But in this discourse of horses and horsemanship, we are not to forget the pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol, a doctor of divinity, upon his mule, whom Monstrelet reports always to have ridden sideways through the streets of Paris like a woman.  He says also, elsewhere, that the Gascons had terrible horses, that would wheel in their full speed, which the French, Picards, Flemings, and Brabanters looked upon as a miracle, “having never seen the like before,” which are his very words.

Caesar, speaking of the Suabians:  “in the charges they make on horseback,” says he, “they often throw themselves off to fight on foot, having taught their horses not to stir in the meantime from the place, to which they presently run again upon occasion; and according to their custom, nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use saddles or pads, and they despise such as make use of those conveniences:  insomuch that, being but a very few in number, they fear not to attack a great many.”  That which I have formerly wondered at, to see a horse made to perform all his airs with a switch only and the reins upon his neck, was common with the Massilians, who rid their horses without saddle or bridle: 

          “Et gens, quae nudo residens Massylia dorso,
          Ora levi flectit, fraenorum nescia, virga.”

     ["The Massylians, mounted on the bare backs of their horses,
     bridleless, guide them by a mere switch.”—­Lucan, iv. 682.]

“Et Numidae infraeni cingunt.”

     ["The Numidians guiding their horses without bridles.” 
     —­AEneid, iv. 41.]

          “Equi sine fraenis, deformis ipse cursus,
          rigida cervice et extento capite currentium.”

     ["The career of a horse without a bridle is ungraceful; the neck
     extended stiff, and the nose thrust out.”—­Livy, xxxv.  II.]

King Alfonso,—­[Alfonso xi., king of Leon and Castile, died 1350.]—­ he who first instituted the Order of the Band or Scarf in Spain, amongst other rules of the order, gave them this, that they should never ride mule or mulet, upon penalty of a mark of silver; this I had lately out of Guevara’s Letters.  Whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles had another kind of opinion of them than I have.  The Courtier says, that till his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these creatures:  but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for the greatest dignity and grandeur.

Xenophon tells us, that the Assyrians were fain to keep their horses fettered in the stable, they were so fierce and vicious; and that it required so much time to loose and harness them, that to avoid any disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of surprise, they never sat down in their camp till it was first well fortified with ditches and ramparts.  His Cyrus, who was so great a master in all manner of horse service, kept his horses to their due work, and never suffered them to have anything to eat till first they had earned it by the sweat of some kind of exercise.  The Scythians when in the field and in scarcity of provisions used to let their horses blood, which they drank, and sustained themselves by that diet: