training and his enjoyment of riding and shooting, he remained healthy
and vigorous. He regularly shot at targets a hundred paces away while
riding.^19 Cao Pi was an upper-class Chinese whose father had him trained
in martial arts. To a great extent, his ability to perform those martial arts
well required a certain acceptance of steppe values. Yet at the same time,
Cao Pi, like his father and brother, was an accomplished Chinese poet. He
was therefore one of those extraordinary individuals who excelled in both
literary and martial pursuits.
Horse archery remained important during the period from the third to
the seventh centuries and gradually became the dominant mode of steppe
cavalry warfare over those centuries. This trajectory of development
stands in stark contrast to that of cavalry in Europe. In China and the
eastern part of the Eurasian steppe, the stirrup arrived with heavily arm-
ored cavalry. Although heavily armored cavalry charges predated the
stirrup elsewhere, it greatly facilitated the practice. Archery from horse-
back also predated the arrival of the stirrup, though it similarly facilitated
that practice. Yet, increasingly, mobile horse archery, rather than charges
by heavily armored cavalry, became the preferred battlefield practice.
Armored cavalrymen still charged into the ranks of infantry or other
cavalry forces, but mobility, rather than weight, was valued.
The change in cavalry practice is particularly noteworthy for several
reasons. First, it demonstrates a decision on the part of steppe and Chinese
cavalrymen to change their mode of warfare. Second, the move away from
charges of heavily armored cavalry was a permanent change in the mode of
Chinese and steppe warfare. Third, the change in practice reflected a sharp
change in the martial ethos of both steppe and Chinese cavalry. Cavalry
would continue to play an important role on the Chinese battlefield until
the nineteenth century. Indeed, some scholars have not only assumed that
steppe cavalrymen had always been exclusively horse-archers but that this
mode of cavalry warfare was a natural and inevitable extension of their
society and culture. This was clearly not the case and provides another
example of how martial arts has been used to distinguish, characterize, and
ultimately generalize about a culture or society without taking due cogni-
zance of the choices and changes in the martial arts over time.
The reasons that steppe cavalrymen moved away from heavy cavalry
charges in the sixth and early seventh centuries are not clear. I speculated
earlier that one reason may have been the rise of disciplined mass infantry
forces. Even if this is true, the shift away from heavy cavalry is remarkable
from a cultural rather than a military perspective. In Europe, for example,
heavy cavalry remained on the battlefield even as new modes of warfare
The Northern and Southern Dynasties 81