Talk:Marengo (horse)

Marengo was believed to be Irish

There are numerous sources online claiming that Marengo was actually bought at a horse market in County Cork, not that he was an Arabian. While there is some debate over the exact town the market was held, the prevailing theory is that it was the Cahirmee fair (now held in Buttevant). This is an important and serendipitous point since the Duke of Wellington's horse Copenhagen was also sold at the same fair (probably a different year).

There is a campaign underway to repatriate the remains of Marengo to Ireland, so it seems like there should be some mention of the opposing views of his heritage. I have no stake in any of these issues, other than being Irish myself. I'm also not a historian so I don't want to just make such a bold change without putting it on the talk page first. baz (talk) 13:32, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you can say that Marengo was from Ireland, but certainly a section/paragraph could be added about the contentiousness of his origins. Until that matters resolved, we can't deal in absolutes (and I have found that the more someone says "I have irrefutable evidence" about a controversial issue, they often don't). Primefac (talk) 14:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

The Irish Hobby is the latest horse breed in the “this breed has every famous horse in the world related to it” fad. On this one, the horse’s partbred Arabian ancestry is highly probable, but he was probably not a purebred Arabian, either. Absent someone pulling DNA on the skeleton, I think we have to stick with the reliable source, but the debate over whether he was bred in Ireland or captured in Egypt is worth adding. Montanabw^(talk) 21:36, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Did Marengo Actually Exist?

There's a review here of a book that (presumably) claims that no horse was ever registered with the name "Marengo" and that Napoleon usually rode similar looking horses, giving rise to the legend of a single horse called "Marengo". Has anyone read the book? I haven't and don't feel qualified to change the article itself. Vince In Milan (talk) 06:04, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

http://www.napoleon-series.org/reviews/biographies/c_hamilton.html

Yes, there IS documentation that Marengo was a real horse. His skeleton is on display in a museum in England. The source you have notes "Hamilton has produced a slight work, lacking footnotes, internal references or other scholarly trappings." While people kept individual farm records, there weren't really many breed registry books as we know them today back then, other than the General Stud Book, which was in the UK, not France. That the horse had a name change and a stable nickname is likely, supposedly the name came from Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Marengo. Naturally, Napoleon sometimes rode other horses. You had to, horses get tired, unlike a car or a motorcycle, a horse needs a break-- someone in the saddle all day long often will need at least two horses, and may use three or more horses in a day, depending on how hard they work and the condition of the horses themselves. Hope this helps. Montanabw^(talk) 17:49, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure how important a skeleton is, seeing as how Piltdown Man was probably on display somewhere too :D But if you reckon there WAS an actual horse called Marengo, that's fine by me. Vince In Milan (talk) 00:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

LOL! I can top the Piltdown Man! There is a theory out here that a mineralized human body that went around the carnival circuit as a novelty in the 1930s was actually that body of Thomas Francis Meagher, who drowned in the Missouri River. As for Napoleon, yes, there probably was an actual horse given the name Marengo and there is a skeleton of one of Napoleon's horses on display in England, which is claimed to be Marengo. If Hamilton had better research and less speculation that contradicted the above, that would have helped. Montanabw^(talk) 01:48, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Marengo is a shade of grey

in Spanish, "gris marengo" could be translated as "marengo's gray". Probably has to do with the popular grey colour of the wool woven in the Italian city of Marengo A not a very imaginative name for a gray horse? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alferez (talk • contribs) 07:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

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