Polish cavalry was famous and continued to perform way after knights as such are usually considered to be obsolete. They were certainly not peasants with horses as has been suggested but rather was always members of high nobility with rather expensive gear, horses, armor, etc, much unlike the infantry armies fielded by the commonwealth.
I'm not very knowledgeable on this really but as far as I understand this is how it all fitted together:
The reason atleast later on (16th and 17th century) for polish knights being fielded in such numbers, apart from tradition and good access to horses, was that the country continued to be a medieval feudal state with a very strong and rich aristocracy for so long (the liberum veto and the ownership of Ukraine and other major grain producing areas among other things assured this).
The arguably one advantage that gave them was the ability to field large amounts of knights, even as this became a more and more antiquated approach to warfare. The drawbacks would be the state being entirely stifled due to every minor noble being able to veto any decision in their parliament with the liberum veto
When the system did work it enabled them to create the territorially largest state in Europe at that time though (the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth basically extended from the baltic to the black sea and would continually sack Moscow during it's youth).
There is no question that these knights were very effective. As late as 1683 Poland defeated the Ottoman army outside of Vienna in the largest cavalry charge in history.
If you look up polish hussars on wikipedia I think you'll find a list of victories attributed to them. I know that it's commonly considered that their use against the Swedish armies prior to the 30 years war is what inspired the cavalry tactics the Swedes would be using when invading the HRE later on with great success.
The polish system didn't enable them to react very well to threats though and despite being territorially intact the state did get weaker and weaker in later years. It certainly wasn't very strong during partition as has been mentioned.
All this aside, isn't eastern cavalry already a lot better than western in the game? I'm pretty sure that's the case... Apart from that I'd say Poland is high offensive, high serfdom and high aristocracy nation in game terms.
EDIT: And yes, nothing here concerns the original post. I know even less of hungarian history and shouldn't comment on that. This is all due to the standard reactions to "Poland threads". Often these reactions are warranted. But that doesn't change the fact that the Polish-Lit commonwealth was a great power for some time and that their armies certainly were effective even though they didn't develop along the lines of western Europe.
I'm not very knowledgeable on this really but as far as I understand this is how it all fitted together:
The reason atleast later on (16th and 17th century) for polish knights being fielded in such numbers, apart from tradition and good access to horses, was that the country continued to be a medieval feudal state with a very strong and rich aristocracy for so long (the liberum veto and the ownership of Ukraine and other major grain producing areas among other things assured this).
The arguably one advantage that gave them was the ability to field large amounts of knights, even as this became a more and more antiquated approach to warfare. The drawbacks would be the state being entirely stifled due to every minor noble being able to veto any decision in their parliament with the liberum veto
When the system did work it enabled them to create the territorially largest state in Europe at that time though (the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth basically extended from the baltic to the black sea and would continually sack Moscow during it's youth).There is no question that these knights were very effective. As late as 1683 Poland defeated the Ottoman army outside of Vienna in the largest cavalry charge in history.
If you look up polish hussars on wikipedia I think you'll find a list of victories attributed to them. I know that it's commonly considered that their use against the Swedish armies prior to the 30 years war is what inspired the cavalry tactics the Swedes would be using when invading the HRE later on with great success.
The polish system didn't enable them to react very well to threats though and despite being territorially intact the state did get weaker and weaker in later years. It certainly wasn't very strong during partition as has been mentioned.
All this aside, isn't eastern cavalry already a lot better than western in the game? I'm pretty sure that's the case... Apart from that I'd say Poland is high offensive, high serfdom and high aristocracy nation in game terms.
EDIT: And yes, nothing here concerns the original post. I know even less of hungarian history and shouldn't comment on that. This is all due to the standard reactions to "Poland threads". Often these reactions are warranted. But that doesn't change the fact that the Polish-Lit commonwealth was a great power for some time and that their armies certainly were effective even though they didn't develop along the lines of western Europe.
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