Alexander the Great (8 page)

Philip had recruited horsemen from Macedonia and neighboring Balkan countries and made them undergo several years of training. The long training was necessary because although the horses had saddles and bridles, the stirrup had not yet been imported from India (it did not reach Western Europe until AD 750). The Macedonian cavalry’s horses were imported from countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania.

Despite this careful breeding, the Macedonian cavalry rode into battle on horses that were not more than two-thirds the size and weight of horses used in the late Middle Ages or today. In the absence of stirrups, the cavalry had to guide the horses with their thighs and knees while holding onto the horses’ manes. The cavalry was equipped with throwing spears and small shields, but its favorite and most reliable weapon was the short sword. The cavalrymen wore iron breastplates and helmets. The Persian cavalry was similarly armed and horsed, and there was little difference in quality between the Persian and the Macedonian cavalry. The difference lay in Alexander’s tactical genius when he attacked the Persians.

Arrian provides a graphic account of Alexander on the battlefield:

The critical difference between the Persian army and the Macedonian army was not in cavalry but in infantry. The latter was divided into a heavily armed and armored contingent—the phalanx—and light infantry called
hypaspists
(shield-bearers). The phalanx soldiers were trained to work in units of sixteen, closely packed together. Their eighteen-foot-long
sarissas
(spears with pikes at the end) were the terror of Europe and western Asia. The cavalry would advance first and throw the opposing infantry into disarray. Alexander’s soldiers tilted their
sarissas
forward then marched ahead in tightly packed ranks.

“Nobody who faced them ever forgot the sight; they kept time to their roaring of the Greeks’ ancient war cry…. Their scarlet cloaks billowed, and the measured swishing of their sarissas, up and down, left and right, seemed to frightened observers like the quills of a metal porcupine.”
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These soldiers were well trained, disciplined, well fed, and very well paid. Not just the companions of Alexander’s cavalry had these benefits. He enriched the infantry phalanx and
hypaspists
as well. The light infantry consisted of many Balkan peoples and mercenaries drawn from all over Greece.}

Alexander crossed the Hellespont (Dardanelles) that separated Europe and Asia in 334 BC. It took 150 triremes (boats with three banks of oars) to transport the whole army. Not one Persian vessel was spotted—fortunately, because the expedition could have been ended before it got under way if Darius had been astute enough to contest the crossing. But the Persian command was not famous for military strategy, relying more on sheer numbers. It must be stressed again that had the king of kings, Darius III, maximized his military resources at any time, he could have put 150,000 cavalry and infantry into the field against Alexander and possibly have swamped Alexander’s army of 40,000. As it was, the Persian forces (initially including many Greek mercenaries) rarely numbered more than 75,000 in any engagement. The fact that the Persian emperor acted so minimally was probably due to his belief in the invincibility of his army and navy, which caused him to take the Macedonian threat too lightly in the beginning.

Alexander sensed that his opponent was a weakling, too lethargic and confused even to summon his potentially much larger army for a particular battle. Darius had been surrounded by eunuchs and concubines too long. He was a soft man.

According to Green:

As Heinrich Schleimann would do centuries later, Alexander carried his well-worn copy of Homer’s
Iliad
with him, because he crossed the Hellespont at exactly the same place the early Greeks had. As Alexander marched through Turkey, he freed Greek cities in his path, but the Persian army kept in advance of him without offering any serious resistance.

Memnon of Rhodes, Darius’s commander in Asia Minor, was a very good general. He had offered his services to Darius many years before, and even though he was a Greek and had traveled to Philip’s Macedonia, he had no liking for Philip’s son, Alexander. Getting little in the way of instructions from Darius, Memnon advised a “scorched-earth” policy because it was common knowledge that Alexander was in financial straits and would need the land and its produce to survive. Memnon felt this was the best solution to the Macedonian invasion. He requested permission to destroy the crops and other foodstuffs in the path of Alexander’s army, leaving Alexander’s army to starve and then—it was hoped—retreat.

Foolishly the Persian lords would not let Memnon carry out his policy. Perhaps they were envious of the Greek general’s rise to power in their land, but more plausibly they had great estates with hordes of slaves and wanted to continue their easy living. Without scorched earth tactics and with the Persian lords seemingly willing to accommodate themselves to Alexander’s rule, there was little Memnon could do. He watched helplessly as the cities of Asia Minor, many of them Greek colonies on the coastline, surrendered peacefully with very little fight.

Alexander allowed the Persian satraps and lords to remain in place for the time being. They had not opposed him as yet, and in fact had denied Memnon the tactic whereby the war would have ended before it began.

Finally the Persian emperor could hesitate no longer. He put an army of 75,000 into the field under Memnon’s command on the banks of the Granicus River (now called the Kocabas River), which flows into the Sea of Marmara. It is noticeable that Alexander’s battles usually took place on the bank of a river. This site suited Alexander and his commanders but was less advantageous to the Persians. They had difficulty deploying their larger numbers in the narrow topography of a riverbank.

