Who fought: Greeks (Alexander the Great) vs. Persians (Darius).
What was at stake: Western civilization.
Every Greek knew the Persian Empire was huge, but never before had it been so obvious. The army Darius III had assembled was not a million strong as some ancient writers assert. That figure is absurd. It was, however, many times larger than the 40,000 foot and 7,000 horse in Alexander's army. The Greeks saw that the Persian line was so long that it could easily envelop both of their flanks. Both Persian wings were held by cavalry. Some of them were heavy cavalry with both riders and horses wearing armor. The rest of the horsemen were light cavalry, the dreaded horse archers of the steppes. Between the cavalry wings were two lines of infantry. In the center of the first line stood mercenary Greek hoplites, flanking the Persian "Immortal" infantry, Darius's corps d'elite. And in the center of the Immortals was the Great King himself.Front and center of the whole Persian army were 15 elephants, beasts the Macedonians had never seen before.
On either side of the elephants were 100 chariots with scythe blades on their wheels. Darius apparently was banking heavily on the chariots. He had leveled the field in front of his army so the chariots could operate efficiently. That was typical of Darius—strategically stupid. That levelled field kept his army tied in place more rigidly than if he had shut it up in a fortress. The army not only couldn't move; it couldn't even change front if Darius were to use his chariots. Darius did not see the problem, but his opponent did.
Alexander
The young king of Macedon had many faults: He was ruthless, was capable of breathtaking cruelty, and possessed of a superhuman ego. But he was not stupid— especially strategically. He scouted the Persians' position, captured orders detailing the arrangements of their army units, and let them wait. For days Darius waited behind his leveled field until Alexander decided to come and get him.Alexander had beaten the Persians twice before. The first time, he led his heavy cavalry across the Granicus River and drove off the 20,000 Persian light cavalry opposing him. Then the rest of his army crossed and defeated 20,000 mercenary Greek infantry under Memnon of Rhodes.
Alexander let the Persian prisoners go home and massacred the Greeks, calling them traitors.The notion that all Greeks should unite in a crusade against the Persian Empire was a legacy Alexander had inherited from his father, Philip II of Macedon. Philip fully accepted the traditional belief that there were two classes of humans: Greeks and "barbarians." And he had a practical reason for promoting the belief: Greeks would only unite when faced with a common enemy, and Philip wanted the Greeks united under him.The idea of the ancient and cultured Greek city-states being led by a Macedonian king repelled many Greeks. Macedonians were Greek hillbillies who were so behind the times they still had kings. Philip achieved his aim by developing an army that utterly outclassed any forces in the Greek city-states. After defeating them, he formed a league that included all mainland Greek city-states but Sparta, a city for which he had only contempt. Then he invaded Persia.
The Macedonian king didn't get far. But that was only because he was assassinated. Revolt broke out in Greece, but Alexander quickly put it down. He proved that he could operate the machine his father had invented.The base of the Macedonian military machine was a new kind of phalanx. The Macedonian phalangites had metal helmets and greaves, but no bronze corselets. They had 18-foot long spears called sarissas, instead of the 8-foot Greek spears. They had smaller shields than the huge, bronze-faced hoplite shield and longer swords. They could move faster than the Greek phalangites, and they could maneuver in small battalions as well as long lines.
Philip used the phalanx to hold the enemy in place, but he used the heavy cavalry to knock it out. The elite heavy cavalry ("the King's Companions") were armed with helmet, corselet, shield, sword, and spear. Macedonians, unlike most Greeks, were horsemen. At this time, no cavalry in the world had stirrups. Only a rider trained from childhood could keep his seat on a horse while thrusting with a spear. For scouting and harassing the enemy, Philip had light cavalry armed with bows or javelins and swords. Alexander later added a corps of super heavy cavalry, the Sarissophomi, which used the long infantry spear.
Philip invented a new kind of soldier to provide a link between the heavy cavalry and the phalanx. These "hypaspists" wore helmets and carried shields heavier than the Macedonian phalangites' but lighter than those of the hoplites. Their spears were similar to the old hoplite weapon. They were more mobile than the phalangites and could fight either as a phalanx or in extended order.
Philip's most mobile infantry were his archers, slingers, and javelin throwers, who wore little armor. For really long-range fighting and siege work, he had artillery—ballistas and catapults. These had been used by the Greek states in Sicily and Italy, but seldom in the Greek peninsula. Philip's engineers invented a new and much more powerful land of artillery that used twisted sinew cords instead of a bow to throw projectiles.
The Macedonian army was a far more complex affair than the old Greek phalanx. It was also better trained. Philip had the world's first standing army, raised by the world's first universal military service.
After putting down the cities that rebelled following his father's death, in the course of which he leveled the city of Thebes and massacred 6,000 Thebans, Alexan-der recruited troops from other Greek states for the Persian expedition. The Granicus battle wasn't much of a test for his army. He outnumbered the Great King's forces, and Memnon of EJiodes had foolishly tried to hold the riverbank with cavalry instead of his heavy infantry. Alexander secured a hold in Asia Minor, then marched down the Mediterranean coast to take the Persian naval bases. He wanted to secure his rear before pursuing the Persian army.
This time, Darius himself appeared at Issus with a large army in Alexander's rear. Alexander maneuvered the Persians into a cramped space where their numbers didn't count for much and led his Companions in charge after charge, aiming at the Persian king. Darius fled, leaving his weapons and family behind.
