Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (7 page)

ANGLES OF VISION

The
Old
Man

POOR PARMENIO! Once more he was to be left behind as the divine Alexander, far away to the right, charged headlong into the Persian horde. Almost the entire battle line of the Macedonian army followed their king. The Companion Cavalry with Parmenio’s own son Philotas in charge, the royal phalanx of pikemen, assorted mercenaries, and the veteran shield-bearing infantrymen, or hypaspists—everyone on foot and horse, it seemed, but Parmenio was heading to the right and to the kill. Once again the old man was to stay fast; there was to be no glory for Parmenio other than in anchoring the left wing. He was left only with a few hundred of his battle-hardened Macedonian horsemen, supported by companies of pikemen left behind under the commanders Craterus and Simmias, some Greek cavalry led by Erigyius, and the 2,000 redoubtable Thessalian horsemen under Philip.

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 immediately 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.