Meanwhile, Pompey might have frustrated Caesar in Greece. Imagine a continual series of raids by Pompey’s cavalry on Caesar’s troops trying to cut down ripe grain in the fields. Caesar would no doubt have struck back, but with hungry and tired men. Imagine the news from the west seeping into Caesar’s camp. If Pompey held his army together, he might have tempted traitors in Caesar’s ranks to join him, just as he had done at Dyrrachium. That might have given Pompey an opening, if only for an assassin, but a dagger could have ended Caesar’s quest.
If avoiding pitched battle would have worked out well, why then did the commanders agree to fight? For one thing, hindsight isn’t history, and there is no guarantee that a Fabian strategy would have worked. For another, pitched battle had its own rewards. Ancient culture put a higher premium on honor than on cunning. To turn down battle was to risk losing face, which might have led waverers to switch sides. Battle was risky but making a decision was easy and quick. A Fabian strategy meant a long war and more chances for a bronco like Caesar to buck.
The losing generals did not go into battle without preparing to meet a dangerous enemy. All of them put together big armies that greatly outnumbered their opponents’. Darius recruited excellent horsemen, made plans to compensate for his lack of heavy infantry, and chose his battlefield carefully. Paullus and Varro massed their legionaries tightly in order to compensate for the men’s inexperience and to increase the odds of breaking through the enemy line. Pompey did not seriously consider a pitched battle before first bruising Caesar’s army in siege warfare. Still, he recognized the weakness of his infantry and rested his plans on his cavalry. In short, the losing generals tried to exercise due diligence, but they failed.
The victors would never have won, of course, unless Divine Providence had convinced their enemies to fight. That same providence gave them the resources to win. They owed some of their success to a general’s willingness to engage in terror or to brand himself as a god’s son. A more important factor was the superior professionalism—the better infrastructure—of the victorious army. The ability to feed their men in hostile country was also a matter of infrastructure. Then there was the leadership by which a commander bound his officers and soldiers to him. Next came the agility to come up with new tactics and the audacity to carry them out. Finally, there was the good judgment of the commander, the combination of intuition and expertise that had him do just the right thing at just the right time. Nothing played a greater role in making Gaugamela, Cannae, and Pharsalus into virtuoso pieces.
The day after battle, the question was what each of the participants would do to justify the terrible carnage. Could the winners translate success on the battlefield into victory in the war? Could the losers rally their societies in defeat and continue the war? We turn to those questions.
5
CLOSING THE NET
FOR SEVENTY DAYS IT RAINED. Alexander’s men had never experienced anything like the Indian monsoon. The heavy rain was constantly slapping on their tents, with thunder and lightning often accompanying the downpour. Everywhere the men stepped, there seemed to be mud. Their Greek clothes were gone and they had to dress in Indian dhotis, white cotton cloths wrapped around their legs. Between the weather and the foreign garments, the men had never felt so far from home.
Their morale was already low when the monsoon finished it off. Their weapons were worn out. Even their horse’s shoes had worn thin from all the marching. The men had suffered casualties and they were exhausted. They were about three thousand miles from Macedonia as the crow flies—much farther, if you consider the rough terrain they had crossed and the circuitous route they had marched. Now they wanted to pack up the loot that they had won at such a heavy price and go home. In the summer of 325 B.C., nine years after Alexander had launched his expedition, it looked like the end of the campaign.
About a hundred years later and three thousand miles away, Hannibal’s younger brother, Mago, was listening to the sound of another kind of water—the Mediterranean. He was riding on his flagship in a flotilla sailing from Genoa to Carthage, and he was lying in a sickbed. It was autumn 203 B.C. Two years earlier, Mago had sailed from the island of Minorca, off Spain, to Italy, with fifteen thousand men, in a bold move to reinforce Hannibal. After he conquered Genoa and raised a local alliance, Mago received reinforcements from Carthage: men, money, and seven elephants. But in 203, a Roman army defeated Mago in a battle near Milan and he suffered a deep wound in his thigh. He was recalled home to defend Carthage from a threat from a Roman army.
