The Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  I lead the army along the shore by night march, over the pass called the Pillar of Jonah, encamping at the city of Myriandrus, from which we will cross the Amanus via the Syrian Gates and attack Darius. A terrific storm covers our advance; we halt a day to rest and dry our weapons and equipment. I am exactly where I want to be, on the very site I have raced to reach. Midnight: The column marshals for the night ascent. I take the fore, with the Royal Guardsmen, the archers, and the Agrianes, stripped of all kit save armor and weapons. Suddenly two riders gallop in from the north. One is a scout of our Paeonians whose proper name I can’t recall but whose nickname is “Terrier.” The other is a local lad of Trynna, a village near Issus.

  They have seen Darius’s army.

  It is in our rear.

  How can this be? I hold reconnaissance reports less than three days old, showing the army of Persia, two hundred thousand strong, encamped on the plain east of the mountains. Who can believe that a host of such scale will pack out from a field so ideal to its uses, broad and level, peerless for exploiting its strength in cavalry—a site that its commanders have doubtless reconnoitered months in advance and taken extraordinary pains to water, provision, even groom for combat? Who can credit that such a multitude, encumbered by its extravagant train, will abandon this capacious arena to hem itself within the cramped defiles of Cilicia?

  But it is true. Contrary to all sense and expectation, Darius’s army has decamped from Sochi and marched north, across the interior of the Amanus via the Lion’s Pass (of whose existence I stand in ignorance), and round the far flank from the one we had taken. The two armies have crossed in opposing directions within fifteen miles of each other, with neither aware of the other’s passage.

  Darius is behind us. He has cut us off. Or, more accurately, I have cut us off by my own impatience and overhaste.

  Worse news is to come. Certain that Darius is on the inland side of the Amanus, I have left our sick and wounded on the coast, at our rear camp below Issus. The enemy reaches this infirmary at about the time our main body approaches Myriandrus, twenty-five miles south. Our hospital site is defenseless. Darius’s troops overwhelm it.

  The king orders our fellows mutilated. Macedonians are painted with pitch and set afire; others are disemboweled. The Persians cut off noses and ears and hack off right hands. Here is butchery as only the barbarian of the East practices it. When report reaches us, I am beside myself with grief. This is my fault! My folly has produced this!

  Those of our sick and wounded who can get away flee south to overhaul us; the thirty-oared galley I send north to confirm Terrier’s report finds a dozen and brings them back. More arrive as day breaks, in such a state of wretchedness as cannot be described. Here appears Meleager’s brother Ephialtes, castrated, borne on a cart, with his cloak wadded into a compress and held with his good hand to contain his entrails. My dear mate Marsyas has two cousins among the mutilated; one carries the other, slung over his shoulder, having bled to death from the stump of his arm. The maimed men come up from the beaching ground, some able to walk, others who must be carried; they conceal their disfigurements with rags torn from their clothing, ashamed to be seen in such a ghastly case, though some bare their defacement, seeking to incite their comrades to revenge. The mangled men’s woe is nothing alongside that of their countrymen, who surround them now, calling upon Zeus Avenger and tearing their garments in fury and despair. Every maimed arrival relays the fate of others left behind, savaged by the foe. It seems no company is spared report of one of its dear ones, upon whom such atrocities have been worked as only the fiends of the East are capable. Walking among the mutilated, I come upon Eugenides, Payday, our gallant squadron commander of Bottiaea, whom we married in the great feast at Dium, whose bride, Elyse, gave me the dancing slippers. For moments he maintains a gallant front, then, succumbing to anguish, drops, clutching my knees. “Alexander! How can I school my son without an arm? How can I love my bride without a face?”

  At the sight of these butchered comrades, I enter a state of extremity such as I have never known. Better this had been done to me! Better I had endured such mutilation than to witness its infliction upon these, my beloved mates, whose trust in me has left them undefended against such horror. And nothing can ever set it right. No grant of gold or honor, not the righteous slaughter of those who have committed these atrocities, not the overthrow of Persia herself will ever make our comrades whole. It goes without saying that the army must turn about at once and give battle. Those of the maimed who can walk crowd about me now, pleading to be armed for the coming fight, to wield weapons with their left hands, or, failing that, to bear a shield or hold a horse. I will not permit this, fearing that their state will carry them apart from themselves, to seek death at the foe’s hands, and by such mischief work harm not only to themselves but to the order and cohesion of the advance.

