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Post by mongol194 on Oct 7, 2008 16:39:36 GMT 3
I just noticed after some time that there is little mention of the most important weapon on the steppes more important even than the bow, sword and spear/lance combined. The noble Horse. I believe that steppe people were probably the first to domisticate our best friend. Does anyone know exactly how we first used them? Historians say the first steppe invaders of civilisation namely the Hyskos conquered pre biblical Egypt. The Hyskos seemd to have used the chariot as thier shock and awe weapon and quickly overran lower Egypt. We guess that early horses were wiry and smaller than later breeds and therefore only used mainly for agriculture and drawing carts. The horses had to be used in teams of up to four in order to carry two men into battle, driver and archer. The hyskos archers were equiped with composite bows which meant the lower kingdom Egyptions were beaten back becuase they mainly used infantry with self-bows made simply from wood alone. Since upper Egypt was more hilly and the terrain far from suitable for chariots the Egyptians managed to consolidate and reconquer thier empire. Since the beating the Hyskos the Egyptians supposedly used the technology to halt the new threat from invading hittites in the north at Megido(aka armegadon) Since that golden age of chariots centuries passed before one day the Byzantines who marched against Parthia sometime i the 3rd century they found themselves facing a more terrifying force than merely chariots. For centuries nations steppe nations had replacd the cumbersome chariots with mounted archers.....maths says it all ;D. Before chariots needed around four horses to pull two men of whom only one could fire a bow!  By using mounted archers they boosted both fire power and mobility becuase now four men rode four horses and each could move and fire independantly. Horses were not much bigger but they were a lot stockier than the more ancient breeds and could now also carry heavier loads. The greatest fear the Romans had however was not just the advent of the stirrup which meant lancers could use more force as they charged with the full weight of horse, but also the Parthians favourite weapon cataphracts. These were not just tanks on legs but also deadly anti-cavalry cavalry....  The Romans were familiar with stirrups and lancers they were even getting used to mounted archers and many auxiliary units not only rode into battle but also carried composite bows. However heavily armoured forerunners to the knights were a new predicament altoghether! I wonder if mongols used heavy cavalry at Ain Jalut. History presents a good record of the mamluks having fine heavy horses and armour clad steeds like the knights. Did the mongols under qitbulka have thier heavy units with them or did hulegu take those whith him when he left syria? Perhaps the lack of heavy cavalry and sheer numbers of mamluks work against the mongols? Either way the Mamluks won and while in the East we had no real challenge to horse supremacy (even Elephants were vulnerable to massed cavalry charges) In the west the developement of the gun would one day spell the end of cavalry. That said cavalry today is still a possible weapon becuase believe it or not mounted troops can move faster then motorised cavalry units! However horses are to most extents obsolete  I want to know how many of you have experiences with horses please tell us what you know? Also if any of you want to expand on my quick hstory of the horse in the steppes please feel free to add to or(mock my comments.....they arent that good anyway ;D) Also lets see how many notable breeds we can come up with, even if you don't own your own horse please chuck whatever you like at this topic! |
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 8, 2008 0:36:56 GMT 3
Very nice topic, thanks  Hmm are you sure that the Hyksos were a steppe people? I think you mean the Battle of Carrhae (53 BC) fought between the Roman Republic and Parthia  It was at a much later time when the Roman started using stirrups (probably around 5th-6th centuries, IIRC?). During the "Classical Imperial" period, they did not use them at all. Even the Huns and Sarmatians probably did not use stirrups at all, or if they used it, that was at a very limited amount (though in his book about the Scythians, İsmail Durmuş states that the Sarmatians used stirrups in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, I did not come across any evidence for that... the Sarmatians depicted on the Column of Traianus at Rome do not have stirrups). |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 8, 2008 9:42:01 GMT 3
Earlier this year I did some research on the horses of the Huns for a university presentation. Hope some of this info is interesting for you. Stirrups: There's no evidence that the Huns used stirrups. The first stirrups, as far as my reading on the subject could gather, were not in widespread use in Asia until about the 5th or 6th century. In my presentation at uni I said that the stirrup was a Central Asian innovation, but my lecturer disagreed with me. He said they were Chinese. So we ended up betting $10 on it =D. I did some reading, and according to what I read we were both wrong! The first stirrups were from India. They were small and only big enough to fit the big toe in (this is important because it means it was only used for getting onto the horse, and not for standing up for extra power during combat). From there the Chinese seem to have adopted it and converted it into the big whole-foot stirrup we know today. Eventually the idea moved on to Europe in about the 7th century. I would guess because of the time frame that the idea reached Europe because of the migrations of the Avars westwards, but it's just a guess. As far as the Sarmatians having stirrups, it's the first I've heard of it (doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong though; i'm not an expert heh). And anyway... stirrups on short Hunnish horses is not entirely necessary anyway. 