Mago hoped that a ship’s rocking motion would be easier on his wound than Italy’s bumpy roads. He looked forward as well to the standard of medical care available in Carthage. But he died of his wound just south of Sardinia. Mago’s fate foretold a bad end awaiting Hannibal in his war with Rome. It was a far cry from the glory days of Cannae.
A little more than 150 years later and five hundred miles to the southwest, in Roman Africa (modern Tunisia), another rainstorm came thundering down. At midnight, in a November sky, a teeming rainfall, with pebble-sized hailstones, struck Caesar’s legionary camp. As usual, Caesar had made his men travel fast and light. Leather tents would have been a luxury—most men had rigged lean-tos from reeds, twigs, and clothing. The storm washed away everything and put out the campfires. Soldiers were reduced to wandering the camp with their shields held over their heads for protection. An enemy army was camped nearby but they did not push. Caesar, as usual, was lucky, but he had pressed his luck.
The battle of Pharsalus seemed long ago: it was January 46 B.C. (November 47, by our calendar), about a year and a half later. But the Roman civil war was far from over. The Pompeians had regrouped after their defeat. Caesar had given them breathing space, because other matters required his attention. He had to find funding—and Cleopatra had found him. Caesar had finally turned back to the Pompeians only a month before the rainstorm. He could shrug off a storm; the enemy’s armies were another matter.
As these three anecdotes remind us, it takes more to win a war than victory in pitched battle—even a big victory. Winning takes the ability to reap strategic advantage afterward. The victories of Gaugamela, Cannae, and Pharsalus did not guarantee that Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar would end their war well. Darius, the Roman republic, and Pompey all still had the resources to bounce back.
The challengers had to close the net.
Closing the net is where things started to get messy, messy because they were complicated. The clarity that victory in pitched battle offered was gone. Instead, the great commanders had to meet a truly bewildering array of challenges to close the net. These challenges entailed a number of military and political changes, from refining troop organization and tactics to reevaluating grand strategy, and from knowing the political workings of the enemy to shoring up support at home. Changes were required at every level of planning. Alexander, Hannibal, and Caesar showed their greatness by keeping their armies together and achieving more victories (if with varying degrees of success) during this crucial stage. But without their knowing where to stop, the enormity of the challenges would soon prove too great, even for them.
ALEXANDER
Even after Gaugamela, Darius still had access to a wealth of money and manpower. Given time and space, he might have mobilized them. To keep that from happening, Alexander needed to be fast and deadly, but there was also something to be said for a light touch. If he let the Persians maintain their dignity, they might bow to his authority and accept him as king, bringing a quick end to the war. The alternative might be a long and bloody slog in Central Asia and beyond. A war there would demand yet more resources and mobility, while it might call forth new excesses in terror. If doing too little risked danger, doing too much threatened a quagmire.
Yet Alexander relished the challenge. A long war in Asia would drain Macedon but invigorate Alexander. With every passing day the old country interested him less. There were new worlds to conquer! No more merely king of Macedon, he was now king
of Asia—and lord of battle. The East was a gigantic school of war and Alexander was an eager student.
The Reckoning: Darius’s Revenge
Alexander made warfare look easy. His march into Iran after Gaugamela is a case in point. After accepting Babylon’s surrender, Alexander rested his army for a month and then marched his forces into the mountains of western Iran. As usual, he pressed the enemy quickly and hard.
His first goals were the enemy’s two capital cities, Susa and Persepolis. Susa lacked defenses and its commander was quick to surrender, but deep mountain passes protected Persepolis: the Persians intended to fight. It was December; snow posed a real risk for the Macedonians, but Alexander did not want to give the enemy a chance to regroup, and so he forged ahead.
