Chariot: The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine

by Arthur Cotterell

Book by ARTHUR COTTERELL

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ancient History, Military History, War, Historical

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Arthur Cotterell, former Principal of Kingston College in London, has spent many years combining senior educational management with historical research. He is the respected author of more than thirty books, and is now writing on the Chinese empire, from the history of which he considers one can learn as much about leadership as from Ashridge or Harvard.

Reviews

[Sarah B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most people who read this book are probably interested in ancient battles or maybe in strategy or they just love ancient history. But I read it for a very different reason: the horses. Because you cannot have chariots without horses. And I have found some very intriguing things about horses in here too. Things I have never actually thought about.

But let's get something straight first: I am not actually interested in war or who won what battle when or how they did it. And I was far more intrigued by Xanthus and Balius than Achilles! And what do they mean that Xanthus was an immortal horse? But this book does recount countless battles and the strategies that was used, including dragging items behind chariots to make huge dust clouds. Other times in was people that was dragged instead. . . ghastly!

Anyway I found the horse bits in here very interesting and it certainly gave me the strange urge to go through the book with a highlighter and mark up the important passages (which in itself is very strange as I certainly never had an urge like that before and the smell from such a highlighter would probably give me an awful banging headache!)...

So once I got to Chapter Two it explains why they had used chariots! And the answer had surprised me! These warriors had bad balance on a horse! How shocking! If they would try swinging a sword or other weapon they were actually scared they were going to fall off! How could these big brave soldiers who are going off to kill other people in a bloody battle be scared they are going to fall off a horse?! But that is what it was. Plus horses back then were the size of ponies. They already had wagons - big heavy lumbering contraptions - and these were often pulled by mules or other creatures - not horses. So someone somewhere came up with the chariot. Which was very lightweight. And fast. And it used horses.

And I was shocked by some of the crazy careless things these warriors did with these chariots! What they did with the reins. I mean stuff even I as a new rider see as suicidal. And I don't mean when they were in war. They were having chariot races. These races were very, very popular. And dangerous. And sometimes the yoke broke without warning and what happened to the charioteer, well, that is just horrid. The book actually states that King Tut might have been badly injured in a chariot accident. That shocked me. I had no idea.

Apparently chariot races also led to many riots in Rome too. All of those different teams.

I can see how the modern sulky must be similar to a chariot. Both are lightweight and pulled by horses. And from the drawings I have seen in here it is clear the idea of the chariot had probably evolved into carriages that has roofs and such. Different kinds of wheels were invented too. And different types of harnesses.

The book discusses ancient passages (including some of the very earliest) on horse training. Horses were trained over a period of time for endurance. And certain areas were better for raising horses too. They became known as horse centers and in Greece one such area is related to centaurs. And yes, this book is also filled with mythology and even old funeral rites. Many important people were buried with horses and with chariots. They were ones who really did take it with them! But it is from these tombs that we could actually study actual chariots (or what was left of them). Not all chariots were for war. Some were just for show and ceremony. And some were covered in gold.

The dates in this book roughly go from ancient Egypt (1460 BC) to the 4th century chariot races in Rome. It covers Egypt, Greece, Rome, India and Asia plus the areas in between.

Reading this has made me think a lot and ask new questions I have never thought about. For example the book states that "stirrups help you control the horse better". Well, how do they do that? In my opinion you should not need stirrups to control a horse! And you should not be using them to help you balance on the horse either! That is just being lazy! Great horsemanship is the silent communication between you and your mount. Many people call it dressage. But you don't need to do actual dressage to have that union between you and your horse. But it's something you learn. And practice. But maybe if you are going off to battle to kill people you don't care about such things?

I also saw a very odd photo on one page. This book is full of black and white photos. Many from old Egyptian tombs. Anyway this one is on page 98. It's the goddess Astarte and she is drawn in the typical Egyptian style you see in their old tombs. She is riding a horse. But the strange thing is the horse is NOT drawn in the Egyptian style at all. The two styles are very different. The pony has a very bushy black mane and is clearly wearing a halter. Very bizarre! I wonder where it came from? Why are these two art styles meshed together? The book gives no explanation.

My favorite passage from the book is from page 272: "He who is devoid of insight and has not yet fully yoked and tamed his mind...will be at the mercy of his senses, like the runaway horses of the charioteer. Only when the mind is calm and the senses are as disciplined as a good chariot team, we are told, is it possible to complete the journey to enlightenment in Vishnu's paradise, a celestial realm situated high in the sky." So this book even holds some wisdom too! Maybe if those ancient chariot racers had heeded this advice they wouldn't be dying in horrid accidents! Apparently it was common to go flying through the air at vast speeds to crash to the ground or get kicked by a horse. Horrible injuries.

