Copenhagen (horse)
Copenhagen | |
Painting by Samuel Spode |
|
Father: | meteor |
Mother: | Lady Catherine |
Mother, father: | John Bull |
Gender: | stallion |
Year of birth: | 1808 |
Year of death: | 1836 |
Country: | Great Britain |
Colour: | Fox |
Breeder: | General Thomas Grosvenor |
Owner: | 1) General Grosvenor 2) Marquis of Londonderry 3) Duke of Wellington |
Equestrian: | Duke of Wellington |
Infobox last modified on: January 6, 2017. |
Copenhagen (born 1808 in Eaton Hall , died February 12, 1836 in Stratfield Saye ) was the horse of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington .
Copenhagen was a colt, his mother was the mare Lady Catherine , the father Meteor . The mare was taken on a war expedition to Denmark by her owner, Earl Grosvenor , who did not know that the animal was pregnant. The foal born after the return was therefore called Copenhagen . As a three-year-old, the stallion competed unsuccessfully and was initially sold to Sir Charles Stewart , the adjutant of the Duke of Wellington and later Marquess of Londonderry. When Stewart was injured during the Spanish campaign , he sold the horse to Wellington in 1812 for 400 guineas .
Copenhagen was ridden by the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars . He was considered capricious and difficult to tame, but also as an excellent war horse that was not impressed by the noise of battle. The soldiers saw horse and rider as a unit.
When Wellington became British Prime Minister in 1828 , he rode Copenhagen to 10 Downing Street . After the Duke's retirement from politics in 1830, Copenhagen lived in the Wellingtons' country estate, Stratfield Saye House . Bracelets for the ladies were woven from his hair. When Copenhagen died at the old age of 29, he received a funeral with military honors. Wellington noticed, however, that a hoof had been removed from the dead horse , which made him angry. After his death, a servant confessed to the theft of the hoof and returned it to the 2nd Duke of Wellington , who from then on used it as an inkwell . The inkwell can still be seen today in Apsley House , the Wellingtons' town house in London .
The Imperial War Museum had asked Wellington to have Copenhagen exhumed to display his skeleton next to that of Napoleon's horse Marengo . However, he untruthfully claimed that he no longer knew exactly where the grave was. His son, the 2nd Duke, later had a memorial stele erected there.
General Wellington and his horse Copenhagen are immortalized in numerous paintings and sculptures. In 1837 the Duke of Rutland proposed a memorial for Wellington. In 1846 the statue of Matthew Cotes Wyatt was unveiled at Hyde Park Corner in London. Wellington himself had sat model on another horse for this, as Copenhagen had meanwhile died. The oversized, 40-ton bronze monument was a thorn in the side of Queen Victoria because it seemed too monumental to her. During Wellington's lifetime, however, they did not move for reasons of piety. The monument has been on the Aldershot barracks site since 1885 .
Wellington on Copenhagen (painting by Sir Thomas Lawrence from 1818)
Web links
- Wellington Statue, Aldershot at en.wikipedia.org , accessed April 3, 2011.
- Copenhagen and the Duke of Wellington. from: horseshowcentral.com , accessed April 3, 2011
- Bonaparte's Arab Stallion, Marengo. at: www.galerieheim.fr , accessed on April 3, 2011 (English)
- Copenhagen-O cavalo de Wellington. from: linesoftorresvedras.com , accessed April 3, 2011
- From Denmark to Belgium: Copenhagen - Wellington's Great Warhorse. at: regencyredingote.wordpress.com