I was referencing a well known aspect of the horrors the French faced during Napoleon’s invasion of the Russian Empire. When thinking about eating horsemeat, a particular passage from Denis Davidov’s memoir In the Service of the Tsar Against Napoleon comes to mind. I’ll share it with you so that you might understand the connection between Frenchmen and eating horses out of desperation:
“I will never forget the night of the 27th of October, which we spent in Dorogobuzh. We entered the town after nightfall, I deployed cannon by the side of the road and took quarters in the yard of a house on the outskirts of town. Soldiers spent the night in great misery without tents, warming up by the fire in the open air. As we settled down on frozen ground covered with snow and ignited a bonfire in front of the tent, I looked around and saw numerous corpses of men and horses all around us dimly lit by the fire. As we had become accustomed to such sights and had more than once enjoyed the sound sleep amidst such a cemetery forgetting all the prejudices of childhood, we paid no attention to it this time and tried to warm out stiffened limbs. Meanwhile the light of the fire and the tent which was set up away from the others attracted wounded and exhausted Frenchmen.”
“Seeing the Frenchman’s futile efforts to gnaw a Russian biscuit, I asked him if he would consider eating horsemeat. “Why not?” he said, “There are no limits when it comes to hardship.” So I pointed to a nearby horse and suggested that he might be able to satisfy his hunger at once. We gave him an axe. I wanted to see what he would do. The Frenchman, with axe in hand, dottled towards the horse, and dropping to his knees began to strike it with all the might that he still had. But the corpse had been petrified from the cold. Seeing that it was impossible for him to get any meat, the poor man returned to the fire and laying down the axe he said, very calmly: “What else to do? One has to die.” And laid down on the ground.”
TLDR: The French ate plenty of horses. However, It was quite a miserable endeavor. Eating one’s horse in AO would surely be a similarly terrible and desperate experience.
