Cavalry Action in the American Revolution

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by JV Puleo
Gentlemen,
When Rocanmbeau's army landed at Newport, Rhode Island they brought no horses with them because the French navy had been completely unable to provide the necessary transport. In fact, about a third of the troops committed to the expedition had to be left behind. The one horse unit included was Lauzon's Legion which included about 400 mounted men. While they were in Rhode Island it was necessary to purchase all the horses for this unit as well as for the staff and mounted officers and for the artillery transport. Some wagon transport was locally hired, horses with wagons and drivers but it would appear that this is just in keeping with conventional practice at the time.
I've never thought of Rhode Island as a center for horse breeding but somehow it seems to me a great many horses had to be found somewhere.
Several of the officers who left memoirs remark on the good quality of the local horses and comparing them to those of Normandy. Just as remarkably, there don't seem to be any complaints that the horses they were forced to buy were inferior although Lauzon did complain bitterly that his unit had to be billeted in nearby Lebanon, Connecticut because there was an extreme shortage of fodder on the Island where the main army was camped. In fact, since he was moved to Connecticut rather early in the period the French were here, they must have already acquired mounts otherwise why would fodder be an issue.
Since I've learned this I've been wondering where they all came from. This army included about 5000 men in 4 regular regiments with both a field artillery train and a battering train (which isn't important here because it was moved by sea to Yorktown) Add to this that the French army was extremely top heavy with officers and that most were nobels it would seem that something in the order of 1000 horses (that is an outright guess on my part) must have been needed and it seems remarkable that there could be that many available.
Were it not for the questions these events raise in my mind I would agree with the comments above. To my knowledge, and I've lived here my whole life, there is no local tradition of extensive horse breeding and yet they had to come from somewhere.
I do plan to get into the records held by the RI historical society as part of my research on the subject of the French Army in RI this winter so if I ever get an answer I'll be glad to share it.
Joe Puleo

Wow, that is surprising. I would not have guess that it would have been possible to find so many horses locally at that time.

I'd like to hear more about the horses to the extent the officers described them. The reference to them comparing favorably to horses in Normandy is interesting, in that some have suggested that the ancestor to the Morgan and Canadian horses is the Norman horse. Of course, that doesn't mean the officers meant the Norman horse, as opposed to other horses in Normandy, and the connection between the Norman horse and the Morgan hasn't been proven, in so far as I know. Still, if the Morgan developed from a horse common to that region, that being the Canadian, it does sort of make you wonder.

Pat

[selewis]

I've never thought of Rhode Island as a center for horse breeding but somehow it seems to me a great many horses had to be found somewhere.

JV; I don't know if this pertains but what about the 'gansett Pacer?
S

[JV Puleo]

SE
Good point. I'd forgotten all about that but early in the twentieth century there were two well know race tracks. Narragansett and Lincoln.
I would generally have associated the pacers with the 19th century "society" that made Newport its summer home but perhaps there is an older tradition.
Lincoln is very near my parents house and I used to curse the traffic every time the horses were running. Now they have dogs and slot machines and I wish the horses were back.
Still, we're talking 18th century. I can't imagine that the local farms would have needed great numbers of horses. I have a friend who worked on a local dairy farm until he went into the army in WWII. They never had a tractor but kept 50 registered Ayshires and farmed 150 acres with a matched pair of Belgians.
I will try to find some exact quotes in my sources and post them. Still, equipping an army of 5000 men must have taken a prodigious effort and yet there is pratically no mention in any of the published accounts as to how it was done.
J Puleo

[JV Puleo]

Pat,
This is from the journal of Baron vonClosen. vonClosen was an officer of the Royal Deux Ponts and an aid to Rochambeau, partly because of family connections but also because he could speak English:
"As for the horses, those I have seen up to now seem to be rather good, but not extraordinary, except that they jump easily both high and wide barriers. We will see in the following pages the use that can be made of them. In any case, we had to pay dearly for them. Those in New England in no way resemble those of the English breed; their ordinary gait is the amble."
I'm sure there is more to come from vonClosen and I have something like 14 first person accounts I can review. I have read all of them at one time or another and can't remember anything special said about the horses. I don't think Lauzun even has much to say and he commanded the Hussars.
I'll keep looking
Joe Puleo

[Pat Holscher]

How interesting.

