User:Daniel.John.Golder/sandbox

Background
By 1130 the Greater East Asian wars had only grown more intense. While the focus of the conflict remained in Central China however, there were signs of development to the Southern flank of the conflict.

The Khmer Empire had been humbled at the Battle of the Burning Beach and spent years marshaling its strength on the mainland in an attempt to restore its strategic position. The Imperial Court increasingly marginalized those that had supported the ill fated decision to invade Borneo in the middle of a major conflict and in their place a coterie of Generals all but excluded the old sea power advocates and instead supported the diversion of ever greater resources to prepare the armies needed to triumph on land.

By 1135 the Khmer were ready and, in an effort to support their XiXia allies and give recompense for the bloody beach, a major Khmer army advanced North into the lands of the Song.

To their West however, an ambitious ruler roused his realm to readiness.

Vikramaditya VI, ruler of the gargantuan Chalukya kingdom, had given no answer to either his Song or XiXia partners when called upon in 1021. Instead he watched and waited, all the while modernizing a military machine that drew on the strengths of the various peoples of the sub-continent. When he summoned his armies to muster a year after the Khmer expedition into Song territory, many in his court speculated as to whether he intended to declare either for his former Song allies in battling the XiXia, or for the XiXia against the Song and their Tripartite pact.

Instead, the Indian ruler followed the coastline North East, and remained silent to all diplomatic queries as to his intended conduct.

At the beginning of the campaigning season in 1137, he gave orders for his army to cross the border into the Khmer Empire, without a declaration of war and in violation of a non-aggression pact with the Khmer rulers. Rumors and whispers swirled through the Indian camp almost immediately. Some thought that the war had been brought on by a failure of the Khmer state to pay tribute to the great Chalukya king, others by a simple desire to seize additional lands while their neighbor was week. No answer seemed satisfactory, and morale in the Indian camp simmered rather than soared as the campaign commenced.

Contemporary thinking at the time was that a military campaign of the order undertaken by the Chalukya was impossible. The density of the Khmer jungle was legendary and offered little in the way for an army of 16,000 men and a quarter of a thousand elephants to forage or scavenge.

Vikramaditya proved those doubters wrong with a logistical effort that defied imagination for the age. A great fleet of ships followed his army as it marched, continually landing the tons of supplies needed to keep an army in the field day by day. The constant supply of food and equipment sustained the great Indian army, but also forced it to remain ever closer to the coastline, lest the jungle make the movement of supplies between the coast and the army almost impossible.

The Khmer had never truly trusted their Indian neighbors but they had expected an attack would come at the mouth of the Mekong, not through the jungles and mountain passes of the North West. As such, only a small army was positioned on the frontier when the initial invasion occurred. As the Indians advanced, the Khmer fell back before them, denying them decisive battle, hoping that hunger and the jungle would do their work for them. They also harassed the Indians with constant night attacks and harassing raids, aimed to speed the collapse.

But collapse never came.

When disease struck Vikramaditya's Generals marshaled the evacuation of the ill on supply ships until they could recover and return to the front line. When food ran short he lent on his voluminous treasury to summon ships filled to the brim with grain and livestock.

The message was simple. The Indians would not starve. And the Khmer would have to fight, lest the Indian army roll all the way South, cut across the top of the Peninsula, and make for Angkor. Eyes turned to the thin neck of the peninsula that divided the bulk of the Khmer Empire from its territories in the South. They would have to hold the Indians short of that position, or face the prospect of the Empire's សរសៃឈាម "sarsaichham" or main artery being cut.

Knowing full well the route the Indians intended to take would keep them marching along the open coast, the Khmer enacted their defensive stratagem. Night time harassment, and supply denial operations escalated tenfold, while the main Khmer defensive army dug in and waited.

Finally seeing the possibility for a decisive battle that had evaded them for so long, the Chalukya eagerly accepted battle.

Opposing Forces
The Chalukya force was as diverse as it was massive. Light jungle troops, mailed heavy warriors wielding heavy Khanda blades and an impressive array of cavalry from across the vast realm, 16,000 warriors in all. At the van however were the pride of the Indian force, a full 250 war elephants carrying archers on their back to augment the damage the massive beasts could do with raw strength alone.

After a long march, constant harassment, and their ongoing confusion as to the justice of their expedition, morale in the Indian army had been low in the lead up to the battle. Now however, it lifted, with the soldiers and lords alike confident that an easy victory was about to pass into their hands.

By contrast, the Khmer force was defined by a solid block of 7,000 infantry supported by perhaps a thousand light riders. It was with this army in mind that they had chosen the battlefield. With one flank secured by the coastal sands and the other by the Jungle, the Khmer reasoned their army would be difficult for the Indians to bypass. While fearful of the enemy's numbers, confidence in their defensive position and the justice of their cause kept morale in the Khmer army high.

