The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913Various
History
The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (May 1913): Vol. LXXXVI. New Series: Vol. LXIV. May to October, 1913
Various
Periodicals
The last horse used by Napoleon was purchased at St. Helena. He
was a small bay of about fifteen hands called “King George,” but
afterward named by the emperor “Scheik,” which became much attached
to him. Captain Frederick Lahrbush of the Sixtieth Rifles, who was
then stationed on the island and who, as he could speak French,
became intimate with Napoleon, gave me a description of “Scheik” and
bequeathed to me his silver Waterloo medal and a lock of the emperor’s
hair, received as a parting gift on his departure from St. Helena.
* * * * *
As far as I am aware, no great commander ever possessed so valuable a
charger as “Cincinnati,” General Grant’s favorite during the fourth
year of the Civil War, and after his great victory at Chattanooga,
during which he rode “Egypt,” another of his six war-horses. A few
weeks later, when in Cincinnati, Grant received the gift of the noble
steed, which he named after that city. He was a son of “Lexington,”
with a single exception the fastest four-mile thoroughbred that ever
ran on an American race-course, having made the distance in 7:19¾
minutes. The general was offered $10,000 for the horse, as his record
almost equaled that of his sire and his half-brother “Kentucky.” He
was a spirited and superb dark bay of great endurance, Grant riding
him almost daily during the Wilderness campaign of the summer of 1864,
and until the war closed in the following spring. “Cincinnati” was
seventeen hands, and, in the estimation of the illustrious soldier, the
grandest horse that he had ever seen, perhaps the most valuable ever
ridden by an army commander from the time of Alexander down to our own
day.
The general very rarely permitted any person but himself to mount him.
Only two exceptions are recalled by the writer, once when Admiral
Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant when a small boy from being drowned,
visited him at his headquarters at City Point on the James River, and
when, a little later, President Lincoln came to the same place from
Washington to spend a week with the general. On the admiral’s return
from a two-hours’ ride, accompanied by a young aide-de-camp, Grant
asked how he liked “Cincinnati.”
Ammen answered, “I have never backed his equal.”
“Nor have I,” said the general.
In his “Personal Memoirs” Grant writes:
Lincoln spent the last days of his life with me. He came to City
Point in the last month of the war, and was with me all the
time. He lived on a despatch-boat in the river, but was always
around headquarters. He was a fine horseman, and rode my horse
“Cincinnati” every day. He visited the different camps, and I did
all that I could to interest him. The President was exceedingly
anxious about the war closing, and was apprehensive that we could
not stand another campaign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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