indefatigable personal activity, and in endurance as to hardship and fatigue, that Alexander stands pre-eminent; though these qualities alone, when found in a king, act so powerfully on those under his command, that they suffice to produce great achievements, even when combined with generalship not surpassing the average of his age. "But in generalship, Alexander was yet more above the level of his contemporaries. His strategic combinations, his employment of different descriptions of force conspiring towards one end, his long-sighted plans for the execution of campaigns, his constant foresight and resource against new difficulties, together with rapidity of movement even in the worst country-all on a scale of prodigious magnitude-are without parallel in ancient history. They carry the art of systematic and scientific warfare to a degree of efficiency, such as even successors trained in his school were unable to keep up unimpaired." The personal valour of the Macedonian prince is familiarly known. Some memorable examples of it occur in the course of Mr. Grote's narrative. The foremost part Alexander played in the battle of the Granicus, when forcing his way up the high bank to the level ground, and when fighting that recurring series of duels (with Mithridates, Rhoesaces, &c.) which, but for good-at-a-blow and strong-i'-th'-arm Cleitus,† had ended in the prince's death; his forwardness to mount the wall at the storming of Tyre; his daring and wounds in the "imminent deadly breach" at Gaza; his impatience in attacking the last stronghold of the Malli, when, the troops with their scaling-ladders not coming up as rapidly as he would have them, he mounted on a ladder that happened to be at hand, attended only by two or three companions, and, having cleared the wall by killing several of its defenders, then jumped down into the interior of the citadel, and made head for some time, nearly alone, against all within-on which occasion he received a bad wound from an arrow in the breast, and was on the point of fainting, when his soldiers burst in, rescued him, and took the place; these and similar instances attest his possession of that chivalrous courage, which Mr. Grote characterises as sometimes both excessive and unseasonable, so as to form the only military defect fairly imputable to him, but which, it is owned, must at the time of these exploits (so impressive even when we read of them now), have acted most powerfully upon the imagination of con Supposed by Mr. Cunningham and others to have been the modern city of Multan. * temporaries, who would recognise in this doughty champion what he himself aspired in good sooth to be, the Achilles of the Iliad redivivus. The celerity of his movements is one most mark-worthy particular in the catalogue of his distinctions as a great commander. Thus, at the outset of his military career, when he was already within Thermopyla, before any Greeks were aware that he was in march, or even (after his long absence in Thrace) that he was alive, his arrival with his army before refractory Thebes, "told with double force on the Greeks from its extreme suddenness"his unexpected appearance in the heart of Greece precluding all combinations, and checking all idea of resistance. Thus, too, when the Uxii, in the mountainous region between Susa and Persis, a race of "rude but warlike shepherds, to whom the Great King himself had always been obliged to pay a tribute whenever he went from Susa to Persepolis,"-when these exacting masters of the pass demanded the like toll from that great highway passenger, his Macedonian majesty, he replied by inviting them to meet him at their pass and receive it, but having in the mean while discovered a new and little frequented mountain track, he forthwith hurried a detachment of troops towards the villages of the mountaineers, surprised them in medias res (angustas domi), and thus not only opened the monopolised pass for the transit of his main army, but so cut to pieces and humiliated the Uxii, that they were forced to sue for pardon. Thus, too, in the case of that other and worser pass, called the Susian or Persian gates,-being informed by a Lycian captive, who for years had been tending sheep as a slave on the mountains, of a track known only to himself, whereby the satrap (Ariobarzanes) might be taken in flank, Alexander set forth at night at the head of a slender company, guided by the Lycian: "he had to surmount incredible hardship and difficulty-the more so as it was midwinter, and the mountain was covered with snow; yet such were the efforts of his soldiers and the rapidity of his movements, that he surprised all the Persian outposts, and came upon Ariobarzanes altogether unprepared,"-forcing the satrap's troops to abandon the Gates, and almost exterminating them in their efforts at resistance or escape. Another instance of the same kind occurred in Alexander's pursuit of Bessus, whom he despaired of overtaking, during his system of retreat by night-marches, unless he could find some shorter road. Such a road was made known to him, but leading through a waterless desert. By this road, however, the Macedonian set out late in the day with his cavalry, and " got over no less than forty-five miles during the night, so as to come on Bessus by complete surprise on the following morning;"-when the Persians, marching in disorder without arms, and having no expectation of an enemy, were so panic-struck * See Grote, XII. pp. 112-3, 188-9, 194, 315, 351, 119. at the sudden appearance of their indefatigable conqueror, that they dispersed and fled without any attempt to resist.* It was during this dispersion and flight that Bessus incurred the deep damnation of the taking off of Darius, after Alexander had made what Mr. Grote calls the prodigious and indefatigable marches of the last four days, not without destruction to many men and horses, for the express purpose of taking Darius alive;" whence we can infer the conqueror's bitter chagrin at being balked in the sole design of this "ruinously fatiguing march," and can understand something of the acharnement of his after-treatment of the regicide satrap. Celerity of movement, then, is one main feature in Alexander's strategy. But it is only one in the imposing aggregate. In many points indeed he was, as the historian eloquently depicts him, a reproduction of the heroic Greeks, his warlike ancestors in legend, Achilles and Neoptolemus, and others of that acid race, unparalleled in the attributes of force-a man of violent impulse in all directions, sometimes generous, often vindictive-ardent in his individual affections both of love and hatred, but