In order to increase the action in movies and television shows, horses are often shown as charging headlong into the front lines of footmen holding spears. Game of Thrones does this all the time, and Braveheart has famous scenes involving horses being sacrificed in order to “break the lines.”

When you stop to think about this for a second, it’s a stupid strategy that doesn’t make much sense. Why would you ride your horses directly into spears? First, you’ll be sacrificing a very expensive animal, one in limited supply that took years to train. Second, a fallen horse is likely to land and trap the leg of the rider, so you don’t really want to be riding it into a situation in which it will almost certainly topple. Even if your leg isn’t trapped, you’re still the first one to get to the enemy and they’ll kill you when you hit the ground.

Believe it or not, horses have no interest in riding headlong into a row of spears! Getting them to do so would be very difficult and something hard to train them for. In reality, the phrase “here comes the calvary” exists for a reason: the cavalry tends to come later in the battle. Calvary will watch for a weak point in the enemy ranks and then move in to exploit it. While horses might experience some resistance, they’re not ridden directly into a row of people.