Perhaps the first literary reference to the horse as a mount capable of carrying a man in the 

 saddle is to be found in the Second Book of Kings, in which Rabshakeh, envoy of King 

 Shalmaneser of Assyria, said to He2ekiah, King of Judah, 'I will deliver thee two thousand 

 horses, if thou be able on thy part to set riders upon them.' 



Chariot-horses, both for sport and warfare, had been in use for much longer, even as far 

 back as the ninth century B. c, while later on, chariot races were a regular feature of Greek 

 and Roman games, a sport that has its modern counterpart in the trotting-races held in the 

 Soviet Union and the United States of America. Boudicca (Boadicea), Queen of the Iceni, 

 springs to mind at the mention of chariots, in which she and her woad-painted tribesmen 

 descended upon Londinium in the last savage revolt of the Britons against the Roman 

 legions. 



But cavalry as such was a later development and it was in the East that its use was first 

 employed on a large scale. The Golden Hordes of Genghis Khan in the twelfth century and 

 the warriors of Tamurlane two hundred years later, were mounted on swift, agile, shaggy 

 Mongolian ponies, from which, with bow and arrow, they fought a highly mobile campaign 

 in a manner small boys associate with Red Indians. 



But in Europe it was only in the seventeenth century that cavalry became an accepted 

 branch of warfare. Most people think of Oliver Cromwell as a politician, even a dictator. It is 

 largely forgotten that he was a brilliant general in his own right and it was he who first 

 perceived the value of cavalry as a devastating massed blow once the enemy had begun to 

 waver. Some military authorities even say that Cromwell's use of his cavalry at Marston 

 Moor and Naseby was the pattern for Napoleon's victory at Jena. 



The horse has indeed stamped its imprint upon the pages of history. 



The development of the horse, as distinct from its evolution, was, from Man's point of view, 

 also a lengthy process even though measured in generations rather than eons. Hundreds of 

 years passed before men began consciously to breed a finer horse and develop distinct breeds. 

 Early Man would have been more familiar with the rugged little pony of the Dartmoor crags 

 or that nimble, foam-maned mount which the gardiens of the Camargue ride when they tend 

 the black bulls than with the massive Suffolk Punches whose cumbrous hooves trampled the 

 soil in later ages or the fiery Arab whose proud eye and curving nostril is the essence of 

 equine majesty. 



In England, William the Conqueror was one of the first to take an interest in improving 

 the horse. He introduced Spanish horses to the country and forbade the use of the horse in 



