Horses were one of the earliest animals to be domesticated, and their military use can be traced back to at least 1800 bc. The horses first used by man were altogether lighter than the ones known today: short in the leg and weak in the back, they were unsuitable for riding. They were limited in their usefulness as draught animals because of their weakness—the wild ass seemed a far better bet, and was used to drag a four-wheeled chariot in about 2500 bc. At some time in the second millennium bc peoples in southern central Asia produced the two-horse chariot, and stallions no bigger than 14 hands were trained to pull it. Around 900 bc a bigger horse was bred, sturdy enough to be ridden astride by a man using weapons. The Assyrians, who had been major chariot-users, initially used cavalrymen in pairs, one man using his bow while the other controlled the horses. By the twilight years of their empire the Assyrians were using cavalry proper, but their collapse was in part brought about by enemies who exploited the horse's potential more fully.
Nomads from the steppes of central Asia impacted on the civilized world under different names and guises for the next 2, 000 years. The horse was not simply the key to their military capability, but central to their way of life. The steppe nomad spent his life in the saddle—it was said that the Huns ate, drank, slept, gave judgement, and even defecated on horseback. Many of their horses were small—around 13 hands—but there is evidence, from grave burials, of ‘powerful cantering animals’ that were over 15 hands, and may have been the ancestors of the modern Akhal Teke horse. In modern tests Akhal Tekes covered 2, 672 miles (4, 299 km) in 84 days, 620 miles (998 km) of it through desert. The remarkable endurance of their steeds was at least one reason for the nomads' success. So too was their eagerness to augment and improve their own stock with captured horses. The Chinese had sent a costly expedition to Fereghana in 102 bc to obtain ‘blood-sweating horses’—which seem to have been around 16 hands—and when the Mongols took Peking in 1215 they captured most of the imperial herd, not simply depriving the Chinese of remounts but gaining the opportunity to improve their own stock. However, travellers noted that the Mongol pony was more robust than western horses: it could live out in all weathers, subsist solely by grazing, and dig for grass under the snow.
Such was the steppe horseman's mastery of his steed that the stirrup meant far less to him than it did to the heavier, often armoured horsemen of the West. Yet the horse was as essential to occidental as to oriental society. In her ground-breaking work on the medieval warhorse, Ann Hyland notes the importance of ‘destriers [warhorses], coursers, rounceys, palfrey and packhorses’. She has also demonstrated that the knight did not ride into battle on the ancestor of the modern heavy horse, but on something closer to the modern hunter: in experiments Norman horseshoes fitted an Arab of 15.1 hands, and the dimensions of horse transports used in the Crusades suggest that ‘early medieval destriers were of very moderate size’. Hyland estimates ‘the build as stocky, and a height range between 15 and 15.2 hands’. Officers' chargers and the troop horses ridden by NCOs and men in succeeding centuries also tended to be small. The dragoons of Napoleon's Imperial Guard averaged 15 hands, and Comanche, the charger of Capt Myles Keogh, which survived the fight on the Little Bighorn (where his master fell), stands preserved at the University of Kansas and is 15.2 hands. Frederick ‘the Great’ liked ‘big, strong and handsome’ horses, and his cuirassier mounts stood at least 16 hands tall. However, attempts to mount cavalry on big horses (as much for reasons of prestige as to give a weight advantage in the shock of the charge) both increased the logistic burden and risked expensive failure in inhospitable terrain. During the Second Boer War the British army lost 326, 000 horses, partly through poor horsemastership, but partly because many unsuitable horses were sent to that trying environment. By the end of the war local Basuto ponies were recognized as much more reliable than many imported horses which swiftly lost condition on the veld. Australian remounts from New South Wales—walers—had, however, a generally good reputation.
