Cavalry provided the main strike force of all fourteenth-century armies, and riding skills were held in high esteem throughout the world. European armies relied heavily on the devastating impact of armored knights on their massive chargers; man and beast fought as a single unit, and if the knight was unfortunate enough to be unhorsed, the encumbrance of his equipment made him easy to capture. In contrast, the tactics of the armies of the Middle East and especially of central Asia, where the horses were smaller, sturdier, and swifter, were determined primarily by the speed and mobility of their cavalry.
In times of peace, hunting on horseback—with spear, sword, bow and arrows, or birds of prey—provided ideal practice in horsemanship. Throughout the countries of Asia, such sport was enjoyed by all ranks of
Society; in European countries, however, where horses were less common and a knight was customarily expected to maintain a team of two or more mounts, it was almost exclusively a pursuit of the aristocratic classes. The richly decorated saddles and harnesses with which wealthy knights furnished their mounts testified to the horses' importance both as status symbols and as accessories of war.
Opposing teams of polo players are shown in action in this fourteenth-century Persian miniature.
Polo probably originated in Persia, where it provided ideal training for the light-cavalry warfare of the Middle East.
Painted in Chinese style by a Persian or Turkish Muslim artist, a horseman bears a bird of prey aloft on his gloved hand. Hawking from horseback was a favorite pastime of warrior elites in all Islamic lands.
In a miniature from a French treatise on hunting written in the fourteenth century, a noble is shown in pursuit of a wolf that has threatened the flocks of his peasants. As well as providing sport, hunting served to suppress wild animals and to supply game for the table.
In scenes from fourteenth-century manuscripts, an English archer strings a longbow (left) by bracing it against his foot, and a crossbowman (far left) takes aim at a bird. To preserve the tension in the wood, the longbow was kept unstrung when not in use. The string of the crossbow was drawn back to a retaining catch with an iron hook, seen here in the crossbowman's belt.
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A late-thirteenth-century Japanese scroll painting depicts mounted warriors at target practice. Japanese bows, made partly of bamboo and about seven feet long, were so designed that the arrows were loosed "off-center" from a point in the lower half of the bow. Accuracy demanded great skill and years of practice; unlike the English longbow, however, these bows could be used from horseback.
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The principal long-distance weapons in the Middle Ages were bows and arrows. In Europe, where the bow was an infantry rather than a cavalry weapon, there was an aristocratic prejudice against archery, but elsewhere this sport was widely practiced by both the nobility and those of lesser rank.
One of the simplest types of bow was the English longbow, which was made from a single piece of wood about the span of a man's height and had a range of almost 1,000 feet; variations of the longbow were used throughout Europe, as well as in Africa and India. More complex was the Asiatic composite bow made of laminated wood, sinew, and horn or bone; short enough to be used from horseback, this was one of the main cavalry weapons of the armies of the Ottomans and Tamerlane.
The steel crossbows widely used in con
Tinental Europe had a greater range than the standard wooden bow, but their shooting rate was slower due to the more awkward method of drawing the bowstring. In several Islamic countries during the fourteenth century, the ordinary bow was turned into a form of crossbow by turning it on its side and shooting short arrows along a grooved piece of wood held against the apex of the curve.
A wild deer wounded by arrows flees from a Persian prince in these silhouetted details from a fourteenth-century manuscript. Seated on a high saddle, the prince is using a short, composite bow of the type first developed in central Asia, where it was employed to deadly effect by the Mongols.
A miniature from a fourteenth-century Egyptian cavalry training manual shows a Mamiuk rider charging a target. He grips his lance in the twohanded manner common to the Middle East.
One of the earliest and simplest of weapons, the spear was used in medieval warfare by both cavalry and infantry in many forms, ranging from the heavy twenty-foot-long pike used by European foot soldiers to the light javelins hurled by Mongol horsemen. Each weapon required specific skills to master its handling, and different exercises were devised to test a soldier's strength, balance, and accuracy.
At the most basic level, these exercises could be played as games by children with pointed sticks. But at their most elaborate, they demanded all the accouterments of war, and the occasions of their practice became popular spectacles.
In European countries, tournaments might often last as long as a week; they included feasting, pageantry, and a variety of mock combats, the most spectacular of which was jousting between mounted knights armed with lances and decked out in elaborate armor.
In Egypt and other Islamic countries, where more emphasis was placed on teamwork and coordination than on individual valor, enormous stadiums were constructed, in which massed squadrons of horsemen performed disciplined cavalry maneuvers in front of crowds of spectators.
Lousling from boats, competitors armed with lances attempt to hurl each other into the water while maintaining their own balance. This sport, here shown in a miniature from a fourteenth-century English manuscript, was especially popular in Venice.
To a fanfare, armored knights charge each other in a joust. The triplepointed lances were used only in tournaments, where the aim was to unhorse an opponent rather than inflict injury. The heavy helmets shown in this fourteenth-century illustration were by then redundant in warfare.
World History
