War Horse Read online

  The most important of the three regions in the early modern period was the German province of Schleswig-Holstein. This area had been breeding what in modern times are known as warm-blooded horses, since the thirteenth century when the count of Holstein and Storman, Gerhard I, granted grazing rights to land around the cloister to the monastery at Uetersen. A warm-blooded horse is a horse breed that combines the sprit, endurance, and athleticism of a hot-blooded breed (an Arab or Andalusian, for example), with the size and calm disposition of a coldblood (a draft horse type such as the Percheron). The resulting horse is large, athletic, with great endurance, but relatively calm and trainable. The warmblood makes an ideal military mount. The Uetersen monastery produced just such a horse that became known as the Holsteiner, the oldest of Germany’s many warmblood breeds. The International Museum of the Horse’s modern description of the breed is indicative of why the Holsteiner became one of the premier cavalry mounts of the eighteenth century: “Traditionally, the Holsteiner has been bay with a preference for no or few white markings. It is a well balanced horse, maturing between 16 and 17 hands with round, generous strides and a natural, elastic movement. A lovely head with large, kind eyes is carried on a nicely arched neck, rising upward out of its withers, producing elegance, lightness and self-carriage. Their temperament is relaxed and willing, with good character and an eagerness for work.”44

  An indication of the popularity of the Holsteiner and the extent of the breeding program were the 10,000 horses exported from the region in 1797. Prussian army expert, historian Christopher Duffy, described the Holsteiner in Prussian service: “The mount par excellence of the cuirassiers and dragoons was the powerful native horse of north Germany, and in particular the long-winded Holstein animal—a rather lighter creature than the breed of the same name in the nineteenth century. It was the endurance of the Holstein horse which enabled the twenty-six Prussian squadrons at Soor in 1745 to charge across a ravine, then up the steep slopes of the Austrian position on the Graner Koppe and so on to the valleys beyond.”45

  The Holsteiner was also highly sought after by other armies including the Austrians. Austrian cuirassiers required large horses: regulations stipulated a horse at least 15.2 hands tall. Light cavalry horses had to be at least 14.2 hands. Regulations required the horse to be dark colored: blacks and bays were preferred. Fox colored and gray horses were not accepted. The Austrians relied on private breeders to meet these requirements.

  Austria did not have an indigenous war horse breeding program, and peasants were incapable of breeding horses suitable to cavalry work. Therefore, it relied heavily on imports to meet its cavalry needs. The army hired contractors to find and purchase horses. Imported horses from the German areas of Hanover, Westphalia, and Holstein provided most Austrian heavy cavalry mounts, while Hungary, Poland, and the Ukraine provided the dragoon and hussar horses. Contractors delivered horses to specified central points, where senior cavalry officers inspected them. Contractors usually delivered the remounts in February or March, out of shape, underfed, and only green broke (broke to basic riding but no specialized skills). Once accepted the horses were shipped to the regiments for assignment to riders and training. During wartime there was only time for minimal training of the annual levy of new mounts before the spring/summer military campaign season began.46 Thus as battles took their toll on experienced horses, cavalry performance on the battlefield declined proportionate to the number of replacement horses in the ranks.

  An early exception to the high standard of horses in European armies was the army of Gustavus Adolphus. When the Swedish army arrived in Europe in the early seventeenth century, their European contemporaries considered them grossly undermounted. The Swedes were mounted on ponies indigenous to Scandinavia that stood on average 14 hands tall for officers, and 11 to 13 hands high for the average trooper. A prominent Catholic commander in the Thirty Years War, Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly, pointed out to his men that the Swedes were “so badly mounted that your baggage boys have better horses than them.” After the battle of Breitenfeld the Swedes gradually transitioned to larger continental mounts. To permanently improve the quality of the Swedish cavalry mounts the Royal Stud at Flyinge began to cross native horses with Spanish, Friesian, Arab, and Barb horses. The result was a superb warmblood horse, known today as the Swedish Warmblood.47 These excellent horses were the mounts of King Charles XII’s expert Swedish cavalry that was critical to the early Swedish successes against Poland and Russian in the Great Northern War, 1700 to 1721.

  In England, civil war threw breeding programs into chaos. After the civil war and the restoration of the monarchy, King Charles II, facilitated by a stable domestic political situation, focused on rebuilding the quality of domestic horses. By the end of the seventeenth century, King William III, an acknowledged horse master, had imported heavy coldblood stallions from Holland and Flanders to increase the size of the English army horses. William was a keen student of breeding, and his goal was to mate the stallions with the lighter English and Irish horses of the army. The result was that the British heavy cavalry rode large dark, often black horses, and were some of the best-mounted troops in Europe during Marlborough’s campaigns.48

  Horsemanship

  Prior to the early modern period most knowledge of horsemanship was a function of local tradition and experience. Some pictorial evidence exists that suggests that Medieval horse training in some cases was very sophisticated.49 Unfortunately, the knowledge developed during the Middle Ages was not captured in writing and is therefore difficult to document. The increased interest in a scientific approach to training, combined with the ability to publish manuals, facilitated the acceptance of standardized training procedures beginning in the sixteenth century.

