Part 3

Alexander’s fleet finally reached the mouth of the Indus. The admiral, Nearchus, sailed to the Persian Gulf, while Alexander and part of his army crossed the desert of Gedrosia, Craterus having moved by a shorter route with another part and the invalids. When Alexander again reached Babylon, his wonderful military career had ended. In B.C. 323, he died there of a fever, and his great conquests and schemes of a Græco-Oriental monarchy were dissipated.

Alexander was possessed of uncommon beauty. Plutarch says that Lysippus made the best portrait of him, “the inclination of the head a little on one side towards the left shoulder, and his melting eye, having been expressed by this artist with great exactness.” His likeness was less fortunately caught by Apelles. He was fair and ruddy, sweet and agreeable in person. Fond of study, he read much history, poetry, and general literature. His favorite book was the Iliad, a copy of which, annotated by Aristotle, with a dagger, always lay under his pillow. He was at all times surrounded by men of brains, and enjoyed their conversation. He was abstinent of pleasures, except drinking. Aristobulus says Alexander did not drink much in quantity, but enjoyed being merry. Still, the Macedonian “much” was more than wisdom dictates. He had no weaknesses, except that he over-enjoyed flattery and was rash in temper.

Alexander was active, and able to endure heat and cold, hunger and thirst, trial and fatigue, beyond even the stoutest. He was exceeding swift of foot, but when young would not enter the Olympic games because he had not kings’ sons to compete with. In an iron body dwelt both an intellect clear beyond compare, and a heart full of generous impulses. He was ambitious, but from high motives. His desire to conquer the world was coupled with the purpose of furthering Greek civilization. His courage was, both physically and morally, high-pitched. He actually enjoyed the delirium of battle, and its turmoils raised his intellect to its highest grade of clearness and activity. His instincts were keen; his perception remarkable; his judgment all but infallible. As an organizer of an army, unapproached; as a leader, unapproachable in rousing the ambition and courage of his men, and in quelling their fears by his own fearlessness. He kept his agreements faithfully. He was a remarkable judge of men. He had the rare gift of natural, convincing oratory, and of making men hang upon his lips as he spoke, and do deeds of heroism after. He lavished money rather on his friends than on himself.

While every inch a king, Alexander was friendly with his men; shared their toils and dangers; never asked an effort he himself did not make; never ordered a hardship of which he himself did not bear part. During the herculean pursuit of Darius,--after a march of four hundred miles in eleven days, on which but sixty of his men could keep beside him, and every one was all but dying of thirst,--when a helmetful of water was offered him, he declined to drink, as there was not enough for all. Such things endear a leader to his men beyond the telling. But Alexander’s temper, by inheritance quick, grew ungovernable. A naturally excitable character, coupled with a certain superstitious tendency, was the very one to suffer from a life which carried him to such a giddy height, and from successes which reached beyond the human limit. We condemn, but, looking at him as a captain, may pass over those dark hours in his life which narrate the murder of Clitus, the execution of Philotas and Parmenio, and the cruelties to Bessus and to Batis. Alexander was distinctly subject to human frailties. His vices were partly inherited, partly the outgrowth of his youth and wonderful career. He repented quickly and sincerely of his evil deeds. Until the last few years of his life his habits were very simple. His adoption then of Persian dress and manners was so largely a political requirement, that it can be hardly ascribed to personal motives, even if we fully acknowledge his vanity.

The life-work of Philip had been transcendant. That of Alexander surpasses anything in history. Words fail to describe the attributes of Alexander as a soldier. The perfection of all he did was scarcely understood by his historians. But to compare his deeds with those of other captains excites our wonder. Starting with a handful of men from Macedonia, in four years, one grand achievement after another, and without a failure, had placed at his feet the kingdom of the Great King. Leaving home with an enormous debt, in fifty moons he had possessed himself of all the treasures of the earth. Thence, with marvellous courage, endurance, intelligence, and skill he completed the conquest of the entire then known world, marching over nineteen thousand miles in his eleven years’ campaigns. And all this before he was thirty-two. His health and strength were still as great as ever; his voracity for conquest greater, as well as his ability to conquer. It is an interesting question, had he not died, what would have become of Rome. The Roman infantry was as good as his; not so their cavalry. An annually elected consul could be no match for Alexander. But the king never met in his campaigns such an opponent as the Roman Republic, nor his phalanx such a rival as the Roman legion would have been. That was reserved for Hannibal.

