Some might consider me a grammarian, having only ever learned languages by rote, and still knowing nothing of adjectives, conjunctions or the ablative. I seem to have heard that the Romans had horses they called funales or dextrarios, which were ridden in relays on the right or left, so as to take them all at once if necessary: and that is why we call service horses destriers.
And our Romans usually say adestrer to accompany. They also call Desultorios Equos, horses that are trained in such a way that, running free from all their stiffness, coupled side by side without bridle or saddle, the Roman gentlemen, even fully armed, would throw themselves in the middle of the race and be thrown back and forth from one to the other. The Numidian gendarmes, with a second horse at hand, would change in the heat of the melee:
They were accustomed to leap from a tired horse to a fresh one, often during the fiercest battle, like a galloping horse, and their horses were so docile. (Livy)
There are several horses trained to rescue their master, to run at anyone who presents them with a naked sword, to throw themselves with their feet and hooves at those who attack and confront them; but it happens more often that they harm friends than enemies. On top of that, you do not take them away from their post once they are harnessed; and you remain at the mercy of their combat.
He cursed Artibius, general of the Persian army fighting against Onesilus, King of Salamis, from person to person, for having ridden a horse trained in that school, because it caused his death: Onesilus’s cuissier stabbed him with a sword between the shoulders, as he had reared up on his master. And what the Italians say, that in the battle of Fornuove the King’s horse unloaded him, with kicks and kicks, from the enemies who were pressing him, and that he was lost without that: it was a great stroke of luck, if it is true. The Mamluks boast of having the most dexterous cavalry in the world. And it is said that, by nature and by custom, they are trained, by certain signs and voices, to pick up spears and darts with their dens and to offer them to their master in the thick of the fray and to recognize and discern them.
It is said of Caesar, and also of the great Pompeius, that among their other excellent qualities, they were very good horsemen; and of Caesar, that in his youth, mounted on a horse and without a bridle, he would make it take off, with his hands behind his back. As nature intended to make this character and Alexander two miracles in military art, you would say that she also endeavored to arm them extraordinarily: for everyone knows that Alexander’s horse Bucephalus had a head like a young bull’s, that it would not allow anyone to ride it except its master, that it could only be trained by the horse itself, that it was honored after its death, and that a city was built in its name.
Caesar also had another that had front feet like a man, with clipped nails shaped like fingers, which could only be ridden or trained by Caesar, who dedicated its image to the goddess Venus after his death. I don’t like to dismount when I’m on horseback, because it’s the position in which I feel best, both when I’m healthy and when I’m ill. Plato recommends it for health; Pliny also says that it is beneficial for the stomach and joints.
So let’s continue, since we’re already here. In Xenophon we read the law forbidding a man who had a horse from traveling on foot. Trogus and Justinus say that the Parthians used to conduct not only warfare, but also all their public and private affairs, bargaining, parley, conversation and walking on horseback; and that the most notable difference between freemen and serfs among them is that some ride, others walk: an institution born of King Cyrus. There are several examples in Roman history (and Suetonius notes it more particularly in Caesar) of Captains who ordered their horsemen to dismount when they found themselves pressed by the occasion, to take away from the soldiers any hope of escape, and for the advantage they hoped for in this kind of combat,
In which the Roman undoubtedly excels (Livy)
It is true that the first means they used to curb the rebellion of the newly conquered peoples was to take away their weapons and horses: yet we see Caesar so often saying:
He orders that arms be brought forth, cattle be produced, and hostages be given.
Today, the great Lord allows neither Christians nor Jews who are under his rule to have their own horses. Our ancestors, especially during the time of the Anglois war, in all solemn combats and assigned days, would most of the time all set out on foot, to rely on nothing other than their own strength and vigor of their courage and their limbs, of something so dear as honor and life. You commit, whatever Chrysanthemum says in Xenophon, your valor and your fortune to that of your horse: its wounds and its death draw yours as a consequence; its fear or its ardor make you either reckless or cowardly; if it is lacking a mouth or a spur, it is to your honor to answer for it.
