THE COACH-HORSE. 93 



lighter regiments have more blood in them. Onr cavalry horses were formerly 

 large and heavy. To their imposing size was added action as imposing. The 

 horse was trained to a peculiar, and grand, yet beautiful method of going ; but 

 he was often found deficient in real service, for this very action diminished his 

 speed, and added to his labour and fatigue. 



A considerable change has taken place in the character of our troop 

 horses. This necessarily followed from the change that has occurred in the 

 thorough-bred horse. If he has lost much of his muscular form and actual 

 yower of endurance, a similar alteration will take place in the offspring; lightness 

 and activity will succeed to bulk and strength, and for skirmishing and sudden 

 attack the change will be an improvement. It is particularly found to be so in 

 long and rapid marches, which the lighter troops scarcely regard, while the 

 heavier horses, with their more than" comparative additional weight to carry, 

 are knocked up. There is, however, danger of carrying this too far. It was 

 proved that in the engagements previous to and at the battle of Waterloo, our 

 heavy household troops alone were able to repulse the formidable charge of the 

 French guard. 



There are few things that more imperiously demand the attention of govern- 

 ment. If from the habit of running short distances, and with light weights, 

 there is a deterioration in the strength and stoutness of our thorough- bred horses, 

 they will become every year less and less fitted for getting stock sufficiently 

 hardy and powerful to do credit to the courage and discipline of our cavalry. 



The following anecdote of the memory and discipline of the troop horse is 

 related on good authority. The Tyrolese, in one of their insurrections in 

 1809, took fifteen Bavarian horses, and mounted them with so many of their 

 own men : but in a skirmish with a squadron of the same regiment, no sooner 

 did these horses hear the trumpet and recognise the uniform of their old 

 masters, than they set off at full gallop, and carried their riders, in spite of all 

 their efforts, into the Bavarian ranks, where they were made prisoners. 



The wounds of a soldier are honourable. The old war-horse can sometimes 

 exhibit his share of scars. One of them, twenty-seven years old, lately died at 

 Stangleton Lodge, near Bedford, that had belonged to one of the regiments of 

 lancers, and was in the battle of Waterloo, and the engagements of the two days 

 that preceded it. No fewer than eight musket-balls were discovered in him 

 after his death, and the scars of several wounds by the sabre and the lance*. 



A horse died at Snowhill, near Gainsford, in 1753, that had been in General 

 Carpenter's regiment at the battle of Shirreff-Muir, in 1715, being at that time 

 seven years old. He was wounded by a bullet in his neck in that engagement, 

 and this bullet was extracted after his deatht. 



THE COACH-HORSE J. 



This animal in external appearance is as different from what he was fifty 

 years ago as it is possible to conceive. The clumsy-barrelled, cloddy-shouldered, 

 round-legged, black family horse neither a coach nor a dray-horse, but some- 

 thing between both as fat as an ox but, with all his pride and prancing when 

 he first starts not equal to more than six miles an hour, and knocking-up with 



* Journal des Haras, 1836-7, p. 61. and with him his mother, because she was 



f* Gentleman's Magazine, Feb. 1753. sick and weak, in a whirlicote ;" and this is 



J Wheel carriages, bearing any resemblance described as an ugly vehicle of four boards put 



to chariots, first came into use in the reign of together in a clumsy manner. 



Richard II. abouttheyearlSSl; they werecalled In the following year he married Anne of 



whirlicotes, and were little better than litters Luxembourg, who introduced the riding upon 



or cotes (cots) placed on wheels. We are side-saddles ; and so " was the riding in those 



told by Master John Stowe, that " Richard II. whirlicotes forsaken, except at coronations and 



being threatened by the rebels of Kent, rode such like spectacles." 



from the Tower of London to the Miles End, Coaches were not used until the time of 



