England's horses for peace and war : their origin, improvement and scarcity

Front matter

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Preface

When a man finds himself, from any reason, the exponent of an honest and meritorious cause, he need not be choice of words, nor punctilious of demeanour in urging it. Nevertheless, the Author feels all the difficulties that beset this his present effort in its handling. Fearful that enthusiasm in his task might engender a style bordering upon the didactic (so offensive to most readers on equine subjects), and, apprehensive that a less vigorous style of writing might suggest weakness, he has thrown to the winds everything like anticipation of what would be thought of his production in any sense but that of practical utility. And, with this slight explanation, he respectfully and earnestly commends the common sense wisdom of the principles he advocates and upholds to the Nation, at a specially exigent period, for its consideration.

THE AUTHOR.

Boscobel House,

Begent's Park,

London, N.W.

PEACE AND WAR.

Chapter I

So much has been said and written, if little has been done, regarding our general horses, their propagation, improvement, culture, supply, insufficiency, and dearness ; to which catalogue we ought to append an alleged decadence, that the subject has fairly passed through that amount of exciting ventilation and publicity which leads to popularity in the public mind.

Writers of varied classes of opinions have dealt w'ith it through works of standard literature, and the medium of the press and periodicals. Men capable of handling it in its varied ramifications and details have devoted energy and ability to exhaustive essays for the last quarter of a century on the subject of our general and military horse supply. From such utilitarian and highly commendable efforts, we have at length aroused the consideration of the great and powerful, without, up to the present, any result beyond that of incontestable practical confirmation of the warnings of writers on the subject.

The Royal Commission granted upon Lord Rosebery's motion in the House of Lords, have discovered, with mathematical accuracy, the inadequacy of supply to our demand; but, unfortunately, nothing has been yet done, or suggested, to rectify so alarming and inconvenient a state of things.

Observations at such a juncture, submitted for public consideration and appreciation, will be rigorously expected to have their base, at any rate, in sound and rational premises. For this is a subject of importance so overwhelming as to embrace considerations of the maintenance of our national supremacy in the future ; and that is sufficiently absorbing "to all patriotic Britons to sharpen their interest and curtail their patience. Something capable of being shaped into practically successful results is what the public now seeks, and anything short of this would be regarded with disfavour. Nor is this state of feeling to be wondered at in the days we have fallen upon, when the most strenuous eflbrts of the constituted officers fail to keep our cavalry and artillery strength in horses up to a 'peace footing ! At the time, too, when a recent enquiry, with all the aegis of Royal Warrant, failed to do more than substantiate the truth of previous assertions as to an alarming want of supply in our military and general horse stock ; being admittedly unable to offer any suggestion calculated to prove practicable and popular for bringing about a cure. A Titanic and very recent war, at our doors, has given to the present and future, in the pages of history, powerful illustration of the value of cavalry operations in modern warfare. A recent French writer, too, calls attention to the same consideration in a pamphlet addressed to his Government, urging the necessity for increasing the means for propagation of horses suited to military purposes, and to the unquestionable superiority of the German cavalry, due, as lie maintains, almost entirely to the quality of their chargers.

And this, notwithstanding the fact that France, with her three and a half millions of horses, has at least a million more than Germany. The inferiority of the French horses he attributes (properly, there can be no physiological doubt) to the want of careful selection as to sires of unquestionable attributes, as in other neighbouring states. Prussia has two thousand stallions, or nearly so, in the Government military studs, or haras ; Austria has more, and all selected by one of the finest judges in the world, well known and much-liked in this country by all breeders and owners of high-class stock ; Hungary can count as many ; while Russia has the vast number of six thousand horses for re-productive purposes. And be it borne in mind, that these are all animals carefully supervised by competent and duly commissioned officers capable of weighing the merits and demerits of each candidate for the duties of the harem. It is only by comparison we can judge of anything; Government haras, under the ablest supervision that careful selection can command, have been found to work well in other countries, where there is not so much sentimental respect paid to private enterprise when national interest hangs in the balance. The French, like ourselves, have discovered a rent in their armour. They wisely make an attempt to repair the injury; we, with characteristic insular apathy and procrastination in anything that costs money and trouble, gravely shake our heads and put our hands in our pockets, not to pull out the needful for the regenerative efforts we are forced to own are too sadly required, but, as a lazy fellow will do, while he contemplates something requiring prompt exertion that he has not the energy to tackle. But it is worse than useless in so regarding this admitted national calamity ; for, like the stiff fences we meet with the fox-hounds, the longer

4 E^'GLANDS HORSES,

you look at them the bigger they get. Those who go at them with pluck and in good form getting off much better than the timid and the shirkers.

