“Arma proferri, jumenta produci, obsides dari jubet.”

     ["He commanded the arms to be produced, the horses brought out,
     hostages to be given.”—­De Bello Gall., vii.  II.]

The Grand Signior to this day suffers not a Christian or a Jew to keep a horse of his own throughout his empire.

Our ancestors, and especially at the time they had war with the English, in all their greatest engagements and pitched battles fought for the most part on foot, that they might have nothing but their own force, courage, and constancy to trust to in a quarrel of so great concern as life and honour.  You stake (whatever Chrysanthes in Xenophon says to the contrary) your valour and your fortune upon that of your horse; his wounds or death bring your person into the same danger; his fear or fury shall make you reputed rash or cowardly; if he have an ill mouth or will not answer to the spur, your honour must answer for it.  And, therefore, I do not think it strange that those battles were more firm and furious than those that are fought on horseback: 

               “Caedebant pariter, pariterque ruebant
          Victores victique; neque his fuga nota, neque illis.”

     ["They fought and fell pell-mell, victors and vanquished; nor was
     flight thought of by either.”—­AEneid, x. 756.]

Their battles were much better disputed.  Nowadays there are nothing but routs: 

          “Primus clamor atque impetus rem decernit.”

     ["The first shout and charge decides the business.”—­Livy, xxv. 41.]

And the means we choose to make use of in so great a hazard should be as much as possible at our own command:  wherefore I should advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort, and such of which we are able to give the best account.  A man may repose more confidence in a sword he holds in his hand than in a bullet he discharges out of a pistol, wherein there must be a concurrence of several circumstances to make it perform its office, the powder, the stone, and the wheel:  if any of which fail it endangers your fortune.  A man himself strikes much surer than the air can direct his blow: 

          “Et, quo ferre velint, permittere vulnera ventis
          Ensis habet vires; et gens quaecumque virorum est,
          Bella gerit gladiis.”

     ["And so where they choose to carry [the arrows], the winds allow
     the wounds; the sword has strength of arm:  and whatever nation of
     men there is, they wage war with swords.”—­Lucan, viii. 384.]