Horses

"My Lord, your horses are so spent, so harassed out by hard duty, that they will fall down under their riders if you thus command them: you may have their skins, but you can have no service."

Oliver Cromwell, overheard speaking to the Earl of Manchester, November 1644.

"...my horse had two or three musket balls in him, which made him tremble under me at that rate, and I could hardly with my spurs keep him from lying down, and he did me the service to carry me off to a led horse, and then died."

Captain Richard Atkyns, Battle of Lansdown, June 1643

As can be gathered from the above quotations, horses had a very hard time during the Civil War, and were very much commodities rather than fellow creatures. There are very few references to horses being named during the period, and officers were known to ride a number of horses in one battle as each in turn was killed under them.

Harquebusiers were to be mounted on a ‘good Horse or gelding’. These were perhaps a little smaller than the average horse of today, being ideally over 15hh. Dapple grey was the most fashionable colour, followed by black, and tails were allowed to grow to fetlock length, rather than just below the hock which is the norm today. At least at the start of the war there were many stallions used, but as the war went on and the supply of horses began to become exhausted, the cavalry took whatever horses they could get which were capable of carrying a fully-armed trooper day in, day out. Dragoon mounts or ‘naggs’ were smaller (over 14hh) and of lesser quality, as was the dragoon’s tack. Again, as the war progressed, any mount that could carry a dragoon was pressed into service.

The daily ration for a Civil War horse was officially: 14 lb hay, 7 lb straw, one peck of oats and half a peck of peas, the cost of which was deducted from the cavalryman's pay. How often the horses got this full ration, however, is debatable.

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