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Horses are still used by the bundeswehr (German Army) today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.100.111 (talk) 04:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
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Why is the main picture of a horse that is not a warhorse? That seems silly to me. Azkm (talk) 00:33, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
What about this: http://i.imgur.com/tHIzdEc.jpg It's US civil war, so must be public domain. It's a good photo of a warhorse. Or what about one of these paintings: http://i.imgur.com/B2h3cnf.jpg http://i.imgur.com/QpN6QoY.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ow14Big.jpg All legal; all great; all showing horses in warfare.
The picture we have now is not even a re-enactment of a horse in warfare, it's a re-enactment of a sporting event. Azkm (talk) 01:23, 14 February 2013 (UTC) OK, I see from the archives that you've discussed changing that picture a lot. It seems like there was no progress because the "perfect" picture could not be agreed upon. Shouldn't we change the current picture, which is completely inappropriate, to one that is of a horse in warfare or a warhorse - even if it isn't perfect? Azkm (talk) 01:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
I love the first world war recruitment poster up there on the right. I think it would be perfect. Azkm (talk) 17:57, 16 February 2013 (UTC)
Comment Yes it's true that horses were used for things other than cavalry charges - but the priority is an arresting image, and you're much more likely to find one in cavalry than in towing a cart. Still, I'm open to the idea of one doing logistics, if the image is good enough. We need the image to be good quality for both composition and technically - the re-enactment photo fails the composition test, the RHA one is a much better photo of horses standing around. The key things horses brought to armies were a)mobility and b)mass. Just one horse wasn't much good to you, Richard III aside.
Finalists?Let's try a smaller gallery to narrow down the best. Let's place the ones that clearly meet all quality criteria here and see what works (i.e., horse facing straight or left, one or a few horses, big enough to be obviously a horse at size in article, etc...). I think there's wiggle room for era. Maybe we could budge on the color thing if there is a good WWI image that was an absolutely fantastic photo (wonder if we could prove one of those first ideas would pass Commons muster) I'll start with three I could live with: Montanabw(talk) 00:42, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
VOTE? Nominate your finalist in the small gallery above, and then vote on your top choice. (If better image added, you can change your vote!)
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_-_n._034_B_-_Venezia_-_Monumento_a_Bartolomeo_Colleoni.jpg)
I'd like to bring this article to up speed on Genghis Khan's Mongol horsemen. But before going on, I have to point out that there are 1,651 words devoted to European horsemanship, but just 154 words devoted to East Asian horsemanship, and a mere 113 words devoted to Central Asian horsemanship. Why is this? Were there less horses used in Asian warfare, or did the Asians have less wars? Why the different sized articles? According to Wikipedia's own article on systemic bias, "The size of [Wikipedia] articles is often based on the interest that English-speaking Wikipedians have in the subject (which to some extent is based on the involvement of their nations). For example, the article on the Second Congo War, the deadliest conflict in the past 60 years, is shorter than that on the Falklands War, with a death toll of under a thousand. Additionally, the amount of information available to researchers is disproportionately biased towards events involving more economically developed countries."
With this in mind, I suggest that the reason European horsemanship has over ten times as much coverage as the either of the Asian areas is that we as wiki editors are Westerners living in developed countries, not Asians living in third world countries (for example, nomadic steppe herders in Mongolia). Though understandable, such slanted coverage is not helpful in furthering Wikipedia's mission to make available the sum of human knowledge. To produce a balanced, consistent article, I propose that we list out all the information that is covered in the European section, then work to match the same level of detail in the two Asian sections. Otherwise, the European section should be shortened to 150 words for the sake of consistency, and the bulk of the information moved to a separate article devoted to the subject. It might be argued that we already have a separate article devoted to Horses in East Asian warfare. However, the counterpoint to this is that we also have a separate European article devoted to Horses in the Middle Ages. If it is appropriate to store the bulk of the E. Asian material in a separate article, then for the sake of consistent coverage, it is also appropriate to store the bulk of the European material in a separate article. Or, if we wish to retain 1,651 words of European coverage, then it is reasonable to expect that 1,651 words should be devoted to the Central and East Asian regions respectively.
One final point before starting--there is a bit of a muddle here as regards Central Asia vs. Eastern Asia. The Central Asia section discusses the Mongols, but Wiki assigns Mongolia to East Asia. (Confusingly, there are different ways of slicing up Asia; but I guess it's best just to stick with Wiki's way.) It would probably be a good idea to move all the Mongol information out of the C. Asian section and into the E. Asian section as part of the rewrite.
An overview of the information in the European section
1. The introduction to the European section describes types of horses and sizes ("The destrier, the courser, and the rouncey") and their sizes ("rarely exceeding 15.2 hands (62 inches, 157 cm)") and what it costs to keep them in varying terrain ("Heavy horses were logistically difficult to maintain and less adaptable to varied terrains."). By a similar token, the Middle Eastern and Sub-Saharan Africa sections also list breeds that were used in the war, including the Arabian, Barb, Turkoman, Basuto and Waler horses.
For the Mongol empire, the equivalent text would read: "Nomadic East Asian steppe warriors used the Mongol horse, a small breed averaging 12 - 14 hands. These horses were hardy, strong, easy to keep and adapted well to varying terrain."
2. The European section then goes on to describe the sexes of war horses ridden, describing why each type was chosen by that particular culture. So we learn that stallions were chosen because of natural aggression, or that mares were chosen was because they were less likely to whinny and give away the soldier's position.
The equivalent Eastern Asian section should provide the information that the Mongols rode mares, and that the reason they chose them was because fermented mares' milk was their favorite drink.
3. The European section describes the maneuvers that the European horsemen used during war ("The heavy cavalry charge, while it could be effective, was not a common occurrence."), and when they fought mounted or dismounted ("it was common for knights to dismount to fight,[134] while their horses were sent to the rear, kept ready for pursuit.").
The Eastern Asian section should note how each Mongol soldier had 2 - 4 extra horses that they used as remounts, and how this affected their strategies and tactics, i.e. 1.) it allowed them to make lightning strikes deep into the territory of enemies who mistakenly thought the Mongols were hundreds of miles away, 2.) it allowed them to pull off their signature feigned retreats, fleeing until the enemy was strung out and exhausted, then jumping onto fresh horses and turning on their foes. The section would also note that the Mongols never left their horses; they were an entirely mounted force and stayed that way.
4. The European section then goes on to discuss the uses of the horse in war games.
The E. Asian steppe warriors also used horse in war games, namely the asa, the great yearly hunt organized by the Khan in which riders on horseback would coordinate to round up herds of wild game on horseback, shooting arrows into the trapped herd. This was considered training for war, since the bulk of Mongol soldiers were horse archers.
5. Next follows a section on the modernization of the European knight, and the factors that changed the European military to light cavalry. It also mentions some of the types of armor they wore and weapons they carried.
Giving similar context to the C. Asian steppe nomads, it would be relevant to devote a paragraph to some of the types of units used by the Mongol military, i.e. the distribution of light and heavy cavalry and archers. Since the European section discusses what the professionalized European militaries looked like in some detail, it's probably worth devoting some space in the C. Asian section to explaining what the Mongol military looked like. Promotion was by merit rather than money or noble blood; they had Chinese artillery; they employed innovative battlefield signalling systems that allowed them to execute elaborate tactics, and they were organized on the decimal system with 10 soldiers under one commander, ten commanders under one upper commander, and so on until the level of generals. It would also be worth mentioning some of the key ways in which the Mongol soldiers differed from our European conception of the mounted cavalrymen: namely the fact that every single male citizen was considered a warrior rather than just the knights; that each soldier rode horses he had personally bred and raised from foals; that each warrior started riding at the age of 2--all of which paints a considerably different picture than the one we imagine when we think about a cavalryman's level of skill and his relationship which his war horse(s). So long as the European section is discussing armor and weapons, this would also be the place to bring up the Mongols' light, flexible lamellar armor/tack and their composite bow, which is considered superior to the English longbow in terms of force produced.
6. The European section next describes the use of horses as scouts ("prickers"). It also describes how horses were used in a logistical role, i.e. pulling carts of provisions.
The Mongols were also noted for using horses extensively in scouting the terrain before battle. However, their use of horses in a logistical support role differs considerably from our Western understanding, i.e. pulling carts loaded with food, weapons, supplies, etc. down a road serving for the supply line. For one thing, the Mongols didn't use supply lines; they just "lived off the land" as they marched. For another thing, the Mongols did not consider the logistical role of their horses to be limited to (say) pulling a cart laden with food--rather, a horse was walking food. Historical sources say that Mongols' favorite drink was fermented mare's milk, and their favorite meat was horse meat; they would even drink the blood of their horses in times of need. Westerners don't think, "Hey, my horse makes alcohol" or "I feel like horse steak for breakfast today." But an army marches on its stomach, and to the Mongols an unneeded horse was just as good as a cart filled with their favorite food. Likewise, the horses did not merely pull carts full of armor, rope, shoes, fuel for fire, or bowstrings; rather, the horses were turned into armor, rope, shoes, fuel, and bowstrings. The use of horses as foodstuffs and raw material is typical of the nomadic steppe people, who used every part of the horse just as the Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. The difference between the logistical role horses played in Europe in pulling provisions and the logistical role horses played in E. Asia as provisions deserves to be described. (And of course horses did pull carts and siege engines too.)
7. In the European Early Modern section, the article describes how cavalry were used in combination with artillery. It also describes the ways in which cavalrymen handled horses in order to use guns effectively ("Ever-more elaborate movements, such as wheeling and caracole, were developed to facilitate the use of firearms from horseback.")
