Thread 64235899

Why were war elephants not that useful? How important were they REALLY to Hannibal's attack against Rome?

>>64235899 (OP)
Elephants are skittish creatures.

>>64235899 (OP)
I get the distinct impression this isn't how this would've gone down lmao

>>64235899 (OP)
Like >>64236074 said, elephants are very skittish and don't like unexpected, loud things that hurt them, all of which happen in war. If you can get them mixed in with the enemy they can be quite devastating, but if they refuse, or worse, turn and run, they can cause serious issues for you and be major obstacles to maneuver.

As for Hannibal's invasion, not very, most of them died on the journey and those that survived died within the first year of the invasion.

>>64235899 (OP)
large, awkward, beasts of burden, that are in reality fairly gentle unless antagonized. they're also noticeably intelligent, with some being measured on par with some humans. add in the food intake and the challenges of corralling hungry megafauna and you'll begin to see some of the reasons for why they're not good in war.
as for Hannibal's assault on Rome they were instrumental. the Roman's couldn't do jack against the elephants. all they could really manage was to hide behind their walls and wait for Hannibal to get frustrated and go home. that is basically what happened by the way. the elephants were unstoppable on the open field, however they were absolutely useless against walls built high enough to require siege towers. you could probably try to ram the door, but arrows and boiling oil/falling rocks proved that to be an expensive loss of a war machine when a mere battering ram with a cover would have been cheaper.
Hannibal wandered around for a while with his big, unstoppable, pachyderms, and then was forced to go home. either lack of funds for his army, or loss of the elephants is not known to me. what is known, is that the humiliation the Romans endured during Hannibal's invasion led directly to the raising of Carthage. Rome wasn't about to allow Hannibal to happen a second time.

>>64235899 (OP)
Huge caloric requirements on campaign doesn’t help. Elephants are on the smarter end as far as animals go. They know what’s good for them. Most war animals, horses included, will refuse after their first battle, regardless of training. That’s why trusty war horses were so prized and written about, they were very much the exception. I can imagine an elephant see whats going on and decide to nope before even getting to the front lines.

You dont want to be anywhere near them.

The trick would be pissing off the normally chill elephants and in a way that would direct their rage onto the enemy instead of your troops. Once you do, though... Hippo in pic related weighs more than a car and the elephant flips it over with its trunk like it’s nothing. What chance does a soldier in the field without firearms stand?

>>64235899 (OP)
In the context of Rome, elephants were incredible game-changers and were responsible for many battlefield victories, right up to the point Rome figured out how to handle them/got lucky and their enemies ran out of elephants (often at the same time). In fact the majority of phalangite victories against Rome would never had happened if it wasn't for the sheer pants-wetting terror the average Roman soldier would had felt upon seeing these huge and novel animals attack them. How to deal with elephants was basically the tactical problem that won and lost battles.

>>64235899 (OP)
none of the elephants Hannibal brought into the alps made it to Rome

>>64236283
It seems that they weren't the same kind of elephant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

>>64235899 (OP)
In the context of bronze and iron age warfare, they were plenty useful as a force multiplier. Morale and unit cohesion were big issues, armies tended to rout far more easily. Rome got its ass kicked by Carthage multiple times, but never accepted any peace offers so kept coming back until they won.
The Punic Wars had far more to do with strategic victories than tactical ones.

>>64235899 (OP)
They seemed to be at their best during the Diodachi wars but good surviving sources have not survived. The most brilliant use of them i am aware of was the Final Battle of Ultimate Destiny between the Antiognous factions v Everyone Else at Ipsus in 301 BC. As in every Macedonian Hellenistic engagement the cavalry were the prime striking arm and in this battle the Antigonid cav led by Demetrius beat and chased off the Coalition cav and then returns and attempts to strike the rear of the Coalitions infantry but is blocked by a massive screening force of c500 elephants strategically redeployed by Selecus. This ended up with the permanent castration of Antiongids as contender for number 1 in the BoP.

>>64235899 (OP)
>Why were war elephants not that useful?
If they weren't that useful, why were they used for over 2, 000 years? Don't let the lack of Roman adoption confuse you, it still took them hundreds of years for them to adopt cataphracts as a useful military tool for example.
>How important were they REALLY to Hannibal's attack against Rome?
Since all of his elephants starved, froze, or died of sickness before fighting in Italy, I don't really think they really mattered.

Now on to some pros and cons of elephants.

>Cons
Super expensive: They take a lot to feed, and if you armor them that takes a lot of metal. You also need the crew which ranges from a mahout (elephant 'pilot') and a dude on the back with either pike, javelin, or bow, all the way up to a mahout, a crew of three on the back, and between two and four guards for each leg.
Easy to spook: We know people prepared the elephants for war by training with whips, and slashing and stabbing at them in an attempt to get them used to pain, and supposedly by giving them wine before the battle, but they're still herd animals. If the lead elephant dies or runs away the rest of the herd will follow, generally the opposite from the enemy and thus right through your own forces.
Not that good at range: Most elephant crews in history had ranged weaponry (Early Diadochi forces seemingly an exception), but that didn't mean they were that useful. The most common way to defeat elephants were to have skirmishers run up and engage them, and they couldn't really do anything to them in return.
Short life in captivity: Elephants in the wild can live up to 70 (Asian) or 50 (African) years, and in captivity it drops to 19 & 17 years according to a study in 2008 of elephants in zoos. The weight from towers and howdahs also damages the spine of the elephants leading to worse health which can be seen in the elephants that give tourist rides.
>1/2

