Real War Horses: The Experience of the British Cavalry 1814 - 1914

By Anthony Dawson

Many histories have been written about the conflicts the British army was involved in between the Battle of Waterloo and the First World War. There are detailed studies of campaigns and battles and general accounts of the experiences of the soldiers. But this book by Anthony Dawson is the first to concentrate in depth, in graphic detail, on the experiences of the British cavalry during a century of warfare. That is why it is of such value. It is also compelling reading because it describes, using the words of the cavalrymen of the time, the organization, routines, training and social life of the cavalry as well as the fear and exhilaration of cavalry actions. Perhaps the most memorable passages record the drama and excitement of cavalry charges and the brutal, confused, often lethal experience of close-quarter combat in a melee of men and horses. Few books give such a direct inside view of what it was like to serve in the British cavalry during the nineteenth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Oct 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473847088

Anthony Dawson

Anthony Dawson is an archaeologist and historian who has made a special study of the history of the British army in the nineteenth century. He spent two years as a post-graduate research student at the University of Leeds where he gained an MRes. As well as writing articles on the subject in magazines and journals, he has published Napoleonic Artillery, French Infantry of the Crimean War and Letters from the Light Brigade: The British Cavalry in the Crimean War.

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Real War Horses

Real War Horses

The Experience of the British Cavalry 1814–1914

Anthony Dawson

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by

PEN AND SWORD MILITARY

an imprint of

Pen and Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire S70 2AS

Copyright © Anthony Dawson, 2016

ISBN 978 1 47384 707 1

eISBN 978 1 47384 708 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47384 709 5

The right of Anthony Dawson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Contents

List of Plates

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Letters Home

1. Horse and Rider

2. The Muddy Fields of Waterloo

3. Colonial Adventures

4. The Crimean War

5. The Indian Mutiny

6. With the Imperial Yeomanry in South Africa

7. Horsemen in the Trenches

Afterword

Notes

Select Bibliography

List of Plates

A contemporary depiction of the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at Balaklava.

Lieutenant the Hon Robert Lindsay, Royal Scots Greys, resplendent in review order.

Mounted drummer of the Scots Greys, c.1900.

Sergeant-Major Duncan of the Scots Greys, photographed in 1898.

A recruiting party from a Heavy Dragoon and Lancer regiment

The Riding House at Aldershot Camp, c.1880.

Men of the Scots Greys at Stables, 1898.

The Scots Greys at ‘Post Practice’, 1898.

Farriers of the 7th (The Princess Royal’s) Dragoon Guards, photographed c.1900.

Saddlers of the 17th Lancers, c.1900.

The dismounted band of the Scots Greys.

Ante-room to the Officers’ Mess of the Scots Greys.

A ‘Rest Tent’ belonging to a Yeomanry Regiment in Camp, 1906.

The Guard of the Scots Greys, commanded by a mounted NCO.

A squadron of Scots Greys turned out in ‘Marching Order’, 1898.

The baggage cart of the Scots Greys.

Mounted and dismounted members of the Scots Greys, 1898.

The grim reality of war.

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to the late Kate Taylor MBE, who died during its writing, without whose infectious enthusiasm for the pursuit of history and support of new talent I would not have got where I am today. It is thanks to Kate that my first foray into military history was published in a series of essays edited by her whilst I was still in the Sixth Form over fifteen years ago. Kate was passionate that history should be well written, accessible – but not ‘dumbed down’ or patronising – and relevant. Kate was a friend and ally, with an outstanding knowledge of local history, commitment to heritage and Unitarianism.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank David Paget for the idea to write this book and to Tim Pickles for sharing with me cavalry regulations and standing orders from his personal collection. I should also like to thank my late mother, Jane, for instilling in me a love of horses, history and asking questions.

Thanks must also go to Andy Mason for assistance on research trips, innumerable cups of tea, proof reading and, at times, a shoulder to cry on.