The Mongols used Chinese artillery against opponents; they would fire a rolling barrage to weaken their enemy, then charge into their scattered ranks to finish them off. They also had various maneuvers to facilitate the use of compound bows from horseback: they could shoot both forward and backward while mounted, and also perfected the maneuver of hanging down behind their horse's body for protection while shooting under its chin. I don't consider these techniques to be less militarily significant than wheeling or caracole.
The new material as I've sketched it out thus far is about 800 words. Though still less than half the size of the European section, it should go a long way towards remedying the regional bias in this article. My hope is that new material will continue to be added so that the E. Asian section can become a truly excellent survey of mounted warfare in the entire East Asian region, not just Mongolia. This would include both archeological finds on the steppe from cultures other than the Mongols and written material from China, Korea et al.'s thousands of years of civilization. It would also describe the modernization of these respective countries' equine armies and the changing role that horses played in major East Asian conflicts up to the modern era. There is a long way to go before this article's coverage of East Asian horsemanship will be at at par with that of Europe, but we have to start somewhere. In the meantime, we will at least have coverage of the horsemen who conquered the largest contiguous land empire in history.
Thoughts?
- In concept, adding more to the Central/East Asia and related sections along with some cleanup is not a huge problem, though the article is not as unbalanced as you think , as we do have Horses in East Asian warfare, Mongol military tactics and organization and Nomadic empire where a lot more detail could - and does - go. (Also Horse artillery, light cavalry, heavy cavalry and others) We could also pop in material in the general sections to further globalize those areas. HOWEVER, my concern is basically as follows: 1) This is a GA-class article, so any material must be properly and meticulously cited. (Your edits to Mongolian horse aren't done well enough to pass muster here) 2) It must be neutrally phrased, no one culture is going to be described as superior to another. 3) This is an article about HORSES, not so much tactics and logistics which here we must handle in a summary fashion. Montanabw(talk) 20:31, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Details--I will continue to refer back to the European section and imitate what I see there; I won't go into more detail than already exists for that section.
Citations--no problem; I'll make sure that I get good citations for this article. I know I've been lazy in the Mongol horse section. :p
Neutrally phrased--I certainly don't believe that any one culture is superior to another. If you do see anything that looks that way, then it's not deliberate (please fix it).
Some concerns of mine:
I know you aren't going to like this, but I'm afraid that it may require more background information than you're used to giving in order to provide context for the reader. When discussing a subject that is outside the common frame of reference (in this case, the Western, English-speaking frame of reference), you have to establish the frame of reference itself before you can convey the information--otherwise, readers will jump to incorrect conclusions. Like, if I say, "The Mongol cavalrymen were known for their skilled horsemanship." Well, so what? Every nation's cavalry has skilled horsemen. Well here's what: every single soldier in the Mongol army started learning to ride horses at age two or three. This implies a level of skill that most readers will not automatically assume when you say, "skilled cavalrymen." Instead, the reader will default to their Western cultural expectation regarding skilled cavalrymen, i.e. a select group of especially talented horsemenmen who began learning to ride at a young age--not as babies. Without context, the sentence "The Mongol cavalrymen were known for their skilled horsemanship" is meaningless as a measure of comparison. Yet if I provide the context for this fact, then is the section now too detailed?
Have you ever read a story written by (say) the ancient Egyptians 4,000 years ago? Without a background in Egyptian culture, some of the events in the narrative sound inexplicable simply because a modern reader has no context for them ("Why are they letting this bull walk into the royal harem like it's normal?"). This is why such stories are accompanied by a pile of footnotes meant to prevent the reader from getting lost and confused. Take another example, the sentence, "The husband picked up his new bride and carried her to bed." A European reader might think, "Aww, how romantic." But in an Asian context, that sentence has an entirely different meaning: "That bride can't walk because her parents bound her feet to make them small and attractive to her future husband, with the result that she is now crippled and has to be carried everywhere." Without context, readers jump to the conclusions natural to their own cultural background, and such conclusions are often incorrect. A reader unversed in E. Asian horsemanship and warfare is entering a new world with unfamiliar reference points, and they are going to make mistaken assumptions unless we provide them with context. But this means adding in more information, mostly information which would be considered obvious and unnecessary in a European context.
One final note on this: in order to avoid going into the background details that are necessary to give the fact its proper value, it is tempting to compare the Mongol horsemen to a culturally familiar reference point, like the European horsemen (i.e.): "The Mongol cavalrymen were known for their skilled horsemanship; this gave them an edge against their less well-trained opponents in Europe and other areas." But this makes it look like you're trying to say one culture is "better" than another. It is also unhelpful to people who don't live in Europe and therefore cannot use it as a shared reference point. I did that before and you were right to ding me on it.
