The Strategos

by H A CULLEY

  ‘If you can find men you trust, bring him to my camp tonight. If he disappears people will wonder what happened to him for a time, then he will be forgotten when something else happens to occupy their minds.’

  That night the former taxiarch was killed and buried in the marshes that lay to the south of Pella and three days later Parmenion was summoned to his private audience with the king. This time the message was genuine.

  -o0o-

  The Illyrian raiding party watched as the farmers around the small city of Oaeneum in north-east Macedon headed to the fields for a day’s work tilling the soil and sowing seeds. The city lay on a plain between two ranges of mountains and had been contested between the Illyria and Macedon for centuries. Currently it was Macedonian but that was about to change.

  Parmenion’s meeting with Amyntas had also been attended by Eurydice and Alexander. He had wondered why Zoilus hadn’t been present but, as no-one commented on his absence, he didn’t think it wise to mention it.

  ‘I understand that you can raise between two and three thousand citizen levy cavalry from the nobles and wealthy merchants of Macedonia, lord king?’ When Amyntas nodded, Parmenion continued.

  ‘They are all heavy cavalry and what I believe you lack is a mixed force of light cavalry and horse archers to act as screen and, with my heavy cavalry, as a vanguard during an advance. They could also be very useful in covering a retreat. In the unlikely event that that is necessary,’ he added hastily when he saw the king’s brow begin to furrow in anger.

  ‘Furthermore, my hipparchia are ideally suited to foraging and for scouting.’

  ‘Scouting? The concept was obviously something that Eurydice wasn’t familiar with.

  ‘Yes, basilissa. For example if you can’t locate an elusive enemy or want to find out where his supply lines are so you can attack them.’

  All of this was evidently a way of conducting warfare that was new to the Macedonians. They tended to march out to meet the enemy and conduct a battle wherever they encountered them.

  ‘Another possibility is to choose a site for a battle that suits you and disadvantages the enemy. We could then launch pinprick attacks and lure the enemy onto you chosen battlefield.’

  ‘This is exactly what Iphicrates has been advocating,’ Alexander broke in excitedly.

  When Parmenion looked at the king enquiringly the latter sighed and indicated to Eurydice that she should explain.

  ‘It seems that Alcetas wasn’t acting entirely alone. Zoilus has never really forgiven you for your part in his failure to take Amphipolis and, although initially he supported you, Alcetas managed to turn him against you so that he turned a blind eye when his subordinate decided to eliminate you. Alcetas never expected you to succeed in raising five hundred horsemen, and women,’ she added with a small smile. ‘No doubt he hoped that you would be killed in the attempt. When you returned, Alcetas was jealous of your success and decided to get rid of you. When my son prevented that, I had Alcetas tortured before the Companions handed him over to you for disposal.’

  A shiver ran down Parmenion’s spine, not so much because of what the queen had said, but more because of the cold, dispassionate way in which she said it.

  ‘He admitted that Zoilus must have been aware of his intentions, even if he didn’t actually condone the plan to get rid of you; so my husband has sent him back to Athens. I would have preferred to have killed him too, but negotiations for a treaty of mutual support with Athens are at a delicate stage.’

  ‘In return for our clemency, they have agreed to send us a new strategos, Iphicrates, who I think you will find more of a military innovator, as indeed you seem to be,’ the king added.

  Parmenion had not only heard of the Athenian strategos but he had studied his reforms of the Athenian army, including the use of peltasts and other light infantry in co-ordination with their hoplites. He had also read about his successful sieges during their war with Sparta when he took city after city. However, he had also heard rumours that he was a difficult man to get on with. Having left Athens for Corinth to help them with their war against Thrace, he succeeded in upsetting the Corinthians so much that he was forced to flee and he joined the Thracian side, marrying the daughter of Kotys, the King of Thrace at the time.

  Now it seems that he was on his way to Pella. Parmenion wondered if he had now argued with the Thracians as well and so had been forced to return to Athens. At any rate, that city was where he was apparently coming from to take up his new assignment.

