Chapter I: Part 1

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By the Same Author

THE CAMPAIGN OF CHANCELLORSVILLE. With Maps.

RIDERS OF MANY LANDS. Profusely illustrated by Remington, and from
photographs of Oriental subjects.

A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF OUR CIVIL WAR. With Maps and Illustrations.
_Students’ Edition._

PATROCLUS AND PENELOPE: A CHAT IN THE SADDLE. _Popular Edition._ With
woodcuts from instantaneous photographs.

GREAT CAPTAINS. With Maps, etc.

Great Captains:

ALEXANDER. A History of the Origin and Growth of the Art of War,
from the Earliest Times to the Battle of Ipsus, B.C. 301; with a
detailed account of the Campaigns of the Great Macedonian. With
237 Charts, Maps, Plans of Battles and Tactical Manœuvres, Cuts of
Armor, Uniforms, Siege Devices, and Portraits. 2 vols.

HANNIBAL. A History of the Art of War among the Carthaginians and
Romans, down to the Battle of Pydna, 168 B.C.; with a detailed
account of the Second Punic War. With 227 Charts, Maps, Plans
of Battles and Tactical Manœuvres, Cuts of Armor, Weapons, and
Uniforms. 2 vols.

CÆSAR. A History of the Art of War among the Romans, down to the End
of the Roman Empire; with a detailed account of the Campaigns of
Caius Julius Cæsar. With 258 Charts, Maps, Plans of Battles and
Tactical Manœuvres, Cuts of Armor, Weapons, and Engines. 2 vols.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS. A History of the Art of War from its revival after
the Middle Ages to the end of the Spanish Succession War, with a
detailed account of the Campaigns of the great Swede, and the most
famous Campaigns of Turenne, Condé, Eugene, and Marlborough. With
237 Charts, Maps, Plans of Battles and Tactical Manœuvres, Cuts of
Uniforms, Arms, and Weapons. 2 vols.

NAPOLEON. A History of the Art of War, with many Charts, Maps, Plans
of Battles and Tactical Manœuvres, Portraits, Cuts of Uniforms,
Arms, and Weapons.

VOL. I. Includes the period from the beginning of the French
Revolution to the end of the Eighteenth Century, with a detailed
account of the Wars of the French Revolution.

VOL. II. Includes the period from the beginning of the Consulate to
the end of the Friedland Campaign, with a detailed account of the
Napoleonic Wars.

VOL. III. Includes the period from the beginning of the Peninsular
War to the end of the Russian Campaign.

VOL. IV. Includes the period from the battle of Lützen through
Napoleon’s last campaign.

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK

GREAT CAPTAINS

A COURSE OF SIX LECTURES

_SHOWING THE INFLUENCE ON THE ART OF WAR
OF THE CAMPAIGNS OF_

ALEXANDER, HANNIBAL, CÆSAR,
GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS, FREDERICK, AND NAPOLEON

BY
THEODORE AYRAULT DODGE

_Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army, Retired List. Author of
“The Campaign of Chancellorsville;” “A Bird’s-eye View of
Our Civil War;” “Patroclus and Penelope--A
Chat in the Saddle,” etc., etc., etc._

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1889
BY THEODORE A. DODGE

_All rights reserved_

TO

John Codman Ropes

IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF

MANY ACTS OF FRIENDSHIP AND HELPFULNESS

AND IN GENUINE APPRECIATION OF HIS

ACUMEN AS A MILITARY CRITIC AND HIS FELICITY AS
AN AUTHOR

THESE PAGES ARE INSCRIBED

WITH CORDIAL ESTEEM

BY THE AUTHOR

PREFACE.

The following lectures were delivered in Boston, under the auspices of the Lowell Institute, in January, 1889. Their conciseness needs but the apology of scant time. Little can be said about Alexander or Napoleon within the limit of an hour. The sketches are of necessity meagre. They are a summary in part of a larger work, of which the author hopes soon to begin the publication, in which a volume will be devoted to each great captain, and mention made of other soldiers who have contributed to the growth of the art of war. The lectures aim to indicate briefly what we owe to the great captains, and to draw an intelligible outline of their careers, which may be filled in by reference to the extended narratives of others. Historical detail often assumes prominence in the mind to the exclusion of general form. It is the latter which it is attempted to portray.

It is generally admitted that Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, Frederick, and Napoleon belong in a class by themselves. Some may claim for Marlborough or Prince Eugene an equality with Gustavus Adolphus. But, mindful that Gustavus was the first to rescue methodical war from the oblivion of the Middle Ages, and that he originated the modern system,--the art appears to owe that to him which entitles him to greater rank, though, indeed, the achievements of others may have reached or even exceeded the height of his.

All sources of information have been utilized, from Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander to Jomini’s Life of Napoleon. Among quite recent works, special thanks are due to the exhaustive History of War of Prince Galitzin, and the Studies of Count von Wartenburg.

CONTENTS

LECTURE I.
PAGE
ALEXANDER 1

LECTURE II.

HANNIBAL 38

LECTURE III.

CÆSAR 73

LECTURE IV.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS 107

LECTURE V.

FREDERICK 142

LECTURE VI.

NAPOLEON 178

LIST OF MAPS.

