How do you keep Calvary from mating?

[Onasander]

This came up just now in conversing with the person helping me translate a old latin text...

 

So you have a group of Calvary, horse with riders mounted ontop.... and your sitting there waiting for your buggle call, doing nothing, and the steed your on.... starts getting randy.... and is very interested in the female horse infront of you.... and it too has a rider mounted on it.... so your horse decides, hey.... why not, and moves forward, and leaps up to mount the horse infront of it.... to both riders get tossed off, with likely injury.

 

Then the other horses see this, and they are bored as hell waiting, and think this is a great time for nookie too, and so start pairing off.

 

Pretty soon, the entire Calvary force is in the mud, trying to stand back up.... horses left and right naying, and just at that point, the enemy Calvary shows up, in complete shock at the sight, and can't help but laugh because this now dismounted Calvary force didn't know the secret of X.

 

So... what is X? I know the Romans always suffered from a shortage of horses.... but the individual Calvary men had to supply their own... so it was likely costly and erratic to breed them consistently till the Byxantine era. That's assuming they castrated.

 

I can't ready think of what else. Stick a painful condom sock on them, weigh it down with a heavy weight so it bounces around like a mace when the horse runs....

 

Doesn't seem to me any old command to the horse would prevent it from embarking on this biological function.... when it's time, it's time.

[caldrail]

Basic control of horses, although in most cases armies tended to prefer either mares (for obedience) or stallions (for spirit). There was a case during the Crusads where the male horses of the knights took a fancy tothe female horses of the turks during a confrontation. Bizarre I know, but it certainly spooked the Turks.

Edited October 1, 2014 by caldrail

[Aurelia]

There was a case during the Crusads where the male horses of the knights took a fancy tothe female horses of the turks during a confrontation. Bizarre I know, but it certainly spooked the Turks.

 

Haha, oh my, that must have been awkward...   

[Onasander]

It would seem then logically, male horses would be a better choice, as you can breed all the female horses in the rear (rear of the theater of war, in safety, not their actual rear which would be counter productive) with the male survivors, be they few or many. You would think the turks, descended from the steppe would of grasped this, but from what you say, they chose female horses.

 

Plus.... it would be a interesting excuse for a knight to wiggle out of battle, purposely knocking up all his female horses, if he only owns female horses, a few months before campaign season..... has a good excuse why he can't go to war, as his every horse has a obvious bun in the oven. Oh well....

[caldrail]

it's not a matter of logic. Stallions are braver, whilst mares are easier to control and more obedient. it's a question of wich aspect you prefer. Typically the west has preferred the former (it's more macho), whilst the east preferred the latter (it's more sensible).

[Onasander]

It is a matter of logic if your a king wanting to insure you have a steady supply of war horses whose breeding isn't interrupted by battlefield losses.

 

I know absolutely nothing about how the british bred their horses, but imagine how many knights they lost charging scottish spear over they years, in some battles quite a few.

 

It be a matter of logic to insure female, breeding horses didn't potentially get massacred in potential loses.

 

Yould have a quicker rebound in fielding a new calvary force, good quality steeds, increasingly lower quality knights, but that can be fixed with training. Horses, hard to get though if you rapidly deplete your stock.

[caldrail]

 

 

matter of logic if your a king wanting to insure you have a steady supply of war horses whose breeding isn't interrupted by battlefield losses.

The supply of horses was almost always a commercial transaction (or requsition of available stocks) and over hisotry it's generally only the last few hundrd years when the onus for supplying a horse changed from the individual warrior to the organisation he fights for.

 

absolutely nothing about how the british bred their horses, but imagine how many knights they lost charging scottish spear over they years, in some battles quite a few.

Rather less than you imagine, I would say. The sources left to us don't often mention how lots of horses were killed -  they were valuable assets to either side - and for that matter, however gung ho a knight wasn't so daft to charge ranks of spears head on. Okay, there a few instances where such behaviour is recorded, but it's also true it's recorded in the light of folly and loss. Mostly horses aren;t too happy at piling into masses of men armed with sharp pointy things. Horses aren't robots. Obedient, and trained for battle perhaps, but still basically a skittish herd grazing animal with an inherent instinct of running away from danger.

