Right. So let’s think of them as cavalry. Cavalry also can’t successfully smash into a strong line, yeah? So you flank, or you smash a weakened line.
So, can you flank with elephants? Well, as mentioned, 1) they need infantry support, and 2) they can trample your own infantry. So now you have a flanking force that moves at the speed of infantry, with a built-in self-destruct mechanism. That’s nutty professor territory. Just bring some actual cavalry.
Can they smash the weakened line, cataphract-style? Yes. But if they need infantry support, you don’t want them too far ahead of your own line. So if you fail? Those elephants are returning like a damned boomerang. Just bring some actual cavalry.
What, then? Flank defense? Look at Ipsus again, and think of this in soccer terms. I know, that makes no sense to you, but I’m European. Maybe that move wasn’t happenstance. Maybe the elephants were put there as flank defense, because it’s what they’re good for at that point. Basically, they’re defensive full backs.
Not great ones, though. I wouldn’t rely on those. If I was the other side, I’d bring some skirmisher cav against them, pelt them, and then grab the popcorn. What’s as bad as rampaging elephants in your own front? Rampaging elephants in your own rear. Just bring some actual cavalry.
How would even the best training override the elephant’s instinctive response to stampede when it’s in pain / burning? That seems hard to imagine- what is the rider supposed to do in such a case?
Unlike tanks, an elephant has a mind of its own, which seems like it would make it particularly unpredictable in a way that a tank isn’t.
I have read about elephant riders being equipped with rods or stakes, maybe poisoned, to kill their own elephants. Like a rudimentary off button. I’m having a hard time picturing this working too well in practice, though.
Exactly so. An elephant, despite its strength, is actually extremely vulnerable. It cannot be armored like a tank. It can’t just stroll into enemy formations and crush everyone and everything. They can only do that if the enemy infantry is sensible, and runs the fuck away, like anyone who doesn’t like being trampled would do.
So the elephant is not a weapon of crush trample charge. It’s a weapon of fear. And if the only thing you have to fear is fear itself, then just stop doing that. Like I said, that’s easy enough if you’re the inhumanly disciplined early Roman legions, you just have the grizzled centurions tell the green recruits not to be scared of some stupid elephants, and it works. It’s harder when you’re a tribal war band.
The mahout who sat on the elephant’s neck supposedly had a spike and a hammer. When the elephant goes berserk, you place the spike at the back of the skull and hammer it in. Hopefully the elephant hasn’t reached back and killed the mahout yet.
Now I’m picturing the look on people’s faces in mahout school when they tell you that. Do we have an emoticon for it?
:dubious: :eek:
It’s something of a side note, but it occurred to me a while ago that it must be incredibly f***ing hard to make a Polybian era Roman legion run away. For starters, these guys have high morale to begin with. But in addition to that, the formation has a built-in morale boost system.
You know the triple line + skirmishers system, right? Velites, hastati, principes, triarii. This always nagged me a bit, because, in a sense, it looks backwards. Youngest and most lightly armored guys at the front, progressively heavy, experienced and rugged towards the back. What gives? Put the toughest guys up front, right?
But here’s what happens if you try to make it rout:
The velites run away. That’s fine, they’re supposed to. No one routs because of that.
Next, maybe the hastati run away. But this doesn’t make the whole army rout, because it’s just the hastati, right? They’re softies anyway. They go to the back of the formation. They regroup back there, because now there are two lines of tougher guys in front of them, so they’re not freaking out anymore.
Say things keep going badly, and the principes run away. Don’t panic, they go to the back, regroup. There’s still the triarii.
Maybe the triarii run away? Never happens. But if they do, they go to the back, now you’re facing the hastati and principes again, with the triarii back behind them, and you have to do the whole blasted thing all over again. You could be there all day. Basically, I don’t think you rout an army like that. You have to kill every last mothercopulating bastard on the field.
A quick google suggests that elephants can get up to 25 MPH, which compares favorably with the speed of horses. So you could deploy elephants as you would horse cavalry, in flanking maneuvers. Additionally, elephants will trample humans while I think horses will avoid it if possible.
Regarding “the triple line” as described by Martian Bigfoot, I’m sure your description is accurate. But I’m also pretty sure I’ve read about battles lost (not in the ancient world–U.S. War of the Southern Traitors maybe? Or Napoleonic?) where the front line/vanguard broke, fled back and disrupted the main army, resulting in a rout. Don’t have a cite handy though.
Beats the heck out of me. The mahout takes a risk either way. Either you’re carried along helplessly atop a rampaging elephant driven mad by pain and fear, who could with a little finesse reach up behind his head and rip you into pieces, or you kill the elephant and risk getting crushed underneath it as it dies.
If you don’t kill the elephant that’s rampaging through your own soldiers, I imagine you will find that your general won’t be too happy with your dereliction of duty either.
True, but the Romans practiced this maneuver of letting the outclassed front lines retreat behind the second line, it was one of their key military innovations.
Right, I should have been more specific by adding “maybe elephants would have been more effective against troops not trained in this manner”–like the Gauls mentioned upthread.
No one alive today really understands how elephants were used in battle. If they were not effective I am sure they would not have been used.
From as I read once he crossed the Alps Hannibal roamed around Italy for 15 years fighting numerous battles. Seems to me if was good enough a General to do that he most likely was good enough a General to know how to use the Elephants and therefore go through the expense and effort to bring them along.
We shouldn’t refer to elephants as “just a terror weapon”. Terror weapons have historically been very effective, especially in an era where almost nobody had career soldiers. There’s something to be said for super-heavy-cavalry that can make regular heavy cavalry react in the same way that regular cavalry makes infantry react. It’s also worth noting that the best counters to elephants were themselves terror weapons.
I can’t believe no one has explained what I was told happened when Hannibal crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants. He got a mountain that never forgets!
Elephants kill people. Even Elephant Hunters, with Elephant Guns, are killed by elepehnts. They are a hazard to life in Africa if and where their numbers bring them into contact with people.
They are, I believe, not an effective military weapon when the troops are trained to handle them, but the same is true of arrows, spears, lances, short swords and battle hammers. To characterize elephants as “a weapon of fear” only would be a mistake.
LOL, I took four years of Latin at my little preppy private school in Baltimore back in the late '70’s, it always occurred to me that they were not much more than an attempt of ‘shock and awe’, (OK, stole that one from the first Gulf War), but, even though I remember very little Latin, I remember the stories and I certainly remember those damn elephants…it was gold, Hannibal, gold!
Quoting from Wikipedia:
Historical accounts of incendiary pigs or flaming pigs were recorded by the military writer Polyaenus and by Aelian. Both writers reported that Antigonus II Gonatas’ siege of Megara in 266 BC was broken when the Megarians doused some pigs with combustible pitch, crude oil or resin, set them alight, and drove them towards the enemy’s massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from the flaming, squealing pigs, often killing great numbers of their own soldiers by trampling them to death.
:dubious: :eek: