Article | A Turkish Horse, a Masurian Peasant

In Polish military history there were cavalrymen called 'elear'/elier/eliar [Polish, singular] and a dictionary of Polish Language (1807 edition) by Samuel Linde, in volume I on page 617, there is the following explanation of what an 'elear' meant: ''Elear - 'elier,' 'halier,' 'harcownik' (skirmisher), soldier who proceed an army before the battle, soldier sent forward to give the enemy a quarrel [fight]. From Latin - eligere." Then he quoted - " Eliers or haliers the best cavalry[men] were called, chosen from the entire army; who to cause the sensation of fear [amongst the enemy] while as a sign of better understanding [between themselves] with red ''binda'' or ''nałęcza'' (scarf) their chests diagonally girdled." 

 Another scholar Marian Czapski, working in the second half of XIX century, in his work titled ''Historya Konia'' (The History of Horse) talks about the elears in volume II, drawing the name from a Hungarian word 'elore' that was to meant 'forward' thus perhaps this was a type of a skirmisher?

During the Rokosz Zebrzydowskiego (in 1607) at the battle of Guzów the bravest soldiers were called elears and grouped together so when they charged the royal lines and penetrated them deeply, and one famous horseman amongst thus grouped elears of Janusz Radziwiłł (anti-royal camp) named Hołownia went as far as the royal tent shouting ''Where is the Swede" (the King was of Swedish origin) and there he paid the highest price for his daring and 'laesa maiestas' by being killed. Amongst the modern scholars, Richard Brzeziński, in his groundbreaking work ('Polish Winged Hussar 1576-1775') in addition to discussing the elears in winged hussars' companies, provides two images from van Booth's 'Journael van de Legatie' (Amsterdam 1632) - an engraved drawing and a black-white watercolour (one day I will turn to it in order to do some drawings etc). 

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"Since ancient times, man has ridden horses. Ancient Greeks and Romans, who did so mostly for utilitarian purposes, also found that horse riding was the source of rider’s health, recommending equestrianism to men and women of different ages as an exercise that helped preserve a healthy body. Poles, a nation whose history was always linked in a rather exceptional way with horses and horsemanship, realized quite early, at the beginning of the 17th century, that horse riding offered a variety of applications and could be used as a tool to improve human fitness and physical condition. Views of Polish hippologists such as Krzysztof Moniwid Dorohostajski and Marian Hutten Czapski on health-related benefits of equestrianism gained popularity not only in Poland but also abroad. At the beginning of the 20th century, their opinions were endorsed by a Polish doctor, Władysław Hojnacki, who campaigned for horse riding to be used as therapy. After WW2, a distinguished Polish orthopedist and physiotherapist, Professor Marian Weiss introduced an innovative hippotherapeutic program at the Medical Center for Rehabilitation of the Locomotive Organs in Konstancin near Warsaw, finding many followers who helped hippotherapy to develop. Research confirmed that horse riding was indeed an effective form of therapy and this soon led to the establishment of the Polish Hippotherapeutic Society, organization of conferences and seminars providing a platform where views and research results could be exchanged, and starting a number of equestrian facilities across the country that popularized hippotherapy in Poland." 

POLISH CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIEWS ON HORSE RIDING AS A FORM OF THERAPY – A BRIEF HISTORICAL RETROSPECTION 

Renata Urban University of Szczecin, Faculty of Physical Culture and Health Promotion, Poland

Mavi Boncuk |

A Turkish Horse, a Masurian PeasantJacek Kobus

Lithograph form K.M. Dorohostajski's: Hippika, 17th century; The National Library

A fondness for Turkish horses among the Polish Sarmatians is confirmed by a whole bunch of sayings, proverbs, maxims, popular at that time as a sort of collection of wisdom. There were also many printed collections of such words of wisdom which, in the second half of the 19th century, were catalogued with respect to horses by the creator of Polish hippology, Count Marian Czapski[1], who used them frequently in his epochal work “The General History of the Horse”, published for the first time in Poznan in 1874.

Poles then used to say so gleeful as if he was mounted on a Turkish horse – and, on the other hand (about someone whose enthusiasm suddenly dropped): sad as if he was dismounted from a Turkish horse.

Because:

A Turkish foal

A German foxhound pup }        are the best to breed

A noble child

While:

A Turkish horse

A Masurian peasant  }        are the best

A Hungarian cap

A Hungarian sabre

Utmost efforts were made to acquire such horses. As tradition says, that happened mainly at  war, starting from Jan Olbracht’s times when the Turkmen tribes of Anatolia in the Sultan’s service, who reportedly participated in the Turkish-Tatar-Moldovan invasion in Podolia in 1498, and a sudden frost attack caused many invaders to surrender, together with their horses.

Jan III was also said to give a sigh on the Turks before setting off to Vienna: I wish to find them there – and it will be easy to have Turkish horses in Poland!

Indeed, among the spoils of Vienna there were many horses (although the majority of the Turkish cavarly fled – and rather not on foot...). Czapski mentions first of all the Silistran Basha’s mare (...) of extremely noble blood, of white colour and of incredible bravery which went to the hetman’s (Jabłonowski) hands and for many years supplied him with her excellent offspring.

The stallion Byerley Turk, captured at the surrender of Buda in 1686 by an Englishman in the imperial service, Captain Robert Byerley, was one of the three “fathers founders” of the most numerous and most important horse breeds in the world nowadays – thoroughbreds.

However, tradition seems to overestimate the importance of this kind of loot. To start with, the horse trade flourished between the Ottoman Empire and the Commonwealth for many centuries. As early as in the early 16th century there were agents-traders who regularly travelled to Istanbul and other cities of the Empire to choose the best horses for the wealthy clients from Poland. Those brave people had many adventures, and quite a few perished. But it was worth it because:

A filly, a bee, wheat

Pull a  nobleman out of debt.

SEE MORE POLISH OTTOMAN ARTICLES  HERE

Marian Hutten-Czapski (1816–1875)

The History of the Horse. After the author's death translated from Polish into German by Ludwig Koenigk and ed. by Bogdan Graf von Hutten-Czapski. (Unchanged reprographic reprint of the Berlin 1876 edition).

[1] Marian Hutten-Czapski[*] (1816–1875), Naturalist, biologist and lawyer, Russian Imperial Chamberlian, Author of " Historya Konia | the History of the Horse | Die Geschichte des Pferdes ", Poznań, 1874, participant of January uprising of 1863.

[*] Hutten-Czapski (feminine: Hutten-Czapska) or Graf von Hutten-Czapski or simply Czapscy, or Czapski, are an old Polish aristocratic family from Pomerania. Some branches were given the title of Count. Members of the family have contributed to Poland's political, cultural and military history. Some members of the family were first recorded serving as Prussian Baltic knights, their allegiance was to Poland.