Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Among the dust and disorder, one crucial movement is agreed, all the more credible for being a habit. On sounding the final advance, a mile, perhaps, from the enemy line which comfortably overlapped him, Alexander advanced obliquely, as his men had long learnt from Philip, thrusting his Companions forward on the right, holding Parmenion and the Greeks behind on the left. But when he came closer, he began to lead the whole line briskly to the right, a sideways movement which was made possible by the wedged shape of his units. Parmenion and the left were now exposed to a still more serious encirclement, but if Alexander could ride out beyond the Persian left, he would have saved his own attacking cavalry wing from being outflanked; to cover him, the Persians would probably shift to the left, and in their hurried surprise a gap might open in their front, which was not neatly ordered in wedge-shaped triangles. On the far right, to which he now headed, the ground was rough and unsuited to scythed chariots, and it was well away from the stakes and snares which had been laid against a conventional head-on charge. The line of advance was a sound one, but it was partly defeated by the Persians' swift adjustments.

  Darius, too, could move horsemen quickly to the left, and although this was to cost him control of the battle, it was not long before his furthest cavalry were riding parallel to the units on Alexander's right, outpacing them and once more regaining the outside position. By this mad gallop, Alexander's spurt to the right was halted before he reached the rough ground, and at once, two thousand or so heavy armed Scythian and Bactrian horsemen began their expected charge to outflank and encircle. They had not prepared for an intelligent retort by the Macedonians' mobile flank guards. First, the seven hundred or so leading mercenary cavalry provoked them into a direct attack which diverted them from the rear by the promise of an easy victory; then, when they were engaged beyond recall, the rest of the flank-guards were loosed to repulse them, first, the mounted Paeonians, then the several thousand veteran mercenaries concealed in between. 'If each unit of cavalry were to contain infantrymen,' Xenophon had written in a pamphlet on cavalry command, 'and if these were to be hidden behind the horsemen, then by suddenly appearing and coming to blows I think they would work for victory all the more.' The manoeuvre had been used by the Theban generals whom Philip had often copied; Alexander, who had also read his Xenophon, felt likewise, and the Scyths, entangled among what had seemed a simple enemy, were in turn outnumbered and forced to retreat.

  As the Scyths recoiled on the extreme flank, the rest of the Persian left poured out to back them up; on the inner wings and centre, the scythed chariots hurtled forwards while the going was still smooth. Again in the manner of Xenophon, they had been anticipated. In front of the Companion cavalry, some two thousand Agrianians and javelin throwers had been placed to shoot them down at long range; their volley was accurate, and such charioteers as continued soon found themselves being hauled off their platforms by the bravest units in Alexander's army, while their horses were hacked with long knives. Those who survived this double assault were received by the Companions behind: ranks had been parted wide, and the chariots bolted harmlessly through into the baggage camp in the rear, where they were given a final mauling by the grooms and royal Squires. To be effective, a chariot must charge in a straight line without interruption: Alexander knew this; first he interrupted them and then, as Xenophon had suggested and he had practised against Thracian wagons four years earlier, he cleared an open path down which their scythed wheels would whirl to no purpose. According to the Macedonian officers, the chariots 'caused no casualties'; others, with a taste for drama, said that 'many arms were cut in half, shields and all; not a few necks were sliced through, as heads fell to the ground with their eyes still open and the expression of the face preserved'. On the centre and the far left, where the greater part of the chariots charged with unknown effect, this may have been true. However, many shins were grazed, the dust must surely have been stirred and the battle must have begun to be obscured.

  Round Alexander the decisive manoeuvre was remembered and recorded. 'The whole art of war', wrote Napoleon, 'consists in a well-reasoned and circumspect defensive followed by a rapid and audacious attack'; Scyths and chariots had been circumspectly countered, and whatever was happening on the extreme left, which nobody described clearly, the mass attack on the right was being valiantly held by an outnumbered flank-guard, so that speed and audacity could begin to come into play. The hectic movements of the Persian left, first riding to one side to match

  Alexander, then racing forwards to outflank him, had opened a gap where the left wing met the left centre; this, the site of Darius's own chariot, invited penetration. 'The second principle of strategy', wrote Clausewitz, master of its theory, 'is to concentrate force at the point where the decisive blows are to be struck, for success at this point will compensate for all defeats at secondary points.' Anticipating both Clausewitz and Napoleon, Alexander formed the Companion cavalry into their customary wedge and showed the nearest foot brigades the way to an offensive against a Persian centre, exposed, disordered and not too heavily his superior in immediate numbers. Like a skilled wing forward on the football field, his first moves had drawn the defence far off to the right; now, he halted, changed direction and plunged back into the centre, heading for the goal of the Great King himself and neatly avoiding the stationary elephants.

  The Companions charged, came to rest among spearmen and then shoved and hustled; the Shield Bearers followed up with the three right-hand brigades of the Foot Companions, who marched at the double, 'thick and bristling with sarissas', and raising their cry of alalalalai. In fine Homeric style, Alexander is said to have thrown a spear at Darius, missed, and killed the charioteer beside him; certainly, Immortals and Royal Relations were much discomforted by this piercing attack, and as corpse piled upon corpse, Darius reversed his chariot and slipped south-cast through the covering dust-cloud to the safety of the Royal Road. Some 3,000 Companions and 8,000 infantry had indeed turned the battle by concentrating at a point of weakness. But secondary positions were still in danger, and the main prize, Darius, would not be easily detected or overtaken.

  As history centres on Alexander, who is even said to have 'meant to settle the whole issue', all million men of it, 'by his own heroics', events elsewhere in the line are left more or less unexplained. On the right, as Darius fled, a massive force of Iranian cavalry had begun to charge down a flank-guard whom they vastly outnumbered, and yet the entry of the 600 or so mounted sarissa-bearers into the battle is said to have turned them promptly to flight; on the left, Parmenion can only have been exposed to every possible threat of encirclement by the units under Mazaeus, but the only result was an outflanking charge by some 3,000 enemy horsemen who rashly continued into the baggage-camp behind the lines, where they are said to have tried to free the prisoners and the Persian queen mother. 'Not a word fell from her lips; neither her colour nor her expression changed, as she sat immobile, so that onlookers were uncertain which course she preferred.' Before she could make up her mind her rescuers had vanished from the story, perhaps because they heard of Darius's flight, perhaps because the reserves had returned to harass them.

  In the centre alone the situation was unmistakable. Alexander's headlong charge towards Darius had carried the right-hand units of Foot-Companions with him, but the left three files, struggling to keep up, had let their line go out of step and exposed a wide gap, as at Issus, in their centre, into which Persians and Indians had poured delightedly, following the daylight through the wall of sarissas. Had they turned against the Foot Companions' ill-armed flanks they could have done untold damage, but they too had scented the distant baggage camp, and so they careered into its midst, slaughtering its unarmed attendants in the hope, perhaps as ordered, of recovering the Great King's family. They had not reckoned with Alexander's line of reserves, whose role throughout is hard to understand. Whether or not they had split, like the front, and allowed the Indians through in the first place, they now patched themselves together en
ough to face about and fall on the plunderers from the rear. Thanks to Alexander's original precautions, the baggage was finally saved from its various attackers, and Darius's family remained under arrest.

  As Alexander routed the Persian centre, he cannot have known that the rest of his line was either endangered or able, most fortunately, to rally its several weaknesses. He may have suspected something of the sort, but he could not possibly have seen it. Dust was swirling around him and it was a matter of dodging the scimitars and lunging at half-seen turbans in order to stay alive: his angled charge had cut in behind the elephants, and the braver foot soldiers had now set about them too, allegedly with bronze tridents designed for stabbing. Their skirmish can only have added to the confusion. The one certain target was Darius, and he was known to have retreated, so Alexander abandoned all secondary dangers and dashed with a group of horsemen in pursuit. If this seems as impetuous as the disastrous conduct of Prince Rupert at Edgehill, it is not to be disbelieved as too irresponsible: through dust and struggling Orientals, Alexander could not usefully have returned in time to aid his left or centre, even had he known this to be necessary. If history later had an excuse to be made, it was not that he set off in pursuit but that this pursuit of a vital prize was to prove a failure. A scapegoat was needed, and as so often, the blame was put down to Parmenion: as Alexander set off on his chase, accompanied by 2,000 cavalry, a messenger, it was said, arrived from Parmenion, begging him to help the left.

  This messenger was beset with problems. Different histories time him differently, varying his message and Alexander's retort: some said he voiced a fear for the baggage, whereupon Alexander told Parmenion to forget the bags and fight the enemy, others said he asked for reinforcements, so that Alexander gnashed his teeth and felt obliged to return. It is extremely unlikely that any message ever reached Alexander through the press of a full-blooded battle; it was generally agreed among historians, presumably because Callisthenes first said so, that Parmenion had been slow and incompetent in the fight, and the talc of his 'messenger' could thus be put about by flatterers, in order to explain why Alexander had delayed and failed to catch Darius. His second-in-command, it was pleaded, had held him back, and by the time the excuse was published Parmenion had been killed on a fear of treachery. History, once more, could be rewritten to please Alexander and slander the general he had put to death.

  If the pursuit failed, it was more because of the dust and the retreating masses of Persian cavalry; these were trying to break away and follow Darius at the same time as Alexander was trying to cut a path through their lines, and with pursuit and escape at issue the fighting between the two sides was particularly savage. Sixty Companions around Alexander were wounded, Hephaistion among them, before the Persians were finally cleared away; by then Darius was far distant, having crossed the Lesser Zab river. There he had exchanged his chariot for a horse, and ridden away to the Royal Road near Arbela, thirty miles from the battlefield and site of a choice of routes to the heart of his empire. Alexander followed belatedly. By the time he had reached the Zab's far bank the October darkness was beginning to fall and a swift arrest no longer seemed possible. The hones therefore, were allowed to rest, as the pace of the pursuit was already too much for them; not until midnight did they continue south-east to Arbela, where they arrived by Royal Road on the following morning. Inquiries revealed that Darius had long since passed through; he had also left the highway which could have brought him south-east to Babylon, and taken a shorter and less familiar hill route to Hamadan, meeting-point of the roads to his upper satrapies. His trail led through the little-known Kurdish mountains, over passes as high as 9,000 feet, and rather than risk being lost among their hostile nomads, Alexander contented himself with Arbela's handsome store of treasure and the prospect of a safe march south to the riches of Babylon. Darius's escape was a grave disappointment, but men nonetheless were calling him the new king of Asia.

  Back on the battlefield, the enemy had soon lost their impulse after the flight of their royal commander. On the right, Bactrians and Scyths had ridden away, unnerved by the mounted sarissa-bearers: in the centre, the Foot Companions had repaired themselves, and on the left Parmenion had somehow repulsed an opposing mass of cavalry, despite their overwhelming numbers and positioning. One dissenting voice maintained that he and his Thessalian horsemen had indeed fought brilliantly, whereas others accused him of sloth and incompetence; the brilliance may be true, and news of Darius's retreat may also have helped him, as may the presence of Mazaeus, who could well have remembered his contacts with Hephaistion a mere month before at the Euphrates. Commander of the entire Persian right, he was not slow to ignore Darius and ride away to Babylon, where he surrendered within weeks and gained his reinstatement. He knew, most suspiciously, where his advantage lay.

  In the rout, 'nearly 300,000 Persian dead were counted and many more were taken prisoner, including any elephants and chariots left intact; of those around Alexander, about a hundred were killed, but more than a thousand horses died of wounds or exhaustion during his pursuit'. These absurd figures are history's final comment on a battle which is confused where it is not downright flattery. Alexander's sudden charge from right to centre was evidently crucial, and in the best tradition of attacking generalship; at other points in his line the Persians' obsession with the contents of his baggage camp and their curious inability to turn their numbers to the proper advantage were blessings for which he could claim less credit. It is the mark of a great general to make his enemy seem insubstantial, and Alexander's planning, audacity and speed of decision, had far excelled the enemy command's: he had won magnificently, and he would never have to fight for Asia on any such scale again.

  As he returned from his failed pursuit his own position did not yet seem so decisive. At Gaugamela Alexander had seized what a Persian would call his western empire: he had still to approach what Iranians called their homelands. East and south-east stretched the provinces of Medcs and Persians, Bactrians, Sogdians and mountain tribes, to whom Darius could retire from Hamadan and raise a second line of resistance; until Darius was captured, Alexander was not the king of Asia, and he knew it. In the first flush of victory it was still as the Greek avenger that he wished himself to be seen: he wrote to his Greek allies 'that all tyrannies had been abolished and that men were now governed by their own laws', a claim more true of Asia Minor than of mainland Greece, where juntas still flourished under his alliance. His message extended to details too: to the other end of the Mediterranean, he sent spoils of victory to a south Italian town, home, as those Companions who knew the West could remind him, of a Greek athlete who had come to fight a hundred and fifty years before for Greece against the sacrilegious Persian Xerxes.

  Such concern for obscurities is partly a credit to his publicity, but also, surely, a sign that the theme of vengeance was taken seriously.

  Not even the landscape was spared his commemorations. Behind the battlefield stood the hill of Tell Gomel, which the natives called 'hump of the camel'. For the site of a glorious victory that would never do: he renamed it Nikatorion, Mountain of Victory in his own Greek language, and long after the details of his battle had been obscured this name alone would survive. A name with old associations in the East, it would be turned into Syriac and live on as awana Niqator, the post-house of victory, name of a relay station on the highway whose ancestor had been the Persians' Royal Road. The victory indeed had been memorable, but it was not to be the last: a name, given in a moment of exultation, would persist for six hundred years and set a fashion for Pompey and other victorious Romans, but Darius had escaped, a fact which no alleged message from Parmenion could ever conceal. It would need a longer and far harder march before the new master of Asia could call himself its rightful king.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  On 2 October Alexander left Darius's camp at Arbela and marched south, keeping the river Tigris on his right and following the Royal Road, which still determined his route. He had lost all hope
of catching Darius in the first flush of pursuit, and as before Gaugamela, he would be wise to wait again and see if the Great King would summon one last army to take a stand in open ground. Meanwhile supplies and the prospect of treasure turned him south to Babylon and the promise of well-earned rewards for his troops. He left the battlefield quickly, a decision which flatterers explained by the stench of the enemy dead and the fear of disease from them. The area was also renowned for poisonous vapours of asphalt and before long, he paused to examine them.

  At Kirkuk, where the Road branched eastwards, he 'admired a chasm in the ground from which fire streamed continually as if from a spring and he marvelled at the nearby flood of naphtha, prolific enough to form a lake'. To show it off, the natives 'sprinkled the path which led to the royal quarters with a thin covering of the liquid, stood at the top and applied torches to the wet patches: darkness was already beginning to fall. With the speed of thought, the flames shot from one end of the street to the other and kept on burning.' For the first time, the Eternal Fires of Baba Gurgan had been shown to the Greeks, and at the suggestion of an Athenian who attended him in his bath, Alexander allowed a second experiment. At court, there was a boy 'absurdly plain to look at but with a pleasant singing voice'; in order to find out whether naphtha would bum as well as blaze, he volunteered to be soaked in the liquid and set alight. The flames, however, burnt him severely, and could only be dowsed by repeated buckets of water. The boy survived, shocked and scarred, a warning to those who believe that in matters of natural science, the Greeks preferred theory to experiment.