>>64236624
>Pros
Scare horses: Any horse unfamiliar to them wouldn't go near them, giving them sorta of a bubble of safety around them against cavalry. This doesn't mean cavalry couldn't engage them, as horse trained around them could still charge them, but that requires you to have enough elephants to train your cavalry around. Even then horses can never completely get over their fear of elephants.
Formation breaking: Elephants can charge fast at short distance and then use their bulk to break formations. This coupled with their size (which admittedly may be smaller than you think), the sounds, including the bells attached to them, and the vibrant paint (which does appear to have been used by Hellenistic forces) all add up and can terrify infantry that are not familiar with them.
Offensives sieges: Elephants were used to batter down gates, or pull down weak walls.
>2/2

Pictured here is a reenactment using an African Forest elephant (those commonly attributed to Carthage). Now there’s no tower, and the mahout sits much further back than usual, so it doesn’t really match what we’re told from the sources. It also doesn’t seem like it would be able to pick soldiers up with its trunk and throw them around, which again the sources tell us they did.

But there’s also another theory.
Ptolemy II claimed to be the first person to train the African elephant, and all things considered, it seem he was. However modern day DNA testing of the elephants in the region he got his has proven that they are the larger African Bush elephants which supposedly can’t be trained, even through they’re used by park rangers today while not fully mature, because mature African Bush elephants can't be ridden. Now with thousands of years they could’ve migrated there, or the “smaller” African elephants could just have been immature African Bush elephants which would help explain why the older, more experienced with war, Indian elephants won their fight at Raphia.

>>64235899 (OP)
War elephants didn't want to step on things, especially horses and people. This meant they were really fucking easy to neutralize once you gor over the shock of BIG ANIMAL. I can't remember who but they basically dug some trenches and the charging elephants, trying to avoid the enemy horses, soldiers and spears ran into the pits where thier riders became easy game. I believe the animals were killed rather easily as well unfortunately. Elephants are too smart for war.

War elephant thread with no mention of
Flaming pigs
Easy counter

>>64235899 (OP)
>>64236074
>>64236124
>>64236728
>>64237003
>Something has literally any counterplay or drawbacks
>Pseuds: WHY WAS IT USELESS???
you are the blackest gorilla nigger I have ever met.

They were useful but like any weapons system there were ways to counter them. They're afraid of pigs irl just like in total war

>>64235899 (OP)
>How important were they REALLY to Hannibal's attack against Rome?
Almost a non factor

>>64236624
The Romans used elephants in the invasion of Britain. Scared the shit out of the local celtoids

>>64239621
I gave a reason why you'd have them you spastic retard
>>64236124
>if you can get them mixed in with the enemy they can be quite devastating
Even so, they were mostly for psychological effect.

>>64235899 (OP)
Elephants are expensive. They eat about 500-600 pounds of vegetables and other shit every day. That's each. An army eats less than what a few of these cost to feed.

>>64235899 (OP)
they were busy to the northwest, bringing news of battle

>>64236124
>>64236074
Thats why you cover their eyes/ears and armor them up. Only the trainer leads them to where they go, not what the external stimuli from others.

Domestication. You can tame an elephant but not domesticate them .
They have to be easy to feed.
They need a agreeable herd instinct.
Needs a lifespan and reproductive rate shorter than a humans so we can selectively breed them.
They also need to be just smart enough to listen to us but also dumb enough to charge into battle.
Dogs are pretty much a perfect example of this.

Elephants are not easy to keep fed, have complicated herd dynamics, reproduce very slowly, live a long time, and are smart enough to try to avoid battle.

IIRC elephants were given enough wine to get drunk and fed some fruit (maybe figs, idk) that elephants are allergic to. this would make them itchy and aggressive to get past their usual docile nature.

>>64236138
>they're also noticeably intelligent, with some being measured on par with some humans
On par with you maybe lmao

>>64235899 (OP)
I don't think most people really recognise just how fucking wild it was to be able to tame African Elephants and be able to armour them up and use them as essentially organic tanks.

>>64242486
>You can tame an elephant but not domesticate them .
Nobody bothered to, the long life cycle makes it inconvenient. It takes a decade for an elephant to become mature so the 40 something generations needed for domestication would take half a millennium or more.

>>64236138
Do you think these things are why ballistas were invented?

>>64242714
>Isokrates?
>Yes, Pantaleon?
>What if bow, but *big*?
I feel like this was one node on the tech tree we were going to unlock regardless of what happened.

>>64245201
>no, Atreus Thraxus, bigger

>>64245929
Ngl I’d surrender if this thing was aimed at me. Holy shit.

>>64246093
A 50+ lb. stone flying at several hundred feet per second will really change your day.

>>64236124
Elephants can't be domesticated like horses. They can barely be tamed. They also take too long to mature for people to try to breed the wild out of them like horses.

the romaboo fears the elephant and the horse archer

>>64236601
Horses are naturally afraid of elephants too, so the smell alone was often enough to get horses to freak out and become disordered.

>>64235899 (OP)
they would easily get sliced up in melee