Horse archers were mounted warriors who shot composite bows from the saddle, the signature troops of steppe peoples such as the Scythians, Parthians, Huns, Turks and Mongols. They won by speed, endless arrow fire, feigned retreats and encirclement. They were beaten when an enemy took away their room to manoeuvre: rough terrain, fortresses, disciplined combined arms, horse archers of its own and, in the end, firearms.
For some two thousand years the most dangerous army on earth was often the one that never let you close. Riders who could shoot accurately at a gallop, change horses several times a day and vanish over the horizon humbled Rome, broke Byzantium and carried the Mongol empire from Korea to the borders of Germany.
This guide explains who the horse archers were, how they actually fought, the battles that made their reputation, and the less told story of how settled armies learned to beat them.
Who were the horse archers?
Horse archery grew out of the Eurasian steppe, the belt of grassland running from Hungary to Manchuria, where whole peoples lived on horseback and every boy learned to ride and shoot. The Greek historian Herodotus described the Scythians fighting this way in the fifth century BC, and the steppe produced horse archers for some two thousand years1 after him: Parthians and Sarmatians, Huns and Avars, Magyars, Seljuk and Ottoman Turks, Mongols and finally Crimean Tatars.
Their weapon was the composite bow, built from horn, wood and sinew, short enough to handle in the saddle yet powerful enough to pierce mail at close range. Just as important was the horse herd. A steppe warrior rode with several remounts, so an army could cover great distances and keep its animals fresh in battle.
How horse archers fought
Horse archers did not charge into a line and stay there. They rode up, shot, wheeled away and came back, wearing down the enemy with arrow fire while giving him nothing to hit. The most famous trick was the Parthian shot: a rider fleeing at full speed turned in the saddle and shot backwards over his horse's rump2.
The deadliest manoeuvre was the feigned retreat. A screen of riders would give way as if beaten, drawing eager pursuers out of formation and into an ambush, where fresh troops and heavy lancers waited on the flanks. The Mongols turned all this into a system, organising their armies in units of ten, a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand3, which let commanders such as Subutai coordinate columns hundreds of kilometres apart.
Carrhae, 53 BC: Rome meets the Parthian shot
Marcus Licinius Crassus, the richest man in Rome, invaded Parthia with about seven legions. On the plain near Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia he met the Parthian general Surena, whose army was all cavalry: about 1,000 armoured cataphracts and around 10,000 mounted archers2.
The Romans formed a square and waited for the archers to run out of arrows. They never did, because many camels laden with arrows stood behind the Parthian lines4. When Crassus sent his son Publius forward to break the ring, the Parthians fell back, drew him on and destroyed his detachment. Ancient accounts put the Roman losses at 20,000 killed and 10,000 captured4, and Crassus himself was killed during a parley soon after. Rome's eagles stayed in Parthian hands for over thirty years.
Manzikert, 1071: the breaking of Byzantium
On 26 August 1071 the Byzantine emperor Romanos IV Diogenes met the Seljuk sultan Alp Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert in eastern Anatolia. The fast Seljuk horse archers harassed the Byzantine line all day5, refusing a straight fight and pulling the heavy army out of shape.
When Romanos ordered a withdrawal at dusk, the movement fell into confusion, part of his army left the field and the emperor was captured. The defeat opened Anatolia to Turkish settlement. Manzikert shows the horse archers' real strength: not one decisive volley, but hours of pressure that exhausted an enemy and exposed every mistake.
Legnica and Mohi, 1241: the Mongols in Europe
In the spring of 1241 two Mongol armies struck Central Europe within days of each other. In Silesia, the Battle of Legnica pitted the knights of Duke Henry the Pious against the Mongol northern column. The Mongols used showers of arrows and feigned retreats6 to draw the knights out of formation, then surrounded them; Henry was killed.
Two days later, on 11 April 1241, the main army7 under Batu and Subutai destroyed the army of King Béla IV of Hungary at Mohi on the Sajó river. The Mongols forced the bridge with stone throwers and encircled the Hungarian camp, leaving an apparent gap for escape and cutting down the fugitives who streamed through it. Only the Mongol withdrawal in 1242 spared the rest of Central Europe. Our Mongol vs knight guide compares the two ways of war in detail.
Ain Jalut, 1260: horse archers beaten by horse archers
The most famous Mongol defeat in open battle, and the first to halt their westward advance for good, came from soldiers who fought just like them. After the death of the Great Khan Möngke8, Hülegü withdrew most of his army from Syria, leaving a smaller force under Kitbuqa. The Mamluks of Egypt, slave soldiers largely of Kipchak steppe origin, were themselves superb horse archers.
On 3 September 1260, at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee, Baibars led a feigned retreat that drew Kitbuqa's cavalry8 into the hills, where the main Mamluk army under Sultan Qutuz lay hidden. The Mongols were surrounded and Kitbuqa was killed. The Mongols' own favourite trick had been turned against them.
How were horse archers defeated?
Horse archers were never invincible. They needed open ground, grass for their herds and an enemy who could be lured into chasing them. Every successful answer took one of those things away.
Terrain and supply came first. Forests, marshes, mountains and hot dry lands without pasture blunted steppe armies; Syria could not feed the great Mongol herds for long, which helps explain why only a detachment fought at Ain Jalut. Fortifications came second. After 1241 the Hungarian kings encouraged the building of stone castles, and a country full of walls could not be won by riding through it.
Third was discipline and combined arms. An army that refused to be drawn out, kept its own crossbowmen or archers in front of its horsemen and charged only on command could survive the arrow storm, as Richard the Lionheart's crusaders did on the march to Arsuf in 1191. Fourth was fighting fire with fire: the Byzantines, Mamluks, Russians and Chinese all hired or raised horse archers of their own.
Finally came gunpowder. At Chaldiran in 1514 Ottoman cannon and muskets behind a wagon barrier shattered the Safavid cavalry, and over the next two centuries field guns, musket volleys and lines of fortified towns pushed the steppe peoples back for good.