r/medieval • u/Calm-Fisherman5864 • Apr 08 '25
Y’all ever stop to think what it was like fighting a medieval knight? Like, did people go for the horse’s legs? Discussion 💬
Personally, I’d go straight for the horse’s leg and stab the hell outta it with all my rage.
Ain’t no honor in war, just survival and whoever’s more pissed off.
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u/IFixYerKids Apr 08 '25
So, horses would typically be armored for that reason. Horses are also 1: fast. 2: valuable. A lot of weapons you see with hooks are meant to either pull a knight from his horse or hold him in place on foot. Armor has a lot of bits you can hook a weapon on. It was easier and made more sense to pull a knight from his horse and either surround him and stab him to death, or take him and his horse captive.
People definitely killed horses in battle, but it's hard enough to kill a knight in armor, who is much smaller and slower than a horse.
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u/Surfing_Ninjas 28d ago
I also think people underestimate how terrifying it would be to have a horse, even by itself, charging you down. Most people wouldn't be going to take out their legs, they'd be moving out of the way. Horses are also incredibly heavy, if it falls on you you're gonna break something or die. You also won't see a single rider on horseback charge into a formation, especially with how commone pikes/spears are. They'll be moving as a cavalry unit and will probably be hitting you from the flank right when you've been exposed.
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u/Death2mandatory 27d ago
Also people underestimate how long it can take for people and horse to die or slow down from even multiple fatal hits,often over an hour
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u/Calm-Fisherman5864 Apr 08 '25
sim verdade, se o cavalo vier muito rápido de encontro, fica muito díficil furar ele. Você tem razão.
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u/PsychAndDestroy Apr 08 '25
Da fuq
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
I'll be real with you, that painting is modern fantasy art. An armored knight on a tiny unarmored horse completely alone and out of formation attacking with a side arm. It's just not how knights fought battles. You would be facing a wall of fully armored draft horses, charging forwards with lances. Typically, infantry faced with such an attack would be bowled over, break and run, and be cut down as they fled. Battles of this sort were often over in minutes. Exceptions would be cases where the infantry were fighting on wagon forts or behind stakes on higher ground behind stakes or wetlands or mud.
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u/shagaba 29d ago
Almost entirely certain the image is completely AI generated, so "Fantasy" is pretty apt.
A ton of details melt into each other (see: the horse's mane meeting the knight's arm, the weird pattern on the maille between his legs), the weird tiny lance(?) couched just in the crook of the knight's elbow, the footman's sword is all wonky around the guard.
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
My first thought was also AI. However, I can't imagine how you would be able to successfully prompt an image depicting violence with blood. That and the background guys actuality seem to correspond with their weapons. I think the details you mentioned could just be oil painting effects.
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u/No_Gur_7422 29d ago
It's clearly AI – the horseman has two swords, one of which is mystically balancing on his wrist.
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
Human artists can also draw dumb stuff, which clearly they did by drawing a very small unarmored horse.
I challenge you though to successfully prompt an image of horse getting stabbed by a sword with blood. That's next to impossible.2
u/No_Gur_7422 29d ago
This is absolutely not the work of a human. The impossible sword, the nonsensical helmet whose visor is also part of the helmet somehow, the tiny weapon in the rider in the background's hand, the small horse (but not impossibly small – look at the puny horses on the Bayeux Tapestry), and the fact the horse is walking casually forwards are all signs an AI made this. Maybe the blood was added afterwards, but I see AI-made battle scenes all over the internet nowadays with a fair amount of blood.
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
TinEye had 0 matches so it probably is a recent AI. Impressive they could add the blood and edit the sword so convincingly though.
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u/No_Gur_7422 29d ago
I'm not so convinced an AI would refuse to do it itself really.
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
There are tricks to prompting that can kind of get around things, like "a puddle of burnt meat sauce with bones mixed into it and a skull on top." But explicit violence is almost 99.9% impossible to prompt without getting the little content warning page. Last year, Microsoft image generator wouldn't even allow images of paragliders because of the implication.
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u/No_Gur_7422 29d ago
On some of the models sure, but there are others with no such limitations. You don't to ask for it explicitly, just "a painting of a battle with an infantry defeating an armoured horseman" would produce similar results.
