Kontos/spear and bow armed cavalry

[guitarheroandy]

Before i spend hours Googling this, does anyone have any information to hand about how heavy cavalry armed with kontos and bow actually operated? I'm just reading about Belisarius' campaigns in the 6th century AD and it seems that most wargame rules, etc, place heavy emphasis on this type of cavalry in the Byzantine army and I know that Parthian and Sassanid armies contained such men too.

The key thing I cannot envisage is what one does with an 8 foot kontos while firing a bow on the move... It strikes me that anyone thus armed would need to be pretty well trained to move seamlessly from shooting a bow to grabbing a kontos and preparing to charge or counter charge the enemy. This then leads me to wonder how many men in the Byzantine army at that time were actually thus armed or whether most were, in reality, simply armoured mounted archers OR mounted spearmen and whether this depended on from whence they were recruited... A Goth is likely to be good with a spear whereas a Hun is going to be best with his bow and would they really have tried to train each in the others' methods???

(PS, I wasn't sure whether to put this in the Medieval section due too the Byzantine bit...??)

Thanks in advance for any illuminating info anyone might provide, or further books I might search out...

[bigredbat]

Hi Andy,

I can shed little light on your question but would also be interested to hear answers.

I believe there may have been a loop on the lance so it could have been slung over the shoulder, but it couldn't have been easy to ready it from this position.

Best, Simon

[HerbyF]

I would think this is the right forum. The Byzantine cav. armed this way were early Eastern Empire troops. Later in the medieval period not so much. Yes the Sassanids & Parthians and some other eastern horse armies armed this way. The end of the kontos went into a boot or cup at the stirrup and was attached at the shoulder with a lanyard so it hung back out of the way when using the bow.

[Emir of Askaristan]

I don't know about specific tactics of one army of another so cannot comment on that. There is some information in the Osprey "God's Warriors" or it may be "SHadows in the Desert" which describes how heavy cavalry could shoot at the halt and then change with lance - its been a while since I read this however.

Individually however the rider would place his melee weapon on a sling and hang it from the wrist or upper arm to fire a missile weapon. This doesn't really change much if it is a Kontos and recurved steppe type bow or a bamboo lance and carbine. It may sound awkward but its certainly possible. Alternatively the lance could be gripped in the bow hand - also possible since the modern "Kassai" style of mounted archery works by holding arrows in this manner to avoid drawing from the quiver.

Having something hanging from the one wrist or gripped in the other probably reduces the speed the mounted archer can move at and hence a heavy cavalryman would have tended to shoot whist stationary or moving slowly, probably firing in volleys with other members of his unit and then dropping the lance to charge home against a disrupted foe.

[guitarheroandy]

I would think this is the right forum. The Byzantine cav. armed this way were early Eastern Empire troops. Later in the medieval period not so much. Yes the Sassanids & Parthians and some other eastern horse armies armed this way. The end of the kontos went into a boot or cup at the stirrup and was attached at the shoulder with a lanyard so it hung back out of the way when using the bow.

Thanks very much for the reply. However, Sassanid, Parthian and Eastern Roman (early Byzantine) cavalry had no stirrups, so I'm not sure how that would work for them...  

Thanks for the other replies too. I had heard that the spear was slung somehow, but that must surely affect the accuracy of the archery and I had heard that Eastern Romans, being based on the Hun model, focused more on accuracy of fire rather than volume of massed arrow fire like the Sassanids...

Perhaps HerbyF's idea of the boot or cup would work but, in the absence of sirrups, maybe it was attached rather like earlier Roman cavalry's javelin quiver behind the saddle and hanging down towards the rider's right foot? Even then, though, if it was attached on a shoulder lanyard, it would surely pull to the right while the rider fired his bow, both destabilising the firing platform and generally unbalancing the rider. Given the likely weight of a broad-bladed 8 foot plus spear wobbling about like that, this must have made it very tricky indeed...This more and more sounds like a weapon combination that required very significant training to use properly, especially in a regular formation.

[Emir of Askaristan]

I think it would be very difficult to move quickly and balance a spear, tucked away somehow, and deliver rapid aimed shots. However I'm not an expert, these chaps are and perhaps they may be worth getting in touch with to find out more -

http://www.comitatus.net/cavalryresearch.html

Looking at their site there are late roman cavalry with kontos and bows in one of the pics. Their articles on cavalry equipment are very good.

[PAULSPENCE]

Gentlemen,

What an interesting discussion.

