The Battle of Liebertwolkwitz, fought south of Leipzig on 14 October 1813, is most often called the largest cavalry battle in European history1. Brandy Station (1863) was the largest cavalry battle fought in North America, Jarosławice (1914) is often called the only division-size cavalry battle of the First World War, and Komarów (1920) is widely remembered as the last great cavalry battle in Europe.
A cavalry charge lasts minutes. A cavalry battle can last all day: wave after wave of horsemen colliding, rallying and charging again, with the result decided by whoever keeps the last fresh squadron in hand. This page is not about single famous charges, which we cover in our guide to the greatest cavalry charges. It is about battles in which horse fought horse on a large scale, or in which cavalry decided the day.
Be careful with the word largest. The steppe empires fielded armies that were entirely mounted, far bigger than any European cavalry wing, but their numbers survive only as guesses. Modern claims also mix different measures: the most horsemen engaged, the largest purely mounted battle, or the largest in a given war or continent. Where sources disagree we say so.
1. Cannae, 216 BC: the wings that closed the trap
Hannibal's encirclement of the Roman army is remembered as an infantry masterpiece, but it was his cavalry that shut the door. According to Polybius, the Romans fielded a little over 6,000 horse2, while Hannibal had about 10,0002. On the Carthaginian left, Hasdrubal's heavy Spanish and Gallic horsemen smashed the Roman citizen cavalry along the river bank.
Instead of pursuing, Hasdrubal rode around the back of the Roman army, helped the Numidian light horse scatter the allied cavalry on the other wing, and then fell on the rear of the legions. Discipline, not just numbers, made this one of the decisive cavalry actions of the ancient world. The infantry side of the day is told in our full account of the battle.
2. Ain Jalut, 1260: horse archers against horse archers
On 3 September 1260 in Galilee3, the Mamluk army of Egypt under Sultan Qutuz met a Mongol force led by Kitbuqa. Both armies were built around mounted archers, so this was cavalry against cavalry from the first arrow. Hülegü had withdrawn most of the Mongol host eastwards3, which left Kitbuqa outnumbered; exact strengths are unknown and estimates vary.
The Mamluk vanguard under Baybars drew the Mongols forward, the main army held their attack, and Kitbuqa was killed. The defeat ended the Mongol advance towards Egypt. Ain Jalut is remembered as the battle that halted the Mongols in the west.
3. Liebertwolkwitz, 1813: Europe's great horse battle
Two days before the Battle of the Nations, Marshal Joachim Murat was holding the ground south of Leipzig when the Army of Bohemia under the Russian general Wittgenstein advanced on him on 14 October 1813. What followed was a day of charge and counter-charge across open fields, with French, Russian, Prussian and Austrian squadrons committed in mass.
The fighting swung back and forth around the village, which changed hands, and the day ended in a draw1. It is often described as the largest cavalry battle in European history, though estimates of how many horsemen took part vary considerably between sources. It was the overture to the main battle at Leipzig that broke Napoleon's hold on Germany.
4. Brandy Station, 1863: North America's largest cavalry battle
On 9 June 1863, as Robert E. Lee began the march that would end at Gettysburg, Union cavalry under Alfred Pleasonton surprised J.E.B. Stuart's Confederate horsemen around Brandy Station in Virginia. About 11,000 Union and 9,500 Confederate troops were engaged4, most of them mounted.
After roughly fourteen hours of fighting, much of it in mounted charges for Fleetwood Hill, Stuart held the field. Union losses were 866 against 433 Confederate4. The American Battlefield Trust calls it the largest cavalry battle ever fought in North America, and it showed that the Union cavalry, led by men like John Buford, could now stand up to Stuart.
5. Trevilian Station, 1864: the biggest all-cavalry fight
A year later the measure changes. Brandy Station had infantry on the field; Trevilian Station, fought on 11 and 12 June 1864 in Louisa County5, Virginia, was cavalry against cavalry from start to finish. Grant sent Philip Sheridan on a raid to wreck the Virginia Central Railroad and draw Confederate attention away from the Union army's move south.
Wade Hampton and Fitzhugh Lee blocked him. George Armstrong Custer's brigade captured Hampton's wagons and was promptly surrounded, and on the second day Sheridan's attacks failed against dismounted Confederates. Sheridan withdrew; combined losses were around 1,950. It is ranked as the largest all-cavalry battle of the Civil War5.
6. Mars-la-Tour, 1870: the last great clash in the west
On 16 August 1870 the Prussian III Corps, about 30,000 men under Constantin von Alvensleben, blocked the French Army of the Rhine's escape west from Metz near Vionville. To buy time, Alvensleben sent Adalbert von Bredow's cavalry brigade straight at the French guns, a charge remembered as the Death Ride, which succeeded but at heavy cost.
Later in the day great masses of German and French cavalry collided near Ville-sur-Yron. Each side suffered about 16,000 casualties in all6, and the battle included the last major cavalry engagement in western Europe6. Two days later the French were driven back into Metz.
7. Jarosławice, 1914: the last cavalry battle of the old kind
On 21 August 1914, in eastern Galicia near Zborów (today in Ukraine), the Austro-Hungarian 4th Cavalry Division under Edmund von Zaremba ran into the Russian 10th Cavalry Division of General Fyodor Keller. Both had been sent out to scout, and the two divisions charged each other in the old style, sabres drawn.
The Austro-Hungarian horse came off worst, caught by Russian rifles, machine guns and artillery as well as by Keller's cavalry, and Zaremba was removed from command. The historian Manfried Rauchensteiner calls it the largest cavalry engagement of Austria-Hungary's last war7. It is usually counted as the only division-size cavalry battle of the First World War, and its lesson was brutal: horsemen could no longer survive in the open against modern firepower.
8. Komarów, 1920: the last great cavalry battle
Six years later, on the same plains, cavalry had one more great day. After the Polish victory at Warsaw, Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army tried to strike north through Zamość. On 31 August 1920 the Polish 1st Cavalry Division8 under Colonel Juliusz Rómmel attacked it near Komarów.
In a day of mounted charges and counter-charges the Polish uhlans drove back Budyonny's divisions, which broke out to the east and retreated with heavy losses. Exact strengths and losses vary widely between sources. Komarów is widely described as the last great battle in which cavalry fought as cavalry, rather than as mounted infantry.
Why did great cavalry battles end?
The pattern across these eight battles is clear. Cavalry won when it fought other cavalry, or struck infantry that was already shaken or surrounded. Each improvement in firepower, from rifled muskets to machine guns, made the open ground between armies more deadly, and horsemen increasingly dismounted to fight on foot. After 1920 cavalry survived mainly as mobile mounted infantry, as Polish units showed at Mokra in 1939, until tanks and trucks replaced the horse altogether.