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War elephant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
War elephants were important, although not
widespread, weapons in ancient military history. Their main use was in charges,
to trample the enemy and/or break their ranks, they were also used by the
Diadochi to protect against cavalry attack. War elephants could be either male
or female animals. Male elephants are larger but their aggression and
restlessness (especially when in musth) were not always welcome.
Charging elephants caused
terror and panic, and their thick hides made them difficult to injure or kill
.
History
Elephant taming (not full
domestication, they were still captured in the wild) began in the Indus Valley
civilization around 4,000 years ago. The first species to be tamed was thus the
Asian elephant, for agricultural ends. The first military application of
elephants dates from around 1100 BC in Vedic India, which is mentioned in
several Vedic hymns from this era. Shang China may have primitively used
elephants for military purposes around the same time as it is known that
elephants lived around the Yellow River[1], and were tamed.
From India, war elephants
were taken to the Persian Empire where they were used in several campaigns. The
battle of Gaugamela (October 1, 331 BC), fought against Alexander the Great was
probably among the first confrontations of Europeans with war elephants. The
fifteen animals, placed at the centre of the Persian line, made such an
impression on the Macedonian troops that Alexander felt the need to sacrifice
to the god of fear in the night before the battle. Gaugamela was Alexander's
greatest success, but the enemy elephants made enough of an impact on him that
following his conquest of Persia, Alexander recognised the use of the animals
and incorporated a number of them into his own army. Five years later, in the
battle of the Hydaspes River against Porus, although without his own, Alexander
already knew how to deal with elephants. Porus, who ruled in Punjab, Pakistan,
employed 200 war elephants in this battle, which presented a challenge to
Alexander, though he defeated Porus. At this time, the Magadha Empire further
east in eastern India and Bengal, had 6000 war elephants, while Chandragupta Maurya
a short time later had 9000 war elephants. These numbers of war elephants were
many times larger than the numbers employed by the Persians and Greeks, which
was discouraging for Alexander's men and stayed further progress into India.[2]
The successful military use
of elephants spread across the world. The successors to Alexander's empire, the
Diadochi, used hundreds of Indian elephants in their wars. The Egyptians and
the Carthaginians began taming African elephants for the same purpose, as did
the Numidians and the Kushites. The animal used was a species or sub-species of
the Forest elephant, specifically the North African relict population which
eventually became extinct from overexploitation[3]. This particular
breed was smaller than the Asian elephants used by the Seleucids, and were
quite often too scared to engage them in combat. The African savannah elephant,
larger than the African forest elephant or the Asian elephant, proved difficult
to tame for war purposes and was not used as extensively. Elephants used by the
Egyptians at the battle of Raphia in 217 BC were smaller than their Asian
counterparts, but that did not guarantee victory for Antiochus III the Great of
Syria.
Sri Lankan history records
elephants were used as mounts for kings leading their men in the battle field.[4]
The elephant Kandula was King Dutugamunu's mount (200 BC) and "Maha
Pabbata" the mount of King Elahara during their historic encounter in the
battlefield.
Burma (Myanmar) and
Thailand also used elephants in all their wars. One famous battle took place in
1591 when the Burmese army attacked Thailand's Kingdom of Ayutthaya. The war
ended when the Burmese crown prince Minchit Sra was killed by Thai King
Naresuan in personal combat on elephant back in Nong Sarai (Suphanburi).
Pliny the Elder (AD 45) one
of the great Roman historians, in Book 6 of his 37 volume history, states that
Megastenes had recorded the opinion of one Onesicritus that the Sri Lankan
elephants are larger, fiercer and better for war than others. For this reason
and the proximity of elephants close to sea ports inter alia made Sri Lanka's
elephants a lucrative trading commodity. Even in peacetime, death by elephant
was reserved for traitors and other offenders against the state and royalty.
In the next centuries,
further use of war elephants in Europe was mainly against the Roman Republic by
Carthage. From the battle of Heraclea (280 BC in the Pyrrhic War) to the famous
march across the Alps by Hannibal during the Second Punic war, elephants
terrified the Roman legions. Like Alexander, the Romans found a way to cope
with the dangerous elephant charges. In Hannibal's last battle (Zama, 202 BC),
his elephant charge was ineffective because the Roman maniples simply made way
for them to pass. More than a century later, in the battle of Thapsus (February
6 46 BC), Julius Caesar armed his fifth legion (Alaudae) with axes and
commanded his legionaries to strike at the elephant's legs. The legion
withstood the charge and the elephant became its symbol. Thapsus was the last
significant use of elephants in the West.[5]
A reportedly effective
anti-elephant weapon was the war pig. Pliny the Elder reported that
"elephants are scared by the smallest squeal of a pig" (VIII, 1.27).
A siege of Megara during the Wars of the Diadochi was reportedly broken when
the Megarians poured oil on a herd of pigs, set them alight, and drove them
towards the enemy's massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror from
the flaming squealing pigs (Aelian, de Natura Animalium book XVI, ch.
36).
The Parthian dynasty of
Persia occasionally used war elephants in their battles against Roman empire,
but they were of substantial importance in the army of the subsequent Sassanid
dynasty. The Sassanids used these giant beasts in many of their campaigns against
their western enemies. One of the most memorable ones was Battle of Vartanantz
in which Sassanid elephants caused much fear and crushed Armenian rebels.
Another example is the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in which elephants were
used in numbers in the Sassanid army.
In the Middle Ages,
elephants were seldom used in Europe. Charlemagne took his elephant,
Abul-Abbas, when he went to fight the Danes in 804[6], and the
Crusades gave Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor the opportunity to capture an
elephant in the Holy Land, later used in the capture of Cremona in 1214.
The Khmer
army waged war with elephants against the Cham in the 12th century.
It was the use of
elephants, again by an Indian Sultanate, that almost put an end to Timur's
conquests. In 1398 Timur's army faced more than one hundred Indian elephants in
battle and almost lost by pure fear of his troops. Historical accounts say that
the Timurids won due to an ingenious strategy: Timur set flaming straw on the
back of his camels before the charge. The smoke made the camels run forward and
scared the elephants, who crushed their own troops in an attempt to retreat.
Another account of the campaign (that of Ahmed ibn Arabshah) reports that Timur
used oversized caltrops to halt the elephant charge. Later, the Timurid leader
used the animals against the Ottoman Empire.
It is recorded that King
Rajasinghe the First, when he laid siege to the Portuguese fort at Colombo, Sri
Lanka in 1558, had an elephant phalanx of 2,200 (Peris 1913). The
officer-in-charge of the Royal stables was called the "Gaja Nayake
Nilame". His off-sider was the "Kuruve Lekham" who controlled
the Kuruwe or elephant men. The training of war elephants was the duty of the
Kuruwe clan who came under their own Muhandiram.
With the advent of gunpowder
warfare in the late 15th century, war elephants became obsolete for charging
because they could be easily knocked down by a cannon shot. Non-battle-trained
elephants have been used for military purposes up to and during World War II[7],
where the animals could perform tasks in regions that would be problematic for
machinery.
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=War_elephant&action=history
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