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 17th and 18th 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, as well as to Switzerland, where they gave rise to the Bulle horse breed in the canton of Fribourg.
By the end of the 19th 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". Available information on this ancient breed is dated, as the Cauchois does not appear in the study of horse breeds conducted by Uppsala University, published in August 2010 for the FAO, nor in the DAD-IS database, nor in the second edition of the University of Oklahoma book listing horse breeds in 2007, nor in the index of extinct horse breeds in the Delachaux et Niestlé book in 2014, nor in the 2016 edition of the CAB International encyclopedia.
According to zootechnician André Sanson, the Cauchois is of British origin. However, according to Count Achille de Montendre, its ancestor is Flemish.
In the 17th and 18th 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.