The Line Formation and Cavalry
The line formation was also used by certain types of cavalry.
The Sassanid Persians, the Mamluks, and Muslim cavalry in India often used the tactics named "shower shooting". It involved a line of fairly well-armoured cavalrymen (often on armoured horses) standing in a massed static line or advancing in an ordered formation at the walk while loosing their arrows as quickly as possible by reducing their draw length.
In the 16th century, the heavy cavalry (reiters and cuirassiers) often attacked in a line formation. Later, dragoons began to use linear tactics, being on foot in the defence. Accordingly, the name "line cavalry" has moved from heavy cavalry to the dragoons. Hussars in the 15th-17th centuries wore armor, and often attacked in close line formation, but later hussars became a light cavalry and stopped using linear tactics. Cossacks never used linear tactics.
Read more about this topic: Line (formation)
Famous quotes containing the words the line, line, formation and/or cavalry:
“I’m the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, “Self negation is noble, self-culture is beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared to self-abuse.” Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time—”None know it but to love it, None name it but to praise.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter I know,
Who charge within the bosom
The Cavalry of Woe.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)