The haute école of classical equitation includes movements with direct military application, like the capriole which was originally intended to enable a horseman to use his steed to kick an attacker approaching from behind. It was believed to be relevant as late as the 18th century, and many cavalry officers learnt it as part of their formal training. The Cadre Noir (instructors) of the French cavalry school at Saumur taught the haute école, and such was the reverence with which it was approached that in student slang watching the instructors perform was described as ‘going to mass’.
From the 18th century most armies favoured what the British termed the ‘Old German Seat’. Soldiers rode with long stirrups and almost straight legs, sitting at the trot so as to present a uniform appearance and, so it was argued, using their weapons more effectively. Prussian regulations of 1742-3 decreed that a single hand's breadth of space (two for hussars) should emerge between a rider's backside and saddle when he stood up in the stirrups. Frederick ‘the Great’ himself favoured a rather shorter style, and used a flat English hunting saddle rather than the heavily padded Pauschensattel preferred by most of his officers.
There were repeated complaints that riding so long produced injuries to the groin and made it harder for light cavalry, who tended to use their swords to cut rather than to thrust, to use their weapons to full advantage. In 1803 Col Thomas Pakenham ordered his men to take their stirrups up two holes before charging at Laswaree, and they cut about to good effect. His contemporary the French light cavalry theorist Brack agreed, writing that the charging horseman should ‘lean forward on his horse, so as to shield himself behind his horse's neck, to present less surface to the enemy's fire, to see danger less, and to give more spirit to his horse’. He added that before charging it was as well to tighten girths and let the men take a dram.
As a distinguished horse artillery officer, Noel ‘Curly’ Birch observed, the Second Boer War proved that riding long was ‘most wearing for man and horse on the march and quite unsuitable for crossing obstacles’. It was not until the early 20th century that European cavalry generally rode with short stirrups and a bended knee, able to take rough country in their stride. The sitting trot survives, to this day, when British Household Cavalry rides on parade.
— Richard Holmes
