"Light cavalry, reiters, caracole" Topic

I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding when exactly light cavalry that performed caracole maneuvers emerged. My limited undestanding of the Italian Wars is that most of the cavalry were still armored Gendarmes, condottieri, or stradiots; and that the caracole was more of a Thirty Years War era tactic. Sorry if this is an unclear question. I'm also trying to learn more about stradiots in general since they were (from what I understand) a common light cavalry during the Italian Wars. Thanks

There apparently were also quite a lot of unarmored, or very lightly armored cavalry as well (perhaps wearing a helmet of some type, at most) during this period.

They were used for scouting, harassment, flank attacks, sacking baggage, etc, etc..

The Spanish countered with genitors who seemed to usually best the stradiots.

The caracole appeared around the middle of the 16th century. I do not know that it was practiced by light cavalry but rather Reiters. a form of medium later heavy cavalry.

Stephan Turnbull does a pretty good job of addressing the rise of the pistol armed reiter in his book on the art of renaissance warfare. From what I recall, as pistols developed so did the reiter (probably 1540s), they were present in the HRE in some of the internal wars and wars against the French. So they probably weren't present in the majority of the Italian Wars.

These guys weren't classic light cavalry, armored but not to the level of full plate armor of gendarmes. The "schwarzen reiter" or "black devils" nicknames came from their behavior as well as their appearance with blackened armor. They weren't necessarily light cavalry, they were shock cavalry but didn't need the same heavier horses that gendarmes did (due to the lighter armor).

The caracole is a whole other matter. From what I've read, most reiters actually didn't caracole. They used large, deep formations (as opposed to the more long, shallow lance armed gendarme formations) and would advance and move to contact with pistols and sword. The would often press the pistol against an enemy's armor (point blank) and fire. Their formations often punched through lance armed cavalry formations. Mounted arqubusiers did perform the caracole, and you can find contemporary diagrams of this maneuver. I have read the concept of caracoling reiters possibly came from undisciplined (or less than resolute) reiters not advancing to contact and instead firing their pistols and wheeling from contact.

Hope this helps.

In the post just ten minutes ago I received Issue XXXVII/iii of "Arquebusier", the journal of the Pike and Shot Society. And it contains a 16-page article on the caracole by John Tincey. Subscribe now!