Eles into Europe

[KrooK]

I have just read book about polish-turkish war into 1620 - 1621.
Into 1621 great turkish army attacked Poland (about 120.000), and they bring even elephants there. I think it was last using eles at war into Europe. Does anybody know newest example?

[Watchman]

The Ottomans were again around Vienna at a later point of the same century, so they may have had a few there too.

Although I've read the big animals were usually more useful for construction work, particularly building bridges. For combat use one wonders if they aren't a wee bit too attractive targets for artillery...

[The Wizard]

They could survive the Eastern/Central European winter?

[Kralizec]

Hannibal took a bunch of them across the Alps. Most of them died, but that's because it's way colder up there. Maybe they could survive an average winter if the handlers take proper care of them.

[Watchman]

Given that the rest of the Ottoman army couldn't, I doubt it.

For the most part major operations were restricted to the warmer seasons, and armies finding themselves still in siege camps when the snow came could usually consider themselves lucky if they got home with a fraction of their men still alive. Which was one of the big headaches for the Ottomans when it came to campaigning in Central Europe - Paris is closer to Vienna than Istanbul (the main Ottoman staging and muster area) as the bird flies, and the extremely inconvenient geography of the Balkans along the way didn't help one bit. By the time the Ottoman main army reached the actual front they could consider it a rare boon if there was still as much as half of the viable campaign season left...

And this with the leanest, meanest logistical and adminstrational apparatus of the period. Small wonder the ability of Europeans to invade Ottoman territory beyond the outermost crust of allies and client states was minimal.

[Watchman]

Hannibal took a bunch of them across the Alps. Most of them died, but that's because it's way colder up there. Maybe they could survive an average winter if the handlers take proper care of them.

Of Hannibal's elephants something like a quarter survived the trek over the Alps. By the end of the next winter, there was exactly one left alive - and I don't think combat casualties featured heavily in the reason.

Obviously the beasts didn't feature too heavily in his Italian operations, although one imagines they made a major impression on the assorted Celts along the way there.

[The Wizard]

I have read that most of Hannibal's elephants (in one go, mind) died when he crossed the Appenines, lower than the Alps but more rugged.

Anyways, your explanation sounds about right, Watchman. But those facts given, what are the chances that these beasts could be found in any European adventures of the Ottomans? The chance seems very slim to me.

[Stig]

Keep in mind that the elephants used by both Hannibal and the Ottomans weren't big African elephants, these were smaller wood elephants. Not as impressive as african elephants. In size they're equal to the normal elephants in RTW, the big elephants could simply not be tamed.

If the Ottomans used them in armies they would have most likely also have used them in Europe, maybe not in every army but in most of them I guess

[Kralizec]

I thought that Hannibal fought with elephants in every Italian battle except Cannae? By then they had all certainly died.

Though I still think it's possible, I'm cynical about it. Were they African or Indian elephants? For the last one they'd have to go all the way to...well, India since the elephant population in the middle east had died out already in Roman times...
It would be logistically inpractical, and the shock value of a handful of them in this time probably wasn't very high.

EDIT: to clarify, by African I mean the African forest elephants, not the savannah dwellers.

[Watchman]

I've read the Carthaginians had managed to establish a breeding stock of Indian elephants by the Second Punic War. The Ptolemies of Egypt, their longtime trading partners with an access to the Indian Ocean, would come across as the most likely source. The ones Pyrrhus had presumably came the same way; I've read encountering those in Sicily was what prompted the Carthaginians to dump their old Tyrean four-wheel chariots and replace them with elephants in the terror weapon gig, although they had to make do with those rather less imposing little forest elephants of the North African coast in the beginning (the big savannah ones beyond the Sahara are apparently untrainable and untameable and thus no good).

Anyway, the scare effects of massed elephants are not to be underestimated against troops unused to them. The Romans apparently had to get their asses kicked anew at least once by the critters before each new generation of soldiers developed the necessary resiliency, and I've read when the (presumably, the details were scarce) Seleucid monarch could finally turn up to deal with the Galatians ravaging Asia Minor what pretty much saved his army's bacon was a handful of elephants that totally panicked the Celts, who'd never seen their likes before. The Romans themselves had a few (courtesy of Numidian allies) at the final siege of Numantia in Iberia, although the locals apparently got over their initial fright unpleasantly soon and killed a few of the animals in a sortie.

Although while it would certainly be possible for the Ottomans to bring Indian elephants to Central Europe (they had the money and the logistical chutzpah), odds are they weren't intented for combat. Too many pikes, heavy polearms and large-bore firearms around by those days, methinks. I've read one use they were put to was bridge building - the animals could wade deep into rivers and carry quite large logs, which can obviously be quite useful and not unlike what domesticated elephants are used for peacefully.

And the Ottomans certainly had to build some major bridges along the way.

[The Stranger]

there is evidence that elephants lived on malta... but that was waaaaay back.

[The Wizard]

Indian elephants in cold European waters?

I was born on Curaçao and grew up swimming in the Caribbean, and I'm telling you, the Mediterranean is cold! I'm not even gonna begin on the North Sea or other bodies of water on that latitude

[Watchman]

Well, it wasn't historically all that rare to be able to cross the Baltic over the ice during winters only somewhat colder than usual...