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by Strauss, Barry

  Bringing their opponents to the battlefield, then, was a challenge for Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar alike. After Issus, Alexander hoped that Darius would agree to a rematch, but Alexander had no way to know what Darius was thinking. After Fabius’s strategy, Hannibal adjusted his plans to try to lure the Romans back into battle, but the decision was up to them. After Dyrracchium, Caesar hoped to breathe life back into his army and tempt Pompey into fighting a pitched battle, but Pompey resisted—at first.

  In the end, the enemy obliged, and the three generals each got the battle they had hoped for. The result was each man’s finest hour. At Gaugamela (331), Cannae (216), and Pharsalus (48), Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar respectively won three of the great pitched battles of military history. Here, we examine how they did it. What they made of the results is a subject for the next chapter.

  GAUGAMELA

  From Egypt to Babylon was about 750 miles by the caravan routes through Syria. It was just off this historic road, on the hot and dusty Assyrian plain, south of the foothills of the Zagros Mountains, that the armies of Macedon and Persia met for their greatest battle.

  Eclipse

  October 1, 331 B.C., was a day of destiny. Even Babylon’s famous astrologers took note. They recorded a battle that morning in which an invading army inflicted a heavy defeat on the great king’s troops. The stars, they say, had predicted it. A week and a half earlier, on September 20, a lunar eclipse—at nighttime, with Saturn present, Jupiter absent, and a west wind blowing—foretold ruin for the king at the hands of an intruder from the west. And so it happened at the battle of Gaugamela (pronounced “gaw-guh-MEE-lah”) on October 1, when Alexander defeated the last army that Darius would ever raise against him.

  Alexander was eager for this battle. He hoped to beat Darius again, and to finish what he had started at Issus, making Alexander in fact what he already claimed to be: the king of Asia. But Darius was eager to fight as well, and the question is why. Wouldn’t Darius have been better off by avoiding battle?

  Darius might have followed a scorched-earth policy instead, which would have worked simply: deny food to Alexander’s army as it marched eastward. Meanwhile, Persian cavalry units could attack in sudden, unpredictable, hit-and-run raids, especially dangerous if the Macedonians split up in small groups to look for supplies. Bleeding, hungry, and off balance from Persian attacks, the army might force Alexander to turn back. True, he would still control Darius’s lost provinces west of the Euphrates, but Darius would hold the east.

  But this strategy too was risky. Many towns might prefer opening their storehouses to Alexander rather than go hungry for Darius. In the end, they could very well decide that one king was as good as another. Darius, therefore, had his reasons to choose to fight another battle. If anyone could make the third time a charm, it was he.

  He had spent the eighteen months since Issus wisely: he showed good judgment by building a new army. Unlike his earlier armies, it was almost entirely a cavalry force—and an excellent one. Despite Alexander’s victories, Darius still controlled a gigantic empire, and it held untapped resources. Then as later, Central Asia was famous for its horsemen, and Darius assembled a superb group.

  They came thundering out of the vast Eurasian steppe. Descendants of nomads, they were renowned for horse breeding and cavalry tactics. Darius’s best cavalry were the riders of Bactria and Sogdiana (modern Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan), supplemented by cavalry from western India and by the knights of the Saca peoples (who lived north of Sogdiana, in the eastern tip of modern Uzbekistan). The Saca were so heavily armed that even their horses wore armor, but the horses of Central Asia were and are known for great stamina.

  They had weapons as good as the Macedonian army and better armor. Some had a well-deserved reputation as archers. Others received Macedonian-style pikes, long swords, and shields. Darius provided them, because he had learned the hard way just how effective they were.

  These magnificent, terrifying, and deadly horsemen also enjoyed an excellent commander in Bessus. A prominent nobleman, Bessus was satrap of Bactria and Darius’s relative. He molded an elite force that could stand comparison with Alexander’s Companion Cavalry.

  Darius’s problem was infantry. A state-of-the-art military in 331 B.C. required a balanced mix of cavalry and infantry. Alexander’s heavy infantry, for example, protected his cavalry from a frontal attack while adding weight to the cavalry’s offensive punch. At Gaugamela, Alexander had about forty thousand infantrymen. But Darius had to do without effective infantry: Alexander had cut off the supply of Greek mercenaries, the traditional source of Persia’s heavy infantry. Darius would have to make do with the two thousand Greek mercenaries he had left and two thousand elite Persian infantrymen, who were no match for Alexander’s numbers.

  To slow down Alexander’s deadly cavalry charge, Darius had two other hopes: elephants and scythed chariots. Neither was very promising. Darius had fifteen elephants at Gaugamela. They could have protected him from an attack by Alexander’s cavalry, but Darius’s own troops probably lacked the training necessary to handle the beasts, and the elephants likely stayed in camp. Then there were Darius’s scythed chariots. These fierce-looking machines bristled on either side with spikes, spearheads, sword blades, and scythes. Yet past experience showed that disciplined units of soldiers could parry any threat from them.

  It came down to Darius’s cavalry. So he gave them an edge in numbers. Alexander had seven thousand cavalrymen. Darius’s cavalry numbers are unknown, but they greatly outnumbered Alexander’s, probably by at least three to one if not more: twenty-five thousand Persian cavalrymen is an educated guess.

  Finally, Darius carefully chose a suitable battlefield and did everything he could to lure the enemy to fight there. He picked a wide-open plain, with few or no shrubs or bushes, and had his engineers flatten the few low hills: now his chariots and cavalry would have the space to maneuver that had been lacking at Issus. He chose Assyria (Iraqi Kurdistan) as the place to make his stand. The region offered plains and plenty of food and it stood on Alexander’s likely marching route south and east: to Babylon (near modern Baghdad), now Darius’s western capital, and to Persia beyond it.

  Darius gave his cavalry the tools to carry out a double envelopment of the enemy. They would surround Alexander’s army on both sides and overwhelm it. That was the plan: the question was, how well could the Persians execute it? And could Alexander make a set of countermoves to stop it?

  For his part, the Macedonian King fielded the largest army he had ever commanded. They were veteran forces and they enjoyed the morale boost of past victories.

  In early spring 331, Alexander and his men headed northeast from Egypt. After stopping at Tyre, they marched inland. Around August 1 a Persian regiment watched the Macedonians cross the Euphrates River at Thapascus (today, in north-central Syria) but it did nothing to stop them. Indeed, it looks as if the Persians were pointing Alexander toward Darius, who was waiting about three hundred miles to the east in Assyria with his army. As Alexander marched eastward, Persian scouts, captured by the Macedonians, gave the false news that Darius planned to block Alexander from crossing the Tigris. Alexander hurried to the Tigris but found no one there. The river was fordable but just barely; a rough current tired out Alexander’s men by the time they reached the other shore. Still, the Persians did nothing to oppose them other than burning crops to deny the enemy food. It was mid-September.

  Roughly seventy-five miles away, the Persians were waiting on Darius’s chosen battlefield. They were probably somewhere between the Gomel River and the Jabal Maqlub Hills, which rise three thousand feet above the plain: either north of the hills, near the small town of Tell Gomel, or south of the hills, near the city of Qaraqosh (modern Al Hamdaniya). In either case, the terrain was similar, a large expense of fairly flat land among eroded hills.

  After crossing the Tigris, Alexander rested his army for two days. Then, on the night of September 20, came the eclipse. Alexander h
ad planned to start the march again the next morning, but his men were too frightened. Instead, he sacrificed animals and called in a soothsayer to reassure the troops that this was an ill omen for the Persians, not them. As a good leader, Alexander attended to his men’s mood.

  And yet, the coming days reawakened their fears. Nine days of marching and resting brought the Macedonians to the Jabal Maqlub, from whose heights they could see Darius’s army clearly, about three and a half miles away, filling the plain in its battle order. That huge force gave Alexander and his senior commanders enough pause that he delayed the battle for a day.

  Defense with a Sting

  Alexander rode around the entire battlefield the next day on a scouting mission with his light-armed troops and Companion Cavalry. He then put his mind to work on refining his battle tactics. Not that he planned to change a winning formula. Alexander left the heart of the Macedonian battle order in place, but he needed to protect it from the danger of being outflanked by Darius’s big and powerful cavalry. Masterful tactician that he was, Alexander figured out Darius’s plans and came up with a way to counter them.

