The Ivory King: A popular history of the elephant and its allies

by Charles Frederick Holder

ANCIENT ELEPHANT MEDALLIONS.

“Having, therefore, made all these preparations, he sent ambassadors to Semiramis (as she was on her march towards him), to complain and upbraid her for beginning a war without any provocation or injury offered her; and by his private letters, taxed her with a dissolute course of life; and vowed (calling the gods to witness), that, if he conquered her, he would nail her to the cross. When she read the letter, she smiled, and said the Indian should presently have a trial of her valor by her actions. When she came up with her army to the river Indus, she found the enemy’s fleet drawn up in a line of battle; whereupon she forthwith drew up her own, and, having manned it with the stoutest soldiers, joined battle, yet so ordering the matter as to have her land-forces ready upon the shore, to be assisting as there should be occasion. After a long and sharp fight, with marks of valor on both sides, Semiramis was at length victorious, and sunk a thousand of the enemy’s vessels, and took a great number of prisoners. Puffed up with this success, she took in the cities and islands that lay in the river, and carried away an hundred thousand captives. After this, the Indian king drew off his army (as if he fled for fear), but in truth to decoy his enemies to pass the river. Semiramis, therefore (seeing all things fall out according to her wish), laid a broad bridge of boats (at a vast charge) over the river, and thereby passed over all her forces, leaving only threescore thousand to guard the bridge, and with the rest of her army pursued the Indians. She placed the mock-elephants in the front, that the enemy’s scouts might presently inform the king what multitudes of elephants she had in her army: and she was not deceived in her hopes; for when the spies gave an account to the Indians what a great multitude of these creatures were advancing towards them, they were all in amaze, inquiring among themselves, whence the Assyrians should be supplied with such a vast number of elephants: but the cheat could not long be concealed; for some of Semiramis’s soldiers, being laid by the heels for their carelessness upon the guard (through fear of further punishment), made their escape, and fled to the enemy, and undeceived them as to the elephants; upon which the Indian king was mightily encouraged, and caused notice of the delusion to be spread through the whole army, and then, forthwith, marched with all force against the Assyrians; Semiramis, on the other hand, doing the like. When they approached near one to another, Stabrobates, the Indian king, placed his horse and chariots in the vanguard, at a good distance before the main body of his army. The queen, having placed her mock-elephants at the like distance from her main body, valiantly received her enemy’s charge: but the Indian horse were most strangely terrified; for in regard, the phantasms at a distance seemed to be real elephants, the horses of the Indians (being inured to these creatures) pressed boldly and undauntedly forward; but when they came near, and saw another sort of beast than usual, and the smell and every thing else almost being strange and new to them, they broke in with great terror and confusion, one upon another, so that they cast some of their riders headlong to the ground, and ran away with others (as the lot happened) into the midst of their enemies; whereupon Semiramis, readily making use of her advantage, with a body of choice men, fell in upon them, and routed them, forcing them back to their main body: and though Stabrobates was something astonished at this unexpected defeat, yet he brought up his foot against the enemy, with his elephants in the front; he himself was in the right wing, mounted upon a stately elephant, and made a fierce charge upon the queen herself, who happened then to be opposite to him in the left. And though the mock-elephants in Semiramis’s army did the like, yet they stood the violent shock of the other but a little while: for the Indian beasts, being both exceeding strong and stout, easily bore down and destroyed all that opposed them, so that there was a great slaughter; for some they trampled under foot, others they rent in pieces with their teeth, and tossed up others with their trunks into the air. The ground, therefore, being covered with heaps of dead carcasses, and nothing but death and destruction to be seen on every hand, so that all were full of horror and amazement, none durst keep their order or ranks any longer. Upon which the whole Assyrian army fled outright: and the Indian king encountered with Semiramis, and first wounded her with an arrow in the arm, and afterwards with a dart (in wheeling about) in the shoulder; whereupon the queen (her wounds not being mortal) fled, and by the swiftness of her horse (which far exceeded the other that pursued her), she got off.”

Curiously enough, in early times the camel was used in Persia, instead of the elephant, to carry burdens. The name of the elephant is not found in the Hebrew language; but the Grecian and Roman poets made frequent mention of it one hundred years before the time of Alexander, so that he must have known something of the strange animal when he contemplated his Indian invasion. He first met them in the flesh, according to Arrian, in the battle of Arbela, where he defeated the king of Persia, who had a few in his army, which Alexander captured. Soon after this he was presented with a number which had been brought from India by Darius, and later the victorious army of the great soldier captured a number on the banks of the Indus. It is known that Alexander was familiar with the advantages to be derived from elephants, but whether he added them immediately to his army is not known. One military writer, Polyænus, states that he did, and that a fine battalion of elephants was placed upon the left wing of the Macedonian army. But, on the other hand, Alexander said, according to Quintus Curtius, “I have so despised those animals, that, when I had them at my command, I did not employ them.” Alexander is pictured on a medal, a cut of which was published in the “Museum Cuspinianum,” edited by Laurentius Legatus, as riding in a chariot drawn by elephants when entering Babylon.

When Alexander passed the Indus, he met the army of King Porus with a large force of elephants. “There,” writes Quintus Curtius, “stood those huge bulks of overgrown bodies, the elephants; which, being on purpose provoked, filled the air with a horrible noise.” The river had to be passed with boats; and the great danger to be apprehended was, that the horses of the Greeks, upon perceiving the elephants, would be seized with fear, and leap into the water. For several days the Macedonians and the Indians lay encamped on the opposite banks of the river, the one effecting to attempt the passage by stratagem, the other constantly resisting the attempt with the terror of the elephants. Porus, however, relaxing in his watchfulness, and being deceived by a division of a part of the army of Alexander, the great body of the Macedonians were safely conveyed across. But the Indian king was resolved not to yield up his dominions without a struggle. “He drew up his army in order of battle,” says Arrian, upon “a plain where the soil was not incommodious by reason of the slippery clay, but firm and sandy, and every way fit wheeling his chariots round upon. First, he placed the elephants in the front, at the distance of one hundred feet from each other, to cover the whole body of foot, and at the same time to strike a terror into Alexander’s horse; for he imagined that none, either horse or foot, would be so hardy as to endeavor to penetrate through the spaces between the elephants. The horsemen, he thought, could not, because their horses would be terrified at the sight; and the foot would not dare, because the armed soldiers would be ready to gall them on each hand, and the elephants to trample them under their feet. The foot possessed the next rank. They were not, indeed, placed in the same order with the elephants, but so small a way behind that they seemed to fill up the interstices. At the extremities of each wing he placed elephants bearing huge wooden towers, wherein were armed men. The foot were defended on each hand by the horse, and the horse by the chariots, which were placed before them.”

“With the caution which is the best characteristic of a skillful general, Alexander resolved to avoid a direct attack upon the main body of the elephants. Perhaps the alarm which his soldiers are described to have felt at ‘those beasts, which, being disposed amongst the men in front, at a distance bore the appearance of towers,’ might have somewhat influenced this determination. The elephant which carried Porus himself, a man of extraordinary stature, was greatly superior to all the lest in height. Alexander is described as rejoicing in the splendid appearance of the enemy which he trusted to subdue. ‘At last I have met with a danger suitable to the greatness of my soul.’ The long pikes of the Macedonian phalanx, the rapid movements of the cavalry, and the cloud of arrows poured in by the light-armed Thracians, soon spread a panic amongst the Indians. But the elephants for a long time sustained the assaults of their impetuous enemies. They trampled the infantry under their feet; and ‘the most dismal thing of all was when these animals took up the armed soldiers with their trunks, and delivered them up to their governors on their backs.’ The day was far spent, and still the fight was doubtful, till at length the Macedonians directed all their power against the sagacious beasts that threatened to baffle the skill and bravery of the most disciplined troops of the earth. The Greeks chopped their legs with axes, and cut off their trunks with a crooked weapon resembling a scythe. While the infantry of Alexander thus encountered the principal strength of the Indians, his cavalry closed round them in overwhelming masses. ‘And the beasts now being pent up in a narrow space, and violently enraged, did no less mischief to their own men than the enemy; and as they tossed and moved about, multitudes were trampled to death; besides, the horse being confined among the elephants, a huge slaughter ensued, for many of the governors of the beasts being slain by the archers, and the elephants themselves, partly enraged with their wounds, and partly for want of riders, no longer kept any certain station in the battle, but running forwards, as if madness had seized them, they pushed down, slew, and trampled under foot friends and foes without distinction; only, the Macedonians, having the advantage of a more free and open space, gave way, and made room for the furious beasts to rush through their ranks, but slew them whenever they attempted to return. But the beasts at last, quite wearied out with wounds and toil, were no longer able to push with their usual force, but only made a hideous noise, and, moving their fore-feet heavily, passed out of the battle.”

