by H A CULLEY
-X-
The part of the valley that Alexander had chosen was narrow enough to be held by his phalanx of hoplites. Unfortunately, being militia, they could only execute the basic manoeuvers and were armed with the twelve foot spear instead of the longer sarissa. His right flank would be anchored on the river and he sent some of his scouts over to the north bank to make sure that, as had been reported, all the Maedi were on the south side. The lower slopes of the steep hills that lined the valley were defended by his light spearmen, who were also there to guard his peltasts. He had sent his heavy cavalry off the previous afternoon to spring a surprise on the Maedi, taking a leaf out of his father’s book. He had been impressed with the advice that Philotas had given him and he had promoted the twenty one year old son of Parmenion to hipparchos and placed him in command of the cavalry. He prayed to Apollo that he didn’t let him down.
He and his dozen companions took up station slightly above the light infantry on the left flank, from where they could see the battle unfold in the valley floor below. Alexander had taken a gamble. He had no reserves and so he was depending on his scratch force to hold until he could spring his surprise. At any rate, the die was cast and there was nothing further he could do.
As soon as the Maedi came into sight it was apparent that the Macedonian army strung out across the valley was unexpected. They hadn’t bothered to send out scouts and so the immediate scenes in their ranks were chaotic. Most milled about in confusion whilst the group of horsemen in the middle of the column, presumable the leaders, tried to force their way through the press of infantrymen to assess the situation for themselves.
If the majority were uncertain what to do, not so the young hotheads near the front of the column. They were evidently eager to blood their spears for the first time and a group of several thousand started to jump and shout, psyching themselves up to attack the army confronting them. Suddenly about three thousand sprinted out of the general mass heading for the centre of the phalanx.
Alexander watched anxiously at the sight of the bloodthirsty youths charging towards his hoplites. Most of them had trained for battle, after a fashion, but few had actually experienced one. The veterans were all with Philip in Thrace. The young men of the Maedi, some as young as thirteen he discovered later, crashed into the phalanx; and suddenly stopped. The long spears of his hoplites skewered the enemy as they arrived and, although the centre of the phalanx bowed slightly, it held firm. Some of the Maedi managed to inflict a few casualties on the hoplites by climbing over their dead comrades and attacking the front rank of hoplites whilst they were still trying to pull their spears out of those they had killed, but not many.
Then, as suddenly as the attack had begun, it was all over. The adrenaline rush which had fueled the insane attack faded and now the boys and youths realised that they had lost a third of their number for nothing. They turned and retreated to face the wrath of their chieftains who had now reached the front on the column.
Once they had gone, the first three ranks of the centre of the phalanx moved to the rear and fresh men took their place. The dead and badly wounded tribesmen now formed a useful obstacle but it could be used as a springboard by the more agile attackers. Alexander had read of men running up piles of the dead to leap over the first rows of hoplites and land amongst those further back. That could well be unsettling and he didn’t want to risk it so he sent Nicanor with a message to the senior chilarch commanding the phalanx ordering him to pull back for ten paces. Once that was done the heap of bodies would no longer be of use to the Maedi but it would break up their next charge, forcing those in the centre outwards and so disrupting the flanks.
The chieftains had now established some sort of order amongst their warriors, though they still looked to Alexander like an undisciplined rabble. Their archers now advanced into range and prepared to fire at high trajectory into the middle of the phalanx. Clearly they had forgotten about the peltasts on the slopes above them and Alexander now gave the order for his own archers to shoot down at them. Only the nearest third were in range but the sudden arrival of a thousand arrows in their midst caused carnage and several hundred were hit. A second volley followed less than a minute later causing hundreds more to fall. The rest, even those well out of range panicked and they all fled back to their main army.
The Maedi were preparing for a massed charge against the phalanx when some of them noticed the black smoke rising from the area where they had left their baggage train. Those at the rear could see that their women and children were being slaughtered by Macedonian cavalrymen and word of what was happening spread to the rest like wildfire.
Without waiting for orders, the men at the rear of the disorganised mass of warriors started to run back to protect their families. It was what the Philotas was waiting for. Abandoning the attack on the baggage train, his men formed into several wedges and slowly cantered towards the men running towards them. Many of the latter hesitated as soon as they saw hundreds of horsemen moving towards them in formation but others pressed on.
The cavalry wedges sliced into the approaching tribesmen, spearing the first wave and the using their swords to hack down at the rest. Unarmoured spearmen in no sort of formation were no match for the cavalrymen, despite their far greater numbers and, although a few Macedonians were pulled from their horses and some tribesmen managed to spear the odd horseman or his mount, most were cut down without inflicting any damage on the cavalrymen.
Those who survived the charge carried on to the baggage train and joined the women and children in fleeing back up the valley the way they had come. Meanwhile the cavalry had continued on to attack the panic-stricken rear of the enemy.
On the hill Alexander gave the order and Marsyas blew his karas to order the advance. In the valley below the phalanx marched forward, trampling over the heap of bodies and then adjusting their line once they were past the obstacle. They approached the front of the Maedi army in silence, lowering their spears as they got close. Initially the tribesmen offered a spirited defence against the hoplites but when the peltasts moved along the hillside so that they could shoot into the center of the mass of men, they broke.
