Flood Tide

by Alexander Geiger

In response, I did my best impersonation of Hephaistion. “You already are, sire. You just have to consolidate your hold on this land before returning to Macedonia.”

  Alexandros shook his head. “I can’t get it done in six months. We’ll be lucky if I can get Dareios to attack us before the fall and even if he does, and we beat him, it will still take years before we can get firm control of these provinces. The truth is, most of them don’t want to be part of the Hellenic League any more than they wanted to be part of the Persian Empire.”

  Since I happened to agree with the king’s sentiments, I maintained a discreet silence. I was surprised, however, at the bluntness of his assessment.

  Alexandros, as if reading my thoughts, resumed. “You’re different from my other commanders, Metoikos. I can be more direct with you.”

  “Thank you, sire.”

  He laughed. “It’s not a compliment. Sometimes I think you’re too independent in your thinking. But I know you won’t run off blabbing to the others, because you’re an outsider to all of them.”

  I drew back, feigning offense. “I’ve been here almost ten years, sire.”

  “I’m not sure ten generations would be enough. But don’t worry about it. Let me ask you instead: What do you think I should do? It sounds like Antipatros is in trouble. My first responsibility is to Macedon. But if I leave, we’ll quickly lose everything we’ve achieved here.”

  “True,” I agreed.

  “And now I’ve been told I’ll be lord of Asia. I can’t be lord of Asia if I’m sitting in Pella.”

  I nodded. “It would be somewhat harder.”

  “And another thing’s been bothering me, although I’d never admit it to the other men. I don’t see how we can ever hold any part of Asia as long as the Persian navy controls the seas. It’s like holding a castle while the enemy roams the surrounding countryside. And I don’t think we’ll ever beat them on water. We Macedonians aren’t made to be sailors. The Athenians are sailors and they did beat them at Salaminos but I can’t trust the Athenians. Deep down, they look down on us as outside interlopers. Every time they’ve had a chance, they’ve allied themselves with our adversaries. If Antipatros’s reports are to be trusted, they’re in the pay of the Persians right now and plotting with Dareios and with Sparta to attack us.”

  “I think I may have a solution for dealing with the Persian navy, sire.”

  That stopped him in his tracks. “You do? Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s simple to describe but hard to execute. It came to me while we were standing atop Mount Grion, watching our navy race against theirs to see which one reached Miletos harbor first.”

  “It’s funny you say that. I reached the opposite conclusion watching that race. It’s true that Nikanoros got our men into the harbor first but looking at the number of warships they had and looking at the fact we were counting on unreliable allies to fill out our meager numbers, I decided right then and there that our navy couldn’t stand up to theirs in the long run.”

  “I know, sire. That wasn’t my idea. What I learned at Miletos was that we completely neutralized the superiority of their navy by denying them access to land anywhere near the city. They couldn’t get provisions, couldn’t get fresh water, couldn’t get respite from the pounding of the sea. Eventually they had no choice but to sail away, leaving Miletos at our mercy.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, what would happen if we occupied every port from the Hellespont down to Egypt? Eventually, they would have to go away, no matter how many ships they had and no matter how few we had.”

  He gave me a long, searching look. “I knew you were an independent thinker,” he finally said. And then he just stood there, silently, for a long time.

  I wonder whether I made that suggestion to make my trek to Egypt easier, I asked myself, or because it was strategically sound?

  “It would mean cutting Antipatros loose and leaving him to his own devices.” He shrugged. “Let’s go back to the tent and discuss it with the boys.”

  We started to walk again. “I mean, discuss our plan to occupy every port. Not the part about cutting Antipatros loose. That’s only between you and me.”

  “I understand, sire.”

  We practically sprinted the rest of the way, exchanging nary a word.

  Chapter 12 – Issos

  By the end of spring 253 Z.E., Alexandros was ready to implement his new strategy of depriving the Persian navy of its bases of operations in the eastern Mediterranean. Before leaving Gordion, he appointed Antigonos Monophthalmos, one of his father’s old generals, satrap of Phrygia. This was a vital post because Alexandros’s lines of communications (and potential escape routes) to the Hellespont all led through Phrygia and the adjoining Hellespontine Phrygia. Unfortunately, Alexandros could only spare one infantry battalion for Antigonos’s use, which was hardly sufficient in the event the locals decided to rebel or Dareios decided to dispatch a detachment to attack. But Alexandros was not overly concerned about lines of communications back to Macedonia and he was certainly not thinking about potential escape routes. And besides, he needed all the troops he could muster for the forthcoming drive down the coast toward Egypt.

  The army that marched out of Gordion was smaller than the combined forces that Alexandros had had at his disposal when he crossed the Hellespont a year earlier. He brought with him some 37,000 men who then joined up with Parmenion’s expeditionary corps of 10,000 warriors already present on the Asian side of the Hellespont, making for a combined force of around 47,000 men. During the previous year’s fighting, we had lost fewer than a thousand men to death, illness, or disabling injury but several thousand more had to be left behind on garrison duty in various cities we had liberated in the course of our campaigning. Notwithstanding the reinforcements brought over by Koinos, Krateros, and Lysimachos, we marched out of Gordion with fewer than 41,000 men, consisting of slightly less than 6,000 cavalry, 22,000 heavy infantry, and about 13,000 light infantry and auxiliaries.

  Dareios, in the meantime, was busy in Babylon assembling a huge army, determined to obliterate this cheeky little intruder from Macedonia once and for all. Theoretically, his empire could have furnished him with a million soldiers or more but there were practical constraints on the size of the army that massed, maneuvered, and eventually marched from the banks of the Euphrates: The countryside could only feed so many hungry troops and horses; Dareios’s patience had its limits and some of the local levies were taking an incredibly long time to make their way to the heart of Mesopotamia; and, most importantly, Dareios realized that, when it came to the lethality of an army, quality was more important than quantity. He wanted an army of trained professionals, rather than reluctant conscripts. He ended up with some of each. His army comprised 11,000 heavy Persian cavalry, 10,000 Persian Immortals,[17] 12,000 Greek mercenaries, and some 70,000 infantry conscripts. In other words, although his army numbered more than 100,000 soldiers, only 33,000 of them were truly elite fighters. The rest were Persian Pussies.[18]

  For their own reasons, both Dareios and Alexandros were anxious to confront each other in a pitched battle. For Dareios, it was almost a matter of self-preservation. The continued presence of a foreign invader within the ambit of the Persian Empire for more than a year was anathema, not only to Dareios but also to Persian nobility, to Dareios’s bodyguards, and to rank and file Persian soldiers alike. Unless Dareios managed to deal with the pest from across the Aegean, his hold on power would become rather tenuous. And of course, in Persia, there was only one tried-and-true mechanism for replacing the buttocks pressing down on the hard, wooden seat of the large imperial throne.

  Alexandros, on the other hand, had to prove that his victory at Granikos had not been a fluke, that he really was destiny’s darling. Unless he could defeat Dareios in the field, and do so relatively soon, the entire Macedonian enterprise on the Asian side of the Hellespont was doomed to inevitable collapse. And the failure of the pan-Hellenic expeditionary adventure in Anatolia would lik
ely lead to the end of Macedonian hegemony on the Greek mainland as well. In addition, on a more mundane level, Alexandros was once again short of money. Finally, on a more transcendental plane, he liked the idea of a battle, which he was sure he would win.

  Dareios and Alexandros spent the summer of 253 Z.E. chasing each other, hoping to precipitate a set piece contest on a field of their choosing. Dareios meandered northwest, across the fertile plains of Mesopotamia, making his way slowly toward Anatolia. In addition to his 100,000-man army, he was dragging along a huge baggage train, including his courtiers and his harem. Nobody wanted to miss the spectacle of the Persian army wiping out the Greek invaders and Dareios, confident of victory, wanted as many witnesses to his triumph as possible.

