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Javanese Horse Archer 2016-10-05

Xyth requested a generic South-East Asian horsearcher and here it is. It uses the same model as the Javanese Horseman in my Java Ancient Unit Pack (Mataram).

Horse archery was never very popular in South-East Asia but there are a few odd references to its use on the mainland. Supposedly during the twelfth century the Cham people learned horse archery from a Chinese instructor as well as how to construct ballistas. But while there is a lot of evidence of ballistas being used by both sides in the wars between the Khmer and Chams, there is little to no evidence of horse-archery being used on the battlefield. It may have been simply practiced by the Cham elite as a pass-time or to prove their martial powers like among the upper-class in China.

Vietnam must have been home to some horse archery tradition as it is one of the classical martial forms of Confucianism. Confucius himself was an archery teacher and later civil exams would feature horse archery. However, as far as I know, Vietnam never produced any mass horse archer units like that used further north.

Interestingly, skilled horse archers were used as mercenaries in Thailand during the seventeenth century. The French ambassador to Siam, Simon de la Loubere, reports that Ayutthaya had "Tartars armed with bows and arrows" as apart of their royal guards. Sadly the origins of these "Tartars" is not known, but they seem to have been the same "Ho Chinese" cavalry refereed to in Thai accounts. Whether these were Chinese, Vietnamese, Mongols, Turks, Indians, or Tibetans is not known as these are all valid sources of skilled horse archers for a small elite guard. Indeed, they may have been simply locals skilled in mounted archer and dressed in funny foreign clothes.


Remember, it uses the Egyptian Horsearcher animations from the Warlords Rise of Rome scenario, not the vanilla horsearcher animations.

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Bakuel
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