made it less and less effective. The attachment of the aristocratic class to
heavy cavalry as a system of martial arts and warfare that distinguished it
from lower-born people led to various innovations designed to maintain
the military value of heavy cavalry on the battlefield. Vestigial forms of
heavy cavalry in Europe, even when it was no longer made up of com-
pletely armored knights, continued in attenuated forms into the nineteenth
century. Just as important, the ideal of the knight and his methods of
fighting have continued over time even into popular culture today.
Another possibility, suggested by David Graff, is that in the Sui and
Tang dynasties the chief concern of their respective armies was dealing
with steppe groups where mobility was most important. A shift in military
practice for purely military reasons is admirable, but the strong steppe
cultural affinities of parts of the Sui and Tang ruling elites surely helped in
this shift. The most effective response to fast-moving steppe cavalry forces
was to create one’s own fast-moving cavalry forces. Slow-moving infantry
and extensive fortifications offered only passive defense of imperial terri-
tory and offered no possibility of offensive operations into the steppe.
Curiously, heavy cavalry not only ceased to be the decisive battlefield
arm in China but it also disappeared entirely from warfare. Cavalry in the
Chinese context came exclusively to mean horse-archers. These horse-
archers were sometimes well armored, particularly those with access to
manufacturing centers, and they were prepared to charge into an enemy
formation after it had been softened up with missilefire. But the idea or
even ideal of a direct force on force clash between heavy cavalrymen no
longer existed. Cavalry forces strove for mobility,flexibility, and the
development and exploitation of opportunities. Later Chinese writers
sometimes complained that steppe cavalry forces refused to stand and
fight, while Chinese infantry forces vainly sought to bring them to battle.
Another possibility is that the heavy cavalry of the Six Dynasties period
was anomalous. Han dynasty armies frequently failed to force battle on
steppe armies, who retreated before superior Han armies or otherwise
outmaneuvered them. An ethos of heavy cavalry arose after the Han and
operated for several centuries before disappearing completely. In its time it
was effective, at least when opposing similar forces. The martial arts
involved preexisted the use of heavy cavalry in battle and continued to
exist after heavy cavalry were no longer used.
The third trend in weapons use that had begun during the Han and
becamefixed in Chinese martial arts soon after the Three Kingdoms
period was the use of the single-edged sword as virtually the only close
combat weapon. The sword could be used alone or, as it was most often
82 The Six Dynasties