Alexander the Great

by Anthony Everitt

  Both the flank guards were hidden from Persian view by lines of cavalry. These were designed to look temptingly weak and ready to be rolled up. In fact, they concealed foot soldiers detailed to cooperate with the riders and repel or maul the Persian attackers.

  Because of the danger of complete encirclement, Alexander placed behind the phalanx a second line of infantry, mainly Greeks from League of Corinth member states. This rear guard was under instruction to turn about and engage with the enemy if it succeeded in outflanking the Macedonian wings.

  * * *

  —

  THE KING, FULLY AWAKE NOW, sent round his orders, and the great military machine he had led across a continent to meet this day, the first of October, 331, slowly but surely geared itself for action.

  He was already wearing his armor when he emerged from his tent—a belted tunic made in Sicily and over this a thickly quilted linen corselet that had been among the spoils captured at Issus. We see him wearing it in a mosaic depicting the battle that was found in Pompeii; a similar one, perhaps his very own, has been found in one of the royal tombs at Aegae in Macedonia. His steel helmet glowed like polished silver and was attached to a steel neckpiece studded with precious stones. His sword, tempered and lightweight, was a present from a Cypriot king; he had trained himself to use it as his principal weapon in hand-to-hand fighting. Finally, he wore an ornately decorated cloak.

  Altogether Alexander was quite a sight on the battlefield. Instantly identifiable, he was not only a human flag or standard to be followed and protected at all costs, but also a key enemy target. Any self-respecting archer or javelin thrower or slinger on the Persian side would do his utmost to bring him down.

  During the early maneuvers, Alexander used another mount to spare Bucephalas, who was past his prime. Only when he was ready to go into action was the elderly horse led up for him to ride. He delivered a long speech to the Thessalians and other Greeks and was greeted with a roar of approval. In response, the king shifted his lance into his left hand and, raising his right, prayed to the gods that if he really was the son of Zeus, they should protect and strengthen the Greeks. Aristander in a white robe and a golden wreath rode along the ranks pointing out an eagle flying overhead in the direction of the Persians, a wonderful augury. Once the king had cheered up his left wing, he crossed over to the right, greeting officers and anyone near to him. He then took up his position among the cavalry Companions. His presence was enough to raise morale.

  At last, with the sun high in the sky the king gave the order to advance. The Macedonian army marched toward the enemy in oblique order, with the right wing leading. The point was to throw the enemy’s line out of gear; if the cavalry on its right wing galloped forward to meet the distant Macedonian left they would risk attack from the side and would uncomfortably stretch the Persian center. To avoid envelopment, Alexander’s left-flank guard and the Thessalians would be prepared to give ground.

  The angle of the Macedonian approach was perhaps as steep as forty-five degrees. As a result, the specialist units at the tip of the left wing could not sensibly be echeloned back, but stood out parallel to the Persian line. They were a combination of Greek cavalry and Thracian forces.

  Alexander was approaching the moment when commanders inevitably lose control of events. Dust thrown up by thousands of tramping feet, and the noise of shouting voices, neighing horses, and clashing armor and weapons meant that after a certain point Alexander would no longer be sure what was going on. Messages were taken to and fro by riders, but they were slow and not guaranteed to arrive at all. Even when a battle was lost and won, few participants would have been able to give a coherent account of what had taken place.

  However, Alexander’s officers had been fully briefed; they were used to their supreme commander delegating authority to them and would do what was required according to the circumstances and their instructions. He himself was at the place where the key decision was to be made: the timing of the crucial charge of the Companions that would determine the outcome of the battle.

  As his army approached the enemy, he allowed it to drift to the right. If this continued, he would almost entirely cross over into unleveled ground. Darius could see the danger and ordered Bessus with the Scythians and Bactrians to advance and wheel around the Macedonian right flank. As soon as Alexander saw this, he reacted by ordering Menidas and his single rank of six hundred mercenary horse to charge them. To nobody’s surprise, weight of numbers forced them back.

  Alexander then sent two small cavalry units—the scouts and the Paeonians—backed by the veteran mercenaries, to attack the Scythians, who began to waver and give way. Arrian does not explain how this was achieved with so few horsemen, but we can deduce what happened from a passage in Xenophon, with which we may assume that Alexander was familiar. He points to the weakness of cavalry in the absence of infantry:

  If he has got some infantry, a cavalry commander should make use of it. A mounted man is much higher than a man on foot, and infantry can be hidden away not only among the cavalry but in the rear as well….If the infantry, hidden away behind the cavalry, came out suddenly and went for the enemy, I think they would prove an important factor in making the victory more decisive. I have noticed that a surprise cheers men up if it is pleasant, but stuns them if it is alarming.

  Alexander had fed into the fighting small groups one after another with brilliant economy and precise timing, while Bessus committed more and more of his massed horsemen. It is clear that the veteran mercenaries had delivered an unpleasant surprise to the Scythians and Bactrians and that the flank guard were in a thoroughly good mood. However, their good fortune could not last forever. Sooner or later the weight of the enemy would tell.