PAGE
PARALLEL ORDER 3

THE BATTLE OF THYMBRA, B.C. 545 4

BEFORE THE BATTLE OF MARATHON 6

THE GREEK MANŒUVRE AT MARATHON 7

THE BATTLE OF LEUCTRA, B.C. 371 9

CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, B.C. 334 TO 323 15

THE BATTLE OF THE HYDASPES, B.C. 326 17

HANNIBAL’S FLANK MARCH, B.C. 217 43

THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ, B.C. 216, I 47

THE BATTLE OF CANNÆ, B.C. 216, II 53

CAPUA, B.C. 211 63

GAUL 75

THE CIVIL WAR 89

THE CAMPAIGN OF GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS IN GERMANY, A.D. 1630–1–2 120

MAP FOR THE SEVEN-YEARS WAR 145

LEUTHEN, DEC. 5, 1757 155

1796 180

THE MARENGO CAMPAIGN 187

THE ULM-AUSTERLITZ CAMPAIGN 189

THE JENA CAMPAIGN 194

THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN 209

LECTURE I.

ALEXANDER.

The earliest history is but a record of wars. Peace had no events stirring enough to call for record. It was the conflict of heroes which inspired the oldest and still greatest of poems. As the more intelligent peoples were, as a rule, the victors, the march of civilization followed in the footsteps of war up to very recent times. The history of war has been carefully recorded for nearly twenty-five centuries, but the science of war, in a written form, dates back less than one hundred years.

The art of war owes its origin and growth to the deeds of a few great captains. Not to their brilliant victories; not to the noble courage evoked by their ambition; not to their distortion of mechanics and the sciences into new engines of slaughter; not to their far-reaching conquests; but to their intellectual conceptions. For war is as highly intellectual as astronomy. The main distinction between the one and the other lies in the fact that the intellectual conception of the general must at once be so put into play as to call for the exertion of the moral forces of his character, while the astronomer’s inspiration stops at a purely mental process. What has produced the great captains is the coexistence of extraordinary intellect and equal force of character, coupled with events worthy of and calling out these qualities in their highest expression.

My effort will be to suggest how, out of the campaigns and battles of the great captains, has arisen what to-day we call the art of war,--not so much out of the technical details, which are a subordinate matter, as the general scheme; and to show that, while war is governed by its rules as well as art, it is the equipment of the individual which makes an Alexander or a Michael Angelo. Six of these captains stand distinctly in a class by themselves, far above any others. They are, in ancient days, Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar,--all within three hundred years of each other. Then follows a gap of seventeen centuries of unmethodical war, and we complete the list with Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon,--all within two centuries. “The art of war is the most difficult of all arts, the military reputation in general the greatest of all reputations,” says Napoleon. The limited number of great captains proves this true.

The words _campaign_ and _battle_ cover the same ground as _strategy_ and _tactics_. Let me make these plain to you, and I shall have done with definitions and technicalities. A campaign consists in the marching of an army about the country or into foreign territory to seek the enemy or inflict damage on him. Strategy is the complement of this term, and is the art of so moving an army over a country,--on the map, as it were,--that when you meet the enemy you shall have placed him in a disadvantageous position for battle or other manœuvres. One or more battles may occur in a campaign. Tactics (or grand tactics, to distinguish the art from the mere details of drill) relates only to and is coextensive with the evolutions of the battle-field. Strategy comprehends your manœuvres when not in the presence of the enemy; tactics, your manœuvres when in contact with him. Tactics has always existed as common military knowledge, often in much perfection. Strategy is of modern creation, _as an art which one may study_. But all great captains have been great strategists.

To say that strategy is war on the map is no figure of speech. Napoleon always planned and conducted his campaigns on maps of the country spread out for him by his staff, and into these maps he stuck colored pins to indicate where his divisions were to move. Having thus wrought out his plan, he issued orders accordingly. To the general, the map is a chessboard, and upon this he moves his troops as you or I move queen and knight.

Previous to Cyrus, about 550 B.C., we have a record of nothing useful to the modern soldier. Nimrod, Semiramis, Sesostris were no doubt distinguished conquerors. But they have left nothing for us to profit by. War was a physical, not an intellectual art, for many centuries. Armies marched out to meet each other, and, if an ambush was not practicable, drew up in parallel order, and fought till one gave way. The greater force could form the longer line and overlap and turn the other’s flanks. And then, as to-day, a flank attack was fatal; for men cannot fight unless they face the foe; and a line miles in length needs time to change its front.

Cyrus is to the soldier the first historical verity. In the battle of Thymbra, according to Xenophon, where Crœsus outnumbered him more than two to one and overlapped his flanks, he disposed his troops in so deep a tactical order of five lines, and so well protected his flanks, that when Crœsus’ wings wheeled in to encompass him, his reserves in the fifth line could fall on the flanks of these very wheeling wings. And as the wheel was extensive and difficult of execution, it produced a gap between wing and centre,--as Cyrus had expected,--and into this he poured with a chosen body, took Crœsus’ centre in reverse, and utterly overthrew him and his kingdom. Cyrus overran in his conquests almost as great a territory as Alexander.

It is of advantage to see what had been done before Alexander’s time,--to understand how much Alexander knew of war from others. For Alexander found war in a crude state and conducted it with the very highest art. That his successors did not do so is due to the fact that they did not understand, or were not capable of imitating him.

Cyrus’ successor, Darius I. (B.C. 513), undertook a campaign against the Scythians north of the Danube, with, it is said, seven hundred thousand men. The Greek Mandrocles bridged for this army both the Bosphorus and the Danube, no mean engineering feat to-day.

Shortly after came the Persian invasion of Greece and the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). Here occurred one of the early tactical variations from the parallel order. Miltiades had but eleven thousand men; the Persians had ten times as many. They lay on the sea-shore in front of their fleet. To reach and lean his flanks on two brooks running to the sea, Miltiades made his centre thin, his wings strong, and advanced sharply on the enemy. As was inevitable, the deep Persian line easily broke through his centre. But Miltiades had either anticipated and prepared his army for this, or else seized the occasion by a very stroke of genius. There was no symptom of demoralization. The Persian troops followed hard after the defeated centre. Miltiades caused each wing to wheel inwards, and fell upon both flanks of the Persian advance, absolutely overwhelming it, and throwing it back upon the main line in such confusion as to lead to complete victory.

You must note that demoralization always plays an immense part in battle. The Old Dessauer capped all battle-tactics with his: “Wenn Du gehst nicht zurück, so geht der Feind zurück!” (If you don’t fall back, why, the enemy will fall back.) Whenever a tactical manœuvre unnerves the enemy, it at once transforms his army into a mob. The reason why Pickett’s charge did not succeed was that there was no element of demoralization in the Union ranks. Had there been, Gettysburg might have become a rebel victory.

The Peloponnesian War shows instances of far-seeing strategy, such as the seizure of Pylos (B.C. 425), whence the threat of incursions on Sparta’s rear obliged her to relax her hold on the throat of Athens. Brasidas was the general who, at this time, came nearest to showing the moral and intellectual combination of the great soldier. His marches through Thessaly and Illyria and his defeat of Cleon at Amphipolis were admirable. He it was who first marched in a hollow square, with baggage in the centre.

The soldier of greatest use to us preceding Alexander was unquestionably Xenophon. After participating in the defeat of Cyrus the Younger by Artaxerxes, at Cunaxa (B.C. 401), in which battle the Greek phalanx had held its own against twenty times its force, Xenophon was chosen to command the rear-guard of the phalanx in the Retreat of the Ten Thousand to the Sea; and it is he who has shown the world what should be the tactics of retreat,--how to command a rear-guard. No chieftain ever possessed a grander moral ascendant ever his men. More tactical originality has come from the Anabasis than from any dozen other books. For instance, Xenophon describes accurately a charge over bad ground in which, so to speak, he broke forward by the right of companies,--one of the most useful minor manœuvres. He built a bridge on goat-skins stuffed with hay, and sewed up so as to be water-tight. He established a reserve in rear of the phalanx from which to feed weak parts of the line,--a superb first conception. He systematically devastated the country traversed to arrest pursuit. After the lapse of twenty-three centuries there is no better military textbook than the Anabasis.

Alexander had a predecessor in the invasion of Asia. Agesilaus, King of Sparta, went (B.C. 399) to the assistance of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, unjustly oppressed by Tissaphernes. He set sail with eight thousand men and landed at Ephesus; adjusted the difficulties of these cities, and, having conducted two successful campaigns in Phrygia and Caria, returned to Lacedemon overland.

Associated with one of the most notable tactical manœuvers--the oblique order of battle--is the immortal name of Epaminondas. This great soldier originated what all skilful generals have used frequently and to effect, and what Frederick the Great showed in its highest perfection at Leuthen. As already observed, armies up to that time had with rare exceptions attacked in parallel order and fought until one or other gave way. At Leuctra (B.C. 371), Epaminondas had six thousand men, against eleven thousand of the invincible Spartans. The Thebans were dispirited by many failures, the Lacedemonians in good heart. The Spartan king was on the right of his army. Epaminondas tried a daring innovation. He saw that if he could break the Spartan right, he would probably drive the enemy from the field. He therefore quadrupled the depth of his own left, making it a heavy column, led it sharply forward, and ordered his centre and right to advance more slowly, so as not seriously to engage. The effect was never doubtful. While the Spartan centre and left was held in place by the threatening attack of the Theban centre and right, as well as the combat of the cavalry between the lines, their right was overpowered and crushed; having defeated which, Epaminondas wheeled around on the flank of the Spartan centre and left, and swept them from the field. The genius of a great tactician had prevailed over numbers, prestige, and confidence. At Mantinæ, nine years later, Epaminondas practised the same manœuvre with equal success, but himself fell in the hour of victory. (B.C. 362.)

The Greek phalanx was the acme of shock tactics. It was a compact body, sixteen men deep, whose long spears bristled to the front in an array which for defence or attack on level ground made it irresistible. No body of troops could withstand its impact. Only on broken ground was it weak. Iphicrates, of Athens, had developed the capacity of light troops by a well-planned skirmish-drill and discipline, and numbers of these accompanied each phalanx, to protect its flanks and curtain its advance.

Such, then, had been the progress in military art when Alexander the Great was born. Like Hannibal and Frederick, Alexander owed his military training and his army to his father. Philip had been a hostage in Thebes in his youth, had studied the tactics of Epaminondas, and profited by his lessons. When he ascended the throne of Macedon, the army was but a rabble. He made and left it the most perfect machine of ancient days. He armed his phalanx with the sarissa, a pike twenty-one feet long, and held six feet from the loaded butt. The sarissas of the five front ranks protruded from three to fifteen feet beyond the line; and all were interlocked. This formed a wall of spears which nothing could penetrate. The Macedonian phalanx was perfectly drilled in a fashion much like our evolutions in column, and was distinctly the best in Greece. It was unconquered till later opposed by the greater mobility of the Roman legion. The cavalry was equally well drilled. Before Philip’s death, in all departments, from the ministry of war down, the army of Macedon was as perfect in all its details as the army of Prussia is to-day.

