Over the course of eight years, the armies of Alexander the Great had been on their quest to scour and conquer the known world. Of course, this quest was prompted primarily out of Alexander’s unquenchable thirst to conquer rather than the army’s hunger for combat. In 326 B.C., Alexander’s great quest to conquer all of the known world ended just past the Hydaspes River, now the Jhelum River, in northwest India. In historian and writer Nic Fields’s new study, “The Hydaspes 326 BC: The Limit of Alexander the Great’s Conquests,” he takes the reader on a journey through the details of not just the battle, but the land, the river, and the soldiers, materiel, and military tactics of each side.
Before the battle commences, Mr. Fields provides the background of the Macedonian army led first by Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon. He makes the case, though briefly, that Alexander, though an incredible leader of men himself, was practically gifted an army readied for conquest and domination.
Mr. Fields hints, as has many other historians, that the assassination of Philip II in 336 B.C. may have been less about a quarrel with Pausanias, a Macedonian noble and his bodyguard, and more due to a plot by Alexander. But it is merely a hint, as there are many theories about the whys and whos behind the assassination. Nonetheless, Alexander is crowned shortly thereafter and begins his march through Greece and then the Persian Empire.
The Armies
Mr. Fields does readers a service by providing many of the contemporary sources—from Arrian to Curtius to Plutarch—so that they may review to the original documents about the life and death, rise and fall, and consolidation and breakup of Alexander’s life and empire. Another helpful addition in the book is the chronology of Alexander’s military decisions and achievements from his momentous crossing of the Hellespont in the spring of 334 B.C. to his death in Babylon during the summer of 323 B.C.Along with a breakdown of those contemporary sources, the author provides the arms of the Macedonian army: the phalanx (long spearmen), hetairoi (cavalry), and the hypaspistai (elite foot soldiers). Furthermore, he discusses the types of arms used by the Macedonians and their allies, including the spears, shields, armor, and swords.
The Battle
The graphics and maps created by illustrator Marco Capparoni, along with photographs, clearly demonstrate the location of the battle, the formation of the armies, and the attacks and counterattacks. These, conjoined with Fields’s explanation of events, make what takes place during the battle of the Hydaspes easy to follow.
Fields makes a number of interesting observations concerning why the battle resulted in a victory for Alexander. One important cause was the weather. The night that Alexander decided to cross the Hydaspes with his 11,000 men (5,000 cavalry and 6,000 foot soldiers), a heavy thunderstorm not only caused the river to rise, but more importantly, the terrain became muddy. When the portion of Poros’s army, led by one of his four sons, tried to combat Alexander after his successful crossing, the mud proved detrimental to the chariots of the Indian army, a primary contingent of the opposing force. Furthermore, that force proved numerically inferior to Alexander’s.
Alexander’s battle plan was successful, but Fields suggests it was not as successful as his contemporaries proffer. He argues that far more Macedonian deaths occurred during the battle than were recorded, an argument he credits to classical scholar Peter Green based on his work “Alexander of Macedon.”
If the number of casualty were higher (possibly as much as four times higher), then this may have contributed to the soldiers’ ultimate resistance to venture further. Fields notes that although Alexander’s army was capable of fending off the massive elephants (the largest they had seen in their eight years of combat), the animals had nonetheless unnerved the soldiers. Along with this anxiety of what else may lie ahead in India, the monsoon season dampened the motivation to continue forward.
Of course, not having seen their homeland for nearly a decade inevitably played a role in their demand to turn back. Additionally, as Fields noted, “Faced with their king’s insatiable urge for more they saw little hope of their own survival or their return, and so mutinied.” Alexander relented.
