Chariots as equid battering rams

[Justin Swanton]

Can one posit that Xenophon, as one of the Ten Thousand who marched with Cyrus, was in a position to acquire fairly reliable knowledge of what Middle Eastern chariots used to be capable of and were once used for?

Xenophon says that before Cyrus the Elder, all Middle-Eastern chariots were of the Homeric style, as still used by the Libyans. I'd take that as evidence that no, he couldn't, but if you're happy to lump Sumerian and Egyptian vehicles as essentially the same thing, I guess you're happy to include Libyco-Homeric charioteering under the same umbrella too.

An oral or written record would probably give a more reliable account of ancient chariot usage than of the precise design of different chariots in different epochs. And yes, I lump them together in terms of how they were employed, just like Tigers, Panthers, Churchills, T34s and Shermans were all on the battlefield for the same reason.

[Justin Swanton]

The thick wheels of Assyrian chariots are interesting. Possibly to crush fallen enemies so they wouldn't get up again?

More robust?  More ground clearance?  Gave more of a height advantage to the crew?

The wheels aren't especially big, they just have thick rims. So I don't think it was about ground clearance or height. Maybe about being robust (though why weren't chariots of other nations equally beefed up if it gave a significant advantage?)



PS: Notice that the charioteer is shooting fleeing infantry as well as running them down - would killing off routed foot be an important reason for arming the charioteer with a bow?

[Andreas Johansson]

An oral or written record would probably give a more reliable account of ancient chariot usage than of the precise design of different chariots in different epochs.

It's a long time since I read the Iliad, but I definitely didn't get the impression it portrayed chariots as shock weapons.

(Before anyone objects that the Iliad isn't a reliable account of Mycenaean warfare, recall the context: it should be a quite reliable guide to what Xenophon's readers understood by Homeric charioteering.)

[RichT]

Please go ahead. The thread is about the nature of the impact of a moving horse on stationary infantry and in that optic I think the Napoleonic era does offer useful input.

Is it though? The nature of the impact of a moving horse on a stationary infantryman is I think pretty clear - the man gets knocked aside or knocked over (depending exactly how the horse hits him), the horse maybe keeps going, maybe trips up (depending exactly what happens to its legs). But taking the interaction of one horse and one man, multiplying by 500 and assuming this is what happened to formed bodies is not valid.

On Napoleonics - yes Nosworthy gathers a lot of evidence on this and is pretty good I think. Going from memory, there was debate at the time (18th/19th C) about the correct way to use cavalry against infantry, and a school of thought that they could and should be ridden into full contact. However, actual examples where this was pulled off successfully are exceedingly rare, and then were often due to special circumstances, such as the dead horse making a gap. Of course, these special cases are what justified the full charge argument - cavalry could charge AT infantry in the hope that something would happen which would make the charge successful.

Musketry could be useful in stopping, slowing or deterring approaching cavalry, but is not the primary reason why squares were adopted - otherwise, a line would have been just as (or more) effective. Cavalry could approach to sword reach of a square, unharmed by musketry, and still be unable to penetrate if the infantry were steady.

I feel we've had this discussion a million times already. The Napoleonic angle usually ends with:
Napeolenic cavalry only failed because the infantry had muskets. Ancient infantry didn't have muskets. QED.
And at the same time:
Napoleonic cavalry charges sometimes broke squares. So cavalry can charge smack into infantry. QED.

We certainly have had the scythed chariot argument quite recently. And the rest of it sounds an awful lot like KTB. Chariot KTB? C-KTB?

[Justin Swanton]

We certainly have had the scythed chariot argument quite recently. And the rest of it sounds an awful lot like KTB. Chariot KTB? C-KTB?

No, no. KTB is about horses sliding between infantry files like, well, a knife through butter. Chariots are about slamming into the infantry without any finesse whatsoever. So better as Club The Bastards Blighters - CTB. There you go.

[Andreas Johansson]

I don't believe I got any answers to the following questions from page one. I realize the thread's been moving at the speed of a charging chariot, but I'd still be interested in Justin's responses

What, anyway, gives you the impression that shock was the primary role of chariots? Egyptian reliefs mostly show their crew as shooting arrows, which prima facie would suggest that to be their main role.