Our Gallic neighbours are considering the subject of careful selection of snes and an increase in the number maintained throughout that country. A proposition is now before the French Assembly, that the number of sires should be added to by one hundred annually, until the aggregate supply doubles its present number of stud horses. Considering the immense demands that the resources of France have recently sustained in comparison to those upon our plethoric exchequer, their scheme for increase and imj)rovement of their military horses contrasts favourably with the results of The Lord's Committee on the same subject in England, which, after sitting for several months and exhausting every possible channel for enquiry and information on the subject exercising their research, eventually decided that our supply was not by any means equal to our wants, but that they could not help that, nor could they suggest a feasible and popular remedy.

We have now, through the accident of change in the administration, a Government in office, amongst the traditional repute of which is recorded strong sympathies in maintaining our national power and prestige amongst the nations of the earth ; and, also, to be favourable to all the interests of our horses, hounds, turf, and other time-honoured institutions. The sympathies of the Conservatives, it is to be hoped, will promptly lead to the consideration and practical treatment of a subject so popular and imjjeratively important.

We cannot be said to be at peace now, and we are not at war with any people where cavalry forces are required. But can wx hope in the course of things to be exempted all through the future from collision necessarily demanding

FOR PEACE AXD WAR. 5

large cavalry aid ! Should that day come before our long censurable apathy as to the efforts to prepare for it will have admitted of preparation, where are we ! With European ports shut, our horse-breeding colonies too far removed to aid us in horse supply at an exigent mom.ent, and, with our internal resources in that way admittedly inadequate, after the most minute investigation on the subject ; may not every Englishman ask, with a laudable anxiety, what is to become of our cavalry and artillery? Cannons, ammunition, and war material that can be made, manufactured, or subsidized, will, doubtless, be forthcoming at the hour of sore need ; but let us, as a rational people, remember that we cannot put our looms, foundries, and steam-power to " turn us out " horses ; nor are they by any means a portable merchandise, if even opportunity of purchase from any source offered. It takes five years, at least, to mount a dragoon with any reasonable hope of even an approximate amount of that training and endurance essential to a cavalry charger to meet with efficiency the duties devolving to his share through the evolutions and hardships of modern warfare. And five years must only be expected to put us in possession of immature " remounts," by no means reliable under the trying ordeals of a protracted campaign. With such unanswerable difficulties staring the country in the face, how, in the name of the very commonest common sense, is it that if we have no better plan of operations to pursue we do not follow that which has in other states been found to work with practical success 1 The Government interposition has been a success upon the Continent ; with greater indigenous advantages, why should it not be, at least, equally beneficial to us now in our extremity ? Let us not shirk the palpable induction, it is DO longer a question of principle, but of coin ! !

The following notice of operations of that great cavalry

0 England's nortsEs,

power, Austria, from one of the leading daily papers, is ar exemplification of the attention such matters obtain upon the Continent, while here — well, " the least said the soonest mended."

" Although French horses have but recently made themselves a name, and even yet Frenchmen have but an indifferent reputation in this country for their powers of horsemanship, strange to say there always has been in England a very strong feeling of respect and admiration for the riding qualities of Hungarians, whose prowess and deeds of daring in war have long been celebrated. The gallantry of Edelsheim's Hussars has almost become a proverb in Europe, and the now far-famed Uhlans honestly avow that they learnt many of their arts from the example set them by their gallant enemies of '66. From time immemorial, whatever may have been the defects and failings of Austrian armies and of Austrian generals, no faults have ever been found with their cavalry, and but few with those who led it; while times out of mind have these gallant cavaliers snatched victory out of the hand of the foe, or, as on the bloody field of Koniggratz, saved from utter destruction the remnants of a routed army. We are sure that our readers will be especially glad to learn all the valuable details relating to horse-breeding in Austria that have been placed at their disposal by Lieutenant Colonel Goodenough, our military attache. In common with our other representatives at foreign courts, he was requested to collect information for Lord Eosebery's committee, and we find the result of his enquiries embodied in a carefully written dispatch, which appears in the appendix of the blue-book issued by the committee. We are likewise indebted to a speech which Colonel Goodenough made on the same subject at a meeting of the United Service Institution last March.

