For thousands of years, armies fought on foot. Then humans discovered that a horse could do more than pull a cart or chariot. It could carry a warrior directly into battle.
That seemingly simple development transformed warfare.
Mounted soldiers could move faster than infantry, scout enormous areas, raid enemy territory, pursue fleeing armies, carry messages, and eventually charge directly into opposing formations. Cavalry would become one of the most important military arms in history, from the armies of Assyria and Persia to Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the Mongols, medieval knights, and the cavalry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
But when did cavalry actually begin?
The answer is more complicated than it might first appear. Horses were being used by humans in warfare long before armies developed true cavalry. The first evidence for organized mounted combat comes from the ancient Near East during the ninth century BC, particularly among the Assyrians and the peoples surrounding them.
Yet the story really begins much earlier.
Horses Before Cavalry
The horse was domesticated thousands of years before anyone developed a recognizable cavalry force.
Archaeological evidence indicates that humans were managing horses by approximately 3500 BC, although the precise history of domestication is complicated. Genetic research indicates that the lineage of modern domestic horses originated in the western Eurasian steppes and expanded rapidly across Eurasia after about 2000 BC.
The earliest clear evidence for horses being used as a means of transportation comes from the Sintashta culture, located in the steppe regions of modern Russia and Kazakhstan, around the beginning of the second millennium BC.
But these people did not initially use horses primarily as cavalry.
They used them to pull chariots.
This distinction is extremely important.
A horse pulling a chariot was not the same thing as a soldier fighting from horseback.
The Age of the Chariot
By approximately 2000 BC, the horse-drawn chariot had become one of the most revolutionary weapons in the ancient world.
The combination of:
- A horse
- Lightweight wheels
- A skilled driver
- A warrior
- A bow or other missile weapon
created a highly mobile weapons platform.
Chariots could move much faster than infantry and allowed archers to attack from an elevated position.
The technology spread rapidly.
The Hittites, Egyptians, Mitanni, Mesopotamian kingdoms, and other Bronze Age civilizations developed sophisticated chariot forces.
The Hittites became particularly famous for their chariot warfare. Their military horse-training traditions were so advanced that the famous Kikkuli text, dating to approximately the fourteenth century BC, describes an elaborate training regimen for chariot horses.
Egyptian pharaohs used chariots extensively.
The famous battle between the Egyptians and Hittites at Kadesh around 1274 BC was fought largely by armies that depended heavily upon chariots.
For centuries, the chariot was the premier horse-based weapon of the ancient Near East.
So why did cavalry take so long to develop?
Why Didn't Cavalry Appear Immediately?
Riding a horse and fighting effectively from horseback are two very different things.
A rider has to control the animal while simultaneously:
- Holding a weapon
- Maintaining balance
- Observing the enemy
- Communicating with other soldiers
- Maneuvering
- Potentially shooting a bow or throwing a spear
This is considerably more difficult than simply riding a horse.
Ancient horses were also generally smaller than many modern breeds, and early riders lacked many technologies later associated with effective cavalry.
There were no:
- Saddles like those used by later cavalry
- Stirrups
- Specialized cavalry formations
- Sophisticated riding equipment
- Centuries of accumulated cavalry doctrine
Consequently, early horseback riding was probably used for transportation, scouting, raiding, and other purposes long before organized mounted combat became common.
Archaeological evidence for early riding is therefore difficult to interpret. Some evidence suggests that horseback riding occurred surprisingly early, but scholars continue to debate precisely when riding became a regular practice and when it became militarily significant.
This is why historians need to distinguish between people riding horses and cavalry as a military institution.
The First Cavalry
The best evidence for the emergence of true cavalry comes from the Iron Age, particularly the ninth century BC.
The region where this transformation becomes visible is the ancient Near East, particularly the area encompassing Assyria, northern Mesopotamia, the Zagros Mountains, and the Armenian highlands.
The Assyrians provide some of our earliest detailed evidence.
