Napoleon and his Cuirassiers: Napoleonic Cavalry in Action (NAP0107)

Napoleonic cavalry: the emperor sits still while it moves

Everything in this plate is moving except the man in the middle of it. The cuirassiers are going past at speed — swords up, the trumpeter sounding, the eagle held above the crowd — and Napoleon sits a white horse in the grey overcoat, watching them go. He is not leading this charge. He has just sent it.

The reserve cavalry was a French idea

Other armies parcelled their horsemen out among the infantry and used them a regiment at a time. The French took the heavy regiments away from the corps and grouped them into a Reserve Cavalry, held in one hand and committed as a single mass at the moment the army chose. It is the reason a Napoleonic battle can turn in twenty minutes: somewhere behind the line there are several thousand horsemen who have not been spent yet.

Heavy, line and light: three jobs, not three names

Cuirassiers and carabiniers existed to break something already shaken. Dragoons were the general-purpose middle, trained to fight on foot as well as mounted. Hussars and chasseurs à cheval did the work that never gets painted — screening the army, cutting couriers, finding the enemy and denying him sleep. An army that lost its light cavalry went blind long before it lost a battle.

Where the commander actually stood

The emperor commanded from a fixed point, usually a rise with a view, and worked by sending aides out and reading what came back. Charging was somebody else’s trade — Murat’s above all, and a marshal at the head of eighty squadrons is a different picture entirely. A commander who joins a charge can see about thirty metres of it and can no longer command anything at all. Sitting still is the harder discipline, and it is the job.

Being recognisable is also being a target

The grey overcoat and the plain hat were a deliberate choice: among staff officers loaded with gold lace, the one man dressed like nobody else can be found instantly by his own army. The cost is symmetrical — he can be found just as easily from the other side. He was hit in the foot by a spent ball at Ratisbon in 1809 and is recorded as having lost horses under him more than once. The composure in this plate is a working method, not a pose.

Marengo, Vizir and the grey horses

The white horse is not artistic licence. Napoleon rode small grey Arabs almost exclusively — Marengo and Vizir are the two names that survived — and they were chosen less for their looks than for their nerve. A horse that will stand still under artillery fire is worth more to a commander than a fast one, and they were schooled to it on purpose. A general whose horse will not stand cannot use his own eyes.