6o Chapters on Animals. 



turn a lane he simply gave his steed a hearty slap on the 

 off-side of the neck, — a hint which never seemed to be 

 be misunderstood. I have witnessed a good deal of 

 remarkable equestrianism, but never anything Hke that. 

 His horse was one of the ugliest, and one of the best, that 

 soldier ever bestrode. I have a faint recollection of seeing 

 a child's wooden horse which so closely resembled it, that 

 the artist must have had some such model in his mind. 

 A great round barrel, that seemed as if it had been turned 

 in a lathe, a broad chest, straight strong legs very short 

 proportionally, shoulders far forward relatively to the neck, 

 high withers, large ugly head, with a good-tempered 

 expression, a stump for a tail, and a rough coat of a bay 

 quite closely resembling red hair in the human species : 

 such were the various beauties of this war-horse. His 

 ugliness and his honest looks gave me a sort of attachment 

 to him ; and his rider loved him dearly, and was loud in 

 his praise. At length the regiment was ordered to Dijon, 

 and severely engaged there in the Battle of Paques. 

 Afterwards I saw the sergeant's red shirt, but he rode no 

 longer that good animal. The poor thing had had three 

 of its four legs carried away by a cannon-ball ; and its 

 master, though in the heat of the battle, humanely ended 

 its misery with his revolver. 



These things, of course, are the every-day accidents of 

 war, in which horses are killed by thousands ; but when 

 particular instances come under your observation, they 

 pain you, if you really love animals. I heartily wish that 

 horses could be dispensed with in war, and some sort of 

 steam-engine used instead, if it were possible. In the 

 orders given by Louis-Napoleon at the opening of the 

 campaign of 1870, one detail seemed to me unnecessarily 

 cruel. Orderlies were told not to hesitate to ride their 



