cavalry and the shield

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I have a question about cavalry equipment in this particular period.
Since armor was downgraded when the gunpowder was more in use the cavalry did rely on speed and fast hit and run tactics. But what happened to the shield, offcourse shields are obsolete against gunpowder but aren't they still usseful when fighting other cavalry.

The other question is about the lance, swedish cavalry didn't use lances only the sword point (i don't know any good advantages with this exept that a sword can be used as a regular sword or a lance only 60 inches shorter).


Edited by Seko - 14-Jan-2010 at 20:20

Originally posted by rapala I have a question about cavalry equipment in this particular period. Since armor was downgraded when the gunpowder was more in use the cavalry did rely on speed and fast hit and run tactics. But what happened to the shield, offcourse shields are obsolete against gunpowder but aren't they still usseful when fighting other cavalry.

http://www.allempires.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=27059

shields were basically only usefull against arrows (see link). sabres can block enemy sabre cuts, so shields are only a hinderance.

The other question is about the lance, swedish cavalry didn't use lances only the sword point (i don't know any good advantages with this exept that a sword can be used as a regular sword or a lance only 60 inches shorter).

what is exactly the question?

Originally posted by Temujin what is exactly the question?

The question is why they didn't use lances instead, a sword unmounted has more range than mounted.

I found some sources that curiaser was worn in this period, like ataman said shield protects the left side of the attacker wich is the weak point while mounted.
A sabre was made for quick attacks and not to take on armors and shields, still no shields were in use.

The shield was abolished in later renasance becouse the armor was made extra thick to protect bullets from primitive firearms, a shield would only add more weight so it became usseles.
but so did armors when even musket could pierce trought the heaviest of them so later cavalry prefered not to wear anything close to armors. but without the armour why didn't they start to use shields instead. this is the bigest questions in cavalry tactics for me.

Originally posted by rapala The question is why they didn't use lances instead, a sword unmounted has more range than mounted.

what do you mean by 'range', unless you're charging with a very long lance, you'll always need to get up close to your target to fight it. and the lance is more difficult to learn than sabre fighting, so for economic reasons most armies descided for sabres. and if you're fighting another mounted enemy, you have more 'range' if you yourself are mounted compared to an infantry swordsman. if you fight infantry from horseback, you have the advantage of slashing from above, directly striking at their heads, that's quite an advantage compared to infantry.

I found some sources that curiaser was worn in this period, like ataman said shield protects the left side of the attacker wich is the weak point while mounted. A sabre was made for quick attacks and not to take on armors and shields, still no shields were in use.

17th century cavalry had armoured gauntlets for this, again, a cavalry shield only really protects from arrows. later there were mounted fencing methods which protects the left side of the rider more efficiently so that too wasn't necessary anymore.

The shield was abolished in later renasance becouse the armor was made extra thick to protect bullets from primitive firearms, a shield would only add more weight so it became usseles. but so did armors when even musket could pierce trought the heaviest of them so later cavalry prefered not to wear anything close to armors. but without the armour why didn't they start to use shields instead. this is the bigest questions in cavalry tactics for me.

see my comments above. besides shields cannot effectively deflect musket balls, so there's no point really.