"Cuchulain in Battle", illustration by J.C. Leyendecker in T. W. Rolleston's Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race, 1911
Chariots are fast, two-wheeled vehicles pulled by horses, developed after the invention of the wheel and the early domestication of horses. True chariots date to around 4,000 years ago with the invention of the lightweight spoked wheel, and became widespread in Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean by about 3,500 years ago. They are the earliest form of cavalry in ancient warfare, with roles ranging from breaking and trampling loose infantry formations to skirmishing with bows and javelins (also making them an early form of Horse Archers). Due to the size of the chariot and its reliance on only one driver, it can carry more than one soldier for transportation or serve as a platform for them to attack with their assortment of weapons. However, sometimes in fiction, the driver also performs double duty as a warrior (especially in video games, due to technical limitations).
Chariots are normally pulled by at least two horses, and some historians think they were used because early horse breeds tended to be too small to ride. As horse breeding produced larger, stronger horses and the invention and adoption of saddles spread throughout the world, chariots became obsolete as more familiar light and heavy cavalry replaced them. However, in fiction, this fact doesn't stop armies from fielding both chariots and knights at the same time. A few nations in Classical Antiquity actually did use chariots alongside horse-mounted cavalry, such as The Achaemenid Empire, where chariots with spinning scythes attached to their axles were intended to cut down infantry who got too close — but these tactics proved ineffective in the long run. For most of the Iron Age in places that still used chariots at all, they were relegated from battle weapons to items of ceremony and prestige.
In fantastical settings, it is sometimes expected for the chariot to be pulled by non-horses.
For use of chariots for recreational purposes, see Chariot Race.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: Joseph's last battle against Wamuu begins with the two racing chariots pulled by Hellish Horses while being provided weapons to try and kill one another. Both chariots are pounded to splinters by the time the race/fight is over
Comic Books
- Hellstrom: On the cover of The Son of Satan #1, Daimon Hellstrom is riding a chariot pulled by three horses with flaming manes.
Films — Live-Action
- Alexander: War chariots are a prominent element of the Persian army. While they can break the front ranks of the Greeks, they get quickly bogged down in the dense crowd. And in certain cuts of the film, the Greeks also simply sidestep chariot charges, making those inefficient, then instantly locking back their ranks against advancing infantry.
- The Eagle (2011): It's set in early Roman Britain, so naturally, the locals are still using chariots when facing the Ninth Legion, with very mixed results. Also, since the film plays fast and loose with historical accuracy, somehow Britons are using Persian-style scythed chariots.
- Exodus: Gods and Kings: Even if the film is a borderline Historical Fantasynote , the Battle of Kadesh gets recreated, with both sides heavily using chariots (the real-life battle is known for having the highest number of chariots ever deployed). The Egyptians have the upper hand thanks to already charging into the Hittite camp, not giving them much time to launch a counter-charge. And while both sides also use regular cavalry, it is in small, limited numbers, seeing chariots as just plain better.
- Gladiator: At the Colosseum, the gladiators are cast as barbarians in a recreation of the fall of Carthage, and pit on foot against the Roman Legion as represented by a group of chariots, each with archers and Spiked Wheels. It’s designed to be a Curb-Stomp Battle, and to begin with, the charioteers pick off lone gladiators with ease, but with Maximus’ leadership and tactics, the gladiators manage to turn the tables, using their shields to overturn the chariots, killing the now fallen charioteers on foot, and even hijacking the chariots and horses themselves.
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: The dwarves deploy a handful of goat-pulled chariots as their shock cavalry. After initial success against the orcs, Azog in turn deploys ogres, who smash the chariots into splinters.
- The Ten Commandments: Rameses and his army chase after the Israelites on war chariots, but don't have the time to use them when God stops them with a storm then drowns them when the open Red Sea returns to normal, with only Rameses escaping.
- Troy: While chariots are never seen in battle proper, they are still in heavy use by both sides in their military exploits. However, the most prominent use is when Achilles drags Hector's body behind his chariot, "touring" him around the Trojan walls.
Literature
- In the Belisarius Series, Aide gives Belisarius a vision of katyusha rockets in World War II. The trucks carrying the rockets are beyond the Romans' ability to manufacture — but Belisarius has the idea of using chariots to carry black-powder rockets deployed in the same manner, and this horse-drawn chariot version of katyushas becomes part of the Roman army.
- The Eagle of the Ninth: The injury that ended Marcus's army career came from taking on a British war chariot.
