Exactly. The reason knights don’t seem to get up after being unhorsed has a lot more to do with falling five or more feet onto hard ground after taking a heavy blow than with the “weight of the armor”.
Regarding lance combat, read John Keegan’s The Face of Battle. He does indeed cite primary sources on Napoleonic lance combat saying that cavalry (by then only armored in breastplates) suffered badly at the hands of steady infantry at Waterloo; one principle reason was that far fewer horsemen could oppose a given frontage of infantry, so they were always outnumbered at the point of “contact”.
More interestingly, he seeks to analyze what the moment of contact might be like in a charge home with lances. After some thought experiments about a horse’s willingness to impale itself or trample bulky objects – which did happen, but probably not as often as we think – he calls up some primary sources from Waterloo. Allowing for imprecision of language, the sources seem to describe a successful charge as not necessarily even being fast, but always marked by “a shiver running down the line” of the infantry just before the cavalry “rides in among them”. Charges that fail are described as turning aside, reining in, or flinching before “steady” or “resolute” infantry. Keegan concludes that (and I hope I’m not spoiling anything) the lance charge was much more a MORAL than physical threat. Troops that did not quail before the fearsome approach of the mounted lancer usually deterred him and drove him off…those that did not broke, and were driven into flight or destroyed. That also explains much of the sargeant’s historical emphasis on forcing his troops to stand pat no matter what – only by standing firm as a unit could cavalry be resisted.
I think I’ve seen the same video - IIRC it was made by the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. Note, however that the earlier chainmail hauberk type of armour worn by the Normans and the Crusaders was probably heavier than the later plate armour, especially with all the extra reinforcments added in the later part of this period, and was also mainly hanging from the shoulders, with some suspension help from the swordbelt, and so the weight was not as evenly distributed.
The best clue as to the value of lances is that they were in use right up to the end of the effective horsed cavalry period. There are numerous photos of German uhlans, and French & British lancers waiting behind the lines in WW1 for the infantry to break through the trenchlines and allow them to ride out into the open fields beyond. Ignoring the optimism of the cavalrymen preparing to go up against machine guns, they still saw the lance as an effective weapon against infantry.
Other people have answered this question in terms of more modern lancers, so I shall answer in terms of medieval combat instead. Much of the infantry was made of peasant conscripts, and so were poorly trained and armed. The best armor they were likely to have was heavy padded clothes, which was about as effective against lances as you’d expect. Typical arms were wooden spears, pitchforks, billhooks, scythes, big knives, hand axes - in other words, farm tools. These might penetrate a knight’s armor if the peasant got lucky, but they weren’t designed for the purpose so it was a chancy thing. Meanwhile, the knights had plate mail, lances, and swords, axes, or maces made for fighting infantry while mounted. Most peasants would, quite sensibly, run the hell away when charged by knights.
There was infantry trained and equipped to take on knights, though. One of the simplest anti-knight weapons was the pike - basically a really long spear. Get a few hundred troops pressed in tight, have them secure the ends of their pikes in the ground and point the business ends all the same direction, and you have a nice big thicket of points. The problem with pike formations was that they couldn’t turn quickly, and so were suceptible to flank attacks.
The best infantry had specialized weapons and training. The most famous of these is probably the Swiss halberdiers:
Another anti-knight weapon was the bec de corbin, French for “raven’s beak”. It was essentially a large hammer with a backspike and mounted on a pole, good for punching holes in plate armor or knocking knights off their horses.
Probably my favorite anti-armor weapon of the day was the “Gutentag”, a very large, heavy hammer with spikes on it, designed for breaking up tightly packed dirt for farming. Apparantly the Flemish peasents figured out that it was also good for taking a French knight off his horse, as the spikes on the hammer concentrated enough force to penetrate plate mail.
Though we really don’t have much to go on in terms of a description.
It appears to be a type of halberd: a long wooden pole flaring at the end a bit where a large spike juts out and is held in place by an iron ring. There might have been more spikes all around the head. But I don’t think we really know.
According to the guy on History Channel’s “Conquest” (I miss that show), it’s what the farmer would say every time he swung the thing. Kinda like “HIYAA!”. But, like, Flemish, and ironic when used against a Knight.
