In today’s landscape of warfare, where drones and missiles play such a decisive role, and as we await the arrival of robot soldiers on the battlefield, studying cavalry seems like an exercise in military archaeology tinged with romantic nostalgia for a vanished world of lancers, hussars, uhlans, and dragoons. Apart from the fact that the countless horsemen slaughtered on horseback throughout history would hardly have seen the romance in it — let alone their poor mounts — cavalry not only remained in effective military use for much longer than is commonly thought, but could once again play a role in warfare in a world that has run out of the fuel or electricity that power modern military machinery. This is the view of the young military historian Ismael López (Valdeobispo, Cáceres, 31 years old), author of the monumental 800-page Sables al viento (Sabers in the Wind), an exhaustive history of modern cavalry between 1860 and 1945, from Custer’s horsemen to those of the Waffen-SS, and full of incredible episodes (published in Spain by Ático de los Libros, 2026).

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I’ve spent a few intense days hunting down an old Nazi. In a prime example of new-new journalism, I enlisted the help of AI, but I have to say things didn’t go as planned: AI can really mess things up. It all stemmed from reading Revenge of Odessa, the posthumous sequel to Frederick Forsyth’s celebrated novel, and also from stumbling upon an old 2001 film on Netflix in which a rather clumsy fellow reinvents himself as a journalist.

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