History Main / CavalryOfficer

However, as cavalry forces have operated in one form or another all over the world throughout history, the trope of the Cavalry Officer extends beyond the use in the Western. The role of the Cavalry Officer implies a certain amount of macho swagger and hubris. They are authoritative and demanding, and contemptuous of people of lesser social station. Even if the officer is in command of an infantry unit, if he is riding a horse while his men are hoofing it, he still counts as a Cavalry Officer. On the positive side, a CoolHorse is a LoyalAnimalCompanion giving the rider plenty of PetTheDog moments, and a cavalry charge looks [[RuleOfCool so cool]] even if often it is [[ HollywoodTactics militarily ridiculous]] . And a CavalryOfficer will have more varied adventures roaming about in no mans land then an infantryman standing in formation. If the Cavalry Officer is a good guy, the negative traits may be played down or diminish over the course of the story. Depending on the setting, the Cavalry Officer is usually of noble birth, or at least very wealthy, and is characteristically arrogant and aristocratic.

However, as cavalry forces have operated in one form or another all over the world throughout history, the trope of the Cavalry Officer extends beyond the use in the Western. The role of the Cavalry Officer implies a certain amount of macho swagger and hubris. They are authoritative and demanding, and contemptuous of people of lesser social station. Even if the officer is in command of an infantry unit, if he is riding a horse while his men are hoofing it, he still counts as a Cavalry Officer. On the positive side, a CoolHorse is a LoyalAnimalCompanion giving the rider plenty of PetTheDog moments, and a cavalry charge looks [[RuleOfCool so cool]] even if often [[HollywoodTactics. militarily ridiculous]]. And a CavalryOfficer will have more varied adventures roaming about in no mans land then an infantryman standing in formation. If the Cavalry Officer is a good guy, the negative traits may be played down or diminish over the course of the story. Depending on the setting, the Cavalry Officer is usually of noble birth, or at least very wealthy, and is characteristically arrogant and aristocratic.

However, as cavalry forces have operated in one form or another all over the world throughout history, the trope of the Cavalry Officer extends beyond the use in the Western. The role of the Cavalry Officer implies a certain amount of macho swagger and hubris. They are authoritative and demanding, and contemptuous of people of lesser social station. Even if the officer is in command of an infantry unit, if he is riding a horse while his men are hoofing it, he still counts as a Cavalry Officer. On the positive side, a CoolHorse is a LoyalAnimalCompanion giving the rider plenty of PetTheDog moments, and a cavalry charge looks [[RuleOfCool so cool]] even if often [[HolywoodTactics. militarily ridiculous]]. And a CavalryOfficer will have more varied adventures roaming about in no mans land then an infantryman standing in formation. If the Cavalry Officer is a good guy, the negative traits may be played down or diminish over the course of the story. Depending on the setting, the Cavalry Officer is usually of noble birth, or at least very wealthy, and is characteristically arrogant and aristocratic.

This is partly because it usually was more expensive to serve in the cavalry than in other arms of service because they wore more [[BlingOfWar glamourous dress]] and had to pay for their own horses - and as a cavalryman you generally could expect to lose at least one or two horses in the course of a campaign. Add to this a tendency of cavalry officers to look upon themselves as a continuation of of the knights of old in more modern times, and you see why in many films set in historic wars a Cavalry Officer tends to be more strict in the appliance of military rituals and codes of honour - when you have a duel scene, there is often a cavalry officer involved - and also more likely to indulge in a spendthrift "aristocratic" lifestyle including gambling, womanizing, racing and various excentricities to a larger extent than officers of other services. In this context it is worth recalling that both the positive "chivalrous" and the negative "cavalier" are derived from a French root meaning "horseman".

However, as cavalry forces have operated in one form or another all over the world throughout history, the trope of the Cavalry Officer extends beyond the use in the Western. The role of the Cavalry Officer implies a certain amount of macho swagger and hubris. They are authoritative and demanding, and contemptuous of people of lesser social station. Even if the officer is in command of an infantry unit, if he is riding a horse while his men are hoofing it, he still counts as a Cavalry Officer. If the Cavalry Officer is a good guy, these negative traits may be played down or diminish over the course of the story. Depending on the setting, the Cavalry Officer is usually of noble birth, or at least very wealthy, and is characteristically arrogant and aristocratic.

* RealLife subversion: aristocrats in AncientGreece often preferred to get off their horses and take a place in the phalanx, lest all the DeterminedHomesteader s in the city think them wussy for refusing to fight like a Real Man.

The Cavalry Officer serves as the leader of a group of mounted soldiers. Although by no means restricted to the genre, he appeas especially as a stock character in Western fiction. Given the ridiculously huge nature of the American west, cavalry forces were the [[IncrediblyLamePun workhorses]] of military forces trying to control the frontier. The Cavalry Officer is typically a professional soldier but may also be represented by anyone in control of mounted civilian or paramilitary forces (such as Texas Rangers, for example).

* Napoleon's cavalry leader Marshal Joachim Murat conformed to many of the tropes about the Cavalry Officer, being the most flashy dresser in the army and displaying bravery to the point of foolhardiness. When he led the great charge at the battle of Eylau, he is said to have kept his sabre sheathed, only holding a riding-crop in his right hand. And his performance as temporary commander of the French army on the retreat from Moscow earned him a lot of criticism.

* ''Dances With Wolves'' features Cavalry Officers, both good and bad.

Being a cavalry officer also required very specialized skills and a readiness to take (calculated) risks. To be successful, cavalry usually had to charge, and thus the stereotype of cavalry officers favouring AttackAttackAttack and ZergRush tactics, also when put in command of infantry, emerged. Conversely, cavalry standing in one place within the range of enemy artillery or infantry fire often meant having to take losses without being able to inflict some on the enemy, so a sensible officer would take his men out of range, which could lead others to charge the cavalry with not having the stomach for a real fight and waging a war of their own divorced from the real one. Thus in the first half of the AmericanCivilWar, a popular dig among the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac was the question: "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?"

* Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht Prince Blücher conformed to many of the tropes assoiciated with a hussar officer, he lost huge amounts of money gambling and injured himself while participating in a horse-race at age 72, but he was also highly successful leader of operations involving all arms.

* Tom Cruise's character in ''The Last Samurai'' is a prime example of a Cavalry Officer.

* Lord Uxbridge and Lord Ponsonby in Sergey Bondarchuk's ''{{Waterloo}}''. Field Marshal Blücher was also a cavalry officer, but of a rather different type.

* Hans Joachim von Zieten, colonel-in-chief of a Prussian hussar regiment was renowned as a leader of light cavalry; his propensity for ambushing the enemy earned him the sobriquet "Zieten aus dem Busch" (Zieten from the bush). However, he also subverted the trope somewhat, being a pious Lutheran of exemplary morals and also a competent leader of entire armies - when FrederickTheGreat had to leave on other business, he usually entrusted his army to him.
* Napoleon's cavalry leader Marshal Joachim Murat conformed to many of the tropes about the Cavalry Officer, being the most flashy dresser in the army and displaying bravery to the point of foolhardiness. When he led the great charge at the battle of Eylau, he is said to have kept his sabre sheathed, only holding a riding-crop in his right hand.

This is partly because it usually was more expensive to serve in the cavalry than in other arms of service because they wore more [[BlingOfWar glamourous dress]] and had to pay for their own horses - and as a cavalryman you generally could expect to lose at least one or two horses in the course of a campaign. Add to this a tendency of cavalry officers to look upon themselves as a continuation of of the knights of old in more modern times, and you see why in many films set in historic wars a Cavalry Officer tends to be more strict in the appliance of military rituals and codes of honour - when you have a duel scene, there is often a cavalry officer involved - and also more likely to indulge in a spendthrift "aristocratic" lifestyle including gambling, racing and various excentricities to a larger extent than officers of other services.

* ''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.
* Lord Uxbridge and Lord Ponsonby in Sergey Bondarchuk's ''{{Waterloo}}''. Field Marshal Blücher was also a cavalry officer, but of a rather different type.

* RealLife subversion: aristocrats in AncientGreece often preferred to get off their horses and take a place in the phalanx, lest all the DeterminedHomesteader s in the city think them wussy for refusing to fight like a Real Man.

