Elephants and Castles

by Alfred Duggan

  ‘On this battlefield there will be a number of kings,’ answered Antigonus. ‘I rank first, as the only king in our army who held high command under the great Alexander. I think Demetrius ought to rank second. He is my heir, and a god as well as a king. In such company it’s no slight on the King of Epirus that he comes third. But if you are really dissatisfied, my dear Pyrrhus, I can put you in charge of the phalanx, riding beside my litter.’

  ‘No, you are right, Saviour God. In this army I ought to rank third, and the left is my correct station.’ Pyrrhus smiled, his face glowing with excitement. ‘What a battle! More than 80,000 men on either side, greater armies than have even been mustered in Hellas! A companion of Alexander to lead us, and two companions of Alexander to lead the foe! It’s a pity we can’t wait for Ptolemy. If he were here, all the surviving companions of Alexander would be fighting on the same field. I suppose we can’t wait for him?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we ought not to delay,’ said Demetrius with an answering smile. ‘We should have done better to fight these kings separately, and our mercenaries won’t like it if another 30,000 men join our foes. But there will be getting on for 600 elephants, perhaps fighting one another if they can’t be persuaded to obey orders. Is that enough to satisfy you? Few Hellenes have seen so many as a hundred elephants at the same time.’

  This as an argument Pyrrhus could understand. He made no further objection.

  While his cavalry deployed into line Demetrius rode over to the phalanx for a last word with his father. Old Antigonus had been propped up on cushions until he could see over the heads of the infantry. He was dressed in full armour and his tall crested helmet carried a golden circlet. At daybreak he had been hoisted on the strongest charger in the army; but though the horse did not quite collapse under his weight, his legs were too feeble to grip the saddle. After he had been taken down he promised never to ride again.

  ‘Except when I enter Babylon to take possession of the undivided Empire. That comes next, you know, after we have disposed of Seleucus. About time, too, after twenty years of fighting. Today the end of the struggle is very near. My loyal subjects, that is to say the whole civilised world, will want to see their new ruler on horseback.’ He grinned at his anxious son.

  Young Antigonus rode by his grandfather’s litter. On horseback he looked a handsome warrior. The old man smiled at him.

  ‘You should be proud of your son, Demetrius. I’m glad he rides to his first battle. Perhaps the soldiers will drop that silly nickname. Do you know, a fool of a clerk put him in formal orders as Antigonus Knocknees. Tomorrow it will be Antigonus the Victorious.’

  ‘That will be your name, Father. The best of luck, but now I must be off. I can see the enemy’s pikes, which means they are within charging distance.’

  ‘One moment. You have two eyes to my one. Can you see their elephants?’

  ‘Yes, most of them. They are coming up in column behind the phalanx. I suppose Lysimachus thinks he has plenty of time to deploy them. He’ll soon find out his mistake. Good-bye.’

  Demetrius cantered happily to the right wing.

  He knew that the glory of the coming victory would accrue to his father, and that as a dutiful son he must not try to poach any of it. He had a professional job to do, and he must not be tempted to inspire a legend.

  He was dressed for serious fighting. He rode a strong, plain horse, with short tail and mane. His cuirass fitted him easily; it was of smooth unpolished bronze, with no gods in bas-relief straggling across its belly. His helmet ended in a bronze knob to deflect sword-cuts, not in the usual flamboyant horsehair crest. His sharp sword had a plain bone hilt. His saddle-cloth was dyed the scarlet which was normal for every Macedonian officer. He wore no jewellery.

  Three lengths before his bodyguard he halted, in the exact centre of the right wing. His best cavalry, two regiments of Thessalian lancers, were stationed on either side of this picked squadron. All the troopers of his first line were Hellenes, well armoured, bearing lance or javelin. The unarmoured Persians were in the second line, which might seem a slight on such magnificent horsemen; but since the days of Alexander Persians had grown accustomed to taking second place behind Hellenes.

