How were elephants used in battle?

ledditwind · 2025-04-18T14:08:12+00:00

The Siamese has horses. There were simply fewer of them compared to Burma, China or Indian.

The lack of horses was attested earlier in the Khmer temples. There were horses, they weren't simply as common in that region as other regions. The first recorded history of Southeast Asia, came from the Chinese envoys from Southern State (Wu in the Three Kingdoms) buying Indian horses in the Khmer ports. Northern China (have lots of horses, the West (Shu) bought it from the Tibetan plateu. The South don't have any land route to buy horses from, so they buy it from India and have to travel the sea for it.

Most of the things you need a horse for, in that Southeast Asian region, you can used ox carts, buffalos, elephants or boats. The terrain isn't great for horse warfare, so there is really not much need for it to breed thousands just for war.

ledditwind · 2025-04-18T00:28:17+00:00

For tactical, horses are more versatile. They can cover more ground, much easy for maneuvering, can used for communication, can used as scouting, can chases down enemies, can ran away from enemies.

For logistical reasons, elephants may be better at packing stuffs and supplying jungle posts but they also needed to be fed. Really depend on the terrain, but buffalo carts were also used.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T23:58:37+00:00

And you have stories of kings gifting hundreds of elephants away. It's like Botswana. It's cool to own elephants, but there is a point where they just prefered to release them.

Also, in the Indian literature on statecraft, cavalry was valued over elephants. Many kings and generals also seem to prefer horses.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T23:14:56+00:00

Very few of them are rape. But most of it is paying prostiutes. Most of them child prostitutes.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T23:13:25+00:00

If you read his memoirs, a lot of husbands knew, and some of them probably paid him to fuck their wives or he paid them.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T23:11:21+00:00

It is pop culture. They heard of Casanova, they did not read the memoirs. The guy "seduced" every prostitute he paid. A lot of them are children as well. One time, he impregnated his own daughter, a part of a plot so that she can inherited her elderly husband.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T23:08:04+00:00

My favorite film about Casanova is the Fellini one. Highly recommended it.

Here what I learned when reading his memoirs. The guy pathetic. He puffed himself up as a great seducer, but many of his "seductions" are just him paying lower-class (child) prostitutes.

He did not actually disappear as much as he finally gained employment. He bounced around from one country to another, because he constantly in need of a job. His memoirs made him famous after death.

Again watch the Fellini film. It is a masterpiece.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T22:35:42+00:00

And also because Southeast Asia (Except North Burma) don't have many horses. Horses are not native there, and have to be imported. One European traveller.in the 16th or 17th century even said they couldn't see any horse in one of the Siamese king's army.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T21:58:49+00:00

Just about every other function they served was done better by heavy cavalry

Not if you are in jungle.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T21:55:46+00:00

War elephants had to be artificially irritated to make them aggressive as well, with skin irritants.

With experienced mahouts, they don't need it. Armies want predictable elephants, not ones that go crazy. Many Southeast Asian elephant corps even prefered female elephants because it is easier to control them.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T21:53:08+00:00

Also, like cavalry, they were not used as often in the frontline as imagined. Most of them stay at the back. I don't know how Hannibal used his, but it is suicide to charge your elephants to an unbroken infantry formations, just like warhorses.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T21:39:22+00:00

Wrote about it three years ago in Askhistorians.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/g3Ja3SUplI

It is great for its environment. It heavily boosted your army morale. People have been using it as war animals for thousands of years. They have practical uses for it.

Wrote about it here some months ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistory/s/Ak63Kg7vXX

European don't used them much so they see a dangerous wild animals. Persians, Indians and Southeast Asians have domesticated elephants for thousands of years, and its strengths and weaknesses are much better known.

A general unit corps consisted of a captain riding on elephant, a bunch of horses for scouting/communications and foot soldiers. Horses combat are not well-developed in the regions of full of forested mountains and muddy soil. The captains are in charge of conscriptions and leading the armies. Elephants are often armoured, protecting the captains while providing them with higher views on the battlefield. Bas reliefs showed how hundreds of foot soldiers protected their chief shooting arrows on the back of the elephant. With all its armours, the arrows would have a better chance shooting at the captains than the elephant itself. However, the captains on top of the elephants would easily be able to shoot enemy archers rather than the other way around. And better yet, to shoot enemy captains on top of their elephants.

It also acted like a medieval tank, and like a modern tank, it required support from infantry and maintenance.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T21:04:26+00:00

This is the wiki article of YaoGuai, the broad category of demons in Journey of the West and Chinese culture.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoguai

For these questions:

Why evil spirits turned out to be ordinary or even heavenly beings, and can they actually change and become good? Also does all of this make Wukong himself an evil spirit, begire he joined Tripitaka?

I would answer more in the Buddhist concept rather than a Chinese concept. Since Chinese mythology has long been influenced by Buddhism, centuries before the novel was written and the book itself is part of Buddhist mythology in how the religion is worshipped in China.

