Originally posted by Temujin
cavalry is cavalry as long as they ride horses. |
I know that is from about 2 pages ago but it raises a good point.
Who exactly was it that had these horses in India? In europe, it was mainly landowners who could afford them along with good armour, and they were the knights, shock troops that ploughed any peasant in their path, no matter how outnumbered they were (not that they ever were, as to my knowledge most kings had a conscription of all landowners that meant that apart from in special cases, most armies were made up 75% or so of mounted and dismounted knights, along with other professional and reasonably wealthy soldiers).
The mongols' horses were a fact of life, they needed them for their nomadic lifestyle and they needed their bows for hunting, so it stood to reason they fought as mounted archers, every able bodied man of them. This was of course completely different from the elite shock function of the knights.
So who had the horses in India, nomadic tribesmen from the hills, or wealthy Kshatriya nobles or what?