WAR-HORSES.
WAR and the chase are the ultimate objects for which the Commission on Irish Horse Breeding has lately been hearing the evidence of experts on both sides of the Channel. The Irish owners desire to raise a class of horses the best of which can be sold at a high price for hunting, while the rest pay their way as cavalry remounts. How best to combine these objects the Committee will have to decide. Thoroughbred sires, it is agreed, produce the stock meet likely to make good hunters ; and though the " hackney " is much in favour with some breeders of cavalry horses, we have very little doubt that the better bred these are the more likely they are to stand the rough work of war.
The modern heavy cavalry horse has to carry a total weight, made up of man, harness, and equipment, of 20 et.- 280 lb.—and the light cavalry horse a weight of 17 st. He is expected, if required, to march thirty miles in one day, and to be able to do his work on the next. Bought in Ireland at three years old, he is two years in training, and spends four years in the ranks as his average time of active service. It is very possible that if the type of cavalry horse were bigger it would last longer. But the modern animal is a compromise between the needs of the Service and the price which Government can afford. There is no such contrast now as formerly between the great war-horse, specially bred to carry the man in armour, and the " natural " war-horse, bred for speed, endurance, and to carry a man armed only with sword, spear, and shield. The difference has never been presented so vividly as in the battles of the Crusaders, especially those in which they were opposed to the Saracen cavalry. Sir Walter Scott's representation of the single combat in the desert between Sir Kenneth and Saladin is a very probable account of what would happen in such an encounter. When the mail-clad Knights on their heavy horses were able to charge knee to knee they must have swept away any force of Saracen cavalry ; but there is evidence in the accounts of the .Templara that they modified their equipment in some degree to suit the Eastern modes of warfare and the climate. It is, however, less well known that the Saracens did the same, and that the changes they made in the days of the Crusades endured a hundred years ago, and in some parts of the Soudan are still observable. They adopted a light chain armour, the steel cap, and the two- handed sword of the Crusaders, and to carry the increased weight must have bred their horses of a larger size. This appears in an account by Bruce in his "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile," published exactly one hundred years ago. He visited, near Sennaar, the Sheik Adelan, round whose house were stabled four hundred horses, with quarters for four hundred men, all alike the " property " of Sheik Adelan. "It was one of the finest sights lever saw of the kind," he wrote. "The horses were all above sixteen hands high, of the breed of the old Saracen horses, all finely made and as strong as our coach-horses, but exceedingly nimble in their motion ; rather thick and short in the forehead, but with the most beautiful eyes, ears, and heads in the world. They were mostly black, some of them black and white, some of them milk-white (foaled so, not white by age)." The size and character of these horses distinguish them from the ordinary light Arab. Sir William B road wood questions Bruce's accuracy, saying that he is eviaently mistaken when he describes Sheik Adelan's troop horses as all above sixteen hands, because Arab horses now rarely exceed fifteen bands. Bruce's accuracy has survived the questioning of his contemporary critics, but the context supplies a probable answer to Sir W. Broadwood's doubts. All the riders wore armour, and the horses were not the modern Arab, but bred to carry the extra weight. "A steel shirt of mail hung over each man's quarters opposite his horse, and by it an antelope's skin, made as soft as chamoy, with which it was covered from the dew of night. A headpiece of copper, without crest or plume, was suspended by a lace above this shirt of mail, and was the most pic.
turesque part of the trophy. To these was added an enor- mous broadsword, in a red leather scabbard, and upon the pommel hung two thick gloves, like hedgers' gloves, their fingers in one poke." To carry this panoply the Sheik's horses were modified from the natural Arab type.
