The Virtues of War

by Steven Pressfield

  At the peak of the melee, Darius takes flight. I do not see him. The realization comes only as we mount—Hephaestion and I, Telamon, Black Cleitus, and the leading wedge of the Royal Squadron—to the promontory where the king’s battle standards still stand. His chariot remains, bowled over onto one side. For a moment I fear that the king has been slain. Fury nearly fells me, that another has stolen my glory.

  “Darius!” I hear my voice cry. I spur about the eminence, mates will tell me later, in a state of near frenzy, while comrades on horseback call for any man who has sighted the king, and others on foot overturn bodies of men and horses, lest Darius, fallen, be trapped or concealed beneath. Suddenly Demetrius, a knight of my Bodyguard, reins-in before me.

  “The king is fled, Alexander!” He points rearward, toward the Persian camp. “Men have seen him, on horseback, making his whip sing!”

  A second wave of rage seizes me, replaced in moments by a cold, incandescent clarity. I understand the political necessity of Darius’s flight. The game is Kill the King; who can fault a monarch for seeking to preserve the principal of the realm? Simultaneously I am stricken with outrage, not so much that the foe, by his flight, has robbed me of my glory, to slay or capture him, but that he could flee at all. Do you understand?

  He is a king!

  He must stand and fight!

  The act of making off is, to me, such an inversion of the knightly ideal as to constitute not felony but sacrilege. By Zeus, the man’s wife and mother are present in the Persian camp! His young son is here to witness his valor!

  Further, by taking to his heels, Darius abandons the valiant hearts of his army, men who bleed and die even now in his name and for his honor. When these divisions learn their king has forsaken them, they will break apart and be slaughtered in the rout his act of self-preservation has rendered inevitable.

  Telamon reins-in at my side. He has taken a lance thrust in the bowl of his hip; blood soaks the linen of his saddlecloth. Bucephalus has simultaneously trodden on a spike; he can barely hobble. I take Telamon’s horse, ceding my own to his care. My fastest riders, I send spurring to Parmenio, whose squadrons are enduring hell on the wing by the sea.

  “Shout that the king of Persia has fled. Let the foe see your joy. Even if the enemy cannot understand your words, he will take your meaning—and our own men will recover courage, knowing that victory will soon be ours.”

  Wounded as he is, Telamon makes to join the pursuit. “Stay here,” I command him, “and don’t do anything stupid.”

  We chase Darius five miles to the enemy camp. The fall of the empire is so close, I can feel it in my palm. The camp itself is pandemonium. My pursuit party is the Royal Squadron and half the Amphipolitan, with Hephaestion, Black Cleitus, and my agema—four hundred men. Around us swarm a hundred thousand of the foe. The spectacle of flight defies depiction. The few outleading tracks are mobbed already by multitudes of noncombatants, confounded with the rabble of provincial levy, who have bolted in tens of thousands from the field. Behind these surge even greater throngs of line-unit Persian troops and allies.

  “Find the king!” Cleitus is shouting. “Bring Alexander his purple balls!”

  It is an art on disordered fields, the seizing of prisoners and their unceremonious terrorization and interrogation. Individuals are yanked off their feet by cavalrymen at the gallop and dragged by their hair or heels (hence the slang “dragooned”) until they spit up some “true trash.” From a eunuch of the camp, we learn that Darius has bolted on a racing stallion, escorted by his brother Oxathres and a company of Kinsman Cavalry. The fugitives spur north now. Their start on us is a count of a thousand.

  We pursue the king till two hours after dark. Fifteen miles, till the night has gone so black that the road can barely be followed on foot, and our mounts are so blown that we must rest them till an hour short of midnight before they can stand our weight to trek back. Throughout all this period, men, women, children, wagons, carts, and pack animals flee past us in the dark.

  Darius has gotten away.

  By midnight we have retraced our track to the hills above the Persian camp. The slaughter of the enemy surpasses the worst I had imagined. With Darius’s flight, his army has broken and run. As I had feared, the ravines have proved man-killers. Thousands have expired, trampled beneath their comrades’ rush. Gullies the size of small stadiums are piled with corpses. When you see such masses of dead, the cause is never hostile action; rather, the wretched fellows have been overrun by their own mates, as will happen in a mob fleeing fire in an indoor assembly, when multitudes stifle in the press.

