Hattin 1187 AD - The Franks

Who fought: Crusaders (Guy de Lusignan) vs. Muslims (Saladin). 
What was at stake: The fate of Christianity or Islam.

So advised the Byzantine emperor, Leo the Wise. Leo was thinking of the knights of the Carolingian Empire, but the techniques of Charlemagne's knights had been adopted all over Europe when the crusades began. Still, perhaps because the first Crusaders were overwhelmingly French or Norman, to Byzantines and Muslims alike, all Westerners were "Franks." And Leo's advice was still sound.

War in Europe—a moist mass of peninsulas and islands, covered with forests and broken up by rivers and mountains—meant fighting at close quarters. Knights were encased in heavy mail, and foot soldiers wore as much armor as they could afford. Often the knight's huge charger, or destrier, was also armored. The destrier's saddle let the knight put all his weight and his horse's weight, too, behind a lance thrust. The lance and the sword were the Western knight's only weapons, and the charge was his only tactic. 

Horsemen of the steppes, unhampered by woods or many rivers, covered wide areas in their skirmishing.They depended mostly on the bow and usually charged only after their foes had been thoroughly softened up by archery.Asian tactics left little room for infantry,except in sieges.The Frankish footmen, who had beaten the Romans, Goths, Vandals, Huns, and Arabs for centuries, had not forgotten how to fight.They were armed with spears and shields,and also with a new weapon: the recently re-invented crossbow. Anna Comnena, a Byzantine princess, described the device she saw in the hands of the first Crusaders:"It is  a weapon unknown to Greeks and to the Barbarians. 

This terrible weapon is not worked by drawing its cord with the right hand,and holding it with the left hand.The user rests both his feet against the bow, whilst he strains at the bow with the full force of his arms. When the cord is released, the arrow leaves the groove with a force against which nothing is proof. It not only penetrates a buckler, but also pierces the man and his armour through and through."

The Crusaders' military system was based on the close coordination of crossbow-men, infantry spearmen, and heavily armored knights. The disciplined spearmen kept the Turkish horse archers away from the knights, who led their destriers until they were ready to fight. Between every two spearmen was a crossbowman who shot down Saracens before they could get close enough to hit anything with their bows. If the frustrated Muslims tried to break through the Christian lines with a mass attack, the infantry opened its ranks and the mounted knights charged. As at Marathon, the Westerners had heavier armor and carried longer spears. Unless there was an enor-mous imbalance of numbers the Muslims always lost.

The Turks 

When Mohammed's followers rode out of Arabia and into the Roman lands of North Africa, Syria, and Mesopotamia, they discovered they had allies. The conflict between the Catholics and the Monophysites (see The Nika Rebellion, pg. 16) was still going on. The Catholics were in control in Constantinople, so the Monophysites in the Near East welcomed the Muslims as liberators. Their Prophet had taught the Arabs that Christians and Jews were "people of the book" and must be tolerated, so the con-quest went smoothly.After they were established, Muslim rulers bought pagan Turks as slaves, converted them, and made them soldiers, called mamluks. In time, the mamluks overthrew their masters and became rulers.

Compared with the Arabs and Persians, the Turks were barbarians. They did not understand all the subtleties of Islam, such as why they must make special allowances for Christians and Jews. This was one reason why the Crusaders were in the Holy Land. The other was the desire of the pope to channel the energies of the nobles and knights away from fighting each other and slaughtering Christian peasants.

The Turks, like the Christian knights, loved fighting, even fighting each other. The so-called Seljuk Empire broke up into a welter of rival sultanates, sheikh-doms, and emirates. At the height of this confusion, the Franks appeared and carved out the Crusader principalities.Then a new leader, a Kurdish sultan who called himself El Malik en Nasir Salehed-Din, appeared. Saladin, as the Franks called him, conquered the petty Muslim states one after another. Then he turned his attention to the Christians.For eight years, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, a leper who assumed royal powers at 16, outmaneuvered and frustrated the great Saladin. Then, Baldwin the Leper, one of history's most underrated generals, died. 

When he knew death was near, King Bald-win appointed his brother-in-law, Guy de Lusignan, regent, but Guy proved so inept the King dismissed him and appointed Count Raymond of Tripoli instead. But when Baldwin died, his sister, Sybilla, organized a coup d'etat that made her husband king. 

More than Byzantine politics 

King Guy quickly proved that he couldn't control his own barons, let alone Sala-din. Count Raymond, who thought he should be Icing, and Reynald de Chatillon, were the two most uncontrollable barons. Reynald, who spent years in a Muslim prison, was a fanatic who said he was not bound by any oath sworn to an infidel. He was also a bandit and a pirate who had robbed and killed Christians as well as Muslims. When Reynald broke the truce with Saladin by attacking a Muslim caravan, the Sultan besieged his castle, but was driven away by King Baldwin and forced to sign another truce. But before that happened, Raymond had protected his own interests by signing a separate truce with Saladin.

When Guy became king, the Master of the Temple, Gerard of Ridfort, urged him to move against Raymond. Saladin, however, sent word that he would support the Count of Tripoli with his army. Then Saladin asked Raymond for permission to cross his territory to raid Acre. Raymond agreed, provided the raid lasted no more than 24 hours and no Christians were harmed.Saladin's 7,000 cavalry were returning from their visit to Acre when they encountered a band of 130 knights under the Master of the Temple at Sephoria. The knights were an embassy from Guy to Raymond. Gerard didn't hesitate; he ordered an attack. Fortune favors the brave, but not the absurd. Almost all the Christians were killed. Gerard got away. 

