New Method of Horsemanship / Including the Breaking and Training of Horses, with Instructions for Obtaining a Good Seat.

by François Baucher

To the work, then, cavaliers! If you will follow my principles, I can promise you that your purse will be less often emptied into the hands of horse-dealers, and that you will render the meanest of your hacks agreeable. You will charm our breeders of horses, who will attribute to their efforts of regeneration that elegance and grace that your art alone could have given to your chargers.

Lowering the hand.—The lowering the hand consists in confirming the horse in all his lightness—that is, in making him preserve his equilibrium without the aid of the reins. The suppleness given to all parts of the horse, the just oppositions of hands and legs, lead him to keep himself in the best possible position. To find out exactly whether we are obtaining this result, we must have recourse to frequent lowering of the hand. It is done in this way: After having slipped the right hand to the buckle, and having assured yourself that the reins are even, you will let go of them with the left hand, and lower the right slowly to the pommel of the saddle. To do this regularly, the horse must neither increase nor diminish the speed of his pace, and his head and neck continue to preserve their proper position. The first few times that the horse is thus given up to himself, he will perhaps only take a few steps while keeping in position, and at the same rate of speed; the rider ought then to make his legs felt first, and the hand afterwards, to bring him into his previous position. The frequent repetition of this lowering of the hand, after a complete placing of the horse's head in a perpendicular position, will give him a most exquisite mouth, and the rider a still greater delicacy of touch. The means of guiding employed by the latter will immediately be answered by the horse, if his forces have been previously disposed in a perfectly harmonious state.

The lowerings of the hand ought to be practised first at a walk, then at a trot, afterwards at a gallop. This semblance of liberty gives such confidence to the horse that he gives up without knowing it; he becomes our submissive slave, while supposing that he is preserving an entire independence.

Of gathering the horse, or rassembler.—The preceding exercise will render easy to the rider that important part of horsemanship called rassembler. This has been a great deal talked about by people, as they have talked about Providence, and all the mysteries that are impenetrable to human perception. If it were allowable for us to compare small things to great, we might say that the more or less absurd theories that have been put forward upon the subject of divine power have not, fortunately, hindered in any way the unchangeable march of nature; but with regard to the progress of horsemanship, the case is not the same as to what has been said and written on the subject of the rassembler. The false principles propagated on this subject have made the horse the plaything and the victim of the rider's ignorance.

I proclaim it, the gathering a horse has never been understood or defined before me, for it cannot be perfectly executed without the regular application of the principles that I have developed for the first time. You will be convinced of this truth when you know that the rassembler demands:

1. The suppling, partial and general, of the neck and haunches.

2. The perfect position that results from this suppling.

3. The entire absorption of the forces of the horse by the rider.

Now, as the means of obtaining these different results have never been pointed out in any treatise on horsemanship, am I not justified in saying that the true rassembler has never been practised until now? It is, nevertheless, one of the indispensable conditions of the horse's education; consequently I think I am right in saying that before my method, horses of defective formation have never been properly broken.

How is the rassembler defined in the schools of horsemanship? You gather your horse by raising the hand and closing the legs. I ask, what good can this movement of the rider do upon an animal badly formed, contracted, and that remains under the influence of all the evil propensities of its nature? This mechanical support of the hands and legs, far from preparing the horse for obedience, will only make him redouble his means of resistance, since, while giving him notice that we are about to demand a movement on his part, we remain unable to dispose his forces in such a way as to force him to it.