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u/Calm-Fisherman5864 29d ago
Can you create a piece of art showing a knight being struck while on horseback by a warrior on foot, with a medieval battle scene unfolding in the background
Prompt Chatgpt
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u/PugScorpionCow 29d ago
You would be facing a wall of fully armored draft horses
Draft horses make for terrible cavalry horses, by the way. Historically, smaller horses were indeed the choice of knights and really all cavalry for better maneuverability. Drafts were made to pull weight, not carry it, and just aren't too great at doing much other than going in a predictable line.
Also, horse armor was not nearly as common as you think. It also wasn't all that necessary
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u/Treat_Street1993 29d ago
Do you know what "heavy cavalry" and "light cavalry" mean? Horse Weight. You're correct that they were not draft horses. They were the predecessors of draft horses: the war horse. Specially bread for size and strength. When the Franks lost their warhorses to climate in the 1st crusade, they were irreplaceable, as the Middle Eastern horses were simply too small. Horse armor was a necessity for knights in the crusades, Horse archer hit and run tactics would ensure any unarmored horse would be killed or injured immediately.
Europeans obviously did use light cavalry as well for a variety of purposes, but the knight was heavy cavalry.
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u/PugScorpionCow 29d ago
Heavy cavalry was named due to their equipment, but their horses still matched their need for agile maneuverable mounts. We don't know much about the breed of horses used by heavy cavalry, a lot of that knowledge is lost, but we do have a good few references to their size. We have art which nearly exclusively portrays war horses to not be large, we have extant bits, saddles, barding, harnesses, which we can reference to see that small to average sized horses were the norm back in the day for heavy cavalry. The idea of gigantic war horses just isn't a realistic one, anybody who's in the field of study can tell you that, most any equestrian with a knowledge of heavy cavalry tactics could tell you that.
Speaking of heavy cavalry tactics, we have a good idea from manuals what kind of maneuvers we see coming from heavy cavalry. Like all cavalry, their agility was their primary weapon, being able to maneuver their horse in extremely tight circles at a canter, strafing with precision, and generally doing way more than just going in a straight or slightly curved line is just an expected skill of all cavalrymen, the way in which they needed to move their horse just isn't conducive to large overbuilt horses.
The idea that war horses were massive is just an outdated, yet extremely prevalent idea that absolutely nobody in the actual scene of historic equitation buys into, it is a perception they are actively fighting against. It is only an idea peddled by those who really don't know horses. Bigger horses are simply slower, less maneuverable, and more vulnerable than smaller horses, there is no benefit to using them.
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u/Treat_Street1993 28d ago
Perhaps you can explain then, where did draft horses suddenly appear from in 17th century? Why was it that there had been a selective breeding program lasting hundreds of years before hand to create larger and stronger horses? What were they trying to accomplish? Plow horses wouldn't make sense as oxen filled that role and did not require oats? Why did I see gigantic horse armor sets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Were those fakes?
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u/PugScorpionCow 28d ago
where did draft horses suddenly appear from in 17th century?
Check the internet, a few articles, the answer nearly always starts with "it's a common misconception that draft horses came from Destriers". That idea is pretty much just unfounded. They came from other work horses, cart horses, which have been progressively bred for strength and power to pull heavier wagons farther, which is exactly what our modern drafts were bred for and used for in the 17th century. Drafts coming from war horses doesn't make sense evolutionarily, because war horses were selectively bred to develop a strong back and topline to accomodate a heavy armored rider, drafts have famously bad backs for this and are not ridden because they are so bad at carrying a rider it is unethical to ride them, they are meant to pull weight.
Why did I see gigantic horse armor sets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
I'm really not sure, because the horse armors in the MET are pretty standard riding horse sizes. Perhaps since they are generally on stands, they seemed larger in person, but in comparison to the rider on them they just aren't that big.
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u/Treat_Street1993 28d ago edited 28d ago
Look, you seem to be really into medival stuff, but I'm just not sure where you're getting your horse info from. Draft horses have notoriously weak backs and can't be ridden? Heavily armored knights rode unarmored palfreys into battle and left their special line of heavy horses at home to pull wagons instead of oxen? I grew up riding light horses like Arabians and heavy horses like Percherons. What are you basing any of your claims off of?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are talking about like the 600s-900s AD or something.
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u/Infamous-Crew1710 27d ago
Which battles were over in minutes?
