Mounted Warriors

Gene Smith

Description

Men, Horses, and All Kinds of Weapons

It may startle some people to remember that, little more than a century ago, the horse was not only humanity's primary means of swift transportation, it was also a major participant in warfare. For more than four thousand years, men mounted horses and galloped at one another in large numbers, wielding clubs, axes, lances, swords, bows and arrows, pistols, rifles, and more. They charged into swarms of arrows, hales of bullets, volcanoes of cannon fire, and legions of other men on horseback, chopping, stabbing, hurling spears, and firing guns. And their exploits became the stuff of romance, drama, and legend.

Mounted Warriors brings you back through the millennia to discover the beginnings and the development of warfare on horseback and meet some of the most remarkable, daring, and courageous men who ever spurred a charger from trot to gallop. You'll find out how Alexander trained Bucephalus to the saddle when all others failed, how Cromwell was transformed by battle, what several British generals had to say about Light-Horse Harry Lee, and why Phil Sheridan changed his horse's name. You'll even learn how the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott influenced the nature of the American Civil War.

The age of the cavalry charge may be past, but when you read Mounted Warriors, you'll rediscover all of its drama, pageantry, and glory.

Sujets

• horses
• Histoire
• Henry Lee III
• Military
• American Civil War
• Alexander the Great
• History
• Walter Scott
• Guerre de Sécession

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781620459706
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Mounted Warriors
Other Books by Gene Smith
Until the Last Trumpet Sounds: The Life of General of the Armies John J. Pershing
The Ends of Greatness: Haig, P tain, Rathenau, and Eden: Victims of History
The Dark Summer: An Intimate History of the Events That Led to World War II
Lee and Grant: A Dual Biography
High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson
The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression
When the Cheering Stopped: The Last Years of Woodrow Wilson
Mounted Warriors
From Alexander the Great and Cromwell to Stuart, Sheridan, and Custer

Gene Smith

John Wiley Sons, Inc.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright 2009 by Gene Smith. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Photo Credits: Library of Congress: pages 76, 120, 167, 169, 200, 224, 279; National Archives: page 306; New York Public Library: pages 9, 18, 27, 42, 52, 68, 92, 216, 242, 263.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Smith, Gene.
Mounted warriors : from Alexander the Great and Cromwell to Stuart, Sheridan, and Custer / Gene Smith.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-471-78332-9 (cloth)
1. Cavalry-History. I. Title.
UE15.S64 2009
357 .109-dc22
2008047043
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Beginnings
2 Xenophon and Alexander
3 Barbarians and the Age of Chivalry
4 The High Middle Ages
5 Terrible as Death, relentless as Doom
6 My children, follow me!
7 Light-Horse Harry
8 The Highest Calling a Soldier Could Know
9 The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood
10 The best damned cavalryman ever foaled in America
11 The War
12 Little Phil
13 For this are we soldiers
14 No one ever came to grief-except honorable grief-through riding horses
15 The Desert Mounted Corps
16 It was a bit of a fa ade, wasn t it?
17 The Last Cavalry Charge
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
The majority of the research for this book was done in the library of the United States Military Academy at West Point. I am indebted to all who so generously helped me there: Alan Aimone, Suzanne Christhoff, Susan Lintelmann, Alicia Maudlin-Ware, Deborah McKeon-Pogue, and Laura Mosher.
Dr. Richard Sommers of the U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, was very kind, as was Jeff Flannery of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. It has always been my experience that librarians and archivists are the most forthcoming of people and deserve a place not only in heaven but also in the happy memories of any author they assist.
Finally, I express my thanks to my kind and patient editor, Hana U. Lane, and her extremely industrious associates at John Wiley Sons.
Introduction