  The Persian camp is five miles north of the battlefield. When we reach it, on our dead-out horses, our men are looting it.

  Despair grips me. I seize the first fellow I see, a sergeant of allied cavalry called “Gunnysack”; he has so many brass lamps stuffed in his cloak, he rattles like a tinker’s ass. “What do you call this?” I demand in outrage.

  “My fortune, sire!” And he jigs with glee.

  I am past fury. I spur down into the camp. Burning wagons and tents afire illuminate a spectacle of pillage and rapine. The site had been protected by a ditch and palisade; these have been overwhelmed in our men’s stampede for treasure. Nothing stops them. Not the sight of me, nor the shouts and orders of my officers.

  “Find Parmenio. Locate every commander. Bring them to me.”

  The Persian camp is a storehouse of plunder. Riches in such quantities as our men have never seen—horses and women, stacked arms, suits of mail, golden vases, bags of money meant as soldiers’ pay—drive our fellows to a pitch of avarice nothing can contain. Prisoners in thousands have been taken, I see, confined not in one central compound, as would constitute propriety or custom of war, but impounded individually by each man of Macedon—as many captives as he can wrangle into one pack, he and his mates, and hold for ransom or just to strip their arms and goods. Wives and mistresses of the foe are dragged, shrieking, from their tents. The strumpets of the whores’ camp, a hardier breed, are not only not resisting the Macedonians but are actively recruiting their commerce, to which call my countrymen fervently comply, purchasing the wenches’ favors with jeweled rings they have just ripped from the fingers of soldiers dead or in flight, then backing the bawds up against pavilion posts, bending them over axletrees, or simply hurling them to the earth and ravishing them in that posture. The victors rampage from tent to tent, draping themselves with robes and vestments, earrings, bracelets, gem-encrusted swords and daggers, so that the spectacle seems, to look upon it, as if kings and priests ran riot and not common infantry.

  Hephaestion reckons my state; he moves to steady me. “What are you thinking, Alexander?”

  I take in the barbarous demonstration.

  “That everything I have loved and labored for is folly.”

  Parmenio, Craterus, and Perdiccas have reached me now. The other commanders haven’t the bowels to show their faces. In the quarter of the camp beneath us, we witness a phenomenon I have never seen: men wrecking their own loot out of spite and malice. Priceless urns and vases our fellows smash apart, baying with pleasure. Busts, furniture, statuary—the victors haul these forth and bash them to splinters. I see one soldier clutch an exquisite ebony chair; Hephaestion cries to him but the man beats it apart with his shield and looks up grinning, as if to say, See, we are conquerors; we are beyond law or consequence.

  When at last my generals assemble, I command them to fall-in the brigades for training.

  They stare as if I have gone mad.

  “March kit and weapons. Now!”

  No one believes me serious. They think that fatigue and loss of blood have disordered my senses, or that I speak in jest, to command that the regiments form up for parade.

  “Alexander, please”—Parmenio is the only one with the guts to speak—“the men are exhausted!”

  “They were not exhausted when they disgraced Macedon’s name. They were not exhausted when they shamed their colors and their
country.”

  It takes the count of six hundred to round up the troops. I transit on horseback before their riot-disordered mass.

  “This day will be acclaimed a great victory! Indeed it was. Until you fouled and polluted it!”

  It is impossible in the dark to drag out the allies and the hired troops, but, beneath Parmenio, Craterus, Perdiccas, and the others, I succeed in making all six brigades of the Macedonian phalanx fall-in, along with Nicanor’s regiments of the Royal Guardsmen. I will not subject the horses, who are blameless, to this scourging, but I command Philotas to stand the Companions by, in order, men in full kit, including the Royal Lancers and Paeonians, and Parmenio the Thessalians.

  “Corps sergeant major, array the troops in march order.”

  I drill the men as if they were raw recruits. The grooms and whores of the Persians, the sutlers and best boys, even the captives form up, of their own, at the margins of the plain as our colonels and masters-at-arms, at my command, take the phalanx through. Advance at the upright. Advance at the slope. A soldier bawls a curse, anonymous in the ranks. I halt the entire army.

