“Perhaps we have succeeded too well. That may be our malady. This is heaven’s trick on us, to sap our will, at the hour when we stand on the threshold of the ultimate. Press on with me! Brothers, give me one more push! The Shore of Ocean cannot be far. When we stand there at the Limits of the Earth—and we shall—then by heaven I will not merely satisfy you but will surpass the utmost hopes of good things that every man has! I will send you home, or lead you there myself, while those who remain, I shall make the envy of those who depart.”
I finish. No one answers. I see the corps’s terror of my wrath.
“Speak, my friends. Do not fear me. You break my heart if you do.”
Silence interminable. Not one can raise his glance from the dirt.
At last, Coenus advances a pace. My heart catches with grief. Coenus, fearless in the face of every foe, now must employ this surpassing valor only to address me.
My old friend speaks:
“Seeing that you, my lord, do not desire to coerce the Macedones as a despot, but rather to persuade them or be persuaded by them, I shall speak not on behalf of my brother officers, whom you have laded so with honors and treasure that we will follow you anywhere, but on behalf of the men of the army, who have no voice save ours offered for them, and upon whom falls most heavily the burdens of campaign.”
Coenus observes that after Persepolis, many believed the army had come too far. But in the seasons succeeding, we have come three times farther. Our force has brought into subjection as many people and twice as much territory as it had, even in the conquest of Persia! We have fought twenty-four more battles and prosecuted nine more sieges. What has become of the army?
“Surely you cannot fail to remark, Alexander, how great were the numbers of Greeks and Macedonians who set out with you at the start of this campaign, and how few survive intact to this day. Many you have sent home with wealth and honors, seeing that they were worn out with exertions, and you were right to do so. Others you established in newly founded cities, giving them land and wives; this was well too, for you perceived that they no longer had their hearts in the expedition. How many others have been slain by the foe, or fallen of wounds and illness, or been invalided from excessive toil? We have come eleven thousand miles and fought every foot of the way! Of those who survive, few enjoy their bodily strength, and their spirit is even more impoverished. Each man longs to see his mother and father, if they are still alive, and his wife and children. He yearns for sight of his native land. Is this wrong? Has he not earned it? Is this not indeed your own intention for him, when by your generosity you raise him from poverty to substance? As for my own case, you furloughed me after the Granicus, with the other newly married men, permitting me by your great kindness to overwinter at home with my bride. That was eight years ago. I have a son I have never seen. Will I perish in your service, Alexander, without once looking upon my child’s face?”
Coenus urges me to take the army home in person, to look again upon my mother, settle affairs in Greece; then, if I so wish, I may mount a second expedition, with new men in place of old, fresh instead of worn. “How much more ardently will these young and eager troops follow you, Alexander, when they see that the partners in your earlier toils have been brought home by you, raised from penury to riches and from obscurity to high renown?”
My old friend finishes. He is seconded by men in their thousands, no few shedding tears and pleading with me to give hearing to his counsel.
Again I have failed to make them see. Such rage burns in my guts as I fear must split me open. It is all I can do to dismiss the assembly and retire, on fire with fury, to my tent.
Thirty- Five
SILVER SHIELDS
NOT A MAN SLEEPS THAT NIGHT. By the gods, I will grant no ease to these blue-livered bastards! At midnight I issue orders that the unit of three hundred Malcontents is to be disarmed and placed under arrest. The roundup sets the camp ablaze with rumor. Will I execute them? I command an assembly of the army for dawn, officers to fall their men in in full dress, as the law prescribes for witnessing punishment. The Malcontents will take formation barefoot and bare-headed, clad only in tunics.
Couriers arriving at nightfall report that the baggage trains with the money and equipment are only a few miles off. I send to the column commanders with secret orders. This ignites even wilder rumors.
I order a square excavated in the center of the camp, with three hundred posts erected, as for execution. The Malcontents are to be cordoned in this space. A berm is to be raised on all sides, men-at-arms posted atop.
