![]() Philip of Macedon was among the first Greek commanders to make substantial use of horsemen, creating the army with which his son Alexander the Great would conquer the world. Horses have been ridden into battle for at least 3,000 years, since the Assyrians and then the Persians realized the speed and maneuverability of cavalry. If the weapon is knocked from his hand in combat, he will not lose it. ![]() The acorn prevents the knot from slipping. A cavalryman loops the sword knot about his wrist before drawing the saber in preparation for the charge. Wound about its hilt is a sword knot and acorn. He lived with it.Ī cavalry saber is a tool, like a hammer or saw. He witnessed the replacement of the sword and lance – weapons he had been trained to use as a cadet – by poison gas, machine guns, and tanks. He went from a cavalry charge at full gallop across the sands of the Sudan to the mud, trenches, and barbed wire of World War I. “War, which used to be cruel and magnificent, has now become cruel and squalid.” Thus Churchill reflected during the 1930s on what he had witnessed during his military career. During the Great War, he led a battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers over the top on the Western Front in the spring of 1916. Churchill charged with the 21st Lancers at Omdurman on September 2, 1898. James Madison became the only President to take the field as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, against the British at Bladensburg MD on August 24, 1814. Four of the first seven Presidents had fought in the Revolution or the War of 1812 (James Monroe served in both). Once, the evasion of military service was considered reprehensible. Members of the elite, the one percent, no longer lead men into battle. Mamarked the centennial of one of the last great charges, at Moreuil Wood in France, led by a wealthy horseman, soldier, and statesman, renowned in his day as “a Boy’s Own hero, a dashing man of action.” Amidst a national discussion on weapons and their rates of fire, we might reflect on an earlier time, before firepower drove cavalry from the battlefield.
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