ELEPHANTS, HISTORICAL 



153 



elephant with the water, he will obey the goad with 

 alacrity.* 



The first elephant seen in Germany is said to have been 

 one sent by Caliph Haroun al Rashid to Emperor Charle- 

 magne. The animal was safely landed at Pisa in 801 A. D., 

 but there was considerable delay in conveying it to Charle- 

 magne's court at Aquisgranum (Aachen, Aix-la-Chapelle), 

 where it arrived only in the ensuing year. Its death in 8 10 

 is duly chronicled in an old record. In or about 1254 Eng- 

 land was also favoured 

 with the gift of an 

 elephant from Louis IX 

 of France, St. Louis, to 

 Henry III of England, 

 of which Polydore Virgil 

 says it was an animal 

 most rare in England 

 (rarissime in Anglia).'\ 



The great world war 

 has brought into use 

 many new and startling 

 methods and inventions, 

 but it has also witnessed 

 a revival of certain de- 

 fensive weapons of earlier centuries, 

 metal shield as a means of individual 



The Elephant as represented in a MS. illustra- 

 tion to a twelfth-century copy of an Alexander 

 romance. (MS. Reg. 15, E. VI.) 



notably of the 

 protection. The 

 innovations have not, however, been confined to inani- 

 mate objects, for in one case at least an elephant has 

 been utilized by the Germans in the construction of military 

 works. This elephant was brought to Breslau from the 

 Hagenbeck zoological garden at Hamburg. Of course, in 

 certain parts of central and southern Asia, especially in 



*Armandi, "Histoire militaire des elephants," Paris, 1843, pp. 528, 529. 

 tAngl. Hist.. Lib. XVI. 



