The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (12 page)

Darius now moved; he crossed the high ground by what are called the Amanian Gates – the pass across Mount Amanus – and, making for Issus, established himself without being perceived in Alexander’s rear.
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Once in possession of Issus he mutilated and put to death every Macedonian he found left there as unfit for service, and on the following day moved on to the river Pinarus. Alexander, not trusting the report that Darius was in his rear,
dispatched a party of his Companions in a galley with orders to sail back to Issus and find out for themselves whether or not it was true. The coast by Issus is deeply indented, and this fact enabled the party in the galley the more easily to see what they wished to see – that the Persians were there. So back they went to Alexander with their news: Darius was indeed at hand.

Alexander now sent for his infantry and cavalry commanders and all officers in charge of allied troops and appealed to them for confidence and courage in the coming fight. ‘Remember’, he said, ‘that already danger has often threatened you and you have looked it triumphantly in the face; this time the struggle will be between a victorious army and an enemy already once vanquished. God himself, moreover, by suggesting to Darius to leave the open ground and cram his great army into a confined space, has taken charge of operations in our behalf. We ourselves shall have room enough to deploy our infantry, while they, no match for us either in bodily strength or resolution, will find their superiority in numbers of no avail. Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service – but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay – and not much of it at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops – Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes – they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they – Darius!’

Having thus enumerated the advantages with which they would enter the coming struggle, Alexander went on to show that the rewards of victory would also be great. The victory this time would not be over mere underlings of the Persian King, or the Persian cavalry along the banks of Granicus, or the 20,000 foreign mercenaries; it would be over the fine flower of the Medes and Persians and all the Asiatic peoples which they ruled. The Great King was there in person with his army, and once the battle was over, nothing would remain but to crown their many labours with the sovereignty of Asia. He reminded them, further, of what they had already so brilliantly accomplished together, and mentioned any act of conspicuous individual courage, naming the man in each case and specifying what he had done, and alluding also, in such a way as to give least offence, to the risks to which he had personally exposed himself on the field. He also, we are told, reminded them of Xenophon and his Ten Thousand, a force which, though not to be compared with their own either in strength or reputation – a force without the support of cavalry such as they had themselves, from Thessaly, Boeotia, the Peloponnese, Macedon, Thrace, and elsewhere, with no archers or slingers except a small contingent from Crete and Rhodes hastily improvised by Xenophon under pressure of immediate need – nevertheless defeated the King of Persia and his army at the gates of Babylon
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and successfully repelled all the native troops who tried to bar their way as they marched down to the Black Sea. Nor did Alexander omit any other words of encouragement such as brave men about to risk their lives might expect from a brave commander; and in response to his address his officers pressed forward to clasp his hand and with many expressions
of appreciation urged him to lead them to battle without delay.

Alexander’s first order was that his men should eat, while at the same time he sent a small party of mounted men and archers to the narrow pass by the shore to reconnoitre the road by which he would have to return; then, as soon as it was dark, he moved off himself with the whole army to take possession once more of that narrow gateway. About midnight the passage was secured; for the remainder of the night he allowed his men to rest where they were, on the rocky ground, with outposts to keep exact and careful watch, and just before daylight next morning moved forward from the pass along the coast road. The advance was in column so long as lack of space made it necessary, but as soon as the country began to open up he gradually extended his front, bringing up his heavy infantry a battalion at a time, until he was moving in line with his right on the base of the hills and his left on the sea.

During the advance the mounted troops were kept in the rear, but as soon as open ground was reached Alexander ordered battle stations: the three battalions of the Guards, under Parmenio’s son Nicanor, were sent to the right wing on the nearby rising ground, with Coenus’ battalion on their left in close touch with Perdiccas’ men, the whole forming a line from right wing to centre – the position of the heavy infantry. On the extreme left were stationed Amyntas’ troops, and in touch with them, and working towards the centre, first Ptolemy’s battalion, then Meleager’s. Command of the infantry on the left was given to Craterus, of the left wing as a whole to Parmenio, whose orders were on no account to leave a gap between his extreme left and the sea; for if he did, they might well be surrounded, as the numerical superiority of the
enemy would certainly enable them to outflank the Macedonians.
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When Darius received the report that Alexander was moving forward to the attack, he sent some 30,000 mounted troops and 20,000 light infantry across the river Pinarus, to give himself a chance of getting the main body of his army into position without molestation. His dispositions were as follows: in the van of his heavy infantry were his 30,000 Greek mercenaries, facing the Macedonian infantry, with some 60,000 Persian heavy infantry – known as Kardakes
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– to support them, half on each of their flanks. These troops were drawn up in line, and the ground would not admit of a greater number. Hard on the rising ground on his left, and facing Alexander’s right, was another division about 20,000 strong, some portions of which actually worked round to Alexander’s rear; for the hills on their left receded to some distance so as to form a sort of bay, the further shore of which (so to put it) curved round back again, bringing the sections which were posted close under the hill to the rear of Alexander’s right wing. In the rear of the Greek mercenaries and the Persians supporting them on either flank was the remainder of Darius’ army – a great mass of light and heavy infantry. These were organized according to the countries of their origin and drawn up in greater depth than was likely to prove of much service; mere numbers made this unavoidable – indeed, it is on record that the army as a whole was some 600,000 strong.
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As soon as Alexander found the ground in front of him opening out a little more, he brought his cavalry – the Thessalian and Macedonian divisions,
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together with the Companions – up from the rear to the right wing under his own personal command, and at the same time sent the Peloponnesian troops and other allied divisions round to Parmenio on the left. Darius, immediately his main infantry force was in position, recalled by signal the mounted troops which he had sent across the river to cover the movement, and ordered the greater number of them over to his right, to threaten Parmenio, on the seaward side, where the ground was rather more suitable for cavalry manoeuvre; some, however, he sent to the opposite flank under the hills, though, as lack of space at that end of the line made them obviously useless, he soon recalled nearly all of them and ordered them round to the right flank. Darius himself took the centre, the traditional position of the Persian Kings. (The general principle of the Persian order of battle has been explained by Xenophon.)
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Nearly all the Persian cavalry had now been transferred to a position on the seaward side facing Alexander’s left, and opposing them he had nothing except the Peloponnesians and other allied cavalry; to meet this threat he sent his Thessalian cavalry with all speed to their support, with instructions to conceal their movement from the enemy by passing in the rear of the massed infantry battalions. At the same time, at the other end of the line he threw forward his advanced Scouts, under Protomachus’ command,
together with the Paeonians under Ariston, and the archers under Antiochus.

