Byzantine troops depended heavily on mounted archers, who also carried spears and a sword. They could use lassos, as could other Eastern cavalrymen, and they occasionally used them as weapons. Byzantine cavalrymen fought in a unit and were trained to stay together in ranks. They were a fighting unit, not individual knights.
The western Germanic tribes—the Franks and Anglo-Saxons—had no tradition of fighting on horseback. The eastern Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Lombards did, but they did not combine cavalry with bows. Avars, Turks, Mongols, and Magyars, invaders from Asia, all rode small horses and were able to shoot arrows on horseback.
The first Muslim armies were cavalry and rode both camels and horses. Some did not use saddles, and they did not adopt stirrups at first. By the ninth century, after taking over Byzantine and Persian territories, they were using both wooden and iron stirrups. They fought with bows, but also with long spears. Arab horses were famous for their small size and great speed. The Arabs called them Faras and kept their breeding separate from the Barb horses of North Africa. The Muslim conquest of Spain was mostly carried out by North African Berbers commanded by Arab generals. They brought their Barb horses and also used the existing strains of horses in Spain, now called the Andalusian breed. They were larger than true Arab horses. Muslim emirs and caliphs in Spain used selective breeding to blend Spanish and North African horses.
After Charles Martel’s heavy infantry defeated Arab cavalry at the Battle of Poitiers, the Franks began to use mounted warriors. The Avars, invading from the East, were defeated in 976, and the Franks adopted their use of stirrups. They did not develop methods of horseback archery and instead trained to charge with lances and fight with swords on horseback. Their horses may have been mostly purchased from Spain, since later Charlemagne sent “Spanish” horses to the caliph of Baghdad as a gift.
The Franks also learned to hunt on horseback. Charlemagne spent many hours on horses every day, both hunting and training for war. He required horses as part of the taxation of his nobles; his royal farms carried out breeding programs. Each stallion had a small herd of mares, but they were rotated out to other herds to prevent inbreeding. Inferior horses spread into civil society as riding horses and packhorses. Unlike later Christian Europeans, the Franks had no taboo against eating old horses.
More horse-based invaders came into Europe. Magyars from Hungary and Mongols from central Asia both used mounted warriors exclusively. They traveled in horse-drawn wagons and lived in tents. Their ponies foraged on grass and did not need extra provisions, so both the Magyars and the Mongols could travel faster than Frankish armies. Their ponies knew how to dig for grass under the snow, while European horses did not. However, their style of horse warfare was better suited to the flat grasslands of central Asia. Western Europe was forested and did not have as much foraging pasturage. Even without military defeat, their onrush was slowed because their horses could not graze as they were used to once they left Asia.
Henry of Saxony became king of Germany in 919, during the invasions of the Magyars. He built walled towns and trained a cavalry force that was able to stop the invasion. The Magyars settled down as horse-breeders in Hungary. The new Christian kingdom of Hungary continued to use light cavalry with mounted archers, although they also adopted Western Europe’s technology of heavy mounted knights. Hungary’s horse ways were no longer distinctively Asian.
During the 10th and 11th centuries, some Norman knights traveled to Spain and fought against the Muslim armies as part of the Christian effort to reconquer the peninsula. Some brought back Spanish stallions and used them to improve Norman horses. By the 11th century, Normans were expert cavalry warriors. When the Normans invaded Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, they transported about 2,000 horses in open boats across the English Channel. The Anglo-Saxons had horses, but they only used them for travel. They fought on foot, using a shield wall. At first, they were able to withstand the Norman cavalry charge, but their shield wall broke after several charges and retreats, and the Norman mounted soldiers ran them down. From that time, mounted warfare was dominant in Europe until the era of gunpowder.
The chief use for heavy warhorses was the chevauchée, a mass charge by many knights in a line. Saddles for this tactic had rigid walls and essentially locked the knight onto the horse’s back. The knight held a lance tucked under his arm, reaching well in front of the horse. He could also fight with his sword on horseback, but his lance was his primary weapon. The horse was trained to charge into danger and to stop and turn quickly.
During the 12th century, selective breeding by kings and other wealthy lords sought to create the best kind of warhorse. While size was an object, overall strength mattered more. Once knights had been trained and armed for horseback fighting, they were dependent on their mounts. If the horses tired or could not carry them, they were more likely to be killed out from under them, and a knight without a horse was not an effective fighter. A knight whose leg was trapped by a fallen horse had to surrender.
In spite of selective breeding for size, knights’ horses were not large until the 14th century. Most warhorses whose skeletons have been examined were not taller than 14 or 15 hands. Modern racehorses are usually taller than 15 hands, and modern draft horses are about 18 hands tall. A typical 14th-century knight stood shoulder to shoulder with his horse.
However, by the late Middle Ages, there was a distinctive type of horse—the destrier, or “great horse”—for jousting. These horses were not large by modern standards, but they were heavy and tall by medieval measure. They were 15 or 16 hands, and they were heavily muscled so that they could carry a great deal of weight for their size. Horses were expected to carry not only their rider and his armor, but also their own armor. First it was thick leather padding for the horse’s chest and head, and then steel plates. The armor and the padded drapery, decorated with heraldic designs, were called a caparison. The increase in padded horse armor then drove spurs to greater size, since a horse protected from lances was also protected from his own rider’s spurs.
Knights rode on palfreys or coursers to travel and had their destriers led to spare their strength. Coursers were faster than warhorses, and they could be mares or gelded horses. Destriers were always stallions, and they were fiery in temper and fantastically expensive compared to lesser horses. A warhorse could cost more than a year’s income, but the horse for a servant, or for an archer to ride on to move about from battle to battle, might cost less than a tenth of a warhorse.
The Crusaders were heavily dependent on horses, both for travel and for fighting. They shipped the horses in special transport ships that could carry between 30 and 100 horses. The ship voyage across the Mediterranean, which lasted more than two months, had to be broken into stages so the horses could get fresh air and exercise on islands. Once in Palestine, the horses had to be brought back to full strength after so much inactivity. When they were injured or died in battle, it was difficult for the knights to replace them, and some knights had to ride mules.
Crusading orders of knights like the Templars kept large stables of horses, with all the supplies needed: farriers, harness makers, grooms, and large supplies of hay and water. In addition to their destriers, Templars needed palfreys to ride while traveling and rounceys for the servants or squires who led the warhorses. All war undertakings required workhorses to carry equipment and supplies. Crusaders were in constant need of buying replacement horses in order to remain effective in hostile territory. They began to use Arabian horses and mules more than the heavy Norman horses they had brought with them. Food and water shortages killed many horses during campaigns and sieges. It was a prolonged struggle to maintain a Northern European war style in the Holy Land.