  “Sarissas at the attack!”

  I make them elevate their lances two-handed. The weapon is eighteen feet long. With blade and butt spike, it weighs seventeen pounds.

  “Speak up! Which of you sons of whores has more to say to me?”

  We resume. I have drilled, myself, hundreds of hours with the eighteen-footer. I know every posture that produces pain, and how to make that pain excruciating. A man falls out. I double the pace. “Let the next man drop! We will stay here all night!”

  My countrymen hate me now. They would drink my blood. I sign to the colonels, who pass the command to sergeant majors and sergeants. By the left flank, march! Right flank. Left oblique. To the rear.

  “Have I forbidden plunder? By Zeus, is that the first standing order of this army or not?”

  Men are puking now. Snot runs from their noses. Spit froths down their beards; sweat drenches their backs. The wine they have guzzled heaves back up their gorges and foams over their stinking gums.

  “Are you soldiers? I called you my brothers. Together, I believed, no force on earth could stand against us. Yet we have met that force this day. It is our own wicked and ungovernable hearts!”

  When a man falls, I order his mates to carry him. Let a fellow groan, I go after him with the flat of my sword. I drill the regiments till their backs break. At last, when even the wounded gimp onto the field to aid their faltering comrades, I call it off. Sergeant majors order the troops to fall-in before me. My rage has not abated one iota.

  “When I saw you fight today, my countrymen, I saw men I would lead with pride against the phalanxes of hell. I saw comrades by whose side I would lay down my life with joy. To count myself among your corps, I felt, would be renown eternal and fame everlasting. Victory! Before today, I believed it to be everything. But you have shown me my error.”

  I stare into faces scarlet with exhaustion and black with shame. By perdition’s flare, I will bind them to me. By the rivers of hell, I will make them mine.

  “You have disgraced the most glorious triumph in the history of Western arms. You have brought shame upon yourselves and upon this corps. But most of all, you have dishonored me. For a man hearing of this day will not say, ‘This rape was performed by Timon,’ or ‘That outrage was the work of Axiochus.’ No, he will say these acts were committed by men serving under Alexander. Your misdeeds have blackened my name, for you are me, and I am you.

  “Do we march for plunder, brothers? Is gold our aim, like merchants? By Zeus, I will cut my own throat if you tell me you believe that. Is it enough to rout the foe, to prove ourselves the greater brutes? Then build my pyre. I will kindle it myself before yielding to such want of imagination and such deficit of desire.

  “Fame imperishable and glory that will never die—that is what we march for! To light that flame that death itself cannot quench. That I will achieve, and by the sword of Almighty Zeus, you will work it with me, every one of you!”

  Not a man moves or breathes. I hate them and love them, as they love and hate me, and both of us know it.

  “Brothers, I will suffer your crimes this day out of my love for you only. But hear me now and sear these words into your hearts: That man who disgraces this army again, I will not chastise as I do this night, as a father punishes his sons with care and concern for their character, but will banish that man from me and from this company forever.”

  This thoroughly chastens them.

  “Now get out of my sight, the lot of you, except officers and generals. To you, I have more to say.”

  I assemble my marshals at the rear of the camp. The scourging I visit upon them, I shall never repeat, save to note that not one would have hesitated to exchange lashes of the whip for the lacerations these words carved into his soul.

  Finished, I turn my fury on myself. “Ultimate responsibility for this debacle lies with me. I have not impressed sufficiently upon you, my officers, the code of chivalry by which I expect you and this army to conduct yourselves. Therefore I shall take nothing from the spoils. That portion that would have been mine will be distributed to our wounded and mutilated comrades and donated to raise memorials for our fallen.”

  I dismiss my officers and retire to the shelter that has been prepared for me, instructing my Pages to admit no one. I sleep all night and all morning, rising only to sacrifice on behalf of the army and to instruct the knight Leonnatus—Love Locks—to see to the comfort and security of the ladies of the Persian royal family, including Darius’s wife Stateira and the queen mother, Sisygambis, who have been captured in their pavilion of the camp.

