Hi all,
welcome to Saurreg, what a great post! As for the first one - Methinks he doth protest too much
I was going to post 'Eomer's Battle' tonight, but thought that such in-depth discussion deserved some continuation before proceeding, so Eomer will be on soon, hopefully! (You all know me far too well to believe that I am capable of committing to a specific day, month or, occasionally, year)
Saurreg raised some excellent points on the tactics and strategy that could have been more successful for the Rohirrim, I especially liked the desciption of the 'hammer and anvil' Macedonian system. Also the criticism of the deployment at the fords, the cavalry attack on pikemen and the scouting deficiency is entirely justified in my view.
On the 'heaviness' of the Rohirrim cavalry and infantry, I'd differ in interpretation, and of course with Tolkien's battles these are almost totally subjective opinions! For the uninitiated, some explanation is probably due. 'Light' troops are usually considered as those deploying in loose skirmish formations, wearing little armour and relying more on mobility than fighting power. 'Heavy' troops, conversely, are well armoured, deploy in dense formations and are expected to perform most of the hand to hand fighting in ancient battles. Obviously, there's a whole spectrum of in-betweens and much is dependent on the psychology and culture of the armies under consideration.
I'm quite tempted by the Rohirrim as light cavalry, but I think that I'm going to stick with my concept of them as akin to Norman or Frankish knights of the eleventh to twelfth centuries. Why so? Well first of all, their equipment appears similar; lance, sword, long chainmail coat and shield, with good horse. On horses, it should be remembered that the Normans' horses were considerably smaller than the great chargers of later medieval knights, and I'd be inclined to imagine the horses of Rohan to be similar 'general purpose' horses, if you like, rather than the purpose-bred warhorse. The psychology of the Rohirrim also appears to favour the dramatic initial charge rather than the 'harass them then charge them when they're disordered' sort of tactic one might expect from lighter cavalry. I would certainly agree that they did not deploy as densely as the ancient cataphracts, nor can I find any mention of them using horse-armour (though they did have stirrups). Conversely, the long ride to Minas Tirith would imply a lighter cavalry type, which may simply argue against the use of specialist warhorses as these were notoriously difficult to keep in good condition on a march, most medieval knights rode lesser horses then tranferred to the chargers only before battle. A small proportion of the cavalry also carried bows, which could be considerd unusual for a 'Frankish knight' type, but was common amongst, for example, Byzantine heavy cavalry.
On the infantry, I'm probably influenced by the Anglo Saxon fyrd. It seems that anybody who was anybody in Rohan would have ridden a horse, so these local militias were probably drawn from the 'peasantry'. Of course this doesn't mean that they couldn't fight stoutly when the time came, but would argue against them possessing good quality armour and being able to carry out the complex maneuvers of more professional soldiers. I'd see them as forming a defensive shieldwall, 'stiffened' perhaps with local leaders and dismounted cavalry on occasion. The shieldwall may not be an aggressive attacking formation but could perhaps have provided the 'anvil' to pin the opposition, allowing the cavalry to deliver the 'hammer blow' - shades of Sun-Tzu maybe?
There also seem to have been some bowmen, who I would regard as light infantry skirmishers, supporting the main infantry line.
On the whole, the Rohirrim could be compared with 'settling-down' Goths. Their early leaders had Gothic-sounding names whereas by the time of the War of the Ring they have more Anglo-Saxon names. This was an intentional philological development by JRRT and I think it represents a change from a nomad to settled culture. Rohan is certainly horse country, wide open rolling grasslands, and only four settlements are named in the book. Therefore I see the Rohirrim as in transition, some aspects nomadic, some tied to the land, as Kuruharan pointed out.
I particularly liked Kuruharan's description of Wood-Elves as 'heavy-ish' and I think it illustrates a point that a well trained unit could be capable of switching battlefield tactics dependent on the situation. The elven spearmen would surely have operated as skirmishers in the forest, but could form up and act as shock troops in more open terrain if the situation demaded it. I'm tempted to think of Roman auxilia here! (btw, just to dangle some bait - LMI or LHI anyone?)