The Essays, vol 8 | Page 4

to sample the author's ideas before making
an entire meal of them. D.W.]

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazilitt
1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 8.
XLVIII. Of war-horses, or destriers. XLIX. Of ancient customs. L. Of
Democritus and Heraclitus. LI. Of the vanity of words. LII. Of the
parsimony of the Ancients. LIII. Of a saying of Caesar. LIV. Of vain
subtleties. LV. Of smells. LVI. Of prayers. LVII. Of age.

CHAPTER XLVIII
OF WAR HORSES, OR DESTRIERS
I here have become a grammarian, I who never learned any language
but by rote, and who do not yet know adjective, conjunction, or
ablative. I think I have read that the Romans had a sort of horses by
them called 'funales' or 'dextrarios', which were either led horses, or
horses laid on at several stages to be taken fresh upon occasion, and
thence it is that we call our horses of service 'destriers'; and our
romances commonly use the phrase of 'adestrer' for 'accompagner', to
accompany. They also called those that were trained in such sort, that
running full speed, side by side, without bridle or saddle, the Roman
gentlemen, armed at all pieces, would shift and throw themselves from
one to the other, 'desultorios equos'. The Numidian men-at-arms had
always a led horse in one hand, besides that they rode upon, to change
in the heat of battle:
"Quibus, desultorum in modum, binos trahentibus equos, inter
acerrimam saepe pugnam, in recentem equum, ex fesso, armatis
transultare mos erat: tanta velocitas ipsis, tamque docile equorum
genus."
["To whom it was a custom, leading along two horses, often in the
hottest fight, to leap armed from a tired horse to a fresh one; so active

were the men, and the horses so docile."--Livy, xxiii. 29.]
There are many horses trained to help their riders so as to run upon any
one, that appears with a drawn sword, to fall both with mouth and heels
upon any that front or oppose them: but it often happens that they do
more harm to their friends than to their enemies; and, moreover, you
cannot loose them from their hold, to reduce them again into order,
when they are once engaged and grappled, by which means you remain
at the mercy of their quarrel. It happened very ill to Artybius, general of
the Persian army, fighting, man to man, with Onesilus, king of Salamis,
to be mounted upon a horse trained after this manner, it being the
occasion of his death, the squire of Onesilus cleaving the horse down
with a scythe betwixt the shoulders as it was reared up upon his master.
And what the Italians report, that in the battle of Fornova, the horse of
Charles VIII., with kicks and plunges, disengaged his master from the
enemy that pressed upon him, without which he had been slain, sounds
like a very great chance, if it be true.
[In the narrative which Philip de Commines has given of this battle, in
which he himself was present (lib. viii. ch. 6), he tells us of wonderful
performances by the horse on which the king was mounted. The name
of the horse was Savoy, and it was the most beautiful horse he had ever
seen. During the battle the king was personally attacked, when he had
nobody near him but a valet de chambre, a little fellow, and not well
armed. "The king," says Commines, "had the best horse under him in
the world, and therefore he stood his ground bravely, till a number of
his men, not a great way from him, arrived at the critical minute."]
The Mamalukes make their boast that they have the most ready horses
of any cavalry in the world; that by nature and custom they were taught
to know and distinguish the enemy, and to fall foul upon them with
mouth and heels, according to a word or sign given; as also to gather up
with their teeth darts and lances scattered upon the field, and present
them to their riders, on the word of command. 'T is said, both of Caesar
and Pompey, that amongst their other excellent qualities they were both
very good horsemen, and particularly of Caesar, that in his youth, being
mounted on the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the

horse run, stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands behind
him. As nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander, two
miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to
arm them after an extraordinary manner for every one knows that
Alexander's horse, Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a
bull; that he would suffer himself to be mounted and governed by