Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers. I'm flying solo again.

So it's Murray's Ancient Warfare Answers. Your 10-minute ancient warfare fix for the week.

We have a question from Lubosh coming up at a minute. You can ask us a question. You can send us an email.

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different ways. Lovely. Now the question we have

is about cavalry charges. Lubosch asks, how can we imagine cavalry battles and mostly charges?

We hear that, for example, Alexander charged with his companions into enemy formations. I ask that

because stirrups were not invented and I presume that the stability of the

horse rider would not be very stable. So I wouldn't expect the charges like the knights in the

medieval ages. And also how, for example, did the charge of light cavalry look? For example,

the new midians, they had very little or no armor. Did they dismount?

So the first thing to establish, of course, is that the ancient saddles, whether it be the four-horn saddle or the two-horns saddle that we have from the Near East that survive do allow experienced cavalry riders to charge home. that you can lean into one of those horns,

and you will be held on to the back of the horse, even without stirrups.

So charging home is something that an experienced horse rider can do even without stirrups.

Would they need to charge home?

This is the question.

And when we think of charging home, of course, we're thinking of heavy cavalry charging a perceivably solid wall, which horses tend not to do unless they're very well

trained.

And, you know, again, you find it talked about for the Battle of Waterloo that the French

cavalry refused to charge the squares of the British infantry because they perceive them

to be solid. And the interesting thing, of course, is that most cavalry in the ancient world

...