[Gordon Frye]

Lafayette;

Rather interesting website, though I have some questions about their scholarship... Still a worthy study, though, and well worth digging through.

A few years ago when I first got my present half-draft (1/2 Quarterhorse, 1/4 Belgian, 1/4 Percheron), I had him in a pasture with some other horses and a new horse was put out there too. I went out to get my horse, and couldn't tell the difference at any distance between mine and the new one. Finally, the difference in main and tail length and fullness told, since my boy wasn't quite as much of a "dandy". Gradually it became obvious who was who, as mine had a much finer face, but shorter tail and mane. I actually thought about trying to get this new fellow, since he was such a nice match for mine, until I discovered that this new horse was a Spanish-Norman, which the owners were asking $60,000 for. I paid a small fraction of that for mine, and he was, as far as anyone could tell, better trained and far more manageable. Quite a difference in price for two otherwise almost identical geldings.

Anyway, just an anecdote on how "breed" can be sort of arbitrary. In the Midaeval and Renaissance periods, they bred for charactaristics, and there weren't "breeds" per se, so it's hard to actually track down what the bloodlines may have been, and/or remain to this day.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Gordon Frye]

[Richard Fay]

Hello all!

[Richard Fay]

Hello again!

As I was perusing certain books in my library, I happened across an interesting viewpoint regarding the size of medieval and Renaissance warhorses from Christopher Gravett. In two of his Osprey books, he points out that surviving horse armour from the period would not fit a large draft horse.

Here's what he said in English Medieval Knight 1400-1500:

[Richard Fay]

Hello again!

Here's a link showing Henry VIII's armour for man and horse, as seen in the Opsrey book Tudor Knight (among other works):

http://tudorhistory.org/henry8/h8armour.jpg

Note the size of Henry's armour compared to the size of the horse armour. Henry was a big man, but the horse was no carthorse!

[Gordon Frye]

Richard;

Thanks for posting those numbers. They mesh pretty well with what ffoulkes had.

Cheers!

Gordon

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Stephen D. Sharp]

[Richard Fay]

Hello all!

Check out this armour for man and horse posted on this thread (thanks again, Manouchehr!):

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t...p;start=22

This seems to further support Christopher Gravett's argument for warhorses of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance being the size of a heavy hunter.
You must have had a horse that fit in the armour; common sense says that you would not have armour smaller than the horse it was designed to fit!

[Richard Fay]

Hello all!

The Metropolitan Museum of Art had some information about armour for man and horse on its site about its exhibition "The Armoured Horse in Europe, 1480-1620". Here's the information, incuding weight:

[Jared Smith]

Thanks Richard.

I had looked for armour weights and rough calculated in the neighborhood of 75 lbs (less than that in light gage steel, but some additional weight for the leather underneath.) Given mean weight and height of male warriors (archeologists state a fairly constant figure of about 5' 8", 175 pounds, actually better bone density and thicker legs in some periods for warriors than for modern men), something like 60 lbs for average armour, 40 lbs for tack, etc. I would say the Destrier would be carrying a little less than 400 lbs. This would be a pretty good match for a 1300 to 1400 lb horse which is heavier than most thoroughbreds or quarterhorses, but about right for a draft cross breed.