48

48. On war-horses

[Montaigne, as a gentleman who loved riding and enjoyed soldiering, lets himself go in this formless chapter, collecting anecdotes about a subject which interested him: horses, especially horses in war. The seeds of later chapters are found here, including III, 6, ‘On coaches’ and doubtless the chapter comparing the armaments of the ancients and modems which is mentioned below but was stolen by a manservant and never rewritten. ]

[A] I have never learned any language except by using it and I still do not know what an adjective is nor a subjunctive nor an ablative: yet here I am, turning into a grammarian. I believe I have heard it said that the Romans had horses called FUNALES or DEXTRARII (which were trace-horses either accompanying them on their right-hand side or stationed at relays, so that they were quite fresh when needed) and that that explains why we call our war-horses destriers1 (Our French romances also regularly use adestrer to mean to accompany.) The Romans also used the term DESULTARII EQUI [leaping horses] for horses which had been so trained that when they were galloping at full force coupled together but without bridle or saddle the nobles riding them would leap from one to the other in full career, clad in their armour. [C] The Numidian cavalry, so as to change horses in mid battle, kept a second one handy: ‘quibus, desultorum in modum, binos trahentibus equos, inter acerrimam sæpe pugnam in recentem equum ex fesso armatis transsultare mos erat: tanta velocitas ipsis, tamque docile equorum genus.’ [Their custom was to have two horses on traces just as our acrobats do and to leap from the one they were riding on to their fresh one, often in the bitterest moment of the battle, such was their own dexterity and the fitness for training of that breed of horses.]2

Many horses are taught to come to their master’s assistance, to run down anyone who threatens them with a naked sword and to kick and to bite all those who make or come straight for them: but they succeed in doing more harm to friends than foes. Moreover you cannot pull them off when you want to once they have become engaged: you have to wait and see what happens in the fight. It turned out disastrously for Artibius, the general of the Persian army, to have been mounted on a horse which had been trained in such a school when he was fighting hand to hand against Onesilus the King of Salamis: that horse was the cause of his death, his knife-bearing equerry slashing it between its shoulderblades just as it was rearing up over its master.3

The Italians tell how our King was saved4 at the battle of Fornova when his horse trampled down several enemies who were pressing him hard; without that, he would have been killed. That was a great stroke of luck, if it is true.

[’95] The Mamelukes boast of having the most skilful horses of any knights in the world: they say that their nature and training are such that they can be brought to identify and recognize the enemy against whom they are to charge using teeth and hoofs, following the word of command or the signal given to them. They similarly pick up in their mouths lances and darts lying on the ground and give them to their masters when he tells them to.5

[A] Among other outstanding qualities both Caesar and Pompey the Great were said to be fine horsemen; and Caesar is said in his youth to have ridden, bareback and without bridle, at full gallop with his hands behind his back. You could say that, just as Nature intended both that great person and Alexander as well to be miracles within the art of war, she also took pains to see that they should be equipped in ways which surpass the natural order: as everyone knows, Alexander’s horse Bucephalus had a head somewhat somewhat like a bull’s; would allow nobody but its master to mount it; would allow only him to train it; was granted honours at its death; and that a city was built in its name. Caesar also had a horse which had forefeet like a man’s, the horn of its hoofs being divided into toes; it too could be ridden by no one but Caesar who, after its death, dedicated a statue of it to Venus.6

Once I am in the saddle I never willingly dismount, for, whether well or ill, I feel better in that position. [C] Plato recommends it as good for your health, [A] and Pliny says it is good for your stomach and your joints.7 But since we have got this far, let us press on.

In Xenophon we can read the enactment8 forbidding anyone with a horse to go on foot. Trogus and Justinus say that the Parthians customarily rode their horses not only to war but to all their public and private engagements: trading, discussing, conversing and simply going out for pleasure; they add that the most striking difference between the freemen and serfs among them is that one lot rides and the other lot walks: [C] a practice conceived and enacted by King Cyrus.9

[A] There are several examples in Roman history of captains (Suetonius mentions it particularly of Caesar) who would order their horsemen to dismount when they were hard pressed, to remove from the soldiers any hope of flight – [C] and also for the advantage they expected from fighting on foot – ‘quo haud dubie superat Romanus’ [in which the Roman undoubtedly excels], as Livy says.10

All the same, the first precautionary measure they used to take to curb any rebellion among conquered peoples was to confiscate their arms and their horses: that is why we so often find in Caesar: ‘arma proferri, jumenta produci, obsides dari jubet’ [he orders them to surrender their weapons, hand over their horses and deliver their hostages]. To this day the Grand Seigneur allows no Christian or Jew under his rule to have his own horse.

