Tanks were first used in battle in WWI, but before then, armies had nature’s tanks. A long, long time ago, someone had the bright idea to use elephants in battle. That person knew that elephants scared horses and men. Horses feared the sight, sound, and smell of the elephants. And men feared being turned into pancakes. The pachyderms would cause cavalry to run away and would trample foot soldiers. They were used for “shock and awe”. The elephant was a psychological weapon. Elephants were probably first used in ancient India. They were part of Indian warfare for centuries. The great conqueror Chandragupta Maurya had 9,000 war elephants. Indian kings led their armies while riding their personal elephants. The Chinese also added elephants to their armies. Setting the elephant’s tail on fire and pointing it at the enemy did not work well. Getting them drunk was more successful in getting them to charge and trample. Some elephants were armored with towers called howdahs on their backs with as many as 10 archers on board. In Southeast Asia, leaders of opposing armies sometimes dueled on elephants. To combat the monstrous beasts, various countermeasures were tried. Pits were dug with spikes in the bottom. Scythed polearms were used to cut the elephants’ trunks. Horses were given lion masks to scare the pachyderms.
Alexander the Great faced elephants when he invaded the Persian Empire. The Persians had imported them from India. The drivers were called mahouts and they sat on the elephant’s head and guided it using a stick to tap the right or left side of their elephant’s head. Alexander encountered them again in India in the Battle of Hydaspes. King Porus sent his elephants to chase off Alexander’s cavalry, but Alexander’s infantry intervened. Although many Macedonians were trampled or stabbed by steel tipped tusks, the light infantry aimed javelins at the elephant drivers. The heavy infantry used axes to chop at the elephants’ legs. Porus was felled by a javelin. His elephant pulled the missile out. The stout defense of the foot soldiers caused the elephants to panic and stampede through their own soldiers. Some historians believe Alexander turned back from India because he learned a future opponent had thousands of elephants. The great conqueror created his own elephant corps to defend his palace in Babylon. In the next short, you will learn about the elephants of Alexander’s successors and the elephants the Romans faced.
When Alexander died, his empire was divided between several of his generals. Not content with their shares of the empire, they attacked each other in a series of wars called the Wars of the Diodochi. In the battle of Ipsus, a victorious general’s cavalry was blocked by his opponents elephants. In the Battle of Gaza in 312 BC, Ptolemy used chains with spikes on them and archers and javelin throwers to deal with 43 war elephants. In 217 BC, there was an elephant on elephant battle in which the smaller African elephants ran away from the larger Asian elephants.
Famous general Pyrrhus brought elephants to Italy for his war with Rome. His elephants were the larger Asian elephants with towers called howdahs. The Roman legionaries had never seen the beasts and they helped rout the Romans in the first battle. For the second battle, the Romans constructed oxen wagons that had spikes, flaming poles, and pots of fire. Unfortunately, Pyrrhus shifted his elephants so they did not encounter the wagons. In the decisive Battle of Beneventum, the Romans used pigs against the elephants. They covered the pigs with tar and set them afire. They were then herded toward the elephants. Elephants do not like the squeals of pigs and they ran away. The Romans won the battle. Pigs were not the solution to the problem. They were hard to control and mahouts learned to have pigs live with their elephants to accustom the elephants to the pigs. Other countermeasures were more dependable. Spikes on boards were placed in the path of the elephants or caltrops were strewn in their path. A caltrop was like a jack from the game. No matter how you dropped it, there was always a sharp point that an elephant could step on.
The Romans had to deal with Carthaginian elephants in the Punic Wars. In the First Punic War, the elephants slammed into a Roman army attempting to capture Carthage. The beasts caused so much damage that the Roman army was badly defeated and its general was captured. By far the most famous use of elephants was by Hannibal. He brought elephants with him when he marched through Gaul on his way to Italy. He solved the problem of getting them across rivers by building ramps disguised as solid ground to trick the elephants into getting onto rafts. He started across the Alps with 37 elephants. Despite the snow and dangerous path, most of the elephants survived the crossing. They played a pivotal role in his victory at the Lake Trebia. However, by the time of the next battle, all but one were lost. The remaining elephant was Hannibal’s favorite named Surus. It is believed Surus was a Syrian elephant. It was bigger than the 36 African forest elephants. Those elephants were not big enough to carry towers, but Hannibal could stand in one on Surus and this allowed him to see the battlefield better. In the final battle of the Second Punic War, Hannibal had high hopes for his elephant charge. However, Roman general Scipio instructed his men to open lanes for the elephants to run through. His men blew trumpets and yelled to scare the grey tanks. In fact, some were stampeded into their own cavalry allowing the Roman cavalry to chase their foes away.
The Romans adopted elephants into their army after the war. They helped Rome to win the Battle of Pydna in Macedonia. The Roman general had elephant fighters who wore spiked helmets and had shields with spikes that they would throw down for the elephants to step on. In the Battle of Thapsus, Caesar faced a rebel army that relied on elephants. Caesar’s Fifth Legion was trained to stab the elephants in their eyes and other weak spots. The elephants were routed and the 5th Legion adopted the elephant as its emblem. Elephants fell out of favor in Europe after this. Part of the reason was that the African forest elephant had been hunted almost to extinction for its ivory.
At the siege of Edessa in 544 AD, the Persian army had one enormous elephant that almost created a breach in the wall. The Byzantines lowered a pig on a rope and the elephant was too scared to continue.
In India, the great conqueror Tamerlane captured the city of Delhi after winning a battle against an army that had war elephants. He had camels loaded with hay. The hay was set on fire and forced to charge the elephants. The beasts panicked and stampeded into their own men. Akbar the Great had thousands of elephants, but he also had gunpowder weapons which were the handwriting on the wall for war elephants. Elephants could survive bullets, but not cannon balls.
Elephants ceased to be a weapon, but they still could be used in armies. In Burma in WWII, the British used elephants to help construct bridges, roads, and runways. The Japanese used them to carry supplies. The Viet Cong used them for that purpose in the Vietnam War.
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