War Horse: A History of the Military Horse and Rider

416 Pages·2008·8.39 MB·English

by  Louis A. DiMarco

WAR HORSE
A HISTORY OF THE MILITARY HORSE AND
RIDER

LOUIS A. DIMARCO
Frontis: “The military seat as it is. A plummet line from the shoulder should fall an inch behind the heel.
[Cavalry Regulations, Page 11] Saddling. The saddle is to be placed on the middle of the Horses back; the
front of it the breadth of a hand behind the play of the shoulder. [Cavalry Regulations, Page 5.]” From
Cavalry: Its History and Tactics (1853) by Louis Edward Nolan, reprinted by Westholme Publishing, 2007.
Copyright © 2008 Louis A. DiMarco All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the
publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
Westholme Publishing, LLC
904 Edgewood Road
Yardley, Pennsylvania 19067
Visit our Web site at www.westholmepublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-59416-525-2 (electronic) Also available in hardback.
Produced in the United States of America.
To my wife, Colonel Joyce P. DiMarco, whose love of soldiers and horses is the
real inspiration for this work, and to my daughters Cara and Gina whose efforts
maintaining our barn and small herd of equine partners permitted the completion
of this project.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. The Ancients
2. Cavalry Armies
3. The Romans
4. The Knight and His Mount
5. Steppe Warriors
6. Early Modern Cavalry
7. All The Emperor’s Horses
8. Industrial War and Cavalry
9. Mounted Guerrilla Warfare
10. The Last Charge
Epilogue
Appendix
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION

The war horse and rider were one of history’s most enduring military fighting
systems. They were a key to the success of Alexander the Great in the fourth
century BC, and, likewise, were integral to British General Edmund Allenby’s
successful Palestine campaign in the same part of the world 2,200 years later.
The similarities between Alexander’s lance-armed companion cavalry and the
Indian lancers of Allenby’s cavalry divisions were far greater than the
differences. The war horse and rider was a viable military weapons system for
more than 3,000 years, far longer than any other military system. There were
many reasons for this phenomenal endurance. One was that man-made
technology could not outperform the horse as a means of transporting soldiers in
battle until the middle of the twentieth century. Also, the horse is a large and
powerful animal. As long as physical size and strength were a critical component
of close combat fighting, the horse was an important con-tributor to combat
power. The horse was not only a weapon that had a material effect on the
battlefield, but also was a psychological weapon that by its mere presence could
effect the morale of friendly and enemy troops. The physical presence of horses
could inspire courage or instill uncontrollable fear. Even after technology gave
soldiers firearms that provided protection from horses, it still took another half a
century before the capabilities of technology were sufficient to erase the
psychological impact of the horse in battle. The intent of this work is to study the
long and fascinating history of the war horse and rider as a military weapons
system—possibly the most important and least understood martial arm in
military history.
This work examines the horse and rider as a weapons system used in battle—
it is not a battle history of cavalry. It reveals the slow and logical evolution of
the horse’s employment in warfare. The chapters examine how horses were
organized within the important armies of history, what type of arms were used in
conjunction with horses, and what type of tactics directed the war horse and rider
on the battlefield. However, weapons and tactics were only part of the success of
mounted forces. The horse itself was also important. The physical characteristics
of the horses, breeding programs, and training for military operations were all
important. Horsemanship was also a critical component of effective mounted
operations. The utility of the horse was greatly dependent on the rider’s skill
under the stressful conditions of combat. Horse mastership—the science of
managing the health and welfare of horses—was also an important aspect of the
success of mounted operations. An army’s ability to manage its horses could be
the difference between battles and campaigns won or lost.
The type of horse used for military operations is an important and much
neglected aspect of military history. Much military history assumes generically
that all military horses were the same. Such an assumption is akin to assuming
all rifles were the same. For most of history, horses were described broadly as
types. Horses within a type are common to a geographic area and broadly share
some physical characteristics. Breeds are more specific than types. Specific
breed identification requires not just careful management to achieve desired
physical characteristics, but also detailed record keeping to document that
management. Breed organization in its modern form does not appear until the
seventeenth century, but even after that period important and recognizable types
continued to influence military operations until the end of large-scale mounted
military operations. The distinction between type and breed is important, but less
so in military history because both terms are sufficient to identify and highlight
the characteristics of the important war horses used by various armies over the
ages.
The first chapters of this work set the tone for those that follow, establishing
the fact that early mounted forces were certainly as equal in importance to
infantry—if not the premier military arm. Even without saddles and stirrups,
mounted forces were a critical component of ancient warfare. The mounted
military power of the Middle East was a force to which Europe’s only effective
response was Alexander the Great. Rome, despite all its great achievements, was
not a state that fielded particularly effective mounted forces, and this
characteristic of the Roman military helped define the limits of the Empire.
During the Medieval period, mounted forces became unquestionably the most
important military forces in Asia and Europe. But the European knight was a
somewhat limited military tool that was only dominant in Europe because of the
unique social and political conditions on the continent. The Eastern mounted
forces, in contrast, were a true comprehensive military force. The Crusades
provide evidence that the Eastern approach to employing the war horse was far
superior to that of the knights of the West. The Central Asian steppe horse
archers also demonstrated the superiority of the well-trained versatile horseman,
using the horse as a firing platform as well as for shock action.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the rise of military
professionalism and resulted in the formation of very competent mounted
military organizations in Western Europe for the first time since the Romans.
Advances in riding techniques, training, and horse breeding were part of the
overall advance of military professionalism. Scientific riding and horse training
principles date from this period. Among horses, some of the first recognizable
modern breeds, including the hot-blooded Andalusians of Spain and the various
warmbloods of Germany, appear in military organizations during this period.
It was during this period that controlled mass cavalry charges against infantry
were first deployed. Infantry began to develop the tactics and technology to
defend against this kind of cavalry attack; however, the psychological impact of
mounted formations on battlefields remained considerable. Fear was an
important—possibly the most important—aspect of employing war horses.
Speed and timing were also keys to success. Despite infantry firearms and
protective formations, charges by mounted forces were both common and had
decisive effects.
During the Napoleonic period mass conscript armies, accompanied by large
cavalry formations, dominated the battlefields of Europe. Mounted units made
up in size and enthusiasm for what they lacked in professional riding skills,
making the point that professional armies had their limitations and that expert
horsemanship was not always necessary for effective battlefield results.
However, declining horsemanship and horse mastership had important negative
operational consequences in several important campaigns and battles.
The Industrial Revolution’s impact on mounted forces was primarily in the
development of firearms that finally achieved longer range, higher rates of fire,
and greater accuracy. These new weapons, used by both infantry and mounted
troops, had a great effect on the role of horses on the battlefield. American
cavalry of the Civil War demonstrated that modern carbine-armed cavalry gave
commanders a highly mobile and lethal force that could attack mounted with
shock action or dismounted with firepower. Small numbers of American Indians
and South African Boers who used the mobility of their war horses to wage very
successful guerrilla campaigns against nations far larger and with much greater
resources in the closing decades of the nineteenth century further demonstrated
the effectiveness of horse mobility combined with firepower. However, the
combination of firepower and horse mobility was largely ignored by the major
military powers of Europe. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 reinforced the
traditional shock-focused employment of cavalry and set the conditions for
generally ineffective cavalry tactics by the French and Germans in World War I.
World War I and World War II demonstrated that a general purpose cavalry
well armed with rifles still had utility on the battlefield, but the challenges of
increasingly lethal firepower made the successful employment of horse-mounted
units more difficult. As infantry weapons became easier to use and more deadly,
the cavalry charge became more difficult to accomplish successfully because
infantry no longer feared the charging war horse and rider. Improving
automotive technology erased the advantage of mobility of horse-mounted
forces in World War II. Only Russia fielded large mounted forces that had a
major effect on operations. After World War II, continued improvements in
automotive technology ensured the end of large-scale military horse operations.
The thousands of years from the ancient Egyptians to World War II is a great
expanse of history. Covering such a vast period of time in one volume requires
deliberate steps to limit the discussion of the topic. Thus, this work does not
include much discussion of the war horse in the Far East or in South America.
Another topic not addressed is the role and contribution of logistics and artillery
horses, though these horses were critical to military success and often
outnumbered the horses of the cavalry. Space constraints also require the
omission of many important battles involving horses and cavalry including the
famous charge of the light brigade at Balaclava, the destruction of Custer’s
command at the Little Bighorn River, and the charge of the light horsemen at
Beersheba. Enough battle descriptions have been included, it is hoped, to
illustrate the combat environment in which horses were placed and the complex
factors which influenced the success or failure of mounted operations. Finally,
some horse breeds and types that have played a role in military operations are
not mentioned. Again, limitations of space have constrained the selection to
some of the most important and famous types and breeds that are generally
representative of the war horse.
This work was only possible because of the research of many talented
historians and horse experts, the written narratives of commanders and
cavalrymen, and the surviving records of armies and units. These are recorded in
the notes and references. The initiative of Westholme Publishing, who