For this reason, I do not find it strange that these fights were fiercer and more furious than those fought on horseback,
They retreated together, and fell together. Victors and vanquished, neither the former nor the latter knowing flight. (Virgil)
Their battles are much more evenly contested; they are now mere skirmishes:
The first cry and attack decides the matter. (Livy)
And something that we call the company of such great risk must be within our power as much as possible. As I would advise choosing the shortest weapons, and those with which we can best defend ourselves. It is much more apparent to make sure of a sword that we hold in our fist than of the cannonball that escapes from our gun, in which there are several parts, the powder, the stone, the wheel, any of which, if it fails, will make you fail in your fortune. You strike with uncertainty the blow that air carries for you:
And where they wish to allow the winds to carry their wounds: The sword has strength, and whatever nation of men there is, It wages war with swords. (Lucan)
But, as for this weapon, I will talk about it more fully where I will compare ancient weapons with ours; and, except for the astonishment of the ears, to which everyone is now accustomed, I believe that it is a weapon of very little effect, and hope that we will one day abandon its use. The weapon used by the Italians, both thrown and fired, was more terrifying. They called the phalarica a kind of javelin, tipped with a three-foot iron spear, so that it could pierce through an armed man; and it was thrown either by hand in the countryside, or with devices to defend besieged places: the staff, covered with pitch and oil, would catch fire from its course; and, attaching itself to the body or the shield, would prevent the use of weapons and limbs. However, it seems to me that, in order to reach him, it also impeded the assailant, and that the field, littered with these burning fragments, caused a general inconvenience in the melee,
A great, shrill, twisted phalanx comes, driven by a lightning bolt. (Virgil)
They had other means, to which custom had accustomed them, and which seem incredible to us through inexperience, by which they made up for the lack of our powder and our cannonballs. They hurled their missiles with such force that they often pierced two shields and two armed men, and stuck them together. The blows of their slings were no less certain and far-reaching:
They crossed the open sea with their slings of rounded stones: they were accustomed to throw small circles of fire at a great distance from the place where they were: they wounded not only the heads of their enemies, but also the place where they had intended them to be. (Livy)
Their drums, as well as their effect, also represented the din of ours:
At the sound of the walls being battered with a terrible noise, panic and trepidation seized them. (Livy)
The Gauls, our cousins in Asia, hated these treacherous, flying weapons, and were more courageous when fighting hand-to-hand.
They are not moved by such open wounds: where the wound is wider than it is deep, they think they are fighting even more gloriously. Likewise, when the sting of an arrow or a hidden bullet burns inwardly with the appearance of a thin wound, then, turned into rage and shame at such a small pestilence, they prostrate their bodies to the ground. (Livy)
This description is very similar to a rifle shot. The ten thousand Greeks, on their long and famous retreat, encountered a nation that did them wonderful damage with long bows and arrows, and darts so long that if you took them in your hand you could throw them back like a dart, and they pierced through the shield and an armed man. The engines that Dionysius invented in Syracuse to fire massive bolts and stones of horrific size, with such a long flight and impetuosity, were very close to our inventions. And we mustn’t forget the amusing plate that Master Pierre Pol, Doctor of Theology, had on his mule.
Monstrelet recounts that he was in the habit of walking through the city of Paris, sitting sideways like women. Elsewhere he also says that the Gascons had terrible horses, accustomed to turning while running, which the French, Picards, Flemings and Brabanters found a great miracle: for not having been accustomed to seeing it, these are his words. Caesar, speaking of those of Sweden: At encounters on horseback, he said, they often throw themselves to the ground to fight on foot, having accustomed their horses not to move during the fight, to which they promptly resort, if necessary; and, according to their custom, there is nothing so vile and cowardly as to use saddles and bridles, and they despise those who do: so that, being very few in number, they do not fear to assail many. What I once admired, to see a horse trained to be handled with any hand with a stick, the bridle lowered over its ears, was common to the people of Marseille, who used their horses without saddle or bridle.
And the nation that sits on the bare back of Massilia. Bends its light lips, ignorant of reins, with a rod. (Lucan)
And the Numidians surround the reins: horses without reins, their very course is deformed, their stiff necks and heads outstretched. (Virgil)
King Alphonse, who established the Order of the Knights of the Band or of the Scarf in Spain, gave them, among other rules, that they should not ride either a mule or a donkey, on pain of a fine of a marc of silver, as I have just learned in the letters of Guevara, of which those who have called them golden, made a judgment very different from the one I make of them. The Courtier said that before his time, it was a reproach for a gentleman to ride one. The Abyssinians, as they are bigger and more advanced than the Prettejan, their master, on the contrary, use mules to ride for honor. Xenophon, that the Assyrians always kept their horses hobbled at home, so shy and wild were they, and that it took so long to unhitch and harness them that, so that this delay in war would not cause them harm, if they were caught unawares by the enemy, they never camped in a camp that was not fenced and fortified. His Cyrus, so great a master of chivalry, put the horses of his escort to work, and did not make them eat until they had earned it by the sweat of some exercise. The Scythians, when necessity pressed them in war, drew blood from their horses, and drank and fed on it,
A Sarmatian horse came and grazed me. (Martial)
Those of Crotte, besieged by Metellus, found themselves in such a shortage of any other beverage that they had to use their horses’ urine. To show how well the Turkish armies conduct themselves and maintain themselves, they say that, in addition to the fact that the soldiers drink only water and eat only rice and salted meat reduced to powder, with which each one can easily carry a month’s supply, they also know how to live on the blood of their horses, like the Tartars and Muscovites, and they salt it. When the Spanish arrived in the New World, they considered the people, horses and other animals to be either gods or animals, nobler than their own kind.
