20 Chapter One
styles of warfare matched Homer’s heroes’ disdain for archery. It
differed from the apparent irrationality of Homeric misuse of chariots,
inasmuch as knightly tactics were in fact exceedingly effective. The
reason was that a knight’s charge, delivered at full gallop, concentrated
an enormous momentum at the lance tip. Only an army similarly
equipped could hope to counter such concentrated force. To keep a
firm seat at the moment of impact required the rider to brace his feet
against a pair of heavy stirrups. Stirrups, apparently, were invented
only about the turn of the fifth-sixth centuries A.D., and spread so
rapidly across Eurasia that it is impossible now to tell where that
apparently simple device was first introduced. The invention made the
charge of western knights enormously formidable on the battlefield
and also increased the effectiveness of steppe cavalry, since an archer
could aim more accurately with stirrups to stabilize his seat atop a
galloping horse.^22
The rise of heavy armored cavalry in western Asia and in western
Europe constituted a reprise of the impact of chariotry on social and
political structures some eighteen hundred years earlier. Whenever
superior force came to rest in the hands of a few elaborately equipped
and trained individuals, it became difficult for central authorities to
prevent such persons from intercepting most of the agricultural sur
plus and consuming it locally. “Feudalism” was the result, even though
in both Iran and the Mediterranean lands, old imperial forms and pre
tensions lingered on to provide models and precedents for reconstruc
tion of more effective authority when the balance of power in matters
military again shifted in favor of centralized forms of administration.^23
The Far East developed differently. In spite of Emperor Wu-ti’s
expedition of 101 B.C. which introduced the great horses of Iran into
China, these animals never became very important in the Far East.
Crossbows, capable of knocking an armored man from his horse at a
distance of 100 yards or more, were readily available in China. This
went far to cancel the effectiveness of the new heavy armored cavalry.
Moreover, Chinese rulers preferred to use the resources which taxa
tion concentrated in their hands to maintain a suitable balance be
tween payments to professionalized border guards on the one hand,
and diplomatic gift-payments to potentates across the frontier on the
other. Matching balances within Chinese society between taxpayers
and tax consumers, as defined by the Han emperors (202 B.C.–A.D.
- On stirrups and knights see Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social
Change (Oxford, 1962); John Beeler, Warfare in Feudal Europe, 730–1200 (Ithaca, N.Y.,
1971), pp. 9–30.
- Shadowy survival of older command structures had also occurred in the chariot
age and facilitated the rebuilding of Iron Age monarchies.