  He looked right and left. This really was an enormous army, the greatest that had even been seen in Phrygia; unless the army facing is half a mile off were even larger. His men were ready while their opponents were still forming line; probably they had been massed to listen to a speech from one of their kings. There were no elephants in front of him. Everything was going according to plan.

  He shortened his reins and drew his sword. As he walked his horse forward the trumpeter of the bodyguard blew the Advance, and all the trumpets of the right wing took up the call. The line walked after him. For a few paces he bumped on his saddle-cloth as he trotted, then he increased speed to an easy controlled canter. All the squadrons behind him conformed, keeping line surprisingly well. He was leading a single unit of 8,000 horse. In Hellas there had never been as many as 2,000 cavalry in his army, and it was rare for a thousand of them to act together. This was indeed a splendid battle, a battle to be remembered.

  It was not quite so much fun as if he had been in supreme command. He must carry out a plan devised by his father, a plan he privately considered jejune and obvious. How much better to have attacked at night, or to have brought up catapults to the front line to shoot bundles of blazing straw at the elephants! Alexander used to charge with his massed cavalry, while his phalanx contained the main body of the enemy. That had worked - against barbarians. Nowadays every veteran would be expecting it, and the enemy were led by veterans who had followed Alexander to India. Besides, Alexander timed his charge for exactly the right moment; in short, Alexander was Alexander, who could have won by any tactics. Father had grown old, and his mind moved slowly. This plan had been drawn up yesterday, and he must stick to it. No commander ought to commit his striking force before he had seen the enemy line of battle.

  That enemy line of battle was now only two furlongs away. Their horse rode out to meet his charge; there was just time for one last look round the field before the collision. The elephants were still massed behind the enemy’s phalanx, though perhaps they were beginning to thin out. Demetrius gestured to his trumpeter. As he squeezed his horse the Charge sounded all down the line. No more looking round; his men might take it as a sign of hesitation.

  For the next quarter of an hour he did not think at all; he was a mixture of athlete and animal, a body without a mind. It was a strong and wary body, excellently trained. When he came to himself there was blood on his sword; but he was unwounded, and so was his horse.

  The enemy had retired, but they were re-forming for another charge. That must be young Antiochus, in armour of parade with a golden diadem round his helmet. In the rear was a little elderly man, who rode awkwardly with the bent knee of the foot-soldier. Yet long ago King Seleucus had seen the back of King Porus, in that legendary foray to the rim of the world. It would be foolish to take chances with a veteran of India.

  His bodyguard would not let him get to the front again. They formed up before him, leaving no gap. The crowd was too dense for him to see clearly, but there seemed to be a lull all along the line. This was the crucial moment, when everything depended on his junior officers and the men in the ranks. He must get his line dressed while the enemy were still disorganised, to crash into them before they were ready for him. Yet his voice could not carry beyond his bodyguard, and the squadron on the flanks could not see him. Charge - re-form - charge again, and keep it up until the sun sets or the enemy break; that was what he had trained them to do during that busy winter at Ephesus. Now their training would tell. In the clumsy, bloody battle his father had planned the best soldiers would win, not the best commanders.

  For an hour there was very little in it. The cavalry of young Antiochus came again to the charge as obstinately as his own men. But there did not seem to be quite so many of them, and they were certainly giving grou
nd. Demetrius guessed that the enemy had drawn up their line in the old manner, with two equal wings of horse. It was a disappointment that the greatest battle the world had even seen should be fought with such a lack of finesse. He wondered how King Pyrrhus was getting on. He must be heavily outnumbered. Luckily, King Pyrrhus was a difficult man to beat.

  At last it happened. The enemy withdrew normally, as though to re-form. But their officers could not halt them. Instead, the whole mass cantered steadily away. They did not flee in blind panic; if closely pursued they would turn again. But they had done enough fighting for one day.

  His own men were in line and under control. He knew what he must do. Wait a few minutes for the dust to settle, then wheel left-handed to come in on the flank of the enemy phalanx. On such a crowded field the dust hung very thick; it was hard to pick up his bearings on the unknown plain.

