“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!”

No apology is needed for including in a Treatise on Cavalry a chapter on the subject of the Horse. Were it demanded, it would only be necessary to point to the unfortunate ignorance in regard to horses, horsemanship, and horsemastership which, extending as it does through every gradation of rank of life in the nation, caused our bill for horses in South Africa to total twenty-two millions—that is, about one-tenth of the whole cost of the war. In fact, it may here be remarked that, following this assessment, it is quite probable that the horse question should be rated as 10 per cent in the percentage of importance of matters in preparation for war; that is, in big wars, for our thoughts are apt to be distracted by small wars from the essentials of great wars.

It is unfortunate that nowadays only at most 15 per cent of the men in our cavalry have, before enlistment, had anything to do with horses. Further, few indeed of the officers, though most of them have ridden, and in that best of schools the hunting-field, have gained sufficient experience in their early life, before joining a regiment, in the stable management and training of horses, to enable them to look after their horses well. This they will only attain to after they have had a fairly long apprenticeship under a good squadron leader.

The essentials of campaigning horse management only come to those who live with horses constantly, and have to get work out of them. Those who hand over their horse to a groom after a long day’s work, and who do not see him till they wish to ride again, cannot learn about horses.

That the ordinary hunting man in Great Britain knows very little indeed about economizing his horse’s strength is evident from the fact that not one in twenty is ever, after a sharp gallop, seen to dismount, loosen his horse’s girth, and turn his head to the wind. Ten to one, if any one does so, it is a soldier, and one who has served in South Africa.

First of all is the question, What is the most suitable animal for cavalry work? And here the mind runs into two lines: (1) There is the animal which will carry a moderately heavy man, whose weight is 11 stone, together with his saddle, arms, etc., which may total up to another 6 stone. For this the beau-ideal is the Irish horse of about 15·2 hands high. But these must be well and carefully fed and watered, and not overdone. Their recuperative power grows less also with every inch of height. (2) The other animal which will carry a lighter cavalryman is seen at its best in the modern type of polo pony about 15 hands high, and as nearly thoroughbred as possible. These latter are more able to withstand hardship than class (1).

Though the limit to the height of the horse suitable for a campaign should be 15·2 hands, it is more difficult to say how small a horse16 is suitable to carry a cavalryman. Chest measurement is the best known test for stamina, and a good judge said truly that “a 13·2 hands pony sixty-four inches round, will do double the work of a 14·2 hands pony of equal girth.”

Whilst we do not wish for one moment to be understood to advocate unduly small horses for cavalry, we do wish the chest measurement standard to be adopted more widely. We cannot help advancing the theory that the natural height of the horse appears to be not more than 14 to 15 hands at most, and all above that are in the nature of forced exotics, obtained by selection and good food for mares and foals, and in these stamina has not been grown in proportion; take, for instance, the power of the heart, which has to pump blood farther to the extremities in a big horse.

Now, though it must be allowed that a squadron mounted on 15·2 hands horses will, in a charge, easily defeat one mounted on 14·2 hands horses, still the difficulty of maintaining the condition of the squadron mounted on 15·2 hands horses, the increased cost of food, the smaller amount of wear and tear which the horse, as it increases in height, can bear, are all factors for consideration.

It is because, unfortunately, our ideas in Great Britain are somewhat inflated in respect to the size of the horse required to mount cavalry, that we neglected at the beginning of the Boer War to collect every animal of suitable age, if only 14 hands high, for the remounting of our cavalry in South Africa, and went to other and far more unsuitable sources for our horse-supply. Had we later, as was suggested, commandeered all suitable animals in the Cape Colony, we should have obtained a most useful reserve, and incidentally deprived our opponents of a source of supply of which they took full advantage. The horse and transport animal of the country are always the most suitable for a campaign in that country. By the end of that war, many a cavalry officer had gladly exchanged his 16 hands horse for a Boer or Basuto pony of 14 to 14·2 hands high.

But this, the South African War, it should be here remarked, can only be regarded as giving us a view of one side of a great question. Campaigning in the fertile plains of Europe, where food and water are generally plentiful, where stabling may often shelter the animals, and where enormous distances, with no food beyond that carried in the waggons, are not necessarily covered, the larger horse may do his work well. But he must be treated with the greatest care and the weight carried, in his case, more rigorously reduced than in that of the smaller horse. For shock tactics he is the best animal on which to mount our cavalry, and our ideal is shock tactics.

But let the squadron leader not forget that, when long distances are to be traversed, a few ponies are perfectly invaluable (they can be driven in a mob with his second line transport and are available to mount men whose horses require a day or two’s rest, and which will, if they do not get it, “give in” and never be any more use to them).

In peace time, in the laudable desire for good appearance, these expedients of war are too apt to be forgotten; they only force themselves on us when it is too late. The animals usually described as only fit for mounted infantry are those which see the finish of a campaign, and must be available as reserves of remounts for cavalry.

No doubt it requires experience and trained intelligence to discriminate between the purchase of the large, fat, slow, hairy-heeled, podgy-muscled brute that has never yet gone fast enough to strain himself or be otherwise than perfectly sound, and the lean son of the desert or veldt whose early toil has developed wind-galls, splints, and so on, but whose conformation and muscular development are as complete as will be his ability to live and carry weight, when the other will fall down and die.

Stamina has been mentioned above; it is obviously the first essential in a cavalry horse. Next in rank to it comes good temper, usually accompanied by good digestion and boldness, and marked by a full kind eye and a broad forehead. Xenophon recommends us to test a horse’s courage by unaccustomed sounds and sights before purchasing him as a war horse, and we recommend this practice to cavalry officers.

The Arabs, who have bred horses with a view to war for many generations, have handed down a great deal of old-world wisdom on the subject of the horse suitable for war.17 The best Arabian horses are undoubtedly the outcome of centuries of breeding to a type, and that the type suitable to carry a light man throughout a long campaign, to face danger courageously, to possess fair speed, immunity from disease and sickness, especially pulmonary complaints, and to bear the jar of galloping on hard ground.

Our own British horses and the Australian Walers have unfortunately been bred for size, speed, and—in the case of the former—ability to carry a man in a burst over a big hunting country, and with, for the last fifty years, a disregard for stamina and temper which has gone far to remove many of them from the type of animal suitable for cavalry.

Situated as we are in regard to knowledge of horses, and hampered as we are in our preparation for war by the difficulty of teaching the essentials of campaigning horse management during peace time, we shall always find that it is in the early part of a war that our cavalrymen will fail to comprehend the necessity for nursing the strength of their horses, for discarding all unnecessary impedimenta, and limiting the task to what is absolutely necessary. In peace time, horses which are in regular work are not appreciably affected by their rider sitting on their backs for five or ten minutes at a halt instead of dismounting, or by his not allowing the horse to pick a few mouthfuls of grass twenty or thirty times in the day, or by his not watering him at every chance.

In peace time the horse will get food and water on his return home; but in war these little things in the aggregate matter greatly. They are like the snatches of sleep which a tired man gets when he can; they keep him going. The man can sustain himself by the hope of sleep at a future time. The man has certain traits in his nature which carry him through.

It is said that Murat, in Napoleon’s Russian campaign, though he crossed the Niemen with 43,000 horses, could only put 18,000 in the field two months later. Murat had worn them out by keeping them saddled up sixteen hours a day, by giving them insufficient food, and by chasing wisps of Cossacks. À propos of this, Nansouty said to Murat: “The horses of the cuirassiers not, unfortunately, being able to sustain themselves on their patriotism, fell down by the roadside and died.” Tired men soon express their feelings, the horse is unable to do so. Verb. sap.

