Chariots

[caldrail]

To my mind a scythed chariot has only one effective application - to travel along the side of an enemy formation and take out the nearest rank(s). This requires that momentum is maintained - not entirely unfeasible with at least two horses galloping, but what strikes me is vulnerability of this technique. Is that why these vehicles never achieved widespread use?

 

I think that's what the problem would be with scythed chariots- once you hit the mass of men, you are litterally stopped. It would be like biking head-on into corn stalks. (Don't do that btw, it hurts.) The Brits moreover used chariots as mobile archers, and carried the important leaders.

 

Quick question: what constitutes a 'chariot'? The Romans used 'ox-led chariots' against Pyrrhus' elephants. I could only imagine them being little more than carts carrying velites and spike collars on the oxen.

 

I wonder if you misunderstood what I meant. No chariot crew is going to charge a formation head-on - Thats suicide. You ride up close enough for your scythes to rip into the enemy line then pull away before you lose too much speed. Its a hit-and-run tactic. As you quite rightly say, if the chariot stops then the chariot crew are horribly vulnerable. I wouldn't care to drive one into combat myself.

[DecimusCaesar]

True, a chariot is much more useful as a mobile tower for killing your opponents. In the Bronze Age Middle East when both sides used Chariots (Egypt and the Hittites for example) the chariots would manouvere in the field so that only charioteers could battle against each other. When chariots came across other types of opponent as they did in later times, they proved to be rather useless, as demonstrated by Alexander at Gaugamela.

[Antiochus of Seleucia]

I wonder if you misunderstood what I meant.

 

No, but even if you were to go down the side of a formation, if one wheel of the chariot is continually hitting mass and the other not, wouldn't that turn the chariot inward or rip the wheel off?

[caldrail]

There would indeed be a tendency to turn into the formation. All the more reason to maintain speed and turn away before that occurred. This is probably why the scythed chariot didn't receive wider use. Ordinary chariots were skirmishing vehicles - they didn't come into contact with the enemy, merely rode past so the passenger could fire arrows or lob spears before disappearing in a cloud of dust and turning around for another pass. very hells angels, but that was the mentality of chariot warfare.

Edited November 19, 2006 by caldrail