  ‘We have decided not to appoint a new taxiarch to command the cavalry. Our son, Alexander, will take over that responsibility, but we want you to advise him. He will also have the cavalry epihipparchos and the commander of his Companions to counsel him as well, of course.’

  He saw Alexander trying not to look smug and he assumed, from what his mother had just said, that he and his hipparchia had now been hired.

  -o0o-

  Reports about the sacking of Oaeneum and the pillaging of the surrounding countryside reached Pella ten days after it had happened. It took another two weeks for the army to muster and march north. By the time that Parmenion’s vanguard arrived outside the city, the ashes had blown away on the wind and the slaughtered population were little more than bleached bones. The enemy had long since returned to their homeland through the mountains to the north.

  The vanguard set out the next day, following the River Peka north through the mountains towards the town of Seltse. It took less than a day for Iphicrates to launch an assault with ladders and a battering ram and that night the town was sacked. Parmenion set out the next day with half his force whilst Orestes took the other half to pillage and forage in the surrounding countryside. The people were poor and the picking were slim. Parmenion hated persecuting and slaughtering innocent people but he appreciated the need to provoke Bardylis, the Illyrian king.

  A month after their arrival the Macedonians got the reaction they wanted. Bardylis was reportedly moving towards them with an army ten thousand strong, a thousand of them cavalry. Iphicrates was confident of defeating them despite the fact that he only had five thousand infantry – four thousand hoplites, five hundred archers and five hundred peltasts. However, he had nearly three thousand mounted troops, including the two hundred king’s Companions, who Amyntas had sent to guard his son.

  Bardylis had chosen to advance down the Peka Valley. It was the easiest route through the mountains, but his army was vulnerable until he reached the plain beyond the high ground. To counter the threat he had placed some of his light infantry on the hill tops to guard against attack from above. Had Zoilus still been in command the Macedonians would have been unable to take advantage of the situation, but Iphicrates deployed his peltasts, light infantry and archers on the tops to oppose the Illyrians. Invariably the Macedonians got the better of these skirmishers and the morale of the main Illyrian army suffered.

  Iphicrates sent Parmenion and his light cavalry to circle around through the mountains to attack the baggage train at the rear of the Illyrian column. The lumbering wagons were guarded by two hundred light cavalry armed with spears and wicker shields and three hundred lightly armed infantrymen, but no bowmen. They therefore had no response to the Scythian horse archers who rode in until they were just out of javelin range and then fired a volley of arrows before withdrawing. After they had done this half a dozen times, the Illyrians discipline gave way to anger and they charged the horse archers, the horsemen leading.

  It was the moment that Parmenion had been waiting for. He sent in his horse archers for one last volley, then he led his one hundred and fifty mounted spearman in line against the disorganized Illyrians. By now his cavalry outnumbered the enemy’s and the latter were forced back into the ranks of their infantry, who had followed them at a run.

  Parmenion saw a mounted spearman in front of him aiming the point at his face and he threw up his shield to block the thrust. The point glanced off the domed surface of the wooden shield but Parmenion’s own spear
went straight through the other man’s wicker shield and struck him in the side of his unprotected chest. The spear was wrenched out of Parmenion’s hand as the man disappeared over the rear of his horse, still with the spear embedded in his body.

  Before he could draw his sword, another Illyrian aimed his spear at him, this time the point glanced off his helmet, knocking it sideways and obscuring his vision in one eye. The Illyrian drew back his spear for another jab at Parmenion but the latter managed to get his shield up just in time. The point glanced off the shield but it scored along his chest, bruising his ribs and tearing a gash in his linothrax armour. He had retained it in preference to a brass cuirass as the sheets of linen were good at stopping an arrow or a javelin which hit straight on. However, now it had been slashed apart it was nearly useless.

  The man disappeared in the melee of battle and Parmenion used the momentary respite to straighten his dented helmet and draw his sword. He looked around him quickly and noted that most of the enemy cavalry had been dealt with. Now his men were being attacked by the spearmen on foot. He rode back to where Kionos sat and told him to attack the flank of the infantry, then he returned to the fight.

