War Elephants

by John M. Kistler

Elephants have fought in human armies for more than three thousand years. Asian powers boasted of their pachyderm power, while the Romans fielded elephants alongside their legendary legions but were, perhaps, too proud to admit that mere animals contributed to victory. Elephants have gored, stomped, and sliced their way through infantry and cavalry with great success. They have also been cut, speared, bombed, and napalmed for their efforts. This is the story of their largely forgotten role in the history of warfare.

Generals throughout recorded history have used elephants as tanks, bulldozers, and cargo trucks long before such vehicles existed. Until gunpowder began to reduce the utility of elephants in battle during the 17th Century, these beasts built roads, swung swords, or simply terrified opposing forces. Although some believe that elephants were mere gimmicks of warfare, Kistler discredits that notion. His book hopes to give elephants the credit they deserve for the sacrifices they have endured. Elephants have long fought for and served human masters, but it is now the elephants themselves that must be protected.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Animals

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2005

Reviews

[Kumar Setty · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was interesting. It is well written and I believe the author made his best attempt to try and verify the accounts. However, is the actual references are slanted and biased then it's a very difficult task to present an accurate picture. First of all the author focused on elephants in war. There is one absolutely glaring error and the other instances may be the result of biased references.

The author states on page 8 that in the Hindu epic The Mahabharata that armies feared the male elephant in "musth" and that this word is a corruption of the Urdu word "mast" meaning "intoxicated". Sanskrit predates Urdu by over 4,000 years! How can a Sanskrit word be a corruption of an Urdu word? The author also states that the Mahabharata is also "one or two millennia" more recent than the stated 3,000 BC. What was the purpose of this statement? So the author is now an expert in dating the Mahabharata?

The author also writes as if he is giving an eyewitness account of the battle between Porus and Alexander. He states that Porus was defeated by Alexander, when almost ALL of the historical evidence states that Alexander was mortally wounded at India's border.

The author also ignores or conveniently glosses over the use of elephants by the Delhi kingdoms in defeating the Mongols two times. There are some amazing historical accounts how this happened.

The author is not a historian. He has a mahout certificate and "runs a small business". As with all books on history, some events cannot be disputed. However, many times the reader must ingest all the information with a boulder of salt. This book is grammatically well written, but the author and his publisher seem to want to present a slanted view of history through his interest in war elephants.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

An overview, mostly chronological, of the use of elephants in combat. Clearly, there was an enormous amount of information sifting that went into this book (indicated by the some 100 pages of bibliography in the back), given the author had to exract every minute mention of elephants that may have occurred for virtually every major recorded battle in the history of the western world.

I found two points the most interesting. First, that it was apparently common custom to get elephants blindingly drunk before combat. Second, the pattern that elephant combat followed -- first time they are used against an enemy, they are successful in that the enemy has no idea what to do when their horses (and sometimes their soldiers) refuse to charge due to panic; however when they are used a second time, a prepared enemy is able to cause enough pain and confusion among the elephants (with the help of ditches, fire, arrows, and caltrops) to result in a stampede back over their own forces. This pattern appeared to repeat throughout history, with it being roughly 50-50 elephants being the source of victory or defeat.

I found the strategies of elephant placement to be interesting, but I really wish there had been more on the actual training of the animals and details of individual fighting technique (some of this is dispersed throughout, but it is scattered somewhat randomly).

It takes a lot for me to really take issue with the editing of a book, but I have to note that the extreme overuse of exclamation points is inappropriate in a nonfiction book, and in this case, overwhelmingly distracting! It was also difficult to separate author's speculation from fact, which leaves me unable to fully accept a lot of what is written here at face value. However, he does cite his sources and this provides a good starting point for further exploration of the subject.
Honestly, I'm just excited there actually exists a book on this subject, that has compiled so many bits together.

[Juliana Gray · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was informative and readable, full of interesting historical events and trivia. But the exclamation points! Drove! Me! Crazy! The author uses a liberal sprinkling of these in every chapter, and they just grated on my nerves.

[Leif]

You've got to love, in a book about war elephants, a chapter entitled: "Massive Weapons of Destruction."