  The Persian line stretched for several miles across the plain. Darius held the great king’s traditional position in the center, guarded by his elite Persian infantry and Greek mercenaries. Fifty scythed chariots and fifteen elephants (which would not take part in the actual battle) were posted in front of him. The right wing, commanded by Mazaeus, former satrap of Syria, was made up of cavalry from Syria, Mesopotamia (Iraq), and parts of Iran—which produced excellent horsemen. Mazaeus also had fifty scythed chariots. The left wing, commanded by Bessus, satrap of Bactria, contained the great cavalry contingents of the east as well as one hundred scythed chariots. This wing was Persia’s stronger arm, and it would face Alexander’s best troops on his right wing. The bulk of Persia’s infantry stood in the rear, which was appropriate, since they were too weak to play much of a role in battle.

  As Alexander could see, his opponent had a bigger army than at Issus, rich in cavalry but poor in infantry. Alexander understood that, in strategic terms, Darius stood on the defensive; he had challenged the enemy to come to him. In tactical terms, though, Darius needed to go on the offensive: Darius had to attack first.

  Cavalry was the Persian’s strong suit. Fresh and motivated at the start of battle, his horsemen might overwhelm the enemy. But if Darius let Alexander attack first, he risked cracks in his shiny military machine—if not worse. Darius had enough heavy infantry to absorb a frontal attack by Alexander but not enough to turn around and go on the counteroffensive.

  Darius’s superiority in numbers allowed him to outflank Alexander on either side. His best move in battle was to envelop Alexander’s two wings with his powerful cavalry. If they did their job well, they would leave the rest of the Macedonian army defenseless—and certainly unable to attack. Alexander had to come up with a plan that would parry the Persians’ cavalry strike and allow him to counterattack in turn. He also had to protect his flanks without thinning out his line to the point where it left his center weak. His solution was a novel, flexible formation.

  At first glance, Alexander arranged his army in a familiar pattern. The Macedonian infantry phalanx took its usual position in the center, linked to the Companion Cavalry on their right by the hypaspists, the elite corps that made sure no gap opened up in the line. On the left stood two sets of cavalry units—those of the Thessalians and those of the other Greek allies. As usual, Alexander took command of the right wing of his army and put Parmenio in charge of the left.

  What made this army different, however, was a series of additional formations that created what was more or less a rectangle. The sides of the rectangle were made up of a flank guard on each wing. Each of these two flank guards was thrown back at about a forty-five-degree angle from the front line. Each flank guard was made up of several infantry units, arranged like a set of steps, and guarded by a screen of cavalry. Finally, the back of the rectangle was made up of a second set of infantry, positioned behind the front line and parallel to it. Their job was to turn and meet the threat from the rear—the Persian horsemen might ride all the way around the rectangle.

  It was on the sides of the rectangle, though, and not the rear, that Alexander planned to fight. He wanted to draw the Persian cavalry into a fight with the flank guards on his army’s two wings. Those guards’ mix of cavalry and infantry represented defense with a sting. Hidden behind their own horsemen, the infantry would emerge during the battle and dash into action. Light-armed troops, including archers and javelin-men, they offered a quick and deadly counterweight to the Persian’s superiority in cavalry numbers—especially on Alexander’s right wing, where he was stationed and where he put his best troops.

  Alexander predicted that the charge of the Persian cavalry on either wing would leave a gap in the enemy’s line. He planned to rip right through that gap by a combined charge of his elite Companion Cavalry and the Macedonian phalanx. Meanwhile, however, his weaker wing, the left wing under Parmenio, would bend under a Persian onslaught. Alexander knew that he might find himself in a race against time, hurrying to win on his right and then turning to help Parmenio before the Persians overwhelmed him.

  In short, Alexander displayed his extraordinary judgment as a commander. He took his superb, combined-arms force and—on the spot—made it better. He displayed agility as well as insight. Above all, it was an exercise in audacity.

