The New Knights

Between the middle of the 16th century and the beginning of the 18th century, the battle cavalry experienced deep upheavals. The men-at-arms armed with spears and arranged in hedges disappear in favor of cavalrymen fighting with swords and pistols in new tactical formations. These transformations have often been interpreted as the symbol of the decline of the cavalry, an archaic arm, a conservatory of chivalric values, incapable of adapting to the transformations of the art of war. This work aims to deconstruct this simplifying vision by focusing on the analysis of what constitutes the privileged combat action of heavy cavalry: the charge. A study centered on France but open to the whole of Europe, exploring the battlefields that dot this geographical area from the Wars of Religion to the War of the Spanish Succession. To embrace such a complex object of history, such an analysis must seek to cross tactical, socio-cultural and anthropological perspectives.It must take an interest in the institutional and technical environment, in the actors, but above all in the principles which found this singular warrior practice, in his doctrine of use. It is then possible to apprehend the dynamics which presided over the metamorphosis of the heavy cavalry, to measure the adaptability of this arm and to understand that, far from being only a legacy of a glorious past, it continued to play a significant role on the battlefield.