Joe, Sandy refers to an extinct breed of horse, the Narragansett Pacer, which did indeed come out of Rhode Island. It is frequently listed as an influence upon some later breeds, such as the Saddlebred and the Tennessee Walker. It was a gaited horse, as the name would imply.

This brings up a couple of interesting things. One is what was the condition in 18th Century Rhode Island that gave rise to this breed? Most horses of this type were bred for an individual who needed, or at least wanted, to cover a lot of ground fairly quickly.

Secondly, the Narragansett Pacer is always mentioned in connection with the Saddlebred and the Tennessee Walker, and I believe may also have been the predacessor to certain other gaited breeds, not all of which may still be around. Anyhow, that fact would show a fairly early commerce in certain types of horses. Apparently southern planters liked what they saw in a Rhode Island horse, and used them to develope other breeds, which would mean that some horses from Rhode Island were making it to the upper South.

Secondly, I cannot help but note the reference in the item by Baron VonClosen that ". . .their ordinary gait is the amble". This would suggest, at least to me, that the Baron was noting the horses locally were pacers. Interesting, if that is correct, as it would show, I suppose, that pacers were fairly common in Rhode Island at the time he made his comment.

Pat

[JV Puleo]

Very interesting gentlemen. Its easy to learn something new every day here.
By the middle of the 18th century Newport had already acquired a name for itself as a summer retreat for the wealthy. Many they came from New York but there was also an annual influx from the south. There was also a considerable coasting trade heading for the French west indies in pursuit for mollasses to be made into rum. In 1780 RI had about 35 commercial rum distilleries around Narragansett bay. Seems there would have been plenty of interaction with the south from at least 1750 on, if not earlier.
The Duc de Lauzun, who commanded the French cavalry, makes no mention at all of how his horses were acquired but he does write "I returned once more to Lebanon, where M. de Rochambeau ordered me to assemble a great number of horses suited for artillery, and to make all preparations for the advance of the army."
Lebanon is in Connecticut, in an area that is still quite rural and these orders must appear to have been given after the plan of the Yorktown campaign had been agreed upon. The implicaton is still that there must have been sufficient horses available to put off acquiring them until nearly the last minute. Of course the French army was paying in silver coin in a place where there was very little spechie and a lot of nearly worthless continental paper money. There is even a street in Lebanon to this day called "Silver Lane" because the French military treasury was located there. There still had to be a lot of horses about, but, of those that could be bought, I'd guess that the French got the best.
Joe Puleo

[Kevin Fox]

This is all very interesting! I am intrigued that Lauzun was, on order from Rochambeau, very near to the start of the Yorktown Campaign, able to purchase hundreds of horses from a single area in Connecticut-Rhode Island. Certainly the ability of the French to pay in hard silver specie may have encouraged horses to be summoned up from - shall we say? - places of security, where paper money requisitioners might have had no access.

It is intriguing that there simply were that many suitable horses available. The French take on their quality seems to have "good, but not great, & they can jump." So, it appears we are not talking about dregs culled from the highways & hedges.

Earlier in the thread, Paul & others have said, essentially, there were no large cavalry formations because there just weren't enough suitable horses. That sounds like a very plausible argument to me, and it is one that I would probably accept rather uncritically.

Yet, these French documents begin to suggest otherwise. A large number of horses could be procured - not all riding horses, I am sure, but satisfactory horses for a variety of military purposes. Have we made assumptions? In the past, scholars did about the landscape. Too wooded, they said, but it turns out to have likely been more open. Now there is a prevailing, received wisdom: too few available horses. But will that hold up to documentary analysis?

I have been burned many times by historical assumptions. Once again, there appears to be a rich mine here for Pat's prospective graduate student.

