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HISTORY OF HUNGARIAN HORSES
By: Egon Kamarasy, HHAA Board Member and
Vice President of Foreign Affairs.
Ellen Walker - Editor
Horses have
played a great role in the history of Hungary, and the history
of the country vitally influenced the breeding and use of horses.
In the year 896 AD the seven Hungarian nomadic tribes crossed
the Carpathian mountain range from the east. Theirs was the last
move of the "great migration" which had begun in 400
AD. They arrived in the area which was to become Hungary (as it
was before the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 ceded two thirds of Hungary’s
territory). Sitting on horseback they elected Arpad to be the
leader of their tribal federation, and founded a dynasty.
Their oriental horses originated at the Mongolian plateau, north
of the Himalaya, and developed in the Ural-Altai plain. The area
between the Caspian Sea and the Kazakh Hills had and has noble
oriental horses, and while the Hungarians camped there, their
breed was influenced by these horses. By 750 AD the Hungarian
tribes were between the Don and the Dneper River, an area also
known for oriental horses.
The Hungarian horses were small, about 14 hands, but the people
were also much smaller than today. The horses were elegant, frugal,
and hardy and had great endurance. Each family had about eleven
horses. They provided transportation: men and boys rode, and the
women followed in horse-drawn carriages. The lactating mares were
milked and blood was drawn from geldings for human consumption.
Horsemeat was aged under the saddle. The same kinds of horses
were ridden in Europe by the Huns around 375 -450 and later by
the Tatars around 1240. The Schweiken, a similar oriental type
in East Prussia, was the foundation stock of the Trakehner breed.
After the Hungarians settled in 896 A.D. in Hungary, they kept
some of their nomadic habits: they plundered cities as far as
Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. Having no industry and little
agriculture, looting was an economic necessity.
Their way of fighting demanded great agility of horse and rider.
A small unit charged the lined-up defenders of the city, showering
them with arrows, then turning and "fleeing" towards
the main group. As the enemy followed them the Hungarian horsemen
were shooting backwards and as they reached the main force a hail
of arrows hit the enemy.
(You need two hands to shoot. The riders had to control their
mounts only with their legs and seat. I always wondered whether
such mounted archery is possible. In 2003 at a show in Babolna,
Hungary’s Lajos Kassai demonstrated that it is. Cantering,
his reins lying in front of him, he was shooting at standing and
moving targets everywhere around him. He never missed...)
In 955 Emperor Otto I and the Bishop of Augsburg and their allies
decisively defeated the Hungarians near the Lech River. They were
sent home with ears or noses cut off. That stopped the raiding
campaigns.
In 1001 Hungary became a Christian kingdom and German knights
coming with Queen Margarita brought in their big German horses,
but they had no influence on the general horse population.
By 1241 the Hungarians had learned farming and lost some of their
mounted warrior skills when the Tatars coming from Mongolia invaded
Hungary. The Tatars devastated the country but left in 1242, leaving
horses (and horse genes) behind, when the news of the death of
Batu Khan reached them.
By the fourteenth century Hungary bred and exported horses to
most European countries, particularly Italy. Hungary’s vast
stretches of rolling grasslands were ideal for livestock, and
influenced the development of endurance and soundness in the local
horses.
King Mathias (1458-- 1490) reorganized his “ black”
royal cavalry and occupied Vienna, Austria for a while.
In 1526 the Ottoman Turks invaded Hungary riding oriental horses,
which were coming via Arabic speaking regions and were called
Arabian or Turkish. The central part of Hungary was under Ottoman
occupation for 150 years. Transylvania, the eastern part of Hungary,
became semi-independent and allied to Turkey. Using imports from
Turkey the nobility developed their outstanding lines of light
horses. The designation Erdelyi, meaning Transylvanian, can frequently
be found in old pedigrees.
The seventeenth century found Europe at peace. The court and the
aristocrats were imitating western fashions and introduced Spanish
and Neapolitan stallions to breed bigger, more elegant riding
and coach horses. The Spanish imports of the time looked more
like Lipizzans or the Khladrub carriage horses than today’s
refined Andalusians or Lusitanos. The ruling class neglected the
breeding of the native horses, and the farmers were breeding small
horses because they were not drafted by the military.
By the middle of the eighteenth century Empress Maria Therezia,
the Queen of Hungary (1740-1780), realized that Hungary could
not supply enough horses for the imperial army and issued a number
of directives to remedy the situation: stallions from the imperial
stables gave free service to farmers, the army paid more for good
horses, mares were loaned to farmers to breed, and breeding by
hand was introduced.
By 1784 Joseph II Maria Therezia's son realized that these measures
were not sufficient and ordered Cuirassier Captain Joseph Czekonics
to establish a stud farm at the 16.000 ha royal estate in Mezöhegyes,
South East Hungary. In 1789 Babolna was founded, and in 1853 Kisber.
( For similar reasons the Austrians founded Lipizza 1580, Kladrub
1579, Radautz 1792, and Piber 1798, the Prussians founded Neustadt
Dosse and reorganized Trakehnen 1787, and the Hanoverian Celle
was founded in 1735.)
The Napoleonic Wars around 1800 and the Hungarian Revolution in
1848 had a negative influence on horses and breeding.
The 1867 "Compromise" gave Hungary an equal standing
in the Austrian Empire. The Imperial Stud Farms situated in Hungary
were turned over to the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, but
the Military Stud Farm Service continued to administer the stud
farms.
In the following we are giving a general overview of breeding
in Hungary from the establishment of these farms until 1943.
How a Chief Stallion was and is selected I discuss in the Kisber
section. His own successes in competition, the conformation of
his progeny, or the successes of his progeny could lead to his
promotion to Chief Stallion. Every year in fall there were drag
hunts organized by the Stud Service. Only stallions were ridden.
It was an important society affair. High-ranking officers, civil
servants and aristocrats were invited – you had to be a
good rider to participate. It also was an important way to test
endurance and manners of a stallion.
C.
G. Wrangel in 1898 published four volumes on "Breeding Horses
in Hungary" (Ungarns Pferdezucht in Wort und Bild, 1895 Stuttgard,
as quoted in Dr. Walter Hecker, A Babolnai Arab Menes, and paraphrased
by Egon Kamarasy). Here we find his report on evaluating all horses
in the state stud farms:
“Early
in June Francis Kozma of the Ministry of Agriculture invites
hyppologues to the yearly inspection. They start in Babolna,
then go to
Kisber, Mezohegyes end end up in Fogaras in Transylvania.
They start with three-year-old mares. They are led in groups
of six. A sergeant reads their breeding and history. They are
led at walk and trot, and then, let go free, are driven by the
Csikos in canter and full gallop. Mr. Kozma listens to his advisors,
notes are made in the stud book, and he decides: brood mare
or prepare her for the fall auction. Then two- and one- year-olds
are presented the same way. The weanlings only are not driven
by the cowboys. The young stallions are shown the same way and
those who are not of the demanded quality are castrated and
sold.
At a similar inspection in October Mr. Kozma decides the distribution
of stallions and the pairing of mares. The sale of stallions
to foreign countries is also decided here. In 1898 Japan was
one of several countries which bought stallions. They were shipped
from Trieste on the Mediterranean to Yokohama, Japan.
Babolna
has sent every year two mares to the Institute for the Training
of Military Riding Instructors. Here is an example of their
report. This report was entered in the Studbook and was read
at the inspections of # 148, the dam of Gazlan ( Gazal ), 59
Shagya X :
“From September 6 to November 20 1886 she has participated
in many fox hunts, some drag hunts and 5 Stag hunts. Has excellent,
fast canter, great endurance, jumps well. Excellent hunt horse.”
Each spring the mares were raced at the Babolna track, and only
the best were kept for breeding.”
Since 1867
the Ministry of Agriculture took over budget and breeding decisions,
but the administration of the farms and many day-to-day decisions
remained with the Army's Stud Service. This strange division of
power worked in exemplary fashion. Stud Service officers were
mostly from the nobility, and all had to be very good riders.
Most of them rode daily to inspect different outlying farms. One
story (from Dr. Frielinghaus) tells of a Lt. Kis who made a bet
he could ride to the second floor of the Babolna commander’s
office and descend without any trouble. He won the bet.
General Tibor von Petko Szandtner, a stud service officer, was
in the 1930s frequently the winner of pair and team (4-in-hand)
driving in Aachen and other competitions. (This tradition was
continued by Imre Abonyi, who from 1967 to 1973 was first in Aachen,
Apeldoorn, Windsor, and Hamburg driving competitions.)
All mares at stud farms were first ridden, and then driven in
pairs. The speed and condition on those drives were noted and
presented at the inspections described above. So were participation
in hunts, events, shows etc. All this gave the people selecting
brood mares and stallions more information than can be gathered
at a 100-day testing.
The Hungarian
breeding program was similar to the programs of other nations
at the time, as all were managed to serve army needs. The difference
was or is the original oriental horse the Hungarians brought from
the east, and supplemented with horses of Turkish and imported
Arab blood.
The similarity with Trakehnen comes to mind. However,
the other German breeders started with a draft or carriage horse
and used Thoroughbreds and Arabs on those heavy mares to produce
an army mount.
Note that German officers also used Hungarian horses for endurance
rides.
Hungary had and has some cold blooded horses owned
sometimes by German-speaking farmers. These horses are called
Murakozi after the river Mura near the Austrian border. Some Ardenne,
France and Belgian horses were imported to improve the breed.
The army had no use for them, and most Hungarian farmers wanted
a faster horse to drive from the village where they lived to the
fields they cultivated.
Thus the Hungarian-bred cavalry riding horses came
from lighter, hotter lines and were not classified as “warmbloods”
(a term which refers to a cross between heavy, draft-type “coldbloods”
and the Thoroughbred, Turkish, or Arabian “hotbloods”).
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