Horsed cavalry and horsemanship in general played a tremendous role throughout human history. Our life might have been different without those magnificent animals.
It is indeed extremely ironic that the horsed cavalry ultimately almost reached its perfection when it was finally relegated to history.
After ten centuries of battlefield dominion the cavalry started loosing it's supremacy around the 14th century, when infantry acquired the deadly long bow and the spectacular Swiss pikeman almost eliminated the cavalry from the Western battlefields. Horsed warriors were mostly to be found in the tournaments which were just a sport spectacle detached from military reality. However it was at this point that European riders (finally free from heavy lances and even heavier shields) developed an interest in scientific horsemanship and science of equitation.
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