Also, as Rich alludes to, scythed chariots of later eras have a terrible track record. Why would conventional chariots be better shock weapons, and if they were why did the conventional ones disappear and the scythed ones be invented?

The conclusion seems to be that infantry have to interlock together with shields or a closely-packed formation or something similar to stop horses quickly. Just standing in intermediate order doesn't cut it.

Accepting this as true, do we have any particular reason to believe chariot age infantry didn't adopt such expedients? It's hard to tell exactly how closely the Assyrian infantry in the reliefs discussed in this thread, say, are supposed to be, but it looks fairly tight to me, and their shields are certainly large enough they could be interlocked.

[Erpingham]

Can I, in the midst of this hurtling discussion, ask for a quick definitional check from Justin?

We understand that the main historical evidence for the equid panzer is Xenophon (though he may have been surprised to hear it).   Yet Xenophon apparently says that there was another type of chariot - the Homeric - which was also used in Libya.  Does Justin accept Xenophon on this?  If so, why is the Egyptian chariot in the "panzer" category, yet the very similar Libyan in a different one?  taking it further, do we assume that other European chariots e.g. Bronze Age Nordic, Celtic are also "Homeric" class?

Are the chariots of India, China and South-East Asia in the "panzer" class or do they have their own class(es)?

[Jim Webster]

Trawling through YouTube I came across some videos that show that galloping horses are quite happy to ride over humans if trying to avoid them would slow them down. Examples here, here and especially here.

All of which show horses trampling over individuals, not groups of men - not even loosely-formed ones.

Sure. I included them to show how little a single human being slows down a galloping horse, which tends to support my working hypothesis that you would need an infantry line in the region of 20-deep to stop it if the infantry don't have weapons capable of killing the horse.

or one man with a spear braced and with the butt spike sticking in the ground

[Justin Swanton]

I don't believe I got any answers to the following questions from page one. I realize the thread's been moving at the speed of a charging chariot, but I'd still be interested in Justin's responses

OK, let me have a go. I'm very much in the exploratory phase at present so it's just possible I may not have all the answers. 

What, anyway, gives you the impression that shock was the primary role of chariots? Egyptian reliefs mostly show their crew as shooting arrows, which prima facie would suggest that to be their main role.

From what I can see, whenever Egyptian art shows charioteers using bows in a battle context, they are pursuing a routed enemy which they are simultaneously riding down:









Anyone know of any exceptions to this? If so how many?

Also, as Rich alludes to, scythed chariots of later eras have a terrible track record. Why would conventional chariots be better shock weapons, and if they were why did the conventional ones disappear and the scythed ones be invented?

My answer is that infantry got good at stopping conventional chariots but scythed chariots were sufficiently terrifying as shock weapons to retain a certain efficacity against foot. An earlier post described how infantry could stop charging horses. The formation is quite intricate, something only professional and experienced troops would be capable of, not levy conscripts called up for a summer campaign. Increasingly professional armies with trained infantry gradually negated the power of the chariot until the Romans could laugh at it in its final Pontic incarnation.

The conclusion seems to be that infantry have to interlock together with shields or a closely-packed formation or something similar to stop horses quickly. Just standing in intermediate order doesn't cut it.

Accepting this as true, do we have any particular reason to believe chariot age infantry didn't adopt such expedients? It's hard to tell exactly how closely the Assyrian infantry in the reliefs discussed in this thread, say, are supposed to be, but it looks fairly tight to me, and their shields are certainly large enough they could be interlocked.

See above. It took a really professional infantry to create the kind of formation that could stop chariots, and Fertile Crescent armies only began to become professional with the advent of the Assyrians, who incidently gave cavalry a role as important as chariots, which role would subsequently grow.

[Justin Swanton]

Can I, in the midst of this hurtling discussion, ask for a quick definitional check from Justin?