  Having figured out his battle plan, Alexander called a conference of his top officers. He told them that they were fighting not for a province or a country but for the control of all “Asia”—that is, for the Persian empire. He emphasized the importance of strict discipline; of keeping silent on the advance but marking the charge with shouts and battle cries. Then, ever the good leader, he attended to morale by giving the men a meal and a good night’s sleep. He himself rested as well, but not before he sacrificed to the god Fear, according to one source.

  Darius, for his part, feared a Macedonian nighttime attack, so he kept his men at their posts all night long. Not knowing when or where the enemy might attack, he couldn’t rely on just a small force of guards to protect the army. The Persians faced the morning fatigued, which hardly helped them in battle.

  At dawn, Alexander appeared in his best armor and rode up and down the ranks. He held his lance in his left hand, raised his right hand, and called on the gods. In Anatolia and Egypt, oracles had proclaimed him to be the son of Zeus. Alexander did nothing to discourage the idea, as it strengthened his brand. Some Greeks had already hailed previous conquerors as demigods, and Alexander had outdone them.

  As he rode along the ranks, Alexander asked the gods, if he really was the son of Zeus, to guard and help strengthen the Greeks. As if on cue, an eagle supposedly appeared above Alexander and flew straight toward the Persians.

  The battle was about to begin.

  The Eagle Pounces

  Gaugamela is hard to reconstruct. The battle lines stretched for miles, so no one man was in a position to see the whole thing. The flat and featureless landscape offered no landmarks to aid memory. Both sides engaged in complex tactics. Each side’s cavalry charges raised clouds of dust. Even with perfect sources, the battle would be a challenge to describe, and our sources are flawed.

  Alexander began the battle by marching toward the right, moving at an oblique angle to the Persian front. As he drew near the end of the Persian line, Darius began to worry that Alexander would move off the ground that had been smoothed for his scythed chariots. So he sent the Bactrian and Saca cavalry under Bessus to ride around Alexander’s right and stop his march.

  The trumpets and battle cries sounded. Alexander, in turn, ordered the leading edge of his right flank guard to charge—just a small squadron, which the Persians easily pushed back, but it served as bait. The rest of Bessus’s cavalry now joined in, a terrifying sight as they charged. But the fight was developing exactly where Alexander wanted it, on his right flank guard. His defense with a
sting was up to the challenge. He did not destroy Bessus’s cavalry but he stopped it.

  Meanwhile, Darius ordered his scythed chariots to plow into the enemy. But the Macedonians were prepared. On the Macedonian right and center, a screen of archers and javelin-men fired; in some cases they actually grabbed the reins and pulled down the drivers. Some chariots got through, but the men had been trained to part ranks and let them pass. The chariots accomplished little or nothing, at least on the Macedonian right. Perhaps they did more damage on the Macedonians’ weaker, left wing, where another Persian cavalry charge, led by Mazaeus, hammered Parmenio’s Thessalian cavalry.

  Around this time a gap appeared in the Persian line, between the left and the center, caused by the departure of Bessus’s horsemen. Alexander seized the moment. He formed his elite Companion Cavalry into a wedge, ordered the Macedonian phalanx to advance beside them, raised the battle cry, and charged. They cut through the opening in the enemy line and ripped apart his exposed flank. The sources describe the scene vividly: “For a short time the battle became a hand-to-hand fight. The cavalrymen around Alexander and Alexander himself pressed the enemy hard and robustly, shoving and using their lances against their faces. They pounded the Persians, and the Macedonian phalanx, thickly massed and bristling with pikes, struck them as well.”

  As at Issus, Darius was the target. Kill or capture the king and win the war: that was Alexander’s plan. It would have worked too, thanks to his men’s unstoppable advance, but Darius turned and fled. He was no coward; he hoped to fight again another day.

  Besides, the battle wasn’t over, and for a while, it looked as though events elsewhere on the field might give Darius his chance. Just as Bessus’s charge opened a gap in the Persian line, so Alexander’s charge left one or more holes in the Macedonian center and left. Now, Persian and Indian cavalry poured through them. They had a golden opportunity to join Mazaeus’s fight against Parmenio’s already struggling troops.