- For other units of the same name, see War Elephant.
The War Elephant is a heavy cavalry unit of the Chinese in Empires: Dawn of the Modern World.
The Stampede ability costs 100 power and tramples adjacent enemies, doing heavy damage.
Strengths[]
Good vs. infantry.
Weaknesses[]
Weak vs. archers.
Description[]
From the earliest times of organized warfare, the elephant has played a role on the battlefield. Huge, imposing, and terrifying to foot soldiers, the mighty pachyderms earned a place in military history, from Alexander's battle at Arbela to Hannibal's crossing of the alps and beyond. It was in Asia, however, where the war elephant originated and where it remained a formidable foe well into the modern era. In 1788, for example, the Vietnamese King Quang Trung used 100 war elephants to defeat a large Chinese force at Thang Long Fort in northern Annam (Vietnam). The Vietnamese even built large rafts to float the elephants down river to make the assault. As primitive armored platforms for archers, the war elephants were impressive, but when they stampeded, running amok amongst the enemy with their massive tusks and tree-trunk legs, they demolished all in their path. The Chinese, like their Vietnamese neighbors, were long practiced in the used of these creatures, and in southern China they were ubiquitous in local armies for centuries.
Elephants were particularly common in Yunnan province in southwest China, and in Xishuangbanna in particular. Located at the southern tip of Yunnan, this region of stunning natural beauty has a long history of elephants in peace and war. During the 12th century the ruler of the region had some 9000 elephants in his personal herd. War elephants were draped in armor "like gowns," and often covered with barrels studded with sword blades, to keep off opposing soldiers. In combat, though, the elephant was most feared when it went on a rampage. The stampede of these seven-ton beasts was a terrifying and phenomenally destructive event, as the elephant exerted its tremendous energy and spent itself in lashing out against and trampling on anything in its path. While it was hard enough to keep calm in the face of an advancing phalanx of pachyderms in the best of circumstances, it was nigh on impossible to stand fast before a raging charge of armored bull elephants in full lather.
Using elephants in battle therefore was a skilled and difficult art. Big targets, they were vulnerable to ranged attacks. Being slow, they had difficulty chasing down dispersed enemies. When faced with massed defenders, however, particularly those without effective missile weapons, stampeding elephants were capable of removing utterly any defensive line. Infantry meeting this charge were faced with a terrible dilemma: run, and abandon the field of battle, or stand, and be trampled under the mighty hooves of the onrushing monsters. For the enemies of China, it was a decision that made many rue the day they made war on the Middle Kingdom. For Chinese armies, it was an essential part of their campaigns in South Asia-force the enemy to choose between elephantine destruction or abject retreat.[1]
See also[]
References[]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||
