Virtues of War (19 page)

At the top, we are met by a wall of gawking faces.

“The king has swallowed river water; he has taken ill,” Hephaestion declares for publication. He calls for my physicians; I am spirited clear, out of the sun.

Inside the tent, I welcome the chance to feign incapacity; I drink till I'm blind, then pass out with relief. Hephaestion will not leave; he banishes the Pages and sleeps all night in the chair. Waking, I am riven with grief and remorse. My first thought is to recompense Diades with gold or honor for the outrage I have offered. Hephaestion calls me off; he has already done it.

We trek with the seers for dawn sacrifice. My brow feels as if a spike had been driven into it. Have I lost command, not only over this army but over myself? Can I rule, at this late hour, not even my own heart? It is minutes before I can even speak.

“Do you remember, Hephaestion, what you said on the eve of Chaeronea?”

“That by battle's end, we would be different people. Older, and crueler.”

A long moment passes. “It gets easier.”

“What?”

“To take the action.”

“Nonsense! You are tired.”

“I used to be able to separate myself from my daimon. It's harder now. I can't tell, sometimes, where he leaves off and I begin.”

“You are not your gift, Alexander. You employ your gift.”

“Do I?”

When we started out, I say, I valued in my friends courage and wisdom, spirit and humor and audacity. Now all I ask is loyalty. “In the end, I have heard, a man cannot trust even himself. Only his gift. Only his daimon.”

The day I reach that state, I will have become a monster.

“The daimon,” I declare, “is not a being that can be appealed to. It is a force of nature. To call it not human is only half-exact. It is inhuman. You make a pact with it. It gifts you with omniscience. But you ally yourself with the whirlwind and make your seat upon the tiger's back.”

Day's end, I return with Hephaestion to Diades' excavation site. Indeed the face carved into the stone is my own.

Next morning I convene the council. “I have decided against diverting the river. Reassemble the boats brought from the Indus. We'll cross, when we do, by waterborne assault.”

E
ighteen

SPOILS OF WAR

W
ITH THE CAPTURE OF THE PERSIAN CAMP
after Issus, certain correspondence fell into my hands. These were propositions addressed to Darius from various city-states of Greece, conspiring for my overthrow. Indeed the haul included a gaggle of envoys in the flesh, of Sparta, Thebes, Corinth, Elis, and Athens, all of whom stood present in the Persian camp on missions of treachery toward me.

I am no neophyte at politics. I count myself slave to few illusions. Indeed, virtually every aspect of the Aegean campaign, from depriving the expeditionary force of half its Macedonian strength—eight brigades of sarissa infantry and five squadrons of Companion Cavalry, left behind as a garrison force with Antipater in Greece—to the tedious and costly neutralization of the seacoast; my personal clemency and attentiveness to Athens; the pardons of those working against me among the Greek cities; all this, I say, was in consideration only of propitiating home opposition, the necessity of securing my base against insurrections of the states of Greece, alone or in alliance with the king of Persia, and to check the opening of a second front in my rear. I knew the Greeks resisted me. I knew they despised my race. Still part of me must have been naive; part must have believed I could make myself loved by them; that I could, by great and noble acts performed in emulation of our common Hellenic ancestors, induce them to take to their hearts if not Macedon, then me personally.

My blood ran hot when I read these letters, whose prose, whether crafted with the unctuous sycophancy of the courtier, the incendiary malice of the provocateur, or the bald power politics of the prime minister, fairly blazed with perfidy and malevolence. I read plots in which I was to be poisoned, stabbed, stoned, hanged, shot with bolts, arrows, and darts, set afire, drowned, trampled. I was to be smothered with a carpet, garroted with a cord, weighted with stones and hurled into the sea, assassinated at sacrifice, in my sleep, while heeding nature's call. Of the lexicon of epithets applied to me, I note only “this beast” and “the Malign One” (which I confess might, with some aptness, be applied to my horse), passing on to those reserved for my father (understandable), my sister (a mystery) and, vilest of all, my mother.

“Compliments,” says Craterus, dismissing these.

Ptolemy calls them “the scorn of the sedge for the oak.”

“At least,” observes Parmenio, “we know whom to hang.”

What infuriates me beyond all else is that these Greeks, before whom I have practically genuflected soliciting their good opinion, prefer union with the Persian barbarian to alliance with me! I show the letters to Telamon, knowing he will view them from a perspective all his own. “Which item of the soldier's kit,” I ask my mercenary mentor, “should I be discarding now?”

“That part,” Telamon replies, “which takes offense personally.”

He is right, of course.

“Does it surprise you that they hate you, Alexander, whom you have deprived of liberty?”

I laugh. “I don't know why I keep you around.”

“And if you freed these Greeks,” he asks, “would they love you then?”

I laugh again.

“Understand you are the earthquake, Alexander. You are fire on the mountain.”

“I am a man too.”

