Free Virtues of War by Steven Pressfield

sees what is coming. But he can do nothing about it. He is all heavy infantry. His bulk is rooted to the earth. He has as much chance against us as the tree has against the axe.
    As the Sacred Band comes forward (as it must, to attack Antipater’s brigade in flank), our wedges of Companion Cavalry appear on their left, hurtling toward them. The foe’s reinforcing companies of the Heracles, Cadmus, and Electra regiments must flood forward now, filling the breach created by the Sacred Band’s charge. We can see their captains shouting and gesticulating for this, and their gallant ranks straining to obey.
    Infantry is mass and immobility.
    Cavalry is speed and shock.
    A gap opens between the Sacred Band and its supporting units. Into this gap I charge.
    Bucephalus is first to strike the foe. My horse is a prodigy. He stands seventeen hands high and weighs over twelve hundred pounds. His hooves on the earth make tracks broad as skillets; his quarters are the size of regimental kettles. I cannot imagine the terror that must have seized that initial warrior of the Sacred Band as my stallion’s driving knees crashed upon him, followed by the massive bulk of his iron-armored chest. The front parted before me with a sound like rending metal. I could feel Cleitus and Telamon behind me on the left, Socrates Redbeard on the right.
    A cavalry charge is nothing grander than a directed stampede. Men have believed that horses will refuse to overrun massed infantry, as they will balk at running into a wall of stone. But horses are herd animals, and in the madness of the rush, they will follow the leader headlong off a cliff. In the formation of the wedge, where the commander’s horse is alone at the point, the mounts of the succeeding chevrons are not following their own eyes and senses; they’re following the lead horse. And if the leader is brave enough or reckless enough, spurred on by a rider impetuous enough, the trailers must follow. The same instinct that drives a herd off a precipice will propel it into massed infantry.
    The foot-knights of Thebes cannot believe the mounted foe is mad enough to hurl himself upon their elevated spear points. But here we are. The shaft of my lance snaps in two against the shield of some spectacularly valorous fellow, whose own eight-footer splinters in the same instant against the iron plate lapping Bucephalus’s chest. The foe’s eyes fasten on mine through the slits of our helmets; I read his fury and exasperation, matching my own, at the cursedness of our mutually rotten luck. Down he plunges beneath Bucephalus’s knees; in a moment his helmet is staved. I feel revulsion at the waste of such a gallant heart and vow to myself for the thousandth time that I, come to power, will never again permit Greek to work slaughter against Greek.
    Muralists depict the clash of cavalry with lances thrusting, sabers slashing. But in the crush it is the horse who does the damage, not the man. The rider in a melee is, to all purposes, out of his mind. So is his mount, and he, the rider, must use this against the foe. Hemmed by shouting, weapon-wielding men, the animal’s instincts supersede all training. Bucephalus rears and plunges, as a stallion will in the wild. He kicks at anything behind him and strikes with his teeth at any flesh he can reach. When a horse senses something moving beneath his belly, he will stamp with his hooves, as at a snake or wolf. Heaven help the man, fallen beneath him in combat. All these instincts the cavalryman must employ against the foe. But the lead rider can have only one object: punch through. Keep moving. The man at the point draws the wedge behind him. If he stalls, the whole rush founders.
    We are ten deep into the mass of the foe. A sea of helmets and spear points boils beneath me. I claw for my saber, but in the initial crash, the sheath has ruptured; I can’t get the jammed blade out. For an instant I consider shouting to Cleitus or