Now that war had begun with the Muslims, Raymond made his peace with Guy and joined the army the King was raising. By stripping castles of most of their garrisons and emptying the treasury to get cash, Guy had assembled 1,200 knights, 2,000 Turcopole light cavalry, and 10,000 infantry. Saladin, though, raised a much bigger army. He besieged Tiberias, where Raymond's castle was located.Surprisingly, Raymond, renowned for devotion to his own interests, advised against attempting to relieve Tiberias. The fortress was strong, he said, and his wife, Princess Eschiva, could hold out for a long time. It was midsummer. 

Saladin would find little fodder for his huge cavalry force. He'd have to give up the siege soon. And if Tiberias should fall, the loss of Princess Eschiva was not as great as the loss of the country.Raymond's counsel was good, but nobody trusted him. Both Reynald and Gerard of Ridfort opposed him. Reynald lived to fight Muslims, and Gerard wanted to live down the shame of running from the fight at Sephoria. 

As a compromise, Guy brought the army up to Sephoria. The town was near Tiberias, and it had plenty of water and fodder. If Saladin attacked them there, he was bound to lose. But that night, Gerard sneaked into Guy's tent and shamed the King into trying to relieve Tiberias.

The dry well of Hattin 

The plan was to drive directly at Saladin's water supply, the Sea of Galilee. With-out water, the Muslims would have to withdraw. The tactics would be the time-tested Christian pile driver. Cavalry and infantry were heavily armored. The poorest foot soldiers wore quilted or felt jackets that were amazingly arrow-resistant."I have seen soldiers with up to 21 arrows stuck in their bodies marching no less easily for that," wrote Beha ed-Din Ibn Shedad, a Muslim official and friend of Saladin.He did not, however, see them marching easily in July. The heat was scorching. Metal armor became searing hot where it was exposed to the sun. 

Many men had emptied their canteens before noon. The Turkish and Arab horsemen seemed to be everywhere. They swarmed around the Christians, shooting arrows and dashing back into clouds of dust. The crossbowmen tried to reply, but they couldn't cock their crossbows while walking. The men had to stop, hold their bows with their feet, and draw their bowstrings with both hands. Every time the crossbowmen stopped, the whole army had to stop. Coordination between crossbowmen, infantry spearmen, and cavalry was the essence of Crusader tactics.

The Turcopole cavalry fought in the Turkish manner, but they were overwhelmed by the masses of Muslim light cavalry. The Christian knights charged again and again, but the more agile Muslim horses scampered away from each charge. To the heavily armored knights, the weather was a more dangerous foe than the Muslims. Some knights actually suffocated to death in their closed helmets. Then the Templars (the rear guard) sent word that their horses could go no farther. Guy saw the village of Hattin, and where there were houses, there must be water. 

He ordered a halt at the village. When they arrived, though, the Crusaders found that the well was dry and the village abandoned. But the men were too exhausted to move on.Saladin surrounded the village and distributed more arrows to his troops. He brought up 70 camels loaded down with more arrows. He set up his tent on a hill where he had a good view of the battlefield. Unlike the Crusader leaders, Saladin was a strategist, not a fighter. He hated war, was inept with weapons, and was never in the forefront of his troops.

On the second day of the battle the Muslims set fire to the scrub, and the Christians, already suffering horribly from thirst, fought right through the blaze. When Guy attempted to rally the soldiers, they lost cohesion, and the Muslim attacks became more effective. They were dying of thirst, and the Sea of Galilee was only three miles away, all downhill after crossing a ridge."Let's save ourselves!" a foot soldier shouted. A disorganized mass of infantry stampeded for the ridgeline. But the spearmen and crossbowmen were unable to coordinate their efforts. And they were too tired to fight anymore. Some could no longer even stand. 

They surrendered. Beha ed-Din saw one Muslim soldier tie up and lead away 30 Christian infantrymen.Raymond of Tripoli gathered his knights, charged the ring of horse archers and broke through. Guy and his remaining men tried to make a stand on a hill, but the Muslims swept over them.The battle was over. Almost all the Christian fighting men in Palestine had been killed or captured. Saladin sent most of the surviving Crusader infantry to the slave markets, but he beheaded all of the Templars and Hospitalers. He kept the other nobles for ransom. He didn't get much ransom. Prisoners he liked, such as King Guy, he released without ransom. 

And if ransom as late in coming for the other knights, he had them butchered for the entertainment of his dinner guests.Immediately after the battle, Saladin had the Crusader leaders sent to his tent. He gave Guy a goblet of chilled rose water. Guy drank a portion and passed the cup to Reynald de Chatillon. Saladin became angry because he had vowed to personally behead Reynald."Remind the King," Saladin said to his interpreter, "that it is he, not I who gives drink to this man."A little later, the Sultan asked Reynald to renounce Christianity. 

As he expected, the Crusader contemptuously refused. Saladin swung his sword, but, inept as always, he cut off Reynald's arm instead of his head. The Sultan's embarrassed attendants immediately beheaded the baron.

The beginning of the end 

Saladin released Guy on the condition that he leave the Holy Land. Guy immediately broke his promise. He went to Tyre, hoping to renew the fight, but the garrison there refused to admit him. In Europe, however, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of England and France started a new crusade. The Emperor died en route, but the French and English arrived. Richard the Lionhearted almost got to Jerusalem, but he realized that a garrison there could easily be cut off by the Turldsh and Arab horse archers. 

Only a full field army could resupply Crusaders in Jerusalem. Richard signed a truce with Saladin. The Crusaders were able to hang on to a greatly reduced portion of the Holy Land for another century, but the crusading cause was defunct.Given the demographics, that result was inevitable. What gives Hattin its greatest importance is its effect on the Muslims, not the Christians. It convinced them that the ancient tactics of the horse archer, demonstrated centuries before by the Scythians and the Parthians, could not be beaten. 

