THE HORSE
“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 horse[16]
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.