These orders I have cried through the camp by heralds, not communicated by me, as is customary, to my generals and passed down from them through the chain of command. Let my marshals sweat too. I banish even Hephaestion, Craterus, and Telamon. Only Aristander the seer is permitted to remain. We sacrifice to Fear. One victim after another bleeds inpropitiously; I order the carcasses dumped, gutted, at the rear of the precinct. Let the army put a meaning on that!
The baggage trains arrive under torchlight three hours before dawn. I have the wagons brought up adjacent to the central square and the area sealed, not by Macedonians, whose errant tongues no one can shackle, but by Raj Ambhi’s Royal Taxileans.
At dawn I am still sacrificing. I bring Hephaestion back, with Craterus, Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Coenus, and Seleucus. I command the camp bolted down tight; any man caught outside the perimeter to be executed as a spy.
I send Telamon to address the Malcontents. He directs the company to either confirm their current leaders, the young lieutenants Matthias and Crow, or elect new ones, but to be certain they are satisfied with who speaks for them, for these officers’ words, come dawn, will be taken by me to be the will of all.
The sun comes up hot in India. I watch the Malcontents brought forward. Every man, it seems, has been a hero. With one glance my eye takes in Eryx, first to scale the face at Aornus; Philo, who held his shield nightlong over White Cleitus, penned by a horde of shrieking Afghans; Amompharetus, called “Half Moon” for the sword gash across his belly, who gave away three years’ bonus to flood-wrecked villagers on the Oxus. Plainly, all believe this dawn will be their last. Yet not one snivels to Telamon, or so much as asks to have his name remembered to his kin at home.
I am wrong.
The fault is mine for estranging such men.
Red-eyed and red-assed, the army falls in. Already the day is blistering. The Malcontents are brought to attention within the berm. Matthias and Crow remain their commanders. Guards man the rise. Before the men stand the three hundred posts. Over each I have ordered a plain sack to be draped, muffling it from crown to base. The wrappers hang there, baggy as sleeping covers. The army stares, baffled and unnerved.
I come forward in the crimson cloak of the Companion Cavalry.
“Macedonians and allies, when I broke off the assembly last night, my gut was on fire with rage. You felt it, I know. All night in your tents, you have taken counsel among yourselves. This is as it should be, for you are not slaves fettered by the will of a tyrant, but free men. I too lay sleepless. Nightlong in my mind I heard the passions voiced on your behalf by our comrade Coenus. I heard them and I pondered them hard.”
I draw up. The camp is so still, one can hear the plashing of the laundry urchins a quarter mile below along the levee.
“Brothers, do what you like. But I am going on.”
From my platform I can see across the river. I gesture east toward Porus and the enemy fortifications.
“I compel no one to follow. And I give you proof, thus.”
I sign to the corps’s quartermaster. At his command, the chief of the baggage train advances before the army, bringing the wagons that came in last night. Some twenty of these carts disperse, briskly, as I have rehearsed them, drawing up before the allied and foreign contingents of the army. One stops before each. Tailgates drop. Teamsters pitch out sacks of riches. Gold takes up little space; in no time, fortunes mound at the feet of each division.
It takes moments for my speech to be translated into a score of native tongues. Murmurs commence. These mount to cries. The allies and foreign troops in the thousands roar their refusal. No! No! They will touch no treasure without earning it.
“Take it!” I advance before them. “Take it and claim you have crossed this river with Alexander and vanquished his foes. This money shall be proof to all who question your valor!”
The tumult intensifies, mounting to a pitch of warrior pride and defiance. Fiercest in their refusal are the Bactrians and Parthians; the horse tribesmen of Scythia, Sacae and Daans and Massagetae, chant their repudiation; the Royal Indians of Ambhi and Sasigupta stand silent and resolute; the mercenaries of Thrace and Greece likewise reject this recompense shorn of honor, with the Syrians, Lydians, Egyptians, and Medes concurring. Tigranes and the Persian regiments will not even deign to look.
By sign I quell the uproar.
Division commanders restore their companies to order.
I turn to the Macedonians. The corps’s quartermaster drives more wagons forth. My countrymen are struck through with shame. Are they past insurrection? I will make them twist yet upon the gibbet.