By the ninth century BC, Assyrian armies were employing mounted warriors as an organized military arm.
The Assyrians were not necessarily the first people ever to fight from horseback. Other peoples in the region were already doing so.
Indeed, Assyrian palace reliefs from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC) show enemy horsemen. Scholars therefore generally regard the emergence of cavalry as a broader regional development rather than an invention attributable to a single individual or civilization.
Nevertheless, the Assyrians were among the first to turn cavalry into a systematic component of a professional army.
And they would eventually make cavalry one of the defining features of their military machine.
The Assyrian Cavalry
The early Assyrian cavalry was quite different from the cavalry of later history.
The earliest mounted soldiers often operated in pairs.
One man controlled the horses while the other used a bow.
This sounds strange to us, but it solved an important problem.
Controlling a horse while simultaneously firing a bow is difficult.
The early Assyrians therefore sometimes had one rider concentrate on controlling the horses while the other acted as the warrior.
The system gradually evolved.
Eventually, individual riders became capable of controlling their own horses while fighting.
The mounted warrior could carry a:
- Bow
- Spear or lance
- Sword
- Shield
This was the beginning of genuine battlefield cavalry.
The Assyrians eventually developed both mounted archers and mounted lancers, giving them a flexibility that their chariot forces could not match.
When Did the First Cavalry Fight?
It is impossible to identify with certainty the first cavalry charge in human history.
The archaeological record simply does not preserve that kind of event.
But written and artistic evidence gives us a very good idea of when organized cavalry was being used.
By the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta II (890–884 BC), Assyria was employing cavalry, while the surviving reliefs from the reign of Ashurnasirpal II provide some of the earliest visual evidence.
By the time of Shalmaneser III (858–824 BC), cavalry was clearly an established part of Assyrian warfare.
One particularly important event was the Battle of Qarqar in 853 BC.
The Battle of Qarqar
In 853 BC, the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III invaded Syria.
He encountered a coalition of rulers determined to stop the Assyrian advance.
Among the coalition leaders was Ahab, king of Israel, along with the king of Damascus and rulers from several other states.
The battle at Qarqar was one of the largest military confrontations known from the ancient Near East.
The Assyrian account records the capture of enemy chariots and cavalry, demonstrating that mounted troops were an established part of warfare among the region's armies by this period.
The battle's precise outcome is disputed.
Shalmaneser's inscription naturally claims a great victory, but the coalition survived and Assyrian expansion in the region did not immediately follow.
What matters for the history of cavalry is that cavalry had become a significant battlefield arm by the middle of the ninth century BC.
It was no longer merely an experiment.
The Scythians and the Rise of Horse Archery
The development of cavalry did not remain confined to Assyria.
One of the most important developments occurred among the nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe.
The Scythians became famous for their mounted archery.
Beginning in the first millennium BC, steppe peoples developed a style of warfare based upon mobility, horse archery, and the ability to avoid close combat when advantageous.
The mounted archer could:
- Approach the enemy.
- Fire arrows.
- Withdraw.
- Reposition.
- Attack again.
This was radically different from the heavy cavalry charge familiar from medieval Europe.
The horse itself became the weapon's greatest advantage.
The Scythians could travel enormous distances and strike at places where conventional infantry armies could not easily respond.
Their mobility made them extraordinarily difficult opponents.
The Persian Empire Adopts Cavalry
The Persian Empire inherited and expanded the traditions of mounted warfare.
The Achaemenid Persian Army contained large cavalry forces.
Persian cavalry served as:
- Scouts
- Mounted archers
- Skirmishers
- Heavy cavalry
- Pursuit forces
The Persians also recruited cavalry from subject peoples.
This was one of the major advantages of the Persian Empire.
It could draw upon the military traditions of many different cultures.
When the Persians fought the Greeks, cavalry became an important part of Persian military operations, although the Greek hoplite remained the principal infantryman on the battlefield.
Cavalry Comes to the Greek World
Greek armies initially relied heavily on infantry.