Philip also made, and Alexander greatly improved, what was the equivalent of modern artillery. The catapult was a species of huge bow, capable of throwing pikes weighing from ten to three hundred pounds over half a mile. It could also hurl a large number of leaden bullets at each fire. It was the cannon of the ancients. The ballista was their mortar, and threw heavy stones with accurate aim to a considerable distance. It could cast flights of arrows. Alexander constructed and was always accompanied by batteries of ballistas and catapults, the essential parts of which were even more readily transported than our mountain batteries. These were not, however, commonly used in battle, but rather in the attack and defence of defiles, positions, and towns.

Alexander’s first experience in a pitched battle was at Chæronea (B.C. 338), on which field Philip won his election as Autocrator, or general-in-chief, of the armies of Greece. Here, a lad of eighteen, Alexander commanded the Macedonian left wing, and defeated the hitherto invincible Theban Sacred Band by his repeated and obstinate charges at the head of the Thessalian horse. Philip had for years harbored designs of an expedition against the Persian monarchy, but did not live to carry them out. Alexander succeeded him at the age of twenty (B.C. 336). He had been educated under Aristotle. No monarch of his years was ever so well equipped as he in head and heart. Like Frederick, he was master from the start. “Though the name has changed, the king remains,” quoth he. His arms he found ready to hand, tempered in his father’s forge. But it was his own strength and skill which wielded them.

The Greeks considered themselves absolved from Macedonian jurisdiction by the death of Philip. Not so thought Alexander. He marched against them, turning the passes of Tempe and Kallipeuke by hewing a path along the slopes of Mount Ossa, and made himself master of Thessaly. The Amphictyonic Council deemed it wise to submit, and elected him Autocrator in place of his father.

Alexander’s one ambition had always been to head the Greeks in punishing the hereditary enemy of Hellas, the Persian king. He had imbibed the idea of his Asiatic conquests in his early youth, and had once, as a lad, astonished the Persian envoys to the Court of Pella by his searching and intelligent questions concerning the peoples and resources of the East.

Before starting on such an expedition, however, he must once for all settle the danger of barbarian incursions along his borders. This he did in a campaign brilliant by its skilful audacity; but on a rumor of his defeat and death among the savages, Thebes again revolted. Alexander, by a march of three hundred miles in two weeks across a mountainous country, suddenly appeared at her gates, captured and destroyed the city, and sold the inhabitants into slavery. Athens begged off. Undisputed chief, he now set out for Asia with thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse. (B.C. 334.)

There is time but for the description of a single campaign and battle of this great king’s. The rest of his all but superhuman exploits must be hurried through with barely a mention, and the tracing of his march on the map. I have preferred to select for longer treatment the battle of the Hydaspes, for Issus and Arbela are more generally familiar.

Alexander’s first battle after crossing into Asia was at the Granicus, where he defeated the Persian army with the loss of a vast number of their princes and generals. Thence he advanced through Mysia and Lydia, freeing the Greek cities on the way, captured Miletus and Halicarnassus, and having made himself a necessary base on the Ægean, marched through Caria and Lycia, fighting for every step, but always victorious, not merely by hard blows, but by hard blows delivered where they would best tell. Then through Phrygia to Gordium (where he cut the Gordian knot), and through Cappadocia to Cilicia. He then passed through the Syrian Gates--a mountain gap--heading for Phœnicia. Here Darius got in his rear by passing through the Amanic Gates farther up the range, which Alexander either did not know, or singularly enough had overlooked. The Macedonians were absolutely cut off from their communications. But, nothing daunted, Alexander kept his men in heart, turned on Darius, and defeated him at Issus, with a skill only equalled by his hopeful boldness, and saved himself harmless from the results of a glaring error.

So far (B.C. 333), excepting this, Alexander had taken no step which left any danger in his rear. He had confided every city and country he had traversed to the hands of friends. His advance was our first instance on a grand scale of methodical war,--the origin of strategy. He continued in this course, not proposing to risk himself in the heart of Persia until he had reduced to control the entire coast-line of the Eastern Mediterranean as a base. This task led him through Syria, Phœnicia,--where the siege of Tyre, one of the few greatest sieges of antiquity, delayed him seven months,--and Palestine to Egypt. Every part of this enormous stretch of coast was subjugated.

Having in possession, practically, all the seaports of the then civilized world, and having neutralized the Persian fleet by victories on land and at sea, Alexander returned to Syria, marched inland and crossed the Euphrates and Tigris, thus projecting his line of advance from the centre of his base. At Arbela he defeated the Persian army in toto, though they were twenty to his one. Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and Pasargadæ opened their gates to the conquerer. But Darius escaped.

It was now the spring of 330 B.C. Only four years had elapsed and Alexander had overturned the Persian Empire; and though he left home with a debt of eight hundred talents, he had won a treasure estimated at from one hundred and fifty millions of dollars up.

Alexander now followed Darius through Media and the Caspian Gates to Parthia, subduing the several territories he traversed. He found Darius murdered by the satraps who attended him. This was no common disappointment to Alexander, for the possession of the person of the Great King would have not only rendered his further conquests more easy, but would have ministered enormously to his natural and fast-growing vanity. He pursued the murderers of Darius, but as he could not safely leave enemies in his rear, he was compelled to pause and reduce Aria, Drangiana, and Arachosia. Then he made his way over the Caucasus into Bactria and Sogdiana, the only feat which equals Hannibal’s passage of the Alps. His eastern limit was the river Jaxartes, the crossing of which was made under cover of his artillery,--its first use for such a purpose. The details of all these movements are so wonderful and show such extraordinary courage, enterprise, and intelligence, such exceptional power over men, so true a conception of the difficulties to be encountered, such correct judgment as to the best means of overcoming them, that if the test should be the accomplishment of the all but impossible, Alexander would easily stand at the head of all men who have ever lived. He now formed the project of conquering India, and, returning over the Caucasus, marched to the Indus and crossed it. Other four years had been consumed since he left Persepolis. It was May, B.C. 326.

