Cavalry
So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold Dragoon,
That lists the tuck of drum.’ ~ Sir Walter Scott
Historically, cavalry (from the French word cavalerie, itself derived from cheval meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, screening, and skirmishing, or as heavy cavalry for decisive shock attacks. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as a cavalryman, horseman, trooper, cataphract, knight, drabant, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, or horse archer. The designation of cavalry was not usually given to any military forces that used other animals for mounts, such as camels or elephants. Infantry who moved on horseback, but dismounted to fight on foot, were known in the early 17th to the early 18th century as dragoons, a class of mounted infantry which in most armies later evolved into standard cavalry while retaining their historic designation.
Quotes
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- Halfway down the trail to Hell,
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead Troopers camped,
Near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place
Is known as Fiddlers’ Green.Marching past, straight through to Hell
The Infantry are seen,
Accompanied by the Engineers,
Artillery and Marines,
For none but the shades of Cavalrymen
Dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.- Anonymous, "Fiddler's Green" (c. 1689), st. 1, associated with the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division; reported as a favourite poem of Jonathan M. Wainwright by Duane P. Schultz, Hero of Bataan (1981), p. 433; see also "Fiddler’s Green – Poem", 1st Cavalry Division Association (2024)
- If you want to have a good time, jine the cavalry!
Jine the cavalry! Jine the cavalry!
If you want to catch the Devil, if you want to have fun,
If you want to smell Hell, jine the cavalry!- Anonymous, "Join the Cavalry", chorus (August 1862), celebrating Jeb Stuart's troopers
- At dawn the drums of war were beat,
Proclaiming, “Thus saith Mohtasim,
‘Let all my valiant horsemen meet,
And every soldier bring with him
A spotted steed.’” So rode they forth,
A sight of marvel and of fear;
Pied horses prancing fiercely north,
Three lakhs—the cup borne in the rear!- Sir Edwin Arnold, "The Caliph’s Draught"
- Indian Poetry (Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd, 1904)
- [T]he cavalry will never be scrapped to make room for the tanks; in the course of time cavalry may be reduced as the supply of horses in this country diminishes. This greatly depends on the life of fox-hunting, for which the class of horse required in the cavalry is used.
- Neil Haig, "Substance or Shadow", Journal of the Royal United Service Institution (March 1921), p. 119; quoted by Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), p. 386, in connection with the ideas of Liddell Hart on the development of armoured warfare after the First World War. Neil Haig's more famous brother likewise dismissed motorised weapons as mere "accessories to the man and horse".
- Если хочешь быть красивым, поступи в гусары.
- If you want to be beautiful, enroll in the Hussars.
- Kozma Prutkov, Fruits of Reflection (1853-1854), No. 16.
- ‘With burnish’d brand and musketoon
So gallantly you come,
I read you for a bold Dragoon,
That lists the tuck of drum.’- Sir Walter Scott, "Brignall Banks"; reported in The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250–1918 (1939)
- Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.- Alfred Tennyson, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854), st. 1
- There is no freer man alive than a captain of cavalry in command of his own troop.
- General Jonathan M. Wainwright; reported in Duane Schultz, Hero of Bataan (1981), p. 434
