Thanks for the many delightful pictures.
Now, let's talk horses. Not that I personally know much about these fourlegged critters, so if anyone has more to add, please do.
http://a.bimg.dk/node-images/82/7/1152x-u/7082216-dronningens-karettur.jpg
Let's start with this one. There are two mounted squadrons in the Guards Hussars Regiment. With some 40 sabres in each squadron. (Lances if it's lancers/uhlans, swords if it's cuirassiers).
Hussars are light cavalry, so the troopers were small men riding fast and nimble horses. Horses that were able to outmanouvre the heavier dragoons and lancers, not to mention the even heavier heavy dragoons and cuirassiers. Sometimes hussars rode mares, but otherwise cavalry horses were always stallions because they were bigger and more aggressive.
This being cavalry the trooper in the centre of the picture is not carrying a colour like in an infantry regiment but a guidon/estandart.
http://b.bimg.dk/node-images/82/7/2048x-u/7082217-dronningens-karettur.jpg
As you can tell the ordinary troppers and officers here ride dark horses, while the trompeters (buglars were used by the US cavalry) nearest in the picture ride light horses. The reason is simple: so that the officer could locate his signalman quickly in the confusion of battle.
It's no secret that the cavalry horses learn the trompeters signals faster and better than recruits (they've got bigger heads), which meant and still means that the horses react faster and more correctly than their silly riders.
http://b.bimg.dk/node-images/82/7/2048x-u/7082182-dronningens-karettur.jpg
The carriadge or whatever the correct words is, from 1840. It's not heated, so the Regent Couple were lucky we don't have any of the American cold!
It's drawn by white Kladraubers. White horses were rare and a sign of prestige beforehand. Apart from that this breed of horses are eminently suited because they are so very calm.
The most peculiar battle I think ever to take place in DK, took place in the early 1800's during the Napoleonic Wars. Where DK became a staunch allied of Napoleon and as such Spanish troops were deployed to DK. The tides of war changed and Spain became occupied by France and as such the Spanish troops weren't that pleased with their deployment. (It was bloody cold up here too)! At some point parts of a heavy Spanish cavalry regiment was evacuated out from DK onboard British ships but the horses had to be left on the beach.
It so happened that there were a number of mares behind an enclosure on a grasing nearby. That attracted the interest of the Spanish stallions! In fact they ended up fighting among themselves. But these were not civillian horses, but trained cavalry horses, so they lined up in lines of battle, by the squadrons, with the officers-horses in the lead and then they charged each other, kicking and biting.
Retreating, reforming and attacking again.
That went on for quite some time leaving a significant number of dead and wounded horses lying on the beach.
All this happened near the town of Nyborg on the island of Funen on 11th August 1808. The British admiral R.G. Keats left an account of this weird event.
ADDED: It wasn't just horses the Spaniards left behind here in DK.
This is a very sweet story from the village of Magleby on the charming island of Langeland.
Here in a parson's farm the wife of the priest found her kitchenmaid in tears. She was to have a child with one of the Spaniards billetted on the farm. The wife tried to console her maid, these things happen after all. - But the maid didn't cry because she was having a baby, she cired because she couldn't speak Spanish, so how was she later on to be able to understand what her child was saying?
H.C. Andersen, who must have been six-eight years at the time also encountered the exotic Spanish troops: "One day a Spanish soldier took me up on his arm and pressed my lips against a sliver-image he wore at his chest. I remember that made my mother very angry, because that was very Catholic, she said. But I liked the picture and the strange man who danced around with me, kissed me and cried. I think he had children of his own at home in Spain".
thank you Muhler