Those defenses were indeed fairly formidable by the standard of field fortifications:

A large number of pits filled with the infamous "punji stakes" had been dug both in front of their force and on its flanks. There was also a basic array of stakes and earthworks intended to limit the effectiveness of Indian cavalry and archers respectively. They reflected the works of weeks, perhaps even months, of fastidious preparation by the locally conscripted labour forces.

Behind those defenses, steeled and determined, the Khmer army took their positions, formed their spear-wall, and bade the Indians come.

The Battle
The Indian Generals did not envy the tactical position, but they were quietly confident as battle commenced.

Wary of Khmer trickery, the Generals sent a corps of elephants forward first, guided by a large force of Indian light cavalry.

Accustomed to labour as well as battle, the Elephants are initially used to yank the anti cavalry stakes from the ground and open up narrow corridors through which the cavalry can advance and begin a long skirmishing fight with the Khmer infantry and cavalry forces.

From their position, the Khmer could see the initial skirmishes go well, their strong defensive formation and missile troops sufficient to not just keep the Indian light horse at bay, but also begin inflicting significant casualties. Beyond their lines however they could clearly see the purpose of the Indian maneuver, even as their were helpless to stop it.

The Indian elephant force continued with their comprehensive destruction of the Khmer field defenses, uprooting spikes, and crushing or kicking mounds of dirt into the various punji pits that were revealed. The exercise is gravely painful for the elephant corps. large numbers of the beasts have their feet painfully impaled by the spikes, but the short length of the makeshift spears limited the prospect of any lethal damage being done. Instead the poor, enraged animals trailed blood across the battlefield as their riders drove them to continue with their task.

Signs that the Khmer might advance to neutralise the elephants forced the Indian cavalry to make repeated charges to lock them in place while the infantry advance. The move costs the Indian cavalry dearly, but with great elan and determination, they locked their opponents.

But with the defences cleared and the Khmer line already engaged, the Indian infantry corps was finally able to bring its substantial strength to battle. Here again, the strength of the Khmer morale and positions were significant, but Indian numbers and equipment began to tell before long, and both sides Generals could see signs of the defence fracturing, albeit with great loss of life among the less heavily protected Indian troops.

Determined not to let the Khmer stabilise, the Indian General unleashed his final reserve of elephants and cavalry in a great charge against the most eroded sections of the Khmer line. With the bone chilling roar of the Indian war elephants, the Khmer lines were finally broken, and it was forced to attempt to disengage.

With the Khmer cavalry mostly unscathed, their riders were able to cover the withdrawal with some success, though entire Khmer units were butchered wholesale wherever they found themselves locked between maddened elephants and the Chalukya infantry.

After less than five hours of fighting, the Chalukya stood victorious among the Khmer positions, surrounded by the fallen corpses of almost 10,000 dead or wounded men.

Aftermath
The Battle gave the Chalukya command of the vital "sarsaichham" linking the Khmer Empire together. It also shattered the better part of 45% of the Khmer army gathered to oppose it.

But the Chalukya themselves were hardly in great condition. The well prepared battlefield, the extensive defences, and admirable discipline of the Khmer heavy troops had made the battle a bloody one, and Chalukya losses in victory were greater than those of the Khmer in defeat.

The toll was even greater among the elephant corps, so vital to the victory. It had been the elephants that had cleared the field defences, and neutralised the spike pits, allowing the Khmer cavalry and infantry to ultimately bring their numbers against the Khmer line. But what proved to be minor injuries on the field grew graver in the humid hell of the jungle. Wounds festered and soon almost half the Indian elephant corps had been either killed on the battlefield or put down by their handlers in order to stem the prodigious appetites of animals that would never walk again without care that not even the Indian logistical effort could provide.

Morale became shaky once more. Far from home, sequestered in the jungle, the Indian troops struggled to find the will to fight on as the Khmer began to pull together reserve and newly raised troops from across their territories. For the next two years, they would make only minimal gains as the depleted armies awaited replacements and reinforcement on a more lavish scale.

For a historian, the Battle of Sarsaichham is a study of great contrasts.

Militarily, it demonstrated the great proficiency of the Khmer in defensive, jungle fighting, the construction of field defences, and was an unambiguous testament to the quality and determination of their infantry forces.

And yet the Khmer lost the battle, and found themselves facing the prospect of their Empire being cut in two.

The Chalukya can thus be said to be the victors, though they paid a heavy price for that victory.

It has been said of the battle that both sides performed miracles:

The Khmer in setting up a battlefield so perfectly suited to their strengths and their aims.

The Chalukya, in managing to marshal the organisation and financial power necessary to move 16,000 men and 250 elephants across some of the worst terrain on the planet, and supply them long enough to win a victory against a dug in enemy army fighting in its home territory.

It was a telling contrast of attitudes, cultures, and techniques, and only time would tell which methodology would ultimately prove the more successful.