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Old 04-03-2019, 02:55 PM
Olefin Olefin is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Greencastle, PA
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Comes down to what you are trying to teach them to do

Riding a horse as in just riding it from point A to point B with no other distractions?

Or riding a horse in combat conditions and being able to control it while there are bullets and artillery shells going off?

Same with the horse itself - i.e. there are horses you can ride, horses that can pull a wagon and horses that can be ridden into combat and not freak out

To learn to ride a horse on trails usually takes the average person about a week to two weeks if they are doing it several hours per day. Now keep in mind that would be a person who had never ridden a horse before with a well broken in horse. Now if its a total neophyte on a barely broken in horse it would take a lot more.

One thing to keep in mind for all cavalry formations is if they took people who already knew how to ride and who may have even brought their own horses - i.e. the Kenyan Cavalry unit was created by people who were lifetime riders using their own horses starting with a few people who had military training

There are countries where raising a cavalry unit due to how many people still ride would easier - i.e. Russia, Ethiopia, the US, China, England, Poland for instance come to mind - the question is are the cavalry units in the Army guides composed of neophytes who had to be taught to ride or did they comb every unit in the area to find people who knew how to ride horses and "trade" for them - i.e. here you can have these 200 guys who dont know how to ride in exchange for those 100 guys you have who do?

Last edited by Olefin; 04-03-2019 at 03:48 PM.
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