Part 18

Thence he marched towards Embolima, but on learning that the pass which led thereto was occupied by 20,000 men in arms under Erix,[242] he hurried forward himself with the archers and slingers, leaving the heavy-armed troops under the command of Coenus to advance leisurely. Having dislodged those men who beset the defile, he cleared the passage for the army which followed. The Indians, either from disaffection to their chief or to court the favour of the conqueror, set upon Erix during his flight and killed him. They brought his head and his armour to Alexander, who did not punish them for their crime, but to condemn their example gave them no reward. Having left this pass, he arrived after the sixteenth encampment at the river Indus, where he found that Hephaestion, agreeably to his orders, had made all the necessary preparations for the passage across it.

The sovereign of the territories on the other side was Omphis,[243] who had urged his father to surrender his kingdom to Alexander, and had moreover at his father’s death sent envoys to enquire whether it was Alexander’s pleasure that he should meanwhile exercise authority or remain in a private capacity till his arrival. He was permitted to assume the sovereignty, but modestly forbore to exercise its functions. He had extended to Hephaestion marks of civility, and given corn gratuitously to his soldiers, but he had not gone to join him, from a reluctance to make trial of the good faith of any but Alexander. Accordingly, on Alexander’s approach, he went to meet him at the head of an army equipped for the field. He had even brought his elephants with him, which, posted at short intervals amidst the ranks of the soldiery, appeared to the distant spectator like towers.

Alexander at first thought it was not a friendly but a hostile army that approached, and had already ordered the soldiers to arm themselves, and the cavalry to divide to the wings, and was ready for action. But the Indian prince, on seeing the mistake of the Macedonians, put his horse to the gallop, leaving orders that no one else was to stir from his place. Alexander likewise galloped forward, not knowing whether it was an enemy or a friend he had to encounter, but trusting for safety perhaps to his valour, perhaps to the other’s good faith. They met in a friendly spirit, as far as could be gathered from the expression of each one’s face, but from the want of an interpreter to converse was impossible. An interpreter was therefore procured, and then the barbarian prince explained that he had come with his army to meet Alexander that he might at once place at his disposal all the forces of his empire, without waiting to tender his allegiance through deputies. He surrendered, he said, his person and his kingdom to a man who, as he knew, was fighting not more for fame than fearing to incur the reproach of perfidy.

The king, pleased with the simple honesty of the barbarian, gave him his right hand as a pledge of his own good faith, and confirmed him in his sovereignty. The prince had brought with him six-and-fifty elephants, and these he gave to Alexander, with a great many sheep of an extraordinary size, and 3000 bulls of a valuable breed, highly prized by the rulers of the country. When Alexander asked him whether he had more husbandmen or soldiers, he replied that as he was at war with two kings he required more soldiers than field labourers. These kings were Abisares and Porus, but Porus was superior in power and influence. Both of them held sway beyond the river Hydaspes, and had resolved to try the fortune of war whatever invader might come.

Omphis, under Alexander’s permission, and according to the usage of the realm, assumed the ensigns of royalty along with the name which his father had borne. His people called him Taxiles, for such was the name which accompanied the sovereignty, on whomsoever it devolved. When, therefore, he had entertained Alexander for three days with lavish hospitality, he showed him on the fourth day what quantity of corn he had supplied to Hephaestion’s troops, and then presented him and all his friends with golden crowns, and eighty talents besides of coined silver. Alexander was so exceedingly gratified with this profuse generosity that he not only sent back to Omphis the presents he had given, but added a thousand talents from the spoils which he carried, along with many banqueting vessels of gold and silver, a vast quantity of Persian drapery, and thirty chargers from his own stalls, caparisoned as when ridden by himself.

This liberality, while it bound the barbarian to his interests, gave at the same time the deepest offence to his own friends. One of them, Meleager, who had taken too much wine at supper, said that he congratulated Alexander on having found in India, if nowhere else, some one worthy of a thousand talents. The king, who had not forgotten what remorse he had suffered when he killed Clitus for audacity of speech, controlled his temper, but remarked that envious persons were nothing but their own tormentors.

