I've been reading Charles Oman and have been struck by the amount of warhorses that die. I'm always reading how chargers are mega-expensive and difficult to come by, I'm under the impression of a fighter or tank being similar in relative cost and importance.
Apparently during the first Crusade the knights lost virtually all of their warhorses before they even got to the holy land, but captured 2000 chargers during an early victory. Similarly at Crecy the English archers killed thousands of chargers in a single afternoon. Does anyone know how these warhorses were 'produced', that they were lost so prolifigately yet captured in such numbers? Were there well organised studs which churned out large numbers of warhorses, or did each landed cavalryman breed his own in an ad-hoc manner? Where did all the horses come from to equip the armies of a country like Egypt or Outremer, which don't strike me as the sort of places you'd breed a lot of horses? I'm under the impression that Byzantium got a lot of horses from its Anatolian territories, which was 'livestock ranching' country, is that true enough?