The hoplite phalanx was designed around heavily armed infantry fighting in close formation.
But the Greeks increasingly incorporated cavalry.
The Macedonians took this development much further.
Under Philip II of Macedon, cavalry became a crucial component of the Macedonian army.
Philip's son, Alexander the Great, would use cavalry with extraordinary effectiveness.
Alexander the Great
Alexander's army demonstrated the possibilities of combining infantry and cavalry.
His Companion Cavalry was one of the most effective mounted forces of the ancient world.
Alexander frequently used cavalry to deliver the decisive blow after infantry had fixed the enemy in place.
At the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC, Macedonian cavalry played a crucial role in the defeat of the Persian Empire.
Alexander's cavalry was not simply a group of mounted warriors charging independently.
It was integrated into a combined-arms system involving:
- Heavy infantry
- Light infantry
- Archers
- Skirmishers
- Cavalry
- Siege forces
This was an important development in military history.
Cavalry had moved from being primarily a transportation and skirmishing tool to becoming capable of delivering a decisive battlefield attack.
The Romans and Cavalry
The Romans initially placed enormous emphasis on infantry.
The Roman legion became famous for its disciplined heavy infantry.
Nevertheless, Rome understood the importance of cavalry.
The Roman army employed cavalry units, but increasingly recruited or allied with cavalry from other peoples.
During the imperial period, Rome relied heavily on cavalry from regions where horsemanship was particularly well developed.
This became especially important as Rome confronted enemies such as the Parthians.
The Parthian Revolution
The Parthians demonstrated just how devastating highly mobile cavalry could be.
At the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, a Roman army commanded by Marcus Licinius Crassus was destroyed by a Parthian force.
The Parthians employed large numbers of horse archers supported by heavily armored cataphracts.
Their horse archers could attack from a distance and withdraw before Roman infantry could close with them.
The famous Parthian shot, in which a mounted archer fired backward while retreating, became symbolic of the capabilities of steppe-style cavalry.
The Romans learned a painful lesson:
A heavily disciplined infantry army could be defeated if it could not force a mobile cavalry opponent into close combat.
How Quickly Did Cavalry Spread?
The answer is: surprisingly quickly once its military advantages became clear—but not uniformly.
There was no single moment when the world "adopted cavalry."
Instead, cavalry spread through several interconnected military and cultural networks.
By the eighth and seventh centuries BC, cavalry had become increasingly important in the Near East.
The Assyrians developed it into a major military arm.
The peoples of the Iranian plateau and Eurasian steppe developed their own highly effective mounted traditions.
The Scythians spread horse-archer warfare across enormous areas.
The Persians incorporated cavalry into their imperial armies.
Greek states increasingly adopted cavalry.
Macedon developed heavy shock cavalry.
Eventually Rome developed increasingly sophisticated cavalry forces.
Thus, within several centuries of its emergence as an organized military institution, cavalry had become a standard feature of major armies across much of Eurasia.
Why Cavalry Was So Effective
The advantages of cavalry were enormous.
Mobility
A mounted soldier could travel much farther in a day than an infantryman.
This meant cavalry could:
- Scout
- Raid
- Pursue
- Retreat
- Reinforce threatened positions
- Deliver messages
- Attack supply lines
Shock
A large group of horses moving rapidly toward an enemy could have an enormous psychological impact.
A cavalry charge was not simply a physical attack.
It was an attempt to break the enemy's morale.
Pursuit
This was perhaps one of cavalry's most important functions.
An infantry army could defeat an enemy but struggle to prevent the enemy from escaping.
Cavalry could pursue fleeing troops and turn a defeat into a catastrophe.
Operational Mobility
Cavalry could move around an enemy's flank.
This allowed commanders to threaten supply lines and communications rather than simply attacking the enemy's strongest position.
Cavalry Was Not Invincible
Cavalry also had weaknesses.
Horses required enormous quantities of food and water.
Terrain could severely restrict their effectiveness.