“Macedonians, you have voiced your complaints and I have heard them. Here. This is what you wanted.”
From the wagons, teamsters heave more sacks of gold. The bags are heavy; many rupture, striking the ground. Coins spill. In the dirt before each division, barrows of lucre ascend.
“Here are your discharges.” My Pages display the rolls aloft. “You are free. Take them! I hold you no longer!”
Not a man moves. Each is stricken through with infamy.
“What keeps you, Macedonians? I release you with honor. Bend! Take your reward! Go home!”
My Pages, as I have rehearsed them, pass among the divisions, bearing the discharge warrants. Not a man will touch them.
“Transport has been arranged for you, brothers. Pack up! March home! And do not forget when you arrive to tell your wives and children how you abandoned your king alone and surrounded by enemies at the ends of the earth. Tell them, too, how allies, who could not even speak his language, remained loyal to Alexander, while you, his own kin and countrymen, took your treasure and stalked for home. Tell them this, and I am sure you will gain abundant renown. What are you gawking at? You have got what you wanted! Go, damn the lot of you. Go!”
My countrymen stand like statues. All are held by shame and suspense.
The Malcontents. Will I execute them? Will I bind them and march them to the posts to be slaughtered?
I address the Malcontents. Numbers I cite, accounting exploits of past valor. I name Eryx and Philo and Amompharetus. It is my fault, I declare, that has produced the estrangement between us.
“I have pushed you, brothers, too hard and too far. Because of your greatness, I have expected prodigies of you, and so perhaps have not sufficiently acknowledged your triumphs or shared enough in your sufferings. I have failed you, my friends. But you have failed me too. You have broken faith with me and with your countrymen. You have favored your disgruntlement over fidelity to the corps. You have sulked and cultivated your disaffection, playing the spoiled favorite and the outraged pet. Such acts are not errors of judgment; they are felonies—military crimes committed in time of war and mandating the sternest possible punishment. But as I have given our allies and countrymen a choice, so I give one to you.”
I order the covers taken off the execution posts. Beneath each emerges a newly crafted shield, untouched and untarnished, set upright upon a stand and dazzling in the ascending sun. Each shield, I inform the corps, is lapped not with bronze but with silver. The rivets are silver, the facing is silver, the studs are silver. A sixth of a talent, nearly nine pounds of precious metal.
“Here are the bonuses and premiums you’ve been bitching for. The silver on each shield is worth three years’ pay.”
I sign the guards to withdraw. The company of Malcontents holds, dumbstruck. The whole army has not breathed. While they gape, I motion to the quartermaster; his men remove the post covers completely. Beside the shields stand three hundred new swords and sarissas, new shoes and tunics, helmets, cloaks, the full panoply.
The army erupts in citation. It takes the count of a hundred before order can be restored.
“This kit is for you!” I address the Malcontents. “But I do not compel you to take it. That sum, which is represented by the silver on each shield, I will give to you instead in coin, if you so elect, and release you with honor and send you home.”
The Malcontents turn to Matthias and Crow. The young officers straighten to offer salute.
“Wait! Know this first before you decide!” I stride before the company of Malcontents. “Wherever the fighting is thickest, that’s where I’ll send you. Whatever chore shall be most hazardous, you will take the lead. Wherever the peril is greatest, I shall set you in the fore. The war elephants of Porus await us across the river. You will attack them! You will vanquish them! I will deal you no slack, who have malingered and played the army false. This last chance is yours, to reclaim your honor. Choose, brothers, but choose now!”
Matthias and Crow step to the fore first. By ones and twos, then in a body the three hundred swell forward and take up their shields. The men shed their tunics of dishonor and don new mantles of redemption and restoration. The army roars in approbation.
Beyond the river, Porus cannot fail to hear. In minutes every man he has will be fallen-in under arms.
I stand forth before the army.
“I will cross this river, brothers! Who will cross it with me?”