To ride a horse, This is one of the most important things in the world, wrote the ex-hussars subaltern Winston Churchill. But how many feel that way now? A century and a quarter ago Manhattan had 750 livery stables. In time they became garages or warehouses, and for many years only one gave lessons and rented out mounts that you could take along Central Park s bridle paths. Then the Claremont Riding Academy closed its doors. The building, and more important, the land it stands on are worth $10 or $15 million.
Certainly you can find riding centers all over the country with pampered and cosseted steeds, and people preparing for dressage and three-day-event competitions, and even here and there a hunt club with hounds, yet we speak now but of hobbies. Mounted warfare? During my presidency, said Ronald Reagan, accepting the 1989 Thayer Award of the United States Military Academy at West Point, I had a goal I could never fulfill. I wanted to reinstate the horse cavalry. The long in the tooth will recall that Reagan always loved to have his joke. He would have known that West Point s equestrian training for cadets was ended in 1947, its vast riding hall-said to have been at one time the world s largest building-now given over to endless corridors of offices and classrooms. (Yet a colonel once told me that when years earlier as a cadet he had been detailed to escort an ancient returning grad around, the old gentleman halted for a moment, sniffed the air, and said, I can still smell the horses. The same is said on warm days after it has rained of Buffalo Soldiers Field, just inside the academy s main gate-named for our post-Civil War black cavalry regiments, their men termed by Indians the Buffalo Soldiers for the texture of their hair. The Point s stables stood where now are a great parking lot and athletic fields.)
So what is left today is an expensive pastime for a tiny percentage of the population, racing as a minor sport when compared to football or baseball, mounted policemen in selected cities. And for some a dim image, and in places a scent, perhaps imaginary, of what once, indeed for four thousand years, had to do with brilliance, magnificence, jingle and clatter, glory, snapping guidons, panoply, bugles, the lance and the glittering sabre, and the sabretache and pelisse and dolman and elaborate headgear, the knight, the hidalgo, the chevalier, the Reitritter, the cavaliere, the caballero, the charge like a thunderbolt and whirlwind that shook the earth, the crested shields and feathers and plumes, the smartness and dash and instantly distinguishable sound of tinkling spurs when the horseman was afoot, the spectacular and vivid and majestic splendor that was possessed only by the cavalry, as Churchill wrote. They wept who saw the final march-past of Fort Riley s horses, this just before World War II, when in the wake of the departing and doomed squadrons there followed in line a smoky and clanging group of little tin-can tanks-the armored cavalry, as it was and is titled. The last horse to die at Riley was interred on his feet, standing erect under the great parade ground.
Now it is gone, all that, and with it the concept that there is that of war which is romance. Who among us today dreams so? Your friends and mine? Were one of them to offer such an opinion-with U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan-we would inquire if prescribed medication usage was being adhered to, or head for the nearest exit. So why this book on war so measurelessly antiquated and distant, so Saturday afternoon visit-with-the-kids to the museum with the armored knight-at-arms or European tour stop at Waterloo and guidebook description of Marshal Ney s disastrously misperceived charge? Have the old black-and-white movies on late-night TV with their depictions of the cavalry coming to the rescue; and tales of Mongol hordes and Assyrians who minus saddle or stirrups got off ten aimed arrows a minute; and Oliver Cromwell screaming and laughing as he and his Parliamentarians rode home; and Alexander, a horse lover in a culture that saw the horse as unworthy of love, lost their appeal? And the last mounted charge of United States history, which found a Japanese waterborne landing party seemingly encountering phantoms from the past from which they recoiled, running back through waves? Who can care?
It is all so unimaginable, so out of time. We can try to believe ourselves when on vacation-time rented steeds not all that removed from Lancelot or Parzifal-never mind the improbability that the next day they suffered such stiffness-but can we really take it all in? I have to reach beyond myself to try to see in my mind s eye the doings that I have attempted to chronicle in this book, to hear the sounds. And I have had to omit multitudes of events, for a book can only be so long. Accepting that my choices as to what I should describe are very much open to argument, I yet offer a work that I hope has two unifying themes.
One is that there is no human activity that over eons has changed less than war. Harold of Hastings s housecarls with their great axes decapitating with a stroke the horses bearing William the Conqueror s archers, Her Britannic Majesty s men riding off in upland punitive expeditions, the horsed Goths destruction of th