The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c16.6

c16.6

Elephants were also used to batter in the gates of fortified places. It is for this reason that such gates are generally found protected by metal plates and spikes. To counteract these, the elephant was again, in its turn, provided with a frontlet of steel. We find an instance at Arcot (Arkāṭ) in 1751, when “the parties who attacked the gates drove before them several elephants who, with large plates of iron fixed to their foreheads, were intended to break them down: but the elephants, wounded by the musquetry, soon turned and trampled on those who escorted them" (Orme, Mil. Trans., i, 194).