Part 5

The actual crossing of the division under his command was done under his own eyes. Regiments of heavy-armed men were left on the right bank in anticipation of a possible rear attack by Abisares, prince of Cashmir, who, it was known, had promised to assist Porus in resisting the invading army. The passage was facilitated by the stormy weather which prevailed during the night. The Indian outposts heard nothing, and Alexander led the way safely past the island to the opposite shore, where, though some difficulty was caused by mistaking an islet for the mainland, the cavalry were disembarked and put in battle array. The whole number of troops under Alexander’s command were 6000 hypaspists, 4000 light-armed foot, 5000 cavalry, including 1000 Scythian archers. In the meantime the Indian outposts had ridden away to announce to Porus what had happened and to prepare him for the news of the Greek advance. Alexander went swiftly forward, taking with him all the cavalry, and he soon met and defeated a detachment of 1000 Indian horsemen and 160 chariots under the command of the son of Porus.

The Indian king himself was advancing with the bulk of his army, and he drew up his line of battle as soon as he found a piece of sandy ground suitable for displaying the cavalry and elephants. In front he placed 200 elephants at intervals of 100 feet, and behind them his infantry to the number of 20,000. In the wings his cavalry were drawn up, about 4000 in all. Alexander placed the pick of his army, the hypaspists, immediately in front of the elephants. The use of these animals in battle was still a strange sight to the Greeks, and the Indian fighting line seemed to them like a city wall with towers. Porus did not think that his foes would venture to advance through the spaces left between the elephants. He argued that the horses would be terror-stricken and the foot would be met by the Indian foot soldiers if they tried to attack the elephants from the side, and that they would hesitate to move directly against them for fear of being trodden down by their onslaught.

Exactly how the Indian infantry were armed is left uncertain. They probably had not the solidity of the Greek phalanx and were depended upon only to cover the work of the elephants. Alexander kept his infantry in reserve until he was able to confuse the line of the enemy by a cavalry attack. His cavalry he directed to spread out and attack not only in front but on the flanks as well. This manœuver was executed with practised precision, and neither the Indian chariots nor their horse could withstand the furious onslaught of the Greek squadrons, and soon retired behind the elephants with the Macedonians in close pursuit. As the elephants wheeled round, passing through the infantry in order to meet the Macedonians, the quick advance was blocked; the horses could not be induced to charge. They were obliged to retire; then Porus, on his side, vigorously attacked both the Macedonian cavalry and the phalanx.

The fight was now a general one. The Greek authorities paint this stage of the battle in superlative diction, describing how the elephants pressed through the thickly packed masses in front of them, rending and trampling the soldiers and horses as they went, while the engines on their backs scattered destruction far and wide. But the Macedonians finally won by striking down the elephants’ drivers and destroying the turrets they were in, and so wounded the beasts themselves that they ceased to attack. With the elephants rendered useless, the chance of victory for the Indians was gone. Their infantry was not sufficiently disciplined to make any use of the confusion caused in the Greek ranks by the work of the elephants. Besides, the Macedonian cavalry had in the first stage of the engagement got so far into the Indian lines, that they remained not only on the field of battle, but actually were, as the engagement advanced, behind both the enemy’s infantry and the elephants as well. When the Indian cavalry tried to take a hand in the fight and leave the part of the field where the elephants were in action, the Greek horse, having a superiority in numbers, forced them back.

The Greek infantry phalanx had been ordered by Alexander to keep its ground, but when the cavalry fight made it impossible for the Indians to move forward, the Greek foot soldiers drew away from their first position, where they were liable to a frontal attack by the elephants, and driving the elephants back, exposed the enemy to an attack by the Macedonian horse. Unprotected as the Indians were on both sides, they could not escape defeat, and at this point of the battle they suffered severely; most of the elephants and King Porus himself were taken prisoners.

The Greek historian, Arrian, says that the Macedonian loss was only 310 dead, mostly horsemen; but as other authorities add 700 foot soldiers, it seems likely that the battle was a stubborn one, for there were only 11,000 men engaged in Alexander’s army. The fact, too, that the use of elephants became customary in the wars fought by Alexander’s successors, some of whom were present at the battle of Hydaspes, proves that the fight with Porus must have made an impression on his opponents, and this places it in a different category from the easier victories over the Persians. Alexander treated his defeated antagonist with magnanimity and erected his kingdom into a vassal state; but as safeguards of his loyalty, directed that two garrison cities, Bucephala and Nicæa, should be established in his domains, one on either side of the Hydaspes near the site of the battle. A lieutenant, Crateros, was left to carry out these building plans, while Alexander turned to the conquest of the neighboring tribes. The only notable difficulty was the taking of the town of Sangala, the chief citadel of the free and warlike Cathæans, which had been strongly fortified and which had to be taken by storm.

