Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Quill and Feather Pub [Public] => Topic started by: JRTomlin on July 23, 2019, 08:42:14 AM
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http://www.rideopenspaces.co.uk/the%20fairly%20big%20ride.htm
Interesting I thought. In medieval times people making long trips often changed horses which allows faster travel, but this is a pretty good idea about what making a long trip by horse is like.
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If I wasn't getting a malicious warning about that site, I'd visit it.
In keeping with your theme though, I read this book a few months ago:
(https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51H9MaFMpeL.jpg)
I think I read this book faster than any book in the last couple of years. I couldn't put it down and read it from cover to cover in a couple of nights.
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I clicked out of curiosity - and because I had a short horse trip question in a book once - and got completely pulled into their story. I had to think for a while just to remember how I got there in the first place. I love travel writing. They should write a book:) Thanks for sharing.
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Do any of you watch Modern History TV on youtube? He talks about life in medieval times and demonstrates everything he talks about. He also does a lot with horses.
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It's a pretty good series that dispels some myths although I'd quibble with a very few of his comments. He does dispel the idiotic myth that a knight would ride a destrier (the heaviest of warhorses) on a daily business. It would be like driving a tank to the grocery store.
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A while back I watch several episodes of Tales from the Green Valley, documenting life on a farm in, I think, the 1600s? I've always meant to go back and finish watching it.
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It's a pretty good series that dispels some myths although I'd quibble with a very few of his comments. He does dispel the idiotic myth that a knight would ride a destrier (the heaviest of warhorses) on a daily business. It would be like driving a tank to the grocery store.
Yes, I saw that one and it made me change what I was writing at the time. Makes sense, doesn't it.
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It is something people see in a book and don't really question, so they repeat it, but once you think about it you can see why it simply wouldn't be done. Besides any knight who could afford a destrier could afford a second horse (or more) for everyday purposes.
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If I had a tank, I'd drive it to the grocery store.
Possibly also through the aisles. These days, too many people can't be bothered to not block the aisles while they jibberjabber with their neighbor they probably see everyday when getting the mail. Pretty sure if they saw a tank heading their way, they'd move without a fuss.
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Fortunately, not everyone wants to squash all their neighbors. :eek:
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Fortunately, not everyone wants to squash all their neighbors. :eek:
You haven't met my neighbors. :hehe
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Fortunately, not everyone wants to squash all their neighbors. :eek:
You haven't met my neighbors. :hehe
That's okay, Dan. I'm with you. ;)
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Hope you two live in the same neighborhood and not mine. 😜
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If I had a tank, I'd drive it to the grocery store.
If I had a tank, I'd drive it everywhere. I'd take it through restaurant drive-thru windows, just like FPSRussia did back in the day.
I mean... it's a tank. Who wouldn't want a tank? I imagine driving one is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
The only question is how to paint it. I'm thinking black with flames curling up from the treads.
On the subject of horses, that's one of my weak spots as far as knowledge goes, and it's part of the reason I haven't tried writing fantasy yet. If/when I ever attempt it, I'll probably just have the characters walk as much as possible. Or maybe I'll invent a fantasy animal that serves the same purpose as a horse but behaves the way I want. Sanderson did something like that with his giant crabs.
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If I had a tank, I'd drive it to the grocery store.
If I had a tank, I'd drive it everywhere. I'd take it through restaurant drive-thru windows, just like FPSRussia did back in the day.
I mean... it's a tank. Who wouldn't want a tank? I imagine driving one is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
The only question is how to paint it. I'm thinking black with flames curling up from the treads.
On the subject of horses, that's one of my weak spots as far as knowledge goes, and it's part of the reason I haven't tried writing fantasy yet. If/when I ever attempt it, I'll probably just have the characters walk as much as possible. Or maybe I'll invent a fantasy animal that serves the same purpose as a horse but behaves the way I want. Sanderson did something like that with his giant crabs.
Really interesting thread - I had to wince earlier as in my current fantasy series I describe my MC's horse as a warhorse, but I had in mind something more like a Lipizzaner rather than a full-on heavy horse. Might need to make that clearer in book 2!
And on your last point, Jeff, I remember Lindsay Buroker commenting that one of the reasons she introduced train travel in her first series was to avoid all the long horse journeys, which I though was a neat work-around.
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Lipizzaner are probably closer to the warhorses that were actually used in Europe than the horse breeds many people might think were such as Shires or Clydesdales though.
I must admit I have never bothered to clarify that point in my novels, that people have misconceptions about the size of the horses (encouraged in part by fantasy authors such as GRR Martin). Sometimes, unless it is a point that affects the story, I figure it's a fight not worth making.
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The only question is how to paint it. I'm thinking black with flames curling up from the treads.
Not for me. I'd either leave it original, paint it black (no flames) or paint it Tron-style.
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The important thing to remember is that form follows function.
The ideal warhorse varied according to use.
Large men + full heavy suit of armour = large and heavy horses. But that period of history didn't last that long.
