War is democratic in a way

From Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson. Page 136.

There is also a class bias in war between horse and foot soldier, in which the aristocratic disdain of the peacetime noble is instantaneously realized in the murderous downward stroke of his lance or saber. Or perhaps the natural insolence of the knight derives not entirely from the past cargo of his birth and wealth, but is created at the moment he mounts, and therein realizes a freedom of movement, relative impunity, and the need for a coterie of retainers unlike his brethren below. The same is true of the modern fighter pilot, whose command of the air, speed, and possession of a complex machine make his rocketing and strafing of soldiers seem almost effortless and in a macabre sense therefore nearly deserved — a different task from shooting face-to-face men who are charging into his foxhole.

In defeat, the swift horseman can beat death through flight—those few British who survived the Zulu slaughter at Islandhlwana were almost all mounted. In victory, fresh and clean knights (the war world of the horseman is not the muddy universe of the infantrymen) often appear from nowhere to kill — but only after the tough hand-to-hand of their inferiors on the ground is over. The Locrian cavalry who nearly ran down a fleeing Socrates at the battle of Delium (424 B.C.) did so only after their tough Theban hoplite allies had shattered the Athenian phalanx. More often, horsemen at the onset of battle fear lines of grim infantrymen. Mounted warriors the world over, whether they are born or invited into the cosmos of the horse, have always hated crossbow bolts, a wall of spears, a line of shields, or a spray of bullets—anything that allowed the man without a mount to destroy in seconds the capital, training, equipment, and pride of his mounted superior.

Just as in peace the middling and poor are always more plentiful than the elite, so in Western battle horsemen are rarely as numerous as foot soldiers. Whereas away from the chaotic killing of the battlefield, the wealthy man has the predictable structures of society on his side, in the melee such protocols of class and tradition mean nothing. War, as the antebellum failures Grant and Sherman both learned, is democratic in a way: the carnage of battle is one of the few arenas in which ingenuity, muscle, and courage can still trump privilege, protocols, and prejudices.