  I feel my daimon at my shoulder. I have failed him too. Arrogance. Heedlessness. Overhaste.

  Now taste, Alexander, the bitter fruit of greatness and ambition.

  To you Necessity grants victory. Here is its toll. Eat it.

  Choke it down.

  My command post at Myriandrus stands above a crescent-shaped inlet. Below, the mutilated are being helped toward the houses of the locals, who have poured forth to offer succor, women and children as well as men, using their own beds as litters and carrying our comrades out of the dust and wind to tend them within doors. I peer down upon this grotesque spectacle. Parmenio stands at my shoulder; Craterus and Perdiccas hasten up. I see Ptolemy and Hephaestion, on horseback, working toward me through the crush. Sergeants and private soldiers press about me, countenances contorted in rage and grief. “Lead us, Alexander!” they cry. “Lead us against these butchers!”

  Fifteen

  PAYDAY

  AT ISSUS THE SEA IS ON OUR LEFT, foothills on the right. Setting out at dusk the night before, the column has fast-marched north along the coast road, retracing the route it took two days prior. We reach the summit of the Pillar of Jonah at midnight; I order the troops to snatch a few hours’ sleep among the crags, then pack them out at “army dawn,” meaning two hours before the real thing. By daybreak we’re descending to the plain. I keep the infantry ahead of the cavalry so the fast units don’t outrun the slow. The Royal Lancers range ahead as scouts. I have dispatched three flying platoons forward as well, comprised of the youngest and strongest troopers, mounted on the fastest horses. Their job is to get me prisoners to interrogate. In war great events turn on small moments and now one breaks in our favor. My dread all night has been that Darius has outgeneraled me; that he has learned somehow, from spies or natives, of our march south to attack him and has, with consummate speed and skill, countered by his own thrust north. Can this be true? One question I cannot answer: Why has my enemy taken his great army, which is made for fighting in open plains, and penned it here in the confines of these coastal hills?

  Descending from the Pillar, I get the answer. One of our grooms’ boys, Jason by name, has been among those in hospital at Issus when the camp was ravaged by Darius. This lad presents himself to me now, brought by his captain and colonel, to whom he has conveyed his tale. Amid the horror of those hours in the medical camp, the colonel reports, this child had not lost his head. He had ranged through the carnage, gathering intelligence of the Persians. How, I inquire of the lad, did he do this?

  “Just asked them, sire. Walked up to them. The sons of whores took me for a local bumpkin. I was able to find out where they had come from, what route they had taken, and where they were going.”

  “And what,” I ask, “prompted you to do this?”

  “I knew, my lord, that you would need this intelligence.” He reports that the Persians, in fact, had no knowledge of our army’s march south. They were as ignorant as we were; they believed our force still north at Mallus. The foe had crossed the mountain, aiming to attack us there. The whole thing has been a colossal double blunder, mine and Darius’s.

  “
Child,” I ask, “can you ride a horse?”

  “Since before I could walk.”

  “Then, by Zeus, you are now a cavalryman.” I command Telamon to find him a fast mount and an outfit to report to. “You shall dine at my shoulder, Jason, tonight when we offer thanksgiving for this victory.”

  Minutes later, scouts return with prisoners, who confirm our youngster’s report. Still I advance with caution. The pass runs right above the sea on the southern approach to Issus; if Darius has sent troops forward to seize the heights, he may fall upon us while we are still in column of march. I order all commanders to bring their units into line of battle as soon as the widening plain permits.

  I need not have worried. The Persians await us in defensive order on the sandy littoral where the river Pinarus twines to the sea. It is just past midday when we bring the foe in sight; the sun dazzles off the Gulf of Issus on the left.

  “Do you see him?”