  In the sixteenth century, there were literally dozens of books written on equitation. Most came out of Italy, the center of progressive renaissance thought. The first and most famous of these was the 1550 work of Federic Grisone of Naples, Gli Ordini di Cavalcaree.50 Grisone focused on high school equitation. The purpose of classic high school equitation was to showcase the horse and rider and was specifically a means for the aristocratic class to simultaneously demonstrate their mastery of the horse and to add to the pomp and circumstance of a noble presentation. It was art and not practical riding. The main thrust of classical riding was to get the horse to “collect” himself. This required that the horse bring his rear legs close underneath his body where they became the primary source of power. This is not the natural way of the horse. Horses in the wild tend to put their weight and derive their power from their front legs. This is called being “on the forehand.” Thus, one of the basic goals of classical equitation was to retrain the horse from its natural way of moving.

  The earliest trainers and writers justified many of the most advanced movements of classical equitation on their practical military application. This claim remains (as it is often repeated in modern times) false. Unfortunately, though appearing to have the potential to be quite effective when demonstrated in the riding hall, the high school movements were completely impractical on the battlefield. Russian World War I cavalryman and internationally recognized trainer Vladimir Littauer observed, “I, myself, as an ex-cavalryman who participated in cavalry charges during the First World War and heard many on-the-spot accounts of others, can assure you that the success of any attack does not depend on refinements of equitation.” Even the English sixteenth-century horseman who translated Grisone’s work in 1560, Thomas Blundeville, commented that in the midst of battle who would want a horse that “falls a-hopping and dancing up and down in one place?”51 The lack of practical application of advanced high school equitation did not prevent it from becoming the standard for equine training among cavalrymen across Europe because it provided a systematic and scientific methodology of producing fundamentally competent horse and rider combinations.

  Classical equitation became the military standard for Continental Europe in the seventeenth century, but, ironically,
as practitioners perfected the techniques of high school equitation in the eighteenth century, military riding began to deemphasize its usefulness. The successful employment of cavalry by two great battlefield commanders, the English duke of Marlborough and the Prussian king Frederick the Great, caused a reevaluation of cavalry training techniques. The cavalry forces of both commanders specifically rejected the most advanced high school traditions perfected over the previous 200 years. The riding tradition of the hunt field was the strongest influence on the English cavalry, while the Prussian king deliberately broke with the European classical riding tradition in order to establish the capability for boldness and speed within his cavalry force.

  The English nobility never adopted high school equitation either as a training methodology or as a social characteristic of the English aristocracy. Young English gentlemen, rather than schooling in the riding hall, met the expectations of society in the hunt field. Riding to hounds was a favorite pastime of the English nobility: hunting stressed the ability of the horse and rider to ride cross-country. The privatization of land after the English Civil War resulted in an abundance of walls, hedges, ditches, and fences dividing the country. The task of the hunter was to ride cross-country at speed and deal with obstacles. This introduced jumping as a riding requirement. The English introduced a new riding position adapted to their sport. This early hunt seat placed the riders back far to the rear against the cantle and his feet forward of the pommel in a shorter stirrup than was prescribed for classical riding. Long hours in the saddle argued for the comfort of this seat, and its security during the negotiation of obstacles was also important. It was, however, not a comfortable seat for the horse.

  The hunt seat was primarily used for the canter or gallop, but during a day’s hunt the trot was the most common gait. A new technique developed to make this potentially bone-jarring gait manageable—the act of “posting” or rising in the trot. The term posting likely originates with English post chaise (carriage) riders in the mid-eighteenth century, who favored the new technique. The rising trot required the rider to lean slightly forward and rise slightly out of the saddle with the weight and balance going into the stirrups as the horse trotted. The trot has two beats per stride and a moment of midair suspension. The rider timed his rise from the saddle in rhythm with the horse such that the rider rose as the horses back moved up and the rider came down lightly into the saddle as the horse’s back moved down. The rising trot allowed the horse and rider to move at a rapid trotting pace for long periods without undue fatigue because the technique was very comfortable for both.52 The hunting riding style passed to the English cavalry through the aristocratic officer corps and reflected in the cavalry tactics of Rupert, Cromwell, and Marlborough. Hunting strongly influenced the riding techniques of the British cavalry into the twentieth century.

