I know that some people in Europe very much admire Russian Cossack cavalry and think it is very effective. But in Russia there was a proverb that one hussar is equal to two cossacks, one dragoon is equal to two hussars and one cuirassier is equal to two dragoons. This places a cossack to be only 1/8 as effective as a cuirassier.

This possibly is not exactly true but in fact the cossack cavalry rarely participated in battles, making disturbing raids instead (and even in that they were thought to be worse than regular light cavalry).

So my question is whether Cossack cavalry was indeed so ineffective?