The one weapon that was unique to the Persians, the scythed chariot, was also hard to deploy in a cramped, muddy riverbank. Had the Persian emperor used his potential army of 150,000 soldiers and deployed them on a wide plain away from the river, the outcome of the battle would undoubtedly have been very different.

The Granicus River was about sixty feet wide, with a fast current. Alexander’s troops were going to have to charge down a steep embankment, go through the swift water, and then scramble up the slippery slope on the other side. This would obviously make them extremely vulnerable when they attempted to reassemble on the far side. Alexander, with characteristic bravado, wanted to cross immediately, even though it was late, they had marched all day, and the men were tired. His generals, led by Parmenion, advised that they wait until morning and cross farther downriver, where the current was not so fast. That way, they argued, his men would be fresh and rested and could be on the other side of the river before the Persians knew what had happened.

Alexander argued, but he eventually realized they were right. The battle took place the next day. Alexander drove his cavalry directly into the midst of the Persian army, first to the right, then the left. He lost his spear in the first charge, but he stayed right in the thick of the fighting.

Plutarch gives us a vivid, albeit somewhat inaccurate, account of the early phase of the Battle of Granicus:

Alexander lost his lance and his horse (not Bucephalus, who either was lame at the time or was considered too valuable to use in this battle), and he suffered a head wound where a saber blow from a Persian nobleman penetrated Alexander’s helmet and cut completely through to the skull. Alexander fell off his horse, and the battle continued over him. Somehow he managed to get back astride, and with his rallying companions, he broke the Persian flanks and they retreated. Memnon got away, but an estimated 2,500 Persian cavalrymen were killed.

Alexander won the Battle of Granicus by using his cavalry as a disruptive force aimed directly at the Persian army. He drove his cavalry right into the middle of the Persian infantry. This shock deployment of cavalry seems to have been first used by Alexander. Previously cavalry had been used only in flanking maneuvers.

After the Battle of Granicus, Alexander buried the dead, both Macedonians and Persians, on the battlefield. The Persians generally cremated their dead, rather than bury them, so what seemed to Alexander to be a magnanimous gesture was actually a slap in the face to their religious observances. He was always inclined to give recognition and honor to the dead among his opponents. First he killed them; then he buried them with military honors. (The British were still following this tradition in World War I.)

Many of the Persian soldiers were Greek mercenaries. These Alexander had rounded up and sent back to Macedonia to work as slaves in the mines. In this way Alexander gave a severe object lesson to any other Greek who might contemplate fighting for Darius. Technically the Greek mercenaries were traitors to the Greek alliance, of which Alexander was the head. Some of the spoils of war were sent home to Olympias, who was acting as regent in Alexander’s absence. In addition he sent three hundred panoplies back to Athens to be dedicated in the Parthenon with the inscription, “Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks—Lacedaemonians (Spartans) excepted—these spoils from the barbarians who dwell in Asia.”
¹⁴

At this battle Darius had to recognize the serious threat that Alexander posed to his entire empire. Asia Minor was now open to him. Perhaps even Alexander, with his visions of conquest, was unable to recognize how long and dangerous the rest of the journey would be. For Aristotle, the Athenian philosopher and Alexander’s tutor, the known world ended in India. (China was still outside the Greek recognizance.) And India was where Alexander wanted to end up,
after
he conquered the Persian Empire.

It is uncertain if Alexander had any clear-cut plan for the Persian Empire in mind. Did he intend to merely defeat Darius or completely replace him? It seemed that he was going to keep going and wherever he ended up was where he would be. He was an adventurer as much as a conqueror.

Alexander had left Greece and its problems in the hands of Antipater (along with his mother), with the orders that he was to squelch any incipient signs of rebellion by whatever means were necessary. He could install dictators and oligarchs freely to control the population and quell any dissent that arose.

Along his road between the Battle of Granicus and the upcoming major Battle of Issus, Alexander knew that he had to control the population in Asia Minor, since it would be at his back as he moved farther into the Persian Empire. Most of these provinces and cities were ruled by heavy-handed tyrants, and since part of Alexander’s modus operandi was to appear to be a liberator, he did the reverse of what he had ordered for Greece: Where he found a tyrant, he freed the people. He had no problem in his own mind of playing the role of tyrant in one place and liberator in another. He had no scruples about using whatever means served his purposes.

As Alexander marched his army inexorably toward the capital city of Susa, he was gratified to see that his victory at Granicus had convinced many of the Persian satraps that they would be better off surrendering peacefully. The governor of Sardis was the first of them to capitulate, along with his garrison. At each juncture Alexander replaced the Persian governor with one of his own choosing, spreading his Macedonian officers around with the apparent intention of not permitting unlimited power to be held by any one of them. He appointed a department to collect taxes and tribute from the satrapies to separate the monetary function from the governing functions. This improved civil administration, but it also kept control of the finances out of the control of the governors.