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.

The Carthaginian fleet had been destroyed. Rome would not permit the building of a new one. Hamilcar’s army was obliged to march overland from Carthage along the north coast of Africa and ship across the strait,--now Gibraltar. This was a bold thing to do, but it succeeded, and, in a series of campaigns, Hamilcar reduced the southern half of Spain, and (B.C. 236–227) firmly planted the Carthaginian power there. So conciliatory as well as vigorous had been his policy, that, on his death, the native tribes elected Hasdrubal, his son-in-law, general-in-chief of the allied Carthaginian and Spanish forces, which then amounted to nearly seventy thousand men and two hundred elephants.

Hasdrubal continued the policy of Hamilcar, and largely increased the Spanish influence and territory. But as Rome had colonies in northern Spain, the two powers were sure soon again to clash. In fact, Rome, after awhile, woke up to this new danger, and notified Carthage that she would extend her colonies north of the Ebro at her peril.

Hannibal was the son of Hamilcar. His father gave him the best Greek education, and this the lad’s remarkable intellect readily assimilated. He trained him to arms under his own eye. Hannibal received his first schooling as a soldier at the age of nine, in his father’s camps in Spain, and later his brother, Hasdrubal, made him his chief of cavalry at the age of twenty-one. A pen-picture by Hannibal’s arch enemy, Livy, tells us what he then was: “No sooner had he arrived than Hannibal drew the whole army towards him. The old soldiers fancied they saw Hamilcar in his youth given back to them; the same bright look, the same fire in his eye, the same trick of countenance and features. But soon he proved that to be his father’s son was not his highest recommendation. Never was one and the same spirit more skilful to meet opposition, to obey or to command. It was hard to decide whether he was more dear to the chief or the army. Neither did Hasdrubal more readily place any one at the head when courage or activity was required, nor were the soldiers under any other leader so full of confidence and daring. He entered danger with the greatest mettle, he comported himself in danger with the greatest unconcern. By no difficulties could his body be tired, his ardor damped. Heat and cold he suffered with equal endurance; the amount of his food and drink was gauged by natural needs, and not by desire. The time of waking and sleeping depended not on the distinction of day and night. What time was left from business he devoted to rest, and this was not brought on by either a soft couch or by quiet. Many have often seen him covered by a short field-cloak lying on the ground betwixt the outposts and sentinels of the soldiers. His clothing in no wise distinguished him from his fellows; his weapons and horses attracted every one’s eye. He was by long odds the best rider, the best marcher. He went into battle the first, he came out of it the last.... Hannibal served three years under Hasdrubal’s supreme command, and left nothing unobserved which he who desires to become a great leader ought to see and to do.”

Hannibal and his brothers had been brought up with an intensity of hatred of Rome which it is hard to describe. Every schoolboy knows the anecdote of the lad’s swearing never to make peace with Rome. The feeling grew with his years. When Hannibal was twenty-four, Hasdrubal died, and he himself was unanimously elected his successor.

Hamilcar had planned an invasion of Italy by way of the Alps; but the scheme was left inchoate at his death. Hannibal at once began definitely to pave the way for such an enterprise by completing the conquest of Spain. The original conception of crossing the Alps was Hamilcar’s, just as Philip originally planned the invasion of Asia. But it was the fertile brain of Hannibal which gave the undertaking birth. The colossal nature of the plan, its magnificent daring, the boundless self-confidence and contempt of difficulty and danger which it implies, no less than the extraordinary manner of its execution, are equalled only by Alexander’s setting forth--also but a lad--to conquer the illimitable possessions of the Great King.

