The Campaigns of Alexander (Classics) (6 page)

Alexander now shut them up in the town, and taking up a position close to the walls, proposed to establish a blockade; but on the following day Glaucias appeared with a large force. As a result of this Alexander abandoned his project of taking the town; for his own force was comparatively small, many fine fighting men had withdrawn within the walls, and many more, under Glaucias’ command, would be ready to attack him should he make an attempt upon the defences. Accordingly he dispatched Philotas on a foraging expedition with the baggage animals and a small squadron of mounted troops to act as guard. The movement did not escape Glaucias; he went forward to the attack, and seized the high ground which ringed the stretch of country where Philotas and his men intended to collect their forage. The danger which threatened both the mounted troops and the pack-animals should they be overtaken by darkness was reported to Alexander, who at once marched to their rescue with a force composed of the Agrianes, the archers, and the Guards, and a squadron of cavalry 400 strong. His remaining troops he left near the town; for had he withdrawn his entire force the enemy who were shut up within it might well have broken out and joined Glaucias. Glaucias, however, abandoned his position on the high ground as soon as he saw Alexander coming, and Philotas’ party returned to camp in safety.

Nevertheless it still seemed that the forces under Glaucias
and Cleitus had caught Alexander in an awkward position. They held the commanding heights strongly, both with mounted troops and with other detachments armed with javelins and slings, in addition to a considerable force of heavy infantry; those at present confined within the town were all ready to attack the moment Alexander withdrew; and the country through which the withdrawal would have to be made was in the nature of a narrow wooded pass, with the river on one side and a lofty range with precipitous foothills on the other, so that it would hardly be practicable for his army to get through even four abreast. Such being the situation, Alexander drew up the main body of his infantry in mass formation 120 deep, posting on either wing 200 cavalrymen with instructions to make no noise, and to obey orders smartly. Then he gave the order for the heavy infantry first to erect their spears, and afterwards, at the word of command, to lower the massed points as for attack, swinging them, again at the word of command, now to the right, now to the left. The whole phalanx he then moved smartly forward, and, wheeling it this way and that, caused it to execute various intricate movements. Having thus put his troops with great rapidity through a number of different formations, he ordered his left to form a wedge and advanced to the attack.

The enemy, already shaken by the smartness and discipline of these manoeuvres, abandoned their position on the lower slopes of the hills without waiting for the Macedonians to come to grips with them. Thereupon Alexander called on his men to raise the war-cry and clash their spears upon their shields, with the result that the din was altogether too much for the Taulantians, who hastily withdrew to the town.

A small party of enemy troops were still in possession
of a hill by which Alexander would have to pass; he gave orders, accordingly, to the Companions and the men of his personal guard to prepare for action and ride to the attack. Their instructions were that if the enemy who had occupied the hill should hold their ground, half their number should dismount and fight on foot in close support of their mounted comrades. The hill, however, was not held; the enemy, as a result of this movement of Alexander’s, abandoned it and went off at a tangent towards the mountains. Alexander with the Companions then occupied the hill, sent for the Agrianes and archers – a force of some 2,000 men – and ordered the Guards to cross the river, followed by the other Macedonian units, and, on reaching the further side, to form up towards the left in order to present a solid front to the enemy immediately they were across the river. Meanwhile he kept a careful watch from the hill upon any movement the enemy might make.

Seeing the Macedonian troops crossing the river, the natives moved down from the high ground with the intention of falling upon Alexander’s party which would form the rear of the army as it withdrew; and Alexander countered by a rapid sally of his own, while the main body of his infantry, coming to the attack through the river, raised the war-cry. The enemy, under the combined onslaught, broke and fled, and Alexander ordered the Agrianes and archers to advance at the double to the river. He himself was the first across, and, setting up his artillery on the river-bank, he gave orders for every sort of missile it would take to be discharged at long range against the enemy, whom he could see pressing hard upon those of his own troops who were bringing up the rear. The archers, too, who were already part-way over, were ordered to shoot from mid stream. Glaucias’ men refused
to venture within range, and the Macedonians got across safely, without a single casualty during the process of withdrawal.