“No. You gave up that luxury when you stood before the nation in arms and accepted their call as sovereign.” It is a terrible thing to be a king, Telamon observes. “You think you will be different from those who went before you. But why? Necessity doesn't change. You have enemies. You must act. You find yourself proceeding with the same brutality as kings have always, and for the same brutal reasons. One cannot be a philosopher and a warrior at the same time, as Parmenio has said. And one cannot be a man and a king.”

I ask Telamon what he would do with the perfidious ambassadors.

“Execute them. And not lose a minute's sleep.”

“And the states of Greece?”

“Act toward them with consideration, as before. But send gold to Antipater for two more regiments.”

In the end I pardon the envoys. They are, after all, brave men and patriots. But I keep them with me, hostages for their countrymen's good behavior.

What is more natural than to crave the good opinion of our fellows? We all wish to be loved. Perhaps the conqueror wants it more, even, than other men, for he seeks the adulation not only of his contemporaries but of posterity.

When I was eighteen, after the victory of Chaeronea, my father sent me with Antipater to Athens. We brought the ashes of those Athenians fallen in the battle and proffered the return without ransom of their prisoners—a noble gesture on Philip's part, whose intent was to disarm both Athens's terror and her antipathy. It worked. I became its beneficiary. I confess the celebrity went a little to my head. Then one night at a banquet, I overheard a remark accusing me of succeeding only by birth and luck. This sent my humor spiraling. Antipater saw and drew me aside.

“It seems to me, little old nephew”—he employed the Macedonian phrase of affection—“that you have elevated these Athenians as arbiters of your virtue. When in fact they are arbiters of nothing; they are just another petty state, consulting its own advantage. In the end, Alexander, your character and works will be judged not by Athenians, however illustrious their city may once have been, or by any of your contemporaries, but by history, which is to say by impartial, objective truth.”

Antipater was right.

From that day, I vowed never to squander a moment's care over the good opinion of others. May they rot in hell. You have heard of my abstemiousness in matters of food and sex. Here is why: I punished myself. If I caught my thoughts straying to another's opinion of me, I sent myself to bed without supper. As for women, I likewise permitted myself none. I missed no few meals, and no small pleasure, before I brought this vice under control—or believed I had.

N
ineteen

MAXIMS OF WAR

Y
OU HAVE SPENT NINE MONTHS NOW, ITANES,
as a Page in my service. Time to emerge from the womb, don't you think?

Yes, you shall have your commission. You shall soon lead men in battle. Don't grin so broadly! For my eye will be on you, as on every cadet who graduates from the academy of war that is my tent.

It has been your privilege, these months since your acceptance into the corps in Afghanistan, to attend upon commanders of such genius as warfare has seldom seen. The officers whose meat you carve and wine you pour—Hephaestion and Craterus, Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Coenus, Polyperchon, Lysimachus, not to say Parmenio, Philotas, and Nicanor, Antigonus One-Eye, and Antipater, whom you have not had the fortune of knowing—each stands in his own right with the great captains of history. Now I require of you the same fidelity I demand of them. You must incorporate the conventions and principles by which this army fights. Why? Because once battle is joined, I shall be where I can control nothing beyond the division immediately under my hand, and, in the inevitable chaos, will barely be able to direct even that. You must command on your own, my young lieutenant, but how you do so cannot be random or idiosyncratic; it must follow my thought and my will. That is why we talk here nightlong, my generals and I, and why you and the other Pages attend and listen. That is why we rehearse fundamentals over and over, until they become second nature to us all.

I have asked Eumenes, my Counsel of War, to make correspondence of mine available to you. Study these letters as if they were lessons in school, but hold this foremost in mind: The pupil may differ with his tutor, the cadet never. What I set in your hands this night is law. Follow it and no force can stand against you. Defy it and I will not need to settle with you, for the foe will already have done so.

On Philosophy of War

TO PTOLEMY, AT EPHESUS:

Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend makes them timorous. If I learn that an officer of mine has assumed a defensive posture in the field, that officer will never hold command under me again.

TO PTOLEMY, IN EGYPT:

When deliberating, think in campaigns and not battles; in wars and not campaigns; in ultimate conquest and not wars.

TO PERDICCAS, FROM TYRE:

Seek the decisive battle. What good does it do us to win ten scraps of no consequence if we lose the one that counts? I want to fight battles that decide the fate of empires.

TO SELEUCUS, IN EGYPT:

It is as important to win morally as to win militarily. By which I mean our victories must break the foe's heart and tear from him all hope of contesting us again. I do not wish to fight war upon war, but by war to produce such a peace as will admit of no insurrection.

On Strategy and Campaign

TO COENUS, IN PALESTINE:

The object of campaign is to bring about a battle that will prove decisive. We feint; we maneuver; we provoke to one end: to compel the foe to face us in the field.

What I want is a battle, one great pitched clash in which Darius comes out to us in the flower of his might. Remember, our object is to break the will to resist, not only of the king's soldiers, but of his peoples.

The subjects of the empire are the real audience of these events. They must be made to believe by the scale and decisiveness of our triumphs that no force on earth, however numerous or well generaled, can prevail against us.