Does anyone know if there is any sort of available Colonial-period horse census? I feel certain - assumption again - that there isn't, but are there some sorts of parish reports or registry of wills documents that would enable us to say that, in 1775, in XYZtown, Connecticut, there appear to have been X number of saddle horses. Then, we have Rochambeau's evidence on how many horses a certain number of towns in his army's "drawing area" could provide. Extrapolation is fraught with perild, too, but it is a few furlongs ahead of assumptions & conventional wisdom.

My question, really, is: "Do we have some handle on the Colonial horse population, or are we winging it?"

[JV Puleo]

Gentlemen,
You can see why I find the question so interesting. Especially because so little seems to be said about it in the few published sources we have. I'm hoping that there are some answers in materials that, so far, haven't been published as I have always accepted the idea that there was a shortage of cavalry horses. What other purposes would a horse suitable for mounted service have been put to? The farm horses I'm slightly familiar with were huge, Belgians and Percherons (sp?) but did these exist in 1780 in New England? It seems hard to imagine that there could have been such extensive breeding and supply and there be very little echo of that in local folklore.
All we can really be sure of is that there must be an answer somewhere!
Also . . . the problem of wagon transport was approached by hiring men complete with their own teams and wagons and we can assume a number of these were ox drawn. I suppose it is possible that some of the field artillery was also drawn by oxen but, so far, I've found no reference to this. Hiring civilian transport was the conventional 18th century method of moving troops so nothing about this suggests a shortage of horses.
Joe Puleo

[selewis]

Have done a little bit of skimming and found very little in my own small collection about Rhode Island or the pacer. Pers Crowell's 'Cavalcade of American Horses' has a bit on the Narragansett horse in the section on the American Saddler, which doesn't add much to what has already been mentioned here by Pat. Also Hiram Woodruff mentions them in 'The Trotting Horse of America', likening to the breed some once well known trotters that had a tendency to pace. Writing in the 1860's he assumes that the reader is familiar with the type. Did some googling though and found a short but interesting paragraph about Rhode Island as a leading producer of horses in the colonial period, which is worth looking at considering the source (The Int'l Museum of the Horse in Kentucky) and especially as it bears on Joe Puleo's particular interest:
http://www.imh.org/imh/kyhpl3a.html
Sandy
PS: Woodruff has some interesting comments about pacey horses in general which I will provide if there is an interest.

[JV Puleo]

Wow! I read the material on the link above. I Have never even heard abut RI as the colonial horse breeding center. If the information is accurate, and I can't see why it wouldn't be, it answers all my questions . . . even that of why the horse supply problem elicits so few comments. People don't generally comment on something that is widely accepted and popularly known. They simply assume everyone else knows. Thanks
Joe Puleo

[Joseph Sullivan]

Poking around on the web and elsewhere. I find lists of names from various states of men who served in companies or troops of horse. For example, there was certainly Philadelphia, but also Nixon's troop in New Jersey, and references to others. I havn't the time right now to do any real research, but if we look just at what is on this page, we begin to see that there was a great deal more mounted action thatn we at first thought.

Joe

[Joseph Sullivan]

The 1914 edition of THE RASP (yearbook of the Monted Service School at Ft. Riley) has this to say about early American horses:

P 80: "The first importation of horses to the Colonies occurred in 1635 when two ships from Holland arrived at Salem with three stallions and twenty-seven mares. About the same period other Dutch ships arrived at New Amsterdam...in the cargoes of which were a number of horses." [around the same time] the English...in Virginia and New England, and the Sweded and Finns on the banks of the Deleware [brought in]...a large number of pacing stallions and mares."

"...in 1748 several of the colonies passed laws prohibiting trotting or pacing races, [so] the conclusion is warranted thatsuch racing had become so common and extensive as to amount to a nuisance."

P 87:

"The Narragenset Pacer of New England, particularly Rhode Island, was the first distinctive breed of pacers in the country--that we know for a certainty-- but from what stock they eminated we cannot tell.'

"The prominance given the Narragenset pacers of Rhode Island was largely dut to the fact that the colony was settled by refugees who could not stand the religious intolerance of the other New England colonies. In other words, they were liberal minded people, loving sport, and as a consequence raced their horses in contests for prizes, thus tending to develop the breed and put the so-called Narragansets upon a highe scale than the horses of the other colonists."

