Crusader Horses
Horses were an
absolutely essential — indeed defining — component of a knight’s equipment. The
German word for knight (ritter)
derives directly from the word for rider (reiter),
while the French and Spanish terms, chevalier
and caballero, derive from the word
for horse (cheval and caballo respectively). While a knight
might temporarily be without a mount, without a horse a knight could not
fulfill his fundamental function as a cavalryman. Indeed, the symbol of
knighthood was not the sword (infantrymen had those as well) or even the lance (they
were throw away pieces of equipment), but the (golden) spurs tied to a knight's heels
during the dubbing ceremony. Richard Barber notes in his seminal work The Knight and Chivalry that being
financially in a position to outfit oneself with arms and horses was crucial to
knightly status. David Edge and John Miles Paddock argue in their comprehensive
work Arms and Armour of the Medieval
Knight that “[a knight’s horse] was the most effective and significant
weapon the knight had; the basis of his pre-eminent position in society and on
the battlefield.”
In short, knights
needed horses — significantly not just one horse but several. This short post provides a overview of a knight's equine needs.
The warhorse or destrier, is the most
obvious of a knight’s horses. This was the horse a knight rode into battle,
joust or tournament. This horse was his fighting platform. It was trained to
endure the shock and noise of combat. In later years, destriers were sometimes
also trained to lash out at enemies with teeth and hooves thereby becoming, as
Edge and Paddock note, a weapon as
well as a fighting platform. Knights rode stallions, not mares or geldings.
This was in part because stallions were considered more aggressive, but also
because riding a mare or a gelding detracted from a knight’s image as a virile
warrior.
Destriers were
not a specific breed of horse, so arguably the defining characteristic of a
destrier was simply its function — and price. If a knight thought a horse had
what it took to be a fine destrier, he was willing to pay a large premium for
that — and anyone in possession of a horse with the necessary qualities was
going to ask a commensurate price for it as well. In short, destriers were outrageously
expensive. They cost 4 to 8 times the price of lesser or ordinary horses. They
cost as much as the armor a knight wore. They could cost as much as the annual
knight’s fee — in short roughly the annual income of the gentry. The equivalent is the price of a top-line BMW
or Mercedes today.
Like any horse,
destriers were vulnerable to colic and injury, however, which meant a knight
was well advised to have more than one destrier — if he could afford it. Even if he could and did, however, he was
likely to have a favorite. The destriers of knights in contemporary romance and
legend all have names: Baucent, Folatise, Babieca etc., but perhaps no description
is more famous that the Dauphin’s praise for his horse before Agincourt in
Shakespeare’s Henry V. “When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots on
air; the earth sings when he touches it…. It is a beast for Perseus: he is pure
air and fire….”
For all their
value and importance, however, a knight spent far less time
mounted on his prized destrier than on his palfrey(s). Palfreys
were riding horses, transportation not weapons, the means
of getting from point A to point B. Since medieval knights rode
everywhere -- to oversea their estates, to visit neighbors, when hunting
or hawking, to attend court or to go courting. In short, a knight spent
literally countless hours
with his palfrey(s). Palfreys were bred not for strength and fierceness
but for
smooth gates, endurance and common sense. They were probably much the
same size
as destriers, but lighter — marathon runners rather than sprinters,
wrestlers
more than boxers.
Since these
horses were just as likely to get colic or injured, the need for more than one
palfrey was just as compelling as with destriers, but given the substantially
lower price of palfreys the possession of more than one was considerably more common.
Knights would normally have possessed at least two and wealthy nobles likely
had stables of horses at their disposal for transport purposes.