_Chapter XIII.—Alexander and Porus confront each other on opposite banks of the Hydaspes_

On the following day envoys from Abisares reached the king, and, as they had been instructed, surrendered to him all that their master possessed. After pledges of good faith had been interchanged, they were sent back to their sovereign. Alexander, thinking that by the mere prestige of his name Porus also would be induced to surrender, sent Cleochares to tell him in peremptory terms that he must pay tribute and come to meet his sovereign at the very frontiers of his own dominions. Porus answered that he would comply with the second of these demands, and when Alexander entered his realm he would meet him, but come armed for battle. Alexander had now resolved to cross the Hydaspes, when Barzaentes, who had instigated the Arachosians to revolt, was brought to him in chains, along with thirty captured elephants, an opportune reinforcement against the Indians, since these huge beasts more than the soldiery constituted the hope and main strength of an Indian army.

Samaxus was also brought in chains, the king of a small Indian state, who had espoused the cause of Barzaentes. Alexander having then put the traitor and his accomplice under custody, and consigned the elephants to the care of Taxiles, advanced till he reached the river Hydaspes, where on the further bank Porus had encamped to prevent the enemy from landing. In the van of his army he had posted 85 elephants of the greatest size and strength, and behind these 300 chariots and somewhere about 30,000 infantry, among whom were the archers, whose arrows, as already stated, were too ponderous to be readily discharged. He was himself mounted on an elephant which towered above all its fellows, while his armour, embellished with gold and silver, set off his supremely majestic person to great advantage. His courage matched his bodily vigour, and his wisdom was the utmost attainable in a rude community.

The Macedonians were intimidated not only by the appearance of the enemy, but by the magnitude of the river to be crossed, which, spreading out to a width of no less than four stadia in a deep channel which nowhere opened a passage by fords, presented the aspect of a vast sea. Yet its rapidity did not diminish in proportion to its wider diffusion, but it rushed impetuously like a seething torrent compressed into a narrow bed by the closing in of its banks. Besides, at many points the presence of sunken rocks was revealed where the waves were driven back in eddies. The bank presented a still more formidable aspect, for, as far as the eye could see, it was covered with cavalry and infantry, in the midst of which, like so many massive structures, stood the huge elephants, which, being of set purpose provoked by their drivers, distressed the ear with their frightful roars. The enemy and the river both in their front, struck with sudden dismay the hearts of the Macedonians, disposed though they were to entertain good hopes, and knowing from experience against what fearful odds they had ere now contended. They could not believe that boats so unhandy could be steered to the bank or gain it in safety. In the middle of the river were numerous islands to which both the Indians and Macedonians began to swim over, holding their weapons above their heads. Here they would engage in skirmishes, while each king endeavoured from the result of these minor conflicts to gauge the issue of the final struggle. In the Macedonian army were Symmachus and Nicanor, both young men of noble lineage, distinguished for their hardihood and enterprise, and from the uniform success of their side in whatever they assayed, inspired with a contempt for every kind of danger. Led by these, a party of the boldest youths, equipped with nothing but lances, swam over to the island when it was occupied by crowds of the enemy.

Armed with audacious courage, the best of all weapons, they slew many of the Indians, and might have retired with glory if temerity when successful could ever keep within bounds. But while with contempt and pride they waited till succours reached the enemy, they were surrounded by men who had unperceived swum over to the island, and were overthrown by discharges of missiles. Such as escaped the enemy were either swept away by the force of the current or swallowed up in its eddies. This fight exalted the confidence of Porus, who had witnessed from the bank all its vicissitudes.

Alexander, perplexed how to cross the river, at last devised a plan for duping the enemy. In the river lay an island larger than the rest, wooded and suitable for concealing an ambuscade. A deep hollow, moreover, which lay not far from the bank in his own occupation, was capable of hiding not only foot-soldiers but mounted cavalry. To divert, therefore, the attention of the enemy from a place possessing such advantages, he ordered Ptolemy with all his squadrons of horse to ride up and down at a distance from the island in view of the enemy, and now and then to alarm the Indians by shouting, as if he meant to make the passage of the river.[244] For several days Ptolemy repeated this feint, and thus obliged Porus to concentrate his troops at the point which he pretended to threaten.

