The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (31 page)

Alexander meanwhile brought the scaling-ladders into position all round the inner stronghold and ordered sapping operations to begin. A tower soon fell and the collapse of a section of the wall laid the fortress open to assault, whereupon Alexander, ahead of his men, was up in the moment, and stood there alone, a conspicuous figure, holding the breach. The sight of him struck shame into his troops, so up they went after him in scattered groups, some here, some there. Soon the fortress was in their hands. Some of the Indians set fire to their houses or were caught in them and killed; most died fighting. In all they lost about 5,000 men; they had fought too well for more than a handful to be taken alive.

After waiting there a day to rest his troops Alexander began his advance against the remaining Mallian forces. He found their settlements deserted and gathered by report that they had all fled into uninhabited country; accordingly, after another day’s rest for his men, he sent
Peitho and Demetrius, the cavalry officer, back to the river with the troops already under their command together with some companies of light infantry sufficient for the task in hand: this was, to march along the river and keep a look out for any of the enemy who might have fled to the woods there (they were very extensive along the river-bank) and to kill all of them who refused to give themselves up. They did, in fact, catch and kill a great many of them.

Alexander’s own next objective was the principal town of the Mallian people. It had been reported to him that many of the Mallians had left their own settlements and joined their kinsmen there; nevertheless, on the news of Alexander’s approach, this town, too, was abandoned, and the Indians, having crossed the Hydraotes, took up a strong position on the high ground of the opposite bank, evidently intending to prevent Alexander from coming over. Learning of this movement, Alexander at once advanced with all his available cavalry to the point on the Hydraotes where the Mallians had massed, and gave orders for the infantry to follow. Reaching the river and observing the enemy in position on the further bank, though he still had only the cavalry with him, he plunged, without even waiting to reform after his march, into the ford. When he was halfway over, the enemy withdrew from the river-bank rapidly but in good order. Alexander followed them up, and as soon as they realized that he had only mounted troops with no infantry in support, they checked their withdrawal, turned, and offered a vigorous resistance. Their force was some 50,000 strong. Alexander’s infantry had not yet joined him; accordingly, as the Indians were massed in close formation, he held off for the time being, keeping his cavalry continually manœuvring and making an occasional probe; presently,
however, the Agrianes arrived on the scene together with the archers and some picked units of light infantry which were serving under his personal command, while at the same time the heavy infantry was already visible at no great distance. Faced by these simultaneous threats the Indians broke and hurriedly withdrew to the shelter of one of the neighbouring settlements which was strongly fortified. Alexander followed close on their heels, inflicting a number of casualties, and when the fugitives had shut themselves up inside the defences of the town, he promptly ordered his cavalry to draw a cordon round it; then, when his infantry joined him, he took up a position completely encircling the outer defences, and suspended operations for the day. There were two reasons for the pause: insufficient daylight left for an immediate attack, and the fact that all his men were pretty well exhausted – the infantry by their long march, the mounted troops by their protracted pursuit, and both not least by their crossing of the river.

Next day when the attack began, with Alexander himself in command of one division of the army and Perdiccas of the other, the Indians did not hold their positions on the outer defences to receive the Macedonian onset, but withdrew their entire force to the inner fortress of the town. Alexander and his men by wrenching a gate from its hinges penetrated into the town far in advance of the troops under Perdiccas, who had met trouble in trying to get over the wall and were, in consequence, slow off the mark; most of them, moreover, carried no ladders, as the sight of the wall bare of defenders led them to believe that the town was already taken. But they soon realized their mistake, and seeing that the enemy held the inner fortress, with large numbers of men posted in front of it bent upon its defence, they at once began sapping operations and got
scaling-ladders into position wherever they could, in an attempt to force their way in. The men with the ladders were not quick enough to satisfy Alexander; in his impatience he snatched one from the fellow who carried it and with his own hands reared it against the fortress wall; then, crouched under his shield, up he went. Peucestas followed him with the ‘sacred shield’ – the shield from the temple of Athene at Troy, which Alexander kept by him and had carried before him in battle.
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Peucestas was followed by Leonnatus, an officer of the Guard; then Abreas, one of the picked soldiers on double pay, mounted by a second ladder.

