the advantages afforded by nail-shoeing—advantages hitherto overlooked, or but partially resorted to, by the Romans?
From this time until the general adoption of iron shoes, we are led to infer that horsemen were as lightly clad and armed as was compatible with the services sought from them. But after the downfall of the Roman empire, and when the horse had by this hoof-defence been converted into a more perfect animal—when it could, without prejudice, be put to the most varied uses on all kinds of ground, and in all seasons, with but a small amount of care, so far as its feet were concerned, a new era was inaugurated in the art of war, from which we may date modern improvements. For it was about the time when, as we have seen, the fashion of protecting the lower surface of the horse's foot by a rim of iron, became general, that the benefits of the feudal system introduced by the people who shod their horses, began to be experienced, and a perceptible change in tactics and equipment became noticeable.
From this system sprang the age of chivalry, when the feudal knight and the feudal tenant, heavily armed and heavily caparisoned, horse and rider closely covered with invulnerable masses of iron, and bearing clumsy weapons, sallied out to the battle-field or the tournament, or travelled great distances to the rendezvous of their superiors, there to be trained or prepared for the contests which, unhappily, were of too frequent occurrence.
Riding double was unknown to the Romans. 'Do you think that two can sit upon one horse?' asks Martial. Suetonius even describes messages being conveyed in