  At my shoulder, Hephaestion points to the center of the enemy line. Even at a thousand yards Darius’s chariot cannot be missed—tall as a teamster’s cart and centered among the matched blacks of the Royal Horse Guard. We can’t make out the man—the range is too far—only his plumage. Still a thrill courses. At last my rival has taken the field! At last the Lord of Asia stands before us!

  Darius of Persia.

  For all his central post as King of Kings, Lord of the Lands, Ruler of the Empire from the Rising to the Setting Sun, I know less of him (as does the whole world) than of any common captain in the enemy horde. When he was a knight, before he became king, he challenged a giant of the Armenians and took him down in single combat. He is tall, men say, and by far the handsomest of all the Persian host. His brother Oxathres fights with the strength of ten, yet Darius is easily his better, on horse or afoot. All this may be fact or fable.

  What I do know is the loyalty my enemy commands, not only of his kin and countrymen but of the foreign troops, the Greeks, in his pay. The mercenaries’ leaders are first-rate men, Mentor’s son Thymondas, Patron of Phocis, and Glaucus of Aetolia. I have made overtures to all of them, offering double and triple pay to come over to me. They won’t budge. Darius has given them Persian brides and estates; he educates their children at court. That my rival prizes these officers shows he understands war; that he treats them with honor shows he understands men.

  Parmenio reins-in at my side now. He will command our left. Darius’s army is two hundred thousand, division upon division, stretching back as far as sight can carry, with another hundred thousand in local levy, noncombatants, and the general crowd. We are forty-three thousand. The foe’s cavalry, in tens of myriads, blankets the near bank of the Pinarus. The host of his foot are just now being drawn up in order, in a double phalanx behind the river. To the rear, for part of a mile, the plain is flat; then the slope climbs to rocky ridges. The ground underfoot is coastal scarp, carved by numerous washes and ravines at right angles to any Persian retreat. We know the ground; we came over it four nights ago.

  The field for combat is not wide. Between twenty-four and twenty-six hundred yards. Darius has cavalry to spread three times that. If he had stayed on the Syrian side of the mountains, he could have done so. Here on this cramped plain he cannot. Again my luck has held.

  An excellent officer named Protomachus, whom the men call “Pan Bread” for his girth, commands the Lancers, assigned this day as scouts. He canters to my colors now, with three of his lieutenants, returning from the fore.

  “What’s up front, Bread?”

  “A pretty party, sire.”

  The stream of the Pinarus is not deep (we forded it four days ago without wetting our thighs), but its banks are steep, particularly on the side the enemy holds, and studded with dense thickets of brambles. Where the bluffs are less than sheer, Protomachus reports, the foe has thrown up palisades.

  “Why is his cavalry on this side of the river?”

  “Covering the deployment of his foot troops, behind the river. The horse were pulling back across when we rode out.”

  This report is worth armies. It means Darius intends to defend; he has ceded the initiative to me.

  Left is the sea. Flat turf. Cavalry ground. Right: The gully-riven foothills ascend to a half-moon spur, onto which the foe’s light infantry hasten now in thousands, threatening our right. Though we stand two-thirds of a mile from the enemy front, this wing already outflanks us.

  Socrates Redbeard’s son Sathon spurs up from his own reconnaissance. He is seventeen and eager as a green hound; two of his father’s savviest sergeants ride cover for him. “The New Persians are here, lord!” The youth points toward two spreads of battle pennants on each wing of the Persian front. “See their serpents?”

  For months we have been hearing through spies and deserters of a new division, called the King’s Own, which has been raised, armed, and trained specifically to face us. We know nothing of this force except that it is infantry, all Persian, and its commander is Bubaces, Darius’s cousin and governor of Egypt. Now here they are. I ask their numbers and armament.

  “Forty thousand,” replies young Sathon without a breath of hesitation. “Spearmen, not archers. In two wings, four hundred across and fifty deep.”

  “Did you loiter to count each head?” I ask, teasing him.

  But he is earnest as an eel. “Their armor is helmets and mail coats, lord. Wicker shields, toe to crown, like Egyptians carry.” He points to the center of the enemy line. “The troops in between are hired Greeks, heavy infantry; Thymondas’s men, with Patron’s and Glaucus’s; we saw their colors at the fore. Their front is about eight hundred yards. I could not tell their depth because of folds in the ground.”

