For military equestrian statues, what does it mean if one horses' hoof is off the ground?

In many parts of the world, an urban legend states that if the horse is rearing (both front legs in the air), the rider died in battle; one front leg up means the rider was wounded in battle or died from battle wounds; and if all four hooves are on the ground, the rider died outside battle. A rider depicted as dismounted and standing next to their horse often indicates that both were killed during battle. A survey of 15 equestrian statues in central London by the Londonist website found that nine of them corresponded to the supposed rule, and considered it "not a reliable system for reading the fate of any particular rider".

In the United States, the rule is especially held to apply to equestrian statues commemorating the American Civil War and the Battle of Gettysburg. One such statue was erected in 1998 in Gettysburg National Military Park, and is of James Longstreet, who is featured on his horse with one foot raised, even though Longstreet was not wounded in that battle. However, he was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness the following year. Although some statues conform, others do not - therefore any correlation between the positioning of hooves in a statue and the manner in which a Gettysburg soldier died is a coincidence. There is no code that sculptors go by to design their statues. There is no proper evidence that these hoof positions correlate consistently with the rider's history but some hold to the belief regardless.