In three years (B.C. 221–218) Hannibal had subjugated all Spain, and after a long siege captured Saguntum. He finally set out, with fifty thousand foot, nine thousand horse, and thirty-seven elephants, across the Pyrenees, whence his route was almost as unknown to him as the Atlantic to Columbus. It is impossible to follow him in this wonderful march,--the first crossing of the Alps by any but isolated merchants,--and probably the most daring enterprise ever set on foot. After toils and dangers impossible to gauge, even by the losses, Hannibal reached the Po in October, B.C. 218, with but twenty-six thousand men and a few elephants, less than half the force with which he had left Spain. With this handful he was to face a nation capable with its allies of raising seven hundred thousand men; and yet the event--as well as our knowledge of Hannibal--shows that he had contemplated even this vast odds.

But Rome was not ready. Hannibal gained numberless confederates among the Gauls in northern Italy, and that same fall and winter won two victories over the Romans at the Ticinus and Trebia. Next year (B.C. 217) he again defeated the Romans, by an ambuscade at Lake Trasymene, killing or capturing their entire army of thirty thousand men. These three victories were due to the over-eagerness of the Roman generals to fight, their careless methods, and Hannibal’s skill in handling his troops and his aptness at stratagem.

The campaign preceding, and the battle of Lake Trasymene, taught the Romans two valuable lessons. The instruction given the world by Alexander had not reached self-important, republican Rome, though Hannibal was familiar enough with the deeds of the great Macedonian. The Romans knew nothing of war except crude, hard knocks. The first lesson showed them that there is something in the art of war beyond merely marching out to meet your enemy and beating him by numbers, better weapons, or greater discipline.

It was thus: The Romans had retired into Etruria. In March, B.C. 217, Hannibal, who was in Liguria, desired to cross the Appenines and move upon them. There were but two roads he could pursue. The highway would take him across the mountains, but by a long circuit. This was the route by which the Consul Flaminius, at Aretium, with his forty thousand men, was expecting him, and, therefore, the way Hannibal did not choose to march, for Flaminius could easily block the mountain roads. The other route was so difficult that Flaminius never dreamed that Hannibal knew of, or could by any possibility pursue it. Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps had taught Flaminius nothing of his daring or his skill. This route lay along the coast to near the mouth of the Arnus, and thence up the right bank. It ran through an immense marsh, which, for an army, was all but as difficult an obstacle as the Alps. But it was the lesser evil, and promised the greater results; and Hannibal chose it, as Napoleon did the Great St. Bernard in 1800. No better description of the task can be given than to say that for four days and three nights the army marched through water where only the wagons, dead animals, or abandoned packs afforded the men any chance for rest. But the Carthaginian general reached his goal, turned Flaminius’ left flank, and cut him off from Rome. Here was the conception of turning the enemy’s strategic flank as clearly carried out as ever Napoleon did it. Such was lesson one.

The result of this turning manœuvre was the battle of Lake Trasymene,--where Hannibal taught the Romans, and us through them, the second lesson. The Romans had always marched in careless open order, without any idea of van or rear guard, or of flankers. This Hannibal knew. He placed his whole army in hiding at both ends of a defile at Lake Trasymene, through which the Romans must march, in such a manner that, when he made his attack, it was on an unsuspecting column,--in front, rear, and one flank; and the lake being on the other flank, the result was utter annihilation. After this the Romans marched with proper precautions. Hannibal had inflicted three staggering blows on his enemy.

But Rome now appointed a Dictator,--Quintus Fabius,--truly surnamed Maximus, and nicknamed Cunctator, because, recognizing that he was not able to cope with Hannibal on the battle-field, he wisely chose to conduct a campaign of delays and small war, the one thing Hannibal could not afford, but also the one thing the Romans could not tolerate or understand; for the Romans had always won by crisp fighting. Still, it was the policy shaped by Fabius which eventually defeated Hannibal, and next to Hannibal himself, he was the best master the Romans then had.

It is impossible, even slightly, to touch on many of Hannibal’s campaigns and battles. I prefer to give a short description of the battle of Cannæ, which, in its conduct and results, is typical of Hannibal’s methods. And first, a few words about the organization of either army.