Me>> As for the west with its disdain for infantry armies, that does
>> not preclude them from having decent infantrymen. It merely
>> means that the nobility (who write the histories) treat them
>> with contempt and claim all the glory when the battle's won.
>However if the people in charge treat their infantry with disdain, they
>tend to breed that disdain into their next generation of commanders
>and eventually the commanders stop using the infantry effectively if
>at all, and then they stop having decent infantry. Using them
>properly is at least part of having effective troops.
But you have not shown that "treating infantry with disdain" leads to "not using them effectively". As a counterpoint, I point to the British Army where the officer corps have historically had contempt for the lower class rank-and-file yet by their efforts managed in the 19th century to amass an empire that spanned the earth.
>IMO the biggest advantage of Crecy period English armies was not
>that they had the longbow, but that they had become an army of
>soldiers that had discipline rather than a collection of individual
>warriors that had courage. The French would never have used the
>archers supported by dismounted knights, it just wasn't done. Ergo
>the French didn't have effective infantry (despite having hired some
>of the best Genoese merc's).
The French did use dismounted knights and they did have archery. In most medieval battles, the knights fought dismounted rather than indulged in a cavalry charge. Furthermore infantry were mostly trained men and not peasant levies. In support of this, the most frequently copied, translated and consulted secular prose work in the early medieval times was Vegetius's 'Concerning Military Matters': This is almost entirely about training infantry and contains very little about cavalry.
Jose Ramos:
> I have never said the Lunars have only infantry (as Peter implies),
>but that they lack dedicated missile troops (a problem the Republican Romans
>also faced, as Crassus found against the Parthians). Peltasts or Javelin
>armed cavalry does not count, as their range is too short.
Javelins are very effective missile weapons for the time. The problem of the romans was that they lacked decent cavalry to prevent the mounted archers from scooting in and firing a shot at the legions.
>That is why the
>romans introduced the darts as a legionnary weapon. The term dart wars would
>indicate that at least the Lunars know of the weapon, although IMG it
>remains a Carmanian weapon.
I've never heard of roman darts. I have read that they modified the javelin so that the head would break off upon landing so that enemies couldn't throw the javelin back at the romans. And the darts would have as much missile range and less lethality as a javelin.
> Concerning the quality of Western infantry, any army that relies on
>shock cavalry does not face frequently foes with good close order infantry,
>as close order infantry is the best remedy for cavalry charges. So as the
>West fights mainly against itself... (set piece battles, I mean).
It depends on what you mean by 'relies on'. Virtually no RW army has relied on shock cavalry exclusively. If OTOH you mean that shock cavalry was viable tactic only if there were no close order infantry opposing them then I must disagree. The French after being defeated by Flemish Pike at Courtrai in 1302, went on to do well in the next three battles (Mons-en-Pevele 1304, Casset 1328 and Roosebeek 1382). The Normans used cavalry and archers to break up the English shieldwall at Hastings. Likewise the Scots at Falkirk were using pikes but still were defeated by Edward I's knights and archers.
In most cases where shock cavalry was used against good infantry, it rarely succeeded unless backed up by archers or foot. The usual practice was to try and soften them up with archery or foot first before charging. In some cases, the knights indulged in feigned retreats to entice the infantry to break order.
Hence I think most gloranthan western armies would have more sophisticated armies than the mythical knights backed up by peasant levies.
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