  In 1741 the new Prussian king, Frederick, disgusted by the performance of Prussian cavalry at the battle of Mollwitz, determined to trans-form his cavalry into a lean bold force that could charge aggressively under even the most difficult conditions. Frederick was blessed in his endeavor by having one of the eighteenth-century’s premier cavalry leaders under his command: Friedrich Wilhelm Baron von Seydlitz. Seydlitz believed in the methodical training of fundamentals. First, he exercised his men on foot, then on a wooden horse, and then when they mounted a live animal he demanded “they must ride without stirrups until they have faultless posture.” The Prussian cavalry had no written riding manual but informally required two years to train a competent trooper.53 Seydlitz was personally a bold and gifted horseman. At an early age he trained to lift a hat from the ground with his saber, shoot a hat in the air with his pistol, and ride at a gallop between the revolving sails of a windmill. As a commander, he began every day by riding from his home and jumping a water trough and his closed front gate on his way to his headquarters. He demanded the same exercise of his staff and also encouraged hunting.

  Seydlitz was also a master of high school classical riding. On one occasion, he gained wide acclaim by executing three difficult capriole movements while on parade in honor of the king. He required all of his officers to train in classical riding with the regimental riding master. Seydlitz’s influence in the Prussian army was twofold. First, he greatly increased the basic horsemanship of the army through his emphasis on formal classical riding fundamentals. Second, he instilled in the cavalry the boldness and discipline that, combined with sound horsemanship, facilitated complex maneuvers cross-country and charging at the gallop. These two contributions identified the two major aspects of horsemanship that became the standard of all cavalry into the twentieth century: sound fundamentals combined with bold cross-country riding.

  Cavalry training was complex. Training in individual horsemanship skills so that the rider and horse could cope with anticipated battlefield situations was the first priority. After completing basic horsemanship, troopers then trained to fire and load their pistols and carbine from the saddle. Regiments maintained a dedicated training cadre to supervise training of horsemanship and weapons. All training included both horse and rider. Once the training cadre certified the soldier, he could participate in unit training. The Prussians were unique because all of their cavalry types, light cavalry hussars to heavy cavalry cuirassiers, received the same basic individual and unit training and thus had the capability of performing a variety of functions on the battlefield.54 The smoke and noise of firearms was a new part of the battlefield environment. Systematic training enabled war horses to perform in the new conditions of battle. Cruso’s seventeenth-century manual described how to train the horse for the terrifying action of firing pistols and harquebuses from the horse’s back:

  When he is at his oats (at a good distance from him) a little powder may be fired, and so near to him by degrees. So may a pistol be fired some distance off, and so nearer: in like manner a drumme or trumpet may be used. The groom may sometimes dresse him in armor, and he may be sued (now and then) to eat his oats from the drumme head. It will be very usefull sometime to cause a musketier to stand at a convenient distance, and both of you give fire upon the other, and thereupon to ride up close to him: also to ride him against a compleat armour, so set upon a stake, that he may overthrow it, and trample it under his feet: that so (and by such means) your horse (finding that he receiveth no hurt) may become bold to approach any object.55

  All armies used similar techniques, and they remained a basic part of remount training into the last years of the cavalry in the twentieth century.

  Horse Equipment

  During the 300 years of the early modern period the standard bit for controlling the horse remained the curb bit; however, saddle design went through profound changes. At the beginning of the period the saddle did not vary much from that observed in the Medieval period. By the end of the period, the saddle and most other equipment had taken a shape and function that would remain essentially unchanged until the last of the great cavalry formations disbanded in the twentieth century.

  In the sixteenth century the combat saddle had both a high pommel and cantle. The cantle wrapped around the hips of the rider locking him into place. The pommel was high and extended down the forward part of the saddle to provide protection to the groin area as well as the thighs. Both of these facets of the saddle could be armored. Some sixteenth-century saddles included a horn on the pommel similar to a modern western saddle horn but its purpose was as a handhold. The rider’s thighs were wedged between pads in front and back locking his leg in place. The rearward pads were inclined to the front to push the rider’s thigh forward thus providing support in the accepted forward leg position.56 The saddle varied little from a Medieval war saddle.

  The seventeenth century saw a move to greater practicality and the move away from an armored rider and the lance-influenced saddle design. In the first half of the century, designs lowered the pommel and the cantle, and the cantle no longer had the stringent high wrap-around style. The padded rolls were still in place and continued
to push the rider’s leg forward. It was during this period that one of the leading classic riding instructors, the duke of Newcastle, began to advocate a more balanced riding position. This, combined with the increased cross-country riding in England resulted in dramatic saddle design changes beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century.

  By the last quarter of the seventeenth century French riding master Francois Robichon de la Guérinière instigated a redesign of the classic school saddle that was reflected in military saddle design. He flattened the pommel to allow the rider to ride closer to the horse’s center of balance and removed the forward and the rear leg roll in the saddle, allowing the leg to hang naturally underneath the rider, closer to the horse. In addition, the stirrup leather attachment was moved to the center of the saddle. These changes permitted the rider to sit in the center of the saddle and allow his legs to be “perpendicular as when he stands upon the ground.” With more leg in closer contact with the horse, control using the leg aid was easier. Having the leg closer to the horse also eliminated the need for the exceptionally long Medieval spurs.57