- Fate/Apocrypha: One of Rider of Red's Noble Phantasm, Troias Tragōidia: Tempestuous Immortal Chariot, is a chariot drawn by three horses, Xanthos, Balios, and Pedasus. It is a very powerful chariot that charges like a speed of lightning, capable of trampling a Golem.
- Fate/Zero: One of Rider's Noble Phantasm, Gordius Wheel: Wheel of Heaven's Authority, is a war chariot being pulled by two divine bulls. Due to its immense size and scythes attached to the wheels, he often uses it to trample through anything that gets in his way.
- The Iliad: It's a Bronze Age epic, so naturally, war chariots are present, primarily used to get heroes right into the middle of ongoing skirmishes. However, the most famous use is Achilles dragging Hector's body behind his chariot, sticking it to the Trojans.
- Mahabharata: Arjuna's chariot is as much a character as actual people. On top of that, Krishna is his charioteer, and a great deal of the plot revolves around the two of them driving into a battle.
- Pharaoh: The setting being Ancient Egypt in the wake of Third Intermediate Period, war chariots are the elite force of the otherwise all-foot Egyptian armies, with all the glamour (and noble origins of their crew) attached.
Mythology & Religion
- The Bible records the use of chariots as a weapon of war in the ancient Middle East. The standout example is the pursuit of Moses and the fleeing Israelites by Pharaoh's chariot force, which foolishly pursued the Children of Israel into their escape route through the parted Red Sea — only to be destroyed when the waters rolled back and the sea reasserted itself. Later in the Bible, in the Book of Judges, it is asserted that the Israelites were vastly outnumbered in a war with the Canaanites, who could muster nine hundred iron-clad chariots as a weapon of war. The Israelites were victorious in combat against the Canaanites in the mountains, but "could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron."
- Buddhism: There is a lot of chariot imagery, along with the figure of Channa, Siddhartha's charioteer. And that chariot is a war one. However, the context is purely symbolic and as a vehicle, not a war machine.
- Celtic Mythology: Cú Chulainn (as seen in the page picture) fights in a chariot pulled by his two horses, Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend, and driven by his companion, Láeg.
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering: The Esika's Chariot
card, which is crewed by creatures in order to attack.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Valkyrie Chariot card, which Fairies can "ride" to get more ATK and act as a Single-Use Shield, or act on its own as an attacker.
- Warhammer Fantasy: Chariot units are present for a large host of factions, with various crazy aesthetics and beasts pulling them thrown into the mix. Unsurprisingly, the Ancient Egyptian-themed Tomb Kings have the most straightforward examples. Notably, chariots are terrible in sustained combat, but are monsters on the charge, enforcing a loop of them plowing through enemy ranks to try to break them on the turn they charge so they can then chase down the foe or make another charge.
Video Games
- Age of Empires:
- Age of Empires I: Chariots are a type of cavalry that can be trained starting at the Bronze Age after the Wheel is researched. There are two types of chariot units: Chariot (a melee-attacking unit trained at the Stable) and Chariot Archer (a ranged-attacking unit trained at the Archery Range). Both Chariot units excel in countering Priests because of their increased conversion resistance. The Rise of Rome expansion allows Chariots to be upgraded to Scythe Chariots in the Iron Age, which grants them trample damage.
- Age of Empires II:
- In the Ivaylo campaign from Definitive Edition, Tsar Konstantin rides on a chariot being pulled by three horses and driven by a soldier carrying a lance. Like the Scythe Chariot in Age of Empires, Tsar Konstatin deals trample damage. Historically, Tsar Konstantin was paralyzed from the waist down due to a riding accident, which is shown in-game with him sitting on a seat built into the chariot.
- Ratha is a unique unit for the Bengalis, introduced in the Dynasties of India expansion. Rathas are Indian chariot riders that can switch between a ranged and melee mode at a command.
- War Chariot is a unique unit replacing the Scorpion line for the Shu, introduced in The Three Kingdoms expansion. War Chariots are equipped with semi-automatic crossbows and can switch between Focus Fire mode (firing at a line that deals pass-through damage) and Barrage mode (firing more arrows at a spread).
- War Chariot and Elite War Chariot in Chronicles are regional units, currently exclusive to the Achaemanids, that deals trample damage and bonus damage against infantry units. The Achaemenids can research the Scythed Chariot's unique technology to increase their blast radius.
- Age of Mythology:
- The Chariot Archer is an Egyptian unit trained at the Migdol Stronghold that serves as a cavalry archer.
- The War Chariot is a unit for the Chinese civilization, introduced in the Tales of the Dragon expansion. However, in Retold, the unit is completely scrapped as it doesn't return with the reworked Chinese civilization in the Immortal Pillars expansion.
