Charge (warfare)

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Soldiers of the US Army's 15th Sustainment Brigade perform a mock cavalry charge during a ceremony in February 2007.

Charge of the Light Brigade, Painting by Richard Caton Woodville.

A charge is a maneuver in battle in which soldiers advance towards their enemy at their best speed to engage in close combat. The charge is the dominant shock attack and has been the key tactic and decisive moment of most battles in history. However, modern charges usually involve small groups against individual positions (such as a bunker) instead of large groups of combatants charging another group or a fortified line.

1 In cavalry tactics
2 In the firearms age
3 Notable charges
4 Footnotes

[edit] In cavalry tactics

The shock value of a charge attack has been especially exploited in cavalry tactics, both of armoured knights and lighter mounted troops of later eras. Historians such as John Keegan have shown that when correctly prepared against (such as by improvising fortifications) and, especially, by standing firm in face of the onslaught, cavalry charges often failed against infantry, with horses balking at ploughing into the dense mass of enemies, or the charging unit itself breaking up. This is famously depicted in the main battle scene of Braveheart. However, when cavalry charges succeeded, it was usually due to the defending formation breaking up (often in fear) and scattering, to be hunted down by the enemy.^[1]

[edit] In the firearms age

In the firearms age, the basic paramaters are speed of advance against rate (or effectiveness) of fire. If the attackers advance at a more rapid rate than the defenders can kill or disable them then the attackers will reach the defenders (though not necessarily without being strongly weakened in numbers). Of course there are many modifiers to this simple comparison - timing, covering fire, organization, formation and terrain, among others. A failed charge will often leave the would-be attackers extremely vulnerable to a counter-charge.

There has been a constant rise in an army's rate of fire for the last 700 years or so, but while massed charges have been successfully broken they have also been victorious. It is only since the mid-19th century that straight charges have become less successful, especially since the introduction of the machine gun and breech-loading artillery. They are often still useful on a far smaller scale in confined areas where the enemy's firepower cannot be brought to bear.

[edit] Notable charges

Charge of the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade at the Battle of Beersheba.

Battle of Patay (June 18, 1429): French heavy cavalry charges an English army, for the first time defeating the English longbowmen in a direct confrontation, marking a turning point in the Hundred Years War.
Battle of Vienna (September 11–12, 1683): 20,000 Austrian-German and Polish cavalry led by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski and spearheaded by 3000 heavily armed Polish armoured lancers - hussars charge Ottoman lines. The largest cavalry charge in history.
Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815: 2,000 British cavalry charge French infantry, and 9,000 French cavalry charge British infantry.
Charge of the Light Brigade (October 25, 1854) at the Battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War.
Pickett's Charge (July 3, 1863) at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War.
Battle of Opequon (September 19, 1864): the largest cavalry charge of the American Civil War.
Second Battle of Franklin (November 30, 1864): the largest infantry charge of the American Civil War.
Charge of the 21st Lancers in the Battle of Omdurman, September 2, 1898: 400 British cavalry charge 2,500 Mahdist infantry.
Charge of the 4th Light Horse in the Battle of Beersheba (October 31, 1917): two regiments of Australian Light Horse charge an unknown number of entrenched Turkish infantry and Austrian artillery. This is often reported as "the last successful cavalry charge in history".
Charge of the 7th Dragoons, November 11, 1918: British cavalry make an opportunistic charge on German infantry to capture Lessines and the Dender crossings in Belgium. The last cavalry charge of World War I, with the action completed as the clocks were striking 11 o'clock to mark the end of hostilities.^[2]^[3]
Battle of Komarów (August 31, 1920): a vital and decisive battle of the Polish-Bolshevik War. It was the largest and last great cavalry battle of significance in which cavalry was used as such and not as mounted infantry.
Battle of Krojanty (September 1, 1939): a cavalry charge that gave birth to the myth of Polish cavalry charging German tanks.
Bataan Peninsula (January 16, 1942): US 26th Cavalry Regiment makes a mounted pistol charge against Japanese positions, the last mounted charge in battle by United States troops.
Eastern front, World War II, (August 23, 1942): The last cavalry charge in history is mounted against a Soviet artillery position along the River Don by 600 men of the Italian Savoia Cavalry regiment.^[4]
Battle of Mount Tumbledown (June 13–14, 1982): British infantry charge Argentine positions in the Falklands War. The last successful bayonet charge until 2004.^[5]