Instead of following the defeated Persians, Alexander completed his conquest of the coastal cities and proceeded into Egypt, where he was hailed as a god. This was no big deal to the Egyptians—all their pharaohs had been gods. But it seemed to be a revelation to Alexander. He decided that he had been chosen by heaven to rule the world. His tutor, Aristotle, had taught him that there were two classes of humans: Greeks and barbarians. Alexander could not understand why, if he ruled both Greeks and barbarians, one group was better than the other. He decided that all men were brothers and the gods had chosen him to reconcile their differences. He took his troops to the East to complete his assignment.Meanwhile, Darius raised another army and hoped to intercept Alexander by the Tigris River, north of the city of Arbela. On a plain called Gau Gamela, or camel pasture, Darius drew up his army and leveled the field.
Quality vs. Quantity
Alexander eventually moved his troops up to face the Persians. He built a fortified camp and waited some more. Parmenio, his second-in-command, suggested a night attack on the massive Persian army. "I will not steal a victory," said Alexander. He was not just being chivalrous. Alexander always depended on exact timing and precise movements. That might not be possible at night. So the Macedonians slept soundly in their camp while the Persians, expecting a night attack, stayed up all night wearing their armor and holding their weapons.
At sunrise, Alexander led his troops up to the leveled field. Then he did some-thing the Persians had never seen before: He moved his army obliquely to the right. It was a kind of giant-scale version of the "right oblique, march" familiar to any vet-erans of the U.S. Army's "dismounted drill." The right wing of Alexander's army would be the first to contact the Persians. The Macedonian king was there, leading his Companions and Sarissophoroi in person. A screen of light infantry covered the advance. To foil any flanking attacks by the enormous Persian army, Alexander had several infantry and cavalry divisions behind his own flanks.
They could face right, left, or to the rear as needed.Darius noticed that the Greeks, while moving forward, were also moving away from his prepared field. To stop that movement, which would frustrate his chariots, he sent his heavy cavalry to charge the Greek right. Alexander met the charge with Greek mercenary cavalry. The Greeks were driven back, but Alexander charged the enemy horsemen with his own heavy cavalry. Meanwhile, Darius unleashed his chariots.
The chariot had been the ultimate weapon a thousand years before this. It was a mobile missile platform, with a driver and one or two archers. All other soldiers could move only as fast as their feet could carry them, so it was easy for charioteers to concentrate overwhelming firepower wherever needed. Then soldiers learned to ride, and cavalry replaced chariots as the mobile arm.
Cavalry could occasionally be used as a shock weapon, but only the most expert riders on the best trained horses could get their mounts to crash into a steady line of spear points. A charioteer, stand-ing behind a pair of horses, never could. Darius's scythe chariots could only be successful if the Greeks panicked. They didn't. The archers and javelin men shot down both charioteers and their horses. The panicked horses that escaped ran around the battalions of phalangites and were captured by the grooms in the Macedonian camp. All the Persian charioteers had accomplished was to demonstrate why chariots had been obsolete for centuries.
What the elephants did was unknown. Whatever it was, it had no effect on Alexander's army. It seems most likely that they suffered the same fate as the chariots.While battling the Persian horsemen, Alexander sent one of his cavalry divisions to flank the would-be flankers. The Persians, menaced from the rear, stampeded off the battlefield. The Persian cavalry attack had opened a gap in the Persian front. Alexander noticed the gap. He detached his Companions , some hypaspists, and four battalions of phalangites and led them in a charge straight at Darius.
The Persian emperor dropped everything and galloped away, running for his life. Most of the Persian army followed him. The Persian right wing, however, had ridden around the Greek left wing and attacked the camp. They were trying to rescue the family Darius had left behind after Issus. Alexander turned and charged to the rear. The Persians were finally routed. The Macedonians pursued the remnants of the Persian army for 35 miles, slaughtering thousands.
The fruits of victory
Alexander rode into Babylon and proclaimed himself the new Great King of Persia. In Babylon he learned that the Spartans had attacked the troops he left in Greece and that Sparta was now part of his empire. Then he went on campaigning, conquering tribes and cities through Iran and Turkestan and into what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. But he did not forget his notion of the brother-hood of man, which he demonstrated in Babylon by holding a mass marriage of 7,000 of his troops to Persian women according to the Persian rites. He adopted Persian administrative methods and employed Persian officials.Before Alexander, Persia had seemed to be on the verge of accomplishing with diplomacy and money what it had failed to do with military power.
The Great King was taking sides in Greece's incessant civil wars. After the Peloponnesian War, Sparta had become the chief power in Greece. Spartan hegemony in the Aegean Islands was destroyed in the Battle of Cnidus. The victorious fleet was Greek, but the Great King had paid for it. Later, in 384 BC, the Great King arranged a peace among the warring Greek states. In this "King's Peace," Persia again got undisputed sovereignty over the Ionian Greeks in Asia Minor. Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth all took turns lording it over other Greeks, and all took Persian money for enterprises, which in the long run benefited only Persia. The Persian Empire was like a great black hole, sucking the small Greek states into it by economic gravity.Alexander changed that. He obviously did not preserve democracy from extinction at the hands of Persia.
He almost made it extinct in Greece. But the idea had already crossed the Adriatic to Italy, where the Roman Republic was growing stronger annually. Slowly the idea of people ruling themselves would spread over the world. It would die in some places but spring to life in others. What Alexander did was shift economic, as well as military, power from Asia to Europe. The idea of the rights and duties of citizenship did not die, even under Alexander and his successors. Because of his conquests, Europeans would never become the slaves of a divine king, as in Persia or Egypt.
Alexander added an idea of his own to both Europe and Asia. The brotherhood of man has had even rougher sledding than democracy, but we've come a long way from the Great King, and even from Aristotle.
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