The Arabs knew about saltpeter, which they called "the snow from China," and its use in gunpowder long before the Europeans, but they neglected to develop guns. Cannons and the clumsy muskets the Europeans made could not be used by horse archers and would be useless against them.So the lords of Dar es Islam sat back, confident of their invincibility, and grew fat siphoning riches from the trade between Europe and the Far East. And three centuries later, as we'll see in the next battle, the roof fell in.

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Arbela, 331BC - A Field Prepared for War

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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Bunker Hill, 1775 AD - A Fort on the Hill

Who fought: Americans (William Prescott) vs. British (William Howe).

What was at stake I American independence.

As the sun rose over Boston Harbor, an officer on the HMS Lively noticed something strange on the hill behind Charlestown. He trained his telescope on the hill. The damned rebels were building a fort. In fact, it was almost completed. The officer immediately informed his captain, who opened fire on the rebel position. But a few minutes later, Lively received an order from Adm.Samuel Graves to cease fire.In his headquarters in Boston, Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage, too, was aware of the fort. This was absolutely intolerable. Gage had spent most of his life in North America, fighting for the king. He had married a New Jersey woman and planned to retire to a country house he had purchased in New York. This ragtag band of peasants, led by the most improper young radicals, was trying to plunge his country into anarchy. Gage had already requested reinforcements to help him deal with the situation. He got 3,000 additional soldiers, bringing the British forces in Boston to 5,000. 

London felt that this number would be adequate to handle dissidents in a town of 20,000. Gage did not. He also got less welcome reinforcements—three new major generals, Henry Clinton, John "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne, and William Howe, three of the most ambitious officers in the service. Each of them, Gage knew, coveted his command.Through his efficient intelligence organization, which included spies in the high-est rebel councils, Gage knew that the dissidents had been hoarding ammunition and weapons, even cannons. 

He had sent a force composed of the flank companies—the grenadiers and the light infantry, the army's elite—to confiscate those stores at Con-cord. But the rebels had spies, too. The stores were gone. What the troops found at Concord was a horde of armed farmers who drove them all the way back to Charles-town. The rebels fired at the troops from houses and from behind stone walls. There seemed to be thousands of them. The fight must have convinced them that they were the equals of British regulars. After the fight, they besieged Boston. Now they were building a fort on Breed's Hill, as if they were real soldiers. 

But they'd run like rabbits when they had to face attacking regulars, Gage thought.Meanwhile, he wanted to give the rebels an immediate reaction to the fort they had built overnight. He called his new staff generals together. Burgoyne was a writer, a playwright. He told Gentleman Johnny to draft a message to Graves, asking the admiral to resume the cannonade of the rebel fort. It had to be persuasive. Graves, a senior member of Britain's "senior service," would never take orders from an army man, even though the task of obliterating the fort would be the army's. Besides, Graves still bore a grudge against Gage because of a dispute he had had with the general's father years before. After the note to Graves had been sent, Gage wanted to hear how his generals thought they should handle the fort.

Rabble in arms 

If Gage could have visited the rebel encampments, the numbers he saw would have troubled him. Militias from all over New England were there, as well as troops from the Middle Colonies and even from the South. But he would have been heartened by the confusion. Artemas Ward, commander of the Massachusetts militia, was nominally in command under the Massachusetts Committee of Safety. But militia officers were all throwing their weight around. 

Gen. Israel Putnam of Connecticut, who had commanded troops in the French and Indian War, was particularly pushy.The Americans had fortified positions at the entrances to Boston and Charles-town. Those two towns occupied a pair of twin peninsulas, almost islands, projecting like huge pollywogs into the harbor. (In those days, the Back Bay section of Boston really was a bay.) Each peninsula was linked to the mainland by a narrow, flat neck. There were no troops permanently in Charlestown. Putnam proposed fortifying Bunker Hill, the highest point on the Charlestown peninsula. This would prevent the British troops from using Charlestown as a staging area, as they had before the raid on Concord. 

It could also close most of Boston Harbor.Other militia generals protested that the hill would be too easy to isolate, given the Royal Navy's absolute control of the harbor. But nobody could stop Putnam from leading troops into the peninsula under cover of night. On the other hand, nobody made any arrangements for relief of the troops who would do the digging or even for supplying them with water, food, and ammunition. With Putnam went Col. William Prescott of Massachusetts, Col. Richard Gridley, a trained military engineer, and 1,200 armed farmers, who would do the digging.When they got to the top of Bunker Hill, they decided it would be better to fortify Breed's Hill—lower, but steeper, and closer to the British. 

Gridley traced the outlines of a fort, and Putnam ordered his men to dig. The fort was to be an earth-work 130 feet square with 12-foot walls rising from a dry moat.Prescott, who would have the field command on Breed's Hill, had his men start fortifying the flanks of the fort. They threw up breastworks down the Mystic River side of the hill and into woods bordered by a swamp. On the other side of the peninsula, the waters of Boston Harbor were too far away to permit building fortifications down to the beach. Prescott sent a detachment into the village of Charlestown. 

By sniping from the houses they might delay a British sweep. There was still a gap beyond the woods on the left. Prescott sent Capt. Thomas Knowlton with some Connecticut militia to plug it. They dug in behind a rail fence with a stone foundation. Below the bluffs above the Mystic shore, Col. John Stark and two regiments of New Hampshire militia took over the end of the fence and built a stone wall that ran across the beach into the river.Work on the fortifications was briefly interrupted when Lively began shooting, but it continued after the cease-fire. Then the whole fleet opened fire, as well as army cannons across the bay. 