Introduction: Letters Home

This book is the distillation of several years of research working with letters and diaries written by British soldiers serving in various campaigns and printed in contemporary newspapers. They reflect the personal thoughts and feelings of those who wrote them, providing a ‘snapshot’ in time. Professor Edward Spiers (2007) presented a methodology for understanding and interpreting this material for the later nineteenth century,¹ which was modified by Anthony Dawson (2013) for understanding mid-nineteenth century material.²

These letters which were sent home by officers and men of the British cavalry over a period of a century are useful documents for revealing not only how the ordinary soldier lived and spent his time, but also his response to and feelings towards war. These letters are also important because of the ‘human interest’ they generated in the plight of the common soldier in those ‘on the home front’ and because of the political ramifications they had: bringing about a change of government (1855: the fall of Lord Aberdeen) and also fuelling limited reform of the British army (Crimean War 1853–6; Second Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902).

Whilst the impact of the reports from the Crimean War by W. H. Russell of The Times has been often – over? – emphasised, it was the provincial press that perhaps was the biggest maker, and changer, of opinion in Victorian Britain. Many provincial papers could not afford to send their own ‘Special Correspondent’ to the front, and thus published verbatim Russell’s reports, commissioned soldiers involved in the various campaigns to write home or paid them for letters sent home. Such was the case with the Nottinghamshire Guardian during the Crimean War and the Cheshire Observer during the Boer War. Thus, reports from the various ‘Special Correspondents’ were given local colour and this combination changed the mood of the country towards the ordinary soldier at the front.³

Newspaper editors, especially those in the provinces, were keen to publish letters, especially those from local soldiers, because they provided a snapshot level of immediacy and intimacy and verified with a degree of local colour the official despatches from the front.⁴ Letters from ordinary soldiers and the despatches of the various ‘Special Correspondents’, which were full with the human drama of war, contrasted greatly with the official version of events.⁵

The reasons for writing home were often diverse; the telling of exciting stories from a young soldier on his first campaign, whether about the long voyage, the shock of campaign life or a foreign and entirely alien country and climate. These letters are primarily descriptive and narrative, ‘telling a story’ to a loved one at home, recounting new and often terrifying experiences, letting family and friends at home that they were safe and well. Soldiers also wrote to set the record straight: after the Battle of Colenso (15 December 1899), Rifleman Martin wrote to his father presenting his narrative of the battle stating that he doubted whether his father would learn any of ‘the truth through the press, as it is under Government Censorship’. Increasing censorship from the 1880s onwards was a further spur for officers and men to tell their story. One officer writing home from the Sudan thought the ‘Special Correspondent’ was the soldier’s best friend, but ‘. . . now they have gone, everything is concealed, and there is no one to say a word for the soldiers’.⁶

The Crimean War was a watershed in the creation and publication of letters home, especially those written by the ordinary soldier.⁷ It was perhaps the first media war: it was not the first war to have war correspondents or the first time letters from the front were published, but it was the first fought under the scrutiny of the domestic press.⁸ Where it was unique was because the press had unprecedented access, to a degree unknown before or since. Increased levels of literacy allowed the private soldier to write home ‘from the front’. This meant that the ordinary soldier now had a ‘voice’ which could be heard, the letters home from the Crimea caused ‘the heart of the nation to go out to its soldiers as it had never before’. The common soldier was now a welcome member of society.⁹ For the first time the common soldier in Britain was commemorated in death and awarded medals, such as the newly instituted Victoria Cross. No longer were the officer and the class they represented the war-hero, now it was the everyday soldier who won Britain’s wars in spite of the blunders of its generals: a narrative which would run through British military history to the Second World War and beyond but may have indeed held back serious reform.¹⁰

The power of the newspaper in reporting military affairs changed greatly; during the Crimean War, W. H. Russell and Lawrence Godkin had almost unlimited access to privileged information and to military personnel, and were much criticised for revealing sensitive information.¹¹ Lord Raglan has recently been described as ‘having lost the media war’. He lost control of the press and therefore management and manipulation of what was printed.¹² Many lessons were learned by the Indian Mutiny (1857–9); the press were brought into the confidence of senior officers, which enabled a more favourable representation of the army, and manipulation of what was published.¹³ Forty years later Major-General Kitchener called the journalists sent to cover his Sudan campaign ‘drunken swabs’ and General Viscount Wolseley described the press as a ‘curse to armies’.¹⁴

The major shift in reporting from the front came in 1914. Lord Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, ‘treated the press with near contempt’.¹⁵ He would not allow ‘Special Correspondents’ to accompany the army and supplied only the minimum of information to his ‘approved’ war correspondents. He was fearful of leaks and disclosures which might aid the enemy and did all he could to control the flow of news from the front. He appointed Colonel Swinton to write reports from the front – under the byline ‘Eye-Witness’: the main thrust of his work was to ‘avoid helping the enemy. This appeared to me even more important than the purveyance of news to our own people . . .’.¹⁶ So whilst the public were being officially starved of any reliable or credibly information, letters home became the source (if they passed the censor) of telling loved ones at home ‘what was really happening’.¹⁷

