This has been bugging me. Every documentary I see about modern day Mongolia, mongolians are riding around on ponies. And they look rather oversized on them.
Are these ponies the same type that Genghis Khan and his forces use to cut a path or destruction? Or were they using larger warhorses that no one uses anymore?
Temujin used the classic Mongol horse for all his raiding. Mongol horses (not ponies, but smallish horses) were quite sturdy animals. While the European counterparts were larger the Mongols were generally more lightly armored. This allowed for greater speed and given that Mongols were practically raised in the saddle they made for superb horsemen. Combine that with excellent coordination and brilliant tactics the Mongols were more than a match for other armies of the day.
I think that you might find that the ‘Wild West’ did not have that many large horses.
My raddled memory recalls reading a biography of Genghis, one of his more endearing tricks was to besiege a town and accept surrender and take all useful males of military age, or raze the place (that sure discouraged his next port of call).
That makes me suspect that his army was mainly on foot.
My earliest recollection of heavy cavalry was in the late Roman Empire, Belisarius.
The Normans were definitely adepts
This description of Genghis and his relatives sets their dates:
http://ut.essortment.com/genghizkhan_rhrg.htm
Mongol cavalry wasn’t heavy cavalry, it was light cavalry. They were horse archers. But also a large proportion of their military was from conquered states. So their armies had infantry, just not Mongol infantry.
Well actually a certain proportion was “heavy calvary”, but only relative to their confreres. They wore slightly heavier armor ( scale or a leather cuirass over chain and an iron helm vs. the cap and no, quilted or a lighter cuirass for the lighter horsemen ) and carried a lance and an armor-piercing weapon ( axe or mace ) in addition to a scimitar. They were used in the same way as western heavy calvary - as the arm of decision, charging in to shock the enemy lines after the mass of archers had softened them up sufficiently.
As for horses, they appear to have averaged 13 to 14 hands high, with the occasional specimen hitting up to 16. That’s a bit larger than the average size of today’s Mongolian ponies. The quality was apparently improved by selective breeding with horses acquired after the penetration of western central Asia.