- Age of Wonders:
- Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne: Charioteer is a Level 3 unit for the Archon race. It is a mounted class that excels in both melee and ranged combat.
- Age of Wonders III: Introduced in the Eternal Lords expansion, Tigran Sabretooth Chariot and Frostling Ice Queen are chariot riders that pilots sabertooth tigers and polar bears, respectively. Tigran Sabretooth Chariot is a cavalry unit that can throw sun spears for ranged physical and fire damage and inflicting immolate before charging at their target; while Frostling Ice Queen is a support unit that can fight in melee combat, negate Frost resistance and deal Frost damage to adjacent non-Frostling units, and use Ice Nova to break enemy's Guard mode.
- Age of Wonders 4: Chariots appear in the Archon Prophecy expansion, which can be ridden if your race has the "Chariot Mount" form trait. Compared to other cavalry traits, chariots increase mounted units' HP by 5 and reduce their unit models down to 1 (making them immune to casualty penalties).
- Assassin's Creed Origins: Near the end of the game, Bayek assists Caesar in combat by being his archer and javelin thrower as they ride in a war chariot while being chased by Ptolemaic forces commanded by Pothinus.
- Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: The Gladiator enemy is two skeletons on a chariot pulled by an undead horse.
- The City-Building Series has chariots as a recurring type of military unit that can be mustered by your city or its enemies:
- Pharaoh: Chariots are Lightning Bruisers that first become available in the tumultuous Middle Kingdom era. They're the best units your city can produce, but enemy charioteers like the Hyksos and Hittites become a nigh-invincible nightmare at higher difficulty levels.
- Zeus: Master of Olympus: As the elite forces of the Egyptians, charioteers are an enemy-only unit in the core game. The expansion Poseidon gives your Atlantean cities chariots in place of the usual cavalry, with very similar abilities: they require a supply of expensive horses but are fast, strong, and tough.
- Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom: Chariots are a Lightning Bruiser Elite Army in the early game: fast, tough, and punishingly powerful, but each fort can only support a small number. They're eventually replaced by the weaker but much more numerous cavalry.
- Civilization: Chariots are generally the first cavalry unit that can be built, with more mobility than infantry, yet with the caveat that they lose movement in hardy terrain. A stronger version of the Chariot (called the War Chariot from III to V, and the Maryannu Chariot Archer in VI) usually serves as the Egyptian unique unit. Civilization III gives the Three-Man Chariot to the Hittites as their unique unit, while Civilization VI gives the War Cart to Sumer as their unique unit.
- Dominions: Some nations have access to chariots, and they have the ability to trample on smaller units to deal damage. The standard horse-drawn chariot shows up, but there are more fantastical versions, such as the Centaur Chariot of Ind, of Uruk's Mushussu Chariot, which uses a huge horse-like dragon.
- Fate/Grand Order: In addition to returning characters possessing chariots as Noble Phantasms, like Iskandar's Gordius Wheel and Achilles's Troias Tragōidia, Boudica's Noble Phantasm is Chariot of Boudica: Chariot of Unpromised Protection, her signature chariot during her campaign against the Roman occupiers of Britain. Despite this, the Noble Phantasm is not used for combat but used for shielding her allies, which grants her party a defense buff (and an attack buff following a Strengthening Quest).
- In Final Fantasy XIV, Rofocale is one of the Lucavi haunting the Lesalia Garden Ruins. It takes the form of a demonic entity whose lower half is fused to a chariot driven by a similarly monstrous horse. Fittingly enough, many of Rofocale's attacks involve him trying to trample the party beneath his chariot.
- Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave: The reveal trailer reveals the newly-introduced Charioteer, a cavalry class that rides on a chariot pulled by two horses and is proficient in bows.
- Enabling Extreme Measures for the Theseus and Asterius fight in Hades gives Theseus a golden gun-mounted chariot that he uses to speed around the battlefield and attack you with. He doesn't take it well when it's destroyed.
- Humankind: Ancient Era, corresponding to the Bronze Age, offers both a generic Chariot for everyone, and culture-specific zhànche (for the Zhou) and gigir (for the Hittites). Notably, when the Classical Era (coded after the Iron Age) eventually grants access to Horsemen, they are only marginally better than Chariots, representing the presence of both cavalry and chariots at the battlefields of ancient times. What really changes, however, is the emergence of much stronger infantry units — while Chariots absolutely dominate Ancient Era Spearmen, they will be having a hard time against Classical Era Swordsmen.