The heavy horses we have now - Percherons, Shires etc - are probably heavier than they were in mediaeval times. Farm work & pulling heavy wagons needed strength but not speed. Some of their ancestors would have been warhorses, but probably smaller and certainly lighter. Anyone who has ridden one knows you can get a gallop out of one, but not for long and longer distances at any sort of speed are definitely out. Good for one charge against infantry but not for crisscrossing a battlefield or destroying a fleeing enemy and not particularly useful for tournaments.
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Even the heavy warhorses were not nearly as heavy as many modern people think, not nearly as large and heavy as the heaviest modern horses.
As Dormouse said, they most definitely did not use Percherons and Shires or Clydesdales or horses similar to those. Those are workhorses, not suitable as warhorses. In fact, coursers were actually used more than the heavier destrier because they required less food and were faster. (Food for horses was an important issue not only from cost but also from the fact that on campaign far from home if you could not forage enough food your horses starved -- and believe me, it happened)
This is pretty good although he doesn't show what would have been a courser. He also clarifies some things such as that a palfrey was not a 'lady's horse' but an ordinary riding horse which anyone might ride.
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I had to do some research about long journeys on horseback, for my novel 'Rebel Liar' which is set in the American civil war.
I'm glad I did, because I discovered that the timetable in the story was impossible to achieve, horses couldn't be ridden that far without a rest, food and water.
As I recall, geldings, as opposed to stallions or mares, were the preferred 'model' of horse because they were less troublesome.
Stallions and mares tended to have love affairs, which got in the way of things.
How unreasonable of them.
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In my current WIP, I had intended to have one of my POV characters be a pony express rider. I've done a fair amount of research about the process the Central Overland California and Pike's Peak Express Company went through to set up the enterprise.
When you read stories about how the pony express managed to get a message from Missouri to California by horseback in as little as 10 days (1900 miles). That's 190 miles a day. The secret to success was that there were relay stations every 10 miles or so. The express rider would run a horse at a gallop for 10 miles or so before needing to change horses at the next relay station. Over the course of a single day, he might change horses 15-20 times.
Most of my research is 19th century military. IIRC, about 30 miles was about as hard as you can push a horse in a day under normal circumstances. But you'd still have to feed and care for the mount if you planned on doing the same thing the next day. The problem you run into is that cavalry could only travel as fast as their supply lines could. And in the days before railroads, you'd be hard-pressed to do very many 30 miles per day and still be able to feed your mounts the necessary food to sustain that kind of pace for very long.
One of my pet-peeves in historical fiction is that too many times writers forget about logistics. I remember reading a story where the writer had a rider traveling overland without supplies going 50 miles per day, with no remounts. I recall thinking, if the writer knew his stuff, the horse would have gone lame and the rider would have been SOL after a week or so.
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One of my pet-peeves in historical fiction is that too many times writers forget about logistics.
The tv show Game of Thrones got a lot of heat for that, too. Westeros is a continent, but the show had people practically teleporting from one end to the other at times. It was ridiculous.
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At the same time, saying that a horse can only travel thirty miles a day is a bit in the other direction. A well-conditioned, well-fed horse can travel more than that especially with an experienced rider who knows how to pace it.
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@ JRTomlin
I agree; I do think though that "well fed and well conditioned" are operative words, IMO. In the preindustrial era, you needed to either haul your feed with you or travel between places where you could obtain it to make much better speeds than that. I concede, riders, traveling between well-established points could easily travel 50-60 miles in a day, because feed was available along the way or at the destination. Alternately, if you can carry enough feed to keep a mount well fed, without unduly sacrificing a lot of weight, you can also travel much further than if you can't carry the feed or don't have it. Things change if you need to forage or graze, though.
It's not that different than how fast a pre-industrial army could march. The average daily march during the Napoleonic era, including the US Civil War was around 17 miles a day. There are always going to be exceptions. I recall one brigade/division that marched 50 miles in one day during the civil war, but that was very much an exception, and earned that unit the nickname of foot-cavalry. The major limiter of that time was an army could really only move as fast as their logistics train, which tended to be slow.
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The marching speed of those armies, however, generally included foot soldiers. When you are talking about cavalry only, it could be substantially more - but that was under optimal conditions. You are right that food both for horses and men was a major factor. If you had to forage, if you had no good quality food for your horses, if there was no water, all of those meant not moving fast. Or it meant losing so many horses that you could not move at all and that DID happen. It is why in medieval warfare, scorched earth strategies were often effective, because in a lengthy campaign not needing to forage at all was unlikely.
It was quite typical for Scottish hobelars who rode very light horses (not requiring the huge amounts of food required by destriers) and the soldiers living off little more than oat bannocks and a little dried meat to travel 60 miles a day. They ravaged much of northern England doing so.
That did not mean that most armies could do that. But it gets very difficult to give a rule about how fast horses or armies can travel because of the vast number of variables.