With the cavalry attacking their rear, the hoplites their front and the light infantry now assaulting their right flank, they were forced into a tight mass and herded towards the river. With nowhere else to go hundreds were pushed into the water and were carried away and drowned. Only a few made it to the far bank, where the Macedonian light cavalry were waiting.
By early afternoon it was all over. Alexander had won a decisive victory and destroyed the Maedi. Of the fifteen thousand warriors who had gone into battle, six thousand were dead or badly wounded and seven thousand had surrendered. Of the other two thousand, some had escaped but most of them had been swept away by the river. A few hundred women, children and old men had also died, but Alexander’s orders to Philotas had been to cause the Maedi to rush back to the defence of their families, not to slaughter the innocent needlessly.
-X-
‘What do you think?’
Alexander, Hephaestion, Philotas and the senior chilarch of the hoplites, an elderly man called Bartholomaios, sat on their horses studying the city of Iamphorynna. It sat on a low hill above the River Strymon some hundred miles from where the Maedi had been defeated. Although Alexander had been reinforced by another thousand men in the days after the battle, he had needed to send the same number to escort the captured warriors and most of the women and children to the slave markets. However, he had kept a few thousand of the latter with him for reasons only he knew.
Reportedly thirty thousand Dacians had settled in the city and another ten thousand farmed the surrounding area. If they got warning that the Macedonians were in their area they would flee into the city. So far they had only discovered Maedi on their side of the river and they had fled into the hills at the army’s approach. They wouldn’t tell the Dacians of Alexander’s presence.
Even if there were forty thousand of them in the c
ity by the time he got there, he could expect a quarter of them to be warriors, so the two sides would have roughly equal numbers. However, they sat behind the defences of Iamphorynna.
It wasn’t a city on the lines of Pella or any of the Greek cities he was familiar with. It looked more like an overgrown village. From their vantage point on a hill across the other side of the river they could see down into the city and, although it was in the distance, they could make out rows of timber houses and hovels made of rough cut timber with earth roofs. The only two sizeable buildings were the large hall house in the centre and what appeared to be a temple. There was an open space in the middle of the city which Alexander supposed must be the agora.
Refugees were still arriving from the countryside and that’s what gave him an idea.
Philotas was the first to reply to the prince’s question.
‘It would all depend on the timing. I agree that it is the one way we have of taking this place quickly, without artillery that is. We could do with Iphitos and his lithoboloi.’
‘Yes, well. They’re in Thrace with my father, so we have to make do with what we have.’
‘Philotas is right though, it is all dependent on getting the timing correct,’ Bartholomaios added.
‘Very well. Let’s go and brief the others.’
With that he turned Bucephalus’s head and they rode back down the hill to where the army waited. The first problem was going to be crossing to the other side of the river. One of the reasons that they had remained undetected so far was the fact that the Dacians were only present on the far side of the Strymon.
Whilst the army marched further north out of sight from the city behind a low range of hills, the scouts searched for a crossing over the Strymon. At first they had no success; the river wasn’t particularly wide at this point but it ran swift and deep.
After two days the scouts finally found a point where the river widened out and one of them managed to cross on his horse. The water was three feet deep in the centre but the current was still strong enough for there to be a risk that a man on foot would be swept away. They had therefore strung two ropes across so that the infantry could safely cross between them.
It took two days to get the whole army across and then they headed back towards Iamphorynna. Now they had to be careful not to be discovered. Alexander’s whole plan depended on surprise. His scouts slew everyone they came across to keep their approach secret, but they stripped the corpses and kept the clothes.
About twenty miles north of the city a group of thirty Macedonian cavalry came across a party who were hunting wild game. Luckily one of the scouts spotted them as they were busy strapping two deer onto packhorses in the middle of a large clearing in some woods. Half of the patrol of thirty men quietly rode through the trees to the other side of the clearing whilst the rest spread out ready to charge.
When the tetrachos in charge estimated that his men must be in position by now he gave the order and his fifteen men charged into the clearing and started to kill the Dacians. There were about twenty of them in all, including some boys leading the packhorses and the dog handlers. They didn’t try and fight but fled towards the far side of the clearing. That was when the second half of the tetrachium appeared.
It was all over in a few minutes. The Macedonians had killed a dozen of the men and taken a couple of youths and five boys prisoner.
-X-
The group of Dacians approached the city just as night was falling. They were a hunting party who had five deer slung over the backs on horses but the gates had shut for the night.
‘Come on, let us in. It’s only just after dusk,’ one of the younger Dacians called up to the sentries on top of the wall by the gate.
‘Sorry, my friend. You know the rules. The gates won’t open again until dawn. You’ll have to camp out there for the night. At least it doesn’t look as if you’ll starve.’
‘Surely it won’t hurt just to let us in?’ another of the young men asked.
‘Listen you arsehole, I’ve told you we’re not going to so shut up and piss off.’
Grumbling quietly the thirty men moved along the wall away from the gate and set up camp.
‘Well done, you two,’ Philotas, who was leading the group, told the two Dacians. ‘Alexander will keep his promise and give you your freedom when this is all over.’
One of the boys, the son of a chieftain who had been taught some Greek, translated this into Dacian.
‘Thank you, but freedom is no good to us if we no longer have a tribe or a home. We’ll not be forgiven for our betrayal.’
Philotas considered this for a moment before replying, once it had been translated in the boy’s rather halting Greek.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that you are all looked after. If necessary you can join my light cavalry.’
Philotas was by no means sure that he would be able to keep his promise. He had been promoted by Alexander, still a sixteen year old ephebe himself, for this campaign. He could well find himself back as a junior officer in charge of a tetrachium after this was all over. He comforted himself with the thought that, even if he couldn’t find posts for the two Dacian youths and five boys, his father, Parmenion, would probably do so if he asked him.
The twenty three Macedonians and seven Dacians camped fifteen yards from the wall mid-way between the main gate and the corner tower. Having heard the exchange at the gate, the sentries wouldn’t find anything unusual about their presence and, once the camp fire was lit, the nearby palisade was thrown into even deeper darkness.
Carefully and quietly a small group of men slipped away from the campsite and went to work on a section of the palisade four yards or so wide. The palisade was fifteen feet high made up of timber posts lashed together by bindings, each tying one post to the next in three places. Each post was also sunk into the ground to a depth of about three feet. The top binding was ten feet from the ground so they severed these first, a boy standing on the shoulders of a man to cut the ropes with a sharp knife.
Philotas wasn’t entirely sure that giving the Dacians weapons was such a brilliant idea but they seem to have thrown in their lot with the Macedonians. Once that was done they did the same with the next lot of bindings a yard lower. This time, however, they replaced the ropes by twine. It would hold the palisade in place pro tem but it would break as soon as pressure was applied.
Once the bottom bindings were cut, they slowly dug away at the earth where the timbers entered the ground until they reached the base of each one. They last thing that they did, and the most risky, was to firm a small pyramid using three men as the base. Another then climbed onto their shoulders and a boy clambered onto his shoulders so that he could loop a stout rope over each of the timber poles. Each loop was pushed down until it rested where the parapet met the palisade. All this had to be done in between the regular passing of the sentries as they patrolled the wall. Now all they had to do was wait until dawn and pray to Zeus that none of the sentries noticed the loops of rope.
The sun had just touched the tops of the hills to the east as it climbed into the morning sky when the Macedonian cavalry appeared from the trees to the north of the city. Behind them marched four thousand hoplites and then two thousand light spearmen. The peltasts ran as fast as they could, fanning out on each flank of the advancing army so that they could keep the heads down of their Dacian counterparts on top of the palisade.
As it turned out, the Dacians had been caught completely by surprise and very few archers or other peltasts made it to the top of the palisade before it was too late. Philotas and his men started to run towards the oncoming cavalrymen, pretending to be begging for mercy. Then they turned and heaved on the ropes they had put in place the previous night. A section of the palisade came crashing down, spilling the Dacians who had been standing on the parapet at that point onto the ground. Philotas and his men quickly killed them and then ran over the fallen timbers through the gap and flattened themselves against another section of palisade
as the horsemen came thundering through the gap and into the city.
Philotas’ men quickly tore off their distinctive Dacian clothing and each changed into a Greek exomis, linothrax and helmet to save being mistaken for the enemy by their fellow Macedonians. They had brought the uniforms with them in sacks and even had chitons for the Dacians to change into.
By now the Macedonian infantry were storming through the gap and, when the last one had passed them, they calmly walked back out again, their job done, retrieved their horses from where they had tethered them a little distance away, and rode back to the Macedonian campsite to report to Alexander.
The prince was watching the assault on the town with some satisfaction. His orders had been to sack the place and kill its inhabitants. He knew better than to enter the city whilst that was going on. His men would be maddened by blood-lust and fueled by any wine that they could find and he had no desire to witness murder, rape and pillage.
‘Well done, Philotas. You and your men did well, especially your Dacians. I shan’t forget my promise to them. For now the two youths can join your light cavalry and the boys can join my household. I can’t promise anything but I will at least ask my father to confirm your promotion to hipparchos.’
‘I am grateful, kyrios.’
The prince smiled at him. ‘My friends call me Alexander. I hope that you will serve me as faithfully as your father has served my father.’
-X-
Alexander stayed at the city for three months. During that time the dead were burned and the city practically raised to the ground. A new Macedonian city started to rise in its place - its walls made of stone - and Greek houses replaced the hovels of Iamphorynna. Alexander also gave the city a new name – Alexandropolis, naming it after himself.
Alexander sent his light cavalry far and wide, to Illyria, Thrace, Epirus, Thessaly, Chalkidike and Macedon to encourage the poor to come to his new city as colonists, promising them land and a bounty, taken from the Dacian treasure he had captured. Many of his peltasts and light spearmen, being from the poorest classes in their home cities, elected to stay too.