Riding to Arms: A History of Horsemanship and Mounted Warfare
ResearchArticle (authored, reviewed) EnglishCharles Caramello
This book examines the evolution of horsemanship—the training of horses and riders—and its relationship over four centuries to the evolution of mounted warfare.
It details how major writers on horsemanship and its military application came to advocate for formal “school” dressage together with outdoor hunt riding as the ideal preparation for cavalry horses and riders. Tracking that history through scores of works ranging from Federico Grisone’s Rules of Riding (1550) to E.G. French’s Good-Bye to Boot and Saddle (1951), Riding to Arms offers both a history of horsemen, horse soldiers, and warhorses and a study of the seminal books that shaped that history.
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