" As our readers are probably aware, Austria, although nominally one empire, under one Emperor, in point of fact possesses two governments and administrations, distinct and independent. As in other matters, so in horse-breeding, the governments of

Austria and Hungary legislate each for themselves, separately and independently. Both encourage ' systematically ' the breeding of horses ; in Austria there are two, and in Hungary three government studs. A fourth also is soon to be added in Transylvania. In each stud there are from two hundred to four hundred mares, and from ten to twenty stallions, of almost all descriptions of breeds. ' At present every endeavour is made to keep these races distinct, and to send the largest proportion of each to those parts of the country where they are found, by experience, to do best. The produce of these studs is weeded out, and the animals not considered fit for breeding are sold by auction. Out of the best, mares are apportioned for the studs themselves, and the staUions are sent to the depots, from whence they travel the country in the season, and serve the country mares on the payment of a small fee from 2s. to £10.' In return, however, for the services of these stallions, the Austrian government, unlike the Prussian, has no claim whatever, on the produce, which remains the exclusive property of the owner of the mare. The extent to which farmers profit by this assistance from the State may be judged by the fact that the Hungarian government owns 1786 country stallions, and the Austrian 1600. By a recent census the horses in the two countries numbered 3,525,000. Colonel Goodenough adds, ' The government seeks to further stimulate the breeding of horses by giving prizes to owners of the best stock ; in every country district there are annual horse shows, at which commissioners, specially named, attend, and award medals and prizes in money for the best mares with foals, and further, for yearlings, and for two-yearolds, and for three-year-olds. About i62,000 is devoted to this purpose in the Austrian provinces this year. The government also subsidises the owners of covering stallions for each such horse examined and approved by them for breeding purposes ; the animal has to be produced annually, and £10 to £30 is then paid on his account.' The above appears to be the summary of the assistance afforded by the Austrian government to private breeders, and from all accounts some such artificial and extraneous aids are much needed, since not only are the peasant farmers in Austria comparatively uneducated and inexperienced in horse-breeding, but the climate in that country is for the most part far less suited for rearing young stock than in England.

" While, however, the general measures adopted by the Austrian government for improving the breed of horses are on the whole simple and apparently efficacious, their military regulations for the formation of reserves are complicated, and would seem scarcely calculated to attain the object for which they were framed. About a year since a new horse conscription law was passed, of which the following are the principal provisions : — ' The whole country is divided into levying districts, and one or more central places of reception are appointed for each. Every year the War Department communicates to the civil authorities the number of horses which would be required to complete the army from a peace to a war footing, on the basis of the existing organisation or ordre de hataiUe. On the basis of this information, the Minister of Agriculture, who is aware, from reports annually received through the district prefects, from the chiefs or overseers of parishes, of the number of horses of different classes to be found in each district, which are also classified according to their probable fitness as riding, draught, or pack horses— apportions to each district the number of animals it has to furnish. At the commencement of each year commissioners are appointed to each levying district, consisting generally of the civil prefect or his deputy, a field or other officer of the army or landwehr, and a veterinary surgeon, whose ultimate duty it is to pass horses into the service. Each commission is assisted by three sworn valuers, experts, chosen if possible from agricultural or other societies. On a mobilisation being ordered the War Department announces the number of horses required, and the time when they are to be delivered, and the civil authorities summon all owners to bring their horses over four years of age to the levying centres. Certain horses are exempted from levy, such as those belonging to the Imperial family, or which servants of the State or postmasters are obliged to keep to perform their duties, those belonging to public breeding establishments, also all licensed stallions and brood mares certified as such. The passing the horses into the service then begins ; those are first taken which the owners- are ready to part with for the ordinary remount price of £25 ; the remainder are inspected, and those which are adjudged fit for service are valued by the valuers attached to the commissions, and this is done without reference to the remount price or to the possibly temporarily enhanced prices occasioned by the mobilisation. The horses valued are then passed into the service, commencing with those of lowest adjudged value, and the owners are immediately paid their price in cash To lighten the

burden of this forced levy, the parishes of a district are permitted to avoid compulsory furnishing of horses, by voluntary presentation of their proper coutingeut from their own district. In this case they are paid the remount price augmented by ten per cent., but the horses must be produced within forty-eight hours of the receipt of the order to furnish them. Whilst the levy is going on the owners must keep their horses at their own expense ; but the government officers must not detain the horses over forty- eight hours at the levying centres. Thizs, if everything is in order, it may be estimated that the War Department would be in possession of the horses they require at the levying centres within four days of the receipt there of the order to furnish them. It is worthy of remark that the major part of the horses thus to be furnished would be destined for artillery or transport purposes, as the cavalry regiments, forty-two in number, are kept up during peace to their full field strength, six squadrons of 150, or 900 horses each, to which is only added, on mobilisation, a first and a second reserve squadron.

