Friday, January 28, 2011

Training horses for war XVI century

Salve,
a quick but very telling image that speaks for itself

training horses for war during the Renaissance, when firearms became part of regular warfare, forcing riders to train their horses  against the equine's natural instincts to run away from fire, smoke, and loud and sudden noise.
ps
 my sketch of late XVI century reiter -with GIMP and Mypaint

5 comments:

Kadrinazi said...

Nice drawings - both :)

Anonymous said...

Piękny rysunek wczesnego rajtara Dario, bardzo mi się podoba, oj bardzo. Czy nie powinien mieć trochę większych obcasów? Sprawa druga zarost. Czy nie powinien mieć coś nosem ? ;-))
Pozdrawiam serdecznie Artur.

Artist - David Lemon said...

You just wonder how they did what they did.. Thanks for this entry. Very interesting. Good illustrations.

Dario T. W. said...

Gentlemen, thank you for your comments!

Michal, mille gracie

David,
this print shows what we often forget about early modern warfare - training of horses for warfare full of firearms, smoke, sudden deafening noises, and riders moving and doing things in big formations (herding up one could say). This is probably the first time in history we see huge horse losses during the battle due to wounds and trauma inflicted on the battlefield, slower moving cavalry regiments sustained heavier losses etc.

Artur,
masz racje co do wąsów - nie namalowałem jeszcze - także buty wciąż są do poprawy - serdecznie dziękuje za cenną uwagę :)

Gustavo Szwedowski de Korwin said...

Beautiful drawings, indeed! Interesting… if we make a comparison between these two drawings - (1) and (2) - the change from the half-armored rajtar (xvi cent) and the almost not-armored rajtar (xvii cent) means that firearms were widely improved in this time, so any kind of armor became obsolete.
(1) http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_C6_DXX4pkmQ/TUJ0xmC1N2I/AAAAAAAAAvc/Wic6wpFIwa4/s1600/IMG_2213a1+reitar.JPG
(2) http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_C6_DXX4pkmQ/TRMpeyA6RHI/AAAAAAAAAsA/QnPOH8BEXbo/s1600/chevallier1.jpg