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History of horses falling en masse in warfare?

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by Herewordless (U14549396) on Saturday, 16th April 2011

  The recent Grand National fiasco in April at Aintree, in which two horses died horribly, brought this to mind. Yet there must be several other such incidents in wars throughout history?
  
  In the dying hours of the bloodbath at Hastings, October 14th, 1066, at the alledged Malfosse incident, pursuing Norman horsemen chased fleeing English fyrdsmen at dusk, and went tumbling over a hidden precipice as they charged at speed.
  Sources stated that following Normans did not see this disaster and also went wheeling over, in a terrible incident, man and horse, until the 'fosse' was 'level'?
  
  Similarly, at the Battle of Roundway Down in 1643 during the English Civil War, roundhead cavalry pursued Cavalier cavalry off the field (leaving both infantry bewildered) and at high speed, perhaps 2000 steeds hurtled headlong over an unseen drop, breaking the necks of men and horses alike, until the chased and the chasers finally reigned their steeds in and halted.
  
  
  
  

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  Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 16th April 2011

  Hereword
  
  Just going back to the Grand National my childhood memories are of regular carnage at the Grand National, and I rather suspect that live TV pictures, the huge investment involved in running stables, and a world less brutalised by the recent war as we were in the Fifties- have all resulted in efforts to make the GN less dangerous than it used to be.
  
  But regarding ditches in battle I seem to recall that a hidden ditch was supposed to have had disastrous consequences in the Battle of Waterloo, but this may be to some extent from the account given in Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" - if my memory serves me right as it tries to go back almost 50 years.
  
  More recent reading of "The Destruction of Lord Raglan" by Christopher Hibbert included quite graphic details of the slaughter of many magnificent chargers who made the Charge of the Light Brigade possible.. Into the valley of Death rode the Five Hundred- each on a horse heading straight for the mouths of the cannon.
  
  Of course the absence of cavalry charges on the Western Front did not save horses from carnage. My grandafather swopped his work as a horseman in the Cotswolds and went to work with the working horses requisitioned to supply the "horsepower" needed to move things around in the Flanders mud.
  
  Cass

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  Posted by Seamus an Chaca (U14844281) on Saturday, 16th April 2011

  The National was a terrible thing, milder in it's ferocity than previous years.
  
  I can't think of any other examples, besides the ones above, but as for doomed cavalry charges;-
  
  - The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854) a doomed British charge against Russian cannons (front, where they aimed for- and on the hill to the right)
  
  - Richard III at Bosworth Field (1485), the Yorkist king's last gamble to kill his enemy, Henry Bolingbroke.
  
  - Marshall Ney's 10,000 cavalry charge at Waterloo (1815), whilst Napoleon had retired ill from the battlefield for a crucial two hours.
  
  - The doomed Polish cavalry charges against nazi tanks in WW2? Well, reports of Polish cavalry charges against German tanks in 1939 are pure fiction. These stories were reported by the Italian press and used as propaganda by the Germans.
  
  - The Battle of Baliqiao (September 1860) The battle became famous for the doomed cavalry charges performed by the Mongolian cavalry in the face of concentrated allied infantry and artillery fire, and the Chinese losses (killed or wounded) were estimated at between 20,000 and 25,000.
  
  - The Bataan Peninsula, the 26th US Cavalry staged a mounted attack against the Japanese on 16 January 1942. The battered, exhausted men of the 26th Cavalry climbed astride their horses and flung themselves moments against the blazing gun muzzles of Japanese tanks.
  This last mounted pistol charge was led by Ed Ramsey in command of G troop, 26th Cavalry. It was the last mounted charge in America's annals, and proved the climax of the 26th Cavalry's magnificent but doomed horseback campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army during the fall of the Philippines in 1941-42.
  According to a Bataan survivor interviewed in the Washington Post (10 April 1977), starving US and Philippine troops ate all the regiment's horses.
  
  - The last Cavalry charge in history took place on 23 August 1942, at Izbushensky on the River Don. The Italian Savoia Cavalry Regiment, and consisting of 600 mounted Italian troops, charged against 2,000 Soviet troops.
  The Italian Lancers destroyed a pair of Soviet Infantry armored vehicles before being forced to withdraw with thirty-two casualties.
  
  

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