"This is an article about HORSES, not so much tactics and logistics which here we must handle in a summary fashion." Hm...I'm unclear here. What are we talking about in terms of tactics? There is a whole section entitled "Tactics," and the word is used almost twenty times throughout the article. I read sections that describe how European cavalry were deployed against various kinds of enemies, how charges were made, etc.
Logistics--I'll devote to two or three sentences to this; it won't be any larger than in the other sections.
Lastly, I remain unconvinced that the article is balanced. If the Horses in Warfare is simply supposed to be a brief summary with the bulk of the information elsewhere, then why does the European section go into detail and depth when that extra information could be placed into the European-focused Horses in the Middle Ages so as to avoid cluttering up Horses in Warfare? For that matter, why are all of the non-Western sections tiny? Unlike E. Asia, most of these sections don't have a separate article where the better information is kept. A similar pattern of regional bias exists in the horse artillery, light cavalry and heavy cavalry articles, where Europe is given a long, thorough treatment, while other regions are glossed over in a few sentences. If Horses in Warfare was like a newspaper, the entire front page would be devoted to European horsemanship, with a footnote at the bottom that reads, "Learn about foreign horsemanship on page 21." This article is supposed to be about war horses worldwide; the "front page" should provide the same kinds of information and the same level of detail throughout so that a reader can survey everything and compare various types of horsemanship at a broad level. Having one long, ultra-detailed section and a bunch of tiny, uninformative stubs isn't going to be helpful to readers who want to gain a generalized understanding of the topic.
- First answer is that some of the non-European sections are "tiny" is due to either 1) Lack of good source material available to those writing the article; or 2) (in the case of sub-Saharan Africa) not much of a tradition. Second answer is that while I acknowledge there is some inevitable European bias here, the truth is that the underlying structure is essentially chronological to the greatest extent possible. (i.e. Ancient Mesopotamia --> Ancient Persia --> Technological developments (saddle, stirrup, horseshoe, etc) --> Tactical (in uses of the horse) developments --> and then we go to the culture-by-culture assessment and divergence once we get to about 400 CE or so. As certain sections get bogged down in detail, spinoffs get created (example being Horses in the Napoleonic Wars) We also have "cousin" spinoffs that are not confined solely to warfare such as Horses in the Middle Ages or History of the horse in Britain). Montanabw(talk) 02:37, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
- I guess my thinking here is that we need to add material carefully and properly - your Mongol horse article is interesting, but it's becoming a data dump, it's sloppily sourced, and such a style here here would subject this article to a GAR. I think I'd like to see what you can do with the Central/East Asian section first, rather than inserting Mongolian material hither and yon throughout. Perhaps start with adding a paragraph or two that summarizes material that could be covered in more detail at the Mongol horse article (which, by the way, was originally an article about the horse type/breed, not the whole culture - may want to note the comments at the talk page there...). If it seems to be consistent with the rest of the article, we can see what else is useful. So far this article has been derailed by POV-pushing on a number of occasions (someone was upset that we didn't dedicate enough to the Samurai, someone else didn't like the coverage of artillery, yet another person felt the Winged Hussars weren't adequately addressed -- sigh) and short of writing a book, I'm not sure I have a complete solution. Montanabw(talk) 02:37, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
- /shrug Lack of source material is listed as one of the causes of systematic bias. I'm not saying that it happens on purpose, I'm just saying that it's there.
- No complaints about the chronological order, or the creation of spinoffs. There is a lot of very detailed information about the uses of use of E. Asian horses in war that I wouldn't discuss here because it would obviously exceed the summary nature of this article. But I think that the level of detail within each section should be equivalent, i.e. if one section discusses warhorse sex, then all sections should provide that same information here, rather than in a separate article. It might be helpful to make a standardized list of all the different kinds of facts that should, in an ideal world, be included for each section. Like, horse sex, size, major breeds, types of cavalry, maneuvers used, etc. Then we would have informational equivalence throughout the article. Anything past that would go in a separate article.
- Here's a list of all the material that I believe should be covered in the article to bring it up to parity with the European section (or at least get it halfway there).
- Horse sex (reason for choosing), size, breed, and a one sentence summary of the characteristics that made it valuable.
- The use of multiple remounts, and how these extra horses affected the way the Mongols waged war
- The use of horses in war games
- A summary of the kinds of cavalry used and a description of what an average cavalryman was capable of
- Horses as scouts
- A few sentences on the use of horses in a logistical role pulling/as provisions
- The use of horses in combination with artillery
- The maneuvers employed by mounted archers that are the Eastern equivalent of the caracole, etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.67.22.179 (talk) 11:53, 28 August 2014 (UTC)
Does the outline sound good, then? Shall I begin? I also had one additional thought, which was that I could write out my edit here in the Talk section and we could discuss it as I go. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.124.96.201 (talk) 20:21, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
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