The King had now reached the top. Laying his shield on the coping of the wall, he forced some of the defenders back into the fortress, cut down others with his sword, till he stood there on the battlements alone, not one of the enemy within his reach. The sight of him filled the men of the Guards with terror for his safety; scrambling for precedence, they made a dash for the ladders, but under the excessive load they broke and hurled the climbers to the ground. The rest were helpless.

No Indian ventured to approach Alexander as he stood on the fortress wall; but he was the target of every marksman in the neighbouring towers; men in the town shot at him too – and from no great distance either, as raised ground near the fortress wall brought them within closer range. That it was indeed Alexander who stood there was plain to all: his almost legendary courage no less than his shining armour proclaimed him.

Suddenly a thought crossed his mind: by staying where he was he might well be killed with nothing accomplished; but if he leapt down into the fortress, he might by that very act spread consternation among the enemy, or at
least, if it was his fate to die, death would come not without a struggle and as the crown of an exploit which would live upon the lips of men. To think was to act: without further hesitation he made his leap.

Once inside the fortress, he put his back to the wall and made ready to fight. A party of Indians came at him, and he cut them down; their commander rushed forward, all too rashly, and he, too, fell. First one, then a second, who tried to approach him he stopped with a well-aimed stone. Others pressed within striking distance, and fell victims to his sword. After that none ventured again to attack him hand to hand; keeping their distance, they formed a half-circle round where he stood and hurled at him whatever missiles they had or could find.

By this time Peucestas, Abreas, and Leonnatus, the only men who succeeded in scaling the wall before the ladders collapsed, had got inside the fortress and were fighting in defence of their King. Abreas was shot in the face and killed and Alexander himself was hit, the arrow penetrating his corselet and entering his body above the breast. Ptolemy tells us that the blood from the wound was mixed with air breathed out from the pierced lung. Despite the pain he continued to defend himself so long as the blood was warm; but there was soon a violent haemorrhage, as was to be expected with a pierced lung, and overcome by giddiness and faintness he fell forward over his shield. Peucestas stood astride of his body holding up before him the sacred shield from Troy, and Leonnatus took his stand on the other side, both men being now the target for the enemy missiles, while Alexander himself was almost unconscious from loss of blood.

The Macedonian assault upon the fortress was by now thoroughly out of hand; the men had seen Alexander as he stood on the battlements, the mark of the enemy’s
missiles; they had seen him leap down on the other side; and now, afraid lest his rash act should be the end of him and eager to bring help in time, they made a rush for the fortress wall. The ladders were smashed and useless, but, on the spur of the moment, they used whatever means they could to get up and over: some drove stakes into the clay of the wall and dragged themselves slowly and laboriously up; others struggled up by standing on their comrades’ shoulders. Each man as he got to the top flung himself down on the further side into the fortress. There they saw the King on the ground, and a cry of grief and a shout of rage rose from every throat. Soon a fierce battle was raging, one man after another holding his shield over Alexander’s prostrate body, until at last the troops outside had smashed the bolt of the gate in the curtain-wall and were beginning to come in, a few at a time. Others then got their shoulders to the half-opened gate, forced it inwards, and so laid the fortress open.

Now the slaughter began; neither women nor children were spared. A party of men carried away the King on his shield; his condition was critical and no one, at this time, thought he could live. Some writers have stated that the arrow which hit him was cut out by Critodemus, a doctor from the island of Cos, of the family of Asclepius; others that Perdiccas, of the King’s Guard, cut it out with his sword at Alexander’s request, no doctor being at hand in this emergency. There was a rush of blood as the arrow was drawn out, and Alexander fainted again, thus checking the haemorrhage. All sorts of other stories about this grave incident have been put on record, most of them false, and tradition has taken them over in their original form and still preserves them; and doubtless it will continue to pass them on to future generations, unless a stop is put to it by the account I give in this book.