devoured especially by an inextinguishable pugnacity, appetite for conquest, and thirst for establishing at all cost his superiority of force over others Jura negat sibi nata, nihil non arrogat armis like the paladins of the Iliad, pluming himself not more on military directorship than on being personally foremost in the fray. But over and above-emphatically above-his resemblance to the Homeric Achilles, Alexander, "as a general, surpassed his age in provident and even long-sighted combinations. With all his exuberant courage and sanguine temper, nothing was ever omitted in the way of systematic military precaution. Thus much he borrowed, though with many improvements of his own, from Grecian intelligence as applied to soldiership,"t-though it is allowed that the character and dispositions, which he took with him to Asia, had rather the features, both striking and repulsive, of Achilles, than those of Agesilaus of Sparta or Epaminondas of Thebes. In the victory of Issus, the consummate excellence of Alexander, alike as general and as soldier, stood conspicuous, not less than the utter deficiency of Darius. His tactics at Arbela are pronounced the most signal example recorded in antiquity, of military genius and sagacious combination: he had really as great an available force as his enemies, simply because every company in his army was turned to account, either in actual combat, or in reserve against definite and reasonable contingencies. "All his successes, and this [Arbela] most of all, were fairly earned by his * Ibid. pp. 48, 231-2, 233, 250-1, 251-2. † Ibid. p. 96. ‡ Ibid. p. 170. own genius and indefatigable effort, combined with the admirable organisation of his army." One of the most remarkable proofs of his aptness for generalship, is seen in the success of his endeavours to raise and discipline new Asiatic levies-epigoni, as they were called-with whom, as heretofore with veterans of Macedonian birth and breed, he might still go on conquering and to conquer: these new levies were, in fact, found such ready (not to say readymade) soldiers, in spite of prejudices and antecedents, and the "genius of Alexander for military organisation was so consummate," that he soon saw himself practically independent of his older troops; a galling truth which they too, so palpable was it, could not but speedily find out. Taking the view Mr. Grote does, of Alexander's military capacity, it is natural that he should oppose the opinion of Livy and all such orthodox good Romanists, as to the chances of Alexander if he had attacked the people of the seven hills. Livy asserts that Alexander would have been soundly thrashed, had he attempted any such foolish display. Livy is sure that the gens togata, the gentry that wore the toga, would have given a good account of the invader; and, like Cowper with a certain noxious intruder, would have taught him never to come there no more. Mr. Grote thinks otherwise. He mistrusts the ability of the robust Roman to cope with Alexander. HUNC tu Romane caveto. Among all the qualities, Mr. Grote affirms, in his précis of Alexander's unrivalled excellence as a military man,-among all the qualities which go to constitute this excellence in its highest form, none was wanting in the character of this hero. Together with extraordinary personal daring, "we trace in all his operations the most careful dispositions taken beforehand, vigilant precaution in guarding against possible reverse, and abundant resource in adapting himself to new contingencies. Amidst constant success, these precautionary combinations were never discontinued. His achievements are the earliest recorded evidence of scientific military organisation on a large scale, and of its overwhelming effects. Alexander overawes the imagination more than any other person of antiquity, by the matchless development of all that constitutes effective force-as an individual warrior, and as organiser and leader of armed masses; not merely the blind impetuosity ascribed by Homer to Ares, but also the intelligent, methodised, and allsubduing compression which he personifies in Athênê.”‡ At the same time, Mr. Grote is very far from hero-worship as regards his hero. Alexander commands his admiration in certain respects, but by no means dazzles his eyes, or wrests his judgment, in all or in any. He differs entirely from those authors, who give Ibid. pp. 351-2. * Ibid. p. 228. † Ibid. p. 326. Alexander credit for grand and beneficent views on the subject of imperial government, and for intentions highly favourable to the improvement of mankind. He can see no ground for adopting this opinion. He sees nothing in prospect, supposing Alexander's career to have continued, except years of ever-repeated aggression and conquest, not to be concluded until he had traversed and subjugated all the inhabited globe. "The acquisition of universal dominion-conceived not metaphorically, but literally, and conceived with greater facility in consequence of the imperfect geographical knowledge of the time-was the masterpassion of his soul." Mr. Grote refers us, by way of illustration, to the fresh aggressions, quite indefinite in extent, which Alexander was commencing, at the moment of his death, against the Arabians in the south; and the vast projects he is known to have formed against the western tribes of Africa and Europe, as far as the pillars of Hercules. The historian holds that Italy, Gaul, and Spain would have been successively attacked and conquered; that the conqueror would have marched from the Danube northward round the Euxine and the Palus Mæotis against the Scythians and the tribes of Caucasus; and that, after this, he certainly would have invaded those Asiatic regions east of the Hyphasis, which his soldiers had refused to enter upon, and which, for that very reason, would be the more tempting to one who could so ill-brook the frustration of any once determined plan. What though this "sound like romance and hyperbole"? It was nothing more, the historian maintains (and il a raison), than the real insatiate aspiration of Alexander, who looked upon every new acquisition mainly as a capital for acquiring more. Every such new station in his progress was, and in an indefinite series would be, a terminus in the sense only of a terminus à quo the terminus ad quem was, and for ever would be, adjourned, removed onwards ad infinitum. The world's great conqueror would his point pursue, So sings, or proses, Edmund Waller; and indeed Alexander crying The world too narrow for his boundless conquest grew, Now a Butler laughingly demonstrates that * Waller: "Divine Poems." † John Oldham: "The Praise of Homer." |