The Sieges of Alexander the Great

by Stephen English

  The host set off east from Macedonia and marched through Thrace, probably picking up the remainder of his allied contingent en route to the Hellespont. Alexander crossed the Hellespont in 334 and threw a spear into the Asian side, claiming it to be ‘spear-won territory’, and was quickly joined by Parmenio and the remnants of the expeditionary force that Philip had sent to the region two years previously. Alexander was no doubt impatient for battle, and he did not have to wait long. The western Persian satraps commanding a force that was heavily reliant upon cavalry and mercenary infantry, commanded by Memnon of Rhodes, awaited Alexander on the banks of the Granicus River. This was Alexander’s first major test, and he was not found wanting (see my forthcoming book, The Field Campaigns of Alexander the Great).

  Chapter 3

  Miletus and Halicarnassus: 334

  Miletus

  After the defeat of the western Persian satraps at the Granicus, Alexander moved south, down the western coast of Asia Minor. The Macedonians paused briefly at Ephesus, where Alexander made sacrifice to Artemis, before continuing south to Miletus. The city of Miletus was an ideal location for the Persians to use as a potential base of operations from which to launch a counter-attack on mainland Greece. It was surrounded on three sides by sea, jutting as it did into the Latmian gulf, and well fortified on the landward side. The ruins of the city are now in a rather different position, lying some 10km from the coast; this is due to the mouth of the Maeander River having silted up over the centuries. A portion of the army had been detached on a secondary mission of conquest, but Alexander still controlled the cream of the army of invasion: the agema of the Companion Cavalry, the Agrianians and archers, the Thracian cavalry and an unspecified number of heavy infantry taxeis.

  Whilst Alexander was at Ephesus, the Persian commander of Miletus, a man called Hegisistratus, had offered to surrender to Alexander, and Alexander was no doubt expecting to receive the surrender of the city without incident, hence the relative lack of troops in his entourage. The presence of a Persian fleet of some 400 warships only three days away from his city filled Hegisistratus with renewed hope and a desire to resist; when Alexander arrived he found the gates of the city closed. Although Alexander expected the city to be surrendered to him without incident, he had anticipated the possibility of Hegisistratus’ change of heart. His own fleet of 160 ships, commanded by Nicanor, had taken up a position just off Miletus on the island of Lade.70 The island was fortified and garrisoned with 4,000 troops to further reduce the possibility of the Persians using it as a base of operations and safe anchorage.

  With the inability of the Persians to land on the island of Lade, they were forced to make their anchorage off Mycale, some 15km south of Miletus. Naval battles in the ancient world only occurred, as with hoplite battles on land, when both sides were prepared to do battle, and there was little to no chance of Alexander offering an engagement for two reasons. Firstly, his own fleet was less than half the size of the Persian. Second, the Persian fleet, consisting of seasoned Phoenician and Cypriot warships, was far superior in quality. Alexander’s fleet was reltively untrained; the Greek city-states had not sent their best ships and crews to serve him. Parmenio had, apparently, argued for a naval battle, but Alexander had rejected the idea, citing the untrained nature of his own fleet, and the potential impact on Greece if he were to be defeated. This is a rare instance of Parmenio proposing the ambitious strategy, and Alexander choosing caution as the safer option.

  In lieu of naval operations, Alexander began the siege on land. The presence of his fleet off Lade meant that the defenders could not be supplied or reinforced by sea, and the city was easily blockaded by land, given the geography of the peninsula. The outer city had been abandoned by the defenders upon Alexander’s approach, and was occupied without incident; the defenders had retired to the inner citadel that was smaller and more defensible.

  After the occupation of the main city, Alexander received an embassy from a well respected Milesian citizen named Glaucippus. The offer was that the city, and notably its harbour, would become a free city; open to both Persian and Macedonian alike and be ruled by neither.71 Alexander rejected the proposal out of hand, as he was to do in response to an identical offer from Tyre in 332 before the commencement of that siege. Alexander could not allow a port as important as Miletus to remain available to the Persians. Although he had not yet formalized his proposal of defeating the Persian navy on land, we can only assume that the embryonic idea for that strategy was already in his thoughts.

  At dawn the following day, Alexander moved forward with his siege engines, which, in all probability, included stone-throwing catapults. We know that these new inventions were used at the siege of Halicarnassus, and I think it highly likely that they were also used here. If this is the case, then this was the first time in history of stone-throwing catapults being used against a fortification. The artillery pieces were used to clear away the defenders from the walls before the battering rams and scaling ladders were brought to bear. The walls were easily breached in several locations, and the city quickly fell. During these final operations, Alexander’s Greek fleet formed a ring around the city. We are told that this was to prevent any possibility of the Persian fleet rendering assistance to the besieged city. Whilst this is likely, we should consider the possibility of ship-borne artillery also being deployed. Although there is no positive evidence for this, it is something that occurred during Tyre, and is a possibility here. Either way, the allied Greek fleet successfully prevented any assistance from the Persian’s reaching Miletus.