Mountains, dense forests, swamps, fortifications, and narrow passes could all neutralize cavalry.
And disciplined infantry could defend itself.
Spearmen, pikemen, and later firearms could create defensive formations that cavalry struggled to penetrate.
The history of cavalry is therefore partly a history of an arms race between mounted troops and anti-cavalry weapons.
The Stirrup Was Not the Beginning of Cavalry
One common misconception is that cavalry could not exist until the invention of the stirrup.
That is incorrect.
The stirrup became enormously important, particularly for mounted shock combat, but cavalry existed for well over a thousand years before the stirrup became widespread.
Assyrian, Persian, Scythian, Greek, Macedonian, and Roman cavalry all fought without the medieval stirrup.
The stirrup probably increased a rider's stability and ability to deliver certain forms of shock attack, but cavalry was already a highly developed military institution before it appeared.
Modern scholarship has also challenged the older idea that the stirrup single-handedly "created" medieval heavy cavalry.
From Assyrian Horsemen to Medieval Knights
Once cavalry became established, its evolution continued for more than two millennia.
The basic concept remained remarkably consistent:
put a trained warrior on a mobile platform and use mobility to gain an advantage over the enemy.
But the platform and weapons changed.
Ancient cavalry used:
- Bows
- Javelins
- Spears
- Swords
Macedonian cavalry developed heavy shock tactics.
Parthian and Scythian traditions emphasized horse archery.
Roman cavalry became increasingly specialized.
The medieval period produced the heavily armored knight.
The Mongols developed perhaps the most sophisticated mounted warfare system of the premodern world, combining composite bows, mobility, reconnaissance, communications, and operational maneuver.
And eventually firearms transformed cavalry once again.
The End of Cavalry?
Cavalry never completely disappeared, but modern firepower made traditional massed cavalry increasingly dangerous.
Machine guns, rapid-fire artillery, barbed wire, and repeating rifles made the great cavalry charges of earlier centuries increasingly difficult.
Yet horses continued to serve armies.
During the First World War, cavalry was still important for reconnaissance and mobility, although trench warfare greatly reduced its usefulness on the Western Front.
Even during the Second World War, horses remained important for transportation, especially in the German and Soviet armies.
By 1945, however, mechanized vehicles had largely replaced horses as the primary means of military mobility in industrialized armies.
Conclusion
The history of cavalry did not begin with a single battle or a single inventor.
Humans domesticated horses thousands of years ago. By approximately 2000 BC, horses were being used to pull sophisticated chariots, which became one of the most important weapons of Bronze Age warfare.
But riding a horse was not initially the same thing as fighting from horseback.
The development of effective cavalry appears to have taken place gradually during the second and early first millennia BC, probably across the regions surrounding the Eurasian steppe and ancient Near East.
By the ninth century BC, mounted warriors were clearly participating in organized warfare. The Neo-Assyrian Empire provides some of the earliest detailed evidence for cavalry as an organized military arm. The battle of Qarqar in 853 BC demonstrates that cavalry was already an important component of Near Eastern armies by that time.
From there, the idea spread rapidly.
The Scythians perfected horse archery.
The Persians incorporated large cavalry forces into their imperial armies.
The Macedonians transformed cavalry into a devastating shock force.
The Parthians demonstrated the ability of mounted archers and armored cavalry to defeat even Rome's legions.
And eventually cavalry became virtually universal among the major military powers of Eurasia.
The significance of the development was enormous.
The horse did not simply make soldiers faster. It changed what an army could do.
Cavalry expanded the battlefield from the immediate area where two armies met to the entire operational environment surrounding them. It made scouting, raiding, pursuit, deep maneuver, and rapid concentration of force possible on a scale previously unimaginable.
For more than two thousand years, cavalry would remain one of the decisive arms of warfare.
And it all began with a deceptively simple idea:
instead of putting the horse in front of the warrior and the chariot between them, put the warrior directly on the horse.
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