  The young man reports that enemy archers, about two thousand, have crossed to the near bank, fronting the foe’s left, at the seam between the New Persian spearmen and the wing cavalry and slingers on their left. “Medes,” reports Socrates’s boy, “in open order, three divisions deep, armed with the long cane bow.”

  “My friend,” I tell young Sathon, “your father never gave a keener report.” I send him back to his squadron, beaming.

  Our corps deploys in conventional order. Darius’s cavalry withdraws behind the river. These divisions transit, consolidating along the shore. They are twenty-five, thirty thousand. Their ranks extend rearward nearly a mile.

  My father used to say that attacking an enemy who outnumbers you is like wrestling with a bear: You have to get your dagger into his heart before the beast crushes you with his paws.

  I have set myself, since Chaeronea, to make each scheme of battle simpler than the one before. Already I see today’s clash—the form, that is, that Darius wishes it to take. And I see another clash. The form into which I will compel it.

  Darius’s vision is this: Right, along the sea (our left), the king will send his cavalry, outnumbering ours five to one, seeking to break through and round our left, to sweep back upon our sarissa phalanx in the center, whose attack, the enemy believes, will have foundered against the banks and brambles of the river and the palisades and massed formations of the King’s Own spearmen and his crack Greek mercenaries. On Darius’s left, from the range of hills, his light infantry will swarm down from the half-moon spur, taking our right on its unshielded side. No matter how hard we hit him frontally, the foe believes, we cannot break through, in such great depth are his ranks stacked, and so numerous are the regiments and divisions of his center and rear. Now, my friend, to our counters. Let us add another concept to your military vocabulary.

  Cover and uncover.

  A commander advances against the foe “covered”—that is, with his intentions masked, either by his configuration, his feints and misdirections, or by the ground itself and the elements. At the instant of attack, he “uncovers.”

  The reason a static defense is always vulnerable is that it is by definition uncovered. The defender by his posture reveals not only his intentions (as Darius does here, making it apparent that he will send his cavalry from h
is right, along the sea) but displays what he believes to be his strengths (his flanking left wing, the river bluffs and palisades, his massed heavy infantry).

  The attacker, in contrast, uncovers nothing.

  The attacker maintains the option to counter every move the defender has, by his dispositions, uncovered.

  At Issus our right wing advances over broken ground—ravines and washes of such depth as to swallow entire divisions. The ruggedness of this terrain is why Darius has set only a handful of light cavalry to defend this wing; he believes the ground unridable by heavy squadrons. But these gorges will let me cover. I can dispatch units left or right, screened by this rugged ground, and Darius cannot see them. This I do now. To counter the foe’s strength in horse along the sea, I send all eight squadrons of Thessalian heavy cavalry to join our mercenary and allied horse already in place on this wing. I instruct Parmenio, commanding our left, to screen the movement of this body by folds of ground and by directing it to pass behind the phalanx. The Thessalians’ role will be to strike the Persian cavalry from the flank when they come round our left.

  With me I keep all eight squadrons of Companion Cavalry under Philotas, the four squadrons of Royal Lancers under Protomachus, and the squadron of Paeonians under Ariston. We will attack from the right.

  Out front of his left, our right, Darius has set lines of archers—the skirmishers reported by Sathon, Redbeard’s son. Clearly these bowmen will loose their volleys upon any element advancing against them and the infantry massed in their rear, then withdraw through the files of these troops when they become hard-pressed.

  Note the uncoveredness of this disposition and the advantage it cedes the attacker. The enemy believes this his strongest post. That is why he has not palisaded it. In fact it is his weakest and most vulnerable.

  Why? Because archers in massed formation are worthless against heavy cavalry. No bow can range effectively beyond a hundred yards (here, with the wind off the sea, twenty-five is more plausible), and cavalry at the gallop can cross a hundred yards in a count of seven. How many volleys will these bowmen get off before they stampede in terror back against their own comrades, throwing them into disorder?