. Both manuals can be found on the internet on several reenactor web pages.

Gallop? Canter? Trot? I personally like Gallop.

"Quick time" or "quick march" for infantry is a brisk walking pace, whereas "at the double [quick]" is a jogging pace, which would correspond to trotting for a horse. The canter is an easy rocking gait at which it would still be possible to maneuver. The full gallop, equivalent to a man at a dead run, was reserved for the very last phase of a charge, when a cavalry unit was irrevocably committed. Since horses, like men, vary in peak performance it was not possible to maintain tight formation for very long at the full gallop, nor to maneuver. Although armies adopted a number of different marching speeds for infantry, it is not easy to teach a horse to walk at anything other than its natural walking gait. The trot, canter, and gallop also come naturally to any horse, but certain breeds of horse exhibit some additional gaits (I'm not aware that any of the special gaits ever had any significant military application).

G'Day Gents

For the French you have three:

Le pas…le trot…et le galop

For le pas: average distance is 100 meters in 1 minute
For le trot: average distance is 240 meters in 1 minute
For le galop: average distance is 300 meters in 1 minute

"while on trails or roads without forcing a hard march, average distance is 4,800 to 5,000 meters in an hour."…which is slower than le pas on the field of battle.

Best Regards
Art

I think you'd have serious formation issues at anything above a trot.

Remember that this would be a significant body of horse that is unlikely to be at peak of its training, with inexperienced men and horses within the troops, over unknown ground, in battlefield conditions. Possibly in no man's land with enemy cavalry around so needing to be ready to counter charge/maneuver away?

And when they get from A to B, you want them to arrive at B in a state where they can then be immediately usable and not having to spend significant amounts of time to reform.

Eg I'd expect it to look much like: YouTube link

You can see how quickly cohesion is lost above a trot here: YouTube link

The British term "Canter" equates to the "Gallop" in most other armies. The British "Gallop" is the "Carrière" which was only used, if at all, for shock effect in the last yards of the charge. The "Trot" was and still is the fast manouevring pace, enabling the cavalry to hold formation well, even during wheels and formation changes. During a charge, moving in a straight line, a reasonable formation can be held at a canter, although the line will not be straight. At the gallop, formations will immediately start to dissolve, with faster horses pushing ahead and slower ones falling back. A fast trot and a slow canter can be about the same speed, my Andalusian partbred preferred to canter at speeds where other horses were trotting.

The important thing to remember about horses is they can go at any speed they like up to their maximum, and the size of the horses makes a difference.
Regularised cavalry tend to get all their animals moving at about the same speed if they can, hence the descriptive terms.
The terms used vary between nations and time periods, as has already been pointed out.

Walk; four phase movement, RH, RF, LH, LF … and so on.

Trot; two phase movement RF – LH together, LF – RH together … and so on.

Canter; three phase movement, lead foreleg, other foreleg and contralateral hindleg together, remaining hind leg.

Gallop; as walk but faster with a suspended phase where all legs are off the ground.

Put a lot of horses together and try to canter them without (quite) a few breaking into a gallop would be well nigh impossible

There is no military pace equivalent to Canter, as far as I know.

All nations have only Walk, Trot and Gallop.

Learning a lot about horsies here :-)

The British term "Canter" equates to the "Gallop" in most other armies. The British "Gallop" is the "Carrière" which was only used, if at all, for shock effect in the last yards of the charge.

The difference between a canter and a gallop is the speed. A canter is a slow gallop, also referred to in the vernacular of the period as a 'lope'.

So going into a charge, the walk, trot, canter, gallop was simply referring to a slow gallop and then full-on run when close [50 or less yards for the British] … which other nations did too, they just didn't refer to the slower, beginning gallop as anything but a gallop.

Put a lot of horses together and try to canter them without (quite) a few breaking into a gallop would be well nigh impossible

Unless trained to. You see the slow gallop about 1:10 in the second Video that Mike Bravo provides:

YouTube link

The video of the French Republican Guard squadron charge has the same 'pace' between the trot and full gallop. It is easy to see the point where the horses go from a slow gallop to full.

YouTube link

So, by 2:28 into the video the buglers have sounded the trot from the walk, the officer raises his sword to note the point of the trot. Then the bugles sound again, and at the start of the gallop the swords are drawn and lowered. Slow gallop begins. When the troopers lean forward in the saddle, the horses move into a full, unrestrained gallop and the formation goes to hell.

At 200-300 yards from the intended target, the cavalry commander would order 'Prepare to Charge! Draw saber! At the trot-March!'

At 150 yards, 'Gallop!'

At 50 yards, 'Charge!' The trumpeters would sound 'Charge!' and the cavalry would spur their mounts into a dead run and they went in with a yell, the front rank with sabers thrust forward and the second rank's held high.

De Brack didn't like the 'formal' charge drill and would maneuver his troopers 'at an easy gait' and when close enough would order 'Draw Saber!' then 'Charge!' leaving neither his own troopers and the target with no time to think about it.

Horses can travel long distances at between 3 and 6 miles per hour, so I would say that at a slow trot that might be considered 'double time' for an infantryman.