I wouldn't want to see such an accident would you? It would definitely give me nightmares!

Glad I read this! So much fascinating horse info and it is thanks to this (and people's urge to go to war) that we have the larger size horses we have today. Because people bred horses to be bigger so they could ride them to war. So if it wasn't for that we would only have ponies.

And I really like the two horses on the bottom image on the book's cover!

[Jeff Clay · Rating 3 out of 5]

The London Times claims that this is an "amiably discursive" history of the rise and fall of chariots. Accurate as far as that phrase goes, but then a 6x6 prison cell might also be termed "monastic coziness."

Chariot starts out with wonderful promise, eloquently describing that (arguably) greatest of great chariot battles, Kadesh, fought betwixt Ramses II's Egyptian forces and the Hittite Empire at its peak expansion under Muwatalli II in 1274 BCE. After a short dissertation on Anatolian international relations, the author goes back two centuries to the Battle of Megiddo fought in 1457 BCE before then jumping forward 3500 years to the 20th century's Megiddo fought towards the end of WWI. Then on we go (backwards in time again) to the defeat and death of Crassus at the hands of the Parthians in 53 BCE at Carrhae. By page 25 we have moved to China in the first millennium BCE and my head was spinning.

There is a wealth of valuable and interesting information in this tome. Did you know, for instance, that the expression "a parting shot" comes from that aforementioned battle in 53 BCE, where the Parthians devastated the grounded Roman legionaries by hit and run tactics executed by mounted and very mobile archers? Over a thousand years later "a Parthian shot" has become "a parting shot!" I find these kinds of tid-bits fascinating but more to the point of this history book there is a lot of well-researched and well-documented information on ancient civilizations, the battles they fought and how military technology changed over time. The problem is that the narrative presented is so rambling, twisty-turny, hither-and-thither-esque, that multiple times I put the book down for days out of exasperation.

Couple the discusive nature of the writing with the habit of Cotterell to use semi-mythical ancient texts such as Homer's Illiad, the Old Testament, and the Mahabharata as primary sources, intermixing acts of gods with the deeds of men in a leisurely and casual manner and any pretense of sorting out the strands of historical Antiquity is pretty much out the window. Too bad. The individual tales that exist within the book are valuable, it's just going to take a re-write to make a coherent story out of it.

[Scott Ormsby · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was read due to a course paper, but was an interesting read nonetheless. I was honestly unaware as to how important the inventions of the stirrup and saddle were in terms of stability and handling of horses, which later led to the creation of cavalry and the decline of chariots. The differences in both timeframes and usage between the Egyptians, Europeans, the Chinese and India were interesting to compare in terms of tactics used and formations created around chariot use. The use of ‘runners’ and their ability to neutralize chariots via killing of horses and jamming of spokes served alongside friendly chariot forces as a sort of early combined arms unit.

Parallels of the rise and fall of the chariot can be compared and contrasted against the employment of armoured vehicles. I’m not really much of a history buff, but if military history is your jam then I do recommend you consider reading this book on the world’s first form of manoeuvre warfare.

[Iset · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read about the importance of the chariot and everything you ever wanted to know about it. Some of the chapters are thematic, others go by geography, examining the chariot’s historic role in Europe, India, and China. Cotterell covers everything from key battles, how various chariots were constructed, how horses were bred and kept, what weapons were employed with the chariot, and chariot tactics in battle. There’s a great deal to interest me personally, from Bronze Age Egyptian clashes which really highlighted the Ramesses II’s feat at Kadesh, and Alexander the Great’s many encounters against chariots in Persia and India, to entirely new and fresh contexts that I knew nothing about – disastrous Roman defeats, use on Chinese battlefields, etc. Cotterell’s writing style was smooth and scintillating, keeping me engaged throughout. Frankly I can see myself re-reading this cover-to-cover.

9 out of 10

[T Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book for long stretches, marred mainly by the author's tendency to go off on unrelated tangents. I like the use of fiction and fact as they relate to the subject matter, but Cotterell sometimes seems to confuse the two.

[Jenn Hartlove · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book with the details on how chariots were used in warfare as well as their proliferation across the ancient empires. I loved the anecdotes on the "chariot hooligans" and drag racers--the more things change, the more they remain the same. Thought the subtitle was going to hint toward tanks as an evolution of the chariot (which, frankly, didn't make sense to me), but turns out that the author argues against that conclusion. I think it might have been interesting to look at attack helicopters as a more modern take on the chariot--also a fast-moving platform for the use of firepower (archers/gunners) and with some distinct vulnerabilities. Great read.

