Reply To: What’s the difference between British heavy and light cavalry

Yes yes IO, quite (nice collection). But in the BP rules does the 1″ shorter curvey sword make all that much difference over the heavy cavalry straight sword?

I actually thinks it’s all a nonsense! Take the KGL Heavy dragoons – top chaps all of them, hard as nails and nasty as heavy cavalry. When they convert to light dragoons they exchanged their uniforms and swords yes – but not their horses or attitudes. British cavalry have just one drill book – they all used it. I think Scott Bowden in his “Armies at Waterloo” has it. There are two types of cavalry:
– Battle cavalry: those who can stand up to it in a proper fight. This might include regts of we what we currently call “light” in BP.
– The rest: probably most French chasseurs – and other “dross” – just bad regts.

I think by the Napoleonic period this fits pretty well. “heavy” and “light” are silly titles by this time. It’s just a hangover from the 17th Century.

My 2p. Thoughts?