[A] Our forebears, especially during the English wars, mostly fought on foot in all formal battles and in fixed encounters so as not to have to rely, where things as dear as life and honour were concerned, on anything but their own might, their stout hearts and their own limbs. You link – [C] no matter what Chrysanthus says in Xenophon11 – [A] your own valour and fortune to that of your horse: its wounds and its death involve your own; its fear or its impetuosity make you too either cowardly or foolhardy; if it does not respond to bit or spur it is your honour which has to answer for it. That is why I do not find it strange that battles fought on foot should have been more bitter and more ferocious than those fought on horses:

[B] Cedebant pariter, pariterque ruebant Victores victique, neque his fuga nota neque illis.

[Locked together they yielded ground; locked together, they advanced, both victor and vanquished; neither side knew the meaning of flight].12

[C] Their battles were far better contested than ours are: nowadays we only have routs: ‘primus clamor atque impetus rem decernit’ [the first yell and the first onslaught decide the battle].13

[A] Anything which we invite to share our great hazards with us must, as far as is feasible, remain under our control: so I would always advise anyone to choose the shortest weapons and those which we can be most answerable for. It is far more likely that we can rely on the sword we hold in our hand than on a bullet which is discharged from a pistol, since that pistol comprises several elements, the powder, the flint and the striker; if the least of them fails then so does your fortune.

[B] When your blow has to travel through the air you are less sure of your aim.

Et quo ferre velint permittere vulnera ventis: Ensis habet vires, et gens quæcunque virorum est, Bella gerit gladiis.

[They let the winds decide where their wounds are made. The soldier’s weapon is the blade: the custom of all manly peoples is to make war with the sword.]14

[A] But as for the pistol, I will speak of it more fully when I compare the arms of former times with our own.15 Except for the deafening noise – and we have all been broken in to that – it is an ineffectual weapon and I hope we shall [C] one day [A] give up using it.

[C] The Italians of old employed a fiery projectile which was indeed most formidable: what they called a PHALARICA was a kind of javelin with a three-foot iron tip, enough to go right through a man in armour; it was hurled either by hand on the field of battle or, when defending places under siege, by catapult-machines. Its shaft was draped in wadded flax soaked in oil and pitch which caught fire as it flew through the air; it stuck to the body or shield and made it impossible for you to use your limbs or your weapons. But it seems to me that, once the armies were joined in battle, these weapons would cause just as much trouble to the attackers and that a battlefield strewn with those blazing shafts must have been an equal hazard to all in the melee –

magnum stridens contorta phalarica venit Fulminis acta modo.

[the whirling phalarica hissed through the air and struck like a flash of lighting.]16

They had other weapons in which they were skilled through practice. Unbelievable though they may seem to us because we have no experience of them, they compensated for their lack of our bullets and gunpowder. Their javelins were hurled with such force that they went through two men at a time, stitching them together, shields and all, as with a needle. The shot from their slings were no less accurate than our bullets and carried just as far: ‘Saxis globosis funda mare apertum incessentes: coronas modici circuli, magno ex intervallo loci, assueti trajicere: non capita modo hostium vulnerabant, sed quem locum destinassent.’ [Being practised in hurling their round stones over the open sea and hitting tiny circles a long way off, they could not only wound their enemies in the head but in any part of the head that they chose.]

Their battering-pieces made as much din as our own weapons: ‘Ad ictus mænium cum terribili sonitu editos pavor et trepidatio cepit.’ [Fear and panic seized the inhabitants at the terrifying noise of their walls being battered].