The naval guns were not designed to fire on hilltop forts at close range. Most of their shots were too low. The digging continued. A soldier named Asa Pollard went down the hill to get water. As he was returning, his head suddenly disappeared, and a geyser of blood erupted from his neck. A cannon ball had decapitated him. The Americans took cover. But Prescott got up on a parapet and walked up and down as he ordered the troops to continue digging.Prescott noticed a nattily dressed young man coming up for the rear. As he came closer, the colonel recognized Dr. Joseph Warren, chairman of the Committee of Safety and president of the Provincial Congress. 

Warren had just been named a major general. Prescott offered him the command."I shall take no command here," Warren said. "I came as a volunteer with my musket to serve under you." 

The attack 

At British headquarters, Henry Clinton had a suggestion. Clinton, born in Newfound land, raised in New York, and blooded on Europe's battlefields, proposed landing on Charlestown Neck. It was a strip only 35 yards wide, and doing so would cut the rebels off.Gage snorted that there was no need for subtlety. The rebels would run when face-to-face with real troops on the offensive. That would be a greater blow to their morale.William Howe opposed both plans. Howe was the brother of Lord Augustus Howe, the inventor and master of light infantry tactics. James Wolfe, the conqueror of Quebec, considered William Howe the most daring and brilliant young officer in the army. Howe had led Wolfe's assault on the Plains of Abraham.

Howe pointed out that troops landing on the swampy neck, where there was no cover, would be caught between rebels to the north and rebels to the south, both on high ground. The tides permitted landing and evacuation at limited times of the day, and then only at a spot a half-mile from the neck. Howe proposed landing at Moulton's point, east of Charlestown, in front of Breed's Hill. It would not be a simple frontal assault, however. One detachment, under Brig. Gen. Robert Pigot, would enter Charlestown Village and march on the fort. Pigot would not attack. 

He would just hold the rebels in place while the rest of the army delivered the knockout punch. Howe, leading the grenadiers—18th-century shock troops—and battalion companies, would attack the hastily dug fortifications on the Mystic River side of the fort. But the light infantry, Howe's favorite arm, would deliver the keystroke. The light infantry, wiry men picked for their agility and trained to think for themselves, would jog up the Mystic Rver beach, hidden by the bluffs, and turn the rebels' flank. 

They would then attack the rebels behind the breastworks just as the grenadiers and battalion companies were about to charge.After landing, Pigot's detachment came under sniper fire. Pigot asked for artillery support. The British ships responded by firing hot shots (cannon balls heated red hot), and carcasses (hollow shot filled with a flaming mixture of tow and tar), into the town. The village was soon a roaring furnace. Pigot led his troops around the town and up toward the fort. On the British right, Howe mustered his troops in three waves."I shall not desire any one of you to go a step farther than where I go myself at your head," he told them. 

He meant it.Behind the breastworks, the slowness of the British advance and the silence of the British field pieces puzzled the Americans. The advance was slow because the Redcoats were plowing through deep grass that hid stone walls and ditches. The field pieces were silent because they were six-pounders and they had been supplied with 12-pound shot.Hidden from both the Americans behind the breastworks and the British main body were the light infantrymen. There was nothing slow about their advance. 

They were double-timing up the beach four abreast toward what looked like a deserted stone wall. The light company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers led the column.When the Welshmen were 100 feet from the wall, there was a deafening blast and a cloud of smoke. The light company of the Royal Welch Fusiliers ceased to exist. The King's Own light infantry, behind the Royal Welch, slowed for fraction of a second, then leveled their bayonets and charged before the rebels could reload. They leaped over the bodies of their comrades and were yelling in fury as a second volley blasted them. 

No soldiers could reload that fast. The light company of the 10th Infantry paused. There was a third volley. The whole light infantry column stampeded to the rear.

Behind the wall, John Stark cast a baleful eye over his three lines of prone militia-men, dampening any desire to pursue the enemy or even cheer. "Reload and wait," he said.If the fourth company had continued to charge, the battle would have been over. All of this was hidden from the men following Howe. The grenadiers, the first wave, fired a volley at the silent breastworks when they were 80 yards away and charged at double-time. They had covered about 30 yards when rebel heads and musket muzzles appeared above the earth wall. There was an ear-splitting crash and a cloud of white smoke. Howe looked around. Instead of a line behind him, there were clumps of men and individuals standing alone. The survivors fired back but hit nothing but dirt. The rebels fired again. The grenadiers headed down the hill. The battalion companies in the second wave marched through them and fired. 

They hit nothing. The rebels began firing as fast as they could."An incessant stream of fire poured from the rebel lines," a British officer wrote later. "It seemed a continuous sheet of fire for near 30 minutes."Howe screamed at his troops and waved his sword, but the British troops ran to the rear.

Pigot's troops, as they neared the fort, had the same experience."General Burgoyne and I saw appearances on the left of the army which made us shudder," Clinton wrote after watching the action from Copp's Hill in Boston. "In short, it gave way." Clinton rounded up reserves and took them across the bay. Once there, he formed up the walking wounded into another unit.Howe was not about to let Clinton steal a victory from him. He and Pigot reorganized their troops, light infantry, grenadiers, and battalion companies together, and took them up the hill 15 minutes after the repulse. There was no subtlety this time. It was a simple frontal assault against an entrenched enemy. It was a simple bloodbath. The Redcoats were again repulsed.

On the hill, most of the rebels had been without sleep or food since the previous night. Now they were running out of ammunition.For his third assault, Howe organized the troops into deep columns so that a whole line would not be exposed to fire at the same time. As soon as the British were in range, the Americans opened fire. The rebels fired until their ammunition gave out. Some fired pebbles and nails in place of bullets. The British swept over the fort, but the rabble militia did not stampede.