Thirty- Six
BATTLE OF THE HYDASPES
I NEED NOT RECOUNT THE BATTLE IN DETAIL. You were there, Itanes. You fought; you conquered. I see no need to narrate for your benefit that which you have seen with your own eyes.
Let me speak instead to the significance of the fight. What it meant to me and to the army.
It was everything we needed—a contest of heroic scale against a foe who stood his ground and dueled with honor. At conflict’s end, the field was ours, indeed, but, far more important, we had preserved our antagonist Porus’s life and the lives of as many of his ksatriyas as possible; we had been able to act toward him and them with integrity and restraint; and we had conquered not only a stubborn and manful foe but our own factious and recalcitrant selves.
Here was a brilliant victory, perhaps our greatest, because it required the most innovative tactics, the most unconventional lines of assault, the greatest coordination among disparate units—three corps, separated from each other by as many as fifteen miles, across twenty-five miles of front—on both sides of a mighty river. This battle (which was in truth an amphibious assault in coordination with a battle) presented the most complex and demanding logistical challenge the army had ever faced—the ferrying, via seven hundred boats and eleven hundred rafts, of forty-seven thousand men, seventy-five hundred horses (the bulk of whom had to be crossed at night and in a monsoon), with all their weapons, armor, and equipment, including field catapults and stone-throwers—and demanded the greatest flexibility and improvisation of widely scattered commanders, many of whom did not speak the same language, across a broad and unprecedented field, against an enemy fighting not for victory alone, but to defend home and liberty. The sheer physical arduousness of the operation beggared all prior endeavors, commencing as it did with an eighteen-mile trek upriver through the mud and thunder of an all-night deluge (which indeed hid our movements from the foe but which also turned the channel, already swollen from preseason downpours, into a howling torrent), then mounting to the crossing itself—indeed the swimming, for the last third—of a nearly mile-wide river (all this before the battle, even before the
marshaling, on the far shore, for the battle); then an approach march of fifteen miles, succeeded by a clash across a two-mile front, on swampy ground, against eighteen thousand cavalry, a hundred thousand men, and two hundred war elephants, a force such as no Western army had ever seen, let alone confronted and defeated. This was only the physical difficulty. The mental and emotional strain proved of equal, if not greater, magnitude. For the fight, as it played out, involved numerous advents and incidents of chance, surprises, changes of front, overthrows, unexpected reverses (the most dramatic of which was my own miscalculation at the river crossing, when our bridgehead force of seven thousand landed on what we took for the far shore, only to discover that the current in its furious spate had torn out a second channel beyond, which we must now swim or die), so that scheme after scheme had to be scrapped and new designs improvised on the fly, not only by me, in touch with my officers, but by dozens and scores of subordinate commanders who had lost touch with me and with one another in the confusion, distance, and duration of the fight. The battle lasted from before nightfall on one day, when the first columns set forth for the crossing eighteen miles above the camp, till sunset the next, on the far side of the river, without sleep or food, except what could be cadged on the run, for men or horses. To these challenges, officers and men rose brilliantly. The assault of our Daan mounted archers upon the enemy left, followed by my Companions’ flanking charge, exceeded in shock and violence even that against Darius at Gaugamela. Hephaestion was wounded three times breaking through cavalry outnumbering his squadrons five to one. Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Peithon, and Antigenes, leading sarissa brigades, and Tauron, commanding the Median and Indian archers, against a solid mile of war elephants and infantry, broke their ranks despite terrific losses and set the great beasts milling in confusion, wreaking havoc upon their own men and one another, while Coenus’s charge from the wing simply broke the enemy’s back. Our foreign troops were spectacular. Scythian mounted archers threw back Porus’s son’s chariots at the first landing; Tigranes’ Persian cavalry broke the Indian right; Raj Ambhi’s Royal Taxilean Horse overwhelmed Porus’s Punjabi lancers; Sadocus’s Thracian darters, working with our mounted Sacae and Massagetae, routed the foe in the one counterattack that truly threatened; while Matthias’s and Crow’s Silver Shields, and their brothers of Neoptolemus’s and Seleucus’s Royal Guards (the original Silver Shields), were simply invincible in the center.
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