1) The horses are short so they're easier to get up on than the tall Roman-type horses and 2) most of the time you would've been shooting your bow, so you don't need the extra power for lance work and so on. Most scholars these days believe the Hyskos were a people from the Levant. Hyskos in ancient Egyptian simply means 'foreigners' if I'm not mistaken. The reason they think they were from the Levant is because they have names like 'praisers of Baal' and such (Baal was a Canaanite god). I don't know of any theories which involve the Hyskos being a steppe people, although I suppose it is possible. Also, the Hyskos ruled Egypt for quite a while.. around a hundred years, so I'm not sure if you can say their expulsion (or incorporation?) was a result of geography. Chariots: what exactly is the point of chariots militarily? I thought it was that you could just run full ball into a bunch of men and kill half of them with sheer speed, regardless of how many men are on it or whether they're shooting arrows or not? I'm not really a military kind of person so if someone could explain this it would be very helpful  . Have you guys heard of the Kurgan hypothesis? It's a theory that the horse was first domesticated somewhere in the Qypchak steppe (basically it's trying to explain the massive extent of the Indo-European language group by saying that it spread from a central area through horse travel. Very interesting stuff!) Huns and horses: The Huns owed pretty much everything to their steeds, and they relied on them heavily. There's a funny quote by a Roman contemporary of the Huns: "scarce had the infant learnt to stand without his mother's aid when a horse takes him on his back. You would think that the limbs of man and horse were born together, so firmly does the rider always stick to the horse; any other folk is carried on horseback, this folk lives there". There were both pros and cons to the Huns reliance on horses: Pros: - mobility, pace, fluidity of territory = unpredictability, ability to abuse the wealth of sedentists who hoard precious goods, can field large equestrian armies, skill in warfare = (arguably) higher Cons: hardier life, no cities = no fortifications, logistical limits to potential places you can go because of requirements of horses, i.e. access to good pasture + water, therefore restricted because of climatic + ecological concerns (very important!) Vegetius, a Roman writer, wrote a military manual sometime in the 5th century. In it he praised the breed that the Huns used as being number one for warfare "because of its patience, perserverance, and its capacity to endure cold and hunger. As his description shows, Vegetius, who probably kept a few Hun horses himself, had ample opportunity to observe them. They have, he says, great hooked heads, protruding eyes, narrow nostrils, broad jaws, strong and stiff necks, manes hanging below their knees, overlarge ribs, wide-spreading hooves, hollow loins; their bodies are angular, with no fat on the rump or the muscles of the back, their stature inclining to length rather than to height, the belly drawn, the bones huge. The very thinness of these horses is pleasing, and there is beauty even in their ugliness. Vegetius adds that they are quiet and sensible and bear wounds well”. (Otto Maenchen-Helfen, p.204) But the fall of the Huns is also related to their horses (as well as other things). A horse requires roughly 14kg of pasturage and 30L of water per day (I can give references for this if you need them). In the steppes there is plenty of food and water everywhere... there are no problems with this. But when the Huns got to Europe there are mountains all over the place. Go to google maps and turn it onto terrain view, and you'll see what i mean. Europe is covered in mountains compared to the steppes. The biggest area of grasslands in Europe is the Great Hungarian Plain, which is about 42,000 square kilometres. Even all of this area is only enough to support 300,000 horses. But then factor in the grass used by native animals, and by the pigs, cattle and sheep that the Huns would have brought, as well as for crops, and you have a lot less (there is an article explaining this theory in full: Rudi Paul Lindner: "Nomadism, Horses and Huns", very good article  . So if you can only have 150,000 horses then either of two things has to happen. Either you have less horses per man or less men. You can only field an army of 15,000 men altogether with 10 horses per man. The Huns had heaps of horses per man so they could cycle them during the battle when the horse got tired (10 per man is actually quite low). And if you have less horses and more men on foot (as is what happened at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields where Atilla was defeated), then your army is just like any old army, and loses the speciality of steppe warfare. The Romans and the Huns had very similar armies at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and it's no surprise that the Romans beat the crap out of Atilla; they'd been using armies like that for hundreds of years, and knew what to do with them, as well as the fact that they probably had better armour and weaponry. Lindner says, and I agree with him, that "Crossing the Carpathians, then, devastated the logistic base of the nomad political and military strength". Anyways I shall stop blabbering... heh. Dinner is ready! |