The rebel retreat, wrote Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne, was "no flight: it was even covered with bravery and military skill."Out of the 1,800 Americans who saw action, 449 were killed or wounded. One was Dr. Joseph Warren, slain in the last few minutes of the fight. The British losses were 1,060 killed or wounded out of 2,600."A dear bought victory," Henry Clinton commented. "Another such would have ruined us."Another such was not needed. The British had gained an unimportant hill. The Americans had gained confidence. At Concord, they had intimidated the British by their numbers, but their shooting was remarkably poor. 

They were nervous because they were committing treason and were firing on what was probably the best army in the world. At Bunker Hill, they stood up to a superior British force and beat them back until they ran out of ammunition.If the Americans decided to resist, the British faced a hopeless situation. The colonies were a land mass 1,000 miles wide and 1,000 miles deep. The population was a quarter of that of Britain and Ireland combined, and it was largely self-sufficient. There was no vital center, although Philadelphia was the second-largest English-speaking city in the world. It was across 3,000 miles of ocean. In short, it was too big to be conquered by any forces available in the 18th century.

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The Nika Rebellion, 532 AD - Civilization on the Edge

Who fought? I Imperial forces (Justinian) vs. Constantinople mob (Green and Blue leaders).

What was at stake?  Not Clear Enough

The hangman was probably new. He certainly didn't know his craft. And his ignorance almost killed Western civilization.It wouldn't have taken much to kill Western civilization in the year 532. In distant Britain, which had not seen a Roman soldier in more than a century, the Saxons had recovered from the defeat the man known as "Arthur the Soldier" had inflicted on them at Mt. Badon, 16 years earlier. Their chiefs, Cynric and Ceawlin, were preparing new invasions. But Arthur had another project on his mind—he was preparing to battle his own son, Medraut (or Modred). The savage Franks owned Gaul and western Germany. The Visigoths, defeated by the Franks, ruled Spain. Across the Straits of Gibraltar, the Vandals controlled the province of Africa, the breadbasket of the Empire, and all of the Mediterranean. Italy, including Rome itself, was under the sway of the Ostrogoths.

The once-mighty Roman Empire consisted only of the Balkan Peninsula, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It was menaced not only by the barbarians in the west, but by the civilized and powerful kingdom of Persia in the East. To the north, the Huns, despite the destruction of Attila's empire, were still the best cavalry in Europe. They and their allies, the Heruls, a Hunnicized German nation, remained a threat, and a new threat was joining them. The Slavs, a people savage enough to make the Huns look like exemplars of civilization, were massing on the Balkan boundaries.But to the people of Constantinople, capital of the Empire, these external threats were not as serious as the internal troubles. The emperor, Justinian, had coped well with the external problems during the five years he wore the purple. Surprisingly well. 

When the Persians attacked, Justinian had put a young, unknown officer named Belisarius in charge of the Imperial forces. At Daras, Belisarius lured the Persians into a trap and scattered their army.But another of the emperor's appointments, John of Cappadocia, was bringing disaster at home. As praetorian prefect, or chief financial officer, John was balancing the budget by levying crushing taxes and curtailing essential services. John's measures were driving small farmers out of business. They began swarming into Constan-tinople, where they strained the city's relief facilities and increased its crime rate.Even more serious was religious dissension. 

Paganism among the Romans was defunct. The two principal Christian sects in Constantinople, however, showed no Christian charity toward each other. Quarreling between the Catholics and the Monophysites was continuous and often violent. Three men to be hanged had committed their murders in one of those quarrels.

The factions 

The men belonged to street gangs sponsored by two factions known as the Blues and the Greens. They took their names from the colors of the chariots they entered in the Hippodrome races. The government recognized the factions and established them as civilian militia divisions charged with defending the walls of the city. With official recognition came political affiliation, and, after Christianity became the reli-gion of the Empire, affiliation with either the Catholics or the Monophysites. 

The Blues were Catholic and supported Catholic emperors; the Greens were Monophysite and supported Monophysite emperors. The factions sponsored street gangs, called partisans. The partisans dressed like Huns. They shaved the front of their scalps and let their hair grow long in the back. They wore Hunnish trousers and boots and shirts with baggy sleeves. Inside the sleeves, they carried daggers.A large crowd had assembled to watch the execution on January 10, 532. The three men were marched to the scaffold and nooses placed around their necks. 

When the floor gave way beneath them, the three bodies dropped.But two of the bodies dropped all the way to the ground. The ropes had broken. After a moment of embarrassment, the hangman and his assistants hustled the two convicts—one a Green, the other a Blue—back up on the scaffold and tried to hang them again. The ropes broke again.The executioners were stunned. The crowd murmured. 

Was God sending them a sign? A crowd of monks from a nearby monastery rushed up to the prisoners and carried them to a boat, rowed them across the Golden Horn and gave them sanctuary in a church. The city prefect, who had condemned the men to death, sent guards to the church to seize the men as soon as they stepped out. 

Nika! 

That  pleased  neither  the  Blues  nor  the Greens. Three days later was the Ides of January, a traditional occasion for chariot races. As tradition demanded, the emperor appeared at the Hippodrome. Both the Blues and the Greens implored him to pardon the fugitives.

He gave them no answer. As the 22nd race began, a cry went up from all parts of the Hippodrome, "Long live the humane Greens and Blues." It must have shocked any neutral observers (if there were any). The Greens and Blues had never agreed on anything before.That night,  a mob of Blues and Greens demanded that the prefect remove his guards.