  At this point Darius released a force of a hundred chariots against the Companion cavalry, who were as yet untouched by the enemy despite Persian hope that Bessus would roll up the entire Macedonian wing. The light skirmishers in front (Agrianians and the rest) grabbed the reins, pulled out the drivers, and slaughtered the horses. Trained in advance, the Companions simply let through their ranks those that got away. They were captured by army grooms at the back and by royal shield-bearers. The Great King’s surprise weapon had been a total failure.

  The complete Persian army, jaded from having had to stay awake all night but splendid to look at, was now moving forward. However, Bessus’s attempt at outflanking the Macedonians had drawn off so many horsemen that the line between him and Darius’s entourage in the center thinned. This was the moment for which Alexander had been waiting. Arrian explains:

  The cavalry sent out to engage the Persians encircling the right wing had forced a break in the front line of the barbarian line of battle. He [Alexander] wheeled for the gap, formed a wedge of the Companion cavalry and the immediately adjacent infantry section [the hypaspists] and led them at full speed and in full cry straight for Darius.

  In the space of a few minutes the whole situation turned upside down. Out of the noisy dust thundered the Macedonian heavy cavalry, shouting, “Alala alala” at the top of their voices. Heading the Royal Squadron at the apex of the wedge rode the scarlet and silver Macedonian monarch on his enormous horse Bucephalas. He and his horsemen were followed by the hypaspist infantry. The formation may well have outnumbered the Persian cavalry facing it, but in any event the Macedonians had superiority at point of contact.

  Alexander and the Companions sliced through the enemy horse, turned left into the now unprotected flank of the Greek mercenaries, and fought hand-to-hand with the royal guards to reach the Great King. They pushed and shoved with their horses and stabbed with their lances at the Persians’ faces. The infantry soon joined in and pressed their long pikes into the mêlée. The two kings were coming closer and closer together. Darius himself threw javelins to help ward off the onslaught. Alexander returned the compliment, but missed and killed the driver next to him.

  * * *
r />   —

  WHAT WAS HAPPENING ELSEWHERE in the field? Here the news was bad.

  Mazaeus on the right was mauling Parmenion and the Thessalians. He was faring well enough, he must have felt, to send three thousand horse round the edge of the Macedonian line and to capture the lightly guarded permanent camp ten or more miles away. He probably did so on the Great King’s direct orders, for this was where prisoners of war, including Darius’s mother and other family members, were held. To retrieve them would be a great prize. The detachment had no difficulty breaking in. Astonished attendants ran to Sisygambis’s tent to bring her the good news that they had been rescued. She knew better than to commit herself, though, until she was sure of the day’s winner. Curtius writes that she

  retained her former demeanor. Not a word left her lips and there was no change in her color or expression. She sat motionless—afraid, I think, of aggravating fortune by expressing joy prematurely. People looking at her could not decide which outcome she would prefer.

  Then there was trouble in the center. The four phalanx battalions nearest to the hypaspists followed them when Alexander and the Companions advanced, and the two left battalions were distracted by Mazaeus’s charge against the Thessalians. As a result, a gap opened in the middle of the phalanx, through which a body of Persian and Indian cavalry poured. They probably intended to take Parmenion from behind, but they became overexcited (as has often happened to horse riders throughout history) and charged unswervingly onward. They punched through the Macedonian infantry reserve and reached the temporary baggage deposit area not far from the back lines of the Macedonian army.

  Arrian writes:

  The commanders of the infantry reserve behind the front phalanx soon realized what was going on, turned their division about face, as were their standing orders, and fell on the Persians’ rear. Many Persians were killed where they were caught hugger-mugger among the baggage-animals, but some broke away and escaped.

  The situation was becoming serious for the Great King, for he feared that he was not only being attacked in the flank, but would soon be taken in the rear and his escape foreclosed. High-born relatives were being slaughtered in front of him. For the second time he was forced to behave like a coward while not being one. Alexander and the Macedonians were getting nearer, and he would soon be taken or killed. If he was to fight another day, as he fully intended, there was no alternative to flight.

  Unfortunately, it was difficult to turn his chariot round and drive it away, for it was snagged by dead bodies and wounded soldiers. The horses began to rear and plunge so that his charioteer was unable to control them. Hidden by clouds of dust, the Great King stepped down from his chariot and galloped away on a mare. Now he was there; now he was not.

  At about the time Alexander launched his charge, Parmenion sent off a dispatch rider, a trusted Thessalian called Polydamas, from his position on the left. He was to inform the king that the enemy was engaging his forces heavily. It was a signal arranged in advance to help Alexander make the tricky decision when to launch his decisive charge. As things turned out, the messenger arrived when the king was already in the thick of conflict and could not be immediately reached. He delivered his dispatch in a probable lull after Darius’s departure.

  A later story suggested that Parmenion had issued an unnecessary cry for help, which fatally delayed the pursuit of Darius, and that his performance during the battle had been sluggish and unenthusiastic. In fact, it is clear that his task was explicitly defensive. As we have seen, he was under orders to hold the line long enough for Alexander to win the battle. His forces, especially the Thessalian horse, had acted with great gallantry and managed to stop the Persians from advancing.