The general result was that the Punjab was annexed to Alexander’s empire and placed in the hands of vassal princes. From this region the Greek army advanced to the river Hyphasis, reaching it at a point higher up than its junction with the Sutlej. This was the extreme limit of Alexander’s march. He would have gladly gone farther, for the whole of India might well have become a subject state; but the army had suffered from the discomforts of the rainy season, and they were weary of campaigning. The horses were worn out, the armor and accoutrements in bad condition. The temper of the troops, devoted though they were to their commander, left no doubt that they would mutiny if Alexander refused to turn back. He told the officers he would go on himself, and that they could return to Macedonia and let the Macedonians know that they had abandoned their king in a hostile land.

But appeals and threats alike failed to convince the army that their view of the situation was unreasonable. The sacrifices were found to be unfavorable, and persuaded by this intimation of the disfavor of the gods, the king consented to return. On the bank of the Hyphasis twelve altars were erected of large size, as lofty as the walls of a city, to mark the limits of Macedonian conquests, and as a thank-offering to the gods for their protection through the hazards of long-continued warfare in strange lands. The army then retired to the Hydaspes.

Alexander was an explorer as well as a conqueror, and his disappointment at this enforced withdrawal from the prosecution of his march must have been that of a man who was within reach of the goal and just failed to attain it. According to the geographical notions of his day, he was near the certain limit of the world; he knew nothing of the great Indian peninsula, and of course nothing of the vast extent of Siberia or the Chinese Empire. He supposed that the Ganges flowed into an eastern sea which was continuous with the Caspian and which washed the shores of Scythia and the base of the high mountains he had lately passed through. On the river Hydaspes, a fleet had already been under construction; as soon as it was ready he embarked on it a part of his best troops, while the mass of the army, in two divisions, moved down the stream. The route followed was along the Hydaspes to its confluence with the Akesines, then down this stream to the Indus and the Indus itself to the Delta.

From the military point of view, this concluding stage of the Indian expedition offers little of special interest. The inhabitants of the country either submitted to or fled from the Greek army, and various strongholds were taken by storm. In an assault on one of them, held by the Malians, who dwelt in the southern Punjab, the king, who had pressed forward in the midst of the enemy, found himself separated from the main body of his followers and was dangerously wounded. In the region the army traversed several colonies were founded; another Alexandria rose at the point where the Akesines flows into the Indus, and at Pattala a harbor and navy yard were built. The conquered portion of India was organized in three satrapies, one of which was under Porus, who had a free position as a vassal prince, for in his territory there were no Macedonian garrisons.

But the real subjugation of the country had not been effected by the spectacular march through it; as soon as the Greeks turned their backs, an uprising took place. Before the whole army reached Pattala, a part had been detached with directions to march west to Arachosia, and to wait in Caramania till it was joined there by the main division. The fleet was placed under the command of Nearchus, a Cretan, who was to take it along the coast of the Indian Ocean and finally into the Persian Gulf. Alexander, at the head of the rest of the army, took the road through Gedrosia.

The difficulties of the return were considerable. The men under Alexander suffered terribly in passing a desert country before they reached, after sixty days’ slow progress, the capital of Gedrosia, Pura. In the farther stretch to Caramania there was also exhausting work, but these trials marked the end of the expedition, for Crateros, who had led the rest of the troops by Arachosia, soon arrived, and news came of the landing of the fleet after a skilfully managed cruise of seventy-five days through unknown waters on the coasts of Caramania. A year had now passed (325 B.C.) since the beginning of the return home from India. During the course of the winter the army returned to Susa, thus concluding this remarkable adventure of Far Eastern conquest.

V ALEXANDER’S EMPIRE

It had now been five years, from the summer of 330, since Alexander had left Ecbatana in pursuit of Darius. His presence was urgently needed, for the government of the empire was in chaotic state so far as the central administration was concerned. Fortunately the attempts at an uprising had generally been feeble, and were easily and loyally suppressed by the satraps where they did occur. Only one gave trouble, a revolt in Bactria, initiated first of all by Greek mercenaries and taken up by the native inhabitants as far as the border of Scythia. This lasted some time, and peace was not restored until after Alexander’s death.

But the maladministration of the conquered provinces was more serious than these uprisings. During Alexander’s absence in the Far East there had been boundless liberty in the financial plundering of the people. Peculation was the rule everywhere, and it was common to the Persian official class, to whom the government of the satrapies had been intrusted. Trained as these officers had been in maladministration and corruption, they had no notion of following different standards, simply because there was a different ruler. While Alexander was in Bactria he had been forced to deprive several satraps of their governments. It was time for the strong arm of the king to be felt, and there was no doubt about his intentions and aims. Many Persian satraps were executed and their places taken by Macedonian officers. But while Alexander had been away the infection had spread to European office-holders, both military and civil. We hear, for example, of the death penalty being inflicted on Greek commanders of the troops in Media, who had plundered graves and temples and had signalized their rule over the subject population by systemic oppression.

Among the guiltiest of this class was the minister of finance, Harpalus, who treated the state’s money as his private property, had brought over from Athens a company of gay comrades, and was living the easy, reckless life of an Oriental satrap. His previous record had been anything but clean; before the battle of Issus he had been obliged to return to Greece and had only come back to Asia because he had received the royal pardon. He knew that there was no chance of finding the king amenable to excuses or explanations; so with 5000 talents taken from the treasury, he raised a body of 6000 mercenaries and departed for the sea coast, hoping to stir up a revolt. The scheme was a pitiable failure; no satrap held out a hand to him; and finally Harpalus sailed to Athens, where he had influence and could count on a welcome, because of the strong anti-Macedonian feeling in the city.

Alexander showed his appreciation of the lesson of Harpalus’ official career by ordering the governors of the provinces to dismiss all soldiers they had collected on their own authority. Now that the period of military expansion was closed, the king devoted himself to the organization of the empire, following the lines he had worked out originally, which tended to the amalgamation of the Greek and Persian elements. This ideal survived the experience of maladministration, and Alexander held fast to it, despite the opposition of the officers of his army. He seems to have believed firmly in the possibility of educating politically the Asiatic peoples so that they could be ruled without display of despotic power, and he was just as firm in trusting to the loyalty of the Persian ruling class to carry out this program of interracial conciliation. In doing so he failed to take account of the Persian’s deep-rooted dislike of the Greeks, which with Oriental wiliness his new subjects could conceal, but which was ever present as an inducement to them to take advantage of the first opportunity that offered to throw off the yoke imposed upon them by the conquest.

Alexander planned to make his scheme a success by marrying the daughters of the Persian official class to the Macedonian officers. He led the way by claiming, as the successor of the Great King, the right to have more than one legitimate wife, and after his return from India he added to his royal household a daughter of Darius, Stateira, and a daughter of Ochus, Parysatis. Alexander’s close friend, Hephæstion, received another daughter of Darius, and altogether eighty of the high officers in command of the Macedonian army were married to Persian women of high degree. The wedding festivities were made a national affair, and took place at Susa on the same day with great ceremonial, all the brides receiving from Alexander marriage portions. The Macedonian private soldiers, who followed the example of their chief on this occasion, were richly rewarded.

It is said that the officers were as dissatisfied with the matrimonial schemes of the king as they had been with his plans for further conquest in India; in any case, it is known that on the king’s death there was a general movement among them to get rid of their Persian helpmates. The discontent among the rank and file of Alexander’s followers with his program of social equality between Greek and Persian could not be appeased, even when he paid their debts at the time of the “Union of the Two Races” festival, an act of bounty which cost him about $5,000,000. The hostility to Persian influence was accentuated by the introduction of foreign troops into the army. This was naturally a step required by the necessity of raising a force greater than Greece could possibly supply. That thinly populated country must have been already drained to the point of exhaustion by the demands already made upon it to fill up the losses during the years of constant campaigning. And as a matter of fact, we know that a year and a half after the passage of the Hellespont with 35,000 men, Alexander led to battle at Arbela about 60,000, and in the years during which the expedition was moving in the Far East, the various additional troops must have equaled altogether 50,000 men. The substitution of Persian contingents for Greek soldiers was a matter of plain necessity. They received lower pay, they cost less to feed, without considering the saving made in the high cost of transportation of bodies of men from continental Greece to the interior of Asia.

Orders had therefore been given to draw 30,000 young men from the conquered provinces and to prepare them for military services according to Macedonian methods. A further and more radical stage in the amalgamation policy was reached when Persians were enrolled in the Macedonian phalanx and Asiatic horsemen in the élite regiment of the Hetæroi; even in the life guards distinguished Persians were received, and the command of that force was assigned to a warrior from Bactria, Hystaspes.

