How to Carry a Lance

Until somewhere about 1815, Mexican horsemen carried lances only with their hands.

    For most of its history, the horsemen of Mexico and what has come to be called the "Spanish Borderlands" (now the American Southwest from Texas to California) carried lances and pole-mounted tools such as the hocking knife (media luna) in their hand. There was at least one exception, the presidial troops described by Zebulon Pike, but that is another story.

Though a bit hard to see, this French lancer of the Napoleonic era uses the most common method of the day to carry his lance. There is a leather cup or "bucket" attached to his right stirrup. French Light horse lancer. From P.-M. Laurent de L`Ardeche's 'Histoire de Napoleon,' 1843.

    By the early-1800s, nearly all European cavalry used a leather cup or "bucket" attached to the right stirrup as a lance support. The butt of the lance was inserted into this cup. But Spain was different.

Flamboyantly uniformed lancers of the Loyal Extremadura Legion. Note how they use a leather cup hanging at the end of a long strap attached to their saddles. The L-shaped hook fits into the cup to support the lance. From "Láminas del ataque y defensa del arma de la lanza”, Madrid 1814 - Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Oviedo, 1814.

    In 1810, during Napoleon's attempted conquest of Spain, a volunteer unit was raised and commanded by Sir John Downie, a Briton, and named the "Loyal Extremadura Legion." It included a body of flamboyantly uniformed lancers. Rather than using a stirrup-mounted leather cup as a lance support, the Legion had a cup hanging at the end of a leather strap attached to the saddle's pommel. An L-shaped piece of iron was placed on the butt end of the lance and it was this "hook" that was carried in the hanging cup.

Spanish engraving showing a new method of carrying a lance. Note the L-shaped hooks on the butt ends of figures A. and B. From "Láminas del ataque y defensa del arma de la lanza”, Madrid 1814 - Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Oviedo.

My friend, Rene Chartrand, the noted military historian, told me once that this unusual arrangement was due to the fact that the unit's cavalry equipment was supplied out of military surplus by the British, Spain's ally in the war. But, since the British had no regular lancer regiments until 1816, there were no official stirrup mounted leather cups, surplus or otherwise, to give to the Spanish. Instead, the Spanish adapted the hanging cups the British cavalry had used to support carbine muzzles. A 1793 painting of Britain's 10th Light Dragoons shows one of these hanging muzzle cups.

 10th Light Dragoons, by George Stubbs (detail), Royal Collection Trust. Note the leather cup supporting the muzzle of the trooper's carbine.

Though it may seem unlikely to us (at least to me), such an arrangement appears to have worked well. Well enough that its use spread to the New World, probably with the Spanish troops sent as reinforcements in the War of Independence. The French artist Theubet de Beauchamp showed a Mexican fighter of about 1820 with the characteristic L-shaped hook on the butt end of his lance. 

 

This eyewitness picture of a Mexican lancer by Theubet de Beauchamp shows a "hook" at the end of the lance. This proves that the lancer was using the newly-introduced butt hook on his lance.

 
And Agustin Arrieta painted a Mexican mounted policeman in the 1840s still using this hanging lance support in the 1840s.

As late as the 1840s, this method of carrying a lance was still used in Mexico.