The island was now beyond view of the enemy.[245] Alexander then gave orders that his own tent should be pitched on a part of the bank looking the other way, that the guard of honour which usually attended him should be posted before it, and that all the pageantry of royal state should be paraded before the eyes of the enemy on purpose to deceive them. He besides requested Attalus, who was about his own age, and not unlike him in form and feature, especially when seen from a distance, to wear the royal mantle, and so make it appear as if the king in person was guarding that part of the bank without any intention of crossing the river. The state of the weather at first hindered, but afterwards favoured, the execution of this design, fortune making even untoward circumstances turn out to his ultimate advantage. For when the enemy was busy watching the troops under Ptolemy which occupied the bank lower down, and Alexander with the rest of his forces was making ready to cross the river and reach the land over against the island already mentioned, a storm poured down torrents of rain, against which even those under cover could scarcely protect themselves. The soldiers, overcome by the fury of the elements, deserted the boats and ships, and fled back for safety to land, but the din occasioned by their hurry and confusion could not be heard by the enemy amid the roar of the tempest. All of a sudden the rain then ceased, but clouds so dense overspread the sky that they hid the light, and made it scarcely possible for men conversing together to see each other’s faces.

Any other leader but Alexander would have been appalled by the darkness drawn over the face of heaven just when he was starting on a voyage across an unknown river, with the enemy perhaps guarding the very bank to which his men were blindly and imprudently directing their course. But the king deriving glory from danger and regarding the darkness which terrified others as his opportunity, gave the signal that all should embark in silence, and ordered that the galley which carried himself should be the first to be run aground on the other side. The bank, however, towards which they steered was not occupied by the enemy, for Porus was in fact still intently watching Ptolemy only. Hence all the ships made the passage in safety except just one, which stuck on a rock whither it had been driven by the wind. Alexander then ordered the soldiers to take their arms and to fall into their ranks.

_Chapter XIV.—Battle with Porus on the left bank of the Hydaspes—Porus being defeated surrenders_

He was already in full march at the head of his army, which he had divided into two columns, when the tidings reached Porus that the bank was occupied by a military force, and that the crisis of his fortunes was now imminent. In keeping with the infirmity of our nature, which makes us ever hope the best, he at first indulged the belief that this was his ally Abisares come to help him in the war as had been agreed upon. But soon after, when the sky had become clearer, and showed the ranks to be those of the enemy, he sent 100 chariots and 4000 horse to obstruct their advance. The command of this detachment he gave to his brother Hages.[246] Its main strength lay in the chariots, each of which was drawn by four horses and carried six men, of whom two were shield-bearers, two, archers posted on each side of the chariot, and the other two, charioteers, as well as men-at-arms, for when the fighting was at close-quarters they dropped the reins and hurled dart after dart against the enemy.

But on this particular day these chariots proved to be scarcely of any service, for the storm of rain, which, as already said, was of extraordinary violence, had made the ground slippery, and unfit for horses to ride over, while the chariots kept sticking in the muddy sloughs formed by the rain, and proved almost immovable from their great weight. Alexander, on the other hand, charged with the utmost vigour, because his troops were lightly armed and unencumbered. The Scythians and Dahae first of all attacked the Indians, and then the king launched Perdiccas with his horse upon their right wing. The fighting had now become hot everywhere, when the drivers of the chariots rode at full speed into the midst of the battle, thinking they could thus most effectively succour their friends. It would be hard to say which side suffered most from this charge, for the Macedonian foot-soldiers, who were exposed to the first shock of the onset, were trampled down, while the charioteers were hurled from their seats, when the chariots in rushing into action jolted over broken and slippery ground. Some again of the horses took fright and precipitated the carriages not only into the sloughs and pools of water, but even into the river itself.

A few which were driven off the field by the darts of the enemy made their way to Porus, who was making most energetic preparations for the contest. As soon as he saw his chariots scattered amid his ranks, and wandering about without their drivers, he distributed his elephants to his friends who were nearest him. Behind them he had posted the infantry and the archers and the men who beat the drums, the instruments which the Indians use instead of trumpets to produce their war music. The rattle of these instruments does not in the least alarm the elephants, their ears, through long familiarity, being deadened to the sound. An image of Hercules was borne in front of the line of infantry, and this acted as the strongest of all incentives to make the soldiers fight well. To desert the bearers of this image was reckoned a disgraceful military offence, and they had even ordained death as a penalty for those who failed to bring it back from the battlefield, for the dread which the Indians had conceived for the god when he was their enemy had been toned down to a feeling of religious awe and veneration.