Understanding these Letters

The letters presented here were collected using three methods: firstly the purchase of original copies of newspapers; secondly, provincial newspapers were accessed via local libraries and record offices on microfilm; and thirdly, national and metropolitan newspapers (Daily News, Morning Post etc) were searched in electronic format, accessed through the British Library. The Times was also accessed and searched electronically. Selection of letters from various campaigns was based upon the likely percentage of letters home sent by cavalry soldiers. Therefore, those campaigns that involved a large proportion of mounted troops were more likely to produce letters home than those which did not. Therefore, the Zulu War has not been included due to only two British army regular cavalry units being engaged, and because the campaign from eyewitnesses has been well told elsewhere.¹⁸ Similarly, focus on the role of the Yeomanry during the Second Anglo-Boer War is because the Yeomanry units (who had never seen active service before) produced a wealth of material and because Edward Spiers has previously presented many letters from regular cavalry personnel.¹⁹

Many of these letters were written within hours of the events they record, and therefore are likely to record the events as the writer perceived them, without any contamination from other sources. Most letters home contained three main topics: the health of the writer, the writer’s travelogue (many soldiers having never left the British Isles before) and comments on their allies.²⁰ Many writers during the Crimean War and opening months of the Great War commented that their readers would be universally surprised by the French soldiers and how well the allies got on, and reflected the naïve belief that war would be quick and over by Christmas. Letter-writers were also self-censoring, only including details that they deemed were important or felt were of interest to the reader at home. Writers often reserved the more gruesome sights of the battlefield for a male reader to preserve the modesty and feelings of a female reader.²¹

There is a sense of continuity between 1815 and 1914 in the general complaints recorded in the letters, usually relating to horses, especially keeping them alive at the front. Lack of campaign equipment – notably tents – failure of rations (human and equine) to arrive, worn-out clothing and equipment are the most common complaints, and appear during each campaign with a sense of déjà vu. A trooper in the Scots Greys would experience many – all – of the same problems in 1815, 1854, 1900 or 1914.

Whilst letter-writers record events that they remember and deem of sufficient important or interest to write home about, these are not objective or literal records of the events the writer has been involved in. The writers are reporting events they believe they remember or perceive; the closer to the event the letters were written the more likely the reporting is to be uncontaminated from other sources and closer to the experience of the writer. The more detached in time from the event, the less reliable the recording, often contaminated by what has been absorbed from other sources (usually the media, books and contact with other soldiers), subsequent experiences or distorted by a sense of grievance or, usually, self-importance. As Paul Fussell notes, memoirs tend toward being a combination of historical fiction and autobiography, stressing the role or importance of the writer than any objective or literal form of history per se.²² The late Richard Holmes emphasised that memoirs and oral history have to be treated with caution because they ‘invariably reflect the past through the prism of the present’ and tell the reader what they want to know.²³ In some instances such sources tell us about imaginary events, such as the ‘Stirrup Charge’ at Waterloo or Cerizy.²⁴ This is a phenomenon described as ‘inventive memory’, caused either from contamination from other sources or from the trauma of war itself.²⁵ Memory is a complex subject and has different meanings between individuals; is a means of linking the present with the past. How it does so is often selective. Andrew Whitmarsh notes ‘Memory is ultimately connected with present concerns: the motives of memory are never pure.’²⁶

We also need to be careful when using these letters to identify specific regiments, particularly those of the enemy. There were no ‘Spotter’s Guides’ and, in the gunpowder era, identification of an enemy unit was limited to their silhouette rather than particulars of a uniform. Many soldiers simply did not know who, or what, was attacking them other than infantry, cavalry or artillery. Where units are positively identified, such identifications have to be tentative. During the Waterloo campaign every French lancer became ‘Polish’ and Cuirassiers found themselves invariably admitted to the French Imperial Guard, despite no such unit existing until 1854. Similarly, any French soldier wearing a bearskin became a Grenadier of the Imperial Guard. This pattern is borne out throughout the century under study: Russian cavalry invariably became Cossacks, during the Boer War every Boer was a ‘Kommando’ and in 1914 every German cavalryman became a ‘Prussian Uhlan’ – an understandable mistake to make as all German cavalry were lancearmed. However, whilst there is a case for simple mistaken identity, the regularity with which enemy units became admitted to an elite formation may also be due to ego of the self and of the regiment involved: glorification of the self and regiment.²⁷

Chapter 1

Horse and Rider

What is Cavalry?

Cavalry was thought to have two main functions on campaign:

On the march it must disperse, in order to scour the country, reconnoitre, and pursue; in the battle . . . it can only produce a great effect by throwing itself suddenly in mass upon the . . . enemy’s lines.¹

British cavalry theoretically consisted of two branches – heavy and light; the former consisted of the Household Cavalry, the Dragoon Guards and Dragoon regiments, and the light cavalry were the Hussars, Lancers and Light Dragoons. In theory the heavy cavalry consisted of larger horses ridden by larger men and the light cavalry smaller riders on smaller horses.² Heavy cavalry was destined to perform the charge and light cavalry act as scouts and skirmishers.³ In European armies there was careful grading of the heights of men and horses into heavy, medium and light cavalry.⁴ In Britain, however, this distinction was only theoretical: this was due to the small cavalry establishment, the fact that colonels had the power to purchase the horses for their regiments and that the main emphasis for the British cavalry was the charge which both heavy and light cavalry were expected to perform.⁵ That this was the status quo was confirmed by Queen’s Regulations 1844 which stated that

The number of cavalry in the British Army being small in reference to the Amount of Force annually voted by Parliament, it is of the utmost importance that both the Heavy and Light cavalry should be equal to the Charge in Line as well as to the duties of Outposts. The Horses which are selected and Trained for the Cavalry should be therefore of sufficient height and strength to be capable of performing the duties of that branch of the service with the greatest efficiency.

Thus, the distinction between ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ was purely sartorial as both were expected to perform the same role and were given identical training.⁶ This formal training extended to horsemanship, weapons drill, battlefield manoeuvres and in conducting the charge. Indeed, both light and heavy cavalry utilised the same drill book, unlike Continental cavalry.⁷ In the aftermath of the Crimean War, the only change to cavalry training was to include a section on spiking and recovering artillery.⁸ The light cavalry received little instruction in the arts particular to their branch of the service, these being piquet and patrol work. They often had to learn them at the hard school of active campaigning.⁹ By the 1850s Captain Louis Edward Nolan (and other, earlier, reformers) had pointed out that the textbook theory for British cavalry was for it to be able to operate as light cavalry, mounted and dismounted.¹⁰ The reality, from the size of the horses and riders, and the weight to be carried, was the opposite. British cavalry was in effect all heavy cavalry: destined for the charge, mounted on horses and wearing uniforms that, in the eyes of reformers, were totally unsuitable for the hardships of campaign.¹¹ Although unsuited for campaign life, many traditionalist cavalry officers considered this was compensated by the fact that British horses had such superior breeding that they were thought able to better any cavalry in a charge.¹²

After Waterloo the cavalry became obsessed with appearance and show, especially so during the reign of George IV.¹³ Uniforms became more elaborate to the point of losing any functionality.¹⁴ Operational effectiveness and discipline were judged from outward show alone; a smartly-dressed, showy regiment was considered to be efficient and effective on the battlefield.¹⁵ This was a mind-set that continued during the Crimean War where General Sir George Brown was bemoaning the lack of pipe clay and boot blacking for the Light Division in the midst of the Siege of Sebastopol.¹⁶ One satirist poked fun at the 11th Hussars and their skin-tight crimson pantaloons:

Oh, pantaloons of cherry!

Oh, redder than a raspberry!

For men to fight in things so tight

It must be trying – very.

‘Gainst wear, though fine the weather,

They would not hold together.