Joe

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by selewis
Have done a little bit of skimming and found very little in my own small collection about Rhode Island or the pacer. Pers Crowell's 'Cavalcade of American Horses' has a bit on the Narragansett horse in the section on the American Saddler, which doesn't add much to what has already been mentioned here by Pat. Also Hiram Woodruff mentions them in 'The Trotting Horse of America', likening to the breed some once well known trotters that had a tendency to pace. Writing in the 1860's he assumes that the reader is familiar with the type. Did some googling though and found a short but interesting paragraph about Rhode Island as a leading producer of horses in the colonial period, which is worth looking at considering the source (The Int'l Museum of the Horse in Kentucky) and especially as it bears on Joe Puleo's particular interest:
http://www.imh.org/imh/kyhpl3a.html
Sandy
PS: Woodruff has some interesting comments about pacey horses in general which I will provide if there is an interest.

From the linked article:

In 1715, Maryland enacted a law that any old stray horses could be shot on sight. In the later 1700s, there was more than a sufficient number of horses and, in fact, the colonies were being overrun by strays who were not in regular use.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

All this material seems to suggest that horses were in more common supply than normally supposed. The International Museum of the Horse article mentions branding being required and a surplus of some sort of horses. We see from that article that horse breeding, and racing, was popular early. From Joe P's article we see that the French were able to purchase quite a few riding horses in Rhode Island. And we have to assume that draft horses, which would have been used together with oxen for farms, were at least somewhat common.

With all this combined, it would seem to suggest the lack of cavalry is explained by something else rather than a lack of horses. An unwillingness to sell for the rate the Continental Army could pay? A lack of adequate forage for an army in the field? Or perhaps the tactics of the day? Or are we just mmissing something?

Pat

[Joseph Sullivan]

Can't claim to know, either, Pat -- HOWEVER, as mentioned above, there are numerous mentions of horse troops in the records and literature, and there was Light Horse Harry Lee. Without real foundation, mind you, I am beginning to suspect that horse was pretty commonly used. However, it may not have been used in true European cavalry fashion. We never did much with real cavalry, as you know, even in the 19th century, our mounted troops behaved dragooinshly regardless of the cavalry title. I suspect that horse troops were probably used for scouting, screening, and as adjunct to larger infantry actions throughout the Revolution.

Another reason for the lack of more traditional cavalry action and engagements could have been training time. Our armies were begum mostly from scratch--true unorganized militia--and had limited terms of service. Our infantry were initially highly irregular. It took a huge effort to get a semblance of order. The task would have been harder with cavalry. So despite access to horses, and the existence of mounted troops, it might have been indefeasible to mount organized cavalry actions that required maneuvers.

So far conjecture takes me. What think the rest of you learned folk?

Joe

[Pat Holscher]

Originally posted by Joseph Sullivan
Can't claim to know, either, Pat -- HOWEVER, as mentioned above, there are numerous mentions of horse troops in the records and literature, and there was Light Horse Harry Lee. Without rreal foundation, mind you, I am beginning to suspect that horse was pretty commonly used. However, it may not have been used in true European cavalry fashion. We never did much with real cavalry, as you know, even in the 19th century, our mounted troops behaved dragooinshly regardless of the cavalry title. I suspect that horse troops were probably used for scouting, screening, and as adjunct to larger infantry actions throughout the Revolution.

Another reason for the lack of more traditional cavalry action and engagements could have been training time. Our armies were begum mostly from scratch--true unorganized militia--and had limited terms of service. Our infantry were initially highly irregular. It took a huge effort to get a semblance of order. The task would have been harder with cavalry. So despite access to horses, and the existence of mounted troops, it might have been infeasible to mount organized cavalry actions that required maneuvers.

So far conjecture takes me. What think the rest of you learned folk?

Joe

Excellent points. Indeed, our infantry was not very good until imported European advisers helped train them. And there was a Polish adviser who came over who gave instruction on cavalry, although I've forgotten his name. Perhaps that helps explain it.

