
War Elephants - ubac
https://acoup.blog/2019/07/26/collections-war-elephants-part-i-battle-pachyderms/
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cstross
I'd just like to note that the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds has a probably-
unique surviving suit of elephant armour, which is displayed on a stuffed
elephant in pride of place:

[https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/bb/15/43bb154f887b493c76c3...](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/43/bb/15/43bb154f887b493c76c300535bbf47c8.jpg)

 _Not_ on display due to conservation issues (but noted on the display text)
are the tusk swords, because once you've got an angry Indian elephant wearing
armor pointed at the enemy why _wouldn 't_ you strap a pair of giant swords to
its tusks?

If you're ever in Leeds — in the UK — I'd highly recommend a day trip to the
Royal Armouries, especially if you have any kind of interest in the history of
armour, guns, and murder cutlery.

(Posted to add a reality-based perspective to the 100% fictional imagery of
war elephants in the OP.)

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stronglikedan
Were the tusk swords just strapped on? If so, I find it odd that displaying
them would be controversial.

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rhcom2
FYI he said "conservation issues", not controversial. They're probably brittle
and can't support their own weight safely.

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will_pseudonym
Ah, thanks. It was confusing to me. Another word that I think might fit better
would be, "preservation."

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ithkuil
Perhaps that's yet another case where British English diverges a bit from
American English.

I didn't find an explicit quote, but for example look: there is this institute
in UK called "institute of conservation"
[https://icon.org.uk/groups/archaeology/about-
archaeological-...](https://icon.org.uk/groups/archaeology/about-
archaeological-conservation)

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gnufied
Guess no discussion of War elephants can be complete without their use by
Porus in war against Alexander's Indian campaign -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Hydaspes)

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TheGallopedHigh
This is discussed at some length in the article and how the 2004 movie got
certain aspects of the war elephants wrong.

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doc_gunthrop
They mentioned the war elephants used by Hannibal in the Battle of Zama
(during the Second Punic War), but only briefly. The opposing Roman general,
Scipio Africanus, was already prepared to deal with the elephants, effectively
using them _against_ Hannibal.

While elephants can take on the role of an almost tank-like unit on the
battlefield, they still have an inherent sense of self-preservation; when
given the choice of running into a wall of soldiers wielding spears vs going
through an open path in between, they will opt for the path of least
resistance. With this in mind, Scipio was able to effectively set up his
army's formation.

~~~
z3phyr
From what my extended family in India told me, it is relatively easy to get
elephants trained for work, but training war elephants was extremely hard and
required a lot of time. Having said that, well trained war elephants, although
harder to come by, held to their nerves during the battle and were very
devastating; Given they encounter the army they were trained to fight.

During the first battle of Panipat, the invading Mughals had canons, which the
opposing War Elephants were not trained for, and their alien sound broke their
charge. If, for example, those elephants were trained with Canons in mind,
they would probably have been successful in their charge.

I am talking about Indian elephants though.

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benologist
Those Total War games are worth checking out. They've basically been iterating
for 20 years on the same engine and have made a whole bunch of titles, mostly
with a view to historical accuracy. They made a fantasy title from the
tabletop Warhammer game, it's arguably more fun because of the sheer variety
in units, the scale of it is also ludicrous like maybe you have a battle with
10,000 units fighting each other.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_(series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_War_\(series\))

~~~
thrower123
Rome Total War (the original) is one of the most fun and replayable games out
there. It's also still got a massive modding community, that have expanded the
base game in enormous ways - the Rome Total Realism[1] and Europa
Barbarorum[2] mods are very well done, if you want to go for a bigger and more
historically accurate experience.

The successor Medieval 2 is arguably the high point of the entire series.

Rome 2 Total War was sadly not nearly as good; it may be playable at this
point, but I was very disappointed with it.

[1] [http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?26-Rome-
Tota...](http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?26-Rome-Total-
Realism-\(RTR\))

[2]
[https://www.europabarbarorum.com/EB1/](https://www.europabarbarorum.com/EB1/)

~~~
AcerbicZero
Bingo. Even though CA actually did put some effort into getting Rome:II TW
patched/updated it still is no where near the level of the original.
Medieval:II is the high water mark for the series (with Rome being an
_extremely_ close second) and that is unlikely to change anytime soon, based
on CA's current lineup.

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danso
What a fantastic blog. Its follow up to this post, focusing on the logistics
of raising and feeding an elephant army, is even better:
[https://acoup.blog/2019/08/02/collections-war-elephants-
part...](https://acoup.blog/2019/08/02/collections-war-elephants-part-ii-
elephants-against-wolves/)

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pregseahorses
According to the Islamic tradition, before the Hijri calendar was established,
the Arabs used the "aam-ul-feel" \- the "year of the elephant" \- marked by
the event of Mecca being under attack by an army with war elephants. There's a
small chapter in the Quran called "The Elephant" about this.

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Apofis
Unmitigated Pedantry

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etxm
I rode a War Elephant^1 for years. They are pretty bitching. Great for
stomping kobolds and goblins without rusting up your blade on their vile
blood.

[1] in D&D

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0xcafecafe
I actually did ride an angry bull elephant in real life in the jungles of
Chitwan national park
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitwan_National_Park](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chitwan_National_Park))
in Nepal when I was in 7th grade. I was on the elephant along with its mahout
(controller) and my parents and let me tell you it is not fun. I saw it topple
a boat full of passengers over (thankfully they stepped out into the river
before he could do any damage and the river was 2-3 feet deep).

Apparently, it was mating season and he didn't like being separated from his
female when we started the ride. The mahout eventually brought him under
control but it was an experience worth remembering none-the-less.

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z3phyr
Why would the mahout let you ride a mast elephant?

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0xcafecafe
No idea. We didn't even know he was a bull.

It was part of the safari experience where one group will go on elephant back
into the forest to spot tigers/leopards/rhinos,etc and the other group would
go in small boats in the river to spot gharials
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gharial)).

The boat that was toppled was full of tourists going for that. After the
mahout got him under control though there were no other incidents. We were on
him for the full 4 hours.

