alt Hacker NewsSomething often left out of fiction about war is how easily a moving army can overwhelm a local ecosystem, particularly if its supply lines sag. You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged. No more easy hunting for you for years. No more quick trips for firewood, or tinder.
It stands to reason that if an occupying force doesn’t stay long in an area, and its animals die along the way, that the now destitute locals will take the “road kill” and scrounge every possible calorie from it. And marrow was a dish rather than something for soup stock up until the modern era. The Illiad basically won’t shut up about it.
So I have no doubt that every dead elephant anyone could find was 100% rendered down into food and leather by the beleaguered locals. And probably every cousin from one village over got told about the find too. (I suspect elephant leather would make amazing peasant shoes)
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Why should the army leave a dead elephant on the road? They would butcher it themselves and take the meat with them (and the tusks). The locals may have found some large bones for their living room decorations (and may be some skin, if they were lucky).
And perhaps it's not so good even if you are being "defended" by the hungry army! It kind of resembles when a monarch comes to visit a noble; you would need to spend a lot on them and their entourage.
> You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged.
Isn't this how Rome was sacked way back when it was just a city among many others in the Italian peninsula? If I recall correctly, this was a wake-up call for the city to start working on protecting itself adequately.
> Something often left out of fiction about war is how easily a moving army can overwhelm a local ecosystem, particularly if its supply lines sag. You might not even be their target, and yet you will be pillaged. No more easy hunting for you for years. No more quick trips for firewood, or tinder.
This is also why so many soldiers ended up dead outside of battle, and not from getting stabbed. Why Sun Tzu and Clauzewitz went on and on about logistics.