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Post by mongol194 on Oct 8, 2008 11:24:11 GMT 3
Stirrups were from India! Wow well i never!!! Learn something new everyday eh! ;D Anyway the Hyskos did have hebrew names so they may have been levantine i suppose?  That said i've got this wierd book on Roman campaigns in Parthia.....i'll have to dig it up from my library.....but anyway its full of what may just be stories, but i remember reading this account when a famous roman Crassus i think lost to the Persians he was stuffed and put on display for two centuries. It might not be true but it was full of these wierd accounts ...that one stuck in my mind becuase the unfortunate Roman emperor was used as a footstool before having molten gold poured into him!!!? |
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Post by ALTAR on Oct 8, 2008 13:51:08 GMT 3
Hyksos were very interesting. They invaded Egypt easily with their Horses and Chariots easily. They had an absolute military superiority against Native Egyptians. Their origin has not been identified yet. Because there are not so many or very limited archeological sources about them. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_origins_of_the_Hyksos |
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 8, 2008 14:51:24 GMT 3
Nice infos Keagan, thanx And yes, I heard about the Kurgan Hypothesis before. Ah you mean the emperor Valerianus ;D Crassus is the Roman commander who died at Carrhae en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_(emperor) |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 8, 2008 15:58:29 GMT 3
No I think he does actually mean Crassus (the Triumvirate one), the one that died at Carrhae in 53B.C. He was supposedly killed by the Persians by having molten gold poured down his throat (because he was a greedy man). Of course this is probably just rubbish written after the fact by someone who was trying to ridicule Crassus.
Valerian was captured by Shapur a couple of hundred years later. The foot-stool thing and the molten gold thing have probably been mixed up a little there.
But anyway... wasn't the topic horses lol?
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Post by mongol194 on Oct 9, 2008 10:56:30 GMT 3
Yeah thats right Horses ;D LOL! How on earth did sycthian horse archers manage to fire thier copmposite bows without stirrups is truly amazing. I am a good horseman but without stirrups i probably look average! |
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Post by Temüjin on Oct 9, 2008 21:00:39 GMT 3
Stirrups: There's no evidence that the Huns used stirrups. The first stirrups, as far as my reading on the subject could gather, were not in widespread use in Asia until about the 5th or 6th century. In my presentation at uni I said that the stirrup was a Central Asian innovation, but my lecturer disagreed with me. He said they were Chinese. So we ended up betting $10 on it =D. I did some reading, and according to what I read we were both wrong! The first stirrups were from India. They were small and only big enough to fit the big toe in (this is important because it means it was only used for getting onto the horse, and not for standing up for extra power during combat). From there the Chinese seem to have adopted it and converted it into the big whole-foot stirrup we know today. Eventually the idea moved on to Europe in about the 7th century. I would guess because of the time frame that the idea reached Europe because of the migrations of the Avars westwards, but it's just a guess. As far as the Sarmatians having stirrups, it's the first I've heard of it (doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong though; i'm not an expert heh). And anyway... stirrups on short Hunnish horses is not entirely necessary anyway. 1) The horses are short so they're easier to get up on than the tall Roman-type horses and 2) most of the time you would've been shooting your bow, so you don't need the extra power for lance work and so on. well the stirrup issue is always a popular topic . what we talk about here are iron stirrups, because those would be the only ones preserved. the toe-stirrup from India (not neccesarily invented in India) didn't influenced other stirrup developemnts elsewhere. the other one in the later period we talk about was found in India and taken soem factros into account i woudl assume it was NOT invented by "China" (a contemproary Chinese dynasty. China has this theme going on, which is popular also in western countries, that they invented everyhting first. either way, neighbouring Steppe people were not idiots just because they didn't lived in fancy cities, on the contrary most cavalry developments in warfare originate from the Steppe but few people are aware of this. also, why would China, which does hardly rely on cavalry, nor has significant breedign grounds (which used to be a porblem for them), invent something like a stirrup. most likely the stirrup was imported from Steppe-originated dynasties. as for western europe, it seems the avars broguth the iron stirrup with them which was ultimately adopted by the Byzantines. it is not known if wooden (or other materiel like leather thongs) were used before that. both chariots and Kurgan hypothesis are somewhat connected. if we ignore the depiction of the Sumerian mule-drawn cart, the first depiction of an actual war-chariot is from modern Kazakhstan. actually some recent hypotheses about Sumerians say that Sumerians themselves didn't built up Mesopotamian culture but were originally invaders thesmelves that took over an already