THE HORSE IN HISTORY [Illustration: THE KNIGHT, DEATH AND THE DEVIL _From an engraving by Albert Dürer_] THE HORSE IN HISTORY BY BASIL TOZER AUTHOR OF “PRACTICAL HINTS ON RIDING TO HOUNDS” ETC. WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS METHUEN & CO. 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. LONDON _First Published in 1908_ INTRODUCTORY NOTE After directly helping on the progress of the world and the development of civilisation almost from the time when, according to Nehring's interesting studies, the wild and primitive horses of the great Drift began to exhibit distinct differences in make, shape and individual characteristics, the horse has reached the limit of its tether. For with the dawn of the twentieth century, and the sudden innovation of horseless traffic, any further influence that it might have exercised upon the advancement of the human race comes rapidly to a close. That the horse's reign is over—though it is sincerely to be hoped that horses will be with us still for many years—the statistics issued recently by our Board of Agriculture in a measure prove. For in those statistics it is stated that the number of horses in the United Kingdom decreased during last year alone by no less than 12,312, and later statistics show that the decrease still continues. In the following pages, therefore, the writer has striven to trace the progress of the horse from very early times down to the present day mainly from the standpoint of the effect its development had upon the advancement of the human race. For this reason though a selected number of the most famous horses that lived in the centuries before Christ, and between the time of Christ and the period of the Norman Conquest, and that have lived within the last nine centuries, have been mentioned, the horses of romance and mythology have for the most part been passed over. Every effort has been made to obtain information that is strictly accurate, a task of no small difficulty owing to the mass of contradictory evidence with which the writer has found himself confronted in the course of his researches. To the best of his ability he has winnowed the actual facts from the mass of fiction that he has come upon in the writings of some of the earlier historians, and to some extent in records, manuscripts and private letters of more recent times to which he has had access. B. J. T. BOODLE'S CLUB, 1908. CONTENTS PART I FROM VERY EARLY TIMES TO THE CONQUEST CHAPTER I