It was about now that Alexander’s wife, Rhoxane, gave birth to a son, but he was either stillborn or died within the first few days of life. The king buried him and offered sacrifices. A few months had passed between marriage and pregnancy, but the king had at least demonstrated his capacity, if not his enthusiasm. A little later he gave his father-in-law, Oxyartes, the satrapy of Parapanisadae, from which we may deduce that the marriage was at least a public relations success.
Just before dawn on a day in early November, the king stood in the prow of his own ship and poured libations from a golden bowl to the river god, to Heracles, and to his “spiritual” father Zeus Ammon; also to Poseidon, to Amphitrite, and to the Nereids. A trumpet sounded and the fleet put out.
The loyal but unimaginative Nearchus was appointed admiral. He had previously served as satrap of Lycia and Pamphilia. He was somewhat overshadowed by Alexander’s helmsman, a Greek from Aegina called Onesicritus, who had constant access to the king while he was aboard, and used his influence to undermine Nearchus. Arrian notes drily: “One of the falsities in Onesicritus’s history of Alexander is that he gives himself the title of ‘admiral,’ when in fact he was simply a helmsman.”
Arrian evokes the scene of the departure:
The noise of the simultaneous rowing by so many ships was like nothing else. The coxswains shouted the “in…out” command for every stroke and the oarsmen raised a cheer each time they struck the churning water in unison. The river banks, often higher than the ships, funnelled and amplified the noise, which ricocheted from bank to bank. Here and there wooded hollows on either side acted as echo-chambers, beating the sound back from their empty spaces. The horses visible on the transports caused amazement to the barbarians watching the spectacle, as horses had never been seen on ships before in India.
All went well to start with. The king was in no great hurry and after a few days’ sail everyone camped on the banks for a brief rest before continuing downstream. But at the confluence of the Hydaspes and another great river, the Acesines, the gods forgot the generous burnt offerings and hit out at the Macedonians. As well as making a tremendous din, the meeting of the waters created powerful eddies. Broad-beamed boats were spun violently around and Alexander took his clothes off in case he had to swim for his life. However, no harm was done, Arrian observes, “except to the nerves of those on board.”
War galleys, being long, thin, and low, came off much worse.
They did not ride so high over the seething rapids, and those with two ranks of oars could not keep the bottom one clear of the water. When the whirlpools swung them broadside on, their oars collided with each other, and many ships were damaged. Two ran against each other and sank. Many of those sailing in them perished.
This was an entirely unexpected setback, but Alexander made the best of things. He moored the fleet on the right-hand bank where there was shelter from the current and damage could be repaired.
* * *
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THE ARMY WAS IN good condition again. Substantial reinforcements had arrived during the journey back from the Hyphasis—nearly six thousand cavalry from Greece and Thrace; seven thousand Greek mercenary infantry raised by his treasurer in Asia, Harpalus; and 23,000 infantry raised from Greek allies in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. It was now so tempting for men from all over the Mediterranean to follow Alexander’s star, and make a fortune, that there was no need to recruit obstinate and contrary Macedonians. From Babylon came much needed medical supplies and 25,000 suits of armor inlaid with silver and gold. The equipment problem had been solved.
The fleet carried the hypaspist infantry, the royal cavalry squadron from the Companions, the invaluable archers and Agrianians, and (probably, although they are not mentioned) the baggage train and siege equipment. The remainder—in fact, the majority of the army—was divided in two. Craterus was to lead some of the cavalry and infantry along the river’s right bank. Hephaestion was to advance down the other with the largest and strongest part of the army, including some two hundred elephants that various rajahs had presented to Alexander. The two generals were on bad terms and the fact the Hydaspes was never less than two and a quarter miles wide will have come as a relief to both of them.
On one occasion around this time, they actually drew swords and came to blows. Friends appeared and began to join in the disturbance. Alexander rode up and gave Hephaestion, who was evidently more in the wrong, a furious dressing-down. He told him he was mad or stupid if he didn’t realize that without his, the king’s, favor he was nothing. Later in private he sharply rebuked Craterus.
Finally, he imposed a public reconciliation. He said: “By Zeus Ammon and all the other gods, these are the two men I love most in the world. But if ever I hear of them quarrelling again, I will kill them both—or at the very least the one who started the quarrel.” The king’s outburst shocked them into obedience and neither man ever again did or said anything, even as a joke, to offend the other.
* * *
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ALEXANDER’S BODY WAS A palimpsest of scars. He exulted in hand-to-hand combat and regarded wounds as a professional hazard. It was now that he received the last and most dangerous of them and it is very remarkable that he recovered from it.
His army faced one more hard-fought campaign before finding the sea, despite grumbling from the rank and file. The Hydaspes joined the Acesines, which then ran through the territory of the Oxydracae and the Malli; these were hostile tribes who would have to be overcome if the Indus Valley were to be completely pacified and the imperial frontier secured along the length of the great river. News came in that they were planning to obstruct the Macedonians’ passage with a horde of one hundred thousand warriors.