We understand that the main historical evidence for the equid panzer is Xenophon (though he may have been surprised to hear it).   Yet Xenophon apparently says that there was another type of chariot - the Homeric - which was also used in Libya.  Does Justin accept Xenophon on this?  If so, why is the Egyptian chariot in the "panzer" category, yet the very similar Libyan in a different one?  taking it further, do we assume that other European chariots e.g. Bronze Age Nordic, Celtic are also "Homeric" class?

Are the chariots of India, China and South-East Asia in the "panzer" class or do they have their own class(es)?

At present I'm floating the hypothesis that all chariots were primarily or at least initially designed to ride down infantry, though they could be used in other secondary roles (sometimes no more significant than to indicate the status of a Gallic chieftain). This is based on the impressive hitting power of a galloping horse/onager, combined with the extreme instability of a standing human. Types of chariots are irrelevant, just as types of tanks are irrelevant.

[Justin Swanton]

Taking another look at the Stele of Vultures, it is clear the picture of the spearman can't be taken as a realistic portrayal. Notice that beside each shield (if it's meant to be only one shield) there are six pairs of hands each holding a spear that projects the same distance before the shield. That's anatomically impossible.

The best way to interpret this is as a stylistic representation of spearmen who formed 6 deep and held spears with two hands whilst a seventh front row of men held the shields. Which means that this was less than impressive as a chariot-stopper.



Anthony's quote from the Roman anti-cavalry formation is interesting:

If they do close in though, the first three ranks should lock their shields and press their shoulders and receive the charge as strongly as possible in the most closely ordered formation bound together in the strongest manner. The fourth rank will throw their javelins overhead and the first rank will stab at them and their horses with their spears without pause.

This turns a man from an unstable biped into a far stabler six-legged beast that is much more difficult to knock over. I'm guessing that Fertile Crescent infantry finally got the idea to compress ranks when charged by cavalry or chariots. The infantry could not be knocked down and their combined mass became very difficult for the horse to shove aside. A theory.

BTW doesn't this passage describe the fulcum? If so the interlocking shields were one above the other, not side-by-side.

[Patrick Waterson]

I do not know what tactical procedures were used by Indian and Chinese chariots, but would support Justin's conclusion that Biblical era chariots had primarily a shock role.  The very few battle descriptions we have in any detail, namely Megiddo and Kadesh, are both decided by a massed chariot charge; at Megiddo this routs the opposing army wholesale, while at Kadesh it cuts through a marching contingent and the subsequent pursuit wraps up another contingent.

One counter to charging chariots is deep formations: a formation, as has correctly been pointed out, has different characteristics from a scattered collection of uncoordinated individuals.  On a one-to-one basis, horses can keep knocking men over on a sustained schedule, but where men can buffer and/or support each other the dynamics change and the horse (with associated chariot) runs out of steam after bowling over a few ranks and becomes vulnerable.  Ergo, deep formations inhibit 'direct action' by chariots and require softening up - by friendly archers or by the chariots themselves, or both - before they can be charged with success.

One observes in Xenophon's Cyropaedia that the 'Assyrian' (sic) chariots encountered by Cyrus and the Medes dismount their archers as a line of shooters when faced by infantry (Xenophon, perhaps erroneously, expands this tactic into a whole philosophy of chariot use).  This I would see as the chariots attempting to soften up the infantry in the hope of making them chargeable at some later point in the battle.  Cyrus' infantry, however, instead of sitting tight and taking it, advance and panic the Assyrians, who are not used to such behaviour.  (One may note that some sources, e.g. the Book of Judith, refer to Neo-Babylonians as 'Assyrians'; the Neo-Babylonian Empire appears to have used much of the Assyrian military system.)  Had Cyrus not advanced, the opposing chariot crews would have presumably conducted their shooting and then, when they saw or thought they saw signs of failure in the target's morale, mounted up for a decisive charge.

Scythed chariots appear to have differed in that they had no recourse but to charge, although even so at Thymbra some of the crews appear to have considered discretion the better part of valour when facing the very deep Egyptian formation.  Xenophon's description indicates that Cyrus was more concerned about ensuring that opponents did not manage to evade around or under the chariot than about adding effectiveness to the charge per se, although the subsequent retention of the scythed chariot as a weapon system for five whole centuries indicates that its various upsets when meeting disciplined western armies were, in the context of its overall history, the exception rather than the rule.

