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13 - Some Observations on the Training of Medieval Warhorses
- Edited by John D. Hosler, Steven Isaac
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- Book:
- Military Cultures and Martial Enterprises in the Middle Ages
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 21 October 2020
- Print publication:
- 19 June 2020, pp 237-256
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Summary
A GERMAN PROVERB PARAPHRASING an old Carolingian maxim observed, “He who has stayed at school till the age of twelve, and never ridden a horse, is fit only to be a priest.” The aphorism obliquely refers to the chief practitioners of the medieval horse culture, the secular nobility, who received rigorous instruction in horsemanship from an early age. One particularly demanding aspect of this lifelong education entailed the schooling of horse and rider in the performance of turns. These moves, in contrast to the one directional charge of set battles and jousts, demonstrate the maneuverability to perform feigned retreats as well as skirmishing and ravaging warfare, now considered the most prevalent form of medieval mounted combat. The topic requires laying extensive groundwork to make certain principles of horsemanship and horse training intelligible to the uninitiated reader, a process that involves enhancing the meaning of texts discussed previously.
Emergence of the Western European Equestrian Tradition
At either end of the chronological spectrum two treatises, Arrian's Ars Tactica of c. 136–37 CE and Federico Grisone's Ordini di Caualcare of 1550, explained equestrian maneuvers. For the intervening period in the Latin West, information on horse training is scattered in various sources. Medieval horse trainers were men of action who transmitted their knowledge through oral tradition. The best practitioners were not always the best explicators. The Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, has little to say about the subject. His career illustrates the tremendous upward social mobility that could be achieved in this medieval horse culture. William Marshal managed to parlay his skills as tournament champion into major governmental service, eventually becoming Regent of England. King Duarte of Portugal, the author of a treatise on horsemanship, had intended to write a complementary work on the training of war horses; unfortunately, the plague prematurely ended his life. Grisone, who acquired a reputation for brutal training methods, still set down in writing principles that represent the culmination of the medieval oral tradition, and the widespread acceptance of the work ensured its preeminence as the foundation of the European equestrian heritage.
2 - The Brevium Exempla as a Source for Carolingian Warhorses
- Edited by Clifford J. Rogers, Kelly DeVries, John France
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- Book:
- Journal of Medieval Military History
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 18 September 2008, pp 32-57
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Summary
During the Avar campaign in 791, an equine epidemic is reported to have destroyed ninety per cent of the horses in Charlemagne's army, comprising Charlemagne's own horses as well as those of his vassals, both cavalry mounts and pack animals. Fortunately, the breeding stock of the Carolingian army survived the epidemic because of their location far removed from Pannonia, the site of the epidemic. Even to begin the process of replenishing the lost animals entailed a lengthy period of eleven months, the gestation time for horses. It would take even longer – some three years – to raise and train newborn colts to develop them into warhorses.
Two collections of Carolingian estate inventories, the Brevium Exempla ad describendas res ecclesiasticas et fiscales (BE), dated to c. 801, and the better known Capitulare de villis (CV), shed valuable light upon the steps taken and the difficulties of royal stewards tasked with restoring Charlemagne's supply of warhorses. Although the CV has been used by previous scholars, most notably R. H. C. Davis, as evidence for Carolingian approaches to horse breeding, it is not until one reads the CV together with the BE that one can fully understand Carolingian horse breeding management. A careful reading of the CV in conjunction with the BE inventories that survive from Charlemagne's royal estates will show that horse breeding was done as scientifically as had been the case in the Later Roman Empire and as would be in the High Middle Ages, and may reflect a continuity of some Roman practices as evidenced by the presence of manuscripts of the Roman agronomists in Carolingian libraries.
The BE contains inventories of ecclesiastical and royal estates in three sections. The first segment describes possessions of an island on Staffelsee in Bavaria in the see of Augsburg; the next section consists of precarial grants from the possessions of the abbey of Wissembourg in Alsace; the third part lists the inventories of five crown estates (fisci), of which one was a vineyard, while the remaining four include information on horses.
The BE and the (CV) were bound together in the same manuscript. Although the BE immediately precedes the CV in the manuscript, the BE actually was compiled afterwards as a supplement to the CV, dated c. 800. Several considerations suggested that the CV and part three of the BE were interrelated.
3 - The 791 Equine Epidemic and its Impact on Charlemagne's Army
- from ARTICLES
- Edited by Kelly Devries, Clifford J. Rogers
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- Book:
- Journal of Medieval Military History
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 12 September 2012
- Print publication:
- 10 November 2005, pp 23-45
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Summary
Charlemagne led his Franks on campaigns of conquest in nearly every year of his reign. From this general pattern, however, the years 791–93 stand out in sharp relief. Even the strong stimulus of Count Theodoric's defeat by the Saxons in 793 and renewed Muslim incursions from Spain failed to evoke any response by the great king himself. The anomalous cluster of 792–94 events deviating from the established pattern include the natural disasters of an equine epidemic in autumn of 791 and a famine in 793. Politically, Pippin the Hunchback, Charlemagne's eldest son, rebelled in 792, and Duke Grimoald of Benevento defected to the Byzantines. Yet with all these emergencies urging vigorous action, Charlemagne spent 792–93 sitting motionless at Regensburg, an exceptionally prolonged residency there, building mobile bridges in the first year and working on a great (though ultimately unsuccessful) canal project in the second. Never before in his reign had this peripatetic and warlike King of the Franks appeared so passive. At the core of these difficulties was a lack of mobility as evidenced by the unusually long stay at Regensburg with no response to imminent military emergencies.
Modern historians have recognized that this atypical period required some explanation. Hofmann suggested that the famine of 793 prevented Charlemagne from moving away from the plentiful reserves at Regensburg. Karl Ferdinand Werner explained that itinerant kingship was more concerned with prosecuting military campaigns than with providing sustenance for the royal retinue so that Charlemagne's stay at Regensburg should be associated with the Avar campaign.