" In addition to this system for providing a reserve of horses, as so clearly explained by Colonel Goodenough, there is also in Hungary a description of landwehr answering, in many respects, to our yeomanry. These number in all 32 squadrons, and each keeps up a permanent cadre for purposes of training, but they also buy a certain proportion of horses in excess of their peace establishment. These animals are trained at head-quarters, and are let out to farmers on the condition that they are to be available if required. Colonel Goodenough adds, ' I have myself seen these horses when called out for manoeuvres, and I believe that the system has worked well up to the present time.'

" We have placed the Austrian system of providing horses for their army in considerable detail before our readers, as we consider that the newest solution by one of the most military powers in Europe of a problem which has puzzled, and still continiTCS to puzzle, our most able soldiers is deserving of a very full examination. At the same time it is impossible to avoid detecting many flaws and weaknesses in any system which is so complicated, and apparently would require far more than the calculated time to be carried out. We all know the confusion which, in nine cases out of ten, arises on a declaration of war throughout all the departments of any government, however well organised. If all goes well, within four days after the order for mobilisation has been issued, the horses destined for service of the state will have been selected, but it must be remarked that even under the most favourable circumstances they will only have been selected — they will not have been told off to their duties, still less will they have been organized or forwarded to the various points where they are required. As an army without transport cannot move, and without artillery cannot fight, unless some great alteration is introduced into the system just explained we should have much solicitude for the safety of an Austrian army during the first few weeks of a campaign, if it was opposed to an active and energetic enemy like Germany. In a country where distances are great, railways few and ill-organized, the four days wasted in selecting horses might make the difference between safety and ruin. Of course, any such system of forced conscription is wholly impracticable in England, and unless in case of invasion would be quite unnecessary. The practice, however, of letting out surplus cavalry horses to farmers has often been suggested, and is, we think, deserving of consideration, more especially if the principle of localization is ever to be extended to the cavalry,"

FOR PEACE AND WAR. H

CHAPTER 11.

My object is to lay before all who prize the horse, from a love of the animal, or from sordid or prudential motives, my views as to the great danger in which Ave stand of really losing him altogether as a sound and useful animal, because of the many causes that have been for years progressively co-operating to deteriorate that class of horses from which we derive many hunters, our hackney and harness horses, and, we may say, all our re-mounts for cavalry and mounted Artillery. I shall endeavour to point out the causes from which a numerical as well as physical falling off in the supply and its character has taken place, and the means which I fancy would, as effect from cause, eventually put things right again.

As nations, like individuals, are capable of deriving benefit and wholesome instruction from example ; considering England's long and censurable apathy with regard to that middle or half-bred class of horses that in past time she so successfully and ardently founded and maintained, a reference to a similar national crime or folly, in connection with a like subject, by no less a power than that of ancient Rome, in the plenitude of her greatness, and its decading consequences may be worth contemplation here. At least, the example is not without its most suggestive moral. The students of equine literature need not be told that I owe my following facts to authors of established repute.

Rome found herself, when at the zenith of her power, in possession of a famous breed of horses adequate to the varied domestic duties of a peaceful existence, as well as to the more important and arduous exigencies of war. What the accident of circumstances and the practical policy of other powers, over Avhich supremacy in arms had given her dominance, had placed at her command in the way of horses, she permitted to deteriorate, and censurably neglected any system of improvement, or supply of a, no doubt, valuable race of horses for their times and necessities.

As from the Roman Invasion of Britain it is obvious the native breed of these islands derived a direct and important " cross," it will be well to glance at the sources from whence the stock importing the primary blood and form of our horses was derived.

Fable and obscurity wrap the origin and early history of the horse in mysticism. According to the Mosaic text, Asia has given to him, as to man, and all animals that had their prototypes in the Ark with Noah and his family, their original existence. Sixteen hundred years before the advent of the Messiah it is recorded that the horse was used in Egypt. Zoologists acquaint us that the Equidce are traced over a very vast surface of the Old World — from the West of Ireland to Eastern Tartary, and, from the Polar Regions to South of The Himalayas, and to an unexhausted distance in Northern Africa. They argue with every show of reason that, because their remains are found in a fossil state co-existing with the debris of other animals of a former zoology, that they must have existed in the distribution of a period anterior to our own. A pertinent inference as to the high order of the animal horse in the creation's scale resides in the fact that, while other genera and species with which his fossilized remains have been discovered have ceased to exist, or have removed to

