War Horse by Louis A. DiMarco

Author:Louis A. DiMarco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Westholme Publishing

HORSES AND HORSEMANSHIP

The cavalry forces of the Napoleonic period were of unprecedented size. A phenomenal number of horses, certainly the vast majority of the horse population of central Europe, were directly or indirectly involved in the Napoleonic Wars. At the same time, the nature of the battlefield required horses of exceptional quality. They had to have the stamina to endure marches from one end of the continent to the other, and they had to be big, fast, and obedient to achieve success on the battlefield. A large number became casualties. Horse losses were an evitable cost of war. Napoleon’s view was “if such great objects may be obtained as the destruction of a whole hostile army, the State can afford to lose a few hundred horses from exhaustion.”33 Napoleon estimated that he had three or four horses killed for every trooper lost, and he didn’t consider disease and nonbattle injuries. Just the first phase of the 1807 campaign in Poland cost the French cavalry 16,000 horses.34 The nature of war and the tempo of operations put a premium on finding, procuring, and training quality remounts.

Horses

The Napoleonic Wars stressed the remount systems of all of the European powers to their limits. Some of them broke down and ceased to function. The Austrians and Prussians continued to run the same type of remount systems that they had operated throughout the eighteenth century. The confiscation of the entire military horse populations by the French in accordance with surrender terms stressed both the Austrian and Prussian remount programs. French cuirassiers reached the peak of their effectiveness in 1807 when they acquired the best of Prussia’s big warmbloods.35

French Remounts

The French remount program was the most directly effected by the 20 years of war of the Napoleonic period. The French horse breeding system suffered from the revolution, several invasions, and ultimately defeat. War completely wiped out some of the developing French horse breeds. During the revolution, the royal stud farms were disbanded and 1,116 stallions were sold off. From that point forward, the army purchased its horses on the open market. A shortage in horses drove the cost of each animal higher, making the equipping of cavalry much more expensive than it should have been. It did not help that the republic authorized an unrealistically large cavalry arm. Battle losses only added to the problem, and the military wastage of horses throughout Europe was immense.

Napoleon tried unsuccessfully to reestablish a state remount system, but the main source of French cavalry horses as they prepared for the campaign of 1812 were war prizes and levies. Ultimately, the French assembled 42,000 new horses for the invasion of Russia.36 This was sufficient to bring the cavalry horse population up to strength, but just barely—units did not have excess horses. The campaign began with the crossing of the Nieman River on June 23, 1812. Napoleon and his allies had a total cavalry force of 80,000 mounts. The cavalry began to experience problems immediately. Forage was so scarce that troopers took straw from mattresses to feed their mounts.

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