Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  I must strike fast. I must get to grips with Darius before the heart goes out of my horses and the heat bleeds away from my men.

  We failed at Issus because our rush bogged down. The masses of enemy interposed between us and the king broke our momentum and gave Darius time to get away. We went too shallow. We didn’t have enough push.

  My object here at Gaugamela, in yoking to the Companions three brigades of fast infantry and two of heavy infantry, is to break through the Persian front with enough force to keep going—three hundred, four hundred yards into the foe’s rear. I want to get behind Darius in force. I must be where I can cut him off if he runs.

  The nonsoldier believes you can see on a battlefield. See what? The trooper on the ground is blind as a post, and even the cavalryman, from his mounted elevation, sees only smoke and dust. Our lead squadrons have barely spurred into the murk before we are stumbling over enemy infantry, themselves stampeding headlong for their lives; we dodge wrecks of scythed chariots with splendid horses dead and dying in their traces. Then, at once, a wall of enemy horse materializes as if spawned by the earth. The foe are Daans, mounted tribesmen of the eastern provinces; we can tell by their ponies, small and sturdy, and their kurqans—baggy trousers bloused at the knee. The Daans are about five hundred and are just then pulling out of the line, apparently to reinforce the units on their left, where Aretes is attacking. When our squadrons burst from the broth, the foe’s ranks are faced away from us. They’re more startled than we are. We are at the gallop, in a wedge a quarter mile across. The Daans’ ranks tear open like a curtain and go up like a wall of flame.

  I am at the point of the lead wedge of the Royal Squadron. The weight of all eight squadrons thunders behind me. Our mounted force is now at the identical point it was at Issus, when we broke through the archers and the King’s Own. We have penetrated the enemy line, some quarter to half mile from its center, and are poised to wheel in column and launch ourselves at this post.

  Where is Darius?

  Between him and us stand four fronts of defenders: four thousand Persian, Susian, and Cadusian cavalry mixed with Persian, Mardian, and Carian archers; Patron’s brigades of Greek heavy infantry; the five thousand spearmen of the Persian Apple Bearer Guard; and Tigranes with the regiments of Kinsman Cavalry, Darius’s Royal Horse.

  The wind, which gusts powerfully at Gaugamela between the plain and mountains, blows right to left across Darius’s front. This means it is obscuring that sector into which we must turn and charge. Cleitus urges me to strike left at once, before the field becomes an ocean of murk. I may err, keeping on too long. But I cannot leave Darius an avenue of escape. I will not let him cheat me a second time. So I hold our track undeflected into the Persian rear. When at last I come left—four hundred yards deep—great thunderheads of chalk have been thrown up by the passage of our two thousand horses and these, piled before the wind, drift in a thick bank across the field.

  We will come left and take Darius from behind. But suddenly in the blinding chalk, we run upon Patron’s Greek mercenaries. These are five thousand of the enemy’s crack heavy infantry, the foot guard stationed immediately on Darius’s left. How can they be here now—in the king’s rear, half a mile from the front? Have they witnessed the debacle of the scythed chariots and seen their Persian cohorts on both wings put to flight? Have their officers kept their heads? Have they pulled out of the line and dashed rearward at the double to take up a blocking position, defending their master from the direction in which he now faces the gravest peril? No matter: Here they are, square in our path, and forming up fast to take us on.

  We simply run around them.

  This is how cavalry works at its best. It does not squander its precious capital of men and horses in picturesque but wasteful melees and slugging matches. Instead it uses speed and mobility to cut off divisions of the foe, bypass them, and leave them in the dust. In moments Patron’s foot troops are hundreds of yards in our rear.

  Where is Darius?

  He must be close, or Patron’s troops would not have formed up on this site. He must be left, or they wouldn’t have faced their defensive posture shielding that quarter.

  I rein the Companions, sending scouts into the murk. The adventure-eager youth, afire to run off and join the cavalry, imagines battle as one grand and glorious rush at the gallop. What would such a hotblood think, to observe my commanders and me, at the epicenter of this monumental clash, halting our squadrons in place and, without haste, taking the time to dress and align our fighting front, to cover our flanks and rear, and even to recinch our kit and wipe the sweat and grime from our faces? Patience. Though I can hear the mayhem on all quarters, amplified grotesquely by the murk, and though I know that, even as I loiter, my countrymen are bleeding and dying for want of my thrust into the enemy’s vitals, still I cannot prematurely sound the charge; I cannot plunge blindly into the soup. The moment is excruciating. Nor do our scouts come thundering punctually out of the gloom with certain word of the foe’s position. In the event, they have become disoriented themselves, on this featureless field, and are only reacquired by a flock of our grooms, fanning out on foot into the billowing chalk.

  Kill the King.

  We must find Darius.

  At last our riders return. Their leader is Sathon, Socrates Redbeard’s son. The enemy is a quarter mile forward, he reports. The foe knows we have galloped round him; his companies have faced about, in order, to receive our assault.

  “Where is Darius?”

  “In the center.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I saw his colors, sire.”

  We charge.

  But our scout has left out one thing, which he could not know—namely, that the knight Carmanes, captain of Darius’s Household Guard, has ordered the royal standards to be displayed in the center of the line (where kings of Persia always fight) while withdrawing the monarch himself to the wing.

  He fools me.

  The Guards Captain fools me.

  When our wedges strike the foe, Darius is already outside our right. I don’t know this. None of us do. I spur Bucephalus straight for the king’s colors. The melee is horse and foot commingled. The foe, recognizing my armor, hurls every champion at me, while my countrymen cry our antagonist’s name and strain to locate him above the forest of spears and helmet crowns.

  The Persian Royal Horse are commanded by Tigranes, champion of Issus and the most celebrated equestrian of Asia; his charger Bellacris, “Meteor,” is a gift from Darius, said to be worth twenty talents of gold. Around Tigranes fight the peerless knights Ariobates, Autophradates, Gobarzanes, Massages, Tissamenes, Bagoas, and Gobryas.

  A champion strikes for me. It is Tigranes. I recognize him by the brilliance of his kit and the spectacular specimen of horseflesh he rides. Ariobates spurs at his shoulder. This man is unknown to me, but clearly he is a champion of exalted station. Black Cleitus rides at my side. (Telamon and Ptolemy remain on the right of the field, aiding Cleander, as do Love Locks and Peucestas; Hephaestion commands the agema of the Royal Guard.) Three Pages, none over nineteen, form my Bodyguard. Tigranes leads a matching line of Kinsman Cavalry. We crash together like waves.

  “Iskander!”

  Tigranes cries my name in Persian, claiming me as his own. His Meteor plows into Bucephalus like a trireme on the ram. The press swallows all. The heat sucks the breath out of you. The animals’ necks, straining against each other, burn like surfaces of flame. Meteor’s jaw is so close to my face that my cheek piece catches against his bit chain. His eye is wild as a monster in the sea. The horses lock up chest-to-chest, fighting their own equine war, while my antagonist and I clash like fencers, shaft against shaft, dueling for an opening. Tigranes could plunge his lance into Bucephalus’s gorge as easily as I can sever Meteor’s windpipe with my own. But he will not, nor will I.

  “I am Tigranes!” my rival cries in Greek. I love the man. Here is a warrior! Here is a champion! I would strike at him sidearm from my right
, seeking the vital flesh below the lip of his breastplate, but so densely pressed are the men and horses that I can neither incline to that side nor even move my right leg, which is pinned against Bucephalus’s flank by the mass of another horse, my Page Andron’s, though I cannot draw breath even to look. I strike across Bucephalus’s neck, two-handed, seeking Tigranes’ throat. But with the jousting horses, the warhead misses the mark, deflecting off the temple of his helmet, which is the conical type with ear guards and gorget, all gold. The killing point plunges over Tigranes’ shoulder. He seizes the lance with his left hand, so far up the shaft that his fist touches mine, and thrusts his spear at me, uppercutting, with his right. The weapon is a seven-footer, cornel wood with a four-square iron point. The warhead takes me just outside the left nipple, tears through the composite of my corselet, and passes between my ribs and the inside of my left arm. I clamp tight to pin the weapon. Am I wounded? I can’t tell if the lance has opened me up or missed me entirely. I know only that if I am to die, I will drag this man to hell at my side. I heave forward, atop Bucephalus’s neck, as far as I can go with my right leg pinned by the horse beside me, pressing my lance with all my weight behind it, seeking either to wrench its shaft from my antagonist’s grip or, if he will not let go, then to wrest him off balance. I will come clean off my horse if I have to and tear his throat out with my bare hands. But as the pair of us grapple, each clutching the shaft between us, the blow of a Persian mace takes me full force on the left shoulder, bowling me sidelong into Andron on my right, while a Macedonian lance, driven from the rear by Cleitus, though I cannot see in the press, plunges past Tigranes’ carotid, catches the earpiece of his helmet, and wrenches him, headfirst, nearly from his seat. I see the strap rip and the helmet, propelled by the point of Cleitus’s lance, tear free. Tigranes should spill, or his neck snap, but instead he recovers, so swiftly that he actually catches his helmet as it is tearing loose and turns, in the saddle, to sling it in fury at Cleitus.

  Philotas duels Ariobates on Tigranes’ left; he has slipped his rival’s rush and aims a blow upon Tigranes. By now, Companions and Kinsmen have flung themselves into such a concentration on the site that the object of this tumult—Darius himself—has been all but forgotten in the frenzy.

  Seeking him, I am carried apart from Tigranes. We battle through rank after rank. Cleitus shouts, pointing ahead. We can see Darius now. The king is less than fifty feet away, atop his chariot, wielding the askara, the two-handed lance, with furious valor against troopers of our Bottiaean squadron, the rightmost as we rushed, who have broken through the crush somehow and now hurl their horses and themselves upon the royal car. The thought that another will slay my rival nearly severs me from my reason. Only three ranks of enemy horsemen separate us from the king. I can see Carmanes, captain of the Household Guard, rally a company to break Darius’s chariot clear. I drive Bucephalus forward, half-mad with fury and frustration. Suddenly from our rear appears a front of enemy heavy infantry. Patron’s mercenaries, whom we ran around in our attack. Some must have slipped clear of our Big Wedge; now here they are. They break through our Bottiaeans. Their armor forms a defensive ring around the king. They will save him. I cry to heaven for wings, for strength, for anything that will get me across this press and onto my foe. My legs are so spent, I feel nothing below the waist. I drive again into the ruck. The ranks of defenders must buckle as their numbers drop and they see their king marshaling for flight. But this knowledge, when it comes, only summons the champions of Persia to more superhuman exertions. At the point of penetration, the defenders redouble their efforts, believing, one must imagine, that every moment they buy with their blood is another to speed their king clear. The foe retreats before us, always in order, always resisting. They are fresh. We are exhausted. Our line has already fought, through eight and ten ranks. Our horses have covered miles since descending to the battleground and have labored in a state of extremity for what feels like hours. I clash with a champion in iron mail, a left-hander, two ranks from the king. His lance misses the socket of my right arm by a whisker. I drive my saber into his gorge, thrusting with all my strength to propel the man from my path, but even in death, this knight interposes his person between me and his king; he pitches forward, onto my blade, to check me, by the weight of his failing flesh, from penetrating to Darius. By now I have lost all sensation in both arms. I am deaf from the din; blood frenzy makes my eyesight pulse.

  I see the mercenary Patron, rallying his cohort around Darius. Carmanes’ Household Guard clears a lane of flight. Their voices cry, but no sound carries; their whips crack, but no sensation reaches my ears. It is a nightmare. I am mired in tar. A double rank of defenders still shields the king; we hurl ourselves on them—Cleitus and I and the knights of the Royal Squadron—but our blows fall as if dealt underwater. I can’t feel my hands. My saber lifts like a ton of lead.

  “He flies!” Philotas bawls. Down the line, a hundred Macedonian throats take up the cry.

  The fight goes on another two hours. My squadrons cannot break away to pursue Darius, so desperate is the struggle on both our wings, Parmenio’s and Craterus’s divisions on the left, Menidas’s, Aretes’, Cleander’s, and Ariston’s on the right, to whom succor must be brought at all costs, and in that interval I myself am nearly slain half a dozen times, while scores of my commanders—Hephaestion speared through the arm; Telamon shot through both legs; Craterus, Coenus, Perdiccas, and Menidas, riddled, all four, with arrow shafts—suffer desperate wounds. Of two thousand prime battle mounts, the Companions lose half to wounds or exhaustion, and the mercenaries and allies even more.

  By nightfall I am on my ninth horse of the day, twenty miles southeast of the battlefield. The pursuit party is half the Royal Squadron, two quarter squadrons of Aretes’ Lancers, and a patched troop of Ariston’s Paeonians.

  Darius has not fled south to his treasure cities of Babylon or Susa, as one might expect (apparently he has abandoned hope of holding them) but south and east to his camp at Arbela. He reaches this about midnight, we learn later from captives, leaving the bridge intact so his army in flight can cross, while he and his party flee east across the mountains, along the caravan route to Media. I chase his track till dark, rest horses and men till midnight, then press on to Arbela, reaching it next morning. Darius is hours ahead. The highway is an ocean of fugitives. We can’t get through.

  Aretes, who has wrung a lifetime’s glory from this day’s strife, reins-in beside me. His mount’s flanks are caked solid with alkali; his own face, including his teeth, is black with blood and grime. “Let Darius go, Alexander. He is finished. He will never raise an army again.”

  I will hear no call for cessation. We press on over the foothills. Tens of thousands flee before us; we can see parties stumbling into blind canyons, guideless as we are. One of Aretes’ captains spies a muleteer on a track apart from the others. We dragoon him. I will make him a rich man, I swear, if he guides us across these mountains, or cut his throat if he plays us false.

  For two hours our pursuit party snakes along a trace no broader than the stream of an ox’s piss. Stone chasms yawn. Each time Cleitus applies his quirt to our guide’s back, claiming the track smells, the man takes his oath by all of heaven’s sages. “The trail is good, lord! Good!” He leads us up a final ascent, vowing that we’ll see from the summit the caravan road by which Darius has fled. But when we come off the last pitch, the trace terminates in a blind spur.

  The muleteer bolts. Our fellows run him down. The man is brought before me. I am not angry; I admire his resource and his guts. “You have preserved your king’s life,” I tell him, “but forfeited your own.”

  Trekking back, my mates give themselves over to elation. Nothing stands between us and Babylon and Susa. We shall pluck brides from Asia’s harems and dine on plates of gold!

  “The empire is yours, Alexander. Hail, Lord of Asia!”

  My daimon looks on. He knows that with Darius’s flight, I have vanquished one adversary, perhaps, o
nly to have two more take his place. First Persia’s empire, whose rule now becomes my burden. And my own army, who, fattening on plunder, will dream of ease and comfort and return grudgingly, if at all, to the road to glory.

  I am inconsolable. Darius has gotten away again.

  Book Eight

  LOVE FOR ONE’S COMRADES

  Twenty- Seven

  KITES

  BABYLON MEANS “GATE OF GOD.” Its walls are a hundred and fifty feet high and forty miles in circumference, erected, so the story goes, by Nebuchadnezzar himself. The citadel, where the Ishtar Gate ascends above the Euphrates, is five hundred feet tall, of burnt brick and bitumen. The city is sited on a blistering, magnificently ordered plain, whose canals and irrigation works are a wonder of the world, second only to the corps of tax collectors and agricultural administrators under whose supervision the land produces three harvests a year of sesame, millet, barley, wheat, and rye. The plain of Babylon is surely the most manicured tract of dirt on earth. Not a flower blooms that has not been seeded by the hand of man and does not flourish by his care and cultivation. Date palms grow in ordered ranks, in forests as dense as the pine woods of Thrace. These produce timber that will not rot underwater and, from their fruit, a type of beer that tastes pulpy (and so thick with lees, it must be sucked through a straw) but produces a keen and brilliant intoxication that does not leave a headache.