04-28-2013, 12:10 PM
Michael, interesting link with the Marwari horse. They will probably have been linked with the horses from Central Asia as you suggest, because India always got most of its horses from there, even under the Mughals local horse-breeding could not possibly keep the army supplied (Gommans Mughal Warfare).
About the low opinion of the British of local Indian horses, this may have been caused by local stock suffering from the dwindling supply of Central Asian horses, but most of all, the English expected a horse to be big. That had a lot to do with the specific use of horses in European warfare, very different from its use in the Middle East and South Asia. European horses were used for both tactical and strategic mobility, in South and West Asia horses were only used for tactical mobility, while a horseman rode to the battlefield on a mule or dromedary camel, leading his horse.
For obvious reasons, everybody is always going on about "big", "heavy", "well-built" horses as soon as the Asian armoured cavalry is mentioned, but such horses have never existed, the Asians being perfectly satisfied with the performance of their small, fast and agile horses. There were some in the British and the French army who vainly tried to convince their respective military establishments that, at least in the colonies, they should adopt the superior, small horses and support the cavalry with mule-trains, but to no avail. As a result, the European cavalry was strategically no more mobile than its infantry, the marching foot-soldiers soon catching up with the cavalry on their exhausted horses (Junkelmann Reiter Roms).
As the Uhlans, Hussars, Cossacks and other cavalry units on small horses proved again and again, the nimbleness of these horses gave their riders an advantage when confronting a heavy dragoon on his great clod of a horse. In fact, the lance fell out of general use exactly because the light and agile horses needed for the use of this weapon were simply too rare and expensive in Europe.
About the low opinion of the British of local Indian horses, this may have been caused by local stock suffering from the dwindling supply of Central Asian horses, but most of all, the English expected a horse to be big. That had a lot to do with the specific use of horses in European warfare, very different from its use in the Middle East and South Asia. European horses were used for both tactical and strategic mobility, in South and West Asia horses were only used for tactical mobility, while a horseman rode to the battlefield on a mule or dromedary camel, leading his horse.
For obvious reasons, everybody is always going on about "big", "heavy", "well-built" horses as soon as the Asian armoured cavalry is mentioned, but such horses have never existed, the Asians being perfectly satisfied with the performance of their small, fast and agile horses. There were some in the British and the French army who vainly tried to convince their respective military establishments that, at least in the colonies, they should adopt the superior, small horses and support the cavalry with mule-trains, but to no avail. As a result, the European cavalry was strategically no more mobile than its infantry, the marching foot-soldiers soon catching up with the cavalry on their exhausted horses (Junkelmann Reiter Roms).
As the Uhlans, Hussars, Cossacks and other cavalry units on small horses proved again and again, the nimbleness of these horses gave their riders an advantage when confronting a heavy dragoon on his great clod of a horse. In fact, the lance fell out of general use exactly because the light and agile horses needed for the use of this weapon were simply too rare and expensive in Europe.