- Imperator: Rome offers chariots as potential war units to certain cultures (they are almost entirely restricted to Celtic tribes and cultures from India). Given the time period the game is set in, chariots are woefully outdated by this point in history, and the proliferation of both actual cavalry of all kinds and forms, along with heavy infantry, renders chariots a liability. But this is a fully intentional design to represent the technological gap in warfare between various regions and cultures.
- Kingdom Hearts III: The enemies known as Chaos Carriages, which are horse and cart, but no riders on either.
- Paper Mario: Color Splash: To get the yellow Big Paint Star, Mario has to go to the Golden Coliseum and battle Iggy Koopa, a Hammer Bro, and a Snifit. Iggy and his minions each ride on a chariot pulled by a small Chain Chomp. If Mario tries to attack them, their quick chariots let them ride away before his attack can hit them. Before Mario can beat them, he has to destroy their chariots using a Bone Thing card.
- Patapon 3: Two of the Uberhero's potential classes, Canassault and Charibasa, are powerful charioteers (whose chariots, interestingly enough, seem to be self-propelled). Canassault is a frontline damage dealer who charges forth in their chariot with a massive poleaxe, whereas Charibasa is more of a support DPS who throws volleys of spears that can also provide tactical buffs to the rest of the party.
- Six Ages:
- The Samnali, called the Wheels by other cultures, do not know how to ride horses in the way that their Rider cousins do and instead use them to draw war chariots. The Riders think that chariots are obscene on a moral level due to "enslaving" horses, while the Wheels think that squatting on a horse's back is disgusting. Their equivalent to the Firehoof blessing, which sparks fire along the hooves of Rider horses and lets them fight alongside their riders, instead lines their wheels and wheel-spokes with flame to make them deadlier when bearing down on enemies.
- The Penentelli, one of the four southern Ram kingdoms, raise a type of antelope called ordeed to pull their war chariots instead of using horses. In Lights Going Out, the ghost of a Penentelli king can be encountered riding on a spectral antelope chariot while battling the forces of Chaos.
- Total War franchise:
- Rome: Total War:
- Egypt has anachronistic war chariots, even if the game is set centuries after they went out of use.
- The Britons have less anachronistic (at least compared to the Egyptians) Light Chariots (carrying archers) and Heavy Chariots (which are roughly the antiquity equivalent of tanks). The overall depiction of the Briton faction in the game draws heavily from the era of Boudica and her famous conflict with the eponymous Romans, though this is anachronistic in the opposite direction of the Egyptians, with that taking place around 300 years after the start of the R:TW campaign.
- Additionally, more of a general note about chariots in Rome: Total War, the "auto resolve" function of battles seems to weigh them heavily. An Egyptian or Briton force comprised mostly of chariots can easily defeat an army twice the size and of similar quality in an auto battle, while likely losing handily if a player actually plays that battle. This makes the auto battle something of a Video Game Delegation Penalty when playing against factions that use a lot of chariots.
- An Easter Egg located at the northeastern edge of the map is the city of Themiscyra, which has a garrison consisting entirely of Amazon Chariots.
- Total War: Rome II has them in a more historical context, although by the timeframe the game takes place in they had become phased out throughout most of the Mediterranean world and are thus only available to a few factions (Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, Pontus, the British Celts, and a few African and Arabian civilizations). In general, while chariots do have potent charge, lighter chariots are better suited to skirmishing while heavier chariots excel at breaking through enemy lines. The main downside to chariot units is that if they get bogged down in melee, they can be easily destroyed.
- Total War: Warhammer games have chariot units for a large host of factions, copying their unit roster from the tabletop game, with various crazy aesthetics and beasts pulling them thrown into the mix. Unsurprisingly, the Ancient Egyptian-themed Tomb Kings have the most straightforward example, and a large set of bonuses to make them even better. They are also associated with the Norscan NPC warlord Surtha Ek, who had become infamous for his heavy use of chariots due to the limited roster available to Norscan tribes and who was tweaked to remain deliberately chariot-heavy after the Norscan roster expansion. Notably, chariots are terrible in direct combat, but are monsters in charge, enforcing a loop of them plowing through enemy ranks, taking a turn and charging again.
- Total War: Pharaoh: Chariots are an important part of the military landscape since, in the closing days of the Bronze Age, active combat cavalry is still exceptionally rare; the Assyrians are the only faction to train cavalry units. As a result, war chariots are the most reliably mobile and high-mass units for most armies, and are used for both direct charges and as mobile archery platforms. The Peleset oxen carts are driven by oxen rather than horses, giving them very high mass and armour for a chariot unit, and can deploy their riders as makeshift infantry during battle as a Bronze Age equivalent to mechanized infantry. Chariot specialists include Tausret, who focuses on swift and mobile ranged chariots, and the Hittites and Irsu's marauders, who focus more on heavily armed and armored ones.
