Regarding the first part of your question , ever since John Keegan published The Face of Battle in 1976 , it ' s been widely accepted that cavalry charges were about psychological , not physical , impact . It was a game to see who flinched first . Is it widely accepted , though ? And if it is , should it be ? I know various books that just repeat Keegan ' s claim , to be sure , but it was never all that clear what he based it on in the first place . uPapiriusCursor goes into detail on Keegan ' s methodological limitations And it ' s very difficult to render an indepth account of what an ancient cavalry charge actually was like , since we simply have no credible eyewitness reports . We particularly have few reports of armoured cavalry like cataphracts charging armoured men . Eyewitness accounts of cavalry charges from later eras contradict Keegan ' s claim that horses will not charge home into infantry . A famous example would be Churchill ' s account of the battle of Omdurman , omdurman . asp where he describes just such a charge that ends with a physical collision between infantry and cavalry , although he stresses how unusual such a thing is . In this instance , the British lancers are surprised by a mass of infantry appearing from a dry riverbed , and it ' s too late for them to turn away . Eager warriors sprang forward to anticipate the shock . The rest stood firm to meet it . The Lancers acknowledged the apparition only by an increase of pace . Each man wanted sufficient momentum to drive through such a solid line . The flank troops , seeing that they overlapped , curved inwards like the horns of a moon . But the whole event was a matter of seconds . The riflemen , firing bravely to the last , were swept head over heels into the khor , and jumping down with them , at full gallop and in the closest order , the British squadrons struck the fierce brigade with one loud furious shout . The collision was prodigious . Nearly thirty Lancers , men and horses , and at least two hundred Arabs were overthrown . The shock was stunning to both sides , and for perhaps ten wonderful seconds no man heeded his enemy . Terrified horses wedged in the crowd bruised and shaken men , sprawling in heaps , struggled , dazed and stupid , to their feet , panted , and looked about them . Several fallen Lancers had even time to remount . Meanwhile the impetus of the cavalry carried them on . As a rider tears through a bullfinch , the officers forced their way through the press and as an iron rake might be drawn through a heap of shingle , so the regiment followed . They shattered the Dervish array , and , their pace reduced to a walk , scrambled out of the khor on the further side , leaving a score of troopers behind them , and dragging on with the charge more than a thousand Arabs . Then , and not till then , the killing began and thereafter each man saw the world along his lance , under his guard , or through the backsight of his pistol and each had his own strange tale to tell . Stubborn and unshaken infantry hardly ever meet stubborn and unshaken cavalry . Either the infantry run away and are cut down in flight , or they keep their heads and destroy nearly all the horsemen by their musketry . On this occasion two living walls had actually crashed together . The Dervishes fought manfully . They tried to hamstring the horses . They fired their rifles , pressing the muzzles into the very bodies of their opponents . They cut reins and stirrupleathers . They flung their throwingspears with great dexterity . They tried every device of cool , determined men practiced in war and familiar with cavalry and , besides , they swung sharp , heavy swords which bit deep . The handtohand fighting on the further side of the khor lasted for perhaps one minute . Then the horses got into their stride again , the pace increased , and the Lancers drew out from among their antagonists . Within two minutes of the collision every living man was clear of the Dervish mass . All who had fallen were cut at with swords till they stopped quivering , but no artistic mutilations were attempted . The enemy ' s behavior gave small ground for complaint . Ancient sources are more doubtful , but they too do not describe cavalry charges as a purely psychological shock Distinguished by his armour hethe consul was the object of the enemy ' s fiercest attacks , which his comrades did their utmost to repel , until an Insubrian horseman who knew the consul by sight his name was Ducarius cried out to his countrymen , Here is the man who slew our legions and laid waste our city and our lands ! I will offer him in sacrifice to the shades of my foully murdered countrymen . Digging spurs into his horse he charged into the dense masses of the enemy , and slew an armourbearer who threw himself in the way as he galloped up lance in rest , and then plunged his lance into the consul but the triarii protected the body with their shields and prevented him from despoiling it . Livy , AUC 22 . 6 The above is a description of the battle of lake Trasimene , which clearly has a cavalryman charging into an unbroken formation of infantry . Now , this is not an eyewitness account , but the audience Livy wrote for would have included many men with personal experience of war and battle , who would know how cavalry fought . I don ' t doubt that the psychological shock was important , and it may well have been that most cavalry charges did not end with physical clashes like this , but all in all I would be hesitant to state too categorically that dense masses of infantry are impenetrable to cavalry charges . It sounds neat and plausible when Keegan describes it , but there ' s too many counterexamples over the centuries where cavalry is described as riding through infantry formations that remain unbroken afterwards . Nor would I describe the contest as so terribly onesided if the cavalry does manage to break into the infantry formation both Churchill ' s example and Livy ' s description indicate that infantry could and did fight back fiercely . Indeed , the statistics bear Churchill ' s description out 70 out of 400 lancers in the charge were killed or wounded . Heavy losses indeed .