The camel paradox again

[Andreas Johansson]

We've on various points touched on the apparent contradiction that on the one hand there's the frequent observation in period sources that horses fear camels, which effect is credited with deciding some battles (Cyrus' defeat of Croesus, a Vandal defeat by Moors) and strongly influencing others (Byzantine cavalry having to dismount to attack Moorish cameleers at Mammes), and on the other that nobody seems to have chosen camels as battle mounts if horses were an option.

Relevant to this, I came across a passage (19§134) in the Taktika of Leo the Wise which recommends the Byzantine general to bring along camels to accustom the horses and men to them. The implication would seem to be that a little familiarity is all it takes for horses to get over their fear, and that the camel "trick" is likely to work only if camels are brought somewhere where they're not ordinarily found.

It does seem a little strange if the Vandals' horses were wholly unused to camels - they must have been born and raised in North Africa - but perhaps camels were only found towards the desert fringe in this period, not being used in the settled agricultural areas? The Byzantines at Mammes were relatively fresh arrivals from Constantinople.

Naturally, I found myself wondering what this should mean for wargames rules. Probably that camelry should be intrinsically inferior to cavalry, but inflict some penalty - disorder, -1 combat factor, or whatever makes sense within the rules - on cavalry whose horses are unused to them. The trick, then, would be how to determine which horses are familar with camels: Is a costed advantage that can be bought? That's probably impossible to cost fairly, as the advantage would be huge against Tuareg and minimal to nil against most else. Is it automatic if their army includes any friendly camels? That might lead to an unseemly rush for a single stand of dromedarii or baggage camels in any army that can have them - and anyway isn't it weird if a Mongol army is crippled or not against camelry depending on whether they left their bactrians behind? Automatic if the friendly army could have camels?

[Patrick Waterson]

Oner might add to this the question of why Saracens lived in such fear of Crusader mounted charges if all that was needed was to deploy a few camels with their own cavalry.

My own understanding is that horses are upset by camels when encountering them for the first time; thereafter they will either accept them as part of the environment.

If employing this rule of thumb, then we might judge that all armies from camel-using areas (North Africa, Near East, Middle East, parts of Far East) have 'camel-proof' horses from the Achaemenid era onwards and in the Biblical period Egyptian, Babylonian and Assyrian armies, optionally also Philistine, Hebrew etc., are 'camel-proof' while European, Asian and Asia Minor armies are not.  The basic yardstick would be that any culture using camels for transport would have 'camel-proof' mounts while any not so blessed(?) would not.

Actually making use of camels is another matter: camels in the baggage would not affect an opponent on the battlefield.  In order to be effective they must deploy on the battlefield, so an Assyrian army with camels in the baggage train is not going to upset the mounts of a Scythian opponent whereas a Midianite army with camels actually in the battleline is.

Back in the days of WRG rules, horses were only affected by camelry when within 30 paces (25 yards) so it took quite a few camels to disrupt the cavalry wing of an army.  I would suggest that in most wargame systems this equates to base contact, so the cavalry would be adversely affected only when in melee (or in abstracted interaction of which melee conceptually forms part).

Regarding the relative effectiveness of cavalry and camelry, I think there is little in it when it comes to close combat, although the weight of the horses could make a significant difference.  The major difference between horses and camels is the much greater responsiveness and obedience of horses, not so much individually as collectively.  (Interestingly, the Bactrian camel seems to be a more responsive and trainable riding animal than the dromedary, although the latter is faster and a superior cavalry mount.)  This difference in discipline and responsiveness would, at unit level, in my estimation tend to degrade the relative effectiveness of camelry, not so much because of the different animals as because of the different level of attainable discipline and hence unit and subunit cohesion.

[Nick Harbud]

Slingshot 299 in 2015 included the attached observations on horse behaviour from Phil Barker.

Hope this helps... 

[RichT]

I think the question can be made more general. What frightens horses, or people come to that, is just a subset of the more general question of what decides the outcome of a battle (or some part of a battle). Army A meets Army B in battle. Army B is defeated and runs away, and Army A goes home happy. Now at some point, the events of the day need to make their way into a historical account. Maybe the commander of Army A (or less likely of Army B) will sit down to write his memoirs, a few years or decades later. Or maybe some historian, a similar period later, will set about writing an account and interview some participants in the battle (how many? Probably only a very few). Or maybe it will be a generation or two later, and the historian will be working from tales remembered from grandfathers, or from 'common knowledge'. At any rate, as Wellington said, nobody will remember all the events of the battle, but all will remember some incidents, and perhaps some incidents will stand out and be remembered in common. There will be excuses made (by Bs) for why they lost, and impressions (from As) of why they won. Horses being afraid of camels, standing to arms all night, not eating a proper breakfast, wind blown dust, the sun shining in their eyes, an unexpected ditch, divine intervention, greater manliness (of As) or effeminacy (of Bs), better weapons, better armour, better tactics. All sorts of stuff. Our historian may have one or two accounts, with one or two reasons, to choose from, or maybe, rarely, he will have dozens. Some factors will have made it into common knowledge, while others will remain personal recollections. The historian then has to make a more or less coherent account from what he has discovered, that fits his stylistic and didactic needs, and takes up not more than the two sentences or two paragraphs that he feels warranted by the importance of the event. And a couple of thousand years later, some other set of people have to take that account, and a few dozen others like it, and use them to make a general model of ancient combat, applicable to all cases, in which every possible factor is assigned a numerical value and given its 'proper' importance in deciding the result.

