According to an episode of Speed Racer (a very reliable source to be sure!:rolleyes:)
Napoleon’s horse’s name was Melange.
Is there any truth to this whatsoever? A web search has provided numerous cites to this “fact”, but all of them reference the same Speed Racer episode!:smack:
Napoleon owned and used many horses over his lifetime. If you have to answer “What was the name of Napoleon’s horse?” as a trivia question, the one they are probably after is “Marengo”. I don’t see a “Melange” in this list, but it does not claim to be complete:
This page (in French) lists a number of Napoleon’s horses (Belle, Stirie, Aly, Cirus, Epicurien, Fayoume, Gonzalve, Ingenu, Intendant, Jafa, Lutzelberg, Montevideo, Herodot, Roitelet(2), Sara, Soliman, Tamerlan, Tauris, Tcherkès, Turkmen, Vizir, Marengo)
None of them is called “Melange”
“melange” is probably a mistranslation back into english of the japanese version of the french name for the horse
And most people who fought on horseback in more than one war went through more than one horse. The beasts had the unfortunate tendency of being shot
“Melange” means “mix”, in French. A strange name for a horse. It just doesn’t sound right, IMHO.
In Japanese the two words would be similar. PopeJewish is almost certainly right. Whoever was doing the English translation probably figured it didn’t matter and just guessed what the original word was.
The two words? You mean Marengo ---->Japanese-----> Melange?
Well…replacing the “r” by a “l”, it’s about right. (The site I linked to mentions Marengo as being the most famous of his horses Captured by the French in Egypt, and by the British at Waterloo, it “served” during most of Napoleon’s career. It had five wounds and a bullet still in his body)
What carelessness. This is why I get all my French history facts from * Pepé Le Pew*.
I’m thinking this is probably the answer to my OP. Thanks, all!