[FrankTrollman]

OK, I'm going to call shenanigans on Arralen. It is difficult to train a warhorse to charge a forest of spears. It is not impossible. Horsemen traditionally do extremly poorly against close pike formations, but not only because horse are unwilling to charge in - also because when they do charge in they have a tendency to get thrashed.

If horses couldn't be made to charge pikemen, how would the knights have been slaughtered at Laupen after having charged the pikemen?

Making blanket statements like "horses won't charge spear formations" or "horses will panic in the presence of elephants" is only true of the untrained horse, not of the warhorses that knight units presumably ride. While there are many many examples of armies which had not trained their mounts to stay firm in the presence of spears or elephants (heck, the Khmer never bothered to train their horses to not freak at the sight of their own elephants, and just kept them on different sides of the battle), there are many other examples of armies that did.

Sometimes that worked out. Sometimes it didn't.

But it is possible. You are short changing horses. A lot.

-Frank