Specifically concerning horses and camels; as with men and camels, and as with most things, experience and familiarity seem to be the important thing, but where experience is missing then discipline or training may be a reasonable substitute. A horse may shy at a camel; I doubt a unit of cavalry will, still less that a cavalry wing will, but a commander of cavalry, defeated years ago in battle, may remember how horses shied when camels approached, and find that makes a better reason for why he lost than any failure on his part; and he may be right, that may have been the main reason they lost, on that occasion, or he may not. Some rules writer two thousand years later may then decide that cavalry will always lose against camels; or will be disadvantaged against camels but might still win; or will be unaffected if they have prior camel experience (however determined); or will be unaffected if they have high enough training and discipline. And he may be right also, in each case.

Not very helpful or to the point I know, I'm just in ruminating mood, like a camel.

[Erpingham]

I've often wondered about this.  I've not made a deep study of online sources but there does seem to be a shortage of controlled testing of the idea.  A lot of what you find online is either Herodotus-derived or by wargamers asking why camels are a super weapon.  There are some anecdotes from the US Camel Corps which suggest that horses and mules did not get on well with camels on first introduction (along with the surprising fact that camels are good swimmers).

Although traditionally attributed to smell, PB's points that horses are not particularly perturbed by smells might suggest that the entire package of odd appearance, smell and sound were needed to spook horses.  There is a general understanding that horses become accustomed to camels but I've not really found anything which explains how long it takes for them to become familiar or what level or type of exposure is needed.

Then there is the question of how important it is in the big picture, which Richard has already explored.  Camels do seem to have found their strength as transport animals rather than cavalry mounts.  Rewarding them with great combat bonuses or giving them "zones of confusion"  which disorder cavalry seem exaggerated.

[Andreas Johansson]

There is a general understanding that horses become accustomed to camels but I've not really found anything which explains how long it takes for them to become familiar or what level or type of exposure is needed.

Leo doesn't go into any detail, but he seems to assume that the mere presence of camels in the army will do the trick, without any need for special measures. So a fairly low level of exposure and, given the brevity of many campaigns, apparently not all that long. This would fit well with Patrick's "first encounter" idea, and Phil's suggestion not to expect the same expedient to work twice.

Then there is the question of how important it is in the big picture, which Richard has already explored.  Camels do seem to have found their strength as transport animals rather than cavalry mounts.  Rewarding them with great combat bonuses or giving them "zones of confusion"  which disorder cavalry seem exaggerated.

The catch, of course, is that camels occasionally seem to have had big effects. Can we model that without making them ahistorical super-troops?

I guess the Ricardian answer would be to assume Croesus rolled a string of ones, but those of a more Patrician mindset will undoubtedly find this unsatisfying.

There's also the fact that mentions of the effect seems to be rather more common than battles where it's said to have been important: the three I mentioned in the OP are the only ones I can think of. Leo claims the Byzantines had lost "many battles" because of it - which is why the general should take steps to avoid it - but doesn't exemplify. Can anyone think of further instances?

Both the battles were the camels are reported to have been decisive are ones where the accounts we have are rather distant, and one might suspect tales having grown with the telling. Regarding Mammes, it's not clear to me from Procopius' account if he was personally present, but at any rate he was an associate of the Byzantine commander, so his information should be at one remove at worst.

[Nick Harbud]

I'm just in ruminating mood, like a camel.

...and there was me thinking it was the way you walked.     

[Duncan Head]

Leo doesn't go into any detail, but he seems to assume that the mere presence of camels in the army will do the trick, without any need for special measures. So a fairly low level of exposure and, given the brevity of many campaigns, apparently not all that long. This would fit well with Patrick's "first encounter" idea, and Phil's suggestion not to expect the same expedient to work twice.
...
The catch, of course, is that camels occasionally seem to have had big effects. Can we model that without making them ahistorical super-troops?

In a DBMM context, would there be any mileage in making "Camel shock" some sort of Stratagem? Available to armies with camels, or armies with a certain number of camels, or armies known to have had success with camels; pay points for it; increases the factors of ?one group? of camels against horse-mounted troops, for one?two?a few? bounds, usable once? in a game? It puts the onus on the ca,el-using army to provide the stratagem, rather than the old WRG approach of making opponents pay to be proof against an enemy they may never encounter.

[Patrick Waterson]

In a DBMM context, would there be any mileage in making "Camel shock" some sort of Stratagem? Available to armies with camels, or armies with a certain number of camels, or armies known to have had success with camels; pay points for it; increases the factors of ?one group? of camels against horse-mounted troops, for one?two?a few? bounds, usable once? in a game? It puts the onus on the camel-using army to provide the stratagem, rather than the old WRG approach of making opponents pay to be proof against an enemy they may never encounter.

