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Chariot Warfare - Battles of the Bronze Age

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Just like Cataphracts inspired the medieval knights in Europe, horse riders evolved from a similar unit employed in warfare during the Bronze Age: war chariots. During the Bronze Age, the time of the first civilizations, chariots were the dominant force on the battlefields. They were the earliest form of truly heavy units, able to crush infantry formations in a devastating charge while also providing fire support, either from javelinists or archers. The first report of chariots used in warfare came all the way back from Sumer, taking the form of a war cart. Despite being relatively inefficient on the battlefield, as the cart was too slow and was relegated to transport, the idea of a mobile platform stuck. The first proper chariots came from one of the great hegemons of Bronze Age Anatolia, the Hittite people. Starting as Indo-European nomads, they were the first to pioneer the usage of chariots, from construction to tactics, before being adopted by their neighboring nations. Taking the...
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Knights of the Old World - Cataphract

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Heavy cavalry was, for a very long time, the dominant force on the battlefield. Many of such units have reached legendary status, like the noble French knights, whose effectiveness tended to be heavily hampered by their extreme arrogance, or the Polish Winged Hussars and their renowned charge at the Battle of Vienna. Their era of dominance in warfare would be ended with the development of pike-and-shot warfare, obsoleting the unit while lighter mounted units endured for a bit longer. And while heavily armored cavalry has become a symbol of the medieval period, just like crossbows and the feudal system, it finds its roots in more ancient times. Before the knights, there were the Cataphracts, a unit that finds its roots in ancient Persia, and was kept by its successor nations all the way to the Eastern Roman Empire. Cataphracts were straightforward: a rider covered in the heaviest armor of their time, riding a horse protected by fish-scaled armor. Even their name doesn’t deal in subtlety...
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the Not so Mongol Invasions of Japan

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The Mongols under the Great Khans were truly one of a kind, forming the second-largest empire in History, right above the Russians but a fair bit short of the British. They went nearly everywhere in Asia, from the coasts of the Song to the eastern regions of Europe and Anatolia. Only three places have escaped their touch: the inhospitable lands of Siberia, the Indian Peninsula, and Japan. Now anyone who knows a bit about Japan’s history might be surprised by this, as the two great Mongol invasions are a big part of the Island Nation’s past. Now I am not denying these attacks ever happened, but rather that our favourite horse riders had very little to do with them. Let me explain.     Now the main reason why the idea that the Mongols tried to invade Japan on two separate occasions stemmed from the fact that both events were led by Kublai Khan, founder of the Yuan Dynasty and grandson of Genghis Khan. The problem with this is that Kublai, after the fragmentation of the g...
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