[Paul Weimer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chariot, From Chariot to Tank, The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World's First War Machine, by Arthur Cotterell is a history of the chariot.

Between the domestication of the horse, and the use of stirrups and other techniques to make horse-riding warfare more practical, the primary uses of horses in warfare was by means of the chariot. Cotterell begins with the description of one of the major battles in the ancient world, the Egyptian-Hatti Battle of Kadesh in which 5000 chariots on both sides participated. From this basis, Cotterell describes the history of the use of the chariot in time and space from Rome all the way to China.

There is an enormous amount of detail in the book, but its marred by digressions, poor organization and badly formed repetitions. Cotterell mentions battles and places, only to return to them again and again. That would not be a problem, but there is no sense of building on what was already written, or an awareness that there is something new to be said in the narrative. He mentions battles, and then comes back to them again, talking about them as if we had not already read about it earlier in the novel. It was extremely frustrating to this reader.

I learned a lot from the novel, my conception of what good the chariot was and how it was used has expanded. I particularly appreciated that Cotterell did not restrict himself to the Middle East and Europe, as he extensively talks about the role of the chariot in India and China. Cotterell, in the typical haphazard fashion in this book, extends the mandate of the book beyond the war machine role of the chariot to discuss its use as symbol and mythological object ranging from Rome to China.

It's all a pity, though. I really wanted to like and recommend this book, but the disorganized writing and jumbled information just made this book a chore to read, rather than a joy. The scholarship and information is all there, but its more work than its worth, in my opinion, to reach and get it out.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

disjointed and overly discursive. i would have prefered to see a thematic approach, rather than a geographic/cultural one. i also believe the book suffered seriously from a lack of proper editing -- cotterell's paragraph breaks are far from intuitive, and i found myself having to reread sections of the book to try to follow his train of thought. finally, i would have increased the "technical" focus of the book somewhat: in his discussion of the role of the chariot in india, for example, consists of an analysis of the great indian epics, and precious little description of the chariot's use in actual ancient battles. perhaps this is due to source or arachaelogical limitations, but this is not mentioned.

also striking to me was cotterell's apparent uncritical use and seeming acceptance of biblical passages as history (though these were few enough that i didn't set the book down).

cotterell's subject is an interesting one, though, and his treatment isn't stillborn despite its flaws. the reader follows the arc of mobile warfare from its beginnings in the form of the mesopotamian war-cart to its eventual obsolecence at the hands of horse cavalry 2000 years or so later. we learn about its role in the militaries of the near east, europe, india, and china (and the origins of its ceremonial and sporting role in rome). well and helpfully illustrated throughout.

obviously not a scholarly book, but also not recommended for the very casual student of ancient history, as the flaws might put these readers off. folks with a particular interest in the ancient near east, india, china, etc., would still find this book useful and enjoyable, if at times frustrating.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me re-think what I know about chariots. Yes, the Ben-Hur races were real, but that is all the Romans used the things for, that and riding in one for a triumph (where a slave whispered in your ear that you are not a god will die).

The original war chariots were mobile archer platforms. The archer was a noble used to hunting with a composite bow, so he was driven around. Chariots were light and battle chariots were not used as transport, rather they were broken down, carried and put together before a battle. The horses were small, and so 2 to 4 were needed to pull even light chariots with 2, (sometimes 3) soldiers in it. Breeding produced larger horses, but then warriors decided riding your own horse beat riding around in a tip-over prone chariot. Chariots did not charge into infantry, rather they avoided shock action (even if they had those cool scythe wheels like Stephen Boyd had in BEN HUR) and had runner infantry to keep the grunts away. Cottrell cites ratio of 70 runners per chariot, so they were serious about this.

The Chinese used 3-man chariots with a guy with a halberd joining the archer and driver. It was usually archers on the right, driver in the middle and halberd on the left. Several famous victories occurred when the general switched the archer and halberd swinger to the other sides, but Cottrell does not go into detail, likely because history swallowed the details.

All in all this book was worth the time. I wanted more detail, but the lack is likely due to history not providing those details. Cottrell does a fine job describing the overall trends over the centuries.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book I've been meaning to read for some time . . . An interesting history of chariots and chariotry (though some parts are much more readable than others). Despite the somewhat spotty quality of the writing, this book is certainly an excellent reference on the subject.

[Joshua Horn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like the idea and topic, but it is badly organized, doesn't gives enough context, and goes on tangents.