The Hoof at the Palace
A horse gives a man wings.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
Every day when the Captain returns from the Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace he sits down to lunch at a magnificent table set with gleaming regimental silver in the Officers’ Mess. In front of him, in pride of place, is a horse’s hoof.
For over 150 years at St James’s Palace this delicate but complete hoof, covered by a highly polished silver lid, has been moved between the sideboard and its central position above the knives and forks. Twenty-four words inscribed on the hinged lid link it with the man who was once Britain’s most bitter enemy: Hoof of Marengo, Barb charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the campaign of Russia and lastly at Waterloo Engraved on the underside of the lid is the story of how the hoof came into the Guards’
hands: Presented 8th April 1840 by J. W. Angerstein Captain Grenadier Guards and Lieutenant-Colonel to his brother officers of the Household Brigade
Today, Marengo’s other two hooves are on public display with his preserved skeleton, a mile-and-a-half away, in the Waterloo Gallery at the National Army Museum in Chelsea.
When Marengo died at the advanced age of thirty-eight in 1832 at Brandon in Suffolk,his bones were articulated by Surgeon Wilmott of the London Hospital. The skin was put aside for a taxidermist, but was lost or mislaid, as was his fourth hoof.
No comments:
Post a Comment