  Our sources give only a very foreshortened picture of the siege, essentially implying that it all took place in a single day. This seems unlikely, but it was certainly not a protracted siege operation. As the walls were breached, there was general panic amongst the civilian population who had no doubt heard of the fate of Thebes. They immediately offered to surrender to Alexander and begged for lenience, citing their resistance to Persian rule during the Ionian revolt. Our sources further carry no references to the fate of the Milesians once their city fell, or of Alexander’s response to their pleas, but given that the city continued to exist after the siege, we can assume leniency on the part of Alexander. We do know, however, that the defenders, a body consisting entirely of Greek mercenaries, were slaughtered save for a small number who escaped. Alexander would have been all too quick to remind any who objected that it was strictly forbidden by the agreement of the League of Corinth for Greeks to take up arms against other Greeks. Alexander shows the same lack of sympathy as he did to the Greek mercenaries in Persian service after his victory at the Granicus.

  Around 300 of the defenders did, however, escape the fall of the city by using their shields as makeshift rafts and ‘sailing’ to one of the many small rocky islets off Miletus (which Arrian notes as being unnamed).72 Alexander made preparations to land on the islet by attaching scaling ladders to the fore of a number of his triremes with the intention of having marines scale the ladders and thereby gain a foothold on the rocky outcrop. The defenders, showing remarkable bravery, did not ask for terms but prepared to fight to the death. Alexander was so taken with their actions that he offered clemency, and employment within the army, which they readily accepted.

  Alexander, having captured Miletus, had to force the Persian navy to withdraw, and do so without offering a naval battle. He achieved this by exploiting the fact that ancient triremes were too small to carry a great many supplies on board. Alexander sent Philotas with the Companion Cavalry and three taxeis of heavy infantry around the coast towards Mycale. Once there they acted to prevent the Persians from re-supplying their ships with the waters of the Maeander River; the Persians were left with no choice but to withdraw to the protection of the Athenian cleruchs on the island of Samos.

  The siege of Miletus should have taught Alexander a valuable lesson: that a fleet could be extremely useful militarily, even if it did not offer battle to the Persian navy by being able to blockade a port. This is t
o say nothing, of course, of its ability to transport large numbers of troops quickly and to maintain lines of supply and communication with Macedonia. Even if these lessons had been apparent to Alexander, he appears to have ignored them as he now took the much debated decision to disband his fleet, save for a few Athenian vessels that were kept as much as hostages for the good behaviour of their mother city as for any other reason. The disbandment of the fleet is, strictly speaking, beyond the scope of a book on Alexander’s sieges. However, I include an examination of the decision, as its direct effect was that Alexander needed to besiege and capture every Persian port between Miletus and Egypt; its relevance is, therefore, clear.

  Arrian gives us five specific reasons for Alexander’s decision to disband his Greek fleet:73

  1.

  Lack of money.

  2.

  The Persian navy was far superior in quality and strength to his own.

  3.

  Alexander was unwilling to risk any losses, in ships or men, in a naval battle.

  4.

  Alexander believed that he no longer needed a fleet as he was now ‘master of the continent’.

  5.

  He intended to defeat the Persian navy on land by depriving it of its ports.

  Lack of money is the reason most commonly accepted by modern historians as the major factor in Alexander’s decision; it is also one of only two reasons cited by Diodorus.74 This conclusion is flawed for two reasons, though. Firstly, the fleet was supplied by the member states of the League of Corinth; it is therefore reasonable to assume – although we do not know this directly – that the cost of their upkeep would also fall on these states, and not on Alexander. The fleet would, effectively, have cost him almost nothing to maintain as the Macedonian element was small. Secondly, Alexander should not have been short of funds at this point in his career. Just a few months later at Gordium, during the winter of 334/3, Alexander invested 500 talents on raising a new fleet and 600 talents were allotted to pay for the upkeep of garrisons on the Greek mainland.75 Alexander had no opportunity to significantly increase his resources between Miletus and Gordium, and therefore must have already had access to significant funds at the time of the fleet’s disbandment.

  On the second point, Arrian is correct to say that the Persian fleet was superior to Alexander’s, both in numbers and quality. This is not a reason to demobilize the fleet, however, as this would leave the islands and the mainland defenceless and open to a counter-attack by the Persians, a strategy that was evidently considered by Memnon. It is fortunate indeed for Alexander that Memnon died so soon after the decision was made and that he was not able to carry out his plan. Further to the defence of Greece, Miletus had demonstrated to Alexander the usefulness of a fleet, even if he was not prepared to offer open battle. This evident lack of quality and numbers amongst Alexander’s Greek fleet was more of an argument for increasing investment in the fleet, rather than ridding himself of it completely.

  Points two and three are certainly linked: Alexander was unwilling to offer a naval battle because of the potential ramifications of any resulting defeat. If he had chosen a naval battle, his strategy would almost certainly have involved a heavy reliance on marines, most likely the hypaspists, and he could not afford to risk any losses amongst this contingent, as they were a vital component of every one of his land campaigns. The likelihood of Alexander fighting this sort of naval battle would be the result of his total lack of experience or knowledge of this form of warfare. The only occasions when Alexander ever used a navy was in support of his land operations, such as at Miletus and Tyre, or to assist in the crossing of a river, as with the Hydaspes.

