War Horses and the Art of Control — The Essays of Montaigne

Montaigne, who never learned adjective, conjunction, or ablative, turns grammarian on the names of horses. Romans kept funales or dextrarios as led horses or fresh mounts laid on at stages; from these come the destriers of service. They also trained desultorios equos so that armed gentlemen, at full speed, could throw themselves from one horse to another. Numidian men-at-arms kept a led horse in one hand and leaped, in the heat of battle, from a tired mount to a fresh one. Livy marvels at the men's speed and the horses' docility.

The same training can turn on the rider. Horses taught to run upon anyone with a drawn sword, and to fall on with mouth and heels, often harm friends more than enemies, and once grappled they will not be loosed, so the rider stays at the mercy of their quarrel. Artybius dies that way: the squire of Onesilus cleaves the reared horse between the shoulders. Charles VIII's horse Savoy, if Commines can be believed, kicks him free at Fornova. Caesar and Pompey are famed horsemen; Caesar, in youth, could put a horse through all its airs with his hands behind him. Alexander's Bucephalus would bear none but his master. Montaigne himself will not willingly alight once he is on horseback. Yet he will not stake honour on a mount. His ancestors, at war with the English, fought their greatest battles on foot, so that a horse's fear or fury could not make a man seem rash or cowardly. A sword a man holds, he says, is surer than a pistol whose powder, stone, and wheel must all concur.

In the Indies the first Spaniards were taken for gods and their horses for animals raised above their nature. The subdued people offered gold to the horses and read their neighing as a language of truce. Quintus Fabius, after three or four failed charges, unbridles his horses and lets them open a way for the foot. Bajazet, fleeing Tamerlane on an Arabian mare, lets her drink at a ford and is overtaken. When Montaigne was a boy, the prince of Sulmona rode an unbroken horse at Naples and held coins under his knees and toes as if they had been nailed there. The seat looks absolute. The mare at the ford still has to drink.