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thunderlips11 says

Why is there this orgy of fortification, not only in Northern France but in Italy, Germany, and of course Southern France and during the Reconquista? Surely, they serve some purpose.

Eonomy of force. Fortification was/is a force multiplier. When rising market economy made human life more expensive than worthless in market terms relative to the lord's own capital, hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option, in contrast to the prior period when Greek and Romans flooded the field with hordes of citizens and slaves, or the latter period when "democracy" allowed Napoleon to have 30,000 lives to spend every month at no cost to himself. Feudal armies meant either paid mercenaries or levies for which the lord/prince was forgoing other productive output of the same people.

thunderlips11 says

The Infantry are feudal levies, not a standing army. Castles are garrisoned by a lord and his retinue. Walled towns by urban militia.

Feudal levies were not useful field divisions. At the best, they were the equivalent of security divisions to deal with enemy infiltrators and fortification divisions with little initiative. Heck they couldn't even be counted on as fortification divisions, lest they sell the castle to invaders. The Lord/Prince's own retinue had to hold the fort.

As for cavalry sweeping the fight, we've talked about Tours, Hastings, Marienburg, Crecy, Agincourt, Poiters, Bannockburn.

Nearly every single one of those was considered a big "upset" (i.e. surprising outcomes) by their contemporaries. They ran against the general expected outcome, except for Hastings, where the combined arms with cavalry component did win against the pure infantry army.

thunderlips11 says

Reality says

Mongols will later work that tactic to high perfection, and build the world's largest empire ever by area, stretching from German borders to Korea, and from Siberia to India.

Damn annoying horse archers. Basically, herding infantry. Even used the same crescent formation they used to herd animals. Their compound bows often outranged the archers of the victims' infantry.

The enemy infantries were useless as soon as the nomadic archers disposed of the enemy mounted forces. The vast Roman army under Crassus was slaughtered by Cythian mounted archers the same way 1200 years before the Mongols. Superior range and superior mobility, that's how Aircraft Carriers won against Battleships. The side with initiative can intentionally sea-saw the battle and prevent the slower moving side from ever using their weapons or concentration of force effective, provided there is enough room for manuever. That's another reason why fortifications were built in Western Europe: limit room for manuever so as to infantry a chance against cavalry without being sliced and diced in detail in manuever battles. Longbowmen were not infantry, but more like artillery force, or the medieval version of Katusha rocket launchers with rapidly delivred area bombardment.

Reality says

Eonomy of force. Fortification was/is a force multiplier.

Yep - and a territory marker, an impediment to raiders, mark of subjugation (esp in the Baltic Crusades and in Norman England), and most importantly, a way of preventing your neighbor from ambushing your men and taking over your lands in the endemic warfare of the Dark (and Middle) Ages. Until the rise of gunpowder, a well-supplied fortification required a substantial investment of time and effort to take.
Reality says

When rising market economy made human life more expensive than worthless in market terms relative to the lord's own capital

I think it was more the MWP increasing yields and finally making some surplus production possible given all the lost abilities of a deurbanized, depopulated, warlord-led Europe.

Can you point me to any sociologist, historian, or economist that argues the a civilization that is less urban and less populated tends to be more advanced than civilizations that are more urbanized and more populated? Or one that argues that deurbanization and depopulation isn't a clear marker of a civilization in decline?

Reality says

hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option,

Infantry is a helluva lot cheaper than horsemen.

If you can't afford infantry, you definitely can't afford mounted knights, who not only need warhorses to charge with, but several other horses to ride off the battlefield, as only in D&D or Skyrim can a Lord Falkenhoof the Half-Elven Paladin in AC4 Armor ride the same horse for 16 hours straight. Then there's all the sundry goods needed to keep a heavy cavalryman in the field (horseshoes, bridles, stirrups, fodder, etc.) and for his and his squire's (at least, probably more in the entourage) person and baggage as well.

I think this is one of the stronger arguments against the alleged dominance of Cavalry in the Dark Ages, which was poorer than the ages that preceded it or followed it.
Reality says

hordes of infant to flood the open field was not longer an option, in contrast to the prior period when Greek and Romans flooded the field with hordes of citizens and slaves,

I don't recall Greek or Roman armies using slaves on a regular basis in battles.
Reality says

Feudal levies were not useful field divisions. At the best, they were the equivalent of security divisions to deal with enemy infiltrators and fortification divisions with little initiative. Heck they couldn't even be counted on as fortification divisions, lest they sell the castle to invaders. The Lord/Prince's own retinue had to hold the fort.

Okay... I take it you agreeing with me when I said...
thunderlips11 says

The Infantry are feudal levies, not a standing army. Castles are garrisoned by a lord and his retinue. Walled towns by urban militia.

Reality says

That's another reason why fortifications were built in Western Europe: limit room for manuever so as to infantry a chance against cavalry without being sliced and diced in detail in manuever battles.

I agree with much of what you wrote except this. Equipping soldiers were expensive, so infantry predominated. I can find no evidence that between 500-1000AD, Heavy Horse was the decisive weapon of European Armies, as opposed to Light Cav or Horse Archers with the Arab or Eurasian peoples. Furthermore, I'm asserting that heavy cav wasn't even the decisive arm in the Late Middle Ages, either.

With all the previous examples I've given, I can't see how one can compare the Knight to the Carrier. There is no example of a Battleship - or even a surface combat task force without air cover - defeating a Carrier Force. We have many examples of infantry and archers slaughtering heavy cavalry over multiple battles that span multiple centuries.

As for any battles where the Cavalry pursues and runs down the losers, or attacks open flanks or from the rear, that's been happening long before the Middle Ages. The Greeks and Romans used Cavalry the same way in their battles. No Medieval Innovation there.

Great minds think alike.

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