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.
What has Alexander done for the art of war? When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important qualities in an orator, he replied: “Action, action, action!” In another sense this might well be applied to the captain. No one can become a great captain without a mental and physical activity which are almost abnormal, and so soon as this exceptional power of activity wanes, the captain has come to a term of his greatness. Genius has been described as an extraordinary capacity for hard work. But this capacity is but the human element. Genius implies the divine spark. It is the personality of the great captain which makes him what he is. The maxims of war are but a meaningless page to him who cannot apply them. They are helpful just so far as the man’s brain and heart, as his individuality, can carry them. It is because a great captain must first of all be a great man, and because to the lot of but few great men belongs the peculiar ability or falls the opportunity of being great captains, that preëminent success in war is so rarely seen.
All great soldiers are cousins-german in equipment of heart and head. No man ever was, no man can by any possibility blunder into being, a great soldier without the most generous virtues of the soul, and the most distinguished powers of the intellect. The former are independence, self-reliance, ambition within proper bounds; that sort of physical courage which not only does not know fear, but which is not even conscious that there is such a thing as courage; that greater moral quality which can hold the lives of tens of thousands of men and the destinies of a great country or cause patiently, intelligently, and unflinchingly in his grasp; powers of endurance which cannot be overtaxed; the unconscious habit of ruling men and of commanding their love and admiration, coupled with the ability to stir their enthusiasm to the yielding of their last ounce of effort. The latter comprise business capacity of the very highest order, essential to the care of his troops; keen perceptions, which even in extraordinary circumstances or sudden emergencies are not to be led astray; the ability to think as quickly and accurately in the turmoil of battle as in the quiet of the bureau; the power to foresee to its ultimate conclusion the result of a strategic or tactical manœuvre; the capacity to gauge the efforts of men and of masses of men; the many-sidedness which can respond to the demands of every detail of the battle-field, while never losing sight of the one object aimed at; the mental strength which weakens not under the tax of hours and days of unequalled strain. For, in truth, there is no position in which man can be placed which asks so much of his intellect in so short a space as that of the general, the failure or success, the decimation or security of whose army hangs on his instant thought and unequivocal instruction under the furious and kaleidoscopic ordeal of the field. To these qualities of heart and head add one factor more—opportunity—and you have the great soldier.
Now, Alexander was the first man, the details of whose history have been handed down to us, who possessed these qualities in the very highest measure; whose opportunities were coextensive with his powers; and who out of all these wrought a methodical system of warfare from which we may learn lessons to-day. Look at what he accomplished with such meagre means! He alone has the record of uniform success with no failure. And this, not because he had weak opponents, for while the Persians were far from redoubtable, except in numbers, the Tyrians, the tribes beyond the Caucasus, and the Indians, made a bold front and good fight.
Alexander’s movements were always made on a well-conceived, maturely-digested plan; and this he kept in view to the end, putting aside all minor considerations for the main object, but never losing sight of these. His grasp was as large as his problem. His base for his advance into the heart of the then known world was the entire coast-line of the then known sea. He never advanced, despite his speed, without securing flanks and rear, and properly garrisoning the country on which he based. Having done this he marched on his objective,—which was wont to be the enemy’s army,—with a directness which was unerring. His fertility in ruse and stratagem was unbounded. He kept well concentrated; his division of forces was always warranted by the conditions, and always with a view of again concentrating. His rapidity was unparalleled. It was this which gave him such an ascendant over all his enemies. Neither winter cold nor summer heat, mountain nor desert, the widest rivers nor the most elaborate defences, ever arrested his course; and yet his troops were always well fed. He was a master of logistics. He lived on the country he campaigned in as entirely as Napoleon, but was careful to accumulate granaries in the most available places. He was remarkable in being able to keep the gaps in his army filled by recruits from home or enlistments of natives, and in transforming the latter into excellent soldiers. Starting from home with thirty-five thousand men, he had in the Indian campaigns no less than one hundred and thirty-five thousand, and their deeds proved the stuff that was in them.
Alexander’s battles are tactically splendid examples of conception and execution. The wedge at Arbela was more splendid than Macdonald’s column at Wagram. It was a scintillation of genius. Alexander saw where his enemy’s strength and weakness lay, and took prompt advantage of them. He utilized his victories to the full extent, and pursued with a vigor which no other has ever reached. He was equally great in sieges as in battles. The only thing he was never called on to show was the capacity to face disaster. He possessed every remarkable military attribute; we can discover in him no military weakness.
As a captain, he accomplished more than any man ever did. He showed the world, first of all men, and best, how to make war. He formulated the first principles of the art, to be elaborated by Hannibal, Cæsar, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederick, and Napoleon. His conditions did not demand that he should approach to the requirements of modern war. But he was easily master of his trade, as, perhaps, no one else ever was. For, as Napoleon says, “to guess at the intentions of the enemy; to divine his opinion of yourself; to hide from him both your own intentions and opinion; to mislead him by feigned manœuvres; to invoke ruse, as well as digested schemes, so as to fight under the best conditions,—this is, and always was, the art of war.”
LECTURE II.
HANNIBAL.
Two generations after the death of Alexander, the power of the Mediterranean world was divided between Aryan Rome and Carthage, the vigorous daughter of Semitic Tyre. Carthage was first on the sea; Rome, on land. But Rome, always intolerant of powerful neighbors, fell to quarrelling with her great rival, and at the end of a twenty-three years’ struggle,—the first Punic War,—imposed her own terms on defeated Carthage (241 B.C.). There were two parties bred of these hostilities in Carthage,—the war party, headed by Hamilcar Barca; the peace party, headed by Hanno. Hamilcar knew that peace with Rome meant oppression by Rome, and final extinction, and was ready to stake all on renewing the struggle. But he saw that present war was impossible; that opposition could only be in the future, and that it must be quietly prepared for. With a view of doing this, Hamilcar got the consent of the Carthaginian Senate to attempt the subjugation of Spain, a land of great natural resources, in conquering and holding which an army could be created which by and by might again cope with the Italian tyrant.