In 1898 the Belgian Minister of War turned every fourth company of the Carabiniers into cyclists and gave them a folding bicycle called the Belgica. The point was never the riding. The point was that a man could ride to where the fighting was, get off, fold the machine in half, strap it to his back and fight as infantry — then unfold it and be somewhere else. Each of the four Carabinier battalions kept a company of them, and they were usually first into contact, because they got there first. They were not cavalry and they were not infantry. They were both, at will, and the machine on this man's back is the reason.

Tradition has caught the moment the bicycle stops being transport and becomes luggage: folded, slung across his back, wheels up, the rifle already in his hand. He wears the dark green and the yellow-banded field cap of the 1st Carabiniers. At Halen in August 1914 he and the dog cart were part of the same force — Belgium met a German cavalry advance with bicycles and dogs, and stopped it. In a diorama the Minerva completes the picture: one small country improvising mobility three separate ways in a single August.

Tradition of London model 827. 54mm, white metal, hand-painted in gloss enamel. Single standing figure with folded Belgica bicycle, 1914. Supplied in the Tradition Classic Red Box. Allow 2–3 weeks delivery.