The armies of early modern Europe had an insatiable appetite for horses, and with the expansion of armies throughout the 18th century and into the 19th this hunger grew. Most continental states established state studs—that at Le Pin in Normandy, founded by Colbert in 1665, has magnificent buildings and is known as ‘the horse's Versailles’—to improve the quality of breeding and to help meet military demands. However, during major wars demand usually exceeded supply, and Napoleon rarely had enough horses to mount all his dragoons, some of whom were forced to revert to the infantry role in consequence. During the second half of the 19th century long-distance riding became popular amongst cavalry officers as a means of judging the best breed of horse for military use, and some astonishing results were achieved, usually by Arabs. Classical equitation also had a military connection, with many of the actions of the haute école originating in training designed to teach horses to kick and bite opponents. Some needed no extra bidding. Baron de Marbot's vicious mare Lisette bit a Russian officer who grabbed her bridle at Eylau. Marbot tells us that ‘she seized him by his belly, and, carrying him off with ease, she bore him out of the crush to the foot of the hillock, where, having torn out his entrails and mashed his body under her feet, she left him dying in the snow’.
When war broke out in 1914 national preferences for horses varied. British line cavalry had horses ‘of hunter stamp. Height 15.2 hands.’ The Germans preferred solid Hanoverians and Trakheners, and one German officer commented on the ‘cat-like Arab mounts’ ridden by French hussars. Spahis rode hardy little barb stallions, which they controlled with severe bits. Russian line cavalry rode mounts of the hunter stamp, but Cossacks had tough little ponies that must have resembled the mounts of the steppe horsemen of old. However, all sorts of horses were rapidly pressed into service. Capt Walter Bloem, a German reservist, described them: ‘Sturdy cart-horses, powerful runners, light hacks from gentlemen's stables, prancing thoroughbreds, steeple-chasers, blacks, browns, chestnuts, bays, all sorts and colours’. Traditionally regiments, or squadrons within them, tried to retain steeds of uniform colours, a practice remembered by the names of two British regiments, the Royal Scots Greys and the Queen's Bays. Just as trumpeters wore distinctive uniforms, so too they rode distinctive horses, usually greys, to aid recognition. The practice continued as late as 1914, through there were absurd attempts to dye greys with Condy's fluid or coffee to make them inconspicuous.
Once again supply could not keep pace with demand—in 1917 the British army had over a million animals, mainly horses and mules, on its strength—and good-quality horses became scarcer as the war went on. The terrible winter of 1917-18 killed many horses in their often-inadequate shelter on the western front. Losses amongst the big, steady Clydesdales that drew British heavy guns were especially serious. During the war the British army lost 484, 000 horses, very roughly a horse for every two men.
The growing mechanization of armies in the inter-war years reduced, but did not end, the military use of the horse. The Germans and Russians both maintained cavalry to the end of WW II, and horses were widely used for transport: in 1944 a German infantry division in Normandy had some 5, 000 on its strength. One abiding source of regret amongst many Allied close air support strafing the Falaise Gap was the plight of the horses in the retreating German columns. This reinforces a wider truth. The soldier's natural regard for what the French cavalry theorist F. de Brack called ‘his legs, his safety, his honour, and his reward’ has sharpened the pangs of war by putting another comrade at risk. Men who could cope with man's inhumanity to man often found man's inhumanity to animals too much to bear. One WW I British trooper called them ‘Innocent victims of man-made madness. They broke your heart, especially when you passed the injured ones, left to die, in agony and screaming with pain and terror.’ He lost his own horse at Néry on 1 September 1914, and his words underline a grief that wells up across the centuries. ‘She was called Daisy. She was a lovely, docile, intelligent girl … I suppose she'd either been blown to bits or ended up as someone else's mount in another regiment.’
Some horses have left an enduring mark. Napoleon had a string of little Arabs, and his favourite, Marengo, was named after his 1800 victory. Wellington had Copenhagen, captured from the Danes, who nearly brained his master with a well-aimed kick after a long and trying day at Waterloo. Lee on Traveller was a familiar sight to the Army of Northern Virginia. Alexander ‘the Great’ loved his favourite charger Bucephalus such that after his death at the Hydaspes, he was commemorated by the founding of the town of Bucephela (modern Jhelum in Pakistan).
Bibliography
- Holmes, Richard, Riding the Retreat (London, 1995).
- Hyland, Ann, The Medieval Warhorse (Stroud, 1996)
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