Alexander had a predecessor in the invasion of Asia. Agesilaus, King of Sparta, went (B.C. 399) to the assistance of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, unjustly oppressed by Tissaphernes. He set sail with eight thousand men and landed at Ephesus; adjusted the difficulties of these cities, and, having conducted two successful campaigns in Phrygia and Caria, returned to Lacedemon overland.
Battle of Leuctra B.C. 371
Associated with one of the most notable tactical manœuvers—the oblique order of battle—is the immortal name of Epaminondas. This great soldier originated what all skilful generals have used frequently and to effect, and what Frederick the Great showed in its highest perfection at Leuthen. As already observed, armies up to that time had with rare exceptions attacked in parallel order and fought until one or other gave way. At Leuctra (B.C. 371), Epaminondas had six thousand men, against eleven thousand of the invincible Spartans. The Thebans were dispirited by many failures, the Lacedemonians in good heart. The Spartan king was on the right of his army. Epaminondas tried a daring innovation. He saw that if he could break the Spartan right, he would probably drive the enemy from the field. He therefore quadrupled the depth of his own left, making it a heavy column, led it sharply forward, and ordered his centre and right to advance more slowly, so as not seriously to engage. The effect was never doubtful. While the Spartan centre and left was held in place by the threatening attack of the Theban centre and right, as well as the combat of the cavalry between the lines, their right was overpowered and crushed; having defeated which, Epaminondas wheeled around on the flank of the Spartan centre and left, and swept them from the field. The genius of a great tactician had prevailed over numbers, prestige, and confidence. At Mantinæ, nine years later, Epaminondas practised the same manœuvre with equal success, but himself fell in the hour of victory. (B.C. 362.)
The Greek phalanx was the acme of shock tactics. It was a compact body, sixteen men deep, whose long spears bristled to the front in an array which for defence or attack on level ground made it irresistible. No body of troops could withstand its impact. Only on broken ground was it weak. Iphicrates, of Athens, had developed the capacity of light troops by a well-planned skirmish-drill and discipline, and numbers of these accompanied each phalanx, to protect its flanks and curtain its advance.
Such, then, had been the progress in military art when Alexander the Great was born. Like Hannibal and Frederick, Alexander owed his military training and his army to his father. Philip had been a hostage in Thebes in his youth, had studied the tactics of Epaminondas, and profited by his lessons. When he ascended the throne of Macedon, the army was but a rabble. He made and left it the most perfect machine of ancient days. He armed his phalanx with the sarissa, a pike twenty-one feet long, and held six feet from the loaded butt. The sarissas of the five front ranks protruded from three to fifteen feet beyond the line; and all were interlocked. This formed a wall of spears which nothing could penetrate. The Macedonian phalanx was perfectly drilled in a fashion much like our evolutions in column, and was distinctly the best in Greece. It was unconquered till later opposed by the greater mobility of the Roman legion. The cavalry was equally well drilled. Before Philip’s death, in all departments, from the ministry of war down, the army of Macedon was as perfect in all its details as the army of Prussia is to-day.
Philip also made, and Alexander greatly improved, what was the equivalent of modern artillery. The catapult was a species of huge bow, capable of throwing pikes weighing from ten to three hundred pounds over half a mile. It could also hurl a large number of leaden bullets at each fire. It was the cannon of the ancients. The ballista was their mortar, and threw heavy stones with accurate aim to a considerable distance. It could cast flights of arrows. Alexander constructed and was always accompanied by batteries of ballistas and catapults, the essential parts of which were even more readily transported than our mountain batteries. These were not, however, commonly used in battle, but rather in the attack and defence of defiles, positions, and towns.
Alexander’s first experience in a pitched battle was at Chæronea (B.C. 338), on which field Philip won his election as Autocrator, or general-in-chief, of the armies of Greece. Here, a lad of eighteen, Alexander commanded the Macedonian left wing, and defeated the hitherto invincible Theban Sacred Band by his repeated and obstinate charges at the head of the Thessalian horse. Philip had for years harbored designs of an expedition against the Persian monarchy, but did not live to carry them out. Alexander succeeded him at the age of twenty (B.C. 336). He had been educated under Aristotle. No monarch of his years was ever so well equipped as he in head and heart. Like Frederick, he was master from the start. “Though the name has changed, the king remains,” quoth he. His arms he found ready to hand, tempered in his father’s forge. But it was his own strength and skill which wielded them.
The Greeks considered themselves absolved from Macedonian jurisdiction by the death of Philip. Not so thought Alexander. He marched against them, turning the passes of Tempe and Kallipeuke by hewing a path along the slopes of Mount Ossa, and made himself master of Thessaly. The Amphictyonic Council deemed it wise to submit, and elected him Autocrator in place of his father.
Alexander’s one ambition had always been to head the Greeks in punishing the hereditary enemy of Hellas, the Persian king. He had imbibed the idea of his Asiatic conquests in his early youth, and had once, as a lad, astonished the Persian envoys to the Court of Pella by his searching and intelligent questions concerning the peoples and resources of the East.