Alexander was in the Punjaub, the land of the five rivers. The Hydaspes was swollen with the storms of the rainy season and the melting snows of the Himalayas. The roads were execrable. On the farther side of the river, a half-mile wide, could be seen Porus, noted as the bravest and most able king in India, with his army drawn up before his camp and his elephants and war-chariots in front, ready to dispute his crossing. The Hydaspes is nowhere fordable, except in the dry season. Alexander saw that he could not force a passage in the face of this array, and concluded to manœuvre for a chance to cross. He had learned from experience that the Indians were good fighters. His cavalry could not be made to face their elephants. He was reduced to stratagem, and what he did has ever since been the model for the passage of rivers, when the enemy occupies the other bank. Alexander first tried to convince Porus that he intended to wait till the river fell, and carefully spread a rumor to this effect. He devastated the country, accumulated vast stores in his camp, and settled his troops in quarters. Porus continued active in scouting the river-banks, and held all the crossings in force. Alexander sent parties in boats up and down the stream, to distract his attention. He made many feints at crossing by night. He put the phalanx under arms in the light of the camp-fires; blew the signals to move; marched the horse up and down; got the boats ready to load. To oppose all this Porus would bring down his elephants to the banks, order his men under arms, and so remain till daylight, lest he should be surprised.

After some time Porus began to weary his troops by marching them out in the inclement weather to forestall attempts to cross; and finding these never actually made, grew careless, believing that Alexander would, in reality, make no serious effort till low water. But Alexander was daily watching his opportunity. He saw that to cross in front of Porus’ camp was still impossible. The presence of the elephants near the shore would surely prevent the horse from landing, and even his infantry was somewhat unnerved by them. But he had learned that large reënforcements were near at hand for Porus, and it was essential to defeat the Indians before these came to hand.

The right bank, on which lay the Macedonians, was high and hilly. The left bank was a wide, fertile plain. Alexander could hide his movements, while observing those of Porus. When he saw that the Indian king had ceased to march out to meet his feigned crossings, he began to prepare for a real one, meanwhile keeping up the blind. Seventeen miles above the camp was a wooded headland formed by a bend in the river and a small affluent, capable of concealing a large force, and itself hidden by a wooded and uninhabited island in its front. This place Alexander connected by a chain of couriers with the camp, and laid posts all along the river, at which, every night, noisy demonstrations were made and numerous fires were lighted, as if large forces were present at each of them. When Porus had been quite mystified as to Alexander’s intentions, Craterus was left with a large part of the army at the main camp, and instructed to make open preparations to cross, but not really to do so unless Porus’ army and the elephants should move up-stream. Between Craterus and the headland, Alexander secreted another large body, with orders to put over when he should have engaged battle. He himself marched, well back of the river and out of sight,--there was no dust to betray him,--to the headland, where preparations had already been completed for crossing.

The night was tempestuous. The thunder and rain, usual during the south-west monsoon, drowned the noise of the workmen and moving troops and concealed the camp-fires, as well as kept Porus’ outposts under shelter. Alexander had caused a number of boats to be cut in two for transportation, but in such manner that they could be quickly joined for use,--the first mention we have of anything like pontoons. Towards daylight the storm abated and the crossing began. Most of the infantry and the heavy cavalry were put over in the boats. The light cavalry swam across, each man sustaining himself on a hay-stuffed skin, so as not to burden the horses. The movement was not discovered until the Macedonians had passed the island, when Porus’ scouts saw what was doing and galloped off with the news. It soon appeared that the army had not landed on the mainland, but on a second island. This was usually accessible by easy fords, but the late rains had swollen the low water from it to the shore to deep and rapid torrent. Here was a dilemma. Unless the troops were at once got over, Porus would be down upon them. There was no time to bring the boats around the island. After some delay and a great many accidents, a place was found where, by wading to their breasts, the infantry could get across. This was done, and the cavalry, already over, was thrown out in front. Alexander, as speedily as possible, set out with his horse, some five thousand strong, and ordered the phalanx, which numbered about six thousand more, to follow on in column, the light foot to keep up, if possible, with the cavalry. He was afraid that Porus might retire, and wished to be on hand to pursue.

Porus could see the bulk of the army under Craterus still occupying the old camp, and knew that the force which had crossed could be but a small part of the army. But he underestimated it, and instead of moving on it in force, sent only some two thousand cavalry and one hundred and twenty chariots, under his son, to oppose it. Porus desired to put off battle till his reënforcements came up. Alexander proposed to force battle.

So soon as Alexander saw that he had but a limited force in his front, he charged down upon it with the heavy horse, “squadron by squadron,” says Arrian, which must have meant something similar to our line in _echelon_, while the light horse skirmished about its flanks. The enemy was at once broken, and Porus’ son and four hundred men were killed. The chariots, stalled in the deep bottom, were one and all captured.

