Dismounting of Dragoons

18th Century Guy · Post by **18th Century Guy** » Sun Aug 24, 2008 10:18 pm

I have a question for y'all. In the WSS (and maybe SYW as well) when Dragoons did dismount, how far back did they keep the held horses? I'm curious because if you were going to allow a unit to dismount then how far from the enemy should they be (theoretically anyway

) and once they marched off how far back would the held horses be kept?

I posted this on TMP as well.

18th Century Guy · Post by **18th Century Guy** » Thu Aug 28, 2008 3:12 pm

Lots of views but no takers?

18th Century Guy · Post by **18th Century Guy** » Sat Aug 30, 2008 3:34 am

Iain,

Thank you so much. I suspected that this might be the case. Someone on TMP said 'just far enough back to be safe but close enough when needed'. That helped a lot.

One of the reasons I ask is as our group's rules evolve and dismounting happens I know someone is going to want to shoot at the horses because they are there. Naturally one way to handle that is just to not allow it but I'm sure there could be situations where, as the French found, their horses were chased away by the enemy.

Thank you again.

huevans07 · Post by **huevans07** » Sat Sep 13, 2008 2:49 am

Actually, I think it's common sense. The horses should be out of musket range - i.e. 150 to 200 yds away from enemy infantry - and also out of potential danger from enemy cavalry strikes.

If you obey these rules, then there should be no need for artificial blanket rules as it simply won't be worth your opponent trying to fire or do an attack.

Bluebear · Post by **Bluebear** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:11 am

Without actually having any knowledge of it in period, I would be pretty sure that they would leave their horses in some kind of cover, such as:

behind a slight mound or hill
in a bit of a depression
behind some other form of cover

The basic idea would be that they wouldn't be easy targets . . . but would be close enough to (hopefully) get to if one needed to 'bug out'.

-- Jeff