1 1 4 The Book of the Horse. 



deficiency of saddle-horses, cavalry horses, and horses for light harness, in spite of extraordinary 

 efforts made and extraordinary expenses incurred by successive Governments for the purpose of 

 encouraging their production. 



Previous to the wars of the first French Revolution, France possessed in Ardennes, in the 

 Midi (we have no English synonym for this word), under the Pyrenees, on the plains of Limousin 

 and of Tarbes, several tribes of well-bred horses, the descendants of the cavalry of the Saracens, 

 who were defeated and dispersed A.D. 732 by Charles Martel. These were cultivated and 

 improved by the blood of Oriental sires, imported by way of Marseilles, for the use and 

 amusement of the French nobility before the centralising system of Louis XIV. had lured 

 them from their country seats, sports, and duties, to hover round the court of Le Grand lilonarqiie 

 and his two successors. 



The Limousin, according to the description of mediaeval authors, was the finest gentleman's 

 hack it is possible to imagine, bred in the parks and on the farms of the descendants of the 

 Crusaders ; but even in the time of Louis XV. it had begun to deteriorate, having ceased to 

 receive Infusions of the choicest Oriental blood. Attempts unskilfully conducted to cross it 

 with Arab, English, and even Spanish blood, resulted in destroying the original character of the 

 Limousin. The English blood-horse gave it size, the Spaniards action, but the two crosses 

 did not hit. A large importation of Arabs in the reign of Louis XVI. was thought to have 

 revived the character of the race, but the deluge of the Revolution of 1789 swept away, with 

 ten thousand abuses, every attempt at agricultural improvement beyond the peasant's sweat 

 and the peasant's spade. Napoleon tried to restore the ancient glories of the race by an 

 importation of Egyptian stallions, but for some unknown reason their produce was small, weedy, 

 and unfit for any useful purpose. " Formerly," writes a Limousin gentleman, " riding on horse- 

 back was one of the accomplishments of every French gentleman. We galloped in chase of the 

 deer, the wild boar, and the wolf; France had only a few highways, other means of communi- 

 cation than riding were difficult, so that it was absolutely necessary for every country gentleman 

 to keep a stud containing manege horses, hunting horses, pleasure hacks, and even horses for 

 riding post. In the last fifty years (1832) all that has passed away. Equitation is no longer 

 an art, there is very little hunting, and France is intersected with excellent roads ; hence the 

 reason why Limousin has almost ceased to be a horse-breeding country." 



Forty years later than this writer, the Baron d'Etreilles complains that in France a taste for 

 horses " is associated in the public mind with frivolity; and that the statesman, judge, barrister, 

 physician, or attorney, who ventured to appear on a well-bred hack, or driving himself in a 

 phaeton to the Legislative Assembly, the Courts of Law, or a place of business, would endanger 

 his reputation as a practical man and serious character." 



To this social discouragement must be added the drawback of the s)-stem of arable cultivation, 

 which, in all but a few grazing districts, is universal in a country composed of peasant proprietors. 

 Horses cannot be reared without pastures ; and colts, as French Commissioners observe, reporting 

 on the horses of Alsace, " never attain perfection if from a very early period they arc shut uj) 

 in stables." 



The French farmer, if he breeds a horse, naturally prefers one which will be useful on the 

 land at two years old, and he is encouraged by the improvement of the roads to substitute a 

 heavy cart-horse for the pack-horse on which he formerly rode and carried his goods to market. 

 In the Ardennes there was formerly, according to General Floury, Grand Eciiycr oi Napoleon III., 

 a capital breed of horses, fit for the service of the artillery, but it had been almost extinguished 

 by the ravages and nHjuisitions of the wars of the first Napulcon. 



