Philip Rivers

Alexander – even today, 23 centuries after his
death, his name still has the power to inspire.
His achievements have stood the test of time
and remain amongst the most remarkable in
the whole annals of military history. With an
army of typically only around 40,000 men, he
conquered the largest, richest and most
powerful empire the world had ever seen; and
all of this in less than a decade.
When Alexander became king, his military
career began when he launched a campaign
against Macedonia’s northern neighbours.
This is a campaign that we know little about,
but we can assume that it was remarkably
successful given that Antipater, his regent,
never had any difficulty from that region.
From there, Alexander marched in central
Greece, and sent a terrible message with the
destruction of the ancient city of Thebes.
In 334, Alexander crossed the Hellespont and
invaded Asia. He soundly defeated the
Persians in large set-piece battles at the
Granicus River, Issus and finally Gaugamela
in 331. During this period he also captured
the great fortresses of Halicarnassus, Tyre
and Gaza. After the death of Darius,
Alexander spent several years campaigning in
Afghanistan and India; a brutal period
culminating in the defeat of the Indian king
Porus at the battle of the Hydaspes.
In India, the army had finally had enough and
refused to march further into the unknown.
They turned back and made a disastrous
march through the Gedrosian Desert. After a
final siege during which Alexander was struck
by an arrow that punctured his lung, he
returned to Babylon where he died in 323.
Alexander’s incredible string of successes was
not accidental; listed here are the 10 main
reasons for them (in no particular order). You
can find out more about Alexander as a
military commander in my books, The Army of
Alexander The Great and The Sieges of
Alexander The Great, both published by Pen
& Sword.
1. Philip of Macedon
Philip, Alexander’s father, was one of the
finest military minds of the ancient world; but
he is completely overshadowed by his son.
Philip took a broken kingdom that was about
to be overrun by foreign enemies, and turned
it into the most powerful state in Greece.
Shortly before his death he sent an
expeditionary force to Asia Minor to conduct
an initial campaign against the Persians
whilst he prepared for a larger invasion.
Had Philip lived – he is believed to have been
buried at Aigai – he clearly would have
expanded upon this expeditionary campaign
with a full scale invasion. It is always
interesting (but ultimately fruitless) to
speculate how Philip would have fared
compared to Alexander.
Alexander had a first rate military education
watching the successes of his father, and
evidently was worried that there would be
nothing left for him to conquer if his father
continued too long; the assassin’s blade
ensured that this would not be the case.
Could Alexander have achieved what he did
without his father’s foundation? This is a
difficult question to answer, but I would
suggest that Alexander had the ability, but
his character would likely have let him down.
Alexander clearly had the ability to
reorganise the army and to develop innovative
strategies and tactics as required, as well as
his natural military genius. We must
recognise, however, that it would certainly
have taken rather longer because the army
would have needed to be trained and turned
into the machine that Philip had already
created, and the question also remains as to
whether Alexander would have had the
patience to delay his ambition; patience is not
a trait that Alexander ever demonstrated to
any great degree.
2. The Army
Alexander’s greatest inheritance was the
Macedonian army. At the time of the invasion
of Asia Minor, the historian Diodorus tells us
that it consisted of 5,100 cavalry and 32,000
infantry. This was a respectable size by Greek
standards, but tiny in comparison with the
number of troops Darius could put in the
field. Of the 37,100 troops, the Macedonian
contingent was relatively small: 1,800
Companion Cavalry and 12,000 infantry.
These were by far the most important troops
Alexander commanded, and the main weapon
with which he gained an empire.
This army was a very complex organisation of
interlocking and mutually supportive parts.
Alexander created what was probably the first
combined arms force in world history: he
developed a series of units that excelled at
specific tasks, but retained tremendous
operational flexibility. Individual units were
highly trained and some were highly
specialised: the hypaspists, for example, were
employed to maintain a cohesive link with the
Companion Cavalry during the set-piece
battles; if they failed then a gap would have
opened in Alexander’s line that the Persians
could have exploited.
Light infantry, specifically the Agrianians,
were assigned specialised tasks, and even
fought alongside the cavalr