Neat Developments in Science

[Sardondi]

Dammit, now I have to reread The Face Of Battle and (the better, I think) The Mask Of Command, and I really don't have the time.

Heh. And your statement has made me hungry to search my bookshelves for my hardback copy of Face, which IIRC I bought around 1982 as a second edition which had some pretty good additions. Mask was indeed probably the better work, but I enjoyed Face so much more. All those you-are-there tidbits, like how there was no such thing as a movie-style cavalry charge in which horses ran over men or broke through a line of troops. That, instead, cavalry depended on the men in the lines/squares to lose heart, and break and run, where the real killing could be done during the chase and rundown. That bit of info ruined a childhood full of what I learned from Sir John were fantasies of bold, violent cavalry charges which bowled over their targets.

I was enough of a horseman as a kid and teen on the farm to know that most horses will indeed avoid stepping on or hitting people if possible, but I had never thought how that might play into cavalry charges. Prior to Face I'd always thought, until I was a young adult, that Murat's charge at Eylau and Ney's charges at Waterloo were bowl-'em-over affairs. Keegan taught me that, regardless of how hard the charge, when the cavalry finally got to a non-compromised square or unbroken and unflankable line, that the cavalrymen kind of milled about, shooting pistols or carbines at the infantry or hacking with sabres at the chance target. FWIW here's a great near-silent clip of d'Hautpoult's cuirassiers charging at Eylau from the movie Colonel Chabert

La charge à Eylau - Le colonel Chabert (1994)

And also an overhead shot from the magnificent and, IMO, terribly undervalued Waterloo by Sergei Bondarchuk and Dino DeLaurentis in 1970, using something like 20,000 Soviet troops and cavalrymen as extras. This incredible scene I think accurately depicts how the French cavalry swirled around the sides of the British squares like flood waters washing around pier pilings.

Battle of Waterloo: French Cavalry Charge

What a fantastic spectacle this film was. I can't conceive of it being done today for less than $500 million, maybe more. Just a jaw-dropping spectacle.

Well, I think I probably provided half-a-dozen rabbit trails to for folks to derail the thread if they want.

[stevesh]

I was enough of a horseman as a kid and teen on the farm to know that most horses will indeed avoid stepping on or hitting people if possible ..

That horse tendency was part of the plot line (such as it was) in a Dean Martin western whose name I can't recall.

[Little Hater]

Genius.

http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2014/03/10/stanford-bioengineer-develops-a-50-cent-paper-microscope/