The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1898-12-22
ELEPHANTS IN WAR.
MAKING THE GREAT BRUTES
CHARGE THE ENEMY.
Ancient Queens Disaster Hannibal's
Famous Journey Over the Alps Re
suited Sadly for tho Animals - Only
One Survived the Winter. v

Famous Journey Over the Alps Re-
suited Sadly for tho Animals - Only
One Survived the winter. v
Nowadays when men engage in war
and wish to make improvements in
their mode of fighting they begin to
cast about for some new sort of ma
chine, but when the world was younger
and they didn't know much about me-
chanics, the favorite scheme was to
hunt up some new kind of animal and
train it to help them fight. Even now
we haven't given up the plan alto
gether, but war dogs and horses and
guns and railroads and telegraph lines,
says the Philadelphia Press. Let us
take the biggest beast of all-the ele"
phant. He is really a wonderful fight
ing animal; he almost seems to have
been built for that very purpose. HIS
thick hide is like armor; his tusks are
like heavy lances; his strength and
weight make his im%petuous charge al
most irresistible. and his back is so
huge that wooden towers filled with
soldiers car be carried on it. His very
aspect is terrifying, and before the
rush of a long line of these enormous
creatures any troops fighting with no
better weapons than swords and bows
and spears are fain to break and run.
Besides all this the elephant enters
into the fight with great zeal and relish
provided he himself doesn't get too
seriously hurt-and his great intelll-
gence makes it easy to guide n con-
troll him up to a certain point. But
here came the drawback, fer a crazed
elephant is about as dangerous to his
side as q powder magazine in the
midst of fire. If by any mischance he
doesn't defeat the enemy he is pretty
certain to defeat his friends.
The first use of the elephant in wal
is older than history. The earliest
mention Of it. probably, is in the gro
tesque legend of Semiramis. This in
genious Assyrian queen made war upon
India, and having no elephants of her
own, made a lot of dummies of wick
erwork covered with hides, and mount
ed them on camels. At first the real
elephants were greatly disturbed, not
so much by the dreadful aspect of the
dummies as by the obnoxious and I'M
accountable smell OF the camels, and a
panic seemed imminent. At length,
however, they charged, the queens
dime museum monsters went to pieces
with a crush, and elephants and cam
. o1- oI:l,o 4o ,1r1o lDu-, ho, tynnnc in
a general stampede. You needn't be-
1ieve this story unless you choose; but
those who invented it knew all about
war elephants-that is plain. Alex
ander, many centuries later, had bet
ter luck. When he invaded India and
defeated Porus, he also yanquished a
vast army of elephants. The immense
beast ridden by Porus himself-so runs
the tale-was a creature of such intel
ligence that he reached back with his
trunk and pulled the darts from the
body of his wounded master; but the
o~rientals had a great gift for story tell
ing, as you may see in the Arabian
| Nights" They also informed AleXan-
der that beyond the Ganges there We're
no fewer than 5000 fighting elephants
! waiting to welcome him; and the con-
querer wept, but went no further. Sub
| sequently the Romans had some highly
| exciting experiences with these de-
v~astating pachyderms. The first spe-
cimens they ever saw were brought
! over by Pyrrhus-twenty in number
and as the whole menagerie bolted
straight at them with lifted trunks and
loud trumpetings they didn't at all en-
| joy the show. In two great battle;
they were trampled under foot by this
military circus troop, but the thirG
they managed to turn the charging an.
imals by a skillful use of darts and
tirebrands nd Pyrrhus left Italy in
haste.
The most famous users of this ami
mated artillery, however, We're the
Carthaginians. 1t was chiefly by
means of these brutes that they de
feated and captured DOOR Regulus
whom they afterward treated with
worse than Spanish barbarity. A few
years later, at Panormus, Hasdruba
advanced against the city with 140 Of
AliClu III HE bdttiC HUH. DuJ tHe NJ
mans had now learned how to dea
with them. A multitude of men, sta
toned along the walls and the moat
showered the creatures with ~javelin'
and arrows until they bristled will
darts like pincushions stuck full o
pins, and, wild with pain, they dashed
through the ranks of their own army
spreading havoc. 1t is said that 0,00(
men were slaughtered in the rout tina
followed. Most of the elephants wer,
! rounded up and corraled by the vic
tors, and 104 of them were taken t,
Rome. Notwithstanding all this. tn
elephant battery was a favorite brancl
of the seryice with Hannibal, who uset
it with notable results in Spain. o.
one occasion he stationed a line of ele
plants along the bank of a river, an
when the Spaniards attempted to eros
the eager brutes ran Zip and down tn
shore and destroyed nearly all whit
ventured to emerge from the water
Soon after, as everybody knows, h
marched a train of thirty-seven ela
plants across the Alps into Italy. TIL,
worst difficulty eXperienced-althougl
it was a terrible ordeal all the way
was in the final descent through stee]
fields of slippery slush, where, as a,
old English writer puts it, the wretchet
brutes had much ado not to topple OF