And I'll also be curious as to what other folks have dug up.

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

The Polish advisors name was Casimir Pulaski. A brief item, which I suspect is somewhat inaccurate, on this Polish Count:

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/www ... skidef.htm

Pat

[Pat Holscher]

More on Pulaski:

http://www.chipublib.org/003cpl/pulaskibiog.html

From the way this reads, it sounds as if Pulaski was frustrated in his efforts to gain acceptance as to his view as to how cavalry should be used, or even as to how it should be organized.

Pat

[Kevin Fox]

Dear Pat,

Pulaski's repeated failures to get Americans to accept his idea of a separate cavalry arm, with cavalry used in mass on the battlefield, very much touches on what you & Joe are now discussing.

As Joe said, perhaps it was not the "received wisdom" of too few horses, or perhaps even of logistic difficulties that accounted for small unit only cavalry action. Perhaps it was that Americans were committed to the "dragoon tactical model" or perhaps, more correctly, to the "mounted infantry tactical model." It was only with difficulty that an "hussar model" arose in the South with William Washington, Light Horse Harry Lee, etc., and a "heavy cavalry" (Europeans would probably have said a "medium cavalry" model) never arose.

Notice the fate of Pulaski at Savannah. Like all European cavalrymen in the 1770's, he had been deeply influenced by the Prussian heavy cavalryman, Seydlitz, who is insufficiently appreciated today. It could be argued that Seydlitz developed & perfected the mixed force "legion" model in the final campaigns of the Sevcen Years War, where he commanded against the French on the Rhine-Hannover front. Seydlitz had been known - successfully - to attack prepared positions with cavalry. Sometimes he was successful (e.g. Zorndorf); sometimes he was spectacularly unsuccessful (e.g. Kunersdorf). Indeed, after Kunersdorf, he left entrenched artillery alone!

Yet, the "Seydlitz legend" was very much a part of the East European cavalry tradition (of which Pulaski and brther Poles were part) in the 1760's & 1770's. Indeed, the final phases of Borodino in 1812 can really be seen as a reversion to Seydlitz-style heavy shock tactics. It worked (in a Pyrrhic sort of way) at Borodino, and, so, it was tried again at Waterloo (against less well-prepared defenses), but unsuccessfully. Indeed, there are paintings of Austrian cavalry charging - successfully - skimpy Russian trenches on the Eastern Front in 1915. This tradition stuck around a long time.

At Savannah in 1779, however, it got Pulaski killed. I think that is what most Americans in the 1770's thought would come of cavalry units (however large) flung against big infantry or artillery units, with or without field fortifications. Hence, there were no takers on Pulaski's desire for a "cavalry arm."

In passing, the British commander at Savannah - General Prevost? - was one of their very best officers of the War, one who is quite unsung today.

Godspeed!

Kevin +

[Pat Holscher]

Board of War to George Washington, Aug 19, 1777.

Sir War Office Augt l9th. 1777 There are about 80 Men with Officers for three Troops of Horse of thirty Men each now at Philadelphia. They came from North Carolina with General Nash's Brigade & have been here for a considerable Time their Horses being sold as they were unfit for Service & the Board were so embarrass'd with the high Price of Horses & other Necessaries for sending them into the Field that they had determined to order them back to N. Carolina. They were induced to do this too from the Men having refused to enlist during the War & they have only from 12 to 18 Months to serve. But it has been represented that they are all Americans & therefore the more to be depended upon & that many of the Regiments of Cavalry either from the Misbehaviour of the Men or Accidents have many Horses more than Men. The Board have therefore thought it best to represent the Matter to your Excellency for your Opinion upon it & desire to know how these Men could be employed & mounted. It seems they object to being drafted into the Regiments without their Officers but are willing to be annexed with them to any Regiment of Horse. Col Baylors would be most agreeable to them & it is said he has Horses & cannot get Men equal to the Number of Horses. The Board would be happy to receive a speedy Answer as the Business has been too long delayed & the Men are kept here at a great Expence.(1)
I have the Honour to be, your very obed Servt,
Richard Peters Secy.

From the Law Library of Congress.

Pat