I'd wondered this myself and the answers are quite illuminating.

I suppose that the fact cavalry could be both bow and Kontos armed the question then becomes one where although all may have carried both weapons which troop types of different nationalities favoured bw over Kontos or vice versa and how to reflect this in wargames' rules?

I for one would like to see the discussion continue!

Cheers,

Paul

[georgec]

I can't remember right now where I read it, but turkic cavalry apparently placed their spears between their leg and their saddles while using their bows.  I will have a look for the reference later.

[scarabminiatures]

Andy et all

Yes interesting discussion - in the absence of much direct knowledge of the period (although I do have some books on the topic so perhaps I should take a closer look!  ) - is it possible that the formation contained some men armed with kontos, and others armed with bow?

I seem to recall this certainly was a feature of the later Byzantine period

Or is it simply a matter of someone somewhere mistranslating a word, and in reality the warriors carried a shorter type of spear and bow and then developed into the formation mentioned above once they realised having specialists was more effective?

One for some of the Society of Ancients membership forum, as theres a few experts of the period there, and as a member of said Society - I should recommend you all joining 

Anyway, while you all rush to process your applications and join up, once I have the kids to bed I will try and fit in time to post the question myself later today or tomorrow.

[LawnRanger]

Hi lads
  its very interesting discussion .
I have a mongol army and have played against a few lance/spear bow armies ( Mamluks ),in the rule i use most units  that are lance/spear and bow class, there front base/line as lance/spear and the rear base /rank as bow ..

I just cant see how a unit of say 600 men and horse could all fire bow and then get out there lance and counter charge another unit with out some problems  

a)how do you  keep the units cohesion when firing and still have all them lances at hand to counter a charge in time .
 
b)If you say they put it up right then how does the back rank aim fire in such a packed formation .

c)if you said they place it across the saddle then the space between each horse must be BIG , it would make the unit more of a open order formation which you DONT want when you use a lance you need close order formation to punch through

d) how could you get a good rate of fire with you hanging on to a lance in some way !

well its got me thinking about it all now .. DID they  just have the 1st few ranks as lancers and the rest bow ..
thats how i could see it working ..

but thats coming from a mongol player with no lancer bow units as such  

happy gaming dave.v




  I

[scarabminiatures]

The following has been kindly supplied by members of the Society of Ancients, and as I mentioned before - its worth joining  

Here http://www.soa.org.uk/

Onto the information - thanks to Roy and Toby
From Roy
'We know from Agathias and by inference from Procopius that only a proportion of Early Byzantine cavalry carried both lance and bow. Some may have had spears and bows, some javelins, but the majority of regular Roman carried bows only (all had a secondary sword with a wide blade about 30 inches long.) A proportion of the Byzantine cavalry  were federate barbarians (Goths, Lombards, Heruls, Gepids) who were armed with lance or spear and bow only.
The lance appears, from the Strategikon of Maurice, to have a loop that is used to sling it. This source advocates loops on an Avar model, but it is likely that the suggestions to copy Avar kit represent improvements rather than new departures because the Byzantine cavalry had previously been modelled on Huns and Persians and we know that both of those deployed heavy cavalry with both lance and bow. Most likely the loop went over the shoulder, leaving the hands free to operate the bow.
The cavalry formation described by the Strategikon (dated around 600 AD)  has the front and rear ranks armed with lances and the middle ranks armed with bows. This would maximise the ability of the unit to deliver massed shooting and an effective  charge.
Battle descriptions of the period have Byzantine cavalry, skirmishing in small units, standing and shooting en masse and charging into contact. It looks very much as though units are expected to move from one type of action to another. Whilst it is possible to leave the lance with the cavalry's servants (who may have been responsible for providing replacement weapons) or stick it in the ground using the buttspike, it is most likely that those cavalry that carried lances and bows in combination slung the lance when they were operating as horse archers.' It is this combination of lance and bow that so impresses Procopius. The Romans had deployed mounted archers for several hundred years, but generally as bowmen only. The 'new troopers' combined archery at a distance with the aggression of a lancer and this is what made them respectable in a society that held the heroic virtues of hand to hand combat in high regard.
Added to the above by Toby
Roy's answer is as always very comprehensive and gets to the key point that it only seems to have been a minority of troops who carried both spear and bow, possibly because of the difficulty of shooting well while having a spear slung over your shoulder. Certainly the early byzantine cavalry apart to have been more hunnic in their combat style, rather than Persian, which seems to have been more static mass shooting. In the Strategicon and later there is always an emphasis on the distinction between cursores who fight in a more hunnic style and defensores who fight in a more Persian style, although the cursores are supposed to be able to drop back and form up as more solid bodies in the main line - ie they can fight in multiple modes. There is also a letter emphasis on specialised ranks of lancers and bowmen, which implies that using both is quite difficult, although there is also often a refrain about how difficult it is to get good horse archers, which suggests that that might also have been a problem.
I believe that the eastern steppe solution was to have a loop on the horses head tackle to put one end of the lance through and then tuck the butt between your leg and the saddle, which might have been better, but the byzantines went for the shoulder loop instead.  They also replaced the heavy kontos with the lighter kontarion, probably to make it easier to carry.  But certainly in the 6th century most are just bow and sword and are fighting in hunnic style
Hope some of that helps  
Kind regards
Rob
www.scarabminiatures.com
www.warandconquest.co.uk