  The summer was long gone by the time the entire horde crossed the Euphrates, near the Town of Thapsakos, and headed west, toward the Amanos Mountain Range, which runs parallel to the Gulf of Issos. At this point, Dareios finally decided that his army needed more speed and mobility and sent the bulk of the baggage train, along with most of the harem, back to their temporary quarters in Damaskos. However, he kept his family, along with a few of his favorite ladies and their accouterments, with the army. There was a limit to the sacrifices an emperor should be asked to make simply to win a battle.

  Alexandros made his way across Kilikia, through the Kilikian Gates, back to the coast, and then south along the Gulf of Issos. He was assuming that Dareios would bring his army to the Mediterranean coast somewhere to the west of Damaskos and then travel north, along the coast, because, by sticking close to the sea, he could keep his army supplied and supported by his navy. Dareios, however, had chosen a different route, believing that a battle on the open plains on the eastern side of the Amanos Mountains would enable him to take advantage of the numerical superiority of his forces, particularly the two-to-one advantage of the Persian cavalry over their Greek counterparts. He was also sure that Alexandros would stay away from the narrow strip of land between the sea and the western foothills of the mountains, precisely because he would not wish to be exposed to possible raids by the Persian navy. Alexandros, by contrast, liked the idea of fighting on a narrow field of battle, which would neutralize Dareios’s numerical superiority, make it much more difficult for the Persians to outflank the Greeks, and reduce the scope for initiative by the Persian cavalry, which was the Persians’ most formidable arm.[19]

  *******

  The night we reached the small fishing village of Issos at the apex of its eponymous gulf, Alexandros convened the usual command meeting in his tent. Parmenion, who had been put in charge of the advance scouting units, rushed in breathlessly, anxious to share all the good news his scouts had collected.

  “This is the perfect location,” he told us. “Issos sits in a bowl, surrounded by mountains on three sides, with the bay on the fourth. There are only three passes through these mountains. My men have occupied all three of them. If Dareios tries to cross through any one of them, we’ll know immediately and we can rush up reinforcements. The Persian army will never get across.”

  “I thought they were marching up the coast,” Alexandros interrupted.

  “No, sire. My scouts tell me they’re on the far side of the mountains. I believe we should simply hunker down right here and wait for them. This is the perfect defensive spot.”

  “I think you’re wrong, Parmenion. Those troops your scouts saw are merely a detachment of Persians, sent here by Dareios to keep us bottled up. His main force is coming up north, along the coast, to wipe us out. And besides, we don’t hunker. We’re going to march south and meet them head-on.”

  “We can’t stay here,” Hephaistion chimed in. “The harvest was brought in a long time ago. Winter’s coming. We’ll eat these folks out of house and home in short order and then what?”

  Philotas cleared his throat. “Then we’ll forage along the coast and bring back more food.”

  Perdikkas literally shouldered Philotas aside. “Unless you get ambushed by the Persians along the way.”

  “We don’t hunker,” Alexandros repeated. “And that’s final.”

  We marched out the next morning, leaving only our baggage train and our sick and wounded behind, guarded by a handful of old veterans who, Alexandros worried, might slow us down. His plan was to march south as rapidly as we could and surprise Dareios’s main force before they were ready to face us. Dareios, in the meantime, was marching north, on the other side of the mountains. The two armies passed, like ships in the night, oblivious to each other’s movements.

  *******

  Dareios was the first to realize that the two armies had missed each other. He circled behind Alexandros’s back and made his way to the Gulf of Issos through the Amanic Gates, which had been left unoccupied when Alexandros’s army set off on its march south, along the coast, the previous day. Alexandros, unaware of the Persian movements, guided his own troops through a narrow pass at the southern end of the Amanos Mountains, known as the Assyrian Gates, and then force-marched them another thirty-five miles in a single day, to a Phoenician seaport called Myriandros, where he waited for Dareios’s army to come marching up the coast from the south. He waited in vain.

  Dareios, in the meantime, fell upon the fishing village of Issos from the north and captured our baggage train, along with the sick and wounded soldiers we had left behind. Dareios’s troops slaughtered every person left in our camp, sparing only a half dozen of the veteran guards, and pillaged our baggage train, which must have been a disappointment. There was no treasury, because Alexandros had almost no money left by this point, and there were few luxurious possessions, because most of the spoils we had captured in the course of our campaigning during the previous year had been spent on assuaging the men’s hankering for female company and on other frivolous pursuits.

