Hippotherapy

How were horses trained for battle during the middle ages?

Is it true that horses could attack enemy soldiers by biting and kicking? Were they trained to rescue their masters if they were wounded or fell down?

Public Comments

1. Middle Ages in Europe did not have fighting training for horses, not when they had to gallop with armour and armoured man on their back. Later, when the armour disappeared horses were taught war moves, which are now showed as spectacles by such school as the Spanish school of Vienna. All those moves are in fact war moves, back kick, rearing, cabriole... (see the links) to be done when the rider give the right signal to the horse. Horses are not intelligent and aggressive enough to go to the rescue of their riders, especially in the middle of a noisy scary fight. Without a rider to direct them horses listen to their instinct and run away. And a badly trained horse will not even listen to his rider and run away with his rider still on his back. That's called take the bit between his teeth. http://greybear.greydawnfarm.com:81/about/dressage/images/spanish_riding_school.jpg http://www.viennaticketonline.com/repository/images/hofreitschule2.jpg http://www.onlyhorsespictures.com/images/lipizzan/lipizzan.jpg
2. Horses are generally quite timid, so there is some form of training required to turn them into useful cavalry horses. It's probably akin to aversion therapy, either a horse fears the concequence from the rider of not going against it's instinct or the behaviour is so heavily programmed the horse is able to override it's instinct. In the event of being unseated, I doubt a horse would attempt a rescue of it's rider. They would attempt to get the hell out of the battle and as they are herd animals by nature they would all try and escape the same way. (Medieval battles are confusing enough for humans!)