About Saddles And Stirrups.

[Lacertus]

I suggest that saddles started to use in Roman cavalry at end of 1 BC. They were taken from celts.

 

So, but when did stirrups begin to apply? The heavy cavalry should use them.

 

What did they come from?

[skel]

saddles were taken from the celts????

 

i didnt know celts had saddles before rome did... wasnt it the eastern culturs that brought them into roman military? heck, the scythians had stirrups and saddles before the romans did... but they were in the east.

[Carpe Jugulum]

the roman saddle is from the spainish celts, the romans didnt need striups because the saddle has special grips to keep you in the sadle, the huns where the first cavalry in western europe to use the striiup

[sonic]

the roman saddle is from the spainish celts, the romans didnt need striups because the saddle has special grips to keep you in the sadle, the huns where the first cavalry in western europe to use the striiup

 

 

The Huns did not use the metal strrup. The first people to use metal stirrups in the West - that we currently know of - are the Avars. It was introduced into Byzantium and then the West in the 6th/7th centuries. A form of leather stirrup may have been in use earlier, but they don't survive in the ground except under extreme conditions (eg. waterlogged, frozen etc), so we don't know when or where they were used.

 

The stirrup only really became common in the West much later, possibly in the 8th or 9th centuries. The Roman saddle had four horns which held the rider in place: according to those who have reconstructed one and ridden horses using it, such as Peter Connolly, the only way to fall out of these saddles is to jump. Stirrups are really only useful for mounting and dismounting if your saddle is designed correctly.

[Hadrian Caesar]

Stirrups are really only useful for mounting and dismounting if your saddle is designed correctly.

 

It offers a few more advantages.

 

As you're bobbing about at the trot, it's very easy to slide off to the left or right. The saddle elliminates the possibity of falling off to either side by giving you two footholds.

 

In battle, the stirrups were also a real help in melees. The trooper was constantly swinging his arm about to parry sword blows, some of which were enough to unhorse inexperienced fighters - even with the use stirrups.

 

This advantage of stability must have been even greater in ancient battles, where shields were equally used to absorb blows - most of which didn't just glance off and away, as was so often the case with sabre parries.

 

What's more is that by now being able to stand up in the saddle, mounted bowmen could wield larger bows than ever before - an asset with which stirrup-employing nomads must have terrified their enemies.

[DecimusCaesar]

The Huns did not have a metal stirrup - although John Mann, authour of a biography on Attila, proposes that the Huns might have used rope as a stirrup. Using a rope tied around the big toe as a type of stirrup had been in use in India during the first century BC. It is puzzling therefore that the idea never took off.

 

Whether the Huns actually used the rope stirrup is open to interpretation, although many historians and archaeologists would argue that they didn't. It reminds me that some people hypothesised that the Goths won the battle of Adrianople because the Gothic cavalry made use of stirrups. This idea was quickly proven to be false.

[Gaius Octavius]

The stirrups added balance to cavalry.

[longshotgene]

The stirrup didn't take root until the time of Charlemagne. He adopted the use of it from the eastern cultures. That is what allowed his heavy cavalry to be so destructive, which gave way to his freeing of France.

[Rameses the Great]

The stirrup was invented in India around circa 1 AD? So it would make sense that the Huns had stirrups by the virtue of being in Asia, adopting the invetntion.