“My lord, this…this is?” Even before Alexander could begin his presentation, Grahtos blurted out flabbergasted, unable to hold back his surprise.
This was the first time he had seen a horse wearing armor and he felt his eyes being widened.
Alexander gave a light smile to the shaken cavalry commander as he then addressed all the men there, “My lords, please come forward. And let me show you all the modifications made to the new cavalry.”
And as the men closed the distance, Alexander first pointed to the D-shaped iron piece hanging down the belt of the saddle as he said, “As you can see we attached this new piece to the saddle. This allows the legs to be inserted into the metal pieces, which, as you will see later will improve the riders’ balance. I call it the stirrups.”
The military leaders all felt expectant at the promise as Alexander then moved on to the horseshoe, which Grahtos already knew of, but as the others did not, Alexander them get up to speed, claiming this invention would reduce maintenance costs.
But all those were appetizers in the eyes of the military commanders.
For there was still the elephant in the room, the horse armor, one which Alexander finally got to next.
“And finally this, the horse armor.” Alexander said as he patted the horse, saying, “It’s made of layers of linen sewn together, the same as our soldiers wear. But mail can also be used for more protections.”
After the succinct introduction, Alexander then proceeded to give his thoughts on the reason for their deployment.
“I’m sure that many of you have questions on why horses need to be armored.” Alexander spoke the question on everyone’s mind, as he began, “So let me explain.”
“Currently cavalry on the battlefield is mainly used as skirmishers. They zoom around the battlefield throwing javelins and occasionally getting lucky strikes, thus generally harassing the enemy in formation with their main objective on the battlefield being to try and outflank the enemy and strike the rear, thus breaking the army.” Alexander gave the primary way a cavalry force was used.
And then added the secondary say, “Or they can be used when the enemy starts routing, where they can then start picking off the slow, out-of-formation defenseless peasants and hunt them down, thus decimating the army.”
Contrary to popular belief, in most battles, very few soldiers died during the actual battle.
In fact, the actual deaths occurred during the retreating or running away phase where the soldiers would be caught out of formation and thus could be attacked from all sides.
And it was in those circumstances that cavalry would shine, making sure the enemy could not live to fight another day, as Alexander did with Amenheraft.
Saying this Alexander paused a bit to look around, before continuing, “And I know the reason for this. I know why horses are not massed and charged into massed phalanx formations. Because those phalanxes have huge spears that would make nice horse skewers.”
This was the reason Beihrut could hold off for so long against the Sycarian cavalry.
They simply needed to hold on to their spears firmly to scare off any charge, their shields packed close to their body to withstand the javelins raining down and then work hard to prevent the cavalry from outflanking them and reaching the rear of Amenheraft’s army.
“But things have changed now,” Alexander then claimed raising his right fist before continuing, “Because the phalanx is no longer the be-all-end-all of all infantry tactics. That distinction will soon belong to the legionary.”
“But our legionary equipped with only swords and short spears and will be particularly vulnerable to enemy cavalry. And we will need our own cavalry to deal with that.” His octaves turned slow and leading as he said so.
“So we will need horsemen whose job will be not to engage enemy infantry, but defend our legion from other cavalries. And to do that, to withstand enemy javelin throws and strike back, our men and horse will need to be armored.” Alexander formed a new role for his cavalry, one where the horses would hang back and protect the infantry, while the latter did the heavy lifting of actually defeating the enemy.
And he finished by saying, “And since the cavalry will remain close to the infantry, the loss of speed and agility that comes with the extra weight of the armor can be negated.”
Alexander looked for confirmation of his idea as he finished, feeling his armchair generaling to be quite solid.
“Hmmmm,” Grahtos only hummed, seemingly like he wanted to say something but was holding off on it.
And even after Alexander sent him multiple looks to urge him to speak his mind, the very experienced cavalry rider did not say anything
But Alexander could clearly see much of the enthusiasm Grahtos had a bit prior was gone.
It seemed Grahtos found the idea problematic but was still trying to articulate all the reasons.
Grahtos’s main concern was that the lightly armored opposing cavalrymen would be able to perform many hit and runs on them while the weighed down by armor Zanzan riders would be unable to respond, and thus be slowly worn down and picked off.
But he did not argue this point right away because he did not know just how much the new armor would affect mobility without testing it first.
Maybe the horses would be able to sprint full speed even with the heavy armor, just over a shorter distance and thus engage the enemy before they could run away.
Seeing his cavalry commander busy evaluating the new force deployment in his head, Alexander did not poke him further.
He instead proceeded to address the new weaponry.
Weaponry that addressed much of Grahtos’s concerns.
“Now, let me show you how the rider and his equipment have changed,” Alexander announced as he was then handed over a crossbow from one of the riders.
He showcased this new arm, saying, “I’m sure my military commanders have already seen this new bow. And how it does not need to be pulled back like a traditional bow to be fired.”
“My lord, are you planning to use it on horseback!” This was Grahtos who hurriedly jumped into the conversation, his eyes excited.
When he had first seen the thing, he did contemplate using it on horseback.
The reason was obvious because horse archers were very, very annoying to deal with.
They could shoot infantry with volley after volley of arrow fire, but infantry could never shoot back without appearing out of formation which would give the chance for these mounted archers to switch to spears and finish them.
And this very effective tactic was used in Alexander’s previous life by Mongols who managed to form the largest continuous land empire using this.
Such techniques also existed in this world, and it was something that Grahtos had come across.
And he vividly remembered how frustrating one particular battle against a group of barbarians was for his cavalry group.
They were instructed to chase down a contingent of mounted archers but had failed that a few days of exhausting chase as the opponents would be nimble enough to outrun them and their
arrows could outrange Grahtos’s javelins, making closing the distance hard.
And after the encounter, it had made Grahtos want to form a mounted horse unit of his own, but found that the infantry of Thesos was too heavily arrowed for the smaller bows to penetrate, and more importantly, this skill needed years, if not a decade to develop.
The reason for the higher difficulty of shooting an arrow from horseback was obvious.
Because to shoot an arrow one had to do the following thing.
First, they need to get the horse steady, to minimize the arrow deviation due to the shaking.
This was usually done by controlling the horse with the feet, which without the stirrups was magnitudes harder.
Once the firing platform was readied, it was time to nock the arrow into the bow.
This was easier said than done as the rider needed to hold the bow and horse bridle with one hand, use his other hand to fetch the arrow from the quiver, and then carefully align the two with each other.
If one had not still fumbled until now, then came the challenge of drawing the bow which used not only the arm muscles but also the back.
So, by this point, the rider was doing five things simultaneously.
He was keeping his horse steady with his legs.
Keeping the horse in the right direction using the bridle.
Drawing the bow without letting the arrow or the bow slip from the hand in the process.
And then finally he would have to aim and most importantly shoot accurately.
All while making sure the horse did not bump with all the other horses who were doing the same thing as him
Oh! And keeping sure that the enemy did not fire back and hit you.
So six things.
This was hard. 𝒃𝒆𝒐𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝙘𝙤𝒎
The barbarians up north of Thesos could do it as they lived in the steeps with their horses, and it was their way of life.
But for Sycari or Cantagena, training a man for ten years and then risking losing him in battle was sensibly deemed too high a cost.
Which is why Grahtos had instantly thought of using the crossbow like that as soon as he saw the weapon.
But he soon had found a flaw with that too.
That reloading a crossbow was no easy feat.
And hence the eagerness when Alexander attempted to show how to use the crossbow from horseback.