- Rome: Total War:
Web Comics
- Merchant Band: The Egypt-inspired Ah-Seba deploys war chariots pulled by Mechanical Horses.
Real Life
- While evidence for wheeled platforms used in battle dates back as far as the second millennium BCE, it could have existed earlier since the advent of the wheel is commonly believed to have been near the mid fourth millennium. The earliest recorded use of the war chariot in its commonly depicted form is attributed to the Hittite Empire around the 18th century BCE, with its most famous demonstration in Antiquity being the Battle of Kadesh, which is regarded as the largest chariot engagement in history, with some 5,000-6,000 participating.
- The Battle of Kadesh, from 13th century BCE, has two distinctions: it's the first fully recorded battle in human history, where it is possible to tell what tactics both sides used and how things played out... and due to involving more than five thousand war chariots, the highest recorded number to ever crop up and representing the peak of their use in warfare — especially since both Ancient Egyptians and the Hittites were two cultures heavily using chariots in the first place.
- Chariots were a key part of Chinese warfare and elite culture in the early Spring and Autumn Period (c. 770 – c. 481 BCE): chariot driving and archery were two of the "six arts" that gentlemen were supposed to master and war chariots were considered so important that a state's strength was measured in them (as can be seen from texts like The Art of War (Sun Tzu)). This changed in the shift to the following Warring States period, when population growth and iron weapons made it easier to deploy bigger armies dominated by conscripted infantry, making "gentlemanly" chariot skirmishes a thing of the past. Another factor in the decline of chariot warfare was an increase in conflicts with non-Han Chinese peoples, who had been forced to retreat to areas where the terrain made the use of chariots inadvisable and who were understandably disinclined to come out to fight in the open field.
- The British Isles gained war chariot technology around 500 BCE, the last area in Western Europe to do so (by which point war chariot use elsewhere was on the decline) and continued using them even after chariots got supplanted by mounted cavalry in continental Europe by 300 BCE. In fact, the Battle of Mons Graupius in 84 CE (taking place somewhere in what is now Scotland) was the last recorded battle in which war chariots were used in Europe, as they were fielded by the native Caledonians against the Romans.
- The Persians famously employed chariots with scythed wheels, believed to have been developed as a reaction to the Greek hoplites and their phalanx - while it's hard to get horses to charge into a mass of infantry, the scythes would still hurt the enemy as the horses turned to not impale themselves on enemy spears. These chariots were finally used against phalanxes at the Battle of Gaugamela... Only to fail because they were facing the Macedonian phalanxes, whose pikes were far longer than the spears of the hoplitic phalanxes the chariots had been developed to defeat. However it seemed to have been effective against other enemies, as the Seleucid Empire would employ them until its fall.
- The Roman army didn't employ them, but was single-handedly responsible for their disappearance in Continental Europe and the Middle East.
- The Romans first encountered chariots in Italy against the Celtic tribes of Cisalpine Gaul... And lost that battle, resulting in the Gaulish sack of Rome. When the Romans invaded Celtic lands, however, they had developed Caltrops to stop the chariots dead, allowing the Romans to rush the chariots and kill the crews (Romans wore heavy soled sandals that allowed them to walk over their caltrops). The Roman victories were so complete that the Celts on the continent abruptly abandoned their use of chariots, with only the ones in Britain maintaining their use - and giving Caesar serious trouble in his first invasion of Britain, as he hadn't seen it coming and neglected to bring caltrops (he brought them in the second invasion, and the Britons were defeated so decisively that the only thing keeping him from conquering the island was Vercingerorix' sudden rebellion forcing him to return to Gaul).
- The Romans would encounter scythed chariots in their wars against the Seleucid Empire and later Mithridates - and quickly proved these chariots were just as ineffective as the Celtic ones. While at Magnesia it was their allied troops from Pergamon to defeat the Seleucid chariots with archers and slingers, in other battles the chariots would fall victims to caltrops and some creative tactics, such as tricking them to charge into a ditch and, in one infamous occasion, running to the chariots and planting themselves in a shield wall too close for them to build speed or manouver (after the chariot "charge" ineffectively bounced on the shields, the legionaries rushed the now halted chariots and slaughtered the crews).
- Some military historians argue that the chariot has never really gone extinct, it just morphed into different forms throughout the ages, from the tachanka to the Toyota pickup trucks...