Carabinier

A carabinier (also sometimes spelled carabineer or carbineer) is in principle a soldier armed with a carbine. A carbine is a shorter version of a musket or rifle. Carabiniers were first introduced during the Napoleonic wars in Europe. The word is derived from the identical French word carabinier.

Historically, carabiniers were generally (but not always) horse soldiers. The carbine was considered a more appropriate firearm for a horseman than a full-length musket, since it was lighter and easier to handle while on horseback. Light infantry sometimes carried carbines because they are less encumbering when moving rapidly, especially through vegetation, but in most armies the tendency was to equip light infantry with longer-range weapons such as rifles rather than shorter-range weapons such as carbines. In Italy and Spain, carbines were considered suitable equipment for soldiers with policing roles, so the term carabinier evolved to sometimes denote gendarmes and border guards.

Today, the term is used by some armies, police, and gendarmeries.

Carabinier (dance)

The Carabinier (Haitian Creole: Karabinye, English: carabineer) is a traditional cultural dance from Haiti that originated back to the time of the Haitian Revolution deriving from a section of the kontradans that is said to have evolved into the méringue or mereng (creole) dance.

Origins

Just after the Revolution of 1804, European figure dances (contredanse, lancers, and the quadrille), accompanied by Kongo influences (chica, banboula and the kalenda), hybridized into a couples dance named after the Carabiniers rifle regiments in the Haitian army.

References

Carabinier (disambiguation)

Carabinier originally a cavalry soldier armed with a carbine, may also refer to the following:

Army

Culture