Bret Devereaux

Consider, after all, sport rapier and sabre fencing can make all of the same claims of lineage that modern equestrianism can. They too are modern sport variants inspired by military arts which passed out of common military use in the first decades of the 20th century.

But compare them to the actual late medieval treatises and you realize that modern sport and ancient martial art do not necessarily coincide.

And of course sabre fencing as taught in 1910 as a combat art for officers and cavalrymen was not the same as fencing as learned by a 15th century man-at-arms.

Again, don't mistake me: experimental archaeology and modern practice have an important role to play in illuminating ancient or medieval practice. But it is not the paramount role: that role goes to the primary sources themselves.

Anyway, as far as experience goes, the last cavalry-on-cavalry engagement (the subject, I think, of discussion), the last was in 1920, during the Polish-Soviet War. There are, to my knowledge, no living veterans of that battle (given that if they were 18 then, they'd be 119 now)

Cavalry on *infantry* engagements have happened far more recently (there's been at least one in the current Afghanistan war, for instance), though they been mostly battles of dragoons, not lancers and their tactics do not resemble those of shock cavalry.

So again, the question being 'heavily armored shock cavalry meeting in an engagement' - I stand by my statement. No one alive has experienced that. In the end, the art of the historian is researching and gathering information on things no one living experienced.

To say - as you do on the reddit post - that no one who doesn't ride can speak on cavalry, would be the same as saying no one who hasn't experienced combat can speak on war. A foolish and counter-productive position, as any number of my veteran-mil-hist colleagues will tell you.