Sport

A town named horse

Saumur is taken as a starting point from which to discuss French identity and to help sketch a portrait of France in the year 2000.

The Cadre Noir organization has trained cavalry officers in riding for generations. Real and would-be aristocrats have represented the values of cavalry, namely those of rectitude and panache - values which each Frenchman and woman would like to think of as their own. The army replaced the horse with armor-plated vehicles, and Cadre Noir became the National Riding School. As elsewhere in France, changes have had to be adapted to.