Artillery elephants

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Contents

Also see

• Commissariat, or Army Supply. This Department was responsible for elephants.

Photographs and drawings

• Elephant armour (bargustavan-i-pil) (17th century - 18th century) Click on Media for additional photographs. Royal Armouries, Leeds, UK
• "An Artillery Elephant on Duty", hand-coloured lithograph by Captain C. Gold; 1799 from British Voices from South Asia Louisiana State University, now archived webpages.
• An elephant pulling a field gun, 1858 Photograph by Felice Beato NAM. 1956-08-6-17. National Army Museum. Previously elsewhere identified as a Royal Artillery elephant battery at Lucknow
• Charcoal and watercolor drawing: "Indian elephant artillery battery, c. 1860" by George Bryant Campion. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
• Drawing of "Peshawur Mountain train in the line of March 1877", showing guns loaded on the elephants' backs. flickr.com
• Drawing: Royal Artillery Elephant Battery: Battle of Charasiab from "The Battle of Charasiab" 6th October 1879, 2nd Afghan War (scroll down) Britishbattles.com
• Photograph of "Elephant Battery 12/9 R.A. in action - Morar Gwalior, 1881" from Major Hawkshaw’s India Album Harappa.com
• Drawing of a "Shaft Elephant of Heavy Field Battery Gun (from the Artillery Manual)" , between pages lii and liii of the Introduction in A manual of the diseases of the elephant and of his management and uses by John Henry Steel 1885 Archive.org
• Drawings of an elephant battery at Tongo, Burma 1885 with guns loaded on the elephants’ backs. old-print.com (archived page) Originally from The Graphic Saturday, October 24, 1885
• Photograph of "The Elephant Battery, Artillery Lines, Peshawar" c.1880's from this page of Prof Fran Pritchett’s Indian Routes website
• Photograph of "Elephant battery of heavy artillery along the Khyber Pass at Campbellpur, 1895" with details Library of Congress
• Photograph Elephant Battery Tirah Campaign 1897 bonhams.com. Click on the small picture to enlarge. From an album of views of the Tirah Campaign.
• Photograph of "Elephant Battery on Parade, Jhansi, India c 1899" Staffordshire Past-Track
• Photograph of "Elephant Battery Gwalior c 1935" Heavy artillery is transported to a hill station by a team of Indian elephants. Corbis Images, now an archived webpage, Gwalior was a Princely State
• An elephant battery: Photograph 1 and photograph 2 from a group of photographs, University of California. Identified as a British Heavy Battery of around 1895, refer External links below.
• Photograph: Royal Artillery, No 12 Eastern Division at Campbellpore, Circa 1895, Showing the Heavy Guns Pulled By Pairs of Elephants, archived webpage.
• 40 Pounder Rifled Muzzle Loading (RML) gun of a Royal Artillery elephant battery, India. From the Navy and Army Illustrated, published 1900. wikimedia.org
• British Indian Army: Royal Artillery elephant unit about 1905 and British Indian Army: Members of a Royal Artillery elephant battery about 1905 alamy.com

Historical books online

• This extract includes wording from a 1784 book and refers to the skill of the elephants in the Army of Hyder Ali. "It can hardly be imagined how useful these elephants are, nor with what skill and intelligence they do their work". "Baggage of the Indian Army" Calcutta Review, Volume 11 January-June 1849, page 445
• This extract is about the pushing power of an elephant The Calcutta Review, Volume 8, July-December 1847 page 222
• "Elephant" Aide-mémoire to the military sciences: Framed from contributions of officers of the different services, Volume 1, page 404 Edited by a Committee of the Corps of Royal Engineers 1853 Google Books
• "Elephant Battery" The Musical World, Volumes 19-20 1858, page 392 originally appeared in the Illustrated London News. Google Books
• An account of how a reluctant elephant is made to swim across a river: page 452 Camp and Cantonment‬: ‪A Journal of Life in India in 1857-1859 to which is added A Short Account of the Pursuit of the Rebels in Central India by Majot Paget, RHA by Mrs Leopold Paget 1865 Google Books
• An elephant tale, 1858 Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy by Frank Richard Stockton, page 9, first published 1872 Google Books
• "Notes on elephant carriage and steel mountain batteries employed in Abyssinia", page 191 an Appendix to "The Abyssinian Expedition" pages 167-202 Minutes of proceedings of the Royal artillery institution, Volume 6 1870 Google Books
• "Notes on Elephants and their Transport by Railway" by Capt H Wilberforce Clarke RE from Professional Papers on Indian Engineering Second Series Volume 8 1879 "Notes on Elephants", page 243 "Report on the Transportation of Elephants by Railway", page 289
• "The Elephant as used in modern Armies", page xxvi (Introduction) A manual of the diseases of the elephant and of his management and uses by John Henry Steel 1885 Archive.org
• This page advises an elephant battery at Jhansi was abolished c 1903, and the elephants sold. Chota Nagpur, a little-known province of the empire, page 251 by Francis Bradley Bradley-Birt, 2nd edition 1910, first published 1903. Archive.org.
• "Chapter XII Elephants" page 157 Army Veterinary Service in War by Major-General Sir John Moore AVS 1921 Archive.org
• An elephant story Toomai of the Elephants from The Jungle Book may be read online from the page Rudyard Kipling. The story is set at the conclusion of the annual hunt for wild elephants, for the Government of India.

External links

• Victorian Wars Forum thread by Frogsmile which dates and identifies two photographs (refer above) and provides much additional information about elephant batteries.
• "Heavy Batteries in India" by Lt-Col Roger Ayers www.kipling.org.uk
• Thread about guns carried on elephants' backs. theminiaturespage.com
• Bringing up elephants: 1812 book in the Saraswati Mahal Library by Pradeep Chakravarthy Madras Musings Vol. XXI No. 6, July 1-15, 2011
• Elephants over the centuries by A. Raman Madras Musings Vol. XXII No. 4, June 1-15, 2012
• Catalogue entry Liddell Hart Military Archives King’s College London Block, Col Arthur Hugh (1859-1931) Four copy photographs of 9 Western Div (Heavy Bde) and 72 Company (Heavy Bde), Royal Garrison Artillery, in India, showing elephant battery manoeuvres and parade, 1898-1900. Reference code GB0099 KCLMA Block. kingscollections.org. Note the photographs are not available online.
• Newspaper article "Elephant Artillery. The Most Curious Corps In The British Army".The Colac Herald Friday 25 June 1915 trove.nla.gov.au
• "Elephants at war", by Philip Wynter Life April 10, 1944. In Burma, World War 2 from "China - Burma - India: Remembering the Forgotten Theater of World War II"
• "War Elephants and Early Tanks: A Transepochal Comparison of Ancient and Modern Warfare" by Alaric Searle. Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift Volume 77: Issue 1 2018. degruyter.com