Page:Horse shoes and horse shoeing.djvu/187

Rh they were also without shoes, and had only their bits. MM. Durrich and Menzel, in their interesting search at Oberflacht, found an almost complete equipment of a horse, but no shoes. . . . . . Thus nothing is more common than the bridle bit, and nothing so scarce as shoes.' It was the extreme rarity of these articles that led the Abbé to doubt Chifflet's reported discovery of one in the grave of Childeric. It would also appear that with the second or Carlovingian dynasty, shoeing, and indeed the value of cavalry, was still held in little esteem. The war with the Moors began during the reign of Charles Martel, but every engagement only showed the advantages of cavalry on the one side, and infantry on the other. This monarch would have gained a far more decisive battle at Tours, had the solidity of his infantry been supplemented by cavalry to crush the defeated and retreating Moors, who got away undisturbed; and though the world was saved from Mahommedanism, yet this equestrian people, by their courage and rapidity of movement, harassed the Franks long afterwards.

Charlemagne seems to have become aware of the necessity for mounted troops, and to have organized a large body of cavalry, to which he owed many of his victories. His army appears to have been extensively horsed from Spain, the successes of his lieutenants in that country, in their contentions with the Moors, giving them an opportunity for making captures. From this source