Porus was nonplussed. Alexander’s manœuvre had been intended to deceive, and had completely deceived him. He could see Craterus preparing to cross, and yet he knew Alexander to be the more dangerous of the two. He was uncertain what to do, but finally concluded to march against Alexander, leaving some elephants and an adequate force opposite Craterus. He had with him four thousand cavalry, three hundred chariots, two hundred elephants, and thirty thousand infantry. Having moved some distance, he drew up his lines on a plain where the ground was solid, and awaited Alexander’s attack.

His arrangements were skilful. In front were the redoubtable elephants, which Porus well knew that Alexander’s cavalry could not face, one hundred feet apart, covering the entire infantry line, some four miles long. The infantry had orders to fill up the gaps between the elephants by companies of one hundred and fifty men. Columns of foot flanked the elephants. These creatures were intended to keep the Macedonian horse at a distance, and trample down the foot when it should advance on the Indian lines. Porus had but the idea of a parallel order, and of a defensive battle at that. His own cavalry was on the wings, and in their front the chariots, each containing two mailed drivers, two heavy and two light-armed men.

When the Macedonian squadrons reached the ground, and the king rode out to reconnoitre, he saw that he must wait for his infantry, and began manœuvring with his horse, to hold himself till the phalanx came up. Had Porus at once advanced on him, he could easily have swept him away. But that he did not do so was of a part with Alexander’s uniform good fortune. The phalanx came up at a lively gait, and the king gave it a breathing-spell, while he kept Porus busy by small demonstrations. The latter, with his elephants, and three to one of men, simply bided his time, calmly confident of the result. Alexander yielded honest admiration to the skill of Porus’ dispositions, and his forethought in opposing the elephants to his own strong arm, the cavalry.

The Macedonians had advanced with their right leaning on the river. Despite the elephants, Alexander must use his horse, if he expected to win. In this arm he outnumbered the enemy. He could not attack in front, nor, indeed, await the onset of the elephants and chariots. With the instinct of genius, and confident that his army could manœuvre with thrice the rapidity of Porus, as well as himself think and act still more quickly, he determined to attack the Indian left in force. He despatched Coenus with a body of heavy horse by a circuit against the enemy’s right, with instructions, if Porus’ cavalry of that wing should be sent to the assistance of the left, to charge in on the naked flank and rear of the Indian infantry. He himself with the bulk and flower of the horse, sustained by the more slowly moving phalanx, made an oblique movement towards Porus’ left. The Indian king at first supposed that Alexander was merely uncovering his infantry, to permit it to advance to the attack, and as such an attack would be playing into Porus’ hands, he awaited results. This, again, was Alexander’s salvation. It left him the offensive. Porus had not yet perceived Coenus’ march, the probably rolling ground had hidden it, and he ordered his right-flank cavalry over to sustain that of the left, towards which flank Alexander was moving. The phalanx, once uncovered, Alexander ordered forward, but not to engage until the wings had been attacked, so as to neutralize the elephants and the chariots.

These dispositions gave the Macedonian line the oblique order of Epaminondas, with left refused. Alexander had used the same order at Issus and Arbela. As he rode forward, he pushed out the Daan horse-bowmen to skirmish with the Indian left, while he, in their rear, by a half wheel, could gain ground to the right sufficient to get beyond and about the enemy’s flank, with the heavy squadrons of Hephæstion and Perdiccas. The Indian horse seems to have been misled by what Alexander was doing,--it probably could not understand the Macedonian tactics,--for it was not well in hand, and had advanced out of supporting distance from the infantry.

Meanwhile Coenus had made his circuit of the enemy’s right, and, the Indian cavalry having already moved over towards the left, he fell on the right flank and rear of the Indian infantry and threw it into such confusion that it was kept inactive during the entire battle. Then, completing his gallant ride, and with the true instinct of the _beau sabreur_, Coenus galloped along Porus’ rear, to join the _mêlée_ already engaged on the left. To oppose Coenus as well as Alexander, the Indian cavalry was forced to make double front. While effecting this, Alexander drove his stoutest charge home upon them. They at once broke and retired upon the elephants, “as to a friendly wall for refuge,” says Arrian.

A number of these beasts were now made to wheel to the left and charge on Alexander’s horse, but this exposed them in flank to the phalanx, which advanced, wounded many of the animals, and killed most of the drivers. Deprived of guidance, the elephants swerved on the phalangites, but they were received with such a shower of darts that in their affright they made about-face upon the Indian infantry, to the great consternation of the latter.

The Indian cavalry, meanwhile, had rallied under the cover of the elephants, and again faced the Macedonians. But the king renewed his charges again and again,--it was a characteristic feat of Alexander’s, from boyhood up, to be able to get numberless successive charges out of his squadrons,--and forced them back under the brutes’ heels. The Macedonian cavalry was itself much disorganized; but Alexander’s white plume waved everywhere, and under his inspiration, Coenus having now joined, there was, despite disorder, no let-up to the pressure, from both fronts at once, on Porus’ harassed horse.

The situation was curious. The Macedonian cavalry, inspired by the tremendous animation of the king, maintained its constant charges. The Indian cavalry was huddled up close to the infantry and elephants. These unwieldy creatures were alternately urged on the phalanx and driven back on Porus’ line. The Macedonian infantry had plenty of elbow-room, and could retire from them and again advance. The Indian infantry had none. But finally the elephants grew discouraged at being between two fires, lifted their trunks with one accord in a trumpeting of terror, and retired out of action, “like ships backing water,” as Arrian picturesquely describes it.

