Pickett's Charge

[Valmy]

During the Civil War anyway the Cavalry were by far the most important arm until actual fighting started, at that point they were almost useless.

Didn't they act as mobile infantry a lot of the time?

They could do that in a pinch, but they were too valuable to be used that way much.

Early in the war they did have lots of dragoon type mounted infantry units but they all got converted to regular infantry units pretty quick.

[FunkMonk]

Cavalry should always be used in the offensive, their cuirass armor gleaming in the summer sun, their lances pointed proudly toward the clouds, ready to be lowered in a deadly charge that in one decisive stroke sweeps the enemy armies from the field and gloriously wins the day.

Anything less is uncivilized.

[The Brain]

Cavalry should always be used in the offensive, their cuirass armor gleaming in the summer sun, their lances pointed proudly toward the clouds, ready to be lowered in a deadly charge that in one decisive stroke sweeps the enemy armies from the field and gloriously wins the day. Anything less is uncivilized.

This.

[The Brain]

During the Civil War anyway the Cavalry were by far the most important arm until actual fighting started, at that point they were almost useless.

Didn't they act as mobile infantry a lot of the time?

Little Round Bug? Klendietam?

[alfred russel]

You say things like "cutting the Baltimore Pike". Meade had more cavalry, and more troops. How exactly is 3000 guys on horses going to "cut" any road?

Cavalry, at no point in the Civil War, were able to "cut" a body of infantrymen off from anything. It isn't what they did - they lacked the density of combat power, especially southern cavalry which was not trained or inclined to fight dismounted (and were not armed to do so in any case).

Cavalry was used operationally to cut up rail lines and raid areas without troops. Stuart was pretty good at that, although not nearly as accomplished as the Western cavalry.

Tactically it was used to harass the flanks, not "cut off" formations from...what exactly? More importantly, their job was to scout and ascertain the position of the enemy, something that wasn't really necessary on the third day (but could have been critical on the first day, of course).

Meade didn't care that Stuart was running around to his east. At least, didn't care from the standpoint of it being relevant to his actual position. It could be annoying of course, if he found some supply depots or wagon trains, which is why Gregg was sent after him, and in fact checked his attack.

Your very, very, very hypothetical July 4th where the South uses magic to make Pickets charge succeed because the Union cannot respond to anything in 4 hours, would see the Union in a difficult position I guess because their interior lines had been broken, but Stuart being out there would be utterly irrelevant to that problem. Look at a map of Gettysburg. The reason there was a fight there was because there are so many roads in the area. You say "Oh noes, the Union would be down to one road!".

1. How many roads do they need?
2. You assume that they are somehow incapable of simply moving to another road. There are a lot of roads, and there are more Union troops than there are southern. You are imagining that the smaller force has somehow "surrounded" the larger, but of course that is simply not possible. The union could simply go take another road, if it was so critical that they get a road. You hypothetical has the South somehow taking the center of the Union positions with ten thousands troops they did not have, and apparently, this would not result in there being any less troops anywhere else.

You are, again, imagining that only one side has agency, and your hypothetical is that one side does whatever it likes, the other side is completely passive, and the only things that change in your hypothetical are the things that somehow make things better for one side. You imagine "What if there were more troops HERE" but don't subtract those troops from somewhere else. You imagine that the South wins their cavalry battle, which they lost, and claim that because they didn't lose enough men, they could have actually won. The Union hardly lost many men either - that is because cavalry engagements tend to not be particularly bloody - both sides can easily simply move away when things dont go well, and they mostly did. Cavalry fighting cavalry was always a relatively bloodless affair compared to infantry clashes. That doesn't mean the defeat was any less conclusive. How is that evidence of...anything?

Berkut, first of all Stuart had significantly more than 3k men. A quick google search doesn't turn this up, but I'm sure it is more than that.

Second--look again at the map.



The Union position has a zillion well documented advantages. But one weakness is that it only had 2 roads (Taneytown Road and Baltimore Pike) to supply a very large army. The Battle of Gettysburg basically happened because both armies were trying to unite and both were trying to do so at Gettysburg precisely because of all the roads leading into the city. But because they controlled the town, most of those roads were controlled by the Confederates.

I again don't have the information immediately at hand, but I recall the Union dealt with only having two roads by converting both to one way operations: I think wagons came in Taneytown Road and out the Baltimore Pike. I could have this backwards. A major reason a position on Cemetery Hill was so attractive to Lee (and why that seems to be his goal on day 2 and 3) is that would cut access to Taneytown Road. The Union would be moving everything on the Baltimore Pike.

That is unattractive for a few reasons: 1) even that was tenuous, with the hypothetical Confederate position on Cemetery Ridge less than a mile from the Pike, 2) that is a tremendous amount of supplies to be running on a single road.

The logistics of the army shouldn't be overlooked--during the retreat, the Confederate medical train transporting the wounded from the battle stretched 17 miles. For the Union to manage with one road--and an army starting out with 90k men and almost that number of animals, and then probably 20k wounded--it is a traffic jam in the best circumstances. Complicating this miles long traffic jam which the army is dependent on, you have Confederate cavalry massed in the area. "Cutting" the road doesn't require taking a position along it and holding it against infantry attacks. It only requires short term actions to disrupt a logistic system with severe strain.

This is not in any way comparable to Jeb Stuart riding around the Union Army in late June 1863...in that case the Union Army was dispersed and were not dependent on a single road for supplies.

My guess is not that if night set on July 3 with Confederates on Cemetery Ridge, Jeb Stuart would gallantly charge down and cut off the Baltimore Pike and the Union army would in despair surrender and Lincoln declare Jefferson Davis his lord and master. My guess is that Meade, seeing the forces on Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill were in danger, and believing his army to be outnumbered, would withdraw.

[grumbler]

The success of calvary transcends the battlefield IMHO.

Truly, we are blessed.

Some of us Blessed by Valmy.

[Threviel]

I know that calvary played a very minor part in the Crimean war, but what did anyone care in the other wars?

It's how they were used IMO. The second part of your question I don't understand.

I'm just besserwissring.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry