Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power

by Victor Davis Hanson

  Earlier at the Granicus River (334 B.C.) and Issus (333 B.C.), it had also been up to Parmenio to protect the left horn of the Macedonian army— his wing being “refused,” in tactical parlance—while the mobile Alexander broke through a hole between the Persian center and left, drove behind the enemy, and routed their king. Alexander’s way had always been to collapse the imperial army before Parmenio himself was buried by the mounted hordes of Persia. Parmenio holds; Alexander attacks—such was the traditional formula that made Alexander responsible for victory, and Parmenio alone for defeat.

  At Gaugamela the Macedonian left under Parmenio almost did implode—it was “thrown back and in distress,” the ancient biographer Plutarch dryly notes in his life of Alexander (Alexander 23.9–11). In fact, Parmenio’s men were vastly outnumbered—perhaps by three to one— and for a brief moment, facing annihilation. Our ancient sources suggest that the numerical disparity at Gaugamela was greatest on the left wing, where the Macedonians were almost broken during the first onslaught. Parmenio’s Macedonian mounted lords faced excellent enemy cavalrymen: Armenian and Cappadocian horsemen, some fifty scythed chariots, along with a mixed force of Persian infantrymen and imperial horsemen under the satrap of Syria, Mazaeus himself. A wave of 15,000 mounted killers was breaking against Parmenio’s island of 5,000 foot and horse.

  These cavalrymen were not to be underestimated. Persian horses were somewhat larger than Macedonian. Both rider and mount in great numbers at Gaugamela wore heavy frontal armor. From the Eastern provinces of the empire arose a rather different tradition of horsemanship that would come to resemble the later cataphracts, or heavy mailed cavalrymen on stout warhorses that could break fluid lines of light infantry and horsemen. While Persian cavalrymen were not so accomplished at brutal hand-to-hand fighting—their short javelins and swords were no match for the lance and broad slashing sword of Alexander’s Companions—the size of their mounts, plentiful armor, sheer numbers, and the momentum of attack resulted in a brutal crash against Parmenio’s stationary men.

  Darius’s marshals had learned what Macedonian heavy cavalry could do against Eastern horsemen and infantry, and thus at Gaugamela they were determined for once to field better-protected and more numerous mounted forces than their Greek adversaries—as if war might yet be won through manpower and matériel rather than by tactics and spirit. The historian Curtius records that at first the Macedonians were shocked at the appearance of these novel Bactrian and Scythian nomadic warriors because of their “shaggy faces and uncut hair, in addition to the sheer enormous size of their bodies” (History of Alexander 4.13.6).

  Parmenio was among the first Europeans in Alexander’s entourage to have invaded Asia, and later the rock of the king’s line at the battles of Granicus, Issus, and now at Gaugamela. Parmenio had already lost a son in Alexander’s cause, and his last surviving two were to die within the year. The seventy-year-old veteran had less than a year to live. His last son, Philotas, now charging with the Companions at the side of Alexander himself, would soon be tortured by his king and stoned to death before the assembled troops on the false charge of conspiracy. Poor Parmenio, one of the last of Philip’s original Companions who had built Alexander’s army before the king was even born. A marshal whom hundreds of Persian enemies could never kill in battle—the historian Curtius said he was “the most skilled of Alexander’s generals in the art of war” (History of Alexander 4.13.4)—Parmenio would be decapitated ignominiously in peacetime, on the orders of the king he had saved so many times.

  After his first battle in Asia at the Granicus River, the king had dedicated statues to the fallen Companions, visited the wounded, and released the families of the dead from taxes back home. Now three years later, Alexander was evolving into a different sort of monarch—increasingly suspicious of his officers, soon to be enlisting Persians into the army, enamored with the pomp and arrogance of an Eastern theocrat, intent to accomplish something megalomaniac well beyond the thuggery of looting and destroying the western satrapies of the Persian Empire. The king’s paranoia would lead him to butcher the one man who had helped invent his army, who years earlier had cleared away the rival aristocratic opposition for Alexander’s own succession, who had taught the young king how to keep the unruly Macedonian lowland princes in check, off and on the battlefield—and who would one more time stay put and so save the army at Gaugamela. One of the great ironies of Alexander’s later military career was his systematic destruction of the very officer class which had guaranteed all his major victories—a calculated purge that would transpire only after these old marshals had ensured the destruction of the Achaemenid army.

  Parmenio’s demise—unexpectedly stabbed by Alexander’s courtiers, his body further pierced after death, his head sliced off and sent to the king—was eleven months still in the future, in the far-off Persian provincial capital of Ecbatana. Now the loyal Parmenio had more immediate problems. He was surrounded. Blinded by the dust kicked up by thousands of horses on all sides, he was not yet defeated, despite what Diodorus called the “weight and sheer numbers” of Mazaeus’s contingent (17.60.6). Not yet at least, and so he rallied his old guard of Macedonian horse lords to get in close with the Persians and hack and stab at their horses and faces. Along with his reliable Thessalians—the best light cavalry in the ancient world—he would beat off the waves of assault, ensuring that the Macedonian army at large was protected on its left and rear. If just one more time Parmenio stopped the Persians’ predictable outflanking movement, protected the Macedonian rear, and drew off half the Persian army, Alexander—Alexandros Megas, king of Asia, divine son of Zeus-Ammon, conqueror of Darius III, and soon-to-be emperor of Persia and architect of the most brilliant victory in the history of East-West confrontation—might still ride on to triumph and finish the destruction of the Achaemenid dynasty itself.

  Parmenio had two critical problems. By Darius’s careful intent, there were neither mountains nor sea at the battlefield of Gaugamela—not even a river or gully nearby to protect the Macedonians’ wings from the far longer enemy line. Soon the Persian horsemen to his left were piling up and outflanking Parmenio by hundreds of yards, forcing the thinning line of his own outnumbered troops to bend horseshoelike as they sloughed off the encircling Persians before they got to the rear. His Thessalians on the immediate right likewise beat back a wave of scythed chariots and even a few Greek mercenaries, holding firm so that the enemy would have to go around rather than through Parmenio. Farther to the right, about a quarter mile beyond the Thessalians, there was a growing gap in the Macedonian line that threatened to wipe out the whole middle of the army. Alexander’s own charge to the right would prove deadly to the enemy, but for the time being his dash had taken most of the right center of the Macedonian army along with him. All that remained of a tactical reserve were two companies of phalangites and a few irregulars to protect Parmenio’s right flank.

  Hundreds of veteran Persian and Indian horsemen poured through this tear and were already charging to the rear of Alexander’s army, into the Macedonian camp itself, plundering supplies, killing the guards, and freeing the Persian prisoners. At any moment they might turn on Parmenio’s isolated left wing, meet up with Mezaeus’s flanking Persians, and attack from both sides, encircling and annihilating the septuagenarian and his beleaguered horsemen. Arrian relates that Parmenio at this point was “struck from both sides” (Anabasis 3.15.1). If the Macedonian left could now be cracked, the Persian horsemen could finish the slaughter by riding down Alexander himself from the rear, before the galloping Companions could crack the Persians at their own front. Parmenio could either protect the Macedonian left wing from being outflanked or maintain the integrity of the center, but he could not do both.

  The enemy’s greed for plunder probably saved Parmenio, since the Persians and Indians in the gap first paused to slaughter the unarmed camp guards. Booty and easy killing apparently seemed preferable to charging into grim Macedonian horsemen. Realizing his danger, Parmenio immedi
ately sent a messenger toward the rising dust cloud far across the battlefield—always a good indication of Alexander’s position— to find the rambunctious king and get help. In the meantime he ordered the reserve pikemen still on his wing to turn about and begin spearing the plundering Persians. Then Parmenio readied his own horsemen for a final thrust through the circle, hoping to break out and meet Alexander halfway in no-man’s-land, crushing the Persian right wing between two mounted pincers. Rumors that Darius III far across the battlefield was fleeing to the rear, and that even the successful Persian contingents in front were tottering, gave Parmenio some hope that the worst was over. He might yet get out alive. For the time being, the veteran general stayed where he was, as he broke the crest of the galloping Persian horsemen, readying himself for the final charge of his life to meet his king.

  Alexander’s Pique

  Parmenio be damned, Alexander must have thought. The panicked messenger had somehow found him in the cloud—resplendent in a shiny iron and gem-encrusted helmet, puffed up in magnificent war belt and breast-plate, bestride the venerable Bucephalas—just as he prepared to follow the fleeing King Darius himself. The latter’s imperial guard and the entire middle of the Persian army were collapsing and retreating to the north. Dust, screams, and bodies dulled the senses of sight, hearing, and touch as Alexander was lost in the confusion and scarcely able to make out the chariot of the panicked Darius. Arrian says his horsemen “were striking the faces of their enemies with spears,” as the phalanx “bristling with pikes” followed and slammed into the enemy, yelling the old Macedonian war cry “alala, alala” (Anabasis 3.14.2–3). If this new and sudden report from Parmenio was true—that more than a mile away to his left and rear his old marshal was about to be annihilated—then there could be no pursuit of the Achaemenid king, no further anything until his own army behind was secure.

  It was bothersome for the triumphant Alexander to turn around 180 degrees and ride back into the swarm of interlocked horsemen to save his senior general. The historian Curtius says that Alexander “gnashed his teeth in rage” at the very thought of breaking off his pursuit (History of Alexander 4.16.3). After waiting for his moment of advance, Alexander was to retreat—not through his own failure, but because of the success that his own lieutenants apparently could not match. While Alexander had lost absolute control of the battle once he plunged into the Persian lines, Parmenio and his generals should have known their king’s agenda: hold firm and pivot on the left. Alexander on the right would soon enough prevent the Persian outflanking movement while the Companions crashed through the inevitable enemy gap to come.

  Well before his rescue, Alexander was growing more and more tired of the old man and his circle of reactionary barons from the Macedonian lowlands. “Sluggish and complacent,” Plutarch says, the aged captain had become at Gaugamela, “his age undermining his courage” ( Alexander 33.10–11). All the old horse lords were becoming a bothersome—and suspicious—lot: the farther the army marched eastward, the more these cavalry commanders grew nostalgic for home. The more Persians he defeated, the more Parmenio and his clique worried that they might still lose. The more he talked of empire and a world civilization to come under his own godhead, the more his parochial rustics talked of petty looting and a retirement of leisure and affluence back in Europe. Age and homesickness had gotten the best of them all.

  Three years earlier at the Granicus River, Parmenio had warned Alexander that it was too late in the day to ford the river and start the attack. He had tried to beg off the onslaught since even the waters at the ford reached waist-high, prompting the king to scoff that he would feel ashamed of fearing an enemy across “a tiny stream” after he had just crossed the Hellespont (Arrian Anabasis 1.13.7)! Parmenio was overruled and the battle won directly. The next year at Issus, the sixty-eight-year-old Parmenio needlessly fretted that Alexander might be poisoned before the battle. During the next few months Parmenio had wished to commit to a sea battle in lieu of sacking the strongholds of Phoenicia! Here at Gaugamela before the battle even began, once more a jittery Parmenio and his old guard, numbed by the sight of Darius’s vast horde, had advised a night attack. At that Alexander had finally snapped, “I shall not steal my victory” (Plutarch Alexander 31.12), insisting on a head-on confrontation. Parmenio had even (wisely) convinced his king to reconnoiter the battlefield in the days before the showdown, to ensure there were no hidden traps on the plain that might derail Alexander’s planned mounted thrust to the right.

  Alexander’s sycophantic entourage ridiculed the caution of the old man. The philosopher Callisthenes (soon to be executed himself) is the most likely source of these pejorative morality tales, which culminated in the story of Parmenio’s advice to cease entirely the advance eastward. Before the campaign of Gaugamela, he had purportedly urged acceptance of Darius’s eleventh-hour offer of a Western Persian Empire for Alexander under the aegis of a general truce. “I would accept if I were you,” he told his king. “And I too if I were Parmenio,” Alexander barked back (Plutarch Alexander 29.8–9).

  In the heat of battle, with Darius almost in his grasp, Alexander scoffed that Parmenio fretted more about the loss of the Macedonian camp and its valuables than the course of the battle itself. Nevertheless, he sent back the rider with the promise that Alexander and his Companions would reverse their course, though not without the insulting admonition to Parmenio that the victorious add the baggage of their enemies to their own, while the defeated must not worry about money or their slaves, but only how to fight bravely and die with honor. Parmenio was not worried about his own baggage, nor even about getting his hands on the rich camp of the enemy, but was terrified about the very survival of his entire wing, and with it the fate of a Macedonian army thousands of miles from the Aegean. That same specter struck Napoleon centuries later, when he remarked that Gaugamela was a great victory but too risky, since defeat would have stranded Alexander “nine hundred leagues from Macedonia.” Parmenio knew that the gallant dash of his king, brilliantly timed to crack the weakened Persian left and middle, was nevertheless a tremendous gamble: a chasm opened in the Macedonian lines the moment the Companions took off. If Alexander was right that the Macedonians were a victory away from inheriting the entire Persian Empire, Parmenio was equally correct that they were also a defeat away from total annihilation— 50,000 Europeans 1,500 miles from home in a sea of millions of enemies.

  Up until Parmenio’s messenger arrived, the battle had been a perfect day. Plutarch says that Alexander’s chief problem when he slammed into the Persian line was the sheer mass of enemy dead and wounded who obstructed the pursuit “by grabbing on and entwining themselves around both riders and horses” (Alexander 33.7). Arrian adds that horsemen were literally “shoving” the Persians before the phalanx came on with their bristling spears (Anabasis 3.14.2–3). Alexander’s tactical plan was simple but typically brilliant: as Parmenio pivoted on the left, tying down the Persian right and securing the safety of the army’s rear, he would have the entire Macedonian line drift slowly rightward, toward the rough ground where Darius’s scythed chariots would be useless. In response, the Persian king would be forced to send his left wing to surround Alexander’s right and block the Macedonian drift—and thereby deplete his own middle companies in an effort to herd Alexander back.

  Alexander would continue to send rightward successive contingents—light-armed, horse, and infantry—to force the Persian flanking contingents into an ever-widening hook. Meanwhile, Alexander himself would sit tight with his veterans until he spotted a gap at the heart of the weakened enemy middle. For just such a moment, Alexander was holding back his grand punch—a wedge of his Companions, hypaspists, and the phalanx. With these veterans—the best fighting men the ancient world would produce—he would charge through the hole, into the heart of the Persian line and right at Darius himself. True, the Persian army was far larger and in theory might outflank both his wings. But as long as his horsemen and reserves channeled the flanking assaults
outward, the base of the Persian attack at some point surely must thin and weaken. In every outflanking attack, troops must be transferred from somewhere; that somewhere Alexander was confident he could spot and exploit before it was too late.

  The key for Alexander was organization, tactics, and timing. Novel mobile contingents of light skirmishers and horsemen must be placed independently on the wings—backed by a reserve line of 6,700 heavy infantrymen—while the best of the Macedonian cavalry and phalangites were to be kept out of the preliminary fighting, ready as a razor-sharp blade for the decisive blow against the Persian center. Alexander must strike before his two wings were overwhelmed—and yet not too soon lest he hit the massive wall of the Persian middle that had not yet become weakened. When the long-expected gap in the Persian line for a moment opened up, there rode Alexander into the imperial guard, directly after Darius and the prize of the empire itself.

  With Alexander’s recall the Achaemenid king escaped—only to be murdered nine months later by one of his satraps, Bessus. A disgruntled Alexander reined in Bucephalas and turned back out of the dusty cloud of dying men and horses to ride in the opposite direction, into the retreating Persians who had almost killed Parmenio. But the old baron no longer seemed to be in danger; in fact, Alexander spotted Parmenio’s fleeing attackers and deliberately rode head-on into them. If he were not to slaughter Darius’s fleeing entourage, he might as well wipe out the best horsemen of Scythia and Bactria in this secondary engagement.