Intimately connected with this question is the feeding of the horses. We know that no concentrated ration can constitute a substitute for bulk for continued periods, but it is not generally known how many articles of diet a horse will relish when hungry. In the Pamirs the ponies eat the offal of game which is thrown aside, thus recalling the story of our childhood of Black Bess, Dick Turpin’s celebrated mare, who had a beefsteak tied round her bit on the ride to York.

Ruskin once said in a lecture to the cadets at Woolwich:

Whilst all knowledge is often little more than a means of amusement, there is no science which a soldier may not at some time or another find bearing on the business of life and death; your knowledge of a wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an army, and acquaintance with an obscure point of geography the success of a campaign.

This is applicable to the cavalryman and his horses.

De Brack devotes eight pages of his valuable work, Cavalry Outpost Duties, to a chapter on “Forage and Subsistence,” every word of which should be known to any cavalry officer who may have to serve in Europe or elsewhere.

The theory of horse management is brought now to a very high standard by our Veterinary Department, and their publication of an excellent book on Animal Management marks a step forward which must be appreciated by all who are in agreement with the theory expressed earlier in this chapter, that the horse question is one-tenth in war. It is little different from Frederick the Great’s saying that “Victory lies in the legs.”

One word of caution is necessary for those who command cavalry in war. They must metaphorically keep a finger on the equine pulse, and this is, most of all, necessary when working horse artillery in heavy ground, or horses fed on anything less than full rations, or horses in bad weather. Wet saddle-blankets put next a horse’s back act like a poultice. There is no alternative in wet weather in a bivouac but to keep the blanket dry, or dry it before a start is made. Further, since the health of their horses is vital to the efficiency of cavalry, their leader must be willing to take risks in grazing, off-saddling, and foraging for food. Against surprise on these occasions long range rifles and our guns now confer on us great advantages.

In this matter of attending to the welfare of the horse, however, it must be fully realized when it is permissible and when the horse must be sacrificed to the exigencies of the situation.

An instructive example of what far-reaching results may come from ill-judged watering of horses is given in the American Civil War, by General Alexander. In June 1864 Grant, after his encounter at Cold Harbour with Lee, undertook the bold step of moving south across the James River and attacking the Confederate right flank. For three days, though the movement was reported to Lee, he would not believe it.

On the 15th of June the Federal General Smith, with 1600 men, was moving on Petersburg, a vital point on Lee’s right. Beauregard, the Confederate commander, then had only about 2500 men to hold his extended lines with; he, however, expected reinforcements by night. Every hour’s delay of the Federal advance was therefore invaluable. With one cavalry regiment and a battery he delayed Smith’s column for three hours, and it was not till 5 P.M. that that General had completed his reconnaissance of Beauregard’s position. By 6 P.M. everything was ready for the attack; but it was then found that the Chief of Artillery had sent all the artillery horses to water. This delayed the attack till 7 P.M. It was partially successful, and a portion of the Confederates’ lines were captured; but night came on, and with it the Confederates’ reinforcements. “Petersburg was lost and won by that hour.” That was on the 15th June 1864, and Petersburg did not fall into Federal hands till April 1865.

The question, whether the present day greatly-extended rÔle of cavalry on the battlefield, hitherto entirely confined to theory, will answer in practice, is a burning one for the horse-master. Without an enormous force of cavalry will there be squadrons available for these services?

In Frederick the Great’s army the horses were a first consideration, and he got the greatest results. In Napoleon’s campaigns there is not much evidence of the horses being considered.

Frederick saw that the task suited the horse. Napoleon made the horse suit the task or perish in the attempt. The latter’s lost campaigns teach lessons about cavalry which we cavalrymen cannot afford to ignore. Cavalry worn out in the first week of a campaign, with scores of horses scattered along a line of communication in vain efforts to effect some coup, entail a bitter retribution.

Campaigns of three weeks’ duration are not the rule, and every extra exertion for which horses are called upon has its price. It is only in the pursuit that we can afford to disregard our horses.