  Dareios had his army march to a small river just below Issos, called Pinaros, where he established the Persian defensive line. His soldiers set to work erecting a palisade along the northern bank of the river and then, just to make it even more difficult for any attackers to get across, they drove stakes into the side of the riverbank, with sharpened points aimed up and out. After all the defensive preparations were completed, Dareios’s army set up camp, stretching northward, beyond the village of Issos, around the bend of the gulf, as far as the eye could see. Fenced off toward the back of the camp was the imperial precinct, housing Dareios’s own command tent, the tents of the royal family and the emperor’s favorite ladies of the harem, his traveling treasury, and the various opulent accouterments the army had dragged across the plains of Mesopotamia, the Euphrates River, and the Amanos Mountains.

  When all the preparations were completed, Dareios met with his commanders in the reception room of his tent complex. He listened to a number of reports about the disposition of troops, the state of defensive fortifications, and incoming intelligence from returning scouts. After the reports were finished, Nabarzanes had a question: “How do we know Alexandros will turn around and attack our fortified position, instead of simply continuing on his current course south, ravaging Lowland Assyria and Phoenicia in the process?”

  “He’ll turn around.” A confident, cocky smile spread across Dareios’s face. “He’s got no other way to get back home. Plus, he’s a hothead who wants to have a fight. And just to be sure, I’ve made arrangements to send him an invitation to battle that he won’t be able to resist.”

  This last statement raised an instant clamor in the tent, everyone asking at once what the emperor had in mind.

  Dareios beamed. “Just step outside and take a look.”

  When the commanders exited the tent, they were treated to the sight of six bedraggled, chained, nearly nude old soldiers lined up next to a roughly hewn stone block, surrounded by Persian soldiers. One after the other, the Macedonian veterans were forced to place their right arms on the rock, only to have their hands chopped off at the wrist. Then, with geysers of blood spurting from their stumps, their arms were plunged into a cauldron
of boiling pitch, cauterizing their wounds.

  “Send them back to Alexandros,” Dareios ordered when the gruesome butchery was completed. “Tell your leader the king of kings sends his greetings,” he added, in Greek, as the men staggered away.

  *******

  Alexandros learned of the arrival of the Persian army at Issos and the slaughter of our sick and wounded comrades long before he laid eyes on the six maimed veterans. He immediately turned us around and marched us back to the Assyrian Gates. We completed the seventy mile round trip in two days, getting across the pass just before nightfall. The days were growing short. As we made camp in the foothills of the Amanos Mountains, we could see the campfires of the enemy winking into life in the valley in front of us. There were many more flickering fires in the distance below us than there were stars overhead but we were too tired to absorb either the beauty or the menace of the scene. We simply wanted to get some sleep.

  Alexandros spent the cold, clear night reconnoitering the enemy. He walked, alone, the nine miles from the pass to the Pinaros River, then climbed to the top of the mountain ridge and circled all the way behind the enemy camp. He roused us at dawn for a meeting of the general staff.

  He was bouncing cheerfully on the balls of his feet, bursting with energy. “We have them exactly where we want them.” He was actually rubbing his hands. “The valley opens up very gradually, which will limit the scope of their cavalry play. By the time you get to the river, the valley is still only about three miles wide, so we’ll be able to throw a dense infantry line all the way across, from the seashore to the foothills. Besides, it looks to me like they’re planning to play defense along most of the width of the valley. You should see the defensive fortifications they’ve built for themselves on the northern bank of the river.

  “I think they’ll hit us on our right side, the side closest to the mountains, first. There is a lot of activity in the foothills. So, I think they’ll send some commandos through the trees on the mountainside with the idea of getting beyond our line and then descending from the trees in a surprise attack from behind. And then, once they’ve got the right end of our line in disarray, they’ll send the opposing, left end of their line across the river, hitting our right end with everything they’ve got.”