"Marengo: The Myth of Napoleon's Horse" Topic

"In telling the poignant story of Marengo, Jill Hamilton shows an unexpected side to the Emperor. She explores Napoleon's enormous regard for horses as well as why it was Marengo, and Marengo alone, who became part of the Napoleonic legend -- not Jaffa, Ali, Desiree or any of Napoleon's many mounts. With a bullet lodged in his tail and the imperial cipher of a crowned letter 'N' burnt on his left flank, a diminutive Arab stallion drew crowds to Pall Mall, London, in 1823. Sightseers came to gaze at the horse advertised as 'Bonaparte's personal charger', whose career had spanned the whole of the Napoleonic Wars, who, to the sound of marching songs had trotted, cantered and galloped from the Mediterranean to Paris, Italy, Germany and Austria, and at the age of nineteen, had walked three thousand miles to Moscow and back. Since then, both dead and alive, this horse with the same sonorous name as Napoleon's great victory, Marengo, has been a star exhibit in Britain. At London's earliest military museum his articulated skeleton was seen by Queen Victoria and displayed as the horse that had carried his master at Austerlitz in 1805, at Jena in 1806, at Wagram in 1809, in the Russian Campaign of 1812, and at Waterloo in 1815. For over 150 years one of his hooves has stood on a gleaming sideboard in the Officers' mess at St James' Palace. Today his skeleton, described as 'Napoleon's favourite horse', is the sole equine exhibit in the vast Waterloo Gallery at the National Army Museum in Chelsea, London. Horses for Napoleon were both utilitarian and glamorous. He used them for recreation, for speed and as majestic pedestals on which he appeared as a larger-than-life figure, but mostly as unstoppable machines of war. As he turned the ramshackle cavalry of the Revolutionary army into the most remarkable cavalry force in history he made spectacular use of horses in battle. But Jill Hamilton has uncovered a secret, hidden away for over a century, a secret which brings her inspiring and moving history to a devastating conclusion…."
Main page
id.b-ok2.org/book/895875/5fbe90

Amicalement
Armand

Don't tell me, don't tell me! The horse is really a horse called Binky, owned by Death.

"It has been said that horse breeders do not admit to the existence of such a thing as a white horse; it is pale or grey, but not white, never white. Yet Binky is truly a white horse, a large, magnificent white horse, white not as snow but as milk, because milk has more life than snow. Binky has been for a long time now Death's current mount (time doesn't matter in the alternative reality in which Death resides).

Death had tried a skeletal horse, but that required him to stop often to wire the bits back on. He had also tried a fiery black horse, but that often stood in embarrassment with its bedding on fire. Death then acquired Binky, a flesh-and-blood real and biologically normal horse (no fire, etc). Like Death, Binky lives and works outside of time and does not age. He is very likely the most well-treated beast of burden in the whole of the Discworld."

This lady knew her stuff about horses but was hopeless on the entire Napoleonic Wars. Alas the NAM no longer has a "Vast Waterloo gallery". Her book was written many years ago.

the title tells you the message of the content. The quality of the content is truly awful.

This was one of the very early "Shock Horror; Secret of waterloo Finally Revealed" genre.

All myth, no facts. And as far as any real equestrian knowledge, especially as it relates to cavalry horses in actual battles, nope.

Glup!….

Amicalement
Armand

Osché : Les Chevaux de Batailles de Napoléon – is discussing this and much more, don`'t ignore French sources

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand