Employing war elephants

[PMBardunias]

In ancient times, India's rulers set aside huge tracts of land like national parks for the purpose of keeping their war elephants fat and fed. So it is quite possible that the elephants were larger and healthier before the modern era.

I agree, we often forget the "Nurture" aspect when speaking of breed and species "natures".


Is there a tradition of gelding bull elephants? I imagine this might make them bigger and more manageable.

[PMBardunias]

Anyone have access to this article?

THE RISE OF THE SASSANIAN ELEPHANT CORPS: ELEPHANTS AND THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE
Iranica antiqua [0021-0870] CHARLES yr:2007 vol:42 pg:301

[Eleatic Guest]

A. What is a good working definition for a war elephant? I stumbled upon a border line case where elephants were tied torches to their tails and sent into enemy ranks. While this is certainly a military use of elephants, these elephants can IMO just as sure not qualified as "war elephants". A war elephant is in my understanding rather an elephant trained and guided in combat by a human. What's your thoughts?

B. Bibliography:
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Lionel Casson, “Ptolemy II and the Hunting of African Elephantsâ€

[Marcus Julius]

A. What is a good working definition for a war elephant? I stumbled upon a border line case where elephants were tied torches to their tails and sent into enemy ranks. While this is certainly a military use of elephants, these elephants can IMO just as sure not qualified as "war elephants". A war elephant is in my understanding rather an elephant trained and guided in combat by a human. What's your thoughts?

I would have to agree. In fact in that scenario, I wouldn't call those elephants anything other than ammunition. Expendable just like an arrow, javelin, or sling bullet.

[PMBardunias]

I stumbled upon a border line case where elephants were tied torches to their tails and sent into enemy ranks. While this is certainly a military use of elephants, these elephants can IMO just as sure not qualified as "war elephants".

I agree we need a higher standard, otherwise we must speak of Hannibal's War-cows! :wink:

[Eleatic Guest]

Concerning the question of the introduction of the turret, Goukowsky (Le roi Pôros, son éléphant et quelques autres, Goukowsky, Paul, pages 473 - 502 (Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, volume 96, issue 1, 1972))) argues IMHO convincingly that the howdah was invented between 300 and 280 BC by the Greeks, perhaps by Pyrrhos, while it had before remained unknown to the Indians. This also seems supported by the fact that Kautilya's text, which is otherwise abundant with references for the military use of elephants, is silent on the matter of turrets. Is Goukowsky's conclusion, after all more than 30 years old (1973), still valid or has more recent research pointed to prior uses of turrets by the Indians?

Introduction of armour : Although I haven't found any author yet, who explicitly states that elephant armour was also first introduced by the Greeks, the first literary references I found are again from the classical world, that is from the battle of Magnesia (Livy) and Caesar's expedition to Britain (Polyaenus), while Porus' elephants, according to Greek sources, apparently wore no armour. Does any ancient Indian evidence point to the contrary, or can we credit the Greeks also with the introduction of elephant armour?

[MeinPanzer]

Introduction of armour : Although I haven't found any author yet, who explicitly states that elephant armour was also first introduced by the Greeks, the first literary references I found are again from the classical world, that is from the battle of Magnesia (Livy) and Caesar's expedition to Britain (Polyaenus), while Porus' elephants, according to Greek sources, apparently wore no armour. Does any ancient Indian evidence point to the contrary, or can we credit the Greeks also with the introduction of elephant armour?

Just to add to your list, 1 Maccabees 6.43 mentions one Seleucid elephant among the elephant corps at the battle of Beth-Zechariah in 164 BC wearing 'royal armour.'

[Eleatic Guest]

Thx.

Indian body and head armour from early modern times (not really sure but perhaps the only extant elephant armour world-wide):

[Timotheus]

I read once somewhere that the declining Seleucid Empire lost all of its war elephants to Roman agents sent to hamgstring them while they were grazing in their habitats.

The loss of the elephants hurt the Seleucid military which was already in decline and accelerated its fall.

Can anyone comment or point me to something that supports or refutes this?

[PMBardunias]

I am alomst embarrased to post this, but my daughter was watching the children's animal show "Bindi the jungle girl", she's the late crocodile hunter's daughter, and they showed elephant training in Sri Lankha. Among other things they showed war-training where the elephant bashed aside a shield with it's trunk and plucked a spear from a man's hand. For those who are addicted to such visual images like me, it's worth a look.

[M. Demetrius]

Just finished reading Polybius' The Rise of the Roman Empire, and in his description of the battle of Zama, it looks like Hannibal's elephants' going berserk actually lost the battle for him, though he had 80 of them. Wild, rampaging, berserk elephants could be a heckuva messy situation!

Where's those ropes of tribuli when you need them, Scipio?

[Eleatic Guest]

I got two books for Christmas - one was War Elephants by a certain Mr Kistler ...

To be honest, I am having difficulties with following his account on Chinese war elephants which is rather inprecise to being outright misleading.

First, the author give an incidence in the Zhou dynasty around 500 BC as "example" for the utilization of war elephants during the "Shang dynasty" which actually already ended 1200 BC (p.21). Second, binding torches to elephant tails and sending them into enemy rank can -as I earlier pointed out - hardly be called evidence for war elephants. Very much the opposite, since the mere fact that the Chinese troops resorted to using the elephants as animal missiles strongly indicates that they did not know how to tame and train them for war purpose.

Significantly, the rest of the half page account on Chinese 'war elephants' is devoid of further examples, and the author is content with phasing out the Chinese use of them by pointing out their decreasing habitat - which actually did not keep a Pyrrhos from sustaining 20 beasts in his barren, rugged and remote Epiros and employing them in Italy, both of which had never been an elephant habitat in the first place.

In short, I believe the author prepones war elephants by more than 1500 years. Schaefer, in contrast, explicitly said three times in his short, but informative article that war elephants were an "anomaly" in Chinese warfare and dates the first example for their use in the 6th century AD in South China - with Malayan mahouts. That means that the practice most likely had spread from India, arrived very late in China and was no indigenous development.

Interestingly, the Chinese troops in that battle made use of towers which had remained long unknown to the Indians and which had been introduced first by Pyrrhos during his Italian campaign into warfare (see above). In other words, it took about 800 years for a military innovation to get across Eurasia from the crop fields of southern Italy to the rice fields of South China. Fascinating.

[Francois]

I have seen many posts about the use of elephants in battle (by Rome's enemies or allied), but I would be very interested to learn more about their importance in the logistics... I guess that elephants must eat and drink a lot, but how much ? and what ?
I have read Scullard's book but this aspect is not very developed...

I think I will try to find this article (thank you for the reference, by the way ! ) :
Eleatic Guest\\n[quote]John F. Shean, “Hannibal' s Mules: The Logistical Limitations of Hannibal's Army and the Battle of Cannae, 216 B.C.â€

[Robert Vermaat]

they showed elephant training in Sri Lankha. Among other things they showed war-training where the elephant bashed aside a shield with it's trunk and plucked a spear from a man's hand. For those who are addicted to such visual images like me, it's worth a look.

There's a YouTube link here

From 10:14 into the show, the war training commences. Good stuff! Arrow shooting and spear throwing, gripping the spear from 10:54 ff.

[antiochus]

Now living in central Thailand around five hours from Bangkok, I have had two near collisions with elephants when driving a motor bike. One involved nearly hitting the rear end of an elephant. Some people keep them as pets. In the Issan region there are still wild elephants and the
villages do not like them as they are known to kill.

One hour drive from me is the elephant training camp. I have enrolled in getting my mahout license, as I want to add it to my CV. In February the Thais and the Loatians hold their elephant festival which involves the re-enactment of a battle between the Burmese and the Thais fought in 1500 AD. This re-enactment will involve 75 elephants. Now I have been on numerous occasions, after having gotten to know some of the mahouts, ridden on elephants with the military towers that will be used in the re-enactment. When in the tower you are violently jolted from one side to the other. This cannot be avoided as each time the elephant lifts one leg, the muscles on the elephants back jolt you. You can see this in the YouTube link when the commentor is sitting in a seat mounted on the elephant.

The ability to fire a bow or javelin from the tower while the elephant is moving is a real hit or miss affair and is nothing more than a wild shot. It's not like you can use the Parthian horse archers firing method and fire when the two front legs of the horse are in the air. Sitting on the back of the elephant is more stable than in a tower. My conclusion is the tower and crew are there to protect the mahout, nothing more. Kill the mahout and you disable the elephant. The guys in the towers cannot protect the elephant, which is the role of the elephant escorts.