  At noon Perdiccas begs entrance to me. The men are stricken with remorse, he declares; he implores me to take pity on them. I dismiss him angrily. Telamon is sent in next, and Craterus after him. Last, Hephaestion enters, with a look to the Pages that says he will endure no measure to banish him, no matter what instructions they have received from me. He entreats me in the name of my love for him to take only one step outside. Grudgingly I assent.

  There before the tent, spread over acres, lies all the loot the men have taken: golden cups, robes of purple, chariots, women, suites of furniture. My countrymen surround the site in tens of thousands. Craterus addresses me in the men’s name. “This is everything, Alexander, down to the last earring and amulet. Take it all. Leave us nothing. But please, do not hide your face from us.”

  I turn coldly to Hephaestion. “Is this what you brought me out here for?”

  I start back to the tent. My friend catches my arm. He begs me not to harden my heart to our comrades. Can’t I see how much they love me?

  I glance from face to face; grizzled sergeants, private soldiers, senior officers. Never have I beheld expressions of such abjection. Men are weeping. I am moved to tears myself, which I contain only by supreme effort of will. I am still furious at my countrymen. I will not let them off the hook.

  At last, Socrates Redbeard comes forward—brow and limbs bound in bandages—he who, of all the army, has borne the sternest use and conducted himself with the loftiest integrity.

  “Have we not been true to you, Alexander? Have we not bled for you, and died for you? Have we failed you ever, or served you with anything less than all our hearts?”

  I can no longer contain my tears.

  “What more do you want of us?” Redbeard’s voice cracks with emotion.

  “I want you to be . . . magnificent.”

  A sigh breaks from the army entire.

  “You want us to be you,” Redbeard cries.

  “Yes!”

  “But we cannot! We are only men!” And their misery ascends to yet more excruciating apogees.

  All my fury has fled.

  “Can you believe I am angry with you, Socrates? Or with you, my friends?”

  I can never forgive myself for causing the mutilation of our sick and wounded. For letting Darius escape, so that we must pursue a
nd fight him again. For rendering our triumph imperfect.

  “My rage is at myself alone. I have failed you. . . .”

  “No!” the army cries. “Never!”

  Redbeard steps toward me. I open my arms. A sound goes up from the host, which is part moan and part cry of joy. The men sweep round me in a colossal press; we sob, together, as if our hearts would break. Not a fellow, it seems, will tear himself away until his hand has touched mine and he knows he has been received again within his king’s graces.

  Nine months later, in Egypt, I am hailed as Horus, divine son of Ra and Ammon. Rapturous throngs line the thoroughfares; I reign as Pharaoh and Defender of Isis and Osiris. But I am not the same man I was before this clash along the Pinarus.

  The commander-at-arms manipulates the ungovernable and the unpredictable. In battle, he directs the unknowable amid the unintelligible. This has always been clear to me. But it was not until the mutilation of our comrades at Issus, not until the flight of Darius and the riot of our army, not till then that I reckoned truly how little dominion even he wields, who calls himself victor and conqueror.

  Book Six

  PATIENCE

  Seventeen

  THE SEA AND THE STORM

  THIS DAY I HAVE MET AND SPOKEN for the first time with Porus, our rival across this river of India.

  You watched from shore, Itanes, with the army. The delegations met on Porus’s royal barge, at midchannel. This was his idea, as was the council itself—in response, I imagined, to the rapid progress of our work of diverting the river, and, additionally, the arrival of nine hundred of our transport vessels, carted overland in sections from the Indus. I welcomed this invitation to riverborne parley. The air would be cooler on the water, and I admired the spectacle of it, although the dignity of the expedition suffered a bit of a drubbing, as you saw, when our ferry snapped a line halfway across and we went spooling downriver like the cat that fell into the vat. The craft dispatched to our rescue were manned by Indian boatmen, all over seventy years of age, honored for their seniority, so that our deputies, myself included, had to strip naked and plunge into the current to retrieve the line, then haul in, hand over hand, Macedonians at one end, Indians at the other. Both parties were drenched to the skin by the time they gained the barge, where they were welcomed with much good humor (and dry again in minutes, with the heat of the country, as were our garments spread over the rails), and, as all had been shorn of excessive dignity along with our clothes, the conference seemed off to an auspicious start.