While the "limitanei" were supposed to deal with policing actions and low-intensity incursions, the duty of responding to more serious incidents fell upon the regional or provincial troops of the reduced field reserves of the "comitatenses". The countering of the very largest scale incursions on a strategic scale was the task of the mobile field troops, the "palatini" and "comitatenses" diverted to strengthen the field armies, and possibly accompanied by the emperor's "scholae". Both border and field armies consisted of a mix of infantry and cavalry units although the weight of cavalry was, according to some authorities, greater in the mobile field armies. Overall, approximately one quarter of the army consisted of cavalry troops but their importance is uncertain. Older works such as the Eleventh Edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1911) state that the Roman military of the late Empire was "marked by that predominance of the horseman which characterised the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages," but many more recent authors believe that the infantry remained predominant.* Treadgold, "Byzantium and its Army", pp. 44–59.</ref>