page_title: Equestrian statue
section_title: Hoof-position symbolism
hierarchical_section_title: Equestrian statue / Hoof-position symbolism
caption_attribution_description: English: Equestrian statue of CSA General James Longstreet on his horse Hero in Pitzer Woods at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA
context_page_description: An equestrian statue is a statue of a rider mounted on a horse, from the Latin "eques", meaning "knight", deriving from "equus", meaning "horse". A statue of a riderless horse is strictly an "equine statue". A full-sized equestrian statue is a difficult and expensive object for any culture to produce, and figures have typically been portraits of rulers or, in the Renaissance and more recently, military commanders.
context_section_description: In the United States and the United Kingdom, an urban legend states that if the horse is rearing (both front legs in the air), the rider died from battle; one front leg up means the rider was wounded in battle; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle. For example, Richard the Lionheart is memorialised, mounted passant, outside the Palace of Westminster by Carlo Marochetti; the former died 11 days after his wound, sustained in siege, turned septic. A survey of 15 equestrian statues in central London by the Londonist website found that nine of them corresponded to the supposed rule, and considered it "not a reliable system for reading the fate of any particular rider".
  In the United States, the rule is especially held to apply to equestrian statues commemorating the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg, but there are at least nine instances where the rule does not hold for Gettysburg equestrian statues. One such statue was erected in 1998 in Gettysburg National Military Park, and is of James Longstreet, who is featured on his horse with one foot raised, even though Longstreet was not wounded in that battle.  However, he was seriously wounded in the Wilderness battle the following year. This is not a traditional statue, as it does not place him on a pedestal.  One writer claims that any correlation between the positioning of hooves in a statue and the manner in which a Gettysburg soldier died is a coincidence. There is no proper evidence that these hoof positions correlate consistently with the rider's history but some hold to the belief regardless.
caption: Equestrian statue of Confederate General James Longstreet on his horse Hero in Pitzer Woods at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA
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