To reach Persepolis, Alexander had to defeat three separate stands against him in the rugged Zagros Mountains. The enemy knew the terrain and chose his ground carefully, in mountain passes and gorges, but Alexander’s forces were fast, mobile, and cagey. Again and again they turned the defender’s position and surprised him with an attack from the rear. The Macedonians inflicted heavy losses and killed the enemy commander. Persepolis surrendered.
Once again, Alexander had handled his forces like a virtuoso; his soldiers demonstrated their skill and versatility; and he and his troops showed that audacity pays back dividends tenfold.
Susa and Persepolis were treasuries as well as capitals. Between them, they housed the world’s largest collection of gold and silver, and now it belonged to Alexander. He was the proud owner of 180,000 talents of gold and silver—312 tons of gold and 2,000 tons of silver. The young king had become the richest man on earth—a stunning reversal for someone who had started his invasion broke.
When Alexander entered Persepolis, he showed his contempt for it: he let his men loot the town, except for the royal palace. This was harsher treatment than elsewhere, but Alexander recognized Persepolis’s status as the center of Persian religion. He wanted to deny the enemy any sacred ground to strike back at him. At the end of his four-month stay in Persepolis, Alexander finished what his policy of looting had begun—he burned the royal palace to the ground. If Alexander was king of Asia, it was not by grace of Persia’s gods—that was the message that he sent to the people of Persia.
The Greeks got a different message—payback. Years before, when they first raised the subject of invading Persia, Philip and Alexander had sold the expedition to their Greek allies as a war of revenge for Persia’s invasion of Greece under King Xerxes in 480 B.C. The Greeks bought it. Now, with Greeks and Macedonians in Iran, the circle was nearly complete. What Athens had been to Xerxes, Persepolis was to Alexander: the symbol of enemy resistance. Just as Xerxes once burned down Athens, so Alexander burned Persepolis.
The burning also signaled that the war was coming to an end. Not only Greeks but Macedonians too reached that conclusion. With revenge, riches, and an empire that stretched from Egypt to Iran, they thought it was time to go home and enjoy life. But Alexander disagreed. Having been proclaimed king of Asia, he had no intention of settling for less than the entire Persian empire. But he did not need to press the point yet, because another issue was on the agenda: Darius was still at large. Not even the most homesick soldier could ignore that, because as long as Darius was free, he was trouble for them all. Darius could still raise an army from Persia’s rich and unconquered eastern provinces.
While Alexander spent the winter of 331 to 330 in Persepolis, Darius was about five hundred miles to the northwest, in the city of Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). He had a small army, including the remaining Greek mercenaries—still loyal to their chief—and was trying to raise new troops from the east. But there was no sign of them when, in May 330, Alexander marched on Ecbatana; Darius fled eastward with his troops and his closest advisors, the still-loyal satraps of the eastern empire.
Alexander hurried after them, traveling hundreds of miles through Iran until he reached its treacherous northeastern desert. To speed the way, Alexander divided his forces and left a portion with Parmenio. Then, several weeks later, the news came that the satraps had mutinied and deposed Darius. His loyalists fled into the mountains with the remaining Greek mercenaries. Alexander stripped his forces down to cavalry and raced after Darius. Even so, they were too late. The eastern satraps had assassinated the king and left the body for Alexander to find. Meanwhile, they fled homeward. It was summer 330.
If Alexander had captured Darius alive, he might have reaped a political and military bonanza. With luck, Darius would have accepted Alexander as the rightful king. With a little more luck, the rest of the Persian nobility would have followed him and admitted that the game was up. That, after all, would have spared Persia further bloodshed and—a Persian patriot might have said—given it time to recover and to plot Alexander’s eventual overthrow. As for Alexander, he would have the loyalty of the eastern satraps without having to fight for it.
But it was not to be. It is even possible that the other satraps saw this coming and bristled at it as a dishonorable policy: that may be why they overthrew Darius and killed him.
The greatest of the eastern satraps was Bessus, satrap of Bactria. He had fought well as a cavalry commander at Gaugamela. Now, the other satraps proclaimed him as Artaxerxes V, rightful king of the Persian empire. Bessus returned to Bactria to prepare an army to fight the invaders.
This left Alexander with a dilemma. The Persian empire stretched eastward another thousand miles. If he invaded the east in pursuit of Bessus, Alexander would face tough fighting, far from his home base. If he stayed in the west and consolidated the rule of his new empire, Alexander would have to prepare for raids if not a major invasion from Bessus’s territory.
Security concerns, therefore, dictated that Alexander go after Bessus. But security was not what moved Alexander. I wonder if Alexander ever put things as bluntly as one of the sources claims: he didn’t want Darius’s corpse; he wanted his kingdom. But that was the truth.
He knew that the Persian empire included rich lands in the east: Aria (today’s Afghan province of Herat), famous for its agriculture and especially its wine; Arachosia (centered on Kandahar in southeastern Afghanistan); and Bactria (roughly, northern Afghanistan), known for its fertile farmland. There was also northwestern India (today’s Pakistan and the Punjab). This last, wealthy region had probably slipped from the Persians’ grasp years before, but they still exercised some influence there.
Alexander wanted to conquer these lands not only as a security zone but also for their riches and for the glory. In his own mind, Alexander now belonged to a very select club: Achilles, Heracles, Dionysus (not just god of wine but conqueror of the East), Cyrus the Great, and Semiramis (the mythical Assyrian queen) were its other members. Alexander would settle for nothing less than the entire Persian empire. Besides, Alexander was first, last, and always a warrior king. He excelled at war and he loved it more than any other activity.
Alexander’s heart and head told him to go east. The other Macedonians saw things differently, as they made clear when they heard the news that the Greeks were going home but they had to stay. It happened like this.
In spite of all his victories, Alexander had always been vulnerable in Greece. His many enemies there had long threatened to open a second front against him, and in 331, they finally did. Led by Sparta, a coalition of city-states challenged the Macedonians under Antipater. In his sixties, Antipater was a veteran general and ambassador who had served Philip and befriended young prince Alexander. As king, Alexander had appointed Antipater to govern Macedon in his absence.
If the rebel Greeks had won, they might have forced Alexander to turn back. Memnon’s ghost was surely smiling, but not for long. Alexander sent enough money to Antipater for him to hire massive numbers of mercenaries. They crushed the enemy and killed the Spartan king. In 330, while still at Persepolis or just shortly after leaving, Alexander learned the good news: he no longer had to worry about Greece.
No longer did he need
to keep his Greek troops; they had done little fighting and served as virtual hostages. Previously it was too dangerous to send them home, where they could stir up trouble. That had changed now. So Alexander released his Greek “allies” and gave them generous bonuses. He also gave them the choice of staying and reenlisting as mercenaries, which some did.
Unfortunately for Alexander, Greek enthusiasm for home proved infectious and the Macedonians began to complain. Why not put down their arms and enjoy the loot that they had amassed? Alexander’s officers advised him to call an assembly and address the men. He gave a speech that touched on three themes: security, honor, and royal favor. The Persians were currently in a stupor, he said, but if the Macedonians withdrew, the enemy would wake up and attack them as if they were women. Anyone who wanted to leave was free to do so, but Alexander would go on acquiring the inhabited world with his “friends” and “those willing to fight.” In other words, any Macedonian who wasn’t with Alexander was against him. The rhetoric worked; the soldiers roared their approval of following Alexander wherever he would lead them. No doubt it helped if, as one source claims, he grossly underestimated the distance to Bactria.
Alexander’s points seem strong until we consider the counterarguments. The eastern provinces had never proved easy for the Persians to hold. Even if conquered, those provinces would probably rise in rebellion one day. In the meantime, they would require garrisons of thousands of men. Most important of all, Alexander had pressing business in the west—consolidating his rule—and an eastern campaign would be a long and dangerous distraction.
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