Our Gaulish cousins in Asia hated those treacherous flying weapons, trained as they were to fight most courageously hand to hand: ‘Non tam patentibus plagis moventur: ubi latior quam altior plaga est, etiam gloriosius se pugnare putant: idem, cum aculeus sagittæ aut glandis abditæ introrsus tenui vulnere in speciem urit, tum, in rabiem et pudorem tarn parvæ perimentis pestis versi, prostemunt corpora humi.’ [They are not so much moved by the size of their wounds: they think they have fought with all the more glory when their wounds are wide and deep: consequently when an arrow-head or a bolt from a sling buries itself in their flesh and leaves only a small hole in their skin, the very idea of dying from so trivial a wound drives them mad with shame and they roll about on the ground.]17 A description close indeed to a shot from a harquebus.

Those two thousand Greeks in their famous prolonged retreat came across a nation which did them wondrous harm with great powerful bows shooting arrows so long that you could grab them up and hurl them back like javelins: they could go right through a shield or a man in armour. The war-machines which were invented by Dionysius, the Tyrant of Syracuse, for launching huge heavy spears and rocks of a horrifying size with great force over a huge distance were much like our own inventions.18

[A] I must not overlook the amusing way of sitting on [C] his mule [A] adopted by a certain Master Pierre Pol, Doctor of Theology. Monstrelet tells that he used to go about the city of Paris riding sidesaddle like the ladies. Elsewhere he says that the Gascons used to have terrifying horses trained to turn about at the gallop; the French, the Picards, the Flemings and the men of Brabant, not having seen anything like it, thought this was quite miraculous.

Those are his own words.19

Caesar, writing of the Swedes, says that during cavalry engagements they often leap to the ground and fight on foot, having taught their horses not to budge from a spot which they quickly run back to whenever there is need. He adds that, according to their customs, nothing is so cowardly or so base as using saddles or padded cushions; since they despise those who do so, even a tiny group of them are never afraid of attacking a largish number of men so mounted.20

[B] I used to marvel at seeing horses trained to do all sorts of manoeuvres at the touch of a wand while their reins drooped loose below their ears: that was current practice among the Massilians who rode their horses without saddle or bridle:

Et gens quæ nudo residens Massilia dorsoOra levi flectit, frænorum nescia, vitga. [C] Et Numidæ infræni cingunt;

[The people of Massilia, seated on their horses’ naked backs, know nothing of bridles: they guide them with a light rod. They were surrounded by Numidians who use no reins;]21

‘equi sine freni, deformis ipse cursus, rigida cervice et extento capite currentium’ [their horses, which are not bridled, lope along; their necks are held stiff and their heads are stretched forwards as though they were running].22

[A] King Alfonso – the one who first founded the Chivalric Order of the Band (or Scarf) – forbade the Knights, among other rules, ever to ride he-mule or she-mule on pain of a fine of one silver mark; I have just learned that fact from Guevara’s so-called Golden Letters – those who gave them that name judged them very differently than I do. [C] And Il Corteggiano states that it was formerly a disgrace for a gentleman to ride one.23 Yet, on the contrary, the nobler the Abyssinians are and the more closely related they are to Prester John their ruler, the more they esteem it an honour to ride on a mule.

According to Xenophon, the Assyrians always hobbled their horses in their stables, so ferocious were they and unpredictable; it took so long to unhobble and harness them that the Assyrians never stayed in an encampment unless surrounded by ditches and ramparts lest, under war conditions, the delay should act against them if they were surprised by their enemies and taken unprepared. Xenophon’s Cyrus, such a past-master in such matters, treated his horses as comrades and never ordered them to be fed before they had earned it by sweating through some exercises.24

[B] When pressed by necessity in war, the Scythians drew blood from their horses and drank it for nourishment:

Venit et epoto Sarmata pastus equo.[Then comes the Sarmatian, fed on draughts from his horses.]25

When the men of Crete were besieged by Metellus they were so short of anything to drink that they were forced to use their horses’ urine.26

[C] To demonstrate how much more economically the Turkish armies are managed and maintained than ours are, they say that not only do their soldiers drink nothing but water and eat nothing but rice and salt-meat ground to powder (each soldier easily carrying his ration for a month), but, like Tartars and Muscovites, they also know how to live on the blood of their horses, which they salt.

[B] When the Spaniards made their landfall, those new people of the Indies thought that both the men and the horses were either gods or animate creatures of a nobler or higher nature than theirs. When those Indians were defeated some, coming to seek peace and pardon from the men, brought offerings of gold and food which they did not omit to offer to the horses as well, addressing speeches to them exactly as to the humans, interpreting their whinnying as the language of compromise and truce.