“Although his forces were scattered all around him, the courage of the Indian king remained unconquerable. Exposed ‘as a mark at which every one levelled,’ he had received nine wounds, before and behind; but he still continued to hurl his javelins at the enemy, till they might be said ‘to drop from his faint arm, rather than be delivered.’ The governor of Porus’s elephant at last put the beast to flight, and Alexander himself slowly followed him upon a wounded horse. At length Porus, exhausted by his wounds, slid down from the back of the elephant; and the Indian guide, thinking the king desired to alight, commanded the animal to kneel down. The whole of the elephants were accustomed to imitate the movements of that upon which the king rode; and in like manner they instantly knelt down, and thus became a prey to the conquerors. Their habitual obedience to their masters involved their common ruin.”

An interesting medal is known to antiquarians, which is supposed to commemorate this victory of Alexander over Porus. On one side is shown the head of Alexander, covered with an elephant’s head-skin, and on the other a representation of Minerva, armed with a helmet, shield, and spear, and before her an eagle holding lightning in its talons. Whether Alexander used the elephants he captured, or not, is not known; but he preserved them, and created a new office,—the elephantarch, or governor of the elephants, whose business it was to take entire charge of them. At the death of Alexander, great numbers of elephants were owned by the Macedonians; and his successors, who had, perhaps, more faith in them for purposes of war, often used them in many of the sanguinary engagements of their time.

Many of the elephants of King Porus were afterwards employed by Eumenes; and, in his fiercely contested battle with Antigonus, elephants were used on both sides. In the attack made upon the city of Megapolis by Polysperchon, the latter employed sixty-five elephants which were considered invincible; but the foot-soldiers of the other army stole out, and built ditches in front of them, placing upright spears and spikes in them, and covering all with grass and leaves. When the elephants and the army charged, the great animals fell into the traps, and during the confusion the entire force was routed.

In those times the expense of keeping elephants was enormous, and oftentimes the animals suffered greatly. At the siege of Pydua, in Macedonia, the elephants were obliged to eat sawdust; and many died, or, as Diodorus Siculus says, “pined away for want of food.” In the histories of the wars that were waged between the generals of Alexander and Ptolemy, elephants are often mentioned, and were evidently relied upon more than any branch of the service. Diodorus Siculus says, when Perdiccas marched to the Nile, and assaulted the fort called the “Camel’s Wall,” he “boldly led up his army close to the fort, and forthwith the targeteers with their ladders mounted the wall; and those that rode upon elephants threw down the fortifications, and demolished the bulwarks. Whereupon Ptolemy, with those of his own guard about him, to encourage the rest of his officers and friends manfully to behave themselves, catched hold of a sarissa, and mounted the bulwark; and so, being on the higher ground, struck out the eyes of the foremost elephant, and wounded the Indian that sat upon him; and as for those that scaled the walls, he hurled them down, dreadfully cut and wounded, into the river. After his example, Ptolemy’s friends valiantly exerted themselves; and, by killing the Indian that governed the next elephant, the beast became unserviceable.” When Ptolemy and Seleucus attacked Demetrius at Gaza, their first care was to protect their army from the shock of the elephants of their enemy; and for this purpose they prepared “an iron palisado, sharp-pointed with iron, and fastened together with chains.” That this precaution was not taken in vain, the same author shows in the following: “And now, when the fight between the horse had been a long time doubtful, the elephants, forced on by the Indians, made so terrible an onset that it appeared impossible for any force to have stood against them. But when they came up to the palisado, the darters and archers sorely galled both the beasts and their riders; and being still forced on, and whipt by the Indians, some of them stuck upon the sharp points of the palisado, with which, besides the multitude of the darts and arrows that galled them, they were in such pain and torment that they caused a horrible tumult and confusion: for these creatures, in plain and level places, bear down all before them; but in those which are rough and craggy, they are of no use or service, because of the tenderness of their feet. Ptolemy, therefore, wisely foreseeing of what advantage this palisado would be, by that means frustrated the rage and fury of the beasts. At length, most of the Indians that rode them being killed, all the elephants were taken, upon which the greatest part of Demetrius’s horse were in such a consternation that they forthwith fled.”