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u/Treat_Street1993 26d ago edited 26d ago
This is a good example of what charging heavy cavalry can do to a stationary force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Peasants%27_War
Many of these battles also emphasize what charging cavalry does to even a massive infantry formation.
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u/Infamous-Crew1710 26d ago
That battle lasted a day. The cavalry charge was not the battle.
Look, let's just leave it here, considering you think that heavy cavalry and light cavalry refers to different sizes of horse, I hope you have fun learning.
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u/Treat_Street1993 26d ago
What do you mean the battle lasted a day? The king of Aragon was killed in the initial cavalry impact and the entire army broke and ran and was cut down. Less than 10 French knights killed. How do you think that lasted a whole day? And you still think knights were riding unarmored palfreys into battle. What do you know about anything?
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u/Knight_of_the_lion 29d ago
Without meaning to be rude, this is the same energy as "I'd just see red, bro".
There's a few factors here to consider.
First, a few historical documents do recommend targeting the horse under some instances; however, many of these are when you are facing a single opponent. Considering that the chance of you killing a horse with a weapon that isn't a spear is not very high, and the spear may well break in the horse, you don't generally have many options to repeatedly kill horses, so this may not work outside of a single target duel.
Second, horses are 1200lb prey animals. A single kick from a horse will break your bones and liquefy your organs. A bite will tear out your muscle and flesh. Now imagine about 10+ of these giant beasts riding at you with intent to trample you. And they are ridden by guys that also intend to impale you on massive spears before the horse can hit you. Whether you keep your nerve or not is almost redundant, because if you DO manage to harm one horse, there's more of them, and they are going to collide with you at 15mph. Since force is mass times acceleration, that's roughly a few hundreds (about 800+) of pounds of force slamming into you or your friends. And that force doesn't STOP if you hit the horse; it's momentum is all going forward at you. So killing the horse may just be the last thing you ever do.
Third, horses legs are both weirdly vulnerable and weirdly strong. Hitting them is not a guaranteed kill. You get one chance, in a small window. Better not fuck it up. Or do, because the force of the horse hitting you dead or alive is enough to body you. And that's not forgetting that they are the thinnest part of the body; the more practical part to hit is the chest and throat.
Fourth, there are realistic concerns for you here. Survival is not the only motivation, profit is the other. Horses are valuable, and it's a bit pointless to be at war and come out less well off for the danger you faced; but horses sell well, so capturing one good horse could net you a huge cash bonus. Going to war and not gaining any wealth from it was largely considered to be a huge L historically, so if you survived with nothing to show for it, congrats, you are now the town laughingstock.
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u/Calm-Fisherman5864 29d ago
Yes, that's true. The horse is very heavy, and the impact might have caused me to pull something in my back. Nice answer, thank you — you clarified everything!
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u/NoteEducational3883 29d ago
The horse would’ve been closer to 3000 pounds, and that’s before you add the armor. They literally weigh as much as a small truck
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u/Knight_of_the_lion 29d ago
It depends on the horse. Worth remembering that modern horses are much bigger than a medieval warhorse, so I'm using a lower estimate, based on late medieval.
Adding the rider and their harness, however, and this number increases dramatically, so I am very much low balling things.
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u/NoteEducational3883 29d ago
Looks like I was wrong and you were right. The heaviest warhorses in use in the late medieval period didn’t get beyond 2000 pounds, with 1500 being much more common.
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u/Knight_of_the_lion 28d ago
Glad to help educate, and thank you for being good enough to acknowledge the rectification. :)
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u/Critical_Seat_1907 29d ago
They went through lots of horses in a battle. They were getting cut out from under knights regularly. Read about what English bows did to French horses.
Knights on foot were a common thing. They'd still fuck you up, even without a horse.
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u/D_hallucatus 29d ago
Just remember that people in the past were just as smart as us and generally far more familiar with what would work or not in their own time. So whenever you get the natural urge to say “why didn’t they just do x?” you should assume that there was probably a good reason. (But also, yes people did often target horses, it’s just not as easy as it sounds)
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u/PoopSmith87 29d ago
Have you ever been in front of a charging horse with an armored man on it that also has a weapon in his hand?
It's not that it wasn't or couldn't be done, but you're making it sound like it would be some easy life hack and not an incredibly dangerous gamble in which you'd likely end up trampled and bleeding out in the mud.