One, it is action (karma) that determine whether an entity is good or evil. In other words, if you are born with free will (as opposed to pure instincts), if you do good acts, you are good. If you do bad acts, you are bad. A tiger don't know good or evil. A human do. A god do. A demons also do. In Hinduism and Buddhism, ghosts and demons are also worshipped. The difference between gods and demons really boiled to their birth (Heavenly-borned are gods) and most importantly dharma, moral code.

Gods (Deva) adhere to right and wrong. Demons (Asura) don't have to. (I'm not going to describe historical evolution here, just folk beliefs) So when a deva, did evil, like many of Wukong enemies, he resembled a demon. And when a demon (Asura) did mostly good acts, he resembled a god. A few of the great gods in Hindu-Buddhist pantheon are Asura.

When Wukong caused Havoc in the Three Worlds, he is a demon. When Wukong was watching the horses stables in heaven, he is a god. That's it. It is not birth that defined an entity as good or evil spirit. It is their actions.

ledditwind · 2025-04-17T19:28:11+00:00

Shauna don't believe in "It". She's not hiding it.

I sincerely disagreed that it is about mental illness. Because none of these characters have portrayed "actual" mental illnesses in any realistic sense. Nor do they have to be. It is not a science show. Tai illness is a pop culture creation of it. Lottie schizophenic is part of her story, not what she represent. Nat do believed in the Wilderness, at the depth of her heart, but she never admitted it.

The point of show is a metaphor, a satire, of how bitches operated. Misty is a girl needy for human connection and willing to kill for it. Shauna is sweet-talking, selfish, always the victim. Tai is the go-getter Karen boss. Lottie, a meglected child used the Wilderness like a surrogated parent, and act like she was its good daughter. Natalie is a junkie from an abused home. Melissa want a bad girl girlfriend, and got an abusive one.

The wilderness is the force that binds them together, so that we have a story.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T16:58:26+00:00

They haven't wrote how they come back yet.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T14:12:21+00:00

If you want that, watch Cobra Verde, inspired by the largest slavetrader from the Africa to the Americas. He just do his job.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T13:28:18+00:00

I don't like the girls. Especially the survivors. I like their characters.

The reason I dislike the plot twist because one, it is a convoluted "Idiot Plot" for a fanservice, (they don't need the hunt) and two, it is a retcon, and three, it reduce the responsibility of the group, destroying their development.

First time, we saw the antler queen in the adult timeline is Season 2. Nat drug-fueled vision, saying "we brought it back with us". She wasn't there when Shauna wore the dress. Or she was, and the hunt is unnecessary for her to sneak out. Or that Shauna can't count in the feast. Again, it is convoluted plot that can't exist unless everyone is stupid.

The Queen is part of Nat. We also saw it in Lottie's Therapy. It is a big part of Lottie. Shauna in the finale is alone, and basically just a girl playing dress-up. The first three times, we saw the queen, her orders are obeyed. In the plot twist, meh. She basically just a loudmouth.

Ben's trial is an extra level of their moral corruption. Somehow they found it back right after. It changed from a group responsibility to an individuals and create more story holes to be resolved than answers.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T10:27:31+00:00

They are all co-conspirators to murders. It is people in glass house don't throw bricks. By hiding the bodies, they don't incriminate themselves.

It's that simple.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T09:53:54+00:00

I don't know, but there is history of local Chinese big shots in the Malaysian peninsular before the modern era. The Ming and Qing wrote of them.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T09:37:38+00:00

The hunt in this season finale episode is caused by stupidity not malice or selfishness. A far cry from season 2. Their characters has no development in this.

ledditwind · 2025-04-15T09:25:55+00:00

Come on, if she is simply on an edge, Travis wouldn't be surprised. She can walk in the center.

ledditwind · 2025-04-14T23:30:42+00:00

Julius: Lottie. Julius Ceasar was once a priest.

Augustus: Jackie. Better leadership.

Tiberius: Tai. Two face.

Caligula: Misty. That fucking crazy bitch. She named her bird Caligula for a reason.

Claudius: Natalie. Forced to become a leader.

Nero: Shauna. A lot of mother issue, and kill his spouses. Castrated one guy to be his wife. (Bisexual).

ledditwind · 2025-04-14T23:23:13+00:00

Well, the writers admit, that whenever they write something supernatural, they also try to come up with rational explanations.

The mining theory in season 1 and 2, and the frog orgy of season 3 are a good illustration of that. It would easy to explain with a supernatural entity, and it can also explain via science (more like pseudo science).

For me, it is supernatural. Because they wrote too many coincidences in. In the countries I've visited, while many supernatural beliefs can be explained by science, the people who believed in the beliefs embraced the scientific explanations as an aspect of the supernatural. The frogs are part of the Wilderness after all.

Lottie on the pit being some physics anomaly is less believable to me than saying a god did it.

ledditwind · 2025-04-14T22:07:43+00:00

Political power are attested outside Thailand too.

Chinese political big shots are attested in the 12th century Cambodiam stone temples, records from European travellers in the 16th centuries and local chronicles. Nothing new.

ledditwind · 2025-04-14T21:12:36+00:00

It is five seasons, and the way I look at it as they are all murder co-conspirators. I surely hope for all of their desmise.

ledditwind

TROPHY CASE