I should add that no pole arm or Goedendag is going to magically confer the ability for a peasant to kill a trained knight. Knights knew how to use polearms, certainly better than anyone else at the time.
How about two peasants working together? Or three peasants? Remember, there were always a lot more peasants than knights, and a halberd is a lot cheaper than a suit of plate armor.
Besides, effective polearms appeared just about the same time that professional militaries started to re-appear in the European landscape. The peasant with a polearm might just be a militiaman, or he may be part of a mecenary band or a standing army, in which case he may have a great deal of experience, training and discipline - the last attribute being very hard to find among the knightly classes, who often had a hard time working together. I’d rather have ten halbardeers who are capable of working together as a team, than have ten mounted knights, each one fighting for his own personal glory.
Most of the comments made have been about the armor, weapons, technique, etc. I don’t have any experience to comment on those, but as someone who’s owned and worked with horses, I have to disagree with this. Horses, even very large ones, are agile animals and can make might tighter turns than you might think. One that is well-trained for battle could easily carry out whatever maneuvers an experienced knight should ask for.
But don’t just take my work for it; I’ve worked primarily with Arabians, which are known for being small, light animals. My personal horse is of Russian-Polish breeding stock, which is a bit heavier than a desert-bred Arabian, though not nearly as large as, say, an Irish Hunter, the largest horse I’ve ever ridden. The Lipizzaner Stallions weren’t always just pretty horses doing ballet in an arena. The breed was originally established to create a superior war horse, one that was physically heavy enough to be intimidating, yet compact and agile enough to perform the ‘tricks’ you see in their performances today, all of which have their basis in mounted battle techniques. They, and many other breeds, can in fact “turn on a dime.”
Yes, from what I have read you would expect well-trained and formed heavy infantry to overcome heavy cavalry as a matter of course, all other things being equal (e.g. the aforementioned swiss pikemen). However if this were the case you would not tend to deploy the cavalry unless you wanted them all killed, and such infantry were historically hard to find. In a situation where the infantry is poorly trained, equipped or formed a shock cavalry charge would generally crush them.
Certainly the aristocratic cavalry have historically been prone to individualism and poor adherence to the order of battle, but knights chasing each other round the battlefield is not necessarily what it’s all about. There are plenty of examples of well-disciplined professional cavalry being decisive on the field, just as there are for other unit types. For hundreds of years lancers of some kind were a key component of an effective army, along with the other units you would need to have a balanced force. Would you rather have a hundred halberdiers and no cavalry, or eighty halberdiers and ten lancers?
One further point (ha ha) to keep in mind is that the classical way to wield a lance was not always couched under one arm and thundering forward, the way it is always presented in movies. That was used in tournaments, against other mounted and armored opponents. The idea was to skewer the other guy, or shatter (“shiver”) your lance against his shield, which was a prestigious thing to do in noble combat.
Especially during the Dark Ages and early medieval period, the lance was wielded overhand, especially against opponents on foot, in an downward stabbing action. This required more wrist strength, but made for quicker adjustment of aim.
And I have to second or third the impatience with a lot of these “why didn’t they just do so and so against the knight?” ideas. Mounted cavalry dominated the battlefields of Europe for hundreds of years, and it wasn’t because nobody ever thought of jumping out of the way when Sir Lancelot came thundering at them at twenty miles an hour with a long pointy thing. Even the famous longbowmen needed some cavalry to protect them if enough knights survived to get in among them and lay about them with swords and clubs.
Disciplined infantry, with pikes, helmets, and shields, could resist a cavalry charge, usually, if they were disciplined enough. Thus the development of the classic battle square, and a lot of drilling (a lot of drilling) to be able to manuveur about and maintain the thicket of pike points that protected them. But if once you let twenty or thirty heavily armored knights break into your ranks and start swinging those longswords about, you were in a world of hurt. And it took a considerable amount of discipline to keep your infantry from breaking and running at the sight of a big bunch of fully armored, extensively trained knights heading in your direction with blood in their eyes.
I think that was a different kind of weapon, however, more of spear than a lance (although the same word gets applied to both at times to confuse matters).