 

matter of logic to insure female, breeding horses didn't potentially get massacred in potential loses.

If we're going to be logical, having lots of mares and no stallions to breed with them is not going to produce lots of horses. Basic biology.

 

Horses, hard to get though if you rapidly deplete your stock.

Obvious, but true.

[Onasander]

You can breed with fewer males a larger community of females. Males don't give birth after long gestation, we.... um, ejaculate. And can do that, alot. Each female can get a load. Babies born.

 

Now.... if you have a lot of males, and few females, different issue. Yes, you'll have potentially semen by the wheelbarrow, easily enough to go around.... but only so many surviving female horses to receive.

 

Hence why it's much wiser long run, to use male vs female horses in battle. If you use mixed male and female grouping of horses, they may very well "screw you over" in battle, in a way you noted the crusander horses getting frisky with the turks.

 

But if your going to choose just one, seems better males in battle in terms of regulating long term breeding success of your horses.

 

It could be a actual regulation, or a verbal request that was met with common sense by the knights.

 

If only males or female horses were used, and especially in the case of males (genetic bottleneck as just described) then we should see a explosion of traits being bred intothese turkish and western war horses.

[caldrail]

It ought to be noted that the First Crusade was one instance where the loss of horses was recorded. The trials of the long march through Anatolia reduced the cavalry either to riding donkeys procured locally or to fighting on foot. Not very appealing to a medieval knight, but it was 'gods work', after all. Ahem.

[Onasander]

So, assuming the knights in the west generically preferred males, and the Turks with the infinite wisdom of the steppe females (I'm shaky about this generalization, and even more shaky about my next), could a underlining mechanical reason for the Ottomans Success after the fall of Constantinople of been they more or less ditched their medieval calvary model, of using females in conbat, with diminishing generational returns if kept in constant warfare.... and instead put more emphasis on their Janissary infantry, than Calvary?

 

No longer dependent on a obviously inferior method of equine reproduction, against a enemy horse oriented culture that.... however politically fragmented it was, was none the less able to field horses quicker, held the supremacy against them using infantry, until western powers sufficiently developed field fortifications capable of razing down ottoman infantry assaults, and develop their own infantry esprite on near equal fanatical grounds.

[caldrail]

Not really. It was more about prevailing strengths and strategies. The idea that a war or even a societal struggle is something that ultimately relied on one factor is usually the stuff of sensationalist tv documentaries. History tends to be more complex in reality, because as much as one factor might be important, there are others in the wings waiting to be, and often factors are ignored because one is more popular in hindsifght.

[Onasander]

Not true, the general balance of war swings away from innovative inbalance, after the sides eventually acclimate, adapt, and mimic each others tactics and weaponry. The two sides increasingly look and fight the same. This can take centuries, but it clearly happens.

 

In such wars, the concepts underlining strategy become a universally shared philosophical matrix, and the tactics well known to either side that the other is expected to take. Deposition of terrain often is the crucial aspect in such wars, as opposing commanders are equally competent and want to reduce their risk factors if the blunder. But rarely are such armies completely uniform. Subtle differences in doctrine and tradition, and administration can keep a side perpetually playing the defensive without recognizing why, much less the how of fixing it's "What and Where" issues, and the operational supports that make such considerations happen.

 

The Ottomans did have centuries of near parity against Byzantine and East European powers, and similarly armed western powers. They made advances, but it was always slow. Then they started making massive advances, and the techniques they used to get to their end game backfired, leading to centuries of reversal.

 

Sounds mechanical to me. Just not (likely) of the exact nature of this ptopic. I honestly don't know if there really was this sexual asymmetry for medieval horses.... or if that alone was the root function that caused this realignment.