  He had advanced much farther than he had supposed; from the outset Antiochus had given ground, he heavy black smudge of the enemy foot lay a full mile to his left rear. ‘Was Antiochus trying to draw me away from the battle?’ he wondered. ‘If so, he hasn’t succeeded. In ten minutes I shall be charging that phalanx, with my men in good order.’

  His squadron heeled at a gentle canter, to breathe the horses.

  The plain was not so flat as he had supposed. He could see the infantry quite easily, though they were too far off for him to make out how the fight was going. But a few shallow valleys crossed his path, and on the far crest of one of them the enemy seemed to be building a line of redoubts. Perhaps they were trying out a secret weapon, some device that Lysimachus himself did not trust very far; for the redoubts were hardly big enough to hold half a dozen men, and they were spaced at least fifty yards apart. If there were catapults in them his men would suffer some loss; but it was not an obstacle to stop determined cavalry.

  But when he reached the lip of the little valley he saw that what had seemed a line of redoubts was in fact in line of elephants, drawn up in dead ground so that only their castles showed above the plain. So that was what Antiochus had been after, with his slow withdrawal! The elephants had been placed in line as soon as the cavalry had gone by; evidently their task was to cut him off from the infantry.

  ‘You don’t separate father and son as easily as that. King Lysimachus,’ he muttered. ‘We shan’t stop to kill these elephants, they can be mopped up later. We’ll ride straight through them, to scatter your phalanx with a flank charge.’

  Then the nearest of the great beasts curled his trunk and trumpeted. Demetrius felt the hogged mane tear at his hands as his horse propped and slid to a halt. As it tried to heel round he held it straight with his knees. He whacked it with the flat of his sword. It came up on its hind legs, tottering.

  His men halted behind him, some because they had seen him draw up but most because their horses would go no farther.

  Here was a tiresome interruption. The story was true, then, that horses unused to elephants would not go near them. But they could be trained to approach them, which proved that the terror could be overcome. Behind him he had more than 7,000 horses, and the silly creatures usually felt braver in a herd than alone. He had only to get past himself, with a handful of guards, and the rest would stream after him. It was nothing more than a tricky bit of riding. When he tried he could usually get any horse to do what he wanted.

  He allowed his horse to turn away from the terrifying sight, patted it on the neck, spoke to it gently. Very slowly he edged it round again, and got it walking gingerly forward. Again the elephant trumpeted, and the horse shied so violently that it crossed its legs and fell. He picked himself up, a little stiff from a bruised thigh. As he remounted, he thought hard.

  He might lead his men round the line of elephants; but 500 elephants made a very long line. He could not wheel his mass of cavalry as a unit; they would have to form column of squadrons facing left. It would take half the day to get his excited troopers into their new order. Then he recalled that an elephant could trot just about as fast as a horse could canter. If the Indian drivers kept their heads the obstacle would move with him.

  There was nothing for it but to force a way through. Horses were afraid of elephants, but men need not be. He shouted to his bodyguard to dismount, and himself slid to his feet. While his terrified horse trotted off he trudged steadily towards the nearest elephant, taking care not to look behind him.

  He had never been interested in his father’s elephants, which he regarded as exotic curios rather than serious engines of war. But he had been near them often enough, and he was not in awe of their strange shape. All the same, this elephant looked bigger than any he had seen before, perhaps because it was facing him with its head up. It looked exasperated rather than furious; like a testy old scholar driven crazy by noisy children, rather than a warrior about to engage in battle. Perhaps elephants fought because they could not bear a crowd of little men shouting all round their feet; perhaps that was why they trod on their own infantry as often as on the foe.

  The vulnerable points of an elephant are the trunk and the hind legs; that was what it said in the training manual. All he had to do was to stab this creature in the trunk, or get behind it to hamstring it. So long as he took care it could not tread on him; animals might overcome barbarians, but Hellenes were masters of the brute creation. He was still too excited by his successful cavalry charge to be afraid of anything.

