"Effectiveness of Chariots" Topic

Writing in Slingshot 309, Ian Russell Lowell makes the argument that a small number of chariots was the most highly effective and efficient means of both offense and defense militarily.

Do you agree?

Of course! How could something so cool looking not be?

Dale nailed it.

Rick

Kid just learned what a chariot was night before last while reading something. I had to bring up pictures on my phone.

"They stood up??? That's awkward."

I haven't read the article, and without context it's difficult to judge. The most effective relative to what? Relative to other configurations of chariots? Relative to infantry-only armies? Relative to cavalry-heavy armies? Relative to modern armies?

I disagree; otherwise they would have never been replaced.

Who knows? We have so little information, the Slingshot article makes no mention of how the role of 2-horse chariot may have differed from 3-horse or 4-horse vehicles or indeed Indian and Chinese data.

That chariots might have a smallest sub-unit of five vehicles is possibly indicative of, among other things, cost. If the things cost so much to maintain, minor feudal lords and smaller city / towns could only gather a few of them at one place and time to train.

So it makes sense that a state dictates that all of its chariots learn five-vehicle tactics as a base competency so that all the nation's force has a common understanding and could build other tactics by lumping multiples of this smaller unit for a particular tactic.

db

Why didn't the most successful ancient army, the Romans make use of them? Same with elephants? 🤔

Regards
Russ Dunaway

Real Men rode into battle standing up.

Always thought the smaller chariot formations were easy to control and command with the sound of trumpeters or voice. Plus the ability to dart about tends to smaller formations, avoiding each other.

******
Man found the early horse roaming about.
Man figured out that the horse needed to tow a cart making transport of goods easy vs. tying the goods on the horse.
The cart model improved to a chariot, since man became the goods placed in the cart/chariot.
Bigger and better chariot with every model year…. or century (chariot model/design changeover took longer back then). Came with driver fully equipped.
Finally man figured to drop the chariot and ride the horse. Tired of looking at the horse rear end and drivers are a cost.
Horses rule….. becoming the cavalry of later years and centuries.
Horse became the car.
Man figured out that the car becomes Lyft or Uber with driver assigned.
Lyft and Uber cut out the driver (a cost)… just like the chariot driver of ancient times….
….. becoming the self driven car of Google, just like the horse.

… Google car takes autoconsciency on February 3rd 2017.

Google car takes control of human society the same day.

Google car declares human obsolescence…

Have to agree with Deuce03 – without context, how can one make the assertion?

Furthermore, we really don't know how chariots were used, especially in the Bronze Age Aegean world. My guess is that they were used as mobile archer platforms and, if that's the case, then Drews' work would suggest that they were NOT the most effective offensive or defensive weapon. Finally, chariots were fairly expensive, as was mentioned, and had limited capabilities (no rough ground, no mountains, no marshy land), added onto the limitations of training a crew and horses and the expense of maintaining such and I fail to see the reasons behind chariots being the 'ultimate' weapon.

Yes, the Assyrians and other Middle Eastern empires used them, as did others but in what capacity? As shock? As mobile missile platforms? It seems that the 'jousting' chariot of the Mycenaean world comes from Homer and one fragment of pottery. Again, without knowing exactly how chariots were used, how can such a statement be made?

They lasted a fair length of time. Eventually they were overcome, but it took a while. In the meantime, the largest empires used them. You may as well say the longbow was ineffective because it was replaced by gunpowder weapons.

Caesar said how the Britons used them. As I recall, basically darting out of woods, warrior hops out, has a bit of a tussle/throws a few javelins, hops back on and drives off.

hi there

>>>>>>>>>>>
Why didn't the most successful ancient army, the Romans make use of them? Same with elephants? 🤔

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Well Aeneas has proto-Romans using chariots…

The rise of Rome was well after the fall of the chariot – except for the backward Celtic types who didn't get the memo – and those Eastern people using the scythed 4-horse vehicles as a terror-missile.

Rome did use elephants and went to some lengths to deprive defeated enemies from keeping or acquiring war elephants.

If you're winning wars (by whatever means, economic power, diplomatic cunning, mass of population or whatever) there's little reason to change your military technology.

Regards

David F Brown

The Greeks and Macedonians were certainly aware of chariots and chose, just as the Romans to not make general use of them in ancient warfare. Personally, I think that gamers enjoy thinking of them as some kind of Tiger divisions that ran over the masses. I think they generally began to disappear because man came to the knowledge that you could just get on the horse and didn't actually need the cart.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

I'm by no means an expert, but from everything I understand, pretty much all the battlefield roles a chariot could perform could be performed better by cavalry. When chariots were first introduced, the ability to manoeuvre more quickly than infantry must have been hugely significant, so it's no surprise that they featured pretty universally in successful Bronze Age armies.

But once cavalry were available in numbers, the limitations of the chariot must have rendered them largely obsolete. It seems that they stuck around for a while, as commanders tried to find new uses for them, but none of these uses seem to have been robust enough to stand up to battlefield testing for long.

By the time the Romans came along – or at least by the time they started fighting wars outside Latium – chariots had pretty much been superseded in the Mediterranean theatres. There were still a few imaginative designs purportedly in use, like the Pontic scythed chariots, but their effectiveness is doubtful and for linebreaking purposes the Romans already had elephants by the time they encountered them. Like the phalanx, chariots seem to have been something the Romans only encountered at the very end of its lifespan, and saw no need to add to their strategic model.