  Arrian’s fourth point, that Alexander did not need a fleet, as he already controlled the whole continent, is extraordinary and demonstrably untrue. Even if we take Arrian to be referring to Asia Minor, rather than the whole of Asia, then it still was nowhere near true. It is hard to see why Arrian (or his source) would make such a claim.

  This strategy of defeating the Persian navy on land is famous, and on the surface, fairly sound. In the ancient world, warships could not carry any great quantity of supplies and so had to dock at a friendly port every evening to re-supply with food and fresh water, and to allow the sailors the time and space to exercise and sleep. It is also true that this strategy ultimately worked; the Persian fleet did collapse as Alexander captured key cities on the Phoenician coast, but the strategy had at least two serious flaws. Firstly, a competent commander, as Memnon surely was, had a free hand to act as he wished in the Aegean, to overrun all of the islands and carry the fight to the mainland, where several states would more than likely have revolted given the opportunity. At the very least, the Persians could attack the coastal areas of Asia Minor and land troops in Alexander’s rear, as they in fact did at Tenedos. Secondly, it does not take any account of the fact that a significant portion of the Persian fleet was from Cyprus, which would theoretically have been completely unaffected by Alexander’s strategy. Although these ships would still have needed mainland ports in order to operate, they could have remained loyal to the Persians and able to harass Alexander’s lines of supply and communication. Alexander essentially relied upon luck to overcome these two problems, which was uncharacteristic. His planning was usually far more meticulous than this and his strategies were well thought out; which leads me to conclude that his decision here was not a purely tactical or strategic one, but something else.

  If the decision to disband the fleet was not taken on military grounds, nor was it forced upon him by lack of funds, or any of the other reasons Arrian gives, why did he make this decision? I suspect that the truth lies in something that Arrian comes close to mentioning, but does not specifically say. He points out that any loss in battle could lead to disaffection and potential rebellion in Greece. This raises the question of loyalty. The allied troops with the army were loyal to Alexander, although this could have been because of a fear of reprisals at home if they were not. They did have ample opportunities to be disloyal, including during the set-piece battles where they could have easily caused a defeat of Alexander by attacking the Macedonians’ rear, rather than passively acting as his second line. It could also have been because of the presence of thousands of heavily-armed, battle-hardened Macedonians. The fleet, of course, would very quickly have been far away from the location of the king and the army, Alexander’s personality and influence would have had far less of an impact on them, and the opportunity for disloyalty would have been exponentially greater the further Alexander progressed into Asia, and far easier to act upon. The fact that he retained the twenty Athenian vessels is an indication that he wanted to try to retain some specifically-Athenian hostages, but 160 potentially disloyal vessels was too great a risk.76

  We should also note that Alexander in fact possessed two fleets, that of the League of Corinth, which was now disbanded, and that from Macedonia numbering sixty ships. There is no possibility of Alexander having dismissed all of his fleet as he needed to maintain control of the Hellespont to ensure his own lines of supply and communication with Macedonia, but also to keep open the corn route from the Black Sea, which was essential to the Greek states, and especially Athens.77 Maintaining the corn routes for the city-states was essential in ensuring their continued loyalty. If they ever rebelled, Alexander could easily cut off their grain and starve them into submission, as long as he had a fleet in control of the Hellespont that is.

  Halicarnassus

  After the capture of Miletus, Alexander received news that Halicarnassus was preparing to resist under the guidance of Memnon of Rhodes, the man who Alexander had recently defeated at the Granicus. Memnon was apparently in command of a formidable force of native Persian troops and the remnants of the Greek mercenaries that had escaped after the Granicus. This potential resistance, coupled with the fact that it was the next closest port along the coast, and that it was the largest Persian port in the southwest Aegean, ensured that it was Alexander’s next target.
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  Halicarnassus was in a naturally excellent defensive position; its walls were strongly fortified and ran along the edge of a small group of hills, adding to the city’s defensive situation.78 The outer circuit of the walls also contained three powerful citadels, rather than the more usual one; these were located at strategic points around the perimeter of the city. These citadels consisted of the original acropolis to the northwest, the fortification at the harbour entrance to the southwest, Salmacis, and the island stronghold of Zephyrium, the location of the tomb of Mausolus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The fortress was also surrounded by a moat some 13m deep and 7m wide.79 The defenders were further encouraged, and their position strengthened by, the presence of the Persian fleet, who now had no potential opponent to occupy their attentions. The defenders could be re-supplied and reinforced at will; the disbandment of the fleet meant that the siege would now be considerably more difficult, and would have to be conducted entirely on land. When Alexander arrived before the walls of the city in the autumn of 334, he no doubt expected a lengthy siege.

  Memnon had only received news of his promotion the day before Alexander arrived, and he wasted no time in using his new authority. He first ordered a screen of ships to blockade the harbour, an unnecessary precaution given Alexander’s lack of a fleet. He also gathered together all of the mercenaries who had been evacuated from the various cities in Alexander’s path that surrendered without resistance. His final act was to carry out some emergency repair work to the already formidable defences.