oh, be still my heart

[bedlamsbard]

I've been doing a lot of reading about cavalry lately -- it shows up in S.M. Stirling's Emberverse quite often (I plan to do a bunch of recs on Dust's major influences at some point in time, and Stirling's one of them), and I'm currently reading Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power by Victor Davis Hanson, which has a number of questionable conclusions in it and doesn't actually concentrate enough on the battles for my taste, just the outcomes and why the battles happened the way they did, but which do occasionally have a couple of good points.

Now, the guy really hates cavalry. Not a cavalry fan. Not surprising: he's a military historian and a professor of classics, which means ancient Greeks and Romans, and they didn't tend to do cavalry: they did really good heavy infantry. Which he is a fan of. But he does have a point about how infantry should, can, and do fight and defeat cavalry, whether that be skirmishers or a charge.

No horse will charge a wall of serried pikes. Even the most heavily mailed mounted warrior will be thrown or pulled down from his mount and killed on his back should he try. In a crowded throng of swords and bobbing spear points, where the horseman cannot use his speed to attack or to retreat, even the advantage of his height and the power of the downward angle of his blows are no guarantees of success. Consequently, armies value disciplined heavy infantrymen because when properly organized and deployed they can kill horsemen. Foot soldiers are more nimble. They can dart easily behind the rider, who turns to his rear only with difficulty. The infantryman's sharp pike or sword blows to the animal's flanks, rear, legs, and eyes can send the poor horse rearing in milliseconds, throwing his master several feet up into the air, often with a lethal landing for a man in heavy armor. Horse are large targets and, when sounded, can become the enemies, not the servants, of their riders. Foot soldiers have two hands free for fighting, not one on the reins. (emphasis mine)

Why am I bringing this up? The battle in PC. Why such a complicated plan to take down the Telmarine cavalry? Why not put the Narnians up there in a wall of pikemen or spearmen, or have the centaurs charge to meet the cavalry head to head, a la LWW? Well, for one thing, not enough weapons -- that sort of polearm especially. It looks like the Narnians outnumbered the Telmarine cavalry around two to one, if not more (counting the Narnians inside the How during the duel). Looking at the screen, I might even put it at three to one -- the Telmarines are clearly not a horse-going people (compared to the Calormenes, the other reason I've been thinking about cavalry lately). Enough infantry to withstand a massed charge. But they're not heavy infantry -- they don't have the armor.

So that's one reason (or, well, two). Here's the next: disciplined heavy infantrymen. The Narnians are not much for discipline. They're not trained, battle-hardened soldiers. If they're anything, they're skirmishers, hit and run guerrillas -- but they're not trained, disciplined soldiers, not like the Narnian army we see in LWW, which very clearly is, even without the arms and armor. (I didn't need the deleted scene with Susan staring at the Narnian archers in stark horror to tell me that. There's a reason that Aslan's How becomes Parris Island in Be Like Water.)

See, the thing is, why come up with such a risky plan? What if Peter or Edmund miscalculated and they couldn't bring down the tunnels beneath the plain? Wouldn't it be easier to just have that line of infantry? It's the first thing you think about when you're debating the use of infantry against cavalry -- meet 'em with a line of pikes, angled so that the horses plow right into them. But if the infantry can't hold -- and even having one horse galloping down on you is a very scary thing (hell, having one horse walk towards you, if you're not used to it; horses are big. country girl, here), let alone a couple of hundred, as well as their riders, with the intent in their hearts to wipe you off the face of the earth -- then you can't do that. The Pevensies never had a choice: they had to do the tricky, risky plan, rather than what they probably would have done with the exact same number of Narnian troops in the exact some position during the Golden Age. They had to come up with a plan that would weaken the impact of the enemy -- physically and psychologically -- so that the Narnians would have the upper hand against the cavalry.

(Now, you could also argue that the filmmakers just wanted to do something shiny, but again I say: military consultants. Adamson had them. And they probably thought of this.)

Why was this on my mind? Dust -- cavalry and infantry on both sides, though the Narnian cavalry is heavy and the Calormene cavalry is light, so the Narnian and Archenlander knights are going to (eventually) go through them like a knife through butter. Water -- right now I have the tunnels collapsing in there, but I think I'm going to cut it in favor of something less clever and more traditional; these Narnians have had months more time to prepare for this. My usual thinky thoughts about the makeup of the Narnian military during the Golden Age. Just the fact that I was reading that book.

ETA: Dude. "The filmmakers wanted something shiny" is never a valid excuse, just like "[such-and-such] can't act." One, world-building, two, characterization. Also, I am trying to logic stuff out here.