existing settled culture. chariots are miltiarically of limited usage, they heavily depend on terrain and protection from infantry (which the Greeks eventually developed as primary arm to the phalanx) you can basically just charge all-out with them, like with heavy quadrigas with scythes, or the typcial smaller egyptian or celtic chariot which is used as a fast platform to throw javelins or shoot arrows. of course pure cavalry is superior to chariots but horse domestication didn't happenen in a day. i have to disagree with your description of the Catalaunian Fields and the issue of horses. from later Steppe Nomads (like Hungarians) we know that they had no infantry. one of the main sources of income of Steppe Nomads is raiding and no one raided Europe more than the Hungarians. you can only do that if you have the horses whcih are needed for speed and mobility. also taken into account the general (social) importance of a horse for the warrior as well as the nature of the Hun Empire and comparing to other Steppe empires, we can safely say that the Huns had no form of native infantry. besides most of the Huns Germanic allies would have already fought on foot. it is rather more likely that they've reduced the number of horses per men than allow some of their fellows to fight on foot or foudn another way of retaining an as high number as possible of mounted warriors. as for the battle itself, there are enough hints that suggest that the battle was either inconclusive or at least a phyrric victory for the Romans at best. first of all, both sides relied for this battle heavily on each others Germanic allies, so the battle was mostly fought between the German tribes and the Romans and Huns thesmelves were not heavily involved at all. also the death of one of the Romans allies chiefs is an indication that the Roman coalition suffered heavily at the hands of the Hun confederacy. another indicator is Attilas later invasion of Northern Italy which happened unchecked by Roman forces, that tells us two things: the Huns still had the strenght (incl. manpower) to conduct a major raid, and secondly, that the Romans must have suffered enough casualties so that they couldn't fight another battle. |
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 9, 2008 22:19:11 GMT 3
Good points indeed |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 10, 2008 2:54:17 GMT 3
I know that Atilla and the Romans both used large amounts of Germanic infantry, and this is probably more evidence for the ecological idea. Because the Huns were able to field fewer horses, they were forced to rely militarily on infantrymen. Either they had to have less horses per man, or less men on horses Also, despite the fact that the battle was a devastating attrition for both armies, it should really be considered as a Roman victory. Up until then, Atilla's armies had for all intents and purposes been unstoppable, and it put the Huns in flight back to Eastern Europe. As for the morale of the situation, (I remember reading a while ago but I might be remembering wrong) Atilla himself became heart-sick shortly after the battle. But anyway, you're perfectly within your rights to disagree . I like the idea though. As for the Chinese stirrups thing, the reason people say the Chinese invented the stirrup is not because people like to think the Chinese invented everything, but because they have the first reference of it. I don't think it's likely that the stirrup was a steppe invention. If that's the case, then why is it that the first evidence we have of it being used by steppe peoples is with the Avars in the 7th century, whereas there is evidence of it being used by the Chinese in the B.C. centuries? (The evidence for the Chinese stirrup is a depiction on a tomb which shows a horse and stirrup, dated to around 300B.C. |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 10, 2008 2:54:44 GMT 3
Can anyone tell us about the role of horses at the Battle of Ain Jalut?
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 10, 2008 15:32:37 GMT 3
Yes, I think our Temüjin Yabghu is right in saying that the battle was a "Pyrrhic victory" for the Romans. I didn't know that Do you have any more details? |
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Post by keaganjoelbrewer on Oct 11, 2008 12:50:17 GMT 3
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Post by H. İhsan Erkoç on Oct 11, 2008 14:40:28 GMT 3
Ah ok ;D I know this one ;D
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The Romans were familiar with stirrups and lancers they were even getting used to mounted archers and many auxiliary units not only rode into battle but also carried composite bows. However heavily armoured forerunners to the knights were a new predicament altoghether!
.
. So if you can only have 150,000 horses then either of two things has to happen. Either you have less horses per man or less men. You can only field an army of 15,000 men altogether with 10 horses per man. The Huns had heaps of horses per man so they could cycle them during the battle when the horse got tired (10 per man is actually quite low). And if you have less horses and more men on foot (as is what happened at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields where Atilla was defeated), then your army is just like any old army, and loses the speciality of steppe warfare. The Romans and the Huns had very similar armies at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and it's no surprise that the Romans beat the crap out of Atilla; they'd been using armies like that for hundreds of years, and knew what to do with them, as well as the fact that they probably had better armour and weaponry. 