He refused. The mob burst into his headquarters, killed several officials, opened the jail, and released all the prisoners. Then the rioters set fire to a number of buildings. The fire spread,and many more buildings burned, including the huge church of Hagia Sophia. 

Rioting went on and on. The mob was organized. Officers of the Green and Blue factions—high-ranking Romans—provided the leadership. The partisans, the dispossessed farmers, and the armed retainers of the great magnates supplied muscle. To identify themselves, the rioters shouted the traditional cheer of a winning faction at a chariot race—"Nika!" (Victory!). Historians later named this movement the Nika Rebellion.The two regiments stationed in the city refused to move. Belisarius, who had returned triumphant from the Persian War, led his private army of retainers against the rioters, as did another general, Mundus, who had arrived leading a group of Herul auxiliaries. The mob, however, swarmed around the soldiers in the labyrinthine streets of the city and attacked them from all sides. The troops could accomplish nothing.On January 18, a week after the failed hangings, Justinian, his empress 

Theodora, Belisarius, Mundus, their troops, and a few picked officials were huddled in the palace while the Blues and Greens assembled in the Hippodrome crowning a new emperor. John of Cappadocia urged the emperor to flee.Although probably none of the participants realized it, the moment was a turning point in history. If Justinian had fled, his dreamed-of project, the codification of Roman law, would probably never have happened. The civil and criminal law of most of Europe, Africa, and the Americas is based on Justinian's code. The law in the United Kingdom, most of the United States, and the rest of the world, although not based directly on the Roman code, is strongly influenced by it.The shape of civilization for the next two millennia depended on the actions of as unlikely a cast of characters as fate had ever brought together.First, there was the emperor, Justinian, who had been born Peter Sabbatius on a small farm in Illyria, north of Greece. 

His uncle, Justin, years before had joined the army. Justin could barely read and write, but he learned enough about military tactics to become count of the Excubitors, commander of one of the elite units of the army. Stationed in the capital, Justin sent for his nephew and arranged for his education.Peter became Justin's secretary. To Justin, that meant confidential agent.Succession to the throne in the Roman Empire did not depend on heredity. Theoretically, the senate, the army, and the populace proclaimed the emperor. Actually, the army did most of the choosing, with the factions playing an important part in the process. When the old emperor died, Peter's intrigues with military and religious officials resulted in Justin becoming emperor. Justin gave Peter the rank of patrician and promoted him to Master of Soldiers, or commander-in-chief of the armed forces. When Justin became ill, he made his nephew co-emperor. Peter Sabbatius changed his name to Justinian. 

When Justin died, Justinian became sole emperor. A tall, cadaverous, and humorless man, he shared the throne with his wife, Theodora, who had an even stranger background.The empress, a pretty dark-haired woman, was much younger than Justinian, who was now about 50. She had once been an actress, which in those days was practi-cally synonymous with prostitute. Also, she was a Monophysite, and Justinian was a Catholic. But when Justinian met her, long before he became emperor, he fell madly in love. He wanted to marry Theodora, but the empress Euphemia—herself a former slave—forbade a wedding. 

The patrician and the former prostitute married after Euphemia died.In spite of their differences, and in spite of her background, Theodora remained passionately loyal to Justinian all her life, and he to her. At this moment, her voice resolved a crisis."If you wish, O Emperor, to save yourself, there is no difficulty," she said. "We have ample funds. Yonder is the sea, and there are the ships. Yet reflect whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you will not prefer death to safety. I agree with an old saying 'Purple makes a fair winding sheet.'"Justinian agreed, too. He wasn't ready to die, though. He had a plan. But the plan depended on two other unlikely people: Belisarius and the emperor's private secretary, Narses.Belisarius, not yet 30, had also married an actress, a friend of Theodora. 

The wedding, in fact, had taken place shortly before the riot. Antonina's affair with Belisarius may have had something to do with the young soldier's rise in the world. In the war against Persia, he had fully justified the emperor's faith in him. In Constantinople, though, his best efforts had been futile. His success in carrying out Justinian's plan would depend on the performance of the man who had to play the hardest role: Narses. And Narses was the most unlikely of this entire unlikely group.Justinian planned to make him grand chamberlain, the second most powerful civilian in the Empire. But Narses had once been a slave. He was also a eunuch, castrated as a boy in his native Persarmenia (the portion of Armenia occupied by Persia), so he could be a servant in Persian harems. 

Somehow, he ended up in the slave market of Constantinople, and somehow, he attracted the attention of Justinian.Justinian was impressed with the slave's intelligence, loyalty, and capacity for hard work. The emperor had no need for a harem guard, but he could always find a use for brains. Narses, about four years older than Justinian, became a free man and rose rapidly in the imperial service. He was not only smart, but also generous and gregarious. These characteristics made him one of the most popular of court officials. And he was also, as he was to prove at this time, utterly fearless.Justinian told Belisarius and Mundus to take their troops to the two entrances of the Hippodrome. 

Once again they would meet the rioters. But this time, Narses would prepare the way for them. To Narses, he gave a bag of gold. The skinny little eunuch entered the Hippodrome alone and unarmed, walking through the howling mob that had already killed several hundred people. He circulated through the Blue section, waving to acquaintances and approaching important Blues. He reminded them that Justinian was a Catholic and had favored the Blues during Justin's reign. He pointed out that Hypatius, the man they were now proclaiming emperor, was a Green. He asked how they could support a Green. And he passed out the gold. 