On saddle-back, they’d fly and crack,

Though seated with black leather.¹⁷

A letter-writer to the Daily News shared the sentiments of the satirist, thinking the uniform worn by the 11th so ‘tight-fitting’ they were ‘too stiff to stoop and look at trifles’. The uniform was highly impractical for campaign from its closeness of fit, its ‘frippery’ and colours. Also thought impractical was the practice of ‘booting’ the overalls with leather up to the knee, as mud would cake to the leather or get between the boot and overall making it impossible to move; nor were they easy to dry. What was needed were ‘loose, waterproof Hessians and breaches of some sort’.¹⁸ A ‘Peninsula Dragoon’ thought that ‘The Light and Heavy Dragoons of our army are absurdly dressed’ and none more so than the Lancers or Hussars, the former equipped with the lance, a ‘useless weapon’ which, because of its weight, ‘not one man in twenty of the strongest troopers can wield the weapon as he should be able to do, over his head’.¹⁹ It was against this background that the functional uniform of the French Chasseurs d’Afrique became the beau ideal of British cavalry reformers during the mid-nineteenth century: ‘The accoutrements of both man and horse comprise nothing but what is absolutely necessary, without a particle of ornament’, unlike the British Hussar or Light Dragoon uniform, which were festooned with ‘useless’ ornamentation.²⁰ One observer thought that

The most remarkable thing about their arms and accoutrements is their simplicity, the absence of anything which is intended for display or which does not possess positive utility. No useless tackle about the horse, no frippery about the men. You could not point to one article and say that its owner would be just as well without it.²¹

This desire to shine on parade inevitably had negative effects in the effectiveness of the cavalry, with colonels purchasing horses for light cavalry duty that were as large as heavy cavalry horses.²² This was because creating a spectacle or showy appearance on parade and campaign had become the overriding thinking behind the purchasing of cavalry mounts, especially with regards to breed and horse type. The purchase of thoroughbreds or thoroughbred-crosses, not known for their hardiness on sparse or limited food, would have a disastrous effect on the endurance of the cavalry. Furthermore, because the army was reliant upon the civilian horse trade, the principal supply was horses bred for racing or hunting, so that thoroughbred or thoroughbred-cross horses of those types became the norm as they were the only horses on the market.²³ This policy of buying large horses also had tacit official support; debate in The United Service Magazine suggested that the Inspector General of Cavalry was allowing cavalry colonels to ‘obtain the strongest horses that the Government allowance can procure, which allowance is the very same in both light and heavy cavalry’.²⁴

Acquisition of Horses

Prior to 1887, the British army had no formal structure for the acquisition of horses. Unlike other European countries, Britain had no formal studs for breeding cavalry horses and instead relied upon civilian horse breeders and agents – and as a result was wholly reliant upon the fluctuations of the market in terms of price and what type of animals were bred. Horses were purchased regimentally; there was no coherent system (or staff) for the acquisition of remounts in wartime (other than recursion to horse agents or voluntary enlistment of animals), and, more crucially, there was no provision for a reserve of horses – or trained riders – to be in place upon mobilisation.²⁵

The government was opposed to the establishment of a formal remount system because of political – not military – ideology: a remount system would have given the government a monopoly on the horse trade and therefore have been against the principals of Free Trade. In 1803 it was proposed to form a remount depot, but this was soon quashed.²⁶ Furthermore, there was opposition because of the perceived ‘enormous cost’ of purchasing and feeding the horses. Radicals considered that the money would be better spent feeding the poor and that a government remount depot smacked too much of having a standing army.²⁷ Fifty years later the reform-minded Captain Nolan raged:

It is said that a government stud is opposed to the principle of competition. What competition can there be amongst breeders for the price of a troop-horse when by breeding carthorses they obtain forty pounds for them when two years old? How could they possibly afford to rear animals with the necessary qualifications for a cavalry horse of the first class? To breed such horses a cross must first be obtained with our racehorses: this would entail a large outlay of capital; and when the good troophorse was produced, the breeder could not obtain his price for him.²⁸

He further remarked that because of the system of purchasing from horse dealers, the only horses left for cavalry regiments were the ‘refuse’:

The best horses of the present day make bad warhorses. What can be therefore expected from the refuse left by a nation of horsemen, horsefancyers [sic] and jockeys and indeed our cavalry is mounted on what no one else will buy for any purpose whatever, such horses alone become available for the low price of a remount horse.²⁹