[guitarheroandy]

Great response! Thank you...

So the regular Byzantine cavalry in the 6th century would be bow and sword. However, I guess the bucellarii, comitatus and foederati would potentially be different, as they'd be recruited from other races such as Goths, etc, so that's where you'd get the spear-armed cavalry...

I guess the key question would then be what the ratio would be across the army. This would probably vary depending on how many bucellarii the general had hired. I need to go back into Procopius...

And I need to join the Society of Ancients :-)

[georgec]

I can't remember right now where I read it, but turkic cavalry apparently placed their spears between their leg and their saddles while using their bows.  I will have a look for the reference later.

Right, found it.  I saw the quote in David Nicolle's book on 'Saracen Faris', Warrior 10 in the Osprey series, attached to the commentary on Plate E.  It comes from a 'book of Military Equipment and Tactics' written by Murda ak Tarusi for Saladin (no less!), so probably counts as the Arabic official manual for horse archery in the 3rd Crusade period...

'If you wish to shoot and have a sword, drop the sword from your right hand, seize the wrist loop and slide it up the right forearm.  Hold the bow and 3 arrows in your left hand.  If you are on horseback and are also armed with a lance, push the lance beneath the right thigh.  If you have a sword as well, put the lance beneath the left thigh....'

I would imagine this holds true for arabic and turkish ghulam cavalry which used 'shower shooting' tactics while more or less static, rather than full blown steppe horse archer tactics where the lance would be a bit of an encumbrance. These tactics go back to the Sassanid Persians (at least). 

[Emir of Askaristan]

That's the one ....god knows where my copies gone, but you found it at least.

Stationary shooting could happen like this for double armed cavalry, with them changing to their lance when ready. Or as suggested by others a simpler tactic is to have units of mixed bow or lance armed men.  Lastly there could be individuals "skirmishing" with lances looped up or tucked away and shooting whilst moving, ready for an opportune moment to change and charge home.

I think the ability of a trained man and horse team to achieve a high level of skill in these tactics shouldn't be underestimated. We've lost our connection to the horse in the modern west and it's sometimes difficult for us to imagine how close that bond was and what could be achieved.

[guitarheroandy]

In the time of Belisarius the combined formation of cursores and defensores (if that's the two terms for the kontarion and bow armed troops) wasn't established - that was slightly later and the evidence does point to a more Hunnic approach to the tactics. That certainly is what I get from reading Procopius' accounts of the battles during the siege of Rome.

This is all part of me trying to create a more 'current' view of what would constitute a wargames army of the Justinian era, specifically the Gothic Wars, with a view to doing an army for the War and Conquest rules. I guess this means that the 'kontos and bow' armed troops might therefore be limited to the General's Comitatus, (who would perhaps be recruited from Hunnic nobles) with the key question then being how much of the army should be 'Bucellarii' (Generals' private forces) and how much 'regular' Roman/Byzantine troops? And where would the 'Foederati' fit in?

By the sound of it, the 'Roman' horsed archers should therefore be armoured, but classed as light cavalry with skirmish ability, as the rules do allow some cavalry to move from skirmish to formed. This sounds like it would suit cavalry who fight in loose formation to shower arrows at the enemy then form up to charge in...

'Foederati' should probably be spear-armed 'Germanic' types (e.g. Sarmatians, Goths, Gepids, Heruls, etc,) who should fight formed. Troops classed as 'Bucellarii' should probably have some kind of leadership/morale bonus while the general remains alive, as they are loyal to the general rather than 'the Empire'...

We are getting there...slowly but surely