  The news of Darius’s flight was spreading throughout his army. Bessus decided that the best course was to withdraw while in reasonably good order. Slowly and confusedly, the Persian line in general broke. The unimpressive infantry at the back had not done any fighting and wished to avoid it now: they ran as fast as their legs would take them.

  Alexander was too good a general to leave a battle before he was quite sure of the outcome. He did not know whether Parmenion on the left had succeeded in holding off Mazaeus. He had to find out and intervene if necessary, for there was no point in having won on one side of the field if he had lost on the other. So, having disposed of the Great King in the center, he proceeded behind the enemy cavalry’s positions on the Persian right to reach him.

  To do so he was obliged to traverse terrified flows of fleeing Persian horsemen. According to Arrian,

  what ensued was the fiercest cavalry battle of the whole action. The barbarians rallied…and hurled themselves head on at Alexander’s troops. They had no use now for the usual cavalry tactics—no throwing of javelins, no maneuvering of horses—but it was each man for himself, trying to force his own way through as the only means of survival. They were not fighting now for someone else’s victory, but for their very own lives.

  In this engagement, about sixty of Alexander’s Companion cavalry were killed; Hephaestion himself suffered a spear wound in the arm, and two other commanders were injured.

  Many Persians broke through, but Alexander did not chase them. He pressed on toward Parmenion. By the time he arrived, Mazaeus’s cavalry had realized that all was lost and was disengaging as well as they could from the Thessalians, who had been putting up a stiff resistance. As soon as the king saw that all was well, he wheeled around and set off in pursuit of Darius. The day was won, but not yet over.

  An ancient battle was like a weaponized rugby football scrum. It was relatively bloodless while the fighting was going on; only when there was a clear winner did blood flow copiously. So it was at Gaugamela as at the Granicus and Issus. The exulting Macedonians caught up with the fleeing enemy, cavalry overtaking and trampling on infantry, and went on killing for as long as there were men to kill. Many ransacked the luxuriously appointed and now desolate camp. Implausibly high estimates of casualties abound, but Persian deaths may well have been counted in tens of thousands. The best guess for Macedonian losses are one thousand foot and two hundred horse.

  The pursuit of Darius went on until darkness fell. The king gave his men and horses an hour or two to rest and then resumed the hunt at midnight. He and his party (probably the Royal Squadron) galloped through the darkness. They covered seventy-five miles and with dawn arrived at the ancient city of Arbela (today’s Erbil), but Darius had passed through it sometime before. For the second time the bird had flown, and Alexander returned crestfallen to his marauding army.

  On the following morning he buried his dead and pondered his next step. He had been king for five years and was only twenty-five years old. He had already changed the world.

  * * *

  —

  “ONCE THE BATTLE HAD had this result, the Persian empire was regarded as having been totally dissolved,” Plutarch observed of Gaugamela. At Gordium, Alexander had been guilty of hyperbole in calling himself lord of Asia, when all he actually controlled was Asia Minor. But now the cap fitted. He had beaten the Achaemenid dynasty in a fair fight.

  Darius had made good preparation and chosen his ground intelligently. Gaugamela was a wide plain with no convenient river or foothills with which an invader’s undersize army could guard its flanks. He had assembled an even larger host than at Issus. He had given his inexperienced infantry new weapons and some training. He had recruited mounted troops from the empire’s horse-loving eastern provinces. He had learned from his previous encounter with the Macedonians and had given Alexander the shock of his life when he first laid eyes on the Persian battle formation—miles and miles of cavalry.

  But during his dark night of the soul, the Macedonian king had devised the most brilliant of tactical schemes, which turned his numerical deficit to advantage. Unlike Darius, who made a virtue of preponderance, he understood that victory would depend on movement and quickn
ess of eye. By luring Bessus and his cavalry to overcommit themselves around the right-hand edge of his line, Alexander created the gap or thinning of the ranks opposite the Companions, into which he led his decisive charge. At Gaugamela he tempered his natural impetuousness into disciplined energy.

  But if Alexander had vanquished the Great King, had he overthrown him? Were contemporaries right to recognize the end of an empire, or at least of a dynasty? No, Plutarch was mistaken. Despite Alexander’s best efforts, Gaugamela was the second time he had tried and failed to capture Darius dead or alive. He still could not claim the imperial throne without contradiction. If the Great King wished, as indeed was likely, he could continue the war from the far east of his dominions.

  But for now there was nothing to do but rejoice. The empire and its great cities lay all before the jubilant conquerors.

  CHAPTER 10

  “PASSING BRAVE TO BE A KING”

  What was Alexander to do now?

  He had three choices, the first of which he rejected at once. He knew that many officers and rank-and-file soldiers wanted him to declare peace immediately and go home happy and glorious. To silence them, he stuffed gold into their mouths. Plutarch writes: “Alexander was proclaimed king of Asia, and after offering splendid sacrifices to the gods, he proceeded to reward his friends with riches, estates and governorships.” His men knew how much trouble he took over their comforts, and he was very popular with them. He made it clear that he would soon give them the holiday of a lifetime. For the time being, this calmed any nascent dissent.