Corporal Carrot wrote:I dont know much about horses, but I imagine that they have a natural inclination to NOT run directly into things if they can avoid it. So how do you get a horse to charge into an opposing army?
Training. My gelding walks through flapping flags, because although they were scary once, none have yet eaten him. Once, on a hunt, I saw the field scatter to the left, due to an oncoming train; mine held his line and was perfectly happy to ease right towards the train, for which he was duly praised. Perhaps the question should be: how do you get a horse to charge twice into an opposing army?
(well-trained police horses and poorly-mannered private horses barge into people for the same reason: horses, being hierarchical herd creatures, divide the animate world into two basic groups: things that move away from me, and things I must move away from; untrained people nearly universally fall into the former)
As to horses crashing at speed, geometry matters. Patton remarked in his saber manual that t-boning is an effective battlefield tactic, but nearly impossible to practice safely. It is a foul in polo because it tends to take out the t-boned horse (cf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spPuacIGnkE#t=1m05s @ 1:05); conversely, riding into a horse at a shallower angle, from behind, is a foul because it tends to take out the horse whose front legs get tangled up. The rule of thumb is that horses are (with perhaps the exception of bullfighting horses) very stable longitudinally and fairly fragile laterally.
(the military quarter-turn mentioned is mostly useful for gates and parade formations. Just about everyone who does anything at speed (cow work, polo, réjon, etc.) hops the front and turns on the hind end. If you look at where pluvinel departs from modern dressage practice, it's that he focuses way more on --again, as in the bullfight-- having powerful hindquarters and mobile forequarters. In effect, in his time, the warhorse was used for duelling; in the modern period the warhorse was used to transport mobile infantry from point A to point B)
Although it's true that there are general breed differences, there is far more individual variation. Some horses are best suited for decorating pastures. Some horses enjoy chasing cows, and the ideal cutting horse does so completely on his own initiative. Although there are polo breeders, it's more of a job than a breed, and any horse that enjoys running in and reacting to a herd (fairly natural) and can learn that shoving is sporting, but biting and kicking are right out (also fairly natural) will probably make.
Returning to Pluvinel (et.al.), the general training seems to be: take a horse that's already good at going, and more importantly, stopping and turning, then train "under fire" so that handle is confirmed even under stress.
-Dave
(re lance vs. cavalry: we haven't tried this ourselves yet, but I'd imagine the problem is that once the sabreur passes inside the lance, the lancer is in trouble, and while a lancer easily controls the distance when engaged with infantry, he lacks that control against another horse. the rule of thumb here is that the riding skill of the two matters much more than what they happen to be wielding)