At times of national crisis throughout the nineteenth century, various schemes amounting to a proper remount system were proposed. As early as 1812, in order to alleviate the shortage of horses it was proposed that all the horses in the country be registered and that one-tenth be seconded for ‘public service’. For every gentleman who owned ten horses, he was requested to volunteer one horse and rider; for those who owned between ten and twenty, two horses and riders and so on. Those who owned less than ten horses would have their horses (and rider) seconded via lots, just like the Militia Ballot. Those whose livelihood depended entirely upon their animals would be able to purchase a ‘licence’ to make themselves exempt.³⁰ A similar proposal from the Crimean War included ‘depots in different parts of the kingdom’ where ‘loyal subjects may deliver such horses as they feel inclined to place at Her Majesty’s disposal’. This would, the writer believed, ‘have supplied the cavalry service with some thousands of the finest seasoned horses in the world’.³¹ The lack of a remount system at home caused consternation among those officers who had served in India. The Honourable East India Company had established a centralised remount service and depots for the acquisition and training of horses, invariably of native breeds as ‘European’ horses were felt ‘too civilised’ for that climate. A similar setup was established in South Africa where the ‘Cape Horse’ was much praised for its endurance and hardiness on campaign despite its lack of breeding.³²

Because the army was reliant upon civilian agents, this meant that it was at the mercy of the market. During the first year of the Crimean War the price of horses nearly doubled. This led to a shortage of animals available to the army (the Government would only pay up to £40 per animal) but also for those whose livelihood depended on horses, principally carters, removal companies, cab-owners and the operators of horse-buses. At the Drogheda Horse Fair ‘first class cavalry horses’ sold for £80–£100, double their usual price,³³ and at Doncaster ‘Good nags and roadsters were also scarce, and realized from 30L to 60L each . . .’.³⁴ Where horses could not be purchased they were transferred from other regiments which were not being mobilised. In order to augment the regiments of cavalry being dispatched to the Crimea in spring 1854 virtually all the Home-Service regiments lost some or all of their horses. The 4th Dragoon Guards received fifteen horses transferred from the 1st (King’s) Dragoon Guards and a further five from the 3rd Dragoon Guards. It was also a means of ridding the regiment of poor horses: the 4th Dragoon Guards ejected twenty ‘young ones – a great set of brutes . . .’.³⁵

The situation was even worse the following year when the British cavalry and artillery, which had lost 80 per cent of its horses in the Crimea during the winter, had to be rapidly rebuilt. Lord Hardinge, the Commander-in-Chief at Horse Guards, struggled to find horses on the open market and reported that he would have to dismount every dragoon on Home Service. So desperate was the army for horses that the regulations concerning the age of the horses, so long as they were ‘of sufficient height’, were relaxed to as young as three years in order to increase the number of animals theoretically available to the army.³⁶ Horse Guards placed adverts in the newspapers inviting ‘gentlemen’, ‘sportsmen’ and also cab-owners and hauliers to ‘volunteer’ their horses for the cavalry.³⁷ Some suggestions included hiring Messrs. Pickfords to move the artillery and stores!³⁸

The Royal Artillery at Woolwich, however, did have its own remount system. It established its own Riding School in 1813 and had amongst its staff an ‘Inspector and Purchaser of Horses’ and a veterinary surgeon. By the 1880s it had an establishment of 138 all ranks and 100 horses. There was also a remount depot attached to the Royal Garrison Artillery. The ‘Inspector’ was responsible for the purchase, training and distribution of horses used by the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers on Home Service.³⁹ At times of emergency the Royal Artillery was therefore more able to transfer horses to where they were needed. Those field batteries and horse artillery troops sent to the Crimea, for example, had their gun-teams increased using horses transferred from those units not being sent.⁴⁰

Following the success of Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1) the supply of cavalry horses – and type of cavalry horse – came in for much discussion. Many feathers were ruffled in 1871 when an article in The Field by Mr E. A. Tattersall suggested that ‘there was a great want of cavalry horses’ and furthermore, the British government should immediately establish breeding studs for cavalry horses and purchase stallions for that purpose, copying Prussian practice.⁴¹ He also dared to suggest some colonels were purchasing horses that were not in top condition or were actually sick and pocketing the difference! The Morning Post calculated such colonels were making as much as £10 per animal but that the final cost to the country could be as much as £90 (three times the cost of a light cavalry horse) in order to get the animal fit enough for army life.⁴² On the back of this scandal, the question over mounting the cavalry was raised in the Commons.⁴³ Scandal, of course, was not new: Lieutenant-Colonel John Elliott (1st King’s Dragoon Guards) had been court-martialled in 1804 for ‘carrying on an improper