History Main / CavalryOfficer

%% Image selected per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1541295307094756900
%% Please do not replace or remove without starting a new thread.

->''"You're wrong there. They aren't forgotten because they haven't died. They're living right out there, Collingwood and the rest. And they'll keep on living as long as the regiment lives. The pay is $13 a month and their diet is beans and hay. It may be horsemeat before this campaign is over. They fight over cards or rotgut whiskey but share the last drop in their canteens. Their faces may change, the names. But they're there. They're the regiment, the regular army--now and fifty years from now."''

[[folder: Westerns ]]

[[AC:ComicBooks]]
* ''ComicBook/LesTuniquesBleues'' is about two cavalrymen both in the WildWest and during the CivilWar. The only one who's really typical is Captain Stark, who knows how to do one thing only ("CHAAAAAAAARRRGGGEEEEE!!!"), much to the dismay of his underlings (he once led a charge with a grand total of three men including himself). He also refuses to speak to people on foot, was found straddling a cannon on one occasion where his horse was missing, an has only ''once'' been seen fleeing battle, and that was because there was a wildfire sweeping across the battlefield.

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* In ''Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly'', Blondie and Tuco encounter a Confederate cavalry officer, who turns out to be a Union cavalry officer after brushing the gray dust off his uniform.

* ''Film/TheBurrowers'' includes perhaps the most brutally sadistic and completely oblivious Cavalry Officer since Custer himself.

** The films of the "Cavalry Trilogy" - ''Film/FortApache'', ''Film/SheWoreAYellowRibbon'', and ''Film/RioGrande'' - are all about cavalry outposts in the West and show quite a bit of the conventions and rituals of the cavalry. Various types of Cavalry Officer appear, including some who serve as non-coms or other ranks - veterans of the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar who had either served in the Confederate Army or with Northern commissions that only lasted for the duration of the war.

* George Armstrong Custer's life and death became the subject of several films, including e. g. ''Film/TheyDiedWithTheirBootsOn'' and ''Film/LittleBigMan''.
* ''Film/TheLoneRanger'': He and his regiment are called in to take care of the Comanche [[spoiler:thinking they broke the treaty and raided settlements. He later joins forces with the villains after learning he spilled innocent blood.]]
* ''Film/{{Utu}}'' (1983): Lt. Elliot (heroic) and Col. Elliot (villainous).

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[folder: Other Genres ]]

[[AC:{{Fan Works}}]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]
* ''Film/TheChargeOfTheLightBrigade'' (1936), featuring Errol Flynn and David Niven as British lancer officers on the Northwestern Frontier and in the Crimean War.
* Lord Uxbridge and Lord Ponsonby in Sergey Bondarchuk's ''Film/{{Waterloo}}''.

* Tom Cruise's character in ''Film/TheLastSamurai'' is a prime example of a Cavalry Officer.
* In ''Film/TheWeddingMarch'' Nicki is a dashing cavalry officer on horseback who is TheCasanova when he is out of uniform. Mitzi the common girl is taken with him when she sees him on parade.
* ''Film/{{The Eagle|1925}}'' stars Rudolph Valentino as a handsome 18th century Russian cavalry officer--too handsome, as he attracts the unwanted attentions of UsefulNotes/CatherineTheGreat.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* Several characters in ''Literature/WarAndPeace'', notably Nikolay Rostov, Denisov, and Dolokhov.

* Creator/ArthurConanDoyle's ''Brigadier Gerard'' stories, which to a large extent were based on the memoirs of the French Colonel Marbot.
* [[Literature/{{Flashman}} Harry Flashman]] buys a commission as a cavalry officer shortly after being expelled from Rugby and spends most of his career more or less in that service. He displays most of the lifestyle traits, as do many of his comrades.