FOR PKACE AND WAK. 13

higher temperatures, the horse, in our time, alone of these, is to be found in the same regions, and apparently, without protracted interruption ; since, from the circumstances which manifest deposits to be of the earliest era in question, fragments of his skeleton continue to be found and traced upwards in successional formations of the earth's strata to present superficial and vegetable mould. Learned philological and other abstruse enquiries, conducted by the ablest authorities, give us only a reasonable deduction upon which to base the opinion that the original horse of Southwestern Asia came in a domestic state from the North- East. Hence the first mention made of domesticated horses is coeval with the patriarch Jacob's death, when chariots and horses went up with Joseph when his father's body was carried for burial in the cave of the field of Mac?ipelah. Is it too much to suppose that with Jacob came horses to Egypt ? For he came from On (the Greek Heliopolis), the country of the graziers, invaders, and charioteers from High Asia.

In those remote times, anterior to the domestication of the horse, colonization was of slow and gradual advance, and military conquest restricted to mere vicinity. With commendable alacrity, Sesosteis availed himself of the horses of the defeated shepherd invaders, and with those — the first brought to Egypt — he, in turn, passed eastward, to the very sources from which they had issued. From his era horses have been used in Egypt, but that they were numerous in the ranks of war then is doubtful ; for, until the time of Joseph, as alluded to, they were unnoticed, and even though at that time the shepherd Scythian invaders of Goshen had been expelled, horses were alluded to as of recent and novel introduction. Even so far on as the exodus of the Israelites from Egyj^t, it is recorded that, in the pursuit of the Red Sea, the Egyptians could only call out at short notice six hundred chariots of war — " all the chariots of Egypt." Little reliance can be placed in profane historians, and poetical records are not history; but the treatment of the Centaurs, the characters of themselves and horses, though evidently fabulous, lead to a reasonable deduction of a race of horse-men and horses from a basis of truth wrought into imagery and fiction. These fabled beings, but, doubtless, cavalry invaders, belong to the earliest descent of mounted hordes from Central Asia upon Thrace and Thessaly by North of the Black Sea. and across the Lower Danube. It has been inferred that the fabled Centaurs were, in realitj^the bold horsemen of the northern Scythpe of High Asia. The period of this raid or invasion synchronises with the heroic age of Greece, and is sufficiently near the periods of the expulsion of the Grazier or Shepherd invaders, the invasion of Asia by Sesostris or Rameses IL and III, and the Indian Epic legends, to establish the epoch of great movements through all the regions in question, and fix the period when horse, chariot, and rider first make their appearance. But it is worthy of notice here that (in Genesis xlix. 17) there is an anterior evidence that riding was not unknown in the days of Jacob — " An adder in the path, that biteth the horse's heels, so that his rider falleth backwards."*

Although it has been attempted to confer upon Africa the honour of having supplied to Egypt horses, in an almost wild state, for subjugation and use, still, from the fact of there being no true indigenous feral horse in Africa, and as the current of human civilization did not certainly set in from Africa to the North-East, while Egypt was not a country for wild horses when the domesticated first appeared there, and that the elements of progressive cul-

* Note. — I acknowledge my otligations to Colonel Smith and other authors.

ture were taken from Asia, whence the people came, and to which alone they acknowledged affinity, to Asia it is reasonable to attribute the horses of Egypt, and those countries deriving their horses or " cross " from them. But, even in Asia there was a difference respecting horses ; for ever since human records began, the male, and occasionally the female population have used the saddle in the northern half, while in the southern it is only within the commencement of profane history that the better classes are mounted and riding tribes, having preferred swift camels, as the Kyale Arabs do to this day.

Want of more accurate geographical knowledge of the territorial limits of primitive Arabia and ancient Egypt, tend to mislead the enquirer regarding the horses in either. A large portion of Western Persia, all Palestine, and Eastern Syria was occasionally claimed within the boundaries of Arab sway in ancient times ; and, since the Hejira, they have extended, Eastward, far beyond the Euphrates, and. West, to Morocco. . Likewise ancient Egypt at times claimed part of Arabia, of Syria, and the whole of Palestine. Buffon, who asserts that Avild horses have been, and still are found in Arabia, with even the Avide margin of territory that above facts allow, must be held as in error, for it is argued that " all the peninsula and the provinces that can by any extension be claimed within the limits of the country, have been tenanted from the earliest periods by wandering tribes grazing camels, goats, and sheep, on every space that produced verdure ; and there are, nowhere, districts sufficiently inaccessible, or cover properly qualified to shelter horses in a wild state." The probability that there were no horses in this barren and inappropriate region until the period of the Scythian conquerors, or Shepherd Kings, who brought them from high Asia, and left behind them, with many words of their language, their horses.