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"The two D'Abzac were dead. When the Vicomte died, the Premier Ecuyer of Charles X had to write: '...the service of the Manège, where Monsieur d'Aure is currently the only man of true talent ...'.
"And the talent of Comte d'Aure himself was thin, as far as the haute école was concerned. General L'Hotte recognizes this without beating around the bush."
... "So, d'Aure, an eminent improvisor, campaign school rider and trainer without equal, 'the only man of true talent' at the entire School of Versailles, possessed only modest skills in haute école, and it has to be admitted that his competence in the matter remained fairly limited. (footnote: It also has to be pointed out that in his very lively attacks against the new method, d'Aure wisely refrained from criticizing Baucher's talents in the execution and the artistic value of his work. He only contested the absolute value of the method for the use of the campaign school horse.).
"The Maîtres de Manège at Paris and their Ecuyers came almost exclusively, either directly or indirectly, from the subaltern personnell at Versailles. Some of the oldest ones had belonged to one of the two Ecuries in their youth as élèves-piqueurs. Others had received their - very elementary - education, from the old piqueurs of Versailles at the 'Ecole d'instruction des troupes à cheval', or at the 'Ecole Nationale d'Equitation', both of which had been formed successively after 1796 with the remains of the personnell and the horses of the two Ecuries. The youngest ones, finally, had been élèves-piqueurs at the Manège after its reinstitution in 1816, and their number hardly surpassed one dozen. All of them claimed to be from the School of Versailles, but very few among them had an equestrian education that was sufficient to judge Baucher's work based on a thorough knowledge of the subject.
"As far as the élèves-écuyers of the Restauration are concerned, they were also very few in number, and nobody among them made a name for himself based on his talent. The title Ecuyer thus corresponded to several different ranks at the Court, which involved horsemanship, but it did not necessarily indicate any kind of mastership. The Elèves-écuyers 'de Manège' proper formed a tiny minority among all the students, whose number did not surpass a dozen.
"The students of the 'Manège des Pages', which belonged to Versailles, numbered 318 all in all, from 1816 - 1830. They received a good practical basic training, without going any further, in spite of the three years' duration of their course, during which they rode no more than three times a week for 20 - 25 minutes per lesson. They were not in a position to judge Baucher competently, either.
"In the cavalry, the level of horsemanship was very low. A large number of the oldest officers had received no other riding lessons than the recruit 'classes' of the Empire, that were squeezed in between two campaigns. The best ones had received a slightly less rudimentary, but nonetheless very incomplete, training at the School of St-Germain.
"The young officers, some of whom had come exclusively from the Manège des Pages, had gone through the Ecole de Cavalerie in large numbers, but the instruction they had received left them confused due to the lack of unity in the teachings. In the military instruction, only the simplistic principles of Bohan were permitted. At the manège, the instruction was pretended to remain academic, although there was a clear disagreement between the Ecuyer en Chef, Monsieur Cordier, who came from Versailles, and his second in command, Monsieur de Chabannes, an outspoken supporter of d'Auvergne's principles. After Monsieur de Chabannes' retirement, d'Auvergne's principles were the preference of Monsieur Rousselet, who did not hide his convictions and who did not leave the School until 1848.
"The 'Cours d'Equitation', published in 1829, re-established officially and theoretically the unity in the equestrian doctrine of the School, but it was far from being carried out in practice, and the results of the instruction experienced a grave setback when the Ecuyer en Chef, Commandant de Novital, converted to Baucherism in 1842 and threw the instruction into disarray."
(p. 69:) "Across the Rhine, despite the disruptions of the revolutionary period and the Napoleonic era, horsemanship was far from experiencing the same kind of eclipse as in France. The Viennese School, the Versailles of Central Europe, had never ceased to function as a conservatory of equestrian art and as a seminar for horsemen from all of southern Germany. At Göttingen, the University Manège flourished and attracted not only the equestrian youth of the Kingdom of Hannover, but also numerous students from England and even France, who were busy taking lessons from the famous Ayrer brothers. In Prussia, military equitation was doubtlessly more cultivated than artistic equitation, but the training of the military horses was pushed so far that the equestrian competence of the cavalry officers reached an elevated level. Furthermore, the supervision of the military equestrian instruction was placed in the hands of highly qualified civilian écuyers such as Seeger and Seidler.
"After 1815, the royal and aristocratic stables had been re-established in the numerous Courts of Germany, as well as the pre-revolutionary manèges in Bavaria, Württemberg, Sachsen, Baden etc.... Overall, the equestrian art had recovered its sanctuaries, and its cult flourished anew."
Last Update: January 13, 2007