These leveling measures were more than the Macedonian veterans could endure, and they became openly mutinous when Alexander proposed to dismiss those who had been longest in the service. The whole army stood together and told the king that they would serve no longer, and that he would see how he could do without them, now that he had his Persians to serve under him. Alexander then set to work to organize purely Persian regiments on the Macedonian model, a Persian life guard, a Persian squadron of Hetæroi, and a Persian phalanx. This satisfied the Macedonians, and they were farther placated by being given precedence over the various Persian units of the army. Under these conditions, the veterans were willing to be dismissed, and they received one talent as a bonus and full pay until they were actually on Macedonian soil. Moreover, the king agreed to provide for the education of their children. Ten thousand men on these terms returned to Greece.

A more effective means for bringing together the two races on an equal footing was the establishment of military colonies throughout the empire. At an early stage of the expedition this had been adopted as the readiest way of keeping peace in the conquered territory. Tyre and Gaza, after the native population had been sold into slavery, received a new population of Greek origin. We have already noted the extension of this scheme in the Far Eastern provinces and in India. Altogether seventy cities are said to have been founded by Alexander. These colonies, though primarily intended for military purposes, became centers of industrial communication and of civilization. The case of the Egyptian Alexandria is so well known that it does not require to be stressed. Less familiar are the proofs of Alexander’s sagacity as a founder of flourishing towns in other parts of his empire. Alexandria, on the Persian Gulf, continued through the whole period of antiquity to be the greatest emporium of the whole region of Mesopotamia. Alexandria in Arcia (Herat) and Alexandria in Arachosia (Candahar) are still to-day important towns in Persia.

Despite his absorption in military interests, Alexander found time for looking after the economic development of his empire. The Indian Ocean was opened to commerce by the remarkable voyage of Nearchus which concluded the Indian expedition. Attempts were made to circumnavigate the Arabian peninsula, and, though they failed, yet a considerable portion of the coast was explored. The Caspian Sea was also the scene of exploring adventures, because it was supposed to be a part of the vast ocean by which the earth was surrounded. The Tigris was freed from obstruction and made navigable; the ancient irrigation canals in Babylonia were restored; and a beginning was made in constructing a harbor near Babylon.

Equally farsighted was Alexander’s foundation of a unified monetary system for the empire. Under Persian rule the custom had been for the satraps to coin silver money, while the coinage of gold was reserved to the Great King. The result was that each province followed its own customs and financial chaos prevailed. Alexander reserved the minting privilege to the general government; even where provincial coining was permitted, the coins were of the same general type and bore the name of the king. The only exception to this rule is found in the case of the autonomous Greek cities on the western coast of Asia. This new monetary system was based on that of the Athenians; the bimetallic basis, as it had existed in the Persian Empire, was abandoned and the silver standard, as used at Athens and Corinth, took its place. The reformed monetary system of Alexander continued down to Roman times.

The large hoards of precious metals, which fell into Alexander’s hands during the course of his conquests, not only gave occupation to his mints, but also freed him from financial anxiety. He had begun the expedition in a state of insolvency, for he had a debt of 1300 talents with only seventy in his war chest to cover it. The maintenance of the army required a monthly expenditure of 200 talents, and to this 100 talents had to be added for the fleet. The provinces in western Asia, the first fruits of his victories, could not supply a sum so large, and it was lack of money which caused Alexander to give up his fleet in the autumn of 334. After the battle of Issus and the conquest of the rich province of Egypt, there was soon a surplus where there had been a deficit, and Alexander was able to send considerable sums of money to Antipater to help him out in his campaign in Greece.

Rich as were the Persian treasures, they were heavily and constantly drawn upon by the ever-developing military needs of the conqueror. The whole force under arms, including the very numerous garrisons, must have equaled 100,000 men. This meant at least an expense of 7000 talents; to this large sum must be added the drains caused by Alexander’s generosity, by official peculation such as that of Harpalus, and by the gifts to old soldiers, who were richly rewarded. The royal household, which was organized on the Persian model, was most expensive; the royal table alone costing 600 talents. Of course, the receipts were large, probably from fifteen to twenty thousand talents annually, but Alexandria’s budget was far from balancing; and at the time of his death, there were contained in all the treasuries of the empire only 50,000 talents, about $70,000,000, a small sum when the size of the empire is taken into account.