In the East Indies in ancient times the first degree of honour, the King’s, was to ride an elephant; the second, to ride in a coach drawn by four horses; the third, to ride a camel, and the last and basest degree was to ride or be drawn by a single horse.

[C] One of our contemporary writers says that he saw in that region lands where they ride on oxen equipped with small packsaddles, stirrups and bridles; he found them comfortable to sit on.27

When Quintus Fabius Maximus Rutilianus was fighting the Samnites, he saw that his horsemen, after two or three charges, had failed to penetrate the enemy battalion; he decided that they should unbridle their horses and dig in their spurs as hard as they could; since nothing could stop them, they opened a gap for his foot-soldiers right through the scattered men and weapons, so achieving a most bloody defeat.

Quintus Fulvius Flaccus gave similar orders when fighting against the Celtiberians: ‘Id cum majore vi equorum facietis, si effrenatos in hostes equos immittitis; quod sæpe romanos equites cum laude fecisse sua, memoriæ proditum est. Detractisque frenis, bis ultro citroque cum magna strage hostium, infractis omnibus hastis, transcurrerunt.’ [‘The shock of your horses will be greater if before throwing them against the enemy you take off their bridles. We recall that Roman horsemen have often done that with great honour.’] They removed the bridles and charged through the enemy and back again, slaughtering many and shattering all their lances.28

[B] In former days the Duke of Muscovy owed the following mark of respect to the Tartars when they dispatched ambassadors to him: he went to meet them on foot and presented them with a bowl of mare’s milk (which is a delicacy for them); and if a drop of it fell on one of their horse’s manes as they drank it he was obliged to lick it off with his tongue.

The army which the Emperor Bajazet sent to Russia was overwhelmed by such a dreadful snowstorm that many sought to shelter themselves from the cold and to save their lives by slaughtering their horses, slitting open their bellies and crawling quickly inside to enjoy their vital heat.29

[C] When Bajazet was broken in battle by Tamburlane he would have saved himself as he was speeding away on his arab mare if he had not been forced to let her drink her fill when fording a stream; that made her so limp and so shivery that his pursuers easily caught up with him. It is certainly said that horses are weakened by letting them piss, but I would have thought that such drinking would have refreshed her and given her more strength.

When Croesus was skirting the city of Sardis he found some pastures full of snakes which his pack-horses gobbled up; that, says Herodotus, was a bad omen for his enterprise.30

[B] An ‘entire horse’ is a stallion with ears and mane; no other will pass muster. After defeating the Athenians in Sicily, the Spartans were returning in pomp from their victory to the city of Syracuse when, among other insults, they cut the manes off the defeated enemy’s horses and led them like that in their triumph.31

Alexander fought a people called the Dahae; they went armed into battle riding two to a horse; in the melee one of them jumped down; they then took it in turns to fight mounted or on foot.32

[C] No other nation surpasses us, I think, in skill and grace when riding. In the idiom of our language, ‘a good horseman’ seems to refer not so much to skill as to courage.

The man known to me who was most expert, reliable and elegant at training a horse was, to my taste, the Sieur de Carnavalet, whose skills were at the service of King Henry II.

I have seen a man ride at speed with both feet in the saddle, throw the saddle to the ground, return to pick it up, strap it on again and sit in it, with the reins hanging loose as he galloped. He rode over a hat, shot backwards at it with his bow, hitting it repeatedly; he picked up anything he liked, with one foot on the ground and the other still in the stirrup – and many other tricks by which he earned his living.

[B] There have been seen in my own time, in Constantinople, two men on one horse, galloping at full speed and taking it in turns to jump down to the ground then up to the saddle; another put bridle and harness on his horse using nothing but his teeth; another, riding astride two horses, one foot on each saddle, carried a second man on his shoulders while going full tilt; that second man, standing erect, shot accurately from his bow as they raced along; several riders stood on their heads in the saddle with their feet in the air between the points of scimitars fixed to their harness.33

When I was a boy the Prince of Sulmona in Naples, while putting an untrained horse through all sorts of manege, used to hold pieces of eight under his knees as if they had been nailed there [C] to show the firmness of his seat.