[Tallguy]

My quibble is , and horse lovers will agree, that the author's assertion that small grass fed ponies are "faster" then shod, grain fed horses is simply contrary to fact.

Excellent point that you make, and something that I hadn't considered. I think the author was saying that the Indian ponies were more mobile, which is not exactly the same thing. Mobility takes-in a range of characteristics: speed, agility, range, endurance, etc. Guderian made the point that the engines of his tanks were as important as it's main armament.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

My quibble is , and horse lovers will agree, that the author's assertion that small grass fed ponies are "faster" then shod, grain fed horses is simply contrary to fact.

I took it as meaning that a light cavalry could live off the land and could, at a marathon pace, travel a longer distance than a grain-fed cavalry could. A grain-fed cavalry would need to operate like a multistage rocket, starting out big and leaving most of your initial quantity of horses behind with enough grain to RTB.

The kicker being that the grain-fed cavalry had some capability to operate in the winter, and the grass-fed cavalry did not.