The sight not only of the huge beasts, but even of Porus himself, made the Macedonians pause for a time, for the beasts, which had been placed at intervals between the armed ranks, presented, when seen from a distance, the appearance of towers, and Porus himself not only surpassed the standard of height to which we conceive the human figure to be limited, but, besides this, the elephant on which he was mounted seemed to add to his proportions, for it towered over all the other elephants even as Porus himself stood taller than other men. Hence Alexander, after attentively viewing the king and the army of the Indians, remarked to those near him, “I see at last a danger that matches my courage. It is at once with wild beasts and men of uncommon mettle that the contest now lies.” Then turning to Coenus, “When I,” he said, “along with Ptolemy, Perdiccas, and Hephaestion, have fallen upon the enemy’s left wing, and you see me in the heat of the conflict, do you then advance the right wing,[247] and charge the enemy when their ranks begin to waver. And you, sirs,” he added, turning to Antigenes, Leonnatus, and Tauron, “must bear down upon their centre, and press them hard in front. The formidable length and strength of our pikes will never be so useful as when they are directed against these huge beasts and their drivers. Hurl, then, their riders to the ground, and stab the beasts themselves. Their assistance is not of a kind to be depended on, and they may do their own side more damage than ours, for they are driven against the enemy by constraint, while terror turns them against their own ranks.”

Having spoken thus he was the first to put spurs to his horse. And now, as had been arranged, Coenus, upon seeing that Alexander was at close-quarters with the enemy, threw his cavalry with great fury upon their left wing. The phalanx besides, at the first onset, broke through the centre of the Indians. But Porus ordered his elephants to be driven into action where he had seen cavalry charging his ranks. The slow-footed unwieldy animals, however, were unfitted to cope with the rapid movements of horses, and the barbarians were besides unable to use even their arrows. These weapons were really so long and heavy that the archers could not readily adjust them on the string unless by first resting their bow upon the ground. Then, as the ground was slippery and hindered their efforts, the enemy had time to charge them before they could deliver their blows.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.—INDIAN BOWMAN.]

The king’s authority was in these circumstances unheeded, and, as usually happens when the ranks are broken, and fear begins to dictate orders more peremptorily than the general himself, as many took the command upon themselves as there were scattered bodies of troops. Some proposed that these bodies should unite, others that they should form separate detachments, some that they should wait to be attacked, others that they should wheel round and charge the enemy in the rear. No common plan of action was after all concerted. Porus, however, with a few friends in whom the sense of honour was stronger than fear, rallied his scattered forces, and marching in front of his line advanced against the enemy with the elephants. These animals inspired great terror, and their strange dissonant cries frightened not only the horses, which shy at everything, but the men also, and disordered the ranks, so that those who just before were victorious began now to look round them for a place to which they could flee. Alexander thereupon despatched against the elephants the lightly-armed Agrianians and the Thracians, troops more serviceable in skirmishing than in close combat. They assailed the elephants and their drivers with a furious storm of missiles, and the phalanx, on seeing the resulting terror and confusion, steadily pressed forward.

Some, however, by pursuing too eagerly, so irritated the animals with wounds that they turned their rage upon them, and they were in consequence trampled to death under their feet, thus warning others to attack them with greater caution. The most dismal of all sights was when the elephants would, with their trunks, grasp the men, arms and all, and hoisting them above their heads, deliver them over into the hands of their drivers. Thus the battle was doubtful, the Macedonians sometimes pursuing and sometimes fleeing from the elephants, so that the struggle was prolonged till the day was far spent. Then they began to hack the feet of the beasts with axes which they had prepared for the purpose, having besides a kind of sword somewhat curved like a scythe, and called a chopper, wherewith they aimed at their trunks. In fact, their fear of the animals led them not only to leave no means untried for killing them, but even for killing them with unheard-of forms of cruelty.

Hence the elephants, being at last spent with wounds, spread havoc among their own ranks, and threw their drivers to the ground, who were then trampled to death by their own beasts. They were therefore driven from the field of battle like a flock of sheep, as they were maddened with terror rather than vicious. Porus, meanwhile, being left in the lurch by the majority of his men, began to hurl from his elephant the darts with which he had beforehand provided himself, and while many were wounded from afar by his shot he was himself exposed as a butt for blows from every quarter. He had already received nine wounds before and behind, and became so faint from the great loss of blood that the darts were dropped rather than flung from his feeble hands. But his elephant, waxing furious though not yet wounded, kept charging the ranks of the enemy until the driver, perceiving the king’s condition—his limbs failing him, his weapons dropping from his grasp, and his consciousness almost gone—turned the beast round and fled.