Yup. They had lots of cavalry, but it was merely cavalry heavy conventional armies. Compare to Mongols and Huns.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
All cavalry armies of similar or greater size. That's the strategic mobility problem here, an army moves at the speed of its slowest element.
Its also telling that the terror of steppe horse archer hordes got mysteriously diminished around the same time crossbows and early firearms, both hard to use from horseback, even impossible in the heavier, high performance battlefield varieties, became common.
Yeah, longbowmen were a thing earlier on that could be a big problem for the horse archers, but in themselves, especially in the areas exposed to steppe hordes, they were rare and not something the rulers faced with the problem could just simply get as needed considering the training problem that crossbows and firearms didn't share.
If you want to know about why Mongol invasion of Hungary failed, I'd suggest reading this:
In 1241, Mongol armies invaded Poland and Hungary, and small reconnaissance forces even penetrated the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. The following year, the Mongols pulled out of Central Europe though they retained their hold on Russia, the Black
www.academia.edu
Fact that Mongol cavalry armies were as large as they were, and supplied themselves in nomadic way, caused them major problems in their European campaigns. In Hungary, Mongol armies began to starve in the winter without being able to achieve any lasting success - and that was in 1241 invasion. Invasion of 1285 was an outright disaster for the Mongols, and they got destroyed by combination of castle strategy, heavy cavalry and crossbowmen. Compare this to Hungarian campaigns of 15th century, where implementation of the
wagenburg meant that winter campaigning was not only possible, but
preferred.
But you are partly correct. Crossbows did significantly improve ability of foot armies to defend themselves from the horse archers - but horse archers were hardly a machine of death and despair even before introduction of crossbows. Roman armies successfully used foot archers - using
short bows, mind you - to repel both Parthian and Hunnic horse archers, as well as other horse archers. In fact, Romans never had issues facing horse archers: it was
cataphracts which were a major problem for them. Even Crassus, who was dumb enough to invade Parthia with
no archers of his own, will have successfully extracted his armies from Persia if it weren't for Persian cataphracts.
Problem facing steppe horsemen was never the fact that they were horse archers. Rather, it was the fact that they could appear and disappear at will, often faster than message of their appearance could travel. But any time steppe horsemen successfully
conquered something, that only happened after they acquired some infantry and siege engineers first. Hunnic armies which conquered Roman cities looked more like Roman armies of the time than anything else, and likewise, Mongol armies that conquered China were
literally just Chinese armies with added element of Mongol cavalry (40% of which were heavily armored cataphract-style cavalry and not your stereotypical horse archers).
en.wikipedia.org
Of course it was not common in general average of times of war and peace, as actually recruiting the levies took peasants away from farming, and so it was not a decision made lightly.
Nevertheless, anyone who wanted a big army had to bulk it up with peasant levies, most likely spear armed.
That is actually
only mostly wrong.
Yes, peasants were indeed conscripted into army. But that was never done lightly, and very rarely
en masse. Issue was simply logistics: army larger than some 10 000 - 25 000 was impossible to supply in the field without extensive logistical arrangements that were largely beyond the capability of a feudal kingdom. So why would you send ten thousand peasant mobsters if instead you could have ten thousand professional soldiers?
In fact, I would not be surprised if many of these examples were misinterpreted. For example, the
fyrd seems to have evolved over time, but for most of its existence, it was
not a general levy of peasantry. And some historians even doubt it ever was a general levy:
en.wikipedia.org
The persistent old belief that peasants and small farmers gathered to form a national army or fyrd is a strange delusion dreamt up by antiquarians in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries to justify universal military conscription.
In fact, I would suggest that so-called "peasant levy" was in fact similar to Hungarian
militia portalis. This is to say, yes, soldiers were
socially peasants and yes they were levied - so you
could call it a "peasant levy". BUT they were
not merely peasants taken from their fields for the campaign, they
were relatively well-equipped and they
were also well-trained - in short, professional soldiers in all but name.
This is how
militia portalis is described by Iosfalvi:
As well as appearing in person, all landowners, barons, and nobles were required to equip one (presumably mounted) archer from each group of 20 peasant plots. It has long been debated in Hungarian historiography whether the soldiers thus mustered – collectively known as the militia portalis – were peasants or noble retainers,29 but the aim of the measure seems to be clear. Although the decree's statement that the new institution would exist "only as long as the present war against the pagans would last"30 is generally taken to mean the forthcoming Turkish attack,31 the wording was in all probability deliberately vague. In fact, Sigismund may have hoped, through the regular mobilization of such archers, of whatever social origins, to create a semiprofessional light cavalry force with the ability both to stave off, and retaliate against, Turkish raids.32
in all regions subject to the Crown of Saint Stephen were required to either equip menatarms at the ratio of one per twelve peasant plots or give ten florins in lieu of each manatarms to the commissioners entrusted with the task of collecting both the money and the troops.
