Ill] 



AND HISTORIC TIMES 



339 



Ripuarian Franks. In medieval times the duchy of Cleves 

 roughly corresponded to the ancient territory of these two 

 tribes. 



We have thus a breed of great horses developed in the very 

 district where the Tencteri, in the century after Christ, were 

 the first of all the German tribes to discard the old indigenous 

 small ugly horses in favour of a superior breed obtained through 

 Gaul where fine breeds had been produced by crossing the old 

 European horses with Libyan blood from Mediterranean lands, 



FIG. 96. The Horse of Juliers. 



and to develope that organised cavalry system which was the 

 starting-point of Teutonic chivalry. It is more than probable 

 that many of the stout horses that carried the Frankish warriors 

 to victory at Poictiers were the posterity of the first horses 

 which the Tencteri had acquired from the Gauls, and some of 

 whose blood may have been derived from the twenty horses 

 brought back from Italy by the Gallic chieftains in 172 B.C. 

 We have seen that already in the fourth century A.D. 

 Vegetius praised the Friesland horses, and though by the later 

 medieval period they were not so much esteemed as the 



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