The size of the English war-horse reached its maximum in the reign of Henry VIII., when the relations of body armour to "hand guns," were analogous to those of the early ship armour and cannon before the "high velocities" were obtained at Elswick. There was good reason to believe that by adding a little to the thickness of the coat of steel the soft low.velocity ballet of the day could be kept out. So it was for a time. But the additional weight required a still larger horse to carry it. The charger had to be armoured as well as his rider, and the collection in the Tower of London shows the actual weight which it car- ried. The panoply of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the brother-in-law of Henry VIII., still exists. That of the horse covers the whole of the hind-quarters, the back of the neck, forehead, muzzle, ears, shoulders, and chest. It is exactly like a piece of boiler-plating, and fastened by rivets. The rider sat in a saddle the front of which was a steel shield 10 in. high, covering the stomach and thighs as the " breast- work " on an ironclad's deck covers the base of the turret. The total weight is 80 lb. 15 oz. To this add the weight of the rider's armour, 99 lb. 9 oz., and of the rider himself, say 16 st.-224 lb.—and the total is 28 at. 12 lb. 8 oz., or 404 lb. 8 oz. This bears out Holinshead's statement that in the days of Henry VIIL, "who erected a noble studderie for breeding horses, especially the greatest sort," such as were kept for burden, would bear four hundredweight commonly. As the gun prevailed, personal armour, just as in the modern ships, was concentrated over the vital parts. Breastplates remained bullet-proof, thigh-pieces were only sword-proof. But till the days of James II. complete armour seems to have been commonly worn by commanding officers in battle. The statue of Admiral Lord Holmes in Yarmouth Church shows him in fall armour. Charles I., Cromwell, Maurice of Nassau, and William III. at the Boyne, are painted in the same equipment, except that leather boots have superseded greaves. The horse becomes lighter, but is in most respects the same animal. His points are well shown in the fine equestrian statue of Charles IL at the top of Whitehall Place. But before the date of the battle of Blenheim a change had begun. The "great horse" of war was being bred as a beast of draught, to develop into the modern shire horse, and his place as a war-horse was in process of being taken by the " dragooner," which carried a soldier with only as much defensive armour as our modern Life- guards. Cromwell's " dragooners " carried rather more weight; but from a letter quoted by Sir Walter Gilbey in ‘• The Old English War-Horse," it may be inferred that they were not of the old heavy breed. "Buy those horses," he writes to Auditor Squire, "but do not give more than eighteen or twenty pieces each for them. That is enough for dragooners." Then "I will give you sixty pieces for that black you won (in battle) at Horncastle, for my son has a mind to him." The "black" was one of the old war-horses, —the colour having become synonymous with the breed ; and Oliver was so keen on getting it, that as Mr. Auditor Squire would not part at the price offered, he wrote later : "1 will give you all you ask for that black you won last fight." By the accession of the Hanoverian Kings the "great horse" had disappeared, even for the use of officers and commanders. Then the equipment of regular cavalry became uniform throughout the whole of Europe, and has remained so until the present day. The only difference in the horses is that between an animal able to carry a 12 at. man and his equip- ment and that which carries a 10 st. man, and except in some French regiments of Chasseurs which use Arab horses, the breed is almost identical. Even the Cossacks are now regular troopers and mounted on big horses, instead of the twelve-hand ponies on which they rode from the Don to the Seine.
The Greek army is now encamped on the plain where Bucephalus ' was reared ; but the famous Thessalian horses have now dwindled to the size of ponies, ridden by the Irregulars and local levies of the Greeks. 'Bucephalus ' was the most costly war-horse ever bought. The animal came
• The 014 Enyliah War-Horse. By Walter Gilbey. London ; Vinton and Co.
out of a noted stud owned by a Thessalian chief; and even before its celebrated taming by Alexander, this gentleman asked Philip 22.518 15s. as his lowest price. Pliny says that Philip gave £435 more than this. It now appears that, contrary to general belief, Bucephalus' was a mare. This accounts for the high. price paid. The purchaser would breed foals from the costly animal. Compared with the prices asked for Arab mares of great descent in much later times, the sum demanded is not excessive. But Bucephalus' was a good bargain even as a war-horse. She was ridden until she was thirty years old, and then died of wounds received in a battle with Porus, and left her bones in the Punjab.
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