Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  Darius’s engineers have sown the margins of the field with iron crow’s feet to contain our cavalry’s advance within the killing zone of the scythed chariots. But the foe cannot strew these spikes across the entire space between our front and his; he must leave hundreds of yards clear; otherwise his own cavalry, when they charge, will run onto the spikes themselves. My scheme is to advance within the confined corridor only until our foremost ranks reach the open space. Then our front will decline sharply to the right, getting off the killing zone as quickly as possible.

  I have also, before the battle, had a pronouncement cried throughout our camp to all the civilian followers of the army: that whosoever wishes, at his own hazard, to sprint out before the corps’s advance and gather up the crow’s feet may keep every one he takes and sell the iron for profit. And now the men in ranks behold a spectacle marvelous indeed, as great swarms of enterprising youths—our sutler’s boys and laundry urchins, teamsters’ brats, muleteers’ lads, not to mention cooks and merchants, even some of the trollops from the whores’ camp—burst forth before the army, many barefoot, all unarmed and unarmored, to brave the volleys of the archers stationed by the foe on the flanks and even among the field of spikes to throw back just such an incursion. The bolder and more industrious of our scavengers hold their ground long enough, even, to scoop up the spent arrows of the enemy, which are of no small value in their own right. The result is the field is swept clean, or halfway so, with astonishing celerity.

  The enemy’s front comes visible now. Its length is twice ours; it seems to extend from horizon to horizon. The deeper we advance, the more of our flanks we expose to the Persian wings.

  We progress at a walk. To my left move the eight squadrons of Companion Cavalry. Their formation is half-squadron wedges. Dragon’s Teeth. I transit their front at a trot and pass down the line, leftward, monitoring the advance, calling out to men by name, letting my face and colors be seen. Couriers and aides-de-camp shuttle with reports of the foe, the wings, the closing distance.

  We too have staked the plain. Fore riders post as human pennants, demarking the advance. At a thousand yards, where the unsown ground begins, I signal the trumpeters: “Corps, decline half-right!”

  Color bearers pivot at forty-five degrees. Behind them captains and master sergeants center on the point and deflect as well; the brigades follow. Missile troops out front chase off the foe’s skirmishers. Our track is like a man wading across a river. We aim upstream on the diagonal, and our tread is angled upstream too. We slide right . . . right . . . right.

  Darius can’t see this yet. A thousand yards is too far. But his scout riders see. Telamon indicates a pair on thoroughbreds, spurring back to their king. We see two more, and a fifth, all galloping away with the same report.

  We incline to the right across ground incompletely cleared of iron caltrops. Our objects are two: to get off this killing ground, and to make Darius jump.

  How long will the foe let us deflect?

  Will he permit our right wing to outflank his left?

  As our main body declines right, I transit left, across our front for most of a mile, as far as Parmenio, who commands this wing. At nearly seventy years, the general still rides like a buck lancer. We review our scheme one last time. Philotas overhauls us at a hard canter, having crossed after me a thousand yards from the right.

  “You’re making my bung pucker, Alexander!”

  He means he wants me back on the right before serious action starts. He saws the bit on his seventeen-hand black, Adamantine.

  “Don’t do that—you’re hurting him.”

  He laughs. “He can’t feel a thing, and neither can I!”

  “Indeed,” Parmenio calls to his son, “but he’s not as drunk as you are!”

  I’ll give Philotas this: He’s a born swashbuckler. Besides, we’ve all downed a snootful. It burns off like air.

  I acknowledge Philotas’s admonition: I’ll return, right behind him. “Get Balacrus’s darters out front.”

  “Go on,” says Parmenio.

  My party and I canter back across the front. Balacrus is a Macedonian officer commanding a mixed corps of five hundred Agrianian javelineers and an equal number of archers and darters recruited from the mountaineers of Thrace. These have come out for gold, and they have earned it. They dash forward now, on foot, on the right, through the intervals between the squadrons of Companion Cavalry, and assume their station out front of the advance. The Thracians are tattooed, bare-legged, in fox-skin caps; the Agrianes scurry in father-son teams, with their bear hounds, great shaggy beasts, who will die shielding them if they fall.

  Balacrus’s job is to stop the scythed chariots. His missile troops must break the machines’ rush before they rip into the squadrons of Companion Cavalry.

  Here is the order of the army of Macedon, right to left, as we advance:

  Preceding the right: Balacrus’s archers and darters, one thousand. On the wing: mercenary cavalry under Menidas, seven hundred; Royal Lancers under Aretes, eight hundred; Paeonian Light Horse, two-fifty, under Ariston; the other half of the Agrianian darters, five hundred, under Attalus. Brison’s five hundred Macedonian archers are next; then the “vet mercs” of Cleander, sixty-seven hundred, infantry armed with the long lance to work against cavalry. These units comprise the right-flank guard. Their job is to hold off whatever Darius throws at us from the flank.

  Left of these advance the eight squadrons of Companion Cavalry under Philotas, overstrength at two thousand one hundred forty. Next, Hephaestion with the agema of the Royal Guard, three hundred; then the three Guards Brigades under Nicanor, also heavy at thirty-five hundred. Next the sarissa phalanx in six brigades of fifteen hundred each—Coenus’s, Perdiccas’s, Meleager’s, Polyperchon’s, Simmias Andromenes’ (replacing his brother Amyntas, who is in Macedon recruiting), and Craterus’s. Adjacent to these foot troops advance half the allied Greek horse under Erigyius, and all eight squadrons of Thessalian cavalry—the finest in the world after my own Companions—under Philip, son of Menelaus. Round Parmenio, in command of the left wing, ride the horsemen of the Pharsalian squadron, by far the bravest and most brilliant of the Thessalians.

  Behind these, at an interval of five hundred paces, I have deployed a second phalanx of infantry composed of the allied Greeks; the mercenaries of Arcadia and Achaea; Illyrian, Triballian, and Odrysian light infantry; the archers and slingers of Syria, Pamphylia, Pisidia; with five hundred Peloponnesian mercenaries under the Spartan Pausanias, who has come over from Darius’s service—a total of just under sixteen thousand. These I have instructed to stand ready to face about in the event of being enveloped; wing units to close up with flank guards to form a “hedgehog,” a defensive rectangle bristling with spear points, if we must. In between the fore and rear phalanxes are the battle squires with the spare arms and the grooms with the remounts.

  The flank guard of the left is disposed like the right in a modified diamond: four hundred allied Greek cavalry under Coeranus; fifty-nine hundred Thracian light infantry under their native commander Sitalces; three hundred fifty Odrysian plainsman cavalry under Agathon; and Cretan archers, five hundred, under Amyntas. These units, like their counterparts of the opposite flank, must endure whatever assault is thrown at them by Darius’s right wing, with its crack Cappadocian, Armenian, and Syrian cavalry under Mazaeus. In front, to break the foe’s rush, I have posted nine hundred mercenary horse under Andromachus, a unit of reckless dash. Parmenio commands the left overall, Craterus the infantry of that wing. The right is my own.

  We continue our advance in the oblique. Already our rightmost units are off the scythed chariots’ fairways. Soon the leading squadrons of Companions will have passed clear too. Darius tracks with us. He has shifted the entire left of his front, keeping pace with our deflection. He can’t do this forever. He must take some action to contain our lateral advance.

  “There they go.”

  Telamon points to the Persian wing. At seven hundred yards, D
arius sends his leftmost squadrons. We can see their dust and movement as they shift to contain our right.

  “More dust. From the center.” Love Locks indicates the companies around Darius. Units are pulling out of the middle of the Persian line.

  “How many, do you think?”

  “Enough to thin out their belly.”

  This is the gamble I have taken. It is the reason for our rightward deflection. The more squadrons we can draw off from Darius’s center, the fewer we’ll have to fight through to reach him.

  Kill the King.

  It is a dangerous game, however, drawing the enemy upon you. Everything hangs on timing. If our flank holds long enough to let my Companions charge, the empire of Persia will fall. If it breaks, not a man of Macedon will leave this field alive.

  I sign to Hephaestion; I must see to the flank. He acknowledges. He commands the advance now. If I don’t come back, the army is his and Parmenio’s.

  Do you recall, Itanes, the scheme I sketched before?

  This is the wing I now cross to. I want to check their order and be sure they are ready to receive an attack. We reach Aretes’ Lancers first. His horses are high. Their tails are up; froth slings from their muzzles. They are starting to bunch. A hundred yards left (to the front, in relation to the Persians) I see the rear ranks of Menidas’s mercenary cavalry; the same distance to the fore trot our Paeonian Light Horse under Ariston. I spur forward to them. Their mounts are as balky as Aretes’. I think: If either of these units bolts, Menidas’s mercenary cavalry will go with them; the men won’t be able to hold their horses.

  Ariston is the Light Horse’s commander. He should be at the point of the first wedge, but when we get there, I can’t find him. (By chance he has taken this moment to drop back to confer with Attalus, whose javelineers, on foot, are falling behind the Lancers’ pace.) Ariston’s deputy is Milon, a great-nephew of Parmenio. He has not taken the lead post vacated by Ariston, as procedure demands; he rides still in his number-two slot at the wing of the leftmost wedge. I come round the formation, purple with rage. “By Zeus, does no one command here!” Love Locks is on my left, Telamon swinging round on the right. I feel him rap me on the shoulder with the shaft of his lance.

  “Alexander!”

  I turn. A courier races up from Menidas. “There, sire!” He points ahead to our right flank. “Do you see them?”

  Out of the dust on the wing, four furlongs distant, appears a front of horsemen half a mile across.

  By Heracles, it is a sight!

  “What nations? Persians?”

  “Bactrians, my lord.” Tribal horsemen of the eastern plains.

  The courier reports that this division has ridden round from the enemy front in column and come, only moments before, into line of attack. He requests orders for his commander Menidas.

  “He has his orders. Attack.”

  I gallop with the courier back to his division. Menidas is out front with his squadron commanders. “By Chiron’s furry crease”—he points to the foe—“these villains are impatient!” Menidas is a huntsman; at home he runs two hundred superb hounds. He’s as cool now as if we were coursing only after hares.

  The foe are not yet at the gallop. They come at the trot. Dust ascends in ranges behind them; the squall at their backs drives it with them, so that their fore ranks appear to emerge out of sand-colored murk. The plain is crusty; its surface muffles the foe’s tread, making the sound seem as if it comes from twice as far as it does.

  “Take your fifties straight in. I’ll bring up the Lancers to rip them from the flank.”

  I mean that I want Menidas to attack the foe head-on in wedges of fifty. I’ll align Aretes’ eight hundred Royal Lancers to tear through the foe, right behind, from the side.

  I spur back to the Light Horse. Ariston, their commander, comes back from the rear at the gallop.

  “Are you trying to miss the show?”

  My tone lets him know I’m not angry. He reports on his dash to the rear. Attalus and the javelineers, on foot, have fallen behind; he, Ariston, has got them on the run to catch up. The archers and Cleander’s vet mercs are at the double too, Ariston reports. I commend him. He is thinking and acting like a commander.

  I tell him what Menidas and Aretes will do. “Drop back and cover the foot troops. Come up only if you see our wing cavalry hard-pressed.”

  I dispatch a rider of my own to Cleander, calling for three thousand vet merc infantry to hurry forward; the remaining thirty-seven hundred to maintain their position sealing the flank, coming to the fore only should the situation become desperate.

  I spur with my suite back to the Lancers. Cheers erupt at my apparition. The foe is closer, three-fifths of a mile, and plainly visible now as Ariston’s Light Horse pulls out to the rear. In few words I give Aretes the scheme. He is a wild weed, this fellow, just twenty-four years old and in awe of no one, including me. I have had him up on charges a month prior, for bringing me the head of a Persian cavalry commander instead of the living man to interrogate. Who better now?

  “Don’t burn up on the first rush,” I instruct him and his captains. “Up and back. Keep your wedges under control. Rally when you cross past Menidas and do it again.”

  Aretes gives me a grin.

  “Will you reprove me, Alexander, if I bring you another head?”

  Here comes the foe, at the canter.

  “Stay alive. I need you.”

  Aretes’ spurs bite. The Lancers shoot forward.

  Our troopers have rehearsed this evolution a thousand times and worked it in action a hundred. It goes like this. Menidas’s fifties up front will hurl themselves into the mass of the charging enemy. But they will not seek a melee; they will simply rip through, breaking up the foe’s formation as much as they can, then bolting at the gallop out the far side. It is impossible for a body of horsemen not to pursue when they see the foe in flight. And if that foe (meaning us, meaning Menidas) flees in disorder, or feigned disorder, the pursuers will fall at once into a matching state. Bactrians are desert nomads; the concept of unit cohesion is alien to them, as are all tactics beyond charge, circle, and withdraw. They are horsemen but not cavalry, warriors but not an army. Watch, now, what happens. . . .

  Menidas rushes and tears through. Half the foe keep charging; the other half, in a whooping pack, wheel to chase Menidas. In that moment, Aretes’ Lancers hit them from the flank. It is not necessary to produce casualties to stop cavalry; just break up its rush. The enemy’s mass, disordered now by our crisscrossing wedges, loses resolution. The foe sees our companies on his flanks and rear. He reins-in. He balks. Such reflex is primal; it cannot be prevailed over except by disciplined, impeccably officered troops, and the tribal Bactrians are anything but that.

  Now Cleander’s vet mercs sprint from the rear. These are not heavy infantry weighted down with forty pounds of shield and plate, but bareheaded peltasts and foot lancers, armed with the twelve-foot spear, a wicked weapon against cavalry that has lost its momentum and cohesion. Our fellows swarm in contourless orders called “clouds” and “strings.” How can the foe go after them? Only one-on-one, and to do that, the enemy must break up his ranks even further. Our men fight in pairs and triples, inflicting casualties upon the milling horsemen by rushing in, plying their lances, then scampering clear. The foe peels apart and gallops away to regroup.

  I cannot stay. I must get back to the Companions.

  Cleander tells me later that his executive officer Myrinus kept count of the rushes and counterrushes of the day’s fight on the wing. Nineteen times the enemy hurled his divisions upon this corps, and nineteen times our flankers threw them back. What can be said of such men? On parade they look second-raters. Pretty girls pass them over, favoring the dazzle of the Companion Cavalry and the dash of the Royal Guard. But here in this most epochal of victories, these unglamorous companies will make all else possible. The vet mercs of Arcadia and Achaea—I have known these men all my life. Telamon served first in their company. The you
ngest at Gaugamela was forty. I can name two hundred over sixty. No soldier is a peer for the veteran. With campaigners of a certain age, one never finds a coward; they have all run off or been killed. A seasoned man knows patience and self-command. Give me a veteran corporal and keep a captain; I’ll take a mature captain over a general. Nor is the long-timer’s speed or strength diminished far from the youth’s. In the first rush that day, I saw a cloud of thirty Achaeans go after a pod of Bactrian horsemen. One wing headed the foe’s rush, turning it into the belly of the string, while the opposite closed. The vets’ long lances worked terrible execution. In moments twenty of the foe became ten, and ten five.

  The second wave the foe sends from the flank are Scythians—Sacae and Massagetae—steppe raiders who fight with the bow and the battle-axe. Our Lancers and Paeonians cut concourses through them. In this way the battle whipsaws, with each side penetrating the other, putting it to flight, then retiring behind a covering screen of supporting units to regroup, re-form, rearm (pulling the dead and wounded from the field, along with every still-usable lance, axe, and javelin), then attacking again, amid the caustic grit and alkali and the crusty deadfoot ground that wears horses and men down like treading in glue.

  In conventional battle, clashes on the wing are over as soon as the main advance begins. Not at Gaugamela. The fight on the right goes on as long as the entire affray, and on the left, even longer. Its front is half a mile, its depth that and more. The scale of the clash enlarges minute by minute, as each side feeds in fresh divisions. Bessus, governor of Bactria, commands Darius’s left; under orders from his king he draws off from the Persian center first three thousand horse, then six, then eight. I can counter only from divisions already composing my right flank; we need every other man and mount for the primary assault. Bessus’s extractions come from the troops fronting the king’s own person. We can see their masses, mantled in dust, as they pull out of the line behind the screen of scythed chariots, which holds, poised, as our front advances to five hundred yards, four fifty, four.