Porus's Short Story: The Macedonian Elephants

Porus’ force consisted of around 30,000 infantry, 2,000-3000 cavalry, 300 chariot and 200 elephants. Porus deploys his force with his infantry in the center, cavalry on both flanks, chariots all on his left flank and elephants line up in front of his infantry. This may seem pretty standard at first, and for the most part it is, Except for the elephants. Elephants, prior to then, where typically used to guard the flanks against cavalry charges. Something worth noting is that horses are terrified of elephants, not just by their size but by their smell, horses not use acclimatized to the smell of an elephant often won’t go near them and have even been known to throw their riders when near one. This shows that Porus was mainly concerned about

With their mahouts gone, many elephants start to lose control. Additionally, the Macedonian pike men, now gathering their bearings, start to find the elephant’s one weak spot. Elephants have really thick hide that is nearly impenetrable to missiles and conventional weaponry. However, they do have one weak spot, their eyes. It doesn’t take the Macedonians long to realize that their 20ft long sarissa pile can reach the already confused elephant’s eyes. Within moments the now confused, blind and in pain elephants turn and stampeded in the other direction trampling many of their own troops and throwing their whole infantry block into disarray and utterly routing

And that is for a reason. Because of Alexander’s precarious starting position, if he even took one misstep, made one miscalculation, or had even the slightest thing go wrong, the entire plan would have come crashing down. It all hinged on everything going exactly right, and due to Alexander’s exemplar military prowess, it did. Alexander not only won the battle, but he was able to properly deceive his most worthy advisory yet, make an impossible river crossing in the middle of a torrential downpour, and come up with a non-resource based solution to beating a force that was far larger and utilized 200 of the most intimidating and formidable military instruments of the