Alexander now saw that the victory was his. But the situation was still delicate; he kept the phalanx in place and continued his charges upon Porus’ left flank with the cavalry. Finally, Porus, who had been in the thickest of the fray, collected forty of the yet unwounded elephants, and charged on the phalanx, leading the van with his own huge, black, war-elephant. But Alexander met this desperate charge with the Macedonian archers, who swarmed around the monsters, wounded some, cut the ham-strings of others, and killed the drivers.

The charge had failed. At this juncture,--his eye was as keen as Napoleon’s for the critical instant,--Alexander ordered forward the phalanx, with protended sarissas and linked shields, while himself led the cavalry round to the Indian rear, and charged in one final effort with the terrible Macedonian shout of victory. The whole Indian army was reduced to an inert, paralyzed mass. It was only individuals who managed to escape.

The battle had lasted eight hours, and had been won against great odds by crisp tactical skill and the most brilliant use of cavalry. The history of war shows no instance of a more superb and effective use of horse. Coenus exhibited, in carrying out the king’s orders, the clean-cut conception of the cavalry general’s duty, and Alexander’s dispositions were masterly throughout. His prudent forethought in leaving behind him a force sufficient to insure his safety in case of disaster in the battle is especially to be noted.

Craterus and the other detachments now came up, and the pursuit was intrusted to them. Of Porus’ army, twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, including numberless chiefs, were killed, and all the chariots, which had proved useless in the battle, were broken up. The Macedonian killed numbered two hundred horse and seven hundred foot. The wounded were not usually counted, but averaged eight to twelve for one of killed. This left few Macedonians who could not boast a wound.

Porus, himself wounded, endeavored to escape on his own elephant. Alexander galloped after on Bucephalus, the horse we all remember that, as a mere lad, he had mounted and controlled by kindness and by skilful, rational treatment, when all others had failed to do so, and who had served him ever since. But the gallant old charger, exhausted by the toils of the day, fell in his tracks and died, at the age of upwards of thirty years. Porus surrendered, when he might have escaped. When brought to Alexander, the king, in admiration of his bravery and skill, asked him what treatment he would like to receive. “That due to a king, Alexander!” proudly replied Porus. “Ask thou more of me,” said Alexander. “To be treated like a king covers all a king can desire,” insisted the Indian monarch. Alexander, recognizing the qualities of the man, made Porus his friend, associate, and ally, and viceroy of a large part of his Punjaub conquests.

The Macedonian king went but a short distance farther into India. His project of reaching the Ganges was ship-wrecked on the determination of his veterans not to advance beyond the Hyphasis. He returned to the Hydaspes, and moved down the river on a huge fleet of two thousand boats, subduing the tribes on either bank as he proceeded on his way. In capturing a city of the Malli he nearly met his death.

This episode is too characteristic of the man to pass by unnoticed. Battles were won in those days by hand-to-hand work, and Alexander always fought like a Homeric hero. He had formed two storming columns, himself heading the one and Perdiccas the other. The Indians but weakly defended the town wall, and retired into the citadel. Alexander at once made his way into the town through a gate which he forced, but Perdiccas was delayed for want of scaling-ladders. Arrived at the citadel, the Macedonians began to undermine its wall, and the ladders were put in position. Alexander, always impatient in his valor, seeing that the work did not progress as fast as his own desires, seized a scaling-ladder, himself planted it, and ascended first of all, bearing his shield aloft, to ward off the darts from above. He was followed by Peucestas, the soldier who always carried before the king in battle the shield brought from the temple of the Trojan Athena, and by Leonnatus, the confidential body-guard. Upon an adjoining ladder went Abreas, a soldier who received double pay for his conspicuous valor. Alexander first mounted the battlements and frayed a place for himself with his sword. The king’s guards, anxious for his safety, crowded upon the ladders in such numbers as to break them down. Alexander was left standing with only Peucestas, Abreas, and Leonnatus upon the wall in the midst of his enemies; but so indomitable were his strength and daring that none came within reach of his sword but to fall. The barbarians had recognized him by his armor and white plume, and the multitude of darts which fell upon him threatened his life at every instant. The Macedonians below implored him to leap down into their outstretched arms. Nothing daunted, however, and calling on every man to follow who loved him, Alexander leaped down inside the wall and, with his three companions backing up against it, stoutly held his own. In a brief moment he had cut down a number of Indians and had slain their leader, who ventured against him. But Abreas fell dead beside him, with an arrow in the forehead, and Alexander was at the same moment pierced by an arrow through the breast. The king valiantly stood his ground till he fell exhausted by loss of blood, and over him, like lions at bay, but glowing with heroic lustre, stood Peucestas, warding missiles from him with the sacred shield, and Leonnatus guarding him with his sword, both dripping blood from many wounds. It seemed that the doom of all was sealed.

The Macedonians, meanwhile, some with ladders and some by means of pegs inserted between the stones in the wall, had begun to reach the top, and one by one leaped within and surrounded the now lifeless body of Alexander. Others forced an entrance through one of the gates and flew to the rescue. Their valor was as irresistible as their numbers were small. The Indians could in no wise resist their terrible onset, their war-cry doubly fierce from rage at the fate of their beloved king, who, to them, was, in truth, a demigod. They were driven from the spot, and Alexander was borne home to the camp. So enraged were the Macedonians at the wounding of their king, whom they believed to be mortally struck, that they spared neither man, woman, nor child in the town.

Alexander’s wounds were indeed grave, but he recovered, much to the joy of his army. While his life was despaired of, a great deal of uncertainty and fear was engendered of their situation, for Alexander was the centre around which revolved the entire mechanism. Without him what could they do? How ever again reach their homes? Every man believed that no one but the king could lead them, and how much less in retreat than in advance!