The Blue leaders conferred quietly with each other. Then they unobtrusively spoke to their followers. Suddenly, in the middle of the coro-nation, all of the Blues turned and streamed out of the Hippodrome. The Greens were stunned. Before they could recover from their surprise, the soldiers of Belisarius and Mundus attacked. The Greens had no chance to organize. The soldiers killed 30,000, and Justinian had no more trouble with the factions.The emperor was now free to rebuild the fire-ravaged city and build a new Hagia Sophia, a church still considered one of the marvels of the world. He could now start the reconquest of Africa and Italy—a Herculean task actually performed by Belisarius and the incredible Narses. Finally, Justinian could commence his greatest accomplish-ment: the codification of the law. Thanks to that, the rule of law, not the changing whims of a succession of tyrants, became established in Western civilization.

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Marathon, 490 BC - A View from the Mountains

Who fought: Greeks (Mitiades) vs. Persians (Datis).
What was at stake: The survival of democracy.

Callimachus studied his Persian opponents from the heights above the plain of Marathon. As expected, there was a lot of cavalry—mostly horse archers. There were also foot archers and infantry spearmen. It was hard to estimate their number, spread out as they were. There had to be at least as many as the 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plateans he commanded. There were prob-ably many more. The Great King had unlimited resources. The Persian infantry were not as well armored as the Greeks, and their spears were shorter. But the Persian strength was always their cavalry, both lancers and horse archers. 

Plains like Marathon made it possible to use cavalry effectively, but plains were scarce in Greece. That was most likely why the Persians chose to land here, a two-days-march away from Athens. If only the Spartans would arrive soon. With Spartan reinforcements, the Greeks, although all infantry, might be able to drive the Barbarians into the sea. (To the Greeks, all foreigners were "barbarians," who made sounds like "bahbahbah" instead of speaking Greek.) 

The Greeks had sent Pheidippides, a professional runner, to ask for Spartan assis-tance. The Spartans were willing, but they said that because of a local religious festival they'd have to delay their departure. Meanwhile, the Athenians and their Platean allies had been holding the mountain passes. The 10 generals, each commanding an Athe-nian regiment, could not agree whether they should continue holding their ground or whether they should attack the Persians. Although Callimachus was polemarch, or titular commander, he had only one vote in the counsel of war. Field command, when it came to fighting, rotated among the generals, each one having a day to command the entire army. Miltiades, one of the generals, was rabidly anti-Persian. 

He had been badgering Callimachus to vote in favor of attacking. So far the pole march had not made up his mind.Callimachus could think of no Athenian general who ever had to make such a momentous decision. It might determine the fate of an idea that was radically new in the civilized world—rule by the people, democracy. For as long as anyone could remember, Icings, who claimed some sort of connection with the gods, ruled Greece. Then most cities overthrew their kings and accepted rulers (strongmen called tyrants) who claimed no divine connection. Now Athens had deposed its last tyrant, Hippias, and passed laws against tyrants.

The whole situation was very strange. The Great King, Darius, had ordered his son-in-law, Mardonius, to depose tyrants among the King's Ionian Greek subjects. The tyrants had led the subject Greeks in an unsuccessful revolt. Darius replaced the tyrants with pseudo democracies. The Ionian citizens could make their own laws, but all would have to be approved by the Great King. One of the tyrants deposed was Miltiades, the general who so ardently wanted to attack the Persians. Miltiades had a personal grudge. Born in Athens, he was an Athenian citizen. But he had become tyrant of the Cheronese (modern Gallipoli). 

When he fled back to Athens, he was tried under the anti-tyrant law. But while tyrant, Miltiades had conquered the island of Lemnos and given it to his home city. This earned Miltiades enough favor in Athens to win him not only acquittal, but election as one of the generals. There was still, however, a faction in Athens that despised the former tyrant.Athens and Eretria had helped the Ionian rebels, which, the Persians said, was why they were there. They were going to punish Athens and Eretria for their med-dling. But Callimachus knew that Darius wanted all of Greece, and many Greek cities had already submitted to him. The biggest holdouts were Athens and Sparta.Suddenly Callimachus saw movement in the Persian army. 

The Barbarians had begun moving their horses toward the shore where their 600 ships were beached. Callimachus made up his mind. It was time to attack now, Spartans or no Spartans. 

The Great King 

The Greeks called Darius, the Emperor of Persia, the "Great King." In Susa, his capital, he waited for word from the Aegean. The Greeks were a headache. As long as some were outside the empire, they would incite those who were inside, to rebel. But conquest of Greece would not be easy. Mardonius had learned that. After putting down the Ionian revolt, he continued into mainland Greece. Thessaly had submitted, but the semi-nomadic Thracians had put up a stiff fight before they accepted Persian rule. Then the sea intervened. A tremendous storm wrecked the Persian fleet that had been supplying the Persian army. Mardonius had to withdraw.

Greece was mostly barren and mountainous. The Greek cities depended on commerce for food. No large army could live off the land in Greece. Such an army would have to be supplied by sea. But the sea was treacherous. And the Greeks were worse. Just 45 years earlier, the warships of one small Greek city, Phocaea, had destroyed a Carthaginian fleet twice its size. The Carthaginians were colonists of the Phoenicians, who supplied Persian naval power. Greek sailors had colonized not only the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, but the Dardanelles, the Crimea, Cyrene in Africa, Massillia (modern Marseille), and both the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Spain. 

If the Greek cities united, they could wipe out any fleet Darius could muster.Fighting Greeks on land was not much easier. The Greeks had devised a military system that was ideal for their narrow mountain valleys. It was all infantry, based on heavy infantry protected from head to foot by heavy armor. The Greek hoplite wore a bronze helmet that covered everything but his eyes and mouth, an armor corselet, and greaves to protect the part of his legs visible from behind a huge bronze-faced shield. Arrows would not penetrate his armor except at close range. 