[Andreas Johansson]

From what I can see, whenever Egyptian art shows charioteers using bows in a battle context, they are pursuing a routed enemy which they are simultaneously riding down:

[snip images]

Anyone know of any exceptions to this? If so how many?

The Egyptians triumphing over routing enemy is pretty much the default for Egyptian reliefs. Do you know of any showing them attacking non-broken enemy without shooting?

[Andreas Johansson]

Yet Xenophon apparently says that there was another type of chariot - the Homeric - which was also used in Libya.

Here's the relevant excerpt from the Cyropaedia:

(27) He [sc. Cyrus the Great] also procured chariots, taking them from the enemy or wherever he could find them. The old Trojan type of charioteering, still in use to this day among the Cyrenaeans, he abolished; before his time the Medes, the Syrians, the Arabians, and all Asiatics generally, used their chariots in the same way as the Cyrenaeans do now. (28) The fault of the system to his mind was that the very flower of the army, if the picked men were in the chariots, could only act at long range and so contribute little after all to the victory. Three hundred chariots meant twelve hundred horses and three hundred fighting-men, besides the charioteers, who would naturally be men above the common, in whom the warriors could place confidence: and that meant another three hundred debarred from injuring the enemy in any kind of way. (29) Such was the system he abolished in favour of the war-chariot proper, with strong wheels to resist the shock of collision, and long axles, on the principle that a broad base is the firmer, while the driver's seat was changed into what might be called a turret, stoutly built of timber and reaching up to the elbow, leaving the driver room to manage the horses above the rim. The drivers themselves were all fully armed, only their eyes uncovered. (30) He had iron scythes about two feet long attached to the axles on either side, and others, under the tree, pointing to the ground, for use in a charge. Such was the type of chariot invented by Cyrus, and it is still in use to-day among the subjects of the Great King. Beside the chariots he had a large number of camels, collected from his friends or captured from the enemy.

You will notice I slightly misremembered the terminology; he says "Trojan", not "Homeric", and specifically "Cyrenaean" rather than "Libyan". I don't believe this materially affects the argument, although one idly wonders if he perceived a difference in style between Trojan and Achaean charioteering.

With thanks to Jim Webster, whose article "Xenophon's Chariot" in SL264 is warmly recommended to anyone interested in scythed chariots.

[Patrick Waterson]

... I'm not sure any army used scythed and non-scythed chariots at the same time. Do you have an example? (A single non-scythed chariot for the king doesn't count; that's about prestige, not tactics.)

Antiochus I's 'elephant victory', as narrated by Lucian, is a singular but noteworthy example:

Antiochus Soter had a somewhat similar experience about his battle with the Galatians. If you will allow me, I propose to give you an account of that event also. These people were good fighters, and on this occasion in great force; they were drawn up in a serried phalanx, the first rank, which consisted of steel-clad warriors, being supported by men of the ordinary heavy-armed type to the depth of four-and-twenty; twenty thousand cavalry held the flanks; and there were eighty scythed, and twice that number of ordinary war chariots ready to burst forth from the centre ...

No differentiation of location or role is given for the different chariot types.

... Antiochus had sixteen elephants; Theodotas advised him to conceal these as well as he could for the present, not letting their superior height betray them; when the signal for battle was given, the shock just at hand, the enemy's cavalry charging, and their phalanx opening to give free passage to the chariots, then would be the time for the elephants. A section of four was to meet the cavalry on each flank, and the remaining eight to engage the chariot squadron. 'By this means,' he concluded, 'the horses will be frightened, and there will be a stampede into the Galatian infantry.'

Again, no differentiation of, or even distinction between, scythed and non-scythed chariots is made; the formation including both is treated as a unitary contingent.

Caveats with this passage are 1) it is written by a poet and 2) it appears to be the only example of its kind.  That said, there seems to be no reason for Lucian to lie about this, and one example is all we really need to observe the use of scythed and non-scythed chariots by the same army.