  Infantrymen are only safe from cavalry if they are in a tight formation. The Illyrians were a disorganized mass. Some managed to get under his horses and slit their bellies open but most were being speared by his horsemen as if they were on a boar hunt. When the horse archers started to fire volley after volley into the men in the rear, the rest lost heart and started to flee past the baggage train to seek the safety of the main body.

  Parmenion let his men chase them for a few minutes but he didn’t want them to get embroiled in a fight with the thousand cavalry at the rear of the column, so he gave the order to sound the recall. A few fools ignored it, and they would no doubt pay with their lives, but the great majority came riding back to the wagons.

  Fifteen minutes later the whole baggage train was alight. Parmenion’s troops had looted what they could carry on horseback, including several small chests of coins, but most of the enemy’s supplies went up in smoke.

  -o0o-

  King Bardylis was now in something of a quandary. He could retreat and lose face with his army and throughout Illyria eventually, or he could press on, relying on foraging to feed his men. As his raiding party had done a pretty good job of plundering and burning the countryside around Oaeneum a few months previously and the Macedonians had stripped the land between him and there of everything edible since their arrival, he didn’t hold out much hope of feeding his men for very long without more supplies.

  He therefore decided to move onto the plain and wait for more supplies to reach him. After the battle of the baggage train, Parmenion had taken his whole command through the mountains using goat tracks and little frequented paths to block the other entrance the far side of the Peka Valley. Bardylis would have a long wait.

  Iphicrates was content to wait it out and prepared a strong position on raised ground outside Oaeneum. With ditches, pits to break up a cavalry charge, and a sharpened stakes to defend his position, he was confident that he could win against the greater numbers of Illyrians. However, he found himself wishing that Parmenion was with him. In the short time he had known him he had developed a healthy respect for the younger man’s tactical abilities.

  When Parmenion had captured and destroyed a further supply train, he felt that it was time to withdraw before the Illyrians cut his small force off. He had lost several of his men, and about ten of the women, reducing his force to about four hundred and twenty. He himself had been wounded in the thigh in one skirmish, but it was only a flesh wound. Reluctantly he retraced his steps through the mountains back towards Oaeneum.

  He pulled his horse to a halt as he crested the last ridge before descending to the plain below and studied the scene before him. He indicated to Orestes that the column should take up a defensive position whilst he considered what to do.

  He could make out the Macedonian infantry behind their defensive works with the cavalry drawn up behind them in reserve. The Illyrian infantry looked to be double the numbers of their Macedonian counterparts. They had tried to outflank the defensive position, which rested on two steep sided hills, but Iphricates’ peltasts defended the slopes and were holding their own for the moment.

  As he watched, the Macedonian cavalry started to move off into a defile behind their position and Parmenion came to the rapid conclusion that there was a way through the hills so that they could attack the Illyrians in the rear.

  He decided that the best thing he could do was to descend to the plain and hope that he was in time to help with the attack on the enemy. However, the narrow path that they were following meant that they could only proceed at a walk, leading their horses, until the path became less steep towards the bottom of the slope. As they descended they saw two thousand Macedonian horsemen emerge onto the plain on the enemy’s right flank and charge the Illyrian cavalry to the rear of their army. Fifteen minutes later the enemy’s horsemen broke and started to flee across the plain towards the road along the River Peka.

  Parmenion spotted banners amongst the routed cavalry and assumed that Bardylis was amongst those fleeing. He immediately gave the order to charge and he led his hipparchia across the plain to head Bardylis off. When he was confident that he would arrive at the entrance to the pass through the mountains first, he slowed to a canter and told Kionos to attack with his horse archers first.

