re: #46 Shiplord Kirel: Fan of USPS, Goodyear, and Oreo

A major problem the 16th-19th century horse cavalry had was slashing (curved sabres) or poking (straight sabres) people without losing their swords or injuring their sword arm. It took a lot of training.

And it was orders of magnitude more difficult if the enemy fought back. Plus horses had a deep reluctance to do dangerous stuff like run into walls of spears/pikes/bayonets.

The US went very quickly to using cavalry as firearm-ed skirmishers, raiders, and scouts. It took Europeans a lot longer to get there.