It would only work if the elephants were completely disciplined and ignored injury, death of friends, and noise. But they could take down all but thick walls, and they can absorb a lot of bullets / almost unlimited arrows. They wouldn't have battlefield medicine (no hands) and their population does not grow very fast.

Pre-gunpowder humanity would be toast.

With all the excellent counterpoints to my comment by you and others in mind,

> It would only work if the elephants were completely disciplined and ignored injury, death of friends, and noise

How about drugged elephants then? What if, in this increasingly sci-fi alt history setting, the elephants were just smart enough to figure out a) what kind of plant, mushroom or whatever makes them go berserk, b) realize berserk elephants are much better at effectively fighting humans, c) were willing to make individuals sacrifice themselves for the herd, and d) were able to consistently use berserk assaults as a battle tactic?

I know it's a lot of assumptions, but I won't have mere historical facts make me let go of the image of OG ultralisks attacking pre-industrial humanity.

> realize berserk elephants are much better at effectively fighting humans

Here's the fly in the ointment.

Berserk elephants would not be better at fighting in the same way that berserk humans aren't better at fighting. It's discipline and order that make an effective fighting force.

If you know anything about ancient hand-to-hand battles, you'd know that there were very few casualties during the battle proper. It's only when one side's formation broke and their soldiers became chaotic and disorganized that the real casualties occurred.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that you're getting this idea from movies where the main character harnesses emotion to become more capable and powerful. In the real world, emotional people die quickly and are generally ineffective.

Enough with shark movies. There needs to be one with elephants.

If sharks can be in a tornado, elephants can all jump and cause an earthquake!

Tie that up with some mis-reading of ancient Mayan calendar that turned out to be talking about 2024, a comet crashing into the Moon, with elephants reacting to the scarred lunar surface by synchronous jumping. Cue emergency space mission, where our heroes race against the clock to re-paint the Moon, so the elephants stop jumping while there's still some civilization left to return to.

There's a story in the Jungle Book about just that. That said, wild pigs are frightening, they are armed and brave.

We know that's not true. The Romans had no problem repelling them at the Battle of Zama. The legion or phalanx would just need to be trained to make noise to frighten them and open up lanes for the elephant to charge through (they weren't keen on charging into a wall of spears), and then you have a dedicated group of skirmishers to hunt the elephants down once they pass the line.

But I think the idea here is that the elephants in question are at a similar level to humans intellectually. They will be able to overcome fears (be courageous), plan with others, use tools, etc. Hard to know how would come out on top in that case. Probably would come down to food consumption, reproduction rates, adaptability to various environments etc. more than who would win in head-to-head battles.

The lack of opposable thumbs would significantly limit their ability to craft tools. Even if they could use trunks to craft melee or throwing weapons, there is no way for even the most intelligent, coordinated elephants to overcome a ditch with a line of ballistae or cannon on the other side. Cavalry were able to deal with this due to their relatively thin profile and high maneuverability, and even then ditch + spear wall + artillery or ditch + grape shot is a pretty effective counter.

It would be interesting to see them execute the Fabian strategy though.

Maybe, if we are positing alternate-history elephants that will hold formation like trained warriors.

We have pretty strong empirical evidence that real life elephants do not seriously outclass formations of humans armed with iron weapons. They were used in warfare in the Mediterranean for a few hundred years and in Asia for many centuries after that. They had some shock value, but never became a dominant, war-winning component of any army.

> Imagining a bunch of elephants charging a fortified position in formation, I think they'd win most battles through shock/fear factor alone.

Even trained war elephants weren't great, or at least that was the conclusion of the Romans once they had enough experience with them.

They might be enough to route civilians, but probably not anyone in the military. Soldiers used to be expected to walk into enemy canon and musket fire with discipline and good order.

Also, there were black powder elephant guns. Apparently 4-bore rifles were popular for both big game and birds.

The Romans are said to have used war pigs against elephants.

They set the pigs on fire and sent them towards the elephants, who panicked and trampled the people around them.