Alexander the Great

by Robin Lane Fox

  Porus's situation was unenviable but by no means hopeless. In mid-morning, he found himself threatened on two sides at once. Craterus was waiting to cross the river directly opposite, while Alexander had already crossed and was moving down the near bank, set on a pincer attack. Alexander, therefore, was his first priority, and he would do well to come far forward from base to meet him. Elephants and troops would have to be left to stop Craterus slipping across into the rear, but this division of his forces could ill be afforded. His cavalry was outnumbered, perhaps by three to one, and survivors of his advance party were talking dispiritedly of their defeat, for the Indians were practised horsemen, but in skills that now seemed irrelevant:

  They carry two javelins and a small shield: their horses, however, are not padded and they do not use Greek bits, but they tie a noseband of stitched leather round the horse's lips and nose and fit it with spikes of bronze or iron: the rich however, use ivory. The spikes are not very sharp, but in the horse's mouth, they put an iron bar like a skewer, to which they attach the reins. When they pull on the reins, this bar masters the horse and the spikes prick into him, forcing him to obey.

  Against the Companions, javelins and primitive curb-chains allowed neither a countercharge nor sharp manoeuvre. As the advance party had already found, both were essential for victory.

  The infantry, at least, had numbers on their side. Even after leaving guard's for Craterus, Porus is said to have had some 30,000 foot-soldiers at his disposal. These outnumbered Alexander's infantry by five to one, as neither his mercenary troops nor any of the seven battalions of Foot Companions had crossed the river and there was no question of their fighting in packed formation with sarissas. The Indians' proper skill was archery:

  Their bows are as tall as the archers themselves and to shoot them, they rest them on the ground and tread on them with their left foot, pulling the bowstring a long way back. Their arrows are about four feet long and no shield or breastplate, however strong, can keep them off. In their left hand, they hold a leather shield, narrower than themselves but not much shorter.

  Others carried javelins, while 'all wear a broad sword, at least four and a half feet long: they wield this with both hands, so that its stroke may be more effective'. Despite these swords hand to hand fighting was a hazard they liked to avoid. Not so the Macedonians: Porus had no heavy infantry and nothing to compare at close quarters with Alexander's Shield Bearers.

  Advancing up the bank to sandy ground he distributed his troops to the best advantage. The elephants were stationed fifty or a hundred feet apart, far in advance of the rest of the army: they stood like bastions, each with four men or more on their back, though they cannot have numbered two hundred, as Ptolemy perhaps implied, for their line would then have stretched between two and four miles wide. As it was not safe to put troops in the gaps between them, the infantry were drawn up behind, matching the intervals neatly and overlapping on each end; their wings were massed with cavalry and chariots, hoping for a clearer run. Drummers, meanwhile, were sounding the beat of battle, their rhythms pleasing the musical car of the elephants 'who looked, at a distance, like towers, projecting from a wall of armed men'. Prominent among them rode Porus, dressed in a fine cuirass and a cotton Indian cloak; his hair was gathered into a top knot, as was the fashion, and he seemed to the Macedonians to be over seven foot tall.

  Alexander, too, had halted for rearrangement. Outnumbered on foot, if not on horseback, he needed to use his brain, for each unit had its limitations; combined, they could still do what he wanted provided they were asked to do it in the right order. The Companions could charge down the Indian light infantry and outmanoeuvre the fewer horsemen on each wing, but they could not attack the elephants without a panic. The Shield Bearers, archers, and Agrianians were equipped to deal with the elephants and come to close quarters with the Indian swordsmen, but they were vulnerable to a charge from enemy cavalry. The Mounted Archers could harass the chariots but not the elephants: the heavier arrows of the Indians would not have the range of Alexander's and the slippery ground might well hamper the methods of their bowmen. All these factors were balanced out until Alexander had resolved their contradictions. The plan was made ready: it had the added virtue of his ingenuity.