Comments

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

I vote "filmmakers wanted something shiny". Where did Witch-era Narnia get a disciplined trained army from? The Cupboard of Shiny Cinematic Things ;)

[lazaefair.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

Amended to add, "The Cupboard of Shiny Cinematic Things Capitalizing On The Public's Expectations After The Lord Of The Rings"

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

To be perfectly honest, I like Narnia's battle scenes better than LotR's -- and I spent all Christmas break watching and rewatching LotR's. (Except for the charge of the Rohirrim in RotK. Now that is just plain stunning.)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Survivors from the first war against the White Witch, trained the rest, also, Aslan -- the statues/Narnians in the White Witch's castle are in full armor; ergo, they are probably the remnants of the original battle/war. Plus, we have Tumnus's reference in LWW that his father went away to war. Even if we put it at the beginning of the Long Winter (around a century, probably more), there are still Narnians that are going to be alive from that. For that matter, there may have been an organized resistance movement that was quietly training soldiers.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Training them IN THE CUPBOARD OF SHINY CINEMATIC THINGS.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Dude. Do not make me fic this out; if I have to do Narnia without Pevensies ever I may do something drastic. I AM TRYING TO LOGIC STUFF OUT.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

*giggles at you*

ME, I have to write the movieverse LWW fic where the Narnian archers stare blankly at Edmund when he tells them to 'Fire'. And someone explains how he has to yell 'loose!' or 'now!', but they make sure the whole flank will answer to 'Fire', which is just as well, since Edmund forgets his lessons in the heat of battle...

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Hell, I turned Aslan's How into Parris Island in Water just so the Narnians would have actual military training and discipline, because Peta quite calmly assumes she's going to be there for a while; they might as well get that advantage.

LOGIC.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

As i'm sitting here, iTunes decides to play a song which talks about Cair Paravel. Thanks, iTunes.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*giggles* I have the Decemberists' cover of that, but not the original version.

[lazaefair.livejournal.com]

There may have been individually trained pockets of warriors (pretty unlikely going by the book, morale was pretty damn low at that point), but they didn't train together to become a cohesive army à la George Washington in Valley Forge. It was basically a child leading a bunch of separate clans in a desperate rush.

Anyway, I wasn't offering an opinion on whether movie LoTR's battles were filmed better than movie Narnia's - I was opining more that LoTR's commercial and critical success codified what the public expected for "required" elements in a fantasy war movie, and that includes a Shiny Cinematic Charge At The Enemy - which the makers of Narnia did implement. One of the criticisms that LWW received was that it hewed too close to fantasy cliché and "ripped off" some of the visual elements of LoTR, especially at a time when LoTR was still echoing in the public conscious.

Basically, it looked a lot like the makers of Narnia saw the huge splash LoTR made, went "oh, that's what the public pays money for" and actioned up the movie to conform to whatever the public would pay money for. Kind of like how Batman Begins set off a wave of gritty, "dark" superhero movies.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

That I will not argue. *sigh* If I ever do more early Golden Age stuff, we'll see that, all the clans, because I've built it up later.

I think I'm just exceptionally touchy at the moment. *winces*

[caramelsilver.livejournal.com]

I so love it when you logic things out, because you make it work and I get to stop think about it as a fault from the moviemakers. If they actually meant to make it that way is another story entirely, but if it makes sense I won't think about it.

By the by the battle in LWW: Adamson had the battle planned before anything else. That's probably why it's so awesome. My thoughts on the army is that most of the people in Aslan's camp, Oreius and them, has just been de-stoned by Aslan. They were soldiers in the war against the witch the first time around.

And PC!Battle: I'm for anything that makes Peter and Edmund's battle-planning skills seem more awesome=)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Which is interesting in and of itself, because it means there was an armed and organized resistance towards the White Witch -- uniforms, for Christ's sake. I mean, sure, you could just say Aslan pulled that out of thin air because it'd look cool, but where's the fun in that? Despite the fact that each race is armored differently, there's still a very basic likeness to design, especially the red and gold color scheme. I'd have to go back and watch more closely (this will be a real trouble for me, I'm sure) to double-check, but this is not a ragtag army like we see in PC by any means.

...shit, I do want to go back to LWW/early Golden Age and play around with this, now.

(Writing early Golden Age is actually kind of creepy. I mean, by the time you reach middle or late Golden Age they're various degrees of grown up, and of course by PC, post-PC, or LB they're grown up and screwed up, just younger, but early Golden Age? When they're actually still kids but they're just starting to get into that headspace of being kings and queens and cold-blooded killers -- now that is screwed up and creepy, especially because they don't notice it happening. Hi, my name is Bedlam, and I like to fuck with my characters.)

[scarletts-awry.livejournal.com]

I love watching you logic things out, and I continue to be in awe of your researching abilities. :-)

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Logic-ing stuff out is fun, and it adds more depth than just waving your hands and saying, "Well, the filmmakers just wanted something shiny." It is a corollary to the "it's not bad acting, it's characterizatioin" school of thought, at least in my book.

[1aquaesulis76.livejournal.com]

*happy sigh* you, logicing, and cavalry vs infantry tactics. Of course you sent out infantry with pikes/bayonets against a cavalry charge. One of the most famous examples is the battle of Waterloo, where Wellington's squares (so the horses & riders met bayonets at all sides, with the soldiers with guns hid safely in the middle, picking off the officers & anyone they fancied) beat off wave after wave of Napoleon's cavalry.

Also in the Pennisular wars, came the first ever time a cavalry charge broke a square - although 3 ended up scattering to the wind. That was the French fleeing from the best of the German Light Horse I *think* - will have to check, and will give you descriptions of both tactics if you like. I'd love to be helpful if I can!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*grins* This fandom is such a good excuse to let my (not so) inner military geek out.

I'm actually going to have to sit down eventually and plot out the makeup of the Narnian and Calormene armies for the several major battles we're going to get. *twitches* I think I am actually going to diagram out the battles.

Wait, I think we were talking about Water and not Dust. *facepalm*

I'd love to hear about it. *raises eyebrows brightly*