I know that a horse can easily trample people to death during battle, and forgive me of my ignorance, but I run across stories of dangerous horses and they seem a little extreme. Could a horse really disembowel a man ?
Horses are dangerous. Unless you've spent time around them, it's hard to explain how much stronger and faster they are than humans. A horse can easily, on accident seriously injure a human.
Military horses have a history going back many thousands of years, first as chariot pullers, and later as direct mounts. Horses, as prey animals, have to be specially trained to do this kind of work.
Trained not to run from noise
Taught to ignore bad smells, like blood
Trained to deal with a rider that's constantly shifting weight while using a weapon
Trained to know the difference between weapon use and movement commands
Trained to work without reigns
Used to balancing with armored riders (and maybe with armor on them as well)
In difference periods horses might have been trained to kick, headbutt and bite
see: "The Medieval Warhorse from Byzantium to the Crusades"
"The Horseman's Manual" (Hope)
"Tudor Knight" (Gravett)
http://www.nam.ac.uk/microsites/war-horse/explore/training-sport/training/
http://www.classicalfencing.com/horsetraining.php
Throughout history and throughout the world, different battle tactics required different types of horses and horse training. I assume you meant the kinds of horses trained for battle in Europe during the middle ages. This askhistorians thread goes into how war horses were trained in that regard and wht they were capable of.
War horses were trained to be used in a battle, meaning they didn't run away from loud noises/screaming, were used to the bad smells, could jump and move through a battlefield with varying degrees of direction from the rider. They also sometimes wore different kinds of armour that made them more dangerous to those around them.
The easiest answer to you question is yes, horses are that dangerous. They are huge animals, can be trained for battle and were used in various war maneuvers like a calvary charge that provided them opportunities to maim and kill. I guess it depends on what you mean by extreme.
To put into perspective historical war horses, there are very well documented histories of racing thoroughbreds killing or maiming people without any sort of war training. Apologies for the clickbait-esq link but it summarizes a thread of professional horse handlers speaking about some of the nastiest horses in the racing industry's history, with pictures and some documentation.
Essentially, it is hard to really understand how fast, unforgiving, and smart a really mean horse can be. The racing horses linked above primarily hurt trained professionals who had handled that specific horse over and over. I encourage you to take a walk through the internet to view the many videos of stallions killing coyotes, wolves, dogs, other stallions, cougars, etc. You will have new found respect for horses!
Could a horse disembowel a man? Maybe, but I doubt it. Horses don't have the right tools to remove a man's intestines or to cut him open. A horse's teeth just aren't set up for that kind of thing (being herbivores and all). And while a kick from a horse can kill you, your intestines will likely stay within your body.
I've found little evidence or reason to suggest that horses were trained to kick or attack at will on the battle field. In fact, that would be a really undesirable trait for a warhorse. It would make the horse absolutely impossible to handle. There's no way around that one- if the horse is trained to attack people and other horses, it will attack people and other horses, and it won't differentiate between its handlers and its enemies, especially in a combat scenario. It would not behove a knight to have his prize horse constantly attempt to kill the squire tasked with leading it to the battlefield, nor would it be good to allow the horse to attack men randomly. Knights, by and large, wanted horses that were obedient.
In his 1853 book, "The Horse," William Youatt says that, "the after-usefulness of the animal is founded, is early attachment to and confidence in man, and obedience, resulting principally from these" (99).
I've seen the claim that horses would bite and kick in combat in a fair amount of secondary and tertiary sources, but I'm yet to find a primary source that describes this actually happening. If it did happen, I'd imagine that it was probably unintentional and not something that the knight would train into his mounts. Because again, it would make handling the horse and stabling the horse an absolute nightmare (pardon a pun). If the knights were to charge, they would be doing so in a group. Why would the knights want their horses attacking other horses in their formation? Because that's what would happen.
Here is a 17th century painting of Polish warhorses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry_tactics#/media/File:Husaria_pod_Kluszynem.jpg
Notice how they are in a tight formation, not attacking each other. This is the more typical warhorse.
And beyond that... a horse's teeth aren't going to break armor. If a horse rears to strike, that puts the knight at a huge disadvantage because suddenly, all of his weight gets thrown back and he can't reach with his sword or lance. It exposes the horse's legs and stomach, which wouldn't have been armored, and on bad footing, it sets the horse up for a fall. If the horse kicks with its hind legs, that means the knight is facing away from the threat, which again, puts him at a disadvantage because he can't turn in his armor well while in the saddle, and he can't use his weapons. If his back is to the enemy, he would either be turning or running. Additionally, cavalry serve to break infantry lines and harass the enemy. The advantage of the horse is that they are mobile. If the horse is kicking, rearing, or biting, the horse is no longer mobile- it's stationary. And if the horse isn't moving, it's a much easier target to hit.
Anyway. So I don't believe in the whole "war horses would kick and bite!" myth. I just can't find sources that prove it, and I can't find any logic that would make it make any sort of sense.
Horses are inherently dangerous, but not so dangerous that they are unable to be handled safely. Horses were ultimately a way of getting a weapon to the battlefield, and they had to be obedient enough to do so reliably. And there is no horse training in history that would allow for a horse to bite a man on it's on volition. That has universally been considered a vice that needs correcting.
If that groom was killed, he probably did something he shouldn't have done around the horse.
Horses were indeed trained to be used a weapon by their rider in battle. Look up "dressage." It's a discipline of riding that pays homage to years of military training, where a horse had to be able to receive a very subtle cue from their rider and act upon it so as to prevent them both from dying. The Lipizzaners and other baroque breeds are also trained in even more traditional moves, which include jumping so as to get above/on top of foot soldiers, rearing up on their hind legs and striking out with their front, or jumping and kicking out their back legs. Horses are extremely trainable animals and love to please handlers whom they have grown to respect; it's presumably possible that an intelligent horse person could have trained their war horse to do any number of offensive moves while on the battlefield, though some were more standard than others.
Having been a horse person for decades, I feel compelled to include the disclaimer that horses are not by nature aggressive animals (quite the opposite). The only horses I have ever met that are truly aggressive towards humans by their own volition (and not while being asked to do that by a handler/rider) have been abused by humans in their past or are currently in a lot of pain (i.e. suffering from ulcers). Some ponies (horses under 14.2 hands tall, a hand is 4 inches) and some mares (unspayed female horses) may have an attitude that appears as aggressiveness to a non-horse person. They are, however, big prey animals and can be startled easily if not handled appropriately (and sometimes even if they are) or view behavior as a threat which often leads to being kicked or pushed over and injured unintentionally. They exist on a fight or flight plane -- loud noises, sudden movements, anything perceived as a threat or possible predator must be escaped. If it cannot be run from, they will fight it.
On a related note, one of the most famous statistical distributions, the Poisson distribution, was popularized through a statistician's effort to estimate the total deaths by horse-kick in the Prussian army. So it was obviously a significant enough problem to warrant a large statistical study looking into it.
You may find interesting this medical journal entry from 1896 describing injuries from horse-kicks. "No class of traumata produce such a variety of injuries and in such varying degrees as a kick of a horse upon the abdomen."
This paper says, on page 6, that horses were even deadlier than cars when they were the primary means of transportation in New York City.
http://www.uctc.net/access/30/Access%2030%20-%2002%20-%20Horse%20Power.pdf
Does anyone know or have information on whether traffic accidents were more common or more deadly before automobiles were widespread, at least in urban environments?