None, after having been defeated, coming to ask for peace and forgiveness from men, and bringing them gold and meat, failed to go and offer the same to the horses, with a harangue just like that of the men, taking their neighing for a language of reconciliation and truce. In the Indies, it was formerly the principal and royal honor to ride an elephant, the second to go by coach, drawn by four horses, the third to ride a camel, the last and most vile degree to be carried or pulled by a single horse.
Someone in our time writes having seen, in that climate, countries where people ride oxen with harnesses, stirrups and bridles, and having found their bearing to be good. Quintus Fabius Maximus Rutilianus, against the Samnites, seeing that his cavalry with three or four charges had failed to break the enemy battalion, took this advice, that they unbridle their horses and forcefully break their spurs, so that, with nothing able to stop them, through the weapons and men overturned, opened the way for their infantry, who inflicted a very bloody defeat. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus ordered the same against the Celtiberians:
You will do this with a greater force of horses, if you send unbridled horses against the enemy; which Roman cavalry have often done with their own praise, as is recorded in memory. And having taken away the reins, they rushed back and forth twice, with great slaughter of the enemy, breaking all their spears. (Livy)
The Duke of Muscovy formerly owed this reverence to the Tartars, when they sent ambassadors to him, that he would go out to meet them on foot and present them with a goblet of mare’s milk (a beverage they greatly enjoy), and if, while drinking, any drops fell on the hair of their horses, he was required to lick it up with his tongue. In Russia, the army that Emperor Bajazet had sent there was overwhelmed by such a horrible snowfall that, in order to take cover and escape the cold, many decided to kill and disembowel their horses, to jump inside and enjoy their vital heat. Pajazet, after the bitter shock of being broken by Tamburlan, would have escaped unharmed on an Arabesque mare, had he not been forced to let her drink from a stream on the way, which made her so weak and cold that he was easily caught up by his pursuers.
It was well said that they should be let go, leaving them to piss; but to drink it, I would have thought it would have cooled and strengthened her. Croesus, passing by the city of Sardis, found pastures there where there were many snakes, which the horses of his army ate with relish, which was a bad omen for his affairs, as Herodotus said. We call a horse whole, if it has hair and an ear; the others are not considered: the Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in Sicily, returned in triumph to the city of Syracuse, where, among other bravadoes, they had the defeated horses shorn and led them in triumph. Alexander fought a nation Dahas: they went two by two armed on horseback to war; but, in the melee, one would dismount; and would fight now on foot, now on horseback, one after the other.
I do not believe that any nation can beat us in horsemanship. A good horseman, in the sense of our language, seems to be more about courage than skill. The most knowledgeable, surest and best at leading a horse that I have ever known was, in my opinion, the Sieur de Carnevalet, who served our King Henry II. I have seen a man give a career to two feet on his saddle, dismount his saddle, and, on the way back, raise it, re-accommodate it and sit on it again, always fleeing at a brisk pace; having passed over a cap, shoot good shots from his bow at it from behind; gather what he wanted, throwing himself to one foot on the ground, holding the other in the stirrup: and other similar antics, by which he lived.
In my time, in Constantinople, we saw two men on a horse, who, at full speed, would take turns to throw themselves to the ground and then back in the saddle. And one who, with only his teeth, bridled and harnessed his horse. Another, between two horses, with one foot on one saddle and the other on the other, carrying a second on his arms, was running at full speed: this second, standing fully upright on him, was shooting very precise shots from his bow as he ran. Several others, with their legs crossed, were riding with their heads planted on their saddles, between the spikes of the stirrups attached to the harness. In my childhood, the Prince of Sulmone, in Naples, handling a rough horse with all kinds of maneuvers, held reals under his knees and under his toes, as if they had been nailed there, to show the firmness of his seat.