But the paintings are what struck me, particularly the ones of the cuirassiers - heavy cavalry. They had bronze helmets and breastplates and crests on the helmets. It was quite a show as they rode past. In fact, we know this from primary sources because the French army went to war in 1914 with units of cuirassiers and we have photographs of the spectacle:
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| Image courtesy of Le Wik |
1914, a full century after Napoleon - but they look like nothing has changed. Machine guns, barbed wire, and trenches awaited but nothing quite captures just how clueless the General Staffs were of that fact.
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ReplyDeleteThey were obsolete the second guns became viable, I woulda thunk. Rob over at British Muzzleloaders on OyTube describes massed fire with Enfields and Martinis and I just can't see cavalry getting through a hail of lead like that.
ReplyDeleteI might even consider the argument that cavalry became obsolete at Agincourt.
30 years ago the reading of the Navy War College had to do with the failure of Europeans to understand rifles and trenches even though their observers were there throughout the Civil War and knew what was going to happen. Smart Europeans would have figured that out from Wellington's Line of Battle vs, the Napoleanic column.
ReplyDeleteAlways fighting the LAST war...
ReplyDeleteThere are some truly beautiful stills from 1914 showing the uniforms of 1914 in color. You see the lancers and the Zouaves and the French infantry to the point you get an idea of what the Civil war looked like.
ReplyDeleteThere are even movies showing German grenadiers, complete with the mitred caps and the swallow tailed coats.
Glen Filthie said...
They were obsolete the second guns became viable
You'd think so, but the smoothbore stopped little. SOP was to receive them on one's bayonets, as the Scots Guards did at the Loo.
Jefferson Davis, innovator that he was, showed that at Buena Vista. It was the filed barrel, not gunpowder, that made the difference. When he ordered the Mississippi Rifles to fire at the oncoming Jalisco Lancers, they were stopped dead in their tracks. First time aimed musketry stopped cavalry.
I might even consider the argument that cavalry became obsolete at Agincourt.
That was massed volleys, one after the other, similar to Thermopylae. You couldn't do that with muzzleloaders. Enfields and Martinis were breechloaders.
HMS Defiant said...
30 years ago the reading of the Navy War College had to do with the failure of Europeans to understand rifles and trenches even though their observers were there throughout the Civil War and knew what was going to happen.
Those "smart" Europeans called the Civil War "an affair between armed mobs".
Not real effective against cannon fire:
ReplyDeletehttps://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/antoine-fauveau-cuirass/
I don't think they were intended to be.
ReplyDeleteThe Euros thought cavalry should fight mounted, preferably against cavalry, so pistols, lances, sabers, and maybe carbines were the weapons the cuirass was intended to stop.
Personally, I think it was most for decoration, to evoke the knights of old, and to help them get laid.
All the Euro powers maintained units of cavalry. It might have made some sense in the East where the force to space ratio was low and roads were scarce. If the American CW1 didn't alert the generals, the Russo-Japanese War should have. WWI was pretty much the gold standard for cluelessness on all sides.
ReplyDeleteI met a young man who upon being asked his homeplace proudly stated,"Northern Virginia!"
ReplyDeleteI asked if he knew of the 43rd Battalion of the Virginia Cavalry?
At first he appeared to be puzzled, but then brightened and said, "No, but we aren't far from D.C."
If he only knew...
The all wer so without clue.
ReplyDelete