Nevertheless, chariots were a dominant feature of battlefields for somewhere in the region of a thousand years (not even counting their survival in out-of-touch regions like Britain), and I can't think of many other battlefield technologies that can claim that sort of continuing success over the long term.

I hunger for games with chariots, and have a 15mm Classical Indian Army with both heavy and light chariots of fire…well, bow fire. They are Museum Miniatures and look really cool.

There are several possible explanations:

1) Costs. Not just from the weapons platform itself, but also from the horses, which should be specifically breed and trained to pull out a chariot, in battle.
2) Time. Training a chariot crew was time consuming.
3) Tactical use limited to certain types of terrain only. Outside flat areas, chariots were difficult to use and deploy as tactical weapons.

And yet, as Deuce03 points, they were fairly successful for a thousand years. That is not a bad record. Also there is the problem of understanding how they were actually used. Thing is that we don't know. Written sources are not very specific, so we need to deduce their function from their form… which is not a particularly accurate way of acquiring knowledge about how something works! Imagine to deduce how laundry-machines work, if you only have vague commentaries and a few images from advertisements from different eras; "wild guess" wouldn't start to describe the results!

Nobody ever mentions it, but it's pretty obvious – kill one horse and you put three others out of action. And cavalry almost always had more fighting men per mount. Even before you're dealing with rough or muddy going, wider fronts, and clumsy manouevre.

Late Romans are supposed to have tried cataphract scythed chariots…

Like any weapons system, chariots were very effective in their paradigm. Go too far out and they are supplanted by others.

Armies with chariots were more likely to win when facing armies without them.

Nobles have never liked to walk. They rode in chariots then when in vogue, they rode on horses. In some countries noble rode elephants. All a matter of perspective.
Tactics wise, those armies using chariot runners who rode to the battlefield and dismounted were more effective than those who did not have support.

Since nobles were adverse to danger, how effective chariots were depended on the situation.

I remember reading about Biblical warfare, even in the Old Testament there are quotes regarding the simultaneous use of both chariots and horsemen in many armies, I conjecture that as horse breeding improved, and horses became stronger, people discovered that cavalry was more efficient than chariots.
Chariots may well have had advantages in amount of Ammo carried, and being easier to fight from than a horse as the warrior can just fight and doesn't need to worry about driving!
Later big chariots also had a protective function for the crew.

All good and well, but as mentioned above already, the horses would simply become targets of missile troops. I believe they were used because that was what they knew.
Same with the 18th century doctrine of standing and firing at each other without targeting officers.
As time moved on they became used less and less.

Regards
Russ Dunaway

A killer weapon in its time I believe. Infantry quality could vary. There certainly were no Roman Legionary types infantry for chariots to deal with.
Being outflanked by chariots would have caused panic in peasant troops. A bit like Knights….the vast expense and better infantry along with cavalry ended their dominance on the battlefield.
However in their peak the chariot warrior war trained and armed to the teeth.

See Drews' _End of the Bronze Age_ for a very good discussion of chariot warfare; why it came to the fore, lasted for 100s of years, and a very plausible (IMNSHO) explanation of why it became "passe."

Early horses were smaller than modern breeds too, and so imparted less of a height advantage, and probably couldn't be ridden for extended periods. But they were plenty big enough to pull a chariot l.

Horses weren't capable of being an effective cavalry mount during the heyday of the chariot. Once the "right" horses became available through breeding programmes then the chariot's days are numbered. Scythian cavalry raiding Babylon may well have showed the way…small, durable and strong steppe ponies would have been a revelation to the middle east.

The value of chariots must be considered in their specific historical context.

- During the height of their popularity and power, chariots were crewed by the cream of the warrior crop. Infantry were not professional warriors and didn't fight in close order formations designed to repel mounted charges. Result: you have courageous, trained mounted warriors charging into open order farmers. Of course the warriors will win, chariots or not.

- Not all horses can be ridden, or at least ridden effectively in battle by a fully equipped warrior. Many chariot cultures had access only to horses that could pull a chariot by working together and NOT to horses which could individually carry a fully armed warrior. So in many cultures chariots were the only viable way to fight mounted. In others with both cav and chariots, the requirements for the two types of mounts were different. Different breeds are better suited for riding vs pulling.

- Not all chariot-mounted warriors actually fought while mounted. The way we gamers play with chariots, it would be like having all WWII soldiers who rode to the battlefront in trucks actually fighting in battle…from those trucks.

Chariots were frequently just used to ride into contact where the warriors would dismount and fight on foot. This is very different from fighting while mounted. I'm not saying ALL chariot crews fought this way. Clearly, crews did fight from the crew compartment. But I wonder if we too often depict our chariots as mounted fighting platforms like cavalry when they were actually battle taxis fighting more like mounted infantry/dragoons!

- just because chariots persisted in armies and through time where and when cavalry were also present doesn't mean it was a good idea. Even today, armed forces evolve slowly and maintain sometimes maintain traditions that are not necessarily the most effective on the battlefield. 19th century British soldiers insisted on their red coats even when they started fighting dispersed and from cover. Modern air forces initially resisted UAVs in combat roles even though UCAVs have obvious advantages over inhabited vehicles.

So maybe the question isn't so much about "chariots" in a monolithic sense but about chariots in specific contexts and specific tactical uses: as true mounted warrior platform primarily fighting each other or amateur light infantry, as battle taxis for mounted infantry, as virtually expendable "suicide weapons platform", or as prestigious mount for senior leadership.