Cauchois horse

The Cauchois, or Norman bidet, is a breed of heavy draft horse native to the Pays de Caux, on the coast of the former Haute-Normandie region of France. Renowned for its ability to move at a high pace, it was much sought-after in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although it was most often harnessed to heavy loads, such as the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus stagecoaches, it was also sometimes ridden by Cauchois peasants to market. They were exported to many parts of France.

By the end of the nineteenth century, competition from the railroads and light horse-drawn vehicles led to the decline of the Cauchois. It is now extinct, having been absorbed into the Boulonnais breed. The Cauchois has inspired a few works of art, most notably a lithograph by Théodore Géricault in 1822.

History
The Cauchois is also known as the "Norman bidet". It is not listed in DAD-IS.

The nineteenth-century zoologist André Sanson believed it to be of British origin, while Achille de Montendre thought it derived from the Flemish Horse.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Cauchois was much sought-after by country gentlemen for its robustness and elegance. A report by M. Le Prévost, written at the time of the reorganization of the stud farms, gives many details about the breed in the Pays de Caux under the Ancien Régime: "Before the Revolution, the Pays de Caux possessed a species of horse that was particularly advantageous to it, known as Cauchois horses. They were the result of native mares combined with stallions of the Norman or Danish breed, widespread in large numbers in our various cantons".

In 1820, the presence of Cauchois stallions was noted in various stud farms, for example in Amécourt, in the Somme, created in 1815; and in Maintenon, in the Eure-et-Loir.

In 1846, an article in the weekly L'Illustration described the breed as "the type of draft horse", noting that it was "improperly called Boulonnais". Horses bred in the Pays de Caux were nicknamed "chevaux du bon pays (horses from the good country)" in the trade, to emphasize their qualities and to differentiate them from the heavier Picardy drafts, nicknamed "chevaux du mauvais pays (horses from the bad country)". According to Eugène Gayot, this distinction fell into disuse before the 1860s. He also notes that the Boulonnais and Cauchois breeds are tending to merge. In 1877, the Société centrale d'agriculture du département de la Seine-Inférieure in Rouen proposed various measures to "improve Cauchois horses", including crossbreeding with Thoroughbred or half-blood stallions, and a Percheron stallion.

The Cauchois breed declined with the arrival of the railroads, which competed with it as a draft horse, and the tilbury, which favored the use of mixed-breed horses. André Sanson noted this decline as early as 1867, and predicted the imminent extinction of the Cauchois in his zootechnical work published in 1888. In 1896, Jean-Henri Magne indicated that the horse breeds of northern France (Boulonnais, trait picard, Flemish and Cauchois) were tending to merge into a single type, due to the reorganization of their pastures and cross-breeding. In 1923, Paul Diffloth explained that the Cauchois had been suppressed by competition from other breeds, and modified by cross-breeding.

Description
The Cauchois is classified as a "gros trait" breed, considered a variety of the Boulonnais. According to an issue of Mélusine magazine (1878) quoting Eugène Gayot: "The Boulonnais breed belongs mainly to the Pas-de-Calais and the Somme; it becomes Bourbourien in the Nord and Cauchois in the Seine-Inférieure."

This horse is sometimes described as "the most massive of French breeds". Its height is around 1.66 m. Although the breed has a strong body, the Cauchois is, according to F. Joseph Cardini, a draft horse less massive than the Boulonnais, with less feathering, weaker extremities and a less loaded head. On the contrary, M. Le Prévost describes Cauchois horses under the Ancien Régime as less elegant than those of the Orne, Calvados and Manche departments, with a stronger head and more common rump.

André Sanson distinguishes them by "a certain stamp of distinction and robust elegance". The withers are fairly flat. The chest is huge and very prominent. The shoulders are strong and reputedly beautiful. The loins and rump are very broad. The belly is voluminous. The limbs are very solid. The forearms and thighs are full-bodied. The hooves are reputed to be of good quality.

According to Sanson, the best subjects are distinguished by their more elongated lines (including an elongated neck), protruding withers, lighter head and generally bay coat.

According to Diffloth, the most common coat is blue roan. The tail is usually docked, leaving two strands of hair on either side of the base, spread out in a plume, to maintain a certain elegance. Cauchois are reputed to be more precocious and vigorous than other Norman horses.

Gait
The breed is renowned for its high pace, a fast gait that enabled a rider to make long runs while walking "in a hurry". Norman graziers used to travel as far as the Vendée, Poitou and Saintonge on their Cauchois bidets.

According to André Sanson, the common Cauchois horse walks with its head down and lifts its hooves very little, giving the impression that it's going to stumble at every step.

Nutrition
Cauchois foals are fed early on with oats. F. Joseph Cardini believes that the food they are given produces their difference in conformation. The pastures in which they are raised are less humid than those of the Boulonnais region, and produce finer, more substantial grass. The soil in their biotope is dry and elevated.

Usage
The Cauchois was especially well-suited to various forms of heavy drafting, representing one of the favorite breeds for pulling the carriages of brewers and millers, as well as stagecoaches. They are popular with merchants and wealthy city dwellers.

In their native region, these horses pull huge, long, four-wheeled carts over rough terrain. According to an article in L'Illustration, Cauchois horses have never been ridden. Put to work from the age of two, they are sold in the Parisian trade at the age of five, for service or heavy driving. According to Francois-Pierre-Charles, baron Dupin, from the age of two, young horses are put to work pulling the harrow; six months later, they are harnessed to the plough: usually, their resale price at four or five years old is then double the purchase price.

Between 1855 and 1900, the Compagnie Générale des Omnibus (CGO) bought 9.72% Cauchois among its workforce, most of whom were Percherons. According to statistics, the Cauchois has the lowest mortality rate of all the breeds used by the CGO. This doesn't necessarily seem to be due to the breed's particular resistance, but rather to its breeding and training methods: breeders worked their animals before delivering them to the CGO, which led to a much better adaptation to the training period imposed by the company. In the 1830s, the Cauchoise breed was in demand for large cavalry.

In 1867, André Sanson noted that "mares (from the Pays de Caux) are still called Cauchoises (feminine of Cauchois in French). They are the ones who carry the beautiful farm girls of the Pays de Caux to market". Under the Ancien Régime, these horses were much appreciated by the cavalry and dragoon corps: the Royal-Piémont cavalry regiment was supplied from the Pays de Caux for several years in a row. The breed's precociousness enabled it to enter the war squadrons a year earlier.

The spread of breeding
Unique to the Pays de Caux region, the Cauchois was once bred in the arrondissement of Le Havre, but breeding gradually ceased in the early nineteenth, with local farmers preferring to buy Boulonnaise-bred foals aged from one year to 15 months, then resell them in Paris and Lyon at four years of age. Trade links between the Pays de Caux and Picardy go back a long way, giving rise to the practice known as "entraitage".

In 1840 a horse of "Bulle" type in the Swiss canton of Fribourg was reported to be of Cauchois origin.

Cultural impact
The Cauchois has inspired painters to depict Norman farm women knitting on their bidet's back as it returns from the market, bridled at the neck. Théodore Géricault produced a small lithograph depicting a Cauchois horse turned to the left, held by a horse dealer. This work appeared in the catalog of a sale of objets d'art held at the Hôtel Drouot on 6 March 1885.