i62 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



hoofs were allowed to be worn down to their natural 

 size when they had attained an undue length, instead 

 of being shortened by instruments as at present. Shoes 

 would, of course, be more particularly required during 

 wet and frosty weather ; and such is indicated in the 

 description given by Pere Daniel,' when speaking of the 

 difficulties surrounding Louis I., the Dehonnaire (832) : 

 *La gelee qui avoit suivi (les pluyes de I'automne) avoit 

 gaste les pieds de la plupart des chevaux, qtion ne 

 pouvoit faire ferrer dans un pais devenu tout d'un coup 

 ennemi, lorsq'on y pensoit le moins.' From this passage 

 we might conclude that horses were but seldom shod, 

 though the art of shoeing was known and practised ; and 

 that it was only on particular occasions that the hoofs 

 were so protected, as in winter, when ice and frozen 

 roads damaged them, or during war. In some parts of 

 Germany at the present day, agricultural horses are only 

 shod in winter. 



Towards the termination of the Carlovingian reign, 

 and the beginning of the Capet dynasty, shoeing became 

 more general. Lobineau, in his History of Brittany, 

 gives many copies of seals of the tenth, eleventh, and 

 twelfth centuries, on which are dej)icted knights whose 

 horses are shod with iron shoes fastened by nails. 



Those who had the care and management of horses 

 became men of high rank, and the Comte de i Etahle 

 soon became the commander of armies.^ The shoer of 



' Histoire de France, vol. i. p. 556. 



^ ' But Witikind had reappeared, and the Saxons took to their arms 

 again. The Saraves, a Sclavonic people living between the Elbe and 

 Sorba, had invaded the neighbouring frontiers of Saxony and Thuringia. 