The Agrianes under Attalus, supported by a few units of mounted troops and archers, were ordered out towards the high ground at an angle to his main line of advance, thus splitting the right wing of the army into two separate prongs, one designed to engage Darius and the main body of the Persians on the further side of the river, the other the units which had worked round to the hill in the Macedonian rear. In the van of the infantry on the Macedonian left were the Cretan archers and the Thracians, under Sitalces, with the cavalry of the left wing in advance of them; all units had a proportion of foreign mercenaries assigned to them.

Observing a certain weakness on his right and also the danger of being outflanked at that end of his line, Alexander withdrew from the centre two squadrons of the Companions – namely, that from Anthemus commanded by Peroedas and the so-called Leugaean squadron, under Pantordanus, son of Cleander – and ordered them over to the right, with every precaution to conceal their movement; at the same time he further strengthened his right by a contingent of Agrianes and Greek mercenaries which he drew up in line, and so outflanked the Persian left. The Persians on the hills had made no aggressive move; indeed, when Alexander ordered a raid upon them by a small party of the Agrianes and archers, they had been easily dislodged from their position and had sought safety higher up the mountainside, so that Alexander decided that he could use the men originally intended to deal with them to strengthen his main attacking force. Three hundred mounted men were sufficient to keep an eye on the fugitives.
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For a while Alexander’s advance was slow and deliberate; every now and then he ordered a halt, giving the impression that time was on his side. Darius made no move as yet to attack, but kept his men in their original dispositions on the river-bank. In many places the bank was steep, and any sections of it which seemed less easy to defend he had strengthened with a stockade – at once by this precaution making it clear to Alexander’s men that his was a craven spirit.

The two armies were now almost within striking distance. Alexander rode from one end of his line to the other with words of encouragement for all, addressing by name, with proper mention of rank and distinctions, not the officers of highest rank only but the captains of squadrons and companies; even the mercenaries were not forgotten, where any distinction or act of courage called for the mention of a name, and from every throat came the answering shout: ‘Wait no longer – forward to the assault!’

The Persian army was in full view; still, however, Alexander moved forward in line at a deliberate pace, for a too-rapid advance might have thrown the line out of dressing and caused a break somewhere; but once within range of missiles, Alexander, at the head of his own troops on the right wing, rode at a gallop into the stream. Rapidity was now all in all: a swift attack would shake the enemy, and the sooner they came to grips the less damage would be done by the Persian archers. Alexander’s judgement was not at fault: the Persian left collapsed the very moment he was on them – a brilliant local success for the picked troops under his personal command. In the centre, however, things did not go so well: here some of the
troops had broken away towards the right and left a gap in the line, and, in contrast with Alexander, who had so swiftly crossed the stream and was already, in close combat, compelling the Persian left to withdraw, the Macedonian centre was much slower off the mark; in a number of places, moreover, the steep banks of the stream prevented them from maintaining a regular and unbroken front, and the result was that Darius’ Greek mercenaries attacked precisely at that point in the line where the gap was widest. There was a violent struggle. Darius’ Greeks fought to thrust the Macedonians back into the water and save the day for their left wing, already in retreat, while the Macedonians, in their turn, with Alexander’s triumph plain before their eyes, were determined to equal his success and not forfeit the proud title of invincible, hitherto universally bestowed upon them. The fight was further embittered by the old racial rivalry of Greek and Macedonian. It was in this phase of the battle that Ptolemy, son of Seleucus,
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and about 120 Macedonians of distinction met a soldier’s death.

Alexander’s victorious right wing, seeing the Persians opposite them already in flight, now swung left towards the centre, hard pressed as it was by Darius’ Greeks; they forced them back from the river and then, outflanking the broken enemy left, delivered a flank attack on the mercenaries and were soon cutting them to pieces. The Persian cavalry facing Alexander’s Thessalians refused, once the battle had developed, to remain inactive on the further side of the stream, but charged across in a furious onslaught on the Thessalian squadrons. The cavalry action which ensued was desperate enough, and the Persians broke only when they knew that the Greek mercenaries were being cut off and destroyed by the Macedonian
infantry, and that Darius himself was in flight. That was the signal for a general rout – open and unconcealed. The horses with their heavily equipped riders suffered severely, and of the thousands of panic-stricken men who struggled in hopeless disorder to escape along the narrow mountain tracks, almost as many were trampled to death by their friends as were cut down by the pursuing enemy. The Thessalians pressed the pursuit without mercy, and the Persian losses in both arms, infantry, and cavalry were equally severe.