That strikes me as a very good idea.  Not only does it satisfy the historically-minded for spefific match-ups, it also disallows historically dubious generic camel-fright across the spectrum of non-camel-using armies. As a result, camels can be made useful for disrupting cavalry but are not automatically so.  Given that camel-based victories seem to have involved forethought on the part of the camel-users, the idea has my vote.

The next question would be: how much effect should it have DB-wise?  Would it be just a die roll adjustment of a higher/lower score, or a full -1 for affected cavalry (making LC frigteningly vulnerable to camelry) or +1 for the camels or (in the case of a camel laager) their human beneficiaries?

[Andreas Johansson]

In a DBMM context, would there be any mileage in making "Camel shock" some sort of Stratagem? Available to armies with camels, or armies with a certain number of camels, or armies known to have had success with camels; pay points for it; increases the factors of ?one group? of camels against horse-mounted troops, for one?two?a few? bounds, usable once? in a game? It puts the onus on the ca,el-using army to provide the stratagem, rather than the old WRG approach of making opponents pay to be proof against an enemy they may never encounter.

It might get a bit silly if you can pull it off against the horsemen of a LPIA or Christian Nubian army, but I like the principle that the beneficiary pays for it, and that it may come as a surprise, as it seems to have in the accounts we have.

[Patrick Waterson]

It might get a bit silly if you can pull it off against the horsemen of a LPIA or Christian Nubian army, but I like the principle that the beneficiary pays for it, and that it may come as a surprise, as it seems to have in the accounts we have.

We might wish to specify certain armies as immune to the stratagem.  Or we might think about having it affect only certain types of cavalry (historically it was cavalry in the heavy bracket - Lydians, Vandals, Byzantines - who were the principal victims).  Or something of both.

[Dangun]

Although traditionally attributed to smell, PB's points that horses are not particularly perturbed by smells might suggest that the entire package of odd appearance, smell and sound were needed to spook horses.

PB said in that article: "one of the things that all ancient wargamers were told and firmly believed in the 50s was that horses were frightened by the small and noise of elephants and camels. This is another of those things that everyone knows is untrue." His evidence is an anecdote about two horses he once met .

But I wonder whether he has forgotten how clearly this comes out of the sources, because the way he writes about in this article suggests he thinks its a 50s-era wargaming fable. Now if the sources are getting that wron... we spend more time on othismos that its due.

[Mark G]

Mark fry wrote an interesting bit on elephants and horses a short while ago in slingshot after spending some time around Asian elephants and handlers.

I remember him concluding that elephants are just as unhappy around horses as vice versa.

[Andreas Johansson]

But I wonder whether he has forgotten how clearly this comes out of the sources, because the way he writes about in this article suggests he thinks its a 50s-era wargaming fable. Now if the sources are getting that wron... we spend more time on othismos that its due.

That we spend more time on othismos than it's worth is pretty much a given I think.

But returning to the spooking of horses by camels, for all that it's a commonplace evidence of its military effect seems to be rare. Again, can anyone think of any other actions beyond the three mentioned in the OP where its reported to have been important? Any examples outside our period, say in colonial warfare? Any ideas what Roman/Byzantine defeats Leo may have been thinking of?

[Justin Swanton]

I think the question can be made more general. What frightens horses, or people come to that, is just a subset of the more general question of what decides the outcome of a battle (or some part of a battle). Army A meets Army B in battle. Army B is defeated and runs away, and Army A goes home happy. Now at some point, the events of the day need to make their way into a historical account. Maybe the commander of Army A (or less likely of Army B) will sit down to write his memoirs, a few years or decades later. Or maybe some historian, a similar period later, will set about writing an account and interview some participants in the battle (how many? Probably only a very few). Or maybe it will be a generation or two later, and the historian will be working from tales remembered from grandfathers, or from 'common knowledge'. At any rate, as Wellington said, nobody will remember all the events of the battle, but all will remember some incidents, and perhaps some incidents will stand out and be remembered in common. There will be excuses made (by Bs) for why they lost, and impressions (from As) of why they won. Horses being afraid of camels, standing to arms all night, not eating a proper breakfast, wind blown dust, the sun shining in their eyes, an unexpected ditch, divine intervention, greater manliness (of As) or effeminacy (of Bs), better weapons, better armour, better tactics. All sorts of stuff. Our historian may have one or two accounts, with one or two reasons, to choose from, or maybe, rarely, he will have dozens. Some factors will have made it into common knowledge, while others will remain personal recollections. The historian then has to make a more or less coherent account from what he has discovered, that fits his stylistic and didactic needs, and takes up not more than the two sentences or two paragraphs that he feels warranted by the importance of the event. And a couple of thousand years later, some other set of people have to take that account, and a few dozen others like it, and use them to make a general model of ancient combat, applicable to all cases, in which every possible factor is assigned a numerical value and given its 'proper' importance in deciding the result.

Much better to leave history alone and analyze why the Springboks are the greatest rugby team in the world.