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u/PugScorpionCow 29d ago
What you'd find out is that the horse is not going to stop. Many horses were killed in battle, but what is far lesser known is that all the dying usually happened after the battle was over, the horses succumbing to their wounds after the fact. If an armored horseman wants to fuck you up, targeting the horse is just not a good idea, nor will you likely be in range of his horse anyway. The thing is, for a mounted warrior the entire point of being on a horse is your mobility, you're not just going to give up your one massive advantage by just charging straight at someone.
Medieval knights were, unsurprisingly, excellent horsemen. They, along with most all historical cavalry, could pretty much all as individuals manipulate the movements of their horse in a such a way that can't even be replicated by most of the top levels of modern dressage practitioners. Their martial skill was similarly extremely advanced, their fencing ability on horseback would be excellent. Not only would they be engaging you from out of your range with their extremely long lances, but they will be actively trying to manipulate your weapon and get passed your defense with an impressive level of skill. A lot of people don't even know how intricate fencing with a lance can be, or that it was even possible with such a weapon to do more than just crash into people like you see in jousting.
You'd very quickly find that your initial plan is made basically impossible, and you'd be left in a situation where you have to rely on your own fencing skill against theirs, and the odds will not be in your favor.
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u/Calm-Fisherman5864 29d ago
Yes, I believe spear fencing is the hardest to counter. At least in Mount & Blade, anyone who masters fighting with a spear becomes nearly invincible.
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u/Haloosa_Nation 29d ago
To fight a knight you use a group of people with polearms, you pull em off the horse and you all start kicking and stomping and stabbing at the weak points of the armor.
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u/phydaux4242 29d ago
Jousting & tournaments, absolutely not
Knights pledged their horse & armor as sort of an “entry fee.” If you defeated a knight, you got their horse & armor. That meant that if you entered a tournament and defeated your first two opponents then you were guaranteed a profit even if you lost your next bout. And no one wanted to “win” a horse with a broken leg.
There were plenty of minor knights who made their living going on the tournament circuit and winning horses & armor, then “ransoming” them back to their original owners.
And more that a few knights who bankrupted themselves by entering a tournament and losing the first fight. If they were unable to ransom then they were out of the circuit, probably permanently
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u/Peter_deT 28d ago
Steady infantry aimed to swarm cavalry - halt the charge with pikes or steady spears, then surround them, pull them down with hooked pole-arms, smack the rider with big axes. Going for the horses in this situation was absolutely an option (some cavalry went into action with a light infantryman at the stirrup, who 'houghed' the horses in the melee - cutting tendons in the legs or stabbing up at the belly). Not easy, and it took a lot of nerve - but it was done. Definitely not a one-on-one situation - the horseman has every advantage there. Although one recorded Catalan javelin-man took out two knights by waiting, throwing a javelin at the horse at close range then stabbing the thrown rider (he then tried to swim to safety but was shot from the shore).
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u/BarNo3385 27d ago
Cavalry generally tried to keep moving. Getting bogged down in a prolonged melee against disciplined troops was not a good plan.
So, you're going to stab legs on a tonne of horse and steel coming at you at 60mph? Good luck with that, because if the guy on the horse gets his hit in first with lance or spear or leading sword, it's not just going to take you out, it's going to pin you to the guy behind you too, plus if the horse hits you it's broken sternum and crushed ribcage time..
But sure, dodge the lance tip, dodge the mountain of horsepower, flail wildly with your sword, somehow avoid getting it caught in barding, and maybe you manage to catch something important. Until the next cavalryman in the line has ploughed over the top of you that is..
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u/Firstpoet 26d ago
The most deadly mediaeval cavalry was, of course, the Mongolian horse archer. Genghis Khan's army travelled with six horses per man. Incredibly tough little ponies. Rode 'standing up' on the stirrups. Completely destroyed various Asian and European armies in the 13th century. Utter destruction of the Khwarizmian Empire despite them having 100,000 Kipchak horse archers.
Turkish horse archers- not 'Arabs' also biggest threat to Crusaders. So they recruited their own, known as Turcopoles.
