6i8 HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



haste by men on two horses, each horse being relieved 

 by the rider vaulting on the other. But in the middle 

 ages, two riding upon one horse was not unusual. Serv- 

 ants frequently rode behind their masters ; knights took 

 up the wounded ; and altogether two persons on horse- 

 back appears to have become a common practice. In 

 the 'Tactica' of the Emperor Leo, who first speaks 

 of nailed shoes, we read of horsemen named deputati, 

 who were appointed to carry off the wounded behind 

 them, and for this object they had an additional stirrup 

 hanging to the end of the saddle. 



So it is, that unless horses had hoofs of a more en- 

 durable quality than they now possess, it is quite impossible 

 they could have sustained, for many hours even, the great 

 additional strain imposed on them, not only by the pon- 

 derous iron-shell enveloping horse and rider, but by the 

 peculiar nature of the warfare which was introduced, and 

 in which collisions with heavy lances had to be borne in 

 great part by the supporting or propelling feet of the 

 horses engaged. Shoeing was then an art of the first 

 importance, for without it these iron-clad men and horses 

 could never have been serviceable in war. Cuirasses and 

 helmets would not have been so generally adopted, neither 

 would they have become an important feature in military 

 law ; and in all probability the noble and glorious institu- 

 tion of knighthood would have been unknown, or would 

 have decayed soon after its establishment, and history 

 would have been deprived of some of its most brilliant 

 chapters. To the art, therefore, to which they owed so 

 much, kings and knights did not disdain to offer homage 

 by acquiring its rudiments, and learning with their own 