In the first place, it is universally supposed that it was among the Oxydracae that Alexander received his almost fatal wound:
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but it was not – it was in the territory of the Mallians, an independent Indian tribe. The town was a Mallian town, and it was the Mallians who shot Alexander. They had, to be sure, intended to join the Oxydracae and to continue hostilities in concert with them, but Alexander had been too quick for them: he had come upon them by the desert route before either they or the Oxydracae could do anything to help each other. Nor is this the only point in which popular tradition is at fault: for instance, it is generally said that the final battle with Darius, in which he fled for his life until he was caught and killed by Bessus, with Alexander pressing hard upon his heels, took place at Arbela, while the previous battle was fought at Issus, and the one before that, the first – cavalry – battle, on the Granicus. Now it is true enough that there was a cavalry engagement on the Granicus and that the next encounter with Darius took place at Issus, but the historians have stated that Arbela was, at the largest estimate, seventy-five and, at the smallest, rather more than sixty miles from the scene of the final battle between Darius and Alexander. Actually, both Ptolemy and Aristobulus declare that this battle was fought at Gaugamela near the river Bumodus. Now Gaugamela was only a large village, not a town; it was not a well-known place, and the name itself has a somewhat unpleasing sound, and I fancy that it was for these reasons that the town of Arbela was allowed to have the honour of being the scene of this great battle.
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How absurd! If we are
expected to believe that the battle was fought at Arbela, miles and miles from its actual scene, we might as well pretend that the sea-fight at Salamis took place at the Isthmus of Corinth, or that the engagement at Artemisium in Euboea took place at Aegina or Sunium.

Again, all writers agree that Peucestas was one of the mea who held his shield over Alexander during those critical moments, but there is no agreement either about Leonnatus or Abreas.
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One story is that Alexander reeled and fell from a blow on the helmet with a club, but got to his feet again and was then shot in the breast, the arrow piercing his corselet; but Ptolemy, son of Lagus, states that he was shot in the breast only. The most glaring error of all is, in my opinion, the statement of some writers about Alexander’s campaigns to the effect that Ptolemy, son of Lagus, went up the ladder with Alexander, accompanied by Peucestas, and protected him with his shield when he lay wounded on the ground, there by winning the title of Saviour, whereas Ptolemy himself has made it quite plain that he was not present at this action at all, but was, at the time, commanding his own division in other actions elsewhere.
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I think I must be allowed this digression; these events are of the highest importance, and what I have said should help future historians to record less carelessly the facts connected with them.

For some time Alexander was kept where he was, under
medical treatment, and the first report to reach the base camp was that he had died of wounds. The bad news swiftly spread, and the whole army was in the deepest distress. Recovering from the first shock of grief, the men were plunged into helpless despair: who would be their new commander – as both in Alexander’s view and in their own a number of officers had an equal reputation for ability? How could they get safely home, encircled as they were by many warlike tribes, some of which had not yet submitted and seemed likely to fight hard for their freedom, while other seemed certain to revolt now that the dread of Alexander’s name was a thing of the past? They were, or so they thought, hemmed in by impassable rivers, and every difficulty seemed hopelessly insoluble without Alexander to get them through. When at last the news came that he was alive, they could hardly believe it, and were unable at first to persuade themselves that he would really recover. Then he wrote them a letter saying that he would soon be visiting them at headquarters, but such was their state of mind that they could not believe it was genuine, and most of them’ thought it had been forged by his officers and Guards.

Alexander’s first thought on learning of this state of affairs was to prevent a breakdown of discipline among the men; so at the first possible moment he had himself carried to the Hydraotes, and proceeded to travel downstream. The troops were in camp at the junction of the Hydraotes and the Acesines, where Hephaestion was in charge of the land forces and Nearchus had the fleet, and when his vessel had nearly reached them, he ordered the awning over the stern to be taken down so that everyone might see him. Even then the troops were incredulous, and supposed that what they saw on board was Alexander’s body. At last, however, the vessel was brought
in to the river-bank; Alexander raised a hand in greeting to the men, and immediately there was a shout of joy, and arms were stretched towards him in welcome or lifted to heaven in thankfulness. So unexpected was the sense of relief that many, despite themselves, burst into tears. As he was being moved from the ship, a party of his Guards brought him a stretcher; but he refused it and called for his horse. He mounted, and at the sight of him, once more astride his horse, there was a storm of applause so loud that the river-banks and neighbouring glens re-echoed with the noise. Near his tent he dismounted, and the men saw him walk; they crowded round him, touching his hands, his knees, his clothes; some content with a sight of him standing near, turned away with a blessing on their lips. Wreaths were flung upon him and such flowers as were then in bloom.