According to the same report, the decision of the previous diet (April 1464) about equipping one manatarms from each twelve tenant plots was confirmed, and the gathering of a huge army again envisaged. The Slavonian nobility was ordered to take up arms collectively and to equip other soldiers at the ratio of one to every twenty peasant plots.
Secondly, the so-called one-plot nobility, who were required to furnish annually armed horsemen at the ratio of one to every 36 plots "but are reported to have maintained none of these horsemen so far" were also ordered to pay per capita the 50 denarii of the first instalment.
Territories that have winters severe enough that they make wintering the horses a problem may be an even bigger slow down for such armies than castles, hard to say. It's quite telling that Mongols really made their name in more southern lands, while in more northern lands, they were down to raiding or having more conventionally fighting vassals do the conquering.
But they didn't. Mongols fared
even worse in southern Croatia than they did in Hungary, and were defeated by Crusaders and Mamluks in their only attempt to invade Levant.
In fact, Mamluks defeated Mongols in all battles except one, and heavily equipped Western European armies were nearly as successful against the Mongols as Mamluks were.
So while environmental conditions certainly played a part, they are hardly
the explanation for Mongols successes and failures.
Tell that to the mongols and most other lightly armored horse archers like the Parthians, all of which managed to combat the forces of much larger and theoretically more powerful empires.
Sorry, but that is just bullshit. Also, I would suggest that you try
reading the article before repeating historical lies that were literally
debunked in it. I am hardly in mind to repeat myself.
It is said that Romans lost Battle of Carrhae because their heavily armored legionaries were overwhelmed and slaughtered by Parthian horse archers. But none of that is true. In reality, horse archers were employed as a shaping force, pinning Romans into place – but decisive impact was made by Parthian cataphracts, that is, the heavily armored cavalry. Victory was a result of cooperation between horse archers and heavy cavalry; without heavy cavalry, horse archers alone will have been useless. Parthian horse archers forced the Romans to loosen the formation by skirmishing against them, which would make Romans vulnerable to a charge by Parthian heavy cataphracts. As Romans closed ranks to resist cataphracts, horse archers would resume skirmishing. Roman army, having no foot archers to counter horse archers and no cataphracts to counter Parthian cataphracts, was helpless. Parthian horse archers expended 1,6 – 2 million arrows in the battle.
But while Carrhae is used as an example of dominance of horse archers, it is in fact an outlier caused mostly by Crassus' incompetence. Romans proceeded to defeat Parthians under Cassius Longinus, Publius Ventidius, Corbulo, Trajan, Avidius Cassius and Septimus Severus. Cassius Longinus in fact defeated Osaces with the remnants of Crassus' army. Publius Ventidius defeated three Parthian armies and killed their best generals. Romans also sacked Ctesiphon itself numerous times. By 3rd century AD Romans, who until then had gotten by simply by adapting their infantry and hiring mercenaries, had inducted a sizable force of cataphracts into their army.
At Battle of Mohi in 1241, Mongol horse archers played relatively small role in the Mongol success. In fact, after having difficulties with the (very few) Hungarian crossbowmen, Mongol heavy cavalry forced the bridge, catching Hungarians in a pincer maneuver with other cavalry units that had earlier crossed the river upstream and downstream. Hungarians were heavily disadvantaged in terms of equipment, as their heaviest forces used leather and textile armor, while majority of forces had no armor at all – it wouldn't be until after the invasion that Hungarians would introduce heavy knightly cavalry. Despite that, main Mongol force was on the verge of defeat until Subotai outflanked Hungarian army. Most important point to take away here was that battle of Mohi was won by charge of Mongol heavy cavalry and was fought largely hand-to-hand. Mongols eventually had to leave Hungary as the very few stone castles present prevented them from making any progress.
At earlier battle of Legnica, horse archers played a more significant role, largely because Polish army didn't have enough foot archers to keep horse archers at distance, and most of Polish infantry had little or no armor and were thus vulnerable to horse archers. Western knights present in the battle were drawn away from support and destroyed by Mongol heavy cavalry in melee. And Mongol heavy cavalry of the time had lamellar armor which, while somewhat inferior in terms of coverage, offered better protection – especially against missile weapons but also against lances – than mail armor which was in use in Europe at the time.
Yes,
some horse archer armies were extraordinarily historically successful. So were some heavy infantry armies (e.g. Romans), some light infantry armies (e.g. Muslim Arabs), and some heavy cavalry armies (e.g.
Sassanids and
Mongols).
Parthians however got
pasted by Romans whenever the two fought properly. Until Parthians got replaced by Sassanids, Roman armies could take a stroll up to Ctesiphon as a weekend excursion. Reason why we see Parthians as this major horse-archery superpower is largely down to Crassus' stupidity - and even then, it was Parthian heavy cavalry that decided the Carrhae; horse archers were not irrelevant, but on their own, they will have achieved nothing.
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