How to defend against cavalry/ mounted archers as a mostly infantry warband?

So I was doing fairly well this playbthrough. I have started my clan and rescued my brother and even have a few of companions. I’m decently geared for early game and had a small warband of 49. These were mostly just infantry with a handful of archers but my companions are mounted. I had 10000ish denars in the bank and was looking forward to buying some passive income from one of the cities…

That’s until I accepted a caravan escort mission… The caravan was attacked three!!! Yes three!!! Separate times by different bandits with a party of 50ish troops but they were all 75%ish mounted archers and 25% cavalry.

Don’t get me wrong I still won all three encounters but holy shit did they take a toll. But the end of the last battle my main character had fallen in battle and I had 13 troops who were still able to fight with 20 wounded and the rest dead. Maybe my tactics were shot but all I could think to do was order my infantry into a circle formation and use my handful of cavalry to ride them down. The whole time my infantry were basically used as target practice and I kept thinking “there must be a better way”. Should I just recruit more cavalry? More archers? How do I even recruit cavalry? Any help appreciated. Thanks a lot

submitted by /u/Cute_Friendship2438
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