In some ways the Cavalry Officer survived the death of cavalry as an important force on the battlefield, and that his heritage continued in the age of industrialized warfare. For instance, once WorldWarOne became dominated by trench warfare, quite a number of cavalry officers joined the nascent air service to become fighter pilots, the most famous one being former uhlan officer Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the RedBaron. This probably helped contribute to air combat acquiring its "chivalric" image. Later on, many British cavalry regiments were re-equipped with tanks instead of horses, but cavalry traditions and modes of thinking persisted. British military historian Corelli Barnett blamed these factors, which for instance led to a tendency to neglect co-operation between armour, mechanized infantry, and artillery, for many British reverses in WorldWar2.

** The films of the "Cavalry Trilogy" - ''FortApache'', ''SheWoreAYellowRibbon'', and ''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 NCOs or other ranks - veterans of the AmericanCivilWar who had either served in the Confederate Army or with Northern commissions that only lasted for the duration of the war.

This is partly because it usually was more expensive to serve in the cavalry than in other arms of service because they wore more [[BlingOfWar glamourous dress]] and had to pay for their own horses - and as a cavalryman you generally could expect to lose at least one or two horses in the course of a campaign. Add to this a tendency of cavalry officers to look upon themselves as a continuation of of the knights of old in more modern times, and you see why in many films set in historic wars a Cavalry Officer tends to be more strict in the appliance of military rituals and codes of honour - when you have a duel scene, there is often a cavalry officer involved - and also more likely to indulge in a spendthrift "aristocratic" lifestyle including gambling and excentricities to a larger extent than officers of other services.

Being a cavalry officer also required very specialized skills and a readiness to take (calculated) risks. To be successful, cavalry usually had to charge, and thus the stereotype of cavalry officers favouring AttackAttackAttack and ZergRush tactics, also when put in command of infantry, emerged.

This is partly because it usually was more expensive to serve in the cavalry than in other arms of service because they wore more [[BlingOfWar glamourous dress]] and had to pay for their own horses - and as a cavalryman you generally could expect to lose at least one or two horses in the course of a campaign. Being a cavalry officer also required very specialized skills and usually implied being ready to take (calculated) risks. To be successful, cavalry usually had to charge, and thus the stereotype of cavalry officers favouring AttackAttackAttack and ZergRush tactics emerged, as many famous cavalry charges failed and resulted in disproportionate losses of the attackers.

The Cavalry Officer is a stock character in Western fiction. He serves as the leader of a group of mounted soldiers. Given the ridiculously huge nature of the American west, cavalry forces were the [[IncrediblyLamePun workhorses]] of military forces trying to control the frontier. The Cavalry Officer is typically a professional soldier but may also be represented by anyone in control of mounted civilian or paramilitary forces (such as Texas Rangers, for example).

As a trope, the Cavalry Officer extends beyond the literal interpretation. The role of the Cavalry Officer implies a certain amount of macho swagger and hubris. They are authoritative and demanding, and contemptuous of people of lesser social station. Even if the officer is in command of an infantry unit, if he is riding a horse while his men are hoofing it, he still counts as a Cavalry Officer. If the Cavalry Officer is a good guy, these negative traits may be played down or diminish over the course of the story. Depending on the setting, the Cavalry Officer is usually of noble birth, or at least very wealthy, and is characteristically arrogant and aristocratic.

* Lord Uxbridge and Lord Ponsonby in Sergey Bondarchuk's ''{{Waterloo}}''.

* Tom Cruise's character in ''The Last Samurai'' is a prime example of a Cavalry Officer.

The Cavalry Officer is a stock character in Western fiction. He serves as the leader of a group of mounted soldiers. Given the ridiculously huge nature of the American west, cavalry forces were the [[IncrediblyLamePun workhorses]] of military forces trying to control the frontier. The Cavalry Officer is typically a professional soldier but may also be represented by anyone in control of mounted civilian or paramilitary forces (such as Texas Rangers, for example).

If the Cavalry Officer is a bad guy, he will inevitably slaughter some innocents and spark a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. This will often lead to the hero seeking DisproportionateRevenge because ItsPersonal.

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