For almost two hundred years, from about 1630 through the eighteenth century, Western Europeans had discarded the lance for use in mounted combat. During the Napoleonic wars, this long-ignored tool of the horse soldier was reinstituted on the battlefield, although heated disputes about its military suitability soon followed.After the Anglo-Danish conflicts, including the Norman Conquest in 1066, mail-clad feudal horsemen ruled the battlefield for roughly 250 years. Armor-protected knights charged on horseback wielding lances ten to eleven feet long (cut down to as short as five feet by both the French and English at the Battle of Agincourt). The age ended with the rise of the bowmen in the fourteenth century. While the devastating volleys of English longbow men had initiated the change at Crecy on August 26, 1346, it was massed bodies of pikemen that really thwarted cavalry charges, as they did at the Battle of Pavia in 1525. Widespread use of gunpowder made the knight’s charge futile, even suicidal, by the 1560s.

Horsemen turned to the wheel-lock pistol themselves. The Schwartzen Reiter (Black Riders) employed mounted volley fire and countermarch tactics (the caracole), although by about 1630 the cavalry was replacing unreliable and short-range pistols with swords and sabers. Sweden’s King Gustavus Aldolphus, for example, abandoned the lance in favor of arming his cavalry with swords and pistols during the Thirty Years’ War. In a relatively quick period of time, all but the peoples in Europe who had been under Eastern influence, such as the Russians, Hungarians, Cossacks, and Poles, abandoned lancers.

The lancer began reappearing in European armies almost unnoticed. The Hapsburgs formed a lancer regiment shortly after acquiring parts of Poland in the third partition of that nation by Austria, Prussia, and Russia in 1795. They raised a second regiment in 1798, and another in 1801. Russia converted a number of light cavalry formations into lancers in 1803. Both countries enrolled Poles and Lithuanians exclusively in their new lancer units. The prowess of these peoples with the lance gave the Hapsburgs and the Russians a ready pool of skilled and well-trained lancers.

In Western Europe, the greatest impetus for reintroducing lancers came from France. That country had not employed mounted troops with lances since the days of Herman Maurice, marshal de Saxe, in the mid-eighteenth century, and even these amounted only to a meager number of Polish volunteers and adventurers. De Saxe used them for scouting and raiding; the French army did not even officially recognize them.

After Napoleon conquered Prussia in 1806, he marched his Grande Armée into what had been Poland. As he traveled from Poszan to Warsaw, a guard of honor — one hundred mounted Polish nobles — accompanied the French leader. From them he learned of the famous Winged Hussars, who, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, carried fifteen-foot-long lances and rode specially bred steeds to victories over the Turks, Russians, and Swedes. After arriving in the Polish capital, the emperor marveled at the expert manner in which Polish cavalrymen handled their lances.

A reading of de Lessac’s book De l’Esprit Militaire, which stressed that the ‘true weapon of the cavalry was the lance, convinced Napoleon to create his own regiment of lancers from Polish volunteers. Although designated under the decree of March 2, 1807, as the Regiment de Chevau-Legers Polonais de la Garde, it did not obtain lances until after the Battle of Wagram in 1809. It was renamed in 1811 Le 1er Regiment de Chevau-Legers Lanciers de la Garde Impériale, the first lancer unit in the French army, and a component of the emperor’s Imperial Guard.

From this beginning sprang a dramatic resurgence in lance-equipped mounted regiments among the armies of Europe. The Austrians formed their third regiment in 1813. By the end of the Napoleonic wars, Russia maintained twelve regular lancer regiments, plus dozens of irregular Cossack regiments and squadrons sporting the weapon. By 1815, Prussia had eight lancer (or uhlan, a Polish word) regiments, as well as a squadron attached to the Guard. Further single squadrons or companies of lancers were added to nonlancer regiments in all the armies of Europe, to give those units more shock power. Examples include Russian hussar regiments and the French 31st Chasseurs a Cheval, all usually armed with saber, carbine, and pistol as well as a lance.

Napoleon, spurred on by the energy six Allied Polish lancer regiments expended during the Austrian campaign of 1809 (especially at Wagram), two years later formed nine regiments of this category of troops (called the French lancers) by converting six existing French dragoon regiments and one chasseur regiment, as well as the old Lancers of the Vistula. These regiments of the line were soon followed by three more such organizations that became members of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. Uniformed in hussar fashion, they generally carried lances measuring six feet nine inches long, light cavalry sabers, and pistols into combat.

Yet the French cavalry regiments generated controversy about their effectiveness in battle. The officers and enlisted men first questioned the efficacy of using lances on the nineteenth-century battlefield. Many of these critics had participated in the Napoleonic wars. As light cavalry, lancer units were expected to be able to scout and skirmish with enemy horsemen. However, critics pointed out that the lance was virtually useless against cavalry in close quarters — it was more of a pole than a weapon — and it prevented the user from either retreating or advancing rapidly.

Advocates of the lance insisted that it came into its own when horsemen charged opposing cavalry, especially on level ground where the attacks had ample space to maneuver. The frightful impact of a body of lancers moving at twelve to fourteen miles an hour toward the enemy, they reasoned, would always overthrow the adversary. The shock of collision would propel the lance right through the enemy, cause the survivors to flee, and allow the lancers to rally and move back to the safety of their own lines.

Opponents countered that in most engagements cavalry charging against other cavalry was forced to slow its attack once contact was made, and a melee would inevitably result. In that situation, the lancer with his long, cumbersome weapon would be at a considerable disadvantage against an opponent briskly wielding a saber.

Such was the experience of Lieutenant Tomkinson of the 16th British Light Dragoons in the Peninsular campaign of 1811. On September 25, Tomkinson’s regiment met the lancers of the Vistula Legion before the town of Azava. As the lancers trotted toward the Light Dragoons, the Redcoats spurred on against them, driving them back. Advancing at the charge this time, the legionnaires were countercharged by Tomkinson’s regiment and fled before making any contact.

Tomkinson believed the fight at Azava demonstrated that in a melee, after the tight formations disintegrated — the typical outcome when cavalry units collided — riders armed with sabers would win over lance-hampered soldiers, as the shorter weapons were easier to handle. In a general combat, the lancer became a much more clumsy fellow…his weapon was more difficult to manage and his ability to control his mount suffered accordingly. In addition, the lance might become embedded in an enemy soldier or horse and be of no further use.

Lance devotees argued that lancers could defeat enemy cavalry in a melee. On June 17, 1815, during the Waterloo campaign, French lancers were working their way through the Belgian town Genappe. As they debouched from the village, British light cavalry and then heavy cavalry attacked them, both units armed with sabers. According to French sources, the lancers easily beat back the first enemy assaults, but additional attacks caused the lancers’ line to break. British versions of the event say the heavy cavalry of the Union Brigade prevailed in close hand-to-hand fighting, forcing the French from Genappe.

French lances themselves may explain how at Genappe and in other cavalry engagements, horsemen equipped with sabers could best Frenchmen with lances. Commenting on the poor quality of French lances, General Antoine de Brack, a veteran of the Napoleonic wars, pointed out: The ash of which the staff is made is so heavy that it makes it difficult to handle….The wood does not, by its strength, compensate for this disadvantage; for being cut in blocks and the grain crossed, it breaks easily. French lance construction was so defective that a few sword blows would weaken the weapon to such an extent that the next hit could crack it and render it useless.

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