The development of cavalry firearms and the widespread disappearance of armor from the European battlefield saw a decline in the use of the cavalry lance in early modern warfare. However, by 1800 the lance, much changed from its medieval predecessors in both form and function, was back.

During the next century the use of the lance spread to the armed forces of almost every Western country, seeing action in every major conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I including the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars and across the Atlantic in the American Civil War. The lance even...