Draft:Wexy

Wexy, also called Vexy or Wexi (ca. 1801 - 1839 /1840 ) is a horse that was used as the war horse of the then Prince of Orange, Prince Willem Frederik of Orange, the later King William II of the Netherlands. The horse was an Irish half-breed, suitable for use in battle. The horse was wounded in the left hind leg at the battle of Waterloo, on June 18, 1815. The horse collapsed and William fled on foot.

The horse reportedly lived to be 38 years and 7 months old. After his death in 1839, Jacques Kets, the first director of the Antwerp zoo, was commissioned to mount the animal. Wexy's skin was mounted on a wooden frame.

After the mounting, Wexy finally ended up in the Netherlands. The stuffed horse has been in different locations. Around 1844 it was given a place among the paintings in the Gothic Hall of Kneuterdijk Palace. Wexy later decorated the gallery hall of Noordeinde Palace and from around 1900 he has been in the harness room of the Dutch Royal Stables. Wexy is a rare example of a stuffed horse preserved for so long. Until the early nineteenth century, it was unusual and expensive to mount a horse. The preservation of Wexy for posterity indicates that William II, who himself died in 1849, was particularly attached to this (war)horse.

Gastrolith[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]
Kets probably removed a stomach stone, or gastrolith, from the horse carcass during preparation. This stone ended up at the municipal pharmacy in The Hague. When this pharmacy was demolished in the 1920s, a passer-by found the stone on the street, after which it ended up in America, with an artist, sword swallower and fire breather, Johnny Fox (1953-2017). In 2018, the Royal Collections of the Netherlands acquired the stone.

Interesting facts[bewerken | brontekst bewerken]



 * Of the horses that died on the battlefield at Waterloo, only the skeleton of Marengo, Napoleon Bonaparte's horse, has been preserved and now belongs to the collection of the National Army Museum.
 * In Europe, the oldest known mounted horses (dating from the seventeenth century) were those of Archduke Albrecht and Isabella.
 * The painter Charles Tilmont made a painting of Vexy at the age of 36 in 1838 (oil on canvas, 34 x 44,5 cm, Dutch Royal Collections, objectnumber SC-0971)
 * Wexy was exhibited in Dordrecht at the Dordrechts Museum in 2014 and in 2015 in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, at the exhibition 'Eyewitnesses of Waterloo.