02-15-2010, 01:01 PM
Breeding. There's an interesting question. Did Sub-Roman Britons have the resources to breed war horses or would they have tended to use whatever was handy when the need arose? A program of breeding, training and maintaining enough horses to make a military difference might have been beyond the means of a society slipping slowly into ruin. Of course, they didn't know that. So maybe they committed the resources anyway.
Geoffery Ashe commented in <em>Quest for Arthur's Briton</em> about their no longer being able to import horses from Spain (as apparently the Romans had; I remember no support for that assertion), but he did maintain that commerce remained with Armorica even as the latter morphed into Brittany. Since horse-borne warriors remained a feature of Armorican or Breton warriors into the Medieval period, can we assume a breeding program continued there? And that at least the coastal British kingdoms like Dumnonia benefited from it?
Geoffery Ashe commented in <em>Quest for Arthur's Briton</em> about their no longer being able to import horses from Spain (as apparently the Romans had; I remember no support for that assertion), but he did maintain that commerce remained with Armorica even as the latter morphed into Brittany. Since horse-borne warriors remained a feature of Armorican or Breton warriors into the Medieval period, can we assume a breeding program continued there? And that at least the coastal British kingdoms like Dumnonia benefited from it?
"Fugit irreparabile tempus" (Irrecoverable time glides away) Virgil
Ron Andrea
Ron Andrea