  He decided to rely entirely on horsemen for a breakthrough. Because of the elephants, they were to leave the centre well alone and mass on the Indians' far left wing and as usual, their line was slanted. Alexander, the Mounted Archers, the Orientals and two squadrons of Companions, led by Hephaistion and Perdiccas, were furthest forward: the remaining two squadrons were sloped behind them at an angle and commanded by Coenus, the most trusted of the brigadiers. His orders were firm: while Alexander and the main body of cavalry rode far out to the Indian left, he was to detach his two rear units and swing wide behind the Indian right. This was not as risky as it sounded. Alexander's main charge to the left would cause the Indians to gather up all their cavalry from both wings and follow him for fear of being outflanked: they would hurriedly congregate against the main threat, taking their eye off the right, which they had not enough horsemen to defend. Coenus's encirclement would take them by surprise, and with any luck he would arrive in the Indians' rear just as Alexander was breaking through on the left. First, attract all the enemy cavalry on to one wing; then charge them from front and back at once and having routed them, loose the Shield Bearers against the elephants. The battle would be fought in well-defined stages, turning on the very cavalry movement which had proved decisive at Gaugamcla.

  The Indians took up the challenge as expected. When Alexander began to gallop far out to their left they moved all their cavalry on to one wing and struggled after him, disregarding Coenus on the other wing in their hurry. The Mounted Archers volleyed and charged: the Companions followed up with gusto: the Indians were still straggling in column and had no time to fan out into line. Before long, Coenus was careering round into their rear on their right, the last attack they can have expected. They tried to drop back a squadron or two to face him, but the shock of Alexander's charge on their left had so deranged them that they scattered into the centre and looked for safety among the elephants. Shield Bearers, archers and Agrianians now saw their chance. As the mahouts urged their beasts forward against any Companions who hoped to harass the retreating cavalry, the finest foot-brigades in Alexander's army swarmed among them, armed with a surprise weapon. While archers and Agrianian javelin-men aimed at the mahouts themselves, the 3,000 veterans of the Shield Bearers swung axes at the elephants' legs and daringly slashed at their trunks with curved scimitars. Alexander knew the weak points of an elephant and had equipped his men accordingly.

  Hamstrung and trunkless, some fifty elephants were put out of action; the rest stampeded indignantly, tusking and trampling without respect for friend or foe. They were exposed to professional butchery and they hated it: 'It was particularly terrifying to watch them seize men and weapons in their trunks and dash them hard against the ground.' The battle, like its histories, became impossibly confused as the Companions charged down the fleeing Indian horsemen and Craterus at last began to cross the river, while the mercenary troops poured over from upstream. But the signal of defeat did not go unrecorded: 'When the elephants tired and no longer found strength to charge, they began to retreat step by step, emitting only a high-pitched whistle.' The Macedonians had witnessed an elephant's last resort: when too disgruntled to trumpet, they 'signify their apprehension by rapping at the end of their trunk smartly on the ground and emitting a current of air, hitherto retained, as if from a valve at high pressure'. The battle of the Jhelum began with the charge of cavalry and ended with the elephants' hoot of distress.

  Porus was most unwilling to capitulate. He had fought in the thick of the battle and only when wounded in the right shoulder by an arrow had he goaded his elephant into retreat: 'Alexander had seen his might and gallantry and wished to save him. He therefore sent Ambhi the Indian to overtake him and give him a message. But when Porus saw
his old enemy approaching, he turned his elephant and poised himself to throw a javelin. Ambhi wheeled away in the nick of time, and an Indian prisoner less hurtful to the rajah was sent to try a different approach. Porus listened more kindly and even dismounted, feeling thirsty. 'His elephant,' said the more fanciful histories,

  was of the very largest size and had shown remarkable intelligence and care for its king. While Porus was still active, it would vigorously repel his attackers, but when it saw he was flagging under his many wounds, afraid that he might fall off, it bent its knees and gently lowered itself to the ground; with its trunk, it tenderly took hold of each spear and drew them from his master's body.

  Alexander and a few Companions came forward to meet their royal enemy; 'Alexander! my noble lord', the Persians' great epic poem, centuries later, made him say, 'Our two hosts have been shattered by the battle; The wild beasts feed on the brains of men; The horses' hooves are trampling on their bones. But both of us are heroes, brave and young. ... Both noblemen of eloquence and brain; Why should slaughter be the soldier's fate? Or bare survival after the fray?' For once, legend had an excuse in history. As Porus approached, thin and remarkably tall, Alexander sent an interpreter to ask how he wished to be treated. 'Like a King', he replied, and won so much of Alexander's respect that he was reinstated as rajah and left with his kingdom intact: as Alexander advanced, seven new tribes and two thousand new cities would be added to Porus's dominions, a handsome reward for defeat. Chivalry suited the politics of balancing one Punjab rajah against another, but Indian historians have been unable to believe this intelligent generosity and still argue that if Porus received such honours, India's alleged defeat at the Jhelum can only be a western falsehood.

  Victory, though resounding, did have one reservation. Alexander had gained a rajah and a new troop of elephants: he had also lost a life-long friend. In the opening skirmish with Porus's chariots, Bucephalas had been gravely wounded and within hours of the battle the old horse was reported dead; others, loyal to his invincibility, maintained that he had only collapsed of extreme old age. It was saddening news, but it could at least be honoured; Alexander had already decided to found two cities on the banks of the Jhelum, and the nearer of the two was a chance to pay his last respects. The easterly one on the battlefield he called Nicaea, City of Victory; the westerly one, near the site of Bucephalas's last river-crossing, he named Bucephala, in memory of a gallant horse. A funeral procession was organized, which Alexander led in person, and the horse's remains were presumably laid in a grave in his town; the site, soon to be damaged by floods, has never been located.

  Bucephalas's fame could not be so easily washed away. In the art of Alexander's successors there recurs from Balkh to Egypt the novel theme of a horse with horns: at the eastern and western mints alike, it is to be found on the silver coins of Seleucus, his royal Successor in Asia: it also appears on a plaster plaque in the Egyptian kingdom of the Ptolemies. Now, Seleucus was to be famed for killing a bull with his bare hands, and hence it was said that his many portraits showed him wearing bull's horns: he was also to commemorate a horse which had once saved his life by a notable statue at Antioch. But these two motifs together do not wholly explain why his horse was shown homed as well, nor why the Egypt of the Ptolemies, his avowed opponents, had copied the same design. A theme which is shared by Scleucids and Ptolemies may be derived, most plausibly, from Alexander, their only common model. Bucephalas, said a late authority, 'did not as some believe, have horns of his own, but was adorned with golden horns, so they say, for battle', as the proper harness for charger whose name meant Ox-head. If true, this could be the meaning of the Successors' horned horses: they stressed their different links with Alexander but they also revived Bucephalas's memory, even on the side of their coins more usually reserved for a god. Such memories die hard. More than 250 years later, on his equestrian statue at Rome, Julius Caesar's horse was cast to suggest Bucephalas's features. A thousand years after that, the traveller Marco Polo was entertained in Balkh by stories of the rulers of Badakshan, between the Pamirs and the Oxus and close to the site of the most north-easterly Alexandria; their horses, they said, were descended from Bucephalas and so were born with a horn on their head, but jealousies in the royal family had caused the only stallion to be put to death, and so the line was now extinct. Men might never equal Alexander, but they could at least lay claim to his attributes, down to the very hooves and harness of the horse which had carried him for twenty years and died, an unforgotten hero, at the river Jhelum.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  After winning the Jhelum and founding Bucephala, Alexander paid a sacrifice to the Sun. His choice of god was a symbol of his ambitions: his march was to take him eastwards, out towards the sunrise, and it would be helped by a sunny interval in the coming monsoon weather. 'In India,' a Greek had once written, safe at the Persian court, 'it never rains'; conversation with wise men and rajahs would have taught Alexander more of the truth. In the Hindu Kush he had defied the snow: his route to Siwah or Sogdia had made light of the desert. In India, when men talked of the summer rains, a sacrifice to the sun was all he felt he needed. The troops were encouraged with talk of treasure and presents of gold coin: Alexander would show them that a son of Zeus could not be deterred by the elements.

  For a month, his disregard increased the danger, as he delayed in Porus's kingdom and enjoyed the supplies from the three hundred towns in its fertile country. He would have been better advised to hurry eastwards: three more rivers of the Punjab lay in his path and from mid-June onwards they would be dangerously swollen with the monsoon rains. But his mind had turned to a new and promising plan. He believed that he was near to a direct route home and when the day came to act on his belief, he would need a fleet. Men were sent up the Jhelum to the dense fir forests on the lower slopes of the Himalayas and ordered to fell timber to build ships, a familiar task to Macedonians, owners of the finest wood in the Balkans. Himalayan pine and deodar cedars, often twenty feet in girth, were a challenge to their skills of forestry; the men needed to be brave in these unfamiliar surroundings. Snakes of alarming size were seen slithering across the forest floor, and at a distance the chattering of apes was mistaken for the approach of an enemy. There were tigers, too, which the Indians said would attack an elephant, and also blue-green peacocks which so impressed Alexander that he forbade his men to kill them.

  When crossing the Indus, two months before, Alexander had noticed crocodiles along the river: now, on marching east to the Chenab, third of the five Punjab rivers, he was much struck by the clumps of beans which grew on its banks. They reminded him of crops he had seen in Egypt five years ago and together with the crocodiles, they led him to a delightful theory: these upper waters of the Punjab must surely be the long-lost

  source of the River Nile, as they shared its flora and fauna. The Chenab, he knew, joined the Indus: the Indus, he guessed, flowed south-west through the desert and curved round south of the Persian gulf into Upper Egypt where it changed its name to the Nile. His view of the world was compressed to fit the little he had seen of it. The Indian Ocean, the vast mass of Arabia and the Red Sea were obstacles of which he was as yet unaware and throughout his life he continued to underestimate the length of the Persian empire from north to south and the distance west from the Oxus to the Black Sea. 'Not long afterwards,' wrote his admiral Nearchus, 'he discovered his mistake about the Indus,' but when he first gave orders for ship-timber to be cut and seasoned, he was hoping eventually to explore the Indus and coast back home to Egypt and his Alexandria, having realized his aims in the east.

  These aims seemed more plausible because of his faulty geography. India was believed to be bounded by the Eastern Ocean, a part of the waters which flowed round the Greeks' idea of the world, and though the facts were not yet certain, it did not sound as if the edge of India was impossibly far away. If the Eastern Sea was indeed Alexander's objective because it was the boundary of the world, then by playing each rajah off ag
ainst his neighbour and crushing any resistance, Alexander could fight his way towards this thrilling end and crown his career with a sight which no Achilles had ever expected to sec. 'You, Zeus, hold Olympus; I set the earth beneath my sway.' Even if he was only marching east to explore and conquer India, an aim to which the world's end was incidental, the narrowed view of India and the false view of the Nile were still a strong encouragement; for wherever he marched, home, down the Indus-Nile, was always within reach. His ambitions were those of an explorer as much as a conqueror and only to men who have never shared in a search and a struggle against nature do these seem madness. But for the first time since the battle at Issus, Alexander was living under a bad mistake, and from the Chenab onwards, things began to go wrong.

  The natives were numerous, though their weapons were old-fashioned: on the border of the Chenab alone Alexander forced thirty-seven cities and at least as many villages to surrender and added their half million citizens to Porus's kingdom. It was nothing new to the Macedonians to be outnumbered, but there were hazards which needed a stronger nerve. 'In India,' wrote Theophrastus the botanist, who had heard the survivor's reports and is too astute to be disbelieved, *the/Macedonians ate a type of wheat which was so powerful that many actually burst apart.' Such insights into their hardships are all too few; the only convincing figures for casualties are on an occasion when Alexander was not present. But this one at least has the merit of being unforgettable. Others ate from a tree 'which was not particularly large but had pods like a bean, ten inches long and as sweet as honey'; this, the Greeks' first meeting with a banana or perhaps a mango, gave them such upset stomachs that Alexander forbade them to touch it, 'and you were unlikely to survive', wrote Aristobulus, 'if you ate one' against his orders. Other trees were safer, if no less alarming: by the river Chenab the troopers marvelled at the banyan, the wonder of Indian dendrologists. 'The shoots of a single tree spread out into a huge shaded arbour, like a tent with many pillars,' so wide that 'fifty horsemen could shelter from the midday sun beneath it.' Close inspection showed that each separate 'trunk' was a giant shoot from one and the same root system, while the fruits were small but deliciously juicy. Farther east, there were to be reports of a banyan which cast a shadow for half a mile, by no means an impossibility: the prize banyan of the Calcutta Botanic Garden resembles a huge wood, four acres big and a quarter of a mile in circumference.