war horse discourse

 In the aftermath of the recent horse discourse, arguing about what medieval horse types actually looked like in terms of modern breeds and whether a destrier resembled a modern Shire or Friesien, I wound up spending some time going back and reading one of my sources again because it was interesting (not uncommon for Messybeast).

This one is a mixture of primary sources from the nineteenth century discussing draught horse types and breeding. (It actually doesn’t just cover the Old English Black Horses that became the Shire: it also discusses the ancestors of today’s Clydesdales, Suffolk Punch, Percheron, and Cleveland Bay as well as a few other extinct draught breeds.) It's pretty cool because you don't see many descriptions of selective breeding for silly traits on a big expensive horse going back that far! 

( Here are some of the descriptions. )

Here is another comment from 1853 on dray horses bred for the brewers in urban areas, also specific to the Old English Black:

“AN elephant among Horses, the mixed Flemish and Black Draught Horse is familiar to all Londoners as drawing the heavy drays on which beer is conveyed from the breweries to the purchaser. This enormous animal is really needed for his peculiar work, although a natural emulation that exists between the different firms leads them to rival each other in size and magnificence of their dray Horses, as well as in the excellence of their beer. It is a general idea that the dray Horses derive their huge bulk from being fed on grains and permitted to drink beer, and that the dray-men owe their large proportions and rubicund aspect to similar privileges. Such is, however, not the case, as the Horses are bred especially for the purpose, and the men are chosen with an eye to their jovial aspect. It would never answer for a brewer to keep a poor, wizened, starveling drayman, for the public would immediately lay the fault on the beer, and transfer their custom elsewhere.

The dray Horse is a very slow animal, and cannot be permanently quickened in his pace, even if the load be comparatively light. Its breast is very broad, and its shoulders thick and upright, the body large and round, the legs short, and the feet extremely large. The ordinary pace of the heavy Draught Horse is under three miles per hour, but by a judicious admixture of the Flemish breed, the pace is nearly doubled, the endurance increased, and the dimensions very slightly diminished. The great size of the dray Horse is required, not for the absolute amount of pulling which it performs, but for the need of a large and heavy animal in the shafts to withstand the extreme jolting and battering that takes place as the springless drays are dragged over the rough stones of the metropolis. And as a team of two or three small leaders and one huge wheeler would look absurd, it is needful to have all the Horses of uniform dimensions and appearance.”

There’s an incentive here to make these horses bigger and bigger as, effectively, a advertisement for the beer!

Here’s a comment from 1861:

According to “The Complete Grazier And Farmer’s And Cattle-Breeder’s Assistant” by William Youatt and R S Burn (1864): The Black Cart-horse, par excellence, the ‘Old English Black’ (fig. 27), of which the annexed is a delineation, is mostly bred in Leicester, Northampton, and Lincoln, and some of the neighbouring counties; but the largest kind, and that principally used in brewers’ drays and other heavy road-work, is chiefly reared m the fens of Lincolnshire. These counties have been from time immemorial in possession of a celebrated breed of black horses, from the lighter kind of which some of our heavy cavalry were formerly mounted.

Er. The lighter kind, you say? Mind you, this is heavy cavalry of unknown era, and this is exactly the time when the popular myth of the weighty, constricted knight was gaining prominence; but still, this is a useful point to the effect that the Shire as we know it today had been noticeably bred past the point of usefulness as a military animal quite early on.

Note that one comment from 1910 says of the breed

The Black had had a chequered history. In the days of armour it was the war horse; when heavy armour was discarded it still furnished remounts to Dragoons, and remained, up to the earlier years of the last century, in some request (though lighter horses were more in demand) for Army purposes. The Black was also in general use for coach and carriage work when vehicles were weighty and roads bad ; but improvements in carriages and roads led to its disuse.
 

Yet writers from 1790, when surely these black horses would still have been “in some request” well within living memory if not at the present time, mention nothing of the sort! In fact, the only comment on the subject:

The cavalry of England formerly consisted of this class of Horses; but their inutility being experienced in most situations, others of a lighter and more active kind have been generally substituted, except in a few re­giments.

Hm. Damned with faint praise, I should think. It is interesting that no one is aware of any purebred draught horse of a modern form used in British cavalry forces any time within living memory; the one notion of praise on the whole page for their use is a cavalryman praising the use of crossbreds with more [hot] blood in them as remounts, and that can hardly be surprising given the popularity of warmbloods and other draft crosses in sporting events today. But the pure heavy horse of the modern draught breed? You can see the mythologizing happening in these primary sources, and you can see how very vague authors are about these historical military uses at a time when English cavalry was in full use.