During the nineteenth-century in the time-scale referred to as Anno Dominii, on the small blue-green planet Earth, in a rather unfashionable part of the Galaxy,technology in general and weapons in particular, underwent massive changes.


For centuries, mounted warriors known as knights had dominated battlefields, later becoming known as cavalry.


The dominant ape-descended life form of the planet, humans, would ride large four-legged quadrepeds called horses into battle, in large units known as cavalry regiments.The weapons that they used were mostly a collection of bladed instruments known as Swords, which they would stick into other ape-descended life forms, or hack or slash at them.


Other weapons, such as Lances, Axes, Maces, Flails and War Hammers were also used to rather nasty effect.


This was considered a perfectly legitimate way of settling one's differences on Earth. For centuries this seemed to suffice for the inhabitants of the Earth.

Then, in the Nineteenth-century, industrialisation in the Western portion of the globe allowed a region known as Europe to dominate its neighbours. Technological primacy, underpinned by the development of weaponry, facilitated Western Imperial expansion - often at the expense of other groups of humans.

Now, gunpowder had long existed ( a group of humans known as the Chinese had invented it ) but then, some bright spark got the idea to arm the cavalry with firearms. The first firearms were clumsy affairs, a charge of powder, with a projectile, or ball, was rammed down the barrel and then detonated by means of a burning match ( the Matchlock ). Later, this gave way ot the Wheelock and Flintlock mechanisms ( essentially hammer-like devices to set off the charge ). Clumsy and inaccurate, they were originally intended to supplement, not replace, the cavalryman's more traditional weapons.


Of course, even a one-eyed imaginatively challenged parrot could see the use to which these weapons could be put and many armies were not slow in equipping their cavalry with them.

Carbines ( a short-barrelled rifle ) and pistols proliferated.

By the 1870's completely metallic cartridges appeared which could be inserted into the breech of a carbine,or, into the chambers of pistol. This made loading safer and easier. It also made it quicker.
The Spencer carbine, used in the American Civil War, for example, incorporated a magazine into the butt increasing its capacity. The Sharps' carbine was also accurate and reliable. Revolvers, like Colt's New Model Army 1860 model and Remington's New Model Army 1863 were efficient and relatively cheap to produce in large quantities. The Martini-Henry, used by a group called the British in their many Colonial wars, was also a good weapon and there were many other types and designs in use by other nations. The mounted soldier could now inflict far greater lethal damage on his ape-descended opponents than ever before - and that is just what they did.


However, there was a problem.


Although all this technological improvement allowed the Western powers to nobly wreak havoc and destruction upon a variety of often poorly-armed and disorganised local peoples, it also had several barely-seen consequences.


Firstly, edged weapons.


For centuries, the cavalry had always used edged weapons such as swords and the like, but these required the soldier to get up close to his opponent. Why, some people asked, should you slash away at a man with a sabre, when you could just shoot him from a distance? This, they argued, meant that you could blaze away in complete comfort and safety before the screaming savages ( who'd probably never even seen a horse anyway ) wondered why they'd lost again. Some people argued that this was all wrong and that human beings should be using their talents and skills to help each other, not destroy, but they were the kind of wishy-washy liberals that nobody took any notice of anyway.


Eventually, other people got these weapons in sufficient quantities, which meant that the cavalry could rarely get close enough to use their swords. Swords were still issued, but were regarded at best as useless and, at worst, as a downright encumbrance. Lances, too, although retained by some regiments, had by the later decades of the Nineteenth-century been rendered largely obsolete. Now cavalry had to snipe at each other from a distance; to charge against infantry in the old style also being suicidal in the face of such firepower.

Fiascos such as the Charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War in 1854, where Hussar detachments were blown to smithereens by concentrated artillery fire, and, massacres like the Battle of the Little Big Horn in 1876, showed just how vulnerable cavalry groups could be to well-armed opponents. Although still mobile, they could no longer do what they enjoyed best, which was lord it over the poor downtrodden foot-soldiers as they had done for centuries.


This was something of a humiliating comedown for the cavalry.
What was really irritating, however, was that nobody had bothered to tell them this in the first place and if they'd known, then they would never have touched the new-fangled things with a ten foot lance.
Increasingly, the cavalry found themselves relegated to rearguard or reconnaissance duties in the rear, pining for the old days and all because human beings could never be satisfied with what they had.
Not for the first time in human history, a change of weapons had necessitated a change of tactics.


In the end, even their horses didn't last, as cavalry units across the world were mechanised in the early 20th century. It all made the average trooper wonder why his ancestors had started striking rocks together or turning dead brances and grass into heat and flame. This was probably just as well, as the horses had had enough of dying and suffering for their human masters anyway and felt that the introduction of firearms would make the world a much safer place - for them, at least.