TO PERDICCAS, AT GAZA:

The object of pursuit after victory is not only to prevent the enemy from re-forming in the instance (this goes without saying), but to burn such fear into his vitals that he will never think of re-forming again. Therefore, pursue by all means and don't relent until hell or darkness compels you. The foe who has been a fugitive once will never be the same fighter again.

I would rather lose five hundred horses in a pursuit, if it prevents the enemy from re-forming, than to spare those horses, only to lose them—and five hundred more—in a second fight.

TO SELEUCUS, IN SYRIA:

As commanders, we must save our supreme ruthlessness for ourselves. Before we make any move in the face of the enemy, we must ask ourselves, free of vanity and self-deception, how the foe will counter. Unearth every stroke and have an answer for it. Even when you think you have thought of everything, there will be more work to do. Be merciless with yourself, for every careless act is paid for in our own blood and the blood of our countrymen.

On Generosity

TO PARMENIO, AFTER ISSUS:

Cyrus the Great sought to detach from his enemy disaffected elements of the latter's forces, or others serving under compulsion. To this end he showed the Armenians and Hyrcanians honor and spared no measure to make their condition happier under his rule than under the Assyrian's. In Cyrus's view the purpose of victory was to prove more generous in gifts than the enemy. He felt it the greatest shame to lack the means to requite the munificence of others; he always wished to give more than he received, and he amassed treasure with the understanding that he held it in trust, not for himself, but for his friends to call upon in need.

TO HEPHAESTION, ALSO AFTER ISSUS:

Make generosity our first option. If an enemy shows the least sign of accommodation, match him twice over.

Let us conduct ourselves in such a fashion that all nations wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.

On Tactics, Battles, and Soldiers

No advantage in war is greater than speed. To appear suddenly in strength where the enemy least expects you overawes him and throws him into consternation.

Great multitudes are not necessary. The optimal size of a fighting corps is that number that can march from one camp to another and arrive in one day. Any more are superfluous and only slow you down.

All tactics in conventional warfare seek to produce this single result: a breakthrough in the enemy line. This is as true of naval warfare as it is of war on land.

A static defensive line is always vulnerable. Once penetrated in force at any point, every other post on the line becomes moot. Its men cannot bring their arms to bear and, in fact, can do nothing except wait in impotence to be overrun by their own comrades fleeing in panic as our penetrating force rolls them up from the flank.

Be conservative until the crucial moment. Then strike with all the violence you possess.

Remember: We need win at only one point on the field, so long as that point is decisive.

Every battle is constituted of a number of sub-battles of differing degrees of consequence. I don't care if we lose every sub-battle, so long as we win the one that counts.

We fight with a holding wing and an attacking wing. The purpose of the former is to paralyze in place, by its advance and its posture of threat, the enemy wing opposed to it. The purpose of the latter is to strike and penetrate.

We concentrate our force and hurl it with utmost violence upon one point in the enemy line.

I want to feel as if I hold a lightning bolt. By which I mean that blow, poised beneath my command, which when hurled against the enemy will break his line. As the boxer waits with patience for the moment to throw his knockout punch, the general holds his decisive strike poised, careful not to loose it too early or too late.

Don't punch; counterpunch. The purpose of an initial evolution—a feint or draw—is to provoke the enemy into committing himself prematurely. Once he moves, we countermove.

We seek to create a breach in the enemy's line, into which cavalry can charge.

The line soldier need remember only two things: Keep in ranks and never abandon his colors.

An officer must lead from the front. How can we ask our soldiers to risk death if we ourselves shrink from hazard?

War is academic only on the mapboard. In the field it is all emotion.

Leverage of position means the occupation of that site which compels the enemy to move. When we face an enemy marshaled in a defensive posture, our first thought must be: What post can we seize that will make him withdraw?

The officer's charge is to control the emotion of the men under his command, neither letting them yield to fear, which will render them cowards, nor allowing them to give themselves over to rage, which will make them brutes.

Entering any territory, capture the wine stocks and breweries first. An army without spirits is prey to disgruntlement and insurrection.

Use forced marches to cross waterless territory. This minimizes suffering for the men and animals. For a march of two days, I have found it an excellent method to rest till nightfall before setting out, march all night, rest through the heat of the next day, then march again all night. By this scheme we compress two days' marching into a day and a half, and, if we find ourselves still shy of our goal with the second day's sun, it is easier for the men and horses to push on in daylight, knowing water and rest are near.

On Cavalry

The strength of cavalry is speed and shock. A static line of cavalry is no cavalry at all.

A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so.

Cohesion of ranks, paramount with infantry, is even more crucial with cavalry. An enemy on foot may stand his ground against scattered horses of any number but never against mounted squadrons attacking boot-to-boot.

Cavalry need not work execution in the assault. Just break through. We can kill the enemy at leisure once we put him to flight.

It takes five years to train a trooper and ten to train his horse.

Green cavalry is worthless.

What I want in a cavalry mount is “push,” or, as the riding masters call it, “impulsion.”

The skills of mounted warfare require constant practice. Even a brief furlough can put a horse and rider “off their stuff,” until they regain their sharpness by a return to training.

A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.