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carnage of chariot warfare
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After defeating the Elamites in 691 BC, the king of Assyria exults in the gory scene of the battlefield:
'The commander-in-chief of the king of Elam was there, together with his nobles. I cut their throats like sheep. My prancing steeds, trained to harness, plunged into their welling blood as into a river. The wheels of my battle chariots were bespattered with blood and filth. I filled the plain with the corpses of their warriors like grass. There were chariots, with their horses, whose riders had been slain as they came into the fierce battle, so that they were loose; these horses kept going back and forth all over the battlefield. As to the enemy leaders, panic from my onslaught overwhelmed them like a demon. They abandoned their tents and fled for their lives, crushing the corpses of their troops as they went. In their terror they passed scalding urine and voided their excrement in their chariots.'
Quoted John Keegan A History of Warfare, Hutchinson 1993, page 172
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