iSeats 37 



peace, a Prussian riding master was employed under 

 the patronage of the Prince Regent to drill our 

 Cavalry to ride with a perfectly straight leg again. 

 This must have been carried to an extreme, as many 

 men were ruptured in the process. Gibbon, a mili- 

 tary writer (1825), tells us that every man's thigh 

 should lie at an angle of 20 degrees from the per- 

 pendicular (as if we were all built precisely alike!), 

 and says that any deviation from this position ex- 

 poses the rider to some danger or other. 



And now ensued a long period during which there 

 was little or no change in the soldier's seat on a 

 horse in peace time, although some regiments appear 

 to have ridden with shorter stirrups than others ; and 

 the outbreak of the South African War in 1899 

 found our mounted troops sitting on their forks, the 

 exception being the Mounted Infantry, first raised 

 some thirty years ago, who were taught their equita- 

 tion by combatant officers, and rode with the knee 

 bent. Men who went through the Riding Master's 

 course at the Cavalry Depot at Canterbury just be- 

 fore this war have told me that they were ordered 

 to have their spur-rests fitted low on a high heel in 

 order to give their leg an even straighter appear- 



