Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
According to thise website (in Polish):
http://www.gazetarycerska.pl/readarticle.php?article_id=68&rowstart=1
Procopius of Caesarea mentions cavalry units in Byzantine service, consisting of Huns and Slavs, already in years 536 / 537.
So looks like Slavs knew mounted warfare quite well already at that time (not surprising - many of them lived in the steppes of Ukraine).
The article also says that Slavs were breeding horses very early in their history (both for transportation and for war).
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I'm not sure about all Slavs, but Russian (Rus) Early Medieval armies were famous for fast movements, so they surely had remounts (a single horse is getting tired when carrying the rider for a long time - so they needed to change mounts from time to time to keep moving without rest).
Earliest wild horses which lived in forested areas of this part of Europe (modern East Germany and Poland) probably looked like this:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpan_(koń)
Of course later larger breeds of horses were introduced here, and later new breeds were created (for example there was a separate breed of horse known as Polish horse in Late Medieval / Early Modern Era, and they had opinion of excellent war horses - this breed later got extinct).
http://www.gazetarycerska.pl/readarticle.php?article_id=68&rowstart=1
Procopius of Caesarea mentions cavalry units in Byzantine service, consisting of Huns and Slavs, already in years 536 / 537.
So looks like Slavs knew mounted warfare quite well already at that time (not surprising - many of them lived in the steppes of Ukraine).
The article also says that Slavs were breeding horses very early in their history (both for transportation and for war).
======================================
Traitorfish said:Do any of the sources indicate Slavic armies being accompanied by many unmounted horses? Generally, if an army made extensive use of cavalry, they'd have plenty of remounts, while if they only had one or two horses a piece, it was unlikely that cavalry were used on more than an ad hoc basis. (It's obviously possible that this varied between or within armies.)
I'm not sure about all Slavs, but Russian (Rus) Early Medieval armies were famous for fast movements, so they surely had remounts (a single horse is getting tired when carrying the rider for a long time - so they needed to change mounts from time to time to keep moving without rest).
Earliest wild horses which lived in forested areas of this part of Europe (modern East Germany and Poland) probably looked like this:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarpan_(koń)
Of course later larger breeds of horses were introduced here, and later new breeds were created (for example there was a separate breed of horse known as Polish horse in Late Medieval / Early Modern Era, and they had opinion of excellent war horses - this breed later got extinct).