Three days later information came in that the troops under Cleitus and Glaucias were encamped without adequate precautions: no regular sentries had been posted, and no palisade or trench constructed for their protection; their line, moreover, was perilously extended. Alexander at once took advantage of this carelessness – which was due, presumably, to the assumption that he had retreated in panic. Under cover of darkness he took the Guards, the Agrianes, the archers, and the troops of Perdiccas and Coenus back across the river, with orders to the rest of the army to follow. The moment was ripe for attack; so, without waiting for the entire force to concentrate, he sent into action the Agrianes and the archers, who made a surprise assault on a narrow front – a formation likely to fall with greatest effect upon the enemy at his weakest point. Some they killed in their beds, others they took without difficulty as they tried to escape. Many were caught and killed on the spot, many more as they fled in panic and disorder. Not a few were captured alive. The pursuit was pressed as far as the mountains in Taulantian territory. None escaped except at the cost of throwing away their weapons. Cleitus’ first move was to the town; later he set fire to it and made his way to the Taulantians, where he sought refuge with Glaucias.

Meanwhile events were taking place in Thebes.
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Certain persons, with a view to overthrowing the government, had invited a number of political exiles to return; these men, having slipped into the city during the night, had seized and murdered Amyntas and Timolaus, two of
the men who were holding the Cadmeia and had no suspicion of any danger outside.
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They then presented themselves in the Assembly and incited the Thebans to rebel against Alexander, making great play with the grand old words ‘liberty’ and ‘autonomy’,
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and urging them at long last to throw off the burden of the Macedonian yoke. They made their appeal more attractive to the Thebans in general by insisting that Alexander had died in Illyria – which was, as it happened, a common rumour at the time and fairly widely disseminated, because he had been long absent without communicating with them.
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In these circumstances they did what most of us do, and, being ignorant of the truth, persuaded themselves into believing what they wished to believe.

The news of these events caused Alexander considerable concern. For a long time past he had had doubts about Athens, and now had come this attempt from Thebes. He could not but take it seriously, for the danger clearly was that the spirit of disaffection might spread to the Lacedaemonians, who already, in any case, silently resented Macedonian control, and to other states in the Peloponnese, and even to the Aetolians, who were by no
means to be trusted. He therefore decided to act, and, proceeding by way of Eordaea and Elimiotis and the mountain ranges of Stymphaea and Paravaea, arrived within seven days at Pelinna in Thessaly. Six days later he entered Boeotia, and the news that he had passed the Gates did not reach the Thebans until his whole force was at Onchestus.
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Even then the organizers of the revolt continued to maintain that Alexander was dead: an army under Antipater, they declared, had arrived from Macedonia, and anyone who reported that Alexander himself was in command they met with an angry denial – if it was Alexander at all, they insisted, it was another Alexander, Aeropus’ son.

The following day Alexander left Onchestus and marched to Thebes. He halted by the enclosure of Iolaus, waiting there in order to give the Thebans time to think things over, in case they should change their minds and decide to treat with him. Nothing, however, was further from their thoughts than coming to terms or yielding a single inch; on the contrary, their mounted troops and a considerable force of light infantry made a rapid sortie and attacked the outposts of the Macedonian army with missile weapons at long range, and not altogether without effect. Alexander ordered out parties of light infantry and archers to check them, which they did without difficulty, though they had already advanced almost within striking distance of his main position. Next day he moved round with his entire force to the gates which lead to Eleutherae and Attica. Here, still refraining from an assault upon the city’s defences, he took up a position not far from the
Cadmeia, to provide support for the Macedonians who were holding it. The Thebans had ringed it with a double palisade and were watching it closely, so that no outside help could reach the besieged garrison, or any sudden attack from within interfere with their own operations against their enemies elsewhere. Alexander, however, made no move, but continued to wait; for he still hoped to remain on terms with the Thebans and to avoid action against them.
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In these circumstances all who had their city’s interest most at heart were anxious to approach Alexander and gain from him a general pardon for the revolt; but the exiles and the party responsible for their recall, especially as some of them were officers of the Boeotian Confederacy, refused to recognize the possibility of humane treatment by Alexander, and urged war by every means in their power. But still Alexander waited and did not attack.

Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, states in his account of these operations that Perdiccas, who, as officer in charge of the guard, was posted with his own battalion not far from the enemies’ palisade, began the assault on his own initiative and without waiting for the word of command from Alexander.
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Forcing a breach in the palisade, he burst in upon the Theban advanced troops, followed by Amyntas, the son of Andromenes, who with his own troops, which formed a part of the same contingent, moved forward immediately he saw that Perdiccas had got inside. It was to prevent them from being cut off and being placed at the mercy of the Thebans that Alexander ordered a
general advance, sending his archers and the Agrianes through the breach in the palisade, but still keeping his personal guard and the remainder of the Guards outside.

Perdiccas was wounded while he was trying to break through the second palisade; he was carried back to the base, but the wound was serious and it was only with difficulty that his life was saved. His men, joined by Alexander’s archers, boxed the Thebans up in the sunken road which runs down by the Heracleum, pressing on them hard so long as they retreated towards that temple; but the moment came when they turned to face their pursuers with a yell of rage, and then it was the Macedonians who gave ground. About seventy of the archers were killed, together with their commander, Eurybotas the Cretan; the rest hurriedly sought the protection of Alexander’s Guard and the remainder of the Guards.

The sight of his men in full retreat, with the Thebans straggled out in chase of them, soon brought a counterblow from Alexander, who launched an infantry attack in close order, and drove the enemy inside the city gates. The rout became a panic – so much so, indeed, that they failed to shut the gates behind them in time. The result was that the men of the Macedonian army closest on their heels passed with them, in the general scramble, inside the fortifications, which the need for so many advanced posts had left undefended. One party, joining up with the garrison of the Cadmeia, passed thence by way of the Ampheum into the actual town, while the troops by the walls, which were already held by the men who had got in during the rout, swarmed over the top and made at the double for the market square.

For a short time the Theban armed forces stood firm by the Ampheum, until, attacked from every side by the
Macedonians, with Alexander himself apparently ubiquitous in the field, they broke. Their mounted troops, forcing a way through the streets, fled to the open country, and the infantry endeavoured to save their skins as best they could. In what followed it was not so much the Macedonians as the Phocians, Plataeans, and men from other Boeotian towns who, in the lust of battle, indiscriminately slaughtered the Thebans, who no longer put up any organized resistance. They burst into houses and killed the occupants; others they cut down as they attempted to show fight; others, again, even as they clung to temple altars, sparing neither women nor children.
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The violence of the action, the size and importance of the fallen city, above all, perhaps, the unexpectedness of the event both to victors and vanquished, all made the horror of this disaster to men of Grecian blood hardly less shattering for the rest of Greece, than for those who were actually involved. The Sicilian expedition, measured merely by the number of dead, brought a comparable disaster to Athens; but that, it must be remembered, took place far from home: the army which perished was not a native army, but consisted largely of troops from allied states; Athens herself remained untouched, still able to hold out for a number of years against Persia and the Lacedaemonian confederacy; and for all these reasons her defeat in Sicily did not bring to Athens the same sense of overwhelming calamity, or to the rest of Greece a comparable thrill of horror.
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Again, the defeat at Aegospotami was at sea, and though Athens by that defeat suffered
humiliation in the destruction of her Long Walls, the surrender of the greater part of her navy, and the loss of her empire, she nevertheless retained her hereditary form of government and quickly recovered her former strength; indeed, the Long Walls were rebuilt, her sea-power was regained, and she was actually able subsequently to reverse the position and save from great danger those very Lacedaemonians who had once been so formidable and had come so near to destroying her.
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The Lacedaemonians themselves, after the defeats at Leuctra and Mantinea, were shaken rather by the unexpectedness of the disaster than by the magnitude of their losses; and it was the strangeness of the sight when the Boeotians and Arcadians under Epaminondas launched their attack upon Sparta, much more than the immediacy of the danger, that struck terror into them and their allies.
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Again, the capture of Plataea cannot be considered a major disaster; for
the town was a small one, and, as most of its people had already fled to Athens for refuge, very few were taken when it fell; and, lastly, the capture of Melos and Scione was hardly more important: they were merely island communities, and their destruction, though a disgrace to its perpetrators, could scarcely be called a severe shock to Greece as a whole.
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