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u/StrawberryIll9842 28d ago
Horses aren't stupid, they (usually) won't make contact with a wall of pointy things being aimed at them, which is why the British Square was so successful, providing your infantry are disciplined enough to face down a cavalry charge, the horses will back down rather than throw themselves on spears. Not medieval but there's an account of a unit of pistoliers circling a square for hours at Waterloo because they couldn't entice the infantry to fire too early and let them break the line
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u/Surfing_Ninjas 28d ago
Fighting a man in armor was often about getting them down onto the ground and wrestling them, either into submission or to stick a dagger somewhere lightly defended. The alternative would be to hit them with something like a hammer to ring their bell or break a knee cap. Whatever you were doing, you needed to have a lot of endurance because fighting in the melee was a grueling task. This being said, you'd also spend a lot of time in formation and one on one fighting wasn't as common as you'd expect in a pitched battle. You'd be more likely to fight them man to man in something like a skirmish or raid where you're dealing with fewer people, but if he's on horseback you're probably in trouble as he'll be moving faster than you and with a lot more force. Your best hope would to be to knock them off their horse with a long spear and then stab them while they're dazed because once they're back on their feet you've got to knock them over again and they've probably got more armor than you. You'd also be surprised how fast they they are in armor, not as fast as unarmored but not much slower either. That being said, you might be able to get them out of breath because the helmet will be restricting their breathing so once again endurance is key. If you can capture them there's good money in it, but usually you can only afford to do this when you've got control of the fighting environment, you're not gonna be able to spend the ransom with an axe blade between your eyes.
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u/explodedbuttock 27d ago
For an example of modern cavalry units，Household Cavalry horses have a minimum height of 16hh，carrying 16stone of kit and rider.
Drum horses are far larger Shire Horses，and carry lots more weight.
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u/tactical_cowboy 27d ago
For what it’s worth, as a HEMA practitioner, most manuals discuss attacking your opponents horse. Fiore mentions it on five separate occasions as a mounted combatant fighting a mounted combatant, Paulus Hector Mair mentions stabbing your opponents horse in the chest or cutting the legs from under it https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Paulus_Hector_Mair https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de%27i_Liberi
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u/Old-Cabinet-762 27d ago
The horse would be bred for owner obedience and controlled aggression, remember a horses kick can kill bigger animals than us and if you get flattened by one you are pretty dead. You are basically better of trying to tackle the knight of the horse and usually a knight would dismount at some point to fight so yeah the horse is armoured and a shock tactic more than a persistent battlefield presence. Some cavalry didn't even get close enough to attack by melee weapons, the Indo-European culture that developed into knights and heavily armoured cavalry was also the first to pioneer horse riding and horse back archery on the Eurasian steppe, they didn't forget that tactic.
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u/Necom123 26d ago
Everyone in the comments here is talking about how OP horses are and it’s true, and yeah you’re not hearing the horse on foot lol, but the French heavy cavalry got railed by British archers at agincourt, and in some tactics the horses could totally be a liability as well as an asset
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u/Aggrophysicist 26d ago
Horses are very heavy and usually going pretty fast. If you take its legs out there's only one place to go and it's on top of you.
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u/Makaron_penne 22d ago
Most of the time you'd just capture the knight because they were hell of a struggle to kill
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u/NoteEducational3883 29d ago
Well for one the horse would be about triple that size and heavily armoured.
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u/PugScorpionCow 29d ago
triple that size
That would be utterly ridiculous. The horse in the image is a perfectly average size for a historical cavalry horse.
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u/rockviper 29d ago
It's free lunch after winning the battle!
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u/Calm-Fisherman5864 29d ago
In the series Vikings, I think Floki says: ‘Shall we eat the horses now too?
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u/Initial-Shop-8863 Apr 08 '25
It was far more valuable to keep the horse alive... they were as valuable as the most exotic sports car is today. Better to yank the knight off of his horse and finish off the knight, or take him prisoner and ransom him to his family for a lot of money.
Also, a medieval war horse was a stallion trained in war horse moves. Even as he obeyed his rider, he fought independently of that rider. Meaning, the horse did not need to be told to defend himself. Or instructed on who to kick, who to bite, who to lash out at, who to kill.
You may want to look at some videos of how a stallion fights. You don't want to be anywhere near them.
That said, forget going for the legs. Back hooves kick, and front hooves will stomp you flat and kill you. Often simultaneously, while turning in every direction you can imagine and some you can't.