* John Carter of [[Literature/JohnCarterOfMars the Barsoom Cycle]] of books and... ''Film/JohnCarter'' is an ex cavalry-man of the state of Virginia in the American Civil War. In the film, he is forced into being one again for the state of Arizona (despite three escape attempts in the space of five minutes). He is an OfficerAndAGentleman despite [[PermaStubble very much not looking the part]]. (The only time we see him clean-shaven in the whole movie is the brief period before [[spoiler:his wife and child are killed and his house burned]].)
* Max Hennessey's trilogy (''Soldiers of the Queen'', ''Blunted Lance'' and ''The Iron Stallions'') follows three generations of the Goff family, founders of the (fictional) [=19th=] Lancers, from the Charge of the Light Brigade to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* Captain "Give-Em-Hell" Stokes of Django Wexler's ''Literature/TheShadowCampaigns'' series. Despite his well known enthusiasm, he's generally considered competent, coming to the aid of the heroes while hollering at the top of his lungs at several points in the books.
* In the Literature/BelisariusSeries, the arrogance of cavalrymen and especially officers is present not just in the Roman army, but even more so in the Persian and Malwa armies. Becomes a DiscussedTrope as Belisarius realizes, and tries to convince others, that the rapidly advancing technology will increase the importance of infantry and artillery.

[[AC:Live Action Television]]
* Colonel Sherman Potter in ''Series/{{MASH}}'' is on his fourth war in Korea; prior to training as a doctor he had been a cavalryman, and he takes every opportunity to ride as recreation from his job of commanding a military hospital.

* One of the templates in ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}} Warriors'' is the Cavalryman. One of the sample characters is a US Cavalry officer in the Civil War period (who resents that he's guarding the frontier from natives when the ''real'' fighting is against the South), but the others are a member of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's Companion cavalry, the leader of an al-Wazif border patrol in ''TabletopGame/GURPSBanestorm'', and a British cavalry officer, late of UsefulNotes/TheRaj.

[[folder: Mechanized Cavalry Officers ]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

* ColonelKilgore in ''Film/ApocalypseNow'', the commander of an air cavalry unit.
* The title character in ''Film/{{Patton}}''. Not only was he once a horse CavalryOfficer, he played the trope to a hilt.
* ''Film/WeWereSoldiers'' presents us with two modern flavors of this: The helicopter pilots, led by Major Bruce "[[NomDeGuerre Snake Shit]]" Crandall go so far as to wear {{Custom Uniform}}s complete with the classic western Stetson hats. Meanwhile, the "Air Cav" ground troops are lead by Lt. Colonel Hal Moore, a paratrooper who believes that an officer's place in battle is at the front of his men, "where the metal meets the meat." Both of course, were RealLife military officers.

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]
* Josh Goff in ''The Iron Stallions'' by Max Hennessey -- the third of this trilogy about the Goff cavalry family. As it takes place in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, the [=19th=] Lancers have now become an armoured regiment.

[[folder: Real Life ]]

** ''The Horse Soldiers'', based on the real life Grierson Raid of 1863, relates an episode from the UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar. Here most of the officers are not professional soldiers, but very much shaped by their civilian jobs; the only exception is the medical officer.
** ''Sergeant Rutledge'': White officers, black enlisted men.

* ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' (1936), featuring Errol Flynn and David Niven as British lancer officers on the Northwestern Frontier and in the Crimean War.

* One of the templates in ''TabletopGames/{{GURPS}} Warriors'' is the Cavalryman. One of the sample characters is a US Cavalry officer in the Civil War period (who resents that he's guarding the frontier from natives when the ''real'' fighting is against the South), but the others are a member of UsefulNotes/AlexanderTheGreat's Companion cavalry, the leader of an al-Wazif border patrol in ''TabletopGame/GURPSBanestorm'', and a British cavalry officer, late of UsefulNotes/TheRaj.

* Another leader under Napoleon, Marshal Michel Ney, was this early on as a soldier. In Ney's early career as a hussar, he was a talented horseman and fencer, so great with the sword that when the hussar unit's fencing instructor was defeated in a duel by a rival regiment, he was selected to replace the instructor and avenge the regiment's honor. While the first duel was stopped early by a colonel, Ney and the rival duelist did not relent and continued the duel in private, with Ney winning the duel. While he was no longer focused on the cavalry, commanding divisions by 1800, one of his most infamous action was in Waterloo commanding the French cavalry and charging the British infantry squares with little infantry or artillery support.