[dial. F., applied in the Pyrenees to a contrivance fixed on the back of a mule or horse for carrying travellers over the mountains, a mule chair.] A military litter for the sick or wounded carried by mules; either in the form of arm-chairs suspended one on each side of a mule, or of a bed laid along the beast’s back. First employed by the French in the Crimean War, 1854–5.
1878. A. Griffiths, Eng. Army, iv. 108. It has also one hundred pack animals, seventy-six of which carry double litters, or ‘cacolets,’ for patients.
1884. Gen. Graham, in Times, 4 April, 11/5. Ambulances and mule cacolets were sent for to bring away the dead and wounded.
1885. Observer, 8 Feb., 5/4. The wounded who have been successfully removed from Gubat in cacolets.