He carried a long spear, with a short sword as a secondary weapon. The Greek heavy infantry attacked in long, straight lines many ranks deep, called a phalanx. They marched in step, keeping time with the music of flutes. Greek mercenary hoplites were in demand all over the civilized world. Man for man, they were the best infantry in the world.Greece, then, could only be conquered with overwhelming numbers, which would have to be supplied by sea. But depending on ships, in the face of Greek naval power and the stormy Aegean, was risky in the extreme. The conquest of Greece would require subtlety.But Darius had not gotten to where he was by being stupid. 

He had usurped the throne of Persia, restored Cyrus the Great's crumbling empire, and extended its borders into India, across the Hellespont into Europe, up into the barren steppes of Turkestan and down the Nile into the deserts of Sudan. Darius would not try to overwhelm the Greeks. He would wage war on their minds. 

By posing as a patron of democracy, Darius had convinced many Greeks that Persian overlordship was no bad thing. They had given his envoys earth and water as tokens of submission. But the Spartans had thrown his envoy into a well to get water, and the Athenians dropped Darius's representative into a pit to gather earth.Psychological warfare against Sparta was almost impossible. The city-state was run like an army; dissent was also impossible. But Athens had opposing factions. Darius sent agents to the Athenians who hated Miltiades. 

They pointed to flourishing democracies in Ionia and promised that if the Athenian out-party opened the city gates to Persian troops, they would be the in-party. The Athenian dissenters pointed out that there was no way they could do that while the in-party controlled the army. The Persian agents promised to lure the army out of the city. The Athenian traitors agreed to help.Darius's plan called for a swift strike directly across the Aegean. The expeditionary force would be comparatively small—only what could be transported on 600 ships. It would quickly take tiny Eretria, then lure the Athenian army away from the city. 

With their troops away, the Athenian traitors would let the Persians in, and Athens would be conquered before help arrived from Sparta or anywhere else.

Mardonius had been wounded on his expedition to Greece, and he hadn't been notably successful. Darius gave the command to his nephew, Artaphernes, and a Median general named Datis. Datis, a brave and experienced soldier, would actually command.

The military mind 

Datis was a good commander. He had to be to have achieved his rank without being an ethnic Persian. But he wasn't subtle. When he attacked Eretria, on the island of Euboea, the Eretrians resisted for six days. Then traitors opened the city gates to the Persians. It is not known whether or not Persian agents had approached them before the attack, but it seems likely. What is known is that Datis, once inside, followed standard operating procedure. He sacked the city, burned the temples, and car-ried the inhabitants off into slavery. 

Then Datis embarked for the trip to Marathon.He waited for the Athenian army to appear, as expected. Then he waited for the signal telling him the gates of Athens would be open. He waited and waited. He knew that if he didn't get the signal soon the Spartans would arrive and there would be hell to pay.If he had a bit more imagination, Datis would have known that sacking Eretria after traitors had opened the gates was not a good way to encourage the Athenian fifth column.

Finally, Persians and Greeks both saw someone signaling the Persian army by flashing sunlight from a polished bronze shield. Datis ordered his army to embark.

Dunkirk for Datis 

The cavalry, Persia's greatest strength, went first. Meanwhile Callimachus had voted in favor of attack. As luck would have it, today was Miltiades' day to command. Miltiades lined up his troops with the center only four ranks deep in order to make his line as long as the Persian line. He kept the wings eight ranks deep in order to repel flank attacks by any cavalry that hadn't embarked. The flutes tootled, and the hoplites set out with their traditional slow march, keeping all ranks dressed, each man crowding behind the shield of the man on his right.

When the Greeks were about 200 yards away, the Persian archers began shooting at the bronze glacier approaching them. Their arrows bounced off the Greeks' armor. And the glacier turned into an avalanche. The Greek array switched to double-time and swept down on the Persians.Ethnic Persians and Sakas (Iranian nomads related to the Scythians) held the center of the Persian line. They fought desperately against the weakened Greek center, suffering appalling losses. The Greek spears were longer and their armor was heavier. The Persians actually climbed over the Greek shields to hack at the shield-bearers with axes and daggers. The Greek center bent back.

Meanwhile, the Greek wings, eight ranks deep instead of four, continued to advance. As the Greek line bowed in the center, the wings turned inward. The Persians were caught in a double envelopment, crowded into a dense mass where their bows were useless.The Persians turned and fled back to their ships. The Greeks pursued. They only captured seven of the ships, which shows that a great mass of the Persian army got away. It was now headed for Athens, and sea travel was faster than marching over the mountains.

The great race 

Miltiades, Callimachus, and the rest of the Greeks knew about the signal. It seemed that in spite of the fate of Eretria, traitors were ready to surrender Athens to the Persians. They called on Pheidippides, who had run to Sparta to ask for help, to inform Athens of the victory. Speed was absolutely essential, the generals emphasized. The professional runner had never run so fast. He staggered into Athens crying, "Nike, Nike!" and dropped dead. The traitors knew now that the Athenian army had beaten the Persians and was on the way home. Any notion of welcoming Darius's troops was forgotten.

The Athenian army made a forced march over the mountains in one day. The Persians found the city closed and their enemies ready for another fight. They went home.Darius's son, Xerxes, decided to have another go at the Greeks. This time, he sent an enormous army into Greece. The Persians swarmed down the peninsula, over-whelming opposition and burning Athens. Then the disaster Darius had foreseen occurred. A Greek fleet, following the directions of Themistocles of Athens, lured the Persian navy into constricted waters near the island of Salamis and wiped it out. Xerxes had to withdraw the bulk of his army. He left Mardonius with a small force he believed could subsist on the countryside. The next year the combined phalanxes of many Greek cities annihilated the Persian army. Democracy did not die.

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