Arms : The Cavalryman

The Cavalry

The English had a long tradition of mounted soldiers, going back to the knights of the Middle Ages. Being a mounted soldier was costly. Horses were expensive to keep and there was considerable equipment to maintain.

The cavalry was a shock weapon, used to break pike squares and pierce weak areas. To protect themselves from pikes, swords and bullets, the cavalryman wore the most complete armor of 17th-century soldiers. Heavy cavalrymen were covered with armor from head to knees. Medium and light cavalry wore half armor with an open helmet to guard the head and neck. Often a heavy leather buffcoat protected arms and thighs from sword cuts.

Helmets like this, with neck and face protection, were used by many 17th-century cavalrymen. Officially called a Zischagge helmet, it is more popularly known as a "lobstertail pot" because the neck protection looks like a lobster's tails.

This helmet was made in either The Netherlands or Germany, between 1625 and 1650.

Cavalrymen were armed with guns and long swords. A matchlock musket was too heavy and impractical to fire from horseback, so the cavalryman carried a carbine, a petronel (heavy carbine) or pistols. The most common pistol ignition in New England was the snaphance.

This pistol is an unusually early example of an English-lock firing ignition (commonly called "dog lock"). The "dog" was a catch on the left side of the lock plate that held the "cock" in the safe position.
		English-lock pistol, made in England, probably 1620s Descended in the family of John Thompson

The flint was clasped in the jaw at the top of the cock. When the flint struck the steel frizzen, the resulting sparks ignited the powder and fired the pistol.The butt of the pistol has a round knob to make it easy to grab. A number of pieces are lost from the lock plate, as is the ramrod.

Cavalry formations were designed for use in the open against a European enemy and were not very effective in heavily-forested colonial America. In New England, cavalry served most as the mounted component of the "trained band," or militia.