  The archers split into two groups when they were fifty yards from the nearest enemy and started to hit those on the left flank. A few unwise souls broke away to charge the horse archers, but found themselves facing Parmenion’s lochus of heavy cavalry instead. The latter swept them aside and carried on into the main body of the enemy, heading for the banners in the midst of the chaotic mass of horsemen. Meanwhile Parmenion led the light cavalry to the entrance to the pass and turned to face the Illyrians. Shortly afterwards the horse archers joined him and started to fire volley after volley at high trajectory into the leading mass of the enemy.

  By now half of the Macedonian heavy cavalry had broken away from the main battle and were charging through the fleeing Illyrian stragglers. When they struck the main mass of the enemy cavalry and linked up with Parmenion’s men, the former started to surrender and ten minutes later it was all over. A grinning Alexander rode up to Parmenion and embraced him warmly, nearly falling off his horse in the process.

  ‘Well done, Parmenion. Bardylis would have got away if it wasn’t for you.’

  However, when they checked the dead and sorted through the six hundred prisoners there was no sign of the Illyrian king. It seemed that he had escaped after all.

  Iphicrates had quickly mopped up the demoralized enemy infantry, who had been left leaderless and were caught between the Macedonian lines and a thousand heavy cavalry. They added nearly another seven thousand prisoners to the total captured. It would be a long time before Illyria attacked Macedonia again, but no one was under the illusion that the truce agreed later that year would last forever.

  Chapter Four – The Road to Eygpt

  378 to 376 BC

  Once the Illyrians had been defeated, a rare period of peace descended on Macedon. Amyntas was now in his sixties and seemed to have lost his earlier ambition to restore the kingdom to its former boundaries. With no prospect of a campaign to re-conquer Chalkidike, Iphicrates and Parmenion found themselves unemployed. Each had been rewarded for their part in the defeat of King Bardylis by the gift of an estate in northern Macedon but neither felt like exchanging their swords for ploughshares just yet.

  Besides, Parmenion wasn’t about to abandon the three hundred men, fifty women and forty ephebes and boys who had survived the last battle on the plain near Oaeneum. Luckily, he still had enough coins left in his Dacian trove to pay them for a further few months, even after making a donative to the families of those who had been killed, or were so badly wounded that they couldn’t fight any more.

  Then Iphicr
ates offered him a solution, but he knew it wasn’t one that all his soldiers would accept.

  He stood on a rostrum with the Strategos of Macedon at his side and looked down at the men, women and youths gathered around him. For once they weren’t on parade on horseback; this time he wanted them as close as possible to him so that they could hear every word.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he began, pausing to look as many as possible of them in the eye. ‘You are well aware that Macedon has paid us off and, for the moment at least, has no further use for us.’

  He partly regretted it. He had enjoyed his time serving in Macedon, despite the perfidy of Zoilus and Alcetas, and he liked and admired the young Prince Alexander. However, he didn’t trust the new strategos who was replacing Iphicrates, a distant relative of the royal family called Ptolemy of Alorus. He seemed very friendly with Queen Eurydice, too friendly, and he struck Parmenion as being far too self-centered and ambitious.

  ‘However, Strategos Iphicrates has been offered a new commission: to re-conquer Egypt on behalf of the Persians.’

  A ground swell of muttering greeted this news. Few in the Hellenic world had much time for the Persians. Quite apart from their occasional attempts to invade Greece, they hadn’t forgotten how Xenophon of Athens and his ten thousand hoplites had been betrayed twenty years before when they had gone to assist Cyrus in the war against his brother, King Artaxerxes II of Persia.

  Parmenion knew that some of his Greek cavalrymen would refuse to help Persia and the Scythians were already talking about making their way home. It would be a long and hard fought slog across Thrace and Dacia and he wondered how many of them would make it. He shrugged; it was their choice.

  Demetrius had also announced his intention of going back to Amphipolis and making his peace with his family. As an ephebe he had always been the most bellicose of the four but experiencing the harsh realities of war had changed him. Kionos and Calisto wouldn’t be staying with him either; she was expecting their first baby and Kionos had accepted the position of manager of Parmenion’s new estate. At least Orestes had agreed to remain with him.