Konstantin Nossov

Another Osprey book, mostly intended for military modelers. Author Konstantin Nossov discusses military use of elephants as weapons; he mentions that elephants also had military use as transport animals (in fact they still do in the Indian Army) but those aren’t his focus. Before reading this I had only though of war elephants in connection with the Punic Wars; Nossov points out what should have been obvious to me – war elephants were mostly used in the Indian subcontinent and southeast Asia. Indian and African elephants are different species (Elephas maximus versus Loxodonta africana; the elephants used by the Carthaginian, Ptolemaic and Roman armies seem to be a now extinct North African subspecies, probably related to the African bush elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis). Interestingly enough Nossov relates that in the one battle where the different species encountered each other as war elephants (the battle of Raphia, 217 BC), Ptolemy IV’s African elephants were frightened by Antiochus III’s Indian elephants and retreated.

The frightened African elephants brings up another theme; in various wargames I’ve played covering battles of the ancient world that involved elephants, there are always special “rampaging” rules, for elephants that go mad and attack at random. Nossov notes that this sometimes happened with Indian elephants used in India and southeast Asia, but it was fairly rare; Indian war elephants got extensive training. They were subjected to loud, sudden noises; hit with blunt weapons and arrows; exposed to straw dummies of enemy soldiers; and generally hardened to battle. The rampaging problem seems to have been confined to Indian elephants transported to the Middle East and African elephants and may have been due to inadequate training. Indian “combined arms” methods may have helped as well; in Indian armies each elephant was accompanied (if possible) by an infantry squad and a cavalry unit to protect the elephant’s flanks and underside.

Indian armies also seem to have used their elephants in more varied roles than Mediterranean and Near Eastern armies. The basic elephant role in all armies was as a sort of tank; the elephant would carry some number of warriors armed with long weapons and these would attack enemy soldiers. The Indians also made use of elephants as “self propelled artillery”; an elephant could carry a couple of heavy crossbows or light cannon, and as siege weapons; an elephant could reach up with its trunk and pull down fortification walls, or press its head against a gate and stove it in. (Many fortifications had anti-elephant spikes on their gates to prevent this; elephant troops countered by providing armor for their elephant’s foreheads).

Nossov discusses anti-elephant measures; when first confronted by elephants (in the wars against Pyrrhus) the Romans countered with some sort of carts equipped with projecting blades; these were not effective. A later, successful strategy involved covering pigs with pitch, setting them on fire, and releasing them into the elephant ranks.

Nossov is a Russian military historian; although his English is always grammatically correct it often has a slightly foreign feel. Nothing hinders readability, though. As usual in an Osprey book there are extensive color illustrations. His bibliography includes primary sources (classical authors) plus secondary sources; I have very little knowledge of warfare in India and southeast Asia so I’ll have to check some of these out.… (meer)