Alexander’s fleet finally reached the mouth of the Indus. The admiral, Nearchus, sailed to the Persian Gulf, while Alexander and part of his army crossed the desert of Gedrosia, Craterus having moved by a shorter route with another part and the invalids. When Alexander again reached Babylon, his wonderful military career had ended. In B.C. 323, he died there of a fever, and his great conquests and schemes of a Græco-Oriental monarchy were dissipated.

Alexander was possessed of uncommon beauty. Plutarch says that Lysippus made the best portrait of him, “the inclination of the head a little on one side towards the left shoulder, and his melting eye, having been expressed by this artist with great exactness.” His likeness was less fortunately caught by Apelles. He was fair and ruddy, sweet and agreeable in person. Fond of study, he read much history, poetry, and general literature. His favorite book was the Iliad, a copy of which, annotated by Aristotle, with a dagger, always lay under his pillow. He was at all times surrounded by men of brains, and enjoyed their conversation. He was abstinent of pleasures, except drinking. Aristobulus says Alexander did not drink much in quantity, but enjoyed being merry. Still, the Macedonian “much” was more than wisdom dictates. He had no weaknesses, except that he over-enjoyed flattery and was rash in temper.

Alexander was active, and able to endure heat and cold, hunger and thirst, trial and fatigue, beyond even the stoutest. He was exceeding swift of foot, but when young would not enter the Olympic games because he had not kings’ sons to compete with. In an iron body dwelt both an intellect clear beyond compare, and a heart full of generous impulses. He was ambitious, but from high motives. His desire to conquer the world was coupled with the purpose of furthering Greek civilization. His courage was, both physically and morally, high-pitched. He actually enjoyed the delirium of battle, and its turmoils raised his intellect to its highest grade of clearness and activity. His instincts were keen; his perception remarkable; his judgment all but infallible. As an organizer of an army, unapproached; as a leader, unapproachable in rousing the ambition and courage of his men, and in quelling their fears by his own fearlessness. He kept his agreements faithfully. He was a remarkable judge of men. He had the rare gift of natural, convincing oratory, and of making men hang upon his lips as he spoke, and do deeds of heroism after. He lavished money rather on his friends than on himself.

While every inch a king, Alexander was friendly with his men; shared their toils and dangers; never asked an effort he himself did not make; never ordered a hardship of which he himself did not bear part. During the herculean pursuit of Darius,--after a march of four hundred miles in eleven days, on which but sixty of his men could keep beside him, and every one was all but dying of thirst,--when a helmetful of water was offered him, he declined to drink, as there was not enough for all. Such things endear a leader to his men beyond the telling. But Alexander’s temper, by inheritance quick, grew ungovernable. A naturally excitable character, coupled with a certain superstitious tendency, was the very one to suffer from a life which carried him to such a giddy height, and from successes which reached beyond the human limit. We condemn, but, looking at him as a captain, may pass over those dark hours in his life which narrate the murder of Clitus, the execution of Philotas and Parmenio, and the cruelties to Bessus and to Batis. Alexander was distinctly subject to human frailties. His vices were partly inherited, partly the outgrowth of his youth and wonderful career. He repented quickly and sincerely of his evil deeds. Until the last few years of his life his habits were very simple. His adoption then of Persian dress and manners was so largely a political requirement, that it can be hardly ascribed to personal motives, even if we fully acknowledge his vanity.

The life-work of Philip had been transcendant. That of Alexander surpasses anything in history. Words fail to describe the attributes of Alexander as a soldier. The perfection of all he did was scarcely understood by his historians. But to compare his deeds with those of other captains excites our wonder. Starting with a handful of men from Macedonia, in four years, one grand achievement after another, and without a failure, had placed at his feet the kingdom of the Great King. Leaving home with an enormous debt, in fifty moons he had possessed himself of all the treasures of the earth. Thence, with marvellous courage, endurance, intelligence, and skill he completed the conquest of the entire then known world, marching over nineteen thousand miles in his eleven years’ campaigns. And all this before he was thirty-two. His health and strength were still as great as ever; his voracity for conquest greater, as well as his ability to conquer. It is an interesting question, had he not died, what would have become of Rome. The Roman infantry was as good as his; not so their cavalry. An annually elected consul could be no match for Alexander. But the king never met in his campaigns such an opponent as the Roman Republic, nor his phalanx such a rival as the Roman legion would have been. That was reserved for Hannibal.

Greek civilization, to a certain degree, followed Alexander’s footsteps, but this was accidental. “You are a man like all of us, Alexander,” said the naked Indian, “except that you abandon your home, like a meddlesome destroyer, to invade the most distant regions, enduring hardship yourself and inflicting it on others.” Alexander could never have erected a permanent kingdom on his theory of coalescing races by intermarriages and forced migrations. His Macedonian-Persian Empire was a mere dream.

Alexander was never a Greek. He had but the Greek genius and intelligence grafted on the ruder Macedonian nature; and he became Asiaticized by his conquests. His life-work, as cut out by himself, was to conquer and then to Hellenize Asia. He did the one, he could not accomplish the other aim. He did not plant a true and permanent Hellenism in a single country of Asia. None of his cities have lived. They were rather fortified posts than self-sustaining marts. As a statesman, intellectual, far-seeing, and broad, he yet conceived and worked on an impossible theory, and the immediate result of all his genius did not last a generation.