  An arrow whistled past his head. He had forgotten the archers in the elephant’s castle. His plain cuirass, standard issue for Macedonian cavalry, was not proof against arrows at close range; and no mounted man carried a shield. To go closer on foot would be suicide. Reluctantly he walked back to the eager guardsman who held his commander’s horse.

  An hour later he was still trying to break through the line of elephants. As the horses calmed down they could be urged a little nearer; but then some peevish elephant, vexed at this unseemly racket, would charge trumpeting. Again the horses would take fright, and everyone would be back at the beginning.

  Demetrius saw his squadron diminish. Troopers were slipping away to a flank, despairing of victory. They would ride at large until they found refuge in a fortress or gave themselves up to an enemy patrol. He could not think of any way to stop them, so it was better to pretend he had not noticed.

  Then Antiochus at the head of his rallied horse charged into them from the rear.

  Demetrius knew he had been beaten, for the first time since Ptolemy surprised him at Gaza eleven years ago. But even in defeat a good commander gets his men out of the trap, still in formation and ready to fight another day. His bodyguard, and the two regiments of Thessalian horse, were still in hand. As the enemy scattered in pursuit he led this remnant along the line of elephants. When he should reach the last elephant he ought to be somewhere near King Pyrrhus on the other wing; together they could organise a rear-guard and protect the phalanx as it disengaged.

  The elephants, posted to separate Demetrius from Antigonus, did not extend much beyond the centre. At last he as past them. A hasty check showed that he still led about 2,000 troopers; they were disheartened men on tired horses, but they would still obey if he did not ask too much of them.

  The fighting had moved on. This part of the field was deserted, except for a few dead or wounded, mostly pikemen of the phalanx. Half a mile nearer Ipsus he could see a dense crowd. In one place the pikeheads were erect, as though the phalanx was not in action.

  That was strange. Perhaps both sides had pulled back by mutual consent, as sometimes happened in stubborn infantry fights.

  Then he saw another small body of horse, not more than 200 strong. They approached cautiously, which was a good thing. Demetrius feared that his Thessalians would scatter rather than face another action. But these newcomers were led by a figure easily recognised. Soon King Pyrrhus was beside him, sitting a horse whose tail fluttered in time with its sobbing heart.

  Pyrrhus was as tired as his horse. He had lost his crested helmet, and his clipped mil
itary beard was foul with mud and sweat. There was blood on his thighs, but he did not sit his horse like a wounded man. In spite of his exhaustion he was brimming over with cheerful excitement.

  ‘What a day, Saviour God,’ he grasped. ‘One hundred and sixty thousand men on the field - the greatest battle in history! And the elephants, more than have been seen in one place before! I shall remember it as long as I live. I saw it all, you know, from start to finish. Yes, I’m afraid it’s over now ~ and we were beaten, which rather spoils the pleasure of it. Our phalanx took a terrible pasting, though for the first two hours our men behaved very well. Then they broke, and I don’t blame them. A nasty sight, a broken phalanx - the pikes get tangled and the men can’t get away. So the survivors up-ended their pikes in token of surrender. You can see the pikes over there, if you look carefully. I suppose the enemy ill rob them, but they’ll get quarter.’

  He dismounted from his weary horse.

  ‘I was quite close and saw it all. But when the phalanx broke my miserable foot just disappeared and I was left with only my own Epirot bodyguard. The thing to do now is to get behind the walls of Ephesus before Lysimachus catches us. But before leaving I thought I would scout around and gather any other survivors. I’m very glad I found you. Together we’ll get through easily. After such a great victory these fellows will want to enjoy their plunder. They won’t meddle with two regiments of horse. You are senior officer, Saviour God, but I suggest we move of immediately.’

  How like Pyrrhus, thought Demetrius. He did not care whether he had won or lost, so long as he saw plenty of fighting. But in a situation of great peril he had put duty first. He would not escape until he had rallied all the stragglers he could find.

  ‘Yes, we’ll make for Ephesus,’ he answered. ‘Move at a walk, and save our horses all we can. If we keep closed up no one will meddle with us. So our centre was destroyed? What news of my father?’