In response the king divided his army into separate detachments and placed them at various points around the southern borderlands of the tribal territories. To the west and east of these territories were waterless deserts. Alexander decided to attack the Malli from the north and drive them into the arms of the forces that were waiting to receive them. He, of course, led an agile assault force, consisting of hypaspists, a phalanx battalion, some light infantry, half the Companion cavalry, and the highly valued mounted archers.
To ensure the maximum surprise he led his men through an arid wasteland. After some miles they paused at a small spring for a rest and then traveled for the remainder of the day and through the night. Altogether they covered forty-five miles before emerging from the desert at dawn, to the astonishment of the tribesmen, many of whom were out in the fields and unarmed. He killed most of them without any resistance being offered. Settlements in his path, probably little more than villages with mud walls, received the same treatment. Ruthlessness and intolerance had returned. The king had lost patience.
Faced with this blitzkrieg, the Mallians abandoned their capital, and most of their armed forces holed up in a well-fortified stronghold. The king laid the place under siege. The Macedonians broke through the outer perimeter and attacked the citadel. They set up scaling ladders, but morale had been shaken by the fierceness of the defense and some of the assault team nervously hung back. The king seized a ladder, huddled under his shield, and scampered up the wall by himself. Peucestas, an old school friend who was carrying the sacred shield from Troy, came up after him. Two other Macedonians, Leonnatus and a corporal, followed Alexander and climbed up beside him.
At the top was a parapet, against which the king propped his shield. He cleared his section of the wall, shoving some of the defenders off it and dispatching others with his sword. Arrows rained down on him from nearby towers on the wall.
His men could see how exposed he was and frantically jostled one another on the same ladder, which broke under their weight. Alexander realized he could not safely stay where he was for much longer. To take the Indians by surprise and goad his Macedonians to redouble their efforts to rescue him, he decided on an absurdly rash act
. Almost suicidally, he jumped off the wall, not back into the arms of the besiegers, but into the citadel itself.
He had good balance, as well as luck, and landed on his feet near an old tree, which gave some protection from attack. After he killed two Indians at close quarters, his opponents stood back and hurled spears and arrows at him.
He took many missiles on his shield, but his helmet was broken and his legs began to buckle. He was hit by an arrow, which passed right through his breastplate and into his chest, above a nipple. He staggered back and fell to his knees. Arrian writes that
the blood escaping from the wound was bubbling with the air from his lung. As long as his blood ran warm, and although he was in a bad way, Alexander continued to defend himself: but when inevitably his breathing caused a massive hemorrhage he became dizzy and faint, and fell forward over his shield. Peucestas stood astride him as he lay there, protecting him with the sacred shield from Troy, and Leonnatus took his stand on the other side: these two were now the targets, while Alexander was slipping into unconsciousness from loss of blood.
Finally, Macedonians arrived on the scene in force and captured the citadel. Fury was fed by guilt and they slaughtered every Mallian in sight—women, children, and old men.
Meanwhile the king was stretchered away on his shield. There was no surgeon on hand and urgent action was needed. It was essential to remove the arrow from the king’s chest. The head being barbed, this could only be safely done if the entry wound was enlarged. The shaft had to be sawn off first since the flights would not pass through the hole in the cuirass. One of Alexander’s leading generals, Perdiccas, cut round the wound and then carefully drew the barb out. When he did so, blood spurted and pain and shock induced nature’s anesthetic. Alexander passed out.
He was cared for where he was and when he was well enough to travel was brought to the river and boarded ship. There were fears that the indispensable leader would not survive, leaving his men in the middle of nowhere and thousands of miles from home. When Alexander heard that rumors of his death were spreading, he had two ships lashed together and a tent erected in the center of them. This allowed him to be seen in public and prove to both friend and foe that he was alive. Even so he was obliged to wave his arm before his survival was fully believed. He then proceeded downstream, keeping some distance from the rest of the fleet so that the stroke of the oars would not disrupt his sleep (which his very fragile condition still required).
The wound took more than seven days to close, but Alexander recovered with remarkable speed. The foam strongly suggests that his lung was pierced. The antiseptics of the day were weak and it is remarkable that within a few weeks the king was up and about.
We cannot doubt that his health was seriously and permanently affected. Very probably he had a splintered rib; a lung had been torn and both walls of the pleura perforated; and the intercostal muscles were lacerated. These damaged layers are all part of the breathing system and usually mobile. The process of healing, though, would knit them into stiff, ragged scar tissue. In future, with every breath he drew, Alexander would feel his wound, and every arm movement would hurt.
Senior officers in his intimate circle criticized him for taking needless risks. That was something an ordinary soldier might do, but not a commander. Alexander was irritated by these comments. Arrian offers his own convincing assessment of the king’s attitude to risk:
I would guess that Alexander’s annoyance was because he recognized the truth of the accusation and his own responsibility in incurring it. Yet the fact is that in battle he was a berserker, as addicted to glory as men are to any other overpowering passion, and he lacked the discipline to keep himself out of danger.
* * *
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IT WAS JULY 325 and the monsoon rains had started again, blown in from the southwest. While convalescing, the king had had more ships built and he was now impatient to get going again. He intended to deal decisively with any resistance as he moved down into the Lower Indus Valley. To the east of the river lay the wide-ranging Thar Desert, most of which was covered by huge shifting sand dunes. It reached down to the sea and was impassable.
To the west, though, Indian communities still resisted the invader, but their defeat was little more than a sanguinary formality. The Macedonians applied the tactic of the bloodbath. An insurgent prince was crucified together with the holy men or Brahmins who had egged him on. Soon southern Indians were either dead or terrified.
The fleet arrived at Pattala in the Indus Delta. This was the river’s main port, but at the moment it was empty. The population had fled in terror and were only enticed back with difficulty. Hephaestion was ordered to transform the city into a military base with ship sheds and dockyards. Later, a second harbor was created farther south in the delta. While construction work was under way, Alexander explored the principal outlets leading to the Ocean. Out at sea, he sacrificed bulls to Poseidon and poured libations from a gold cup. The animals’ bodies were thrown into the water in thanksgiving, as were the cup and some gold bowls for mixing wine.
The king and his fellow Macedonians were astonished by tides, which are hardly apparent in the Mediterranean. Shocked when the ebbing water marooned their ships on mudbanks, they were mightily relieved when it returned and refloated them.
They encountered a more serious problem, as Arrian explains:
When they came to the point where the river spreads out wide, extending here to twenty-two miles at its broadest, the wind was blowing in strong from the open sea and the rowers could hardly lift their oars in the heaving water. Guided by their pilots, they ran for shelter again into a side-channel.
In due course, this southwest wind was to threaten the very survival of Alexander and his army.
* * *
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THE NEXT STAGE OF Alexander’s journey would take him 450 miles along the barren coast of Gedrosia (today called the Makran) that led from western India to the Persian Gulf. The monsoon passed it by, rain clouds only hitting mountaintops in the interior. The land was mostly desert—red, mountainous, and as dry as an ossuary. A nineteenth-century traveler reports
chiefly a barren repetition of sun-cracked crags and ridges with parched and withered valleys intersecting them, where a trickle of salt water leaves a white and leprous streak among the faded tamarisk or the yellow stalks of last season’s grass….Here and there jagged peaks appear as if half overwhelmed by an advancing sea of sand. They are treeless and barren, and water is but rarely found at the edges of their foot-hills.
According to legend, Heracles, who appears to have visited everywhere, and the fabled Semiramis, queen of Assyria, had both tried and failed to cross Gedrosia. The king, always competitive, would be delighted to outcompete them. However, he was not suffering from a bout of overheated pothos, but rather had sound practical reasons for traveling through this unforgiving landscape. His prime motive was to inspect and if necessary strengthen the boundary of his possessions, but he also knew that traveling by sea was quicker than by land and far less arduous. The Makran could be developed as a trade route between rich and populous India and his empire’s heart, Mesopotamia. Alexander planned to establish a string of colonies along this coast and on offshore islands, which he believed would become as wealthy as the city-ports of Phoenicia. It would also be much easier than before to keep in touch with his Indian provinces and protectorates.
Alexander recognized that guiding his men through the desert would be one of his greatest challenges and he took great pains over his preparations. The Indian soldiers who had swelled his ranks were dispersed. In June, he gave Craterus command of the bulk of the army, including more than half of the phalanx, some of the archers, all soldiers from whatever unit who were unfit for service and to be sent home, and the elephants acquired during the campaign in the subcontinent. They were to march westward through the eastern satrapies and rejoin Alexander in C
armania, the province next to Persis and Persepolis.
This left the king free to undertake his Gedrosian adventure. He still commanded a sizable force—the Macedonian troops not going with Craterus, the Greek mercenaries and cavalry from the eastern satrapies. In addition, the cumbersome baggage train, under Hephaestion’s command, included all sorts of noncombatants from prostitutes to children, from traders to servants.
The most seaworthy ships in the fleet were to join in an amphibious operation. They were under orders to proceed at the same pace as the army along the littoral. The fleet would carry provisions for the troops on land, who in turn would dig wells and supply the sailors with water. They would also take water from the intermittent mountain streams that ran down to the sea and that were full at this time of year. Four months’ supply of grain was gathered and stowed in about four hundred cargo vessels. Military detachments marched west partly to reconnoiter and dig wells and partly to punish two hostile tribes, the Oreitae, who were routed, and the Arabitae, who opted for discretion and fled. The king founded another of his garrison towns, where he left Leonnatus to ensure calm after his departure.
In late August, the king began his homeward trek. He chose the height of the monsoon for his departure because he calculated that dried-up riverbeds in Gedrosia would be briefly in spate and would help water his troops. Estimates of his numbers reach as high as 120,000 or more, if the baggage train is included, and as low as a more plausible thirty thousand. The wind was still blowing from the southwest and prevented Nearchus and his ships from leaving harbor. Alexander assumed that when it changed direction they would catch up with him.
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