The Sieges of Alexander the Great Page 14

  The breach that was assaulted appears to be larger during this final assault than it had been during the earlier repulsed attack, although likely not down to the foundations as Diodorus suggests.148 On this occasion we are told that Alexander took personal control of one of the groups of attackers, and that the section of wall that was attacked by Alexander was where the breakthrough occurred. As Alexander broke through with some members of the hypaspists, he quickly spread out and captured several towers along the southern stretch of the walls. The Macedonians seem to have taken some time to secure their gains on the walls before proceeding into the city. This was sensible given the relative lack of troops that Alexander would have had with him at the time due to the limited transport capacity of ancient triremes. Once he did decide to expand his bridgehead, he made his way around ever greater sections of the walls and made for the royal quarter of the city.

  Whilst the assault on the breach had been occurring, the fleet had performed no less well. The Phoenician fleet that was stationed opposite the Egyptian harbour broke through the defensive boom that lay across the harbour and made short work of what remained of the Tyrian fleet inside; these vessels were rammed and sunk without significant loss of life among the Phoenicians. The Cypriot fleet to the north was equally successful, and their task was made easier by the lack of any defensive booms across the harbour mouth. Marines aboard both navies quickly landed and gained control of these sectors of the city.

  Once the defenders all across the city saw that time was running out, that sections of the walls were in enemy hands, along with the harbours, they abandoned their positions and took sanctuary in the shrine of Agenor, the father of Cadmus, who was the legendary founder of both Tyre and Sidon. Their intention was of making a last stand; Alexander did not disappoint them. Arrian tells us the slaughter was terrible, the Macedonians were allowed to vent their fury at such a brutal siege upon the survivors. Some 8,000 Tyrians were killed and the remaining 30,000 were sold into slavery, as was the usual practice.149

  The creation of the mole was a tremendous feet of engineering and was achieved without drafting in specialists from Greece; Alexander had the foresight to bring with him construction experts for just such an unusual situation. Of almost equal difficulty, but always overshadowed by the mole, were the construction of the two great siege towers at the end of the mole itself. These must have been static towers, and capable of stationing stone- and arrow-throwing catapults inside them. Alexander’s engineering inventiveness is also demonstrated by the curious siege engines that were created from former triremes and transport vessels: artillery, siege towers, ladders on platforms, rams etc. All of these helped in achieving victory, but it is a sobering thought that the final successful attack upon the city came from a ship-borne assault, and not from the mole itself, or from the siege towers. One could conclude that these were a massive folly and not ultimately necessary, but this is to miss the point. They were instrumental in forcing the Tyrians to station large numbers of defenders opposite the mole and thus reduce the potential numbers of defenders at other more vulnerable areas.

  The capture of Tyre is usually regarded as the finest achievement of Alexander’s military career. This is not without some justification. Tyre was a seemingly-impregnable island fortress that was heavily defended and commanded by an extremely-talented king, Azemilcus. When we closely examine the events of the siege, however, we see that many of Alexander’s great innovations were in fact enforced reactions to Tyrian inventiveness. We see Alexander making a series of key errors or misjudgements, such as pushing forward construction work on the mole at the expense of defending it properly, which led to its destruction and a major delay. We also see Alexander’s lack of creativity as an admiral, using essentially land-based tactics for his fleet. This said, however, Alexander certainly showed himself very capable of adapting to new situations and new defensive measures with increasingly-elaborate ideas of his own. That Alexander captured Tyre is beyond doubt and we should recognize that fact; the victory was due as much to persistence and the quality of his troops as it was to innovation. We should also note, as a final point, that king Azemilcus was one of the most able commanders he ever faced, and should be given the honour that he deserves.

  Chapter 5

  Gaza: 332

  Tyre was no doubt one of Alexander’s greatest military achievements, albeit not a series of unremitting victorious innovations as some may wish to suggest. However, the overall fact that he managed to capture a well-defended and brilliantly-commanded island fortress half a mile off the coast is an achievement that spans the ages. In terms of tactics, however, Gaza was at least as interesting, although always understandably overshadowed by the capture of Tyre a few months earlier. Gaza has consistently been ignored by historians both modern and ancient, most seeing it as little more than an interlude between the great siege of Tyre and the events in Egypt, but it certainly deserves far more attention than the couple of lines that Diodorus dedicated to the siege:150

  In this year (331/0) King Alexander set in order the affairs of Gaza and sent off Amyntas with ten ships to Macedonia, with orders to enlist the young men who were fit for military service.

  I aim here to redress the balance somewhat, and give Gaza the position it deserves in the annals of Alexander’s military career.

  Aftermath of Tyre

  Arrian tells us that towards the end of the siege of Tyre, Alexander received envoys from Darius offering peace terms.151 Darius apparently offered Alexander the princely sum of 10,000 talents in gold in exchange for the safe return of his mother, wife and children who had all been captured after Darius’ defeat at the Battle of Issus the previous year. Darius made the further proposal that Alexander should be ceded all territory west of the Euphrates, and that the alliance would be sealed by the marriage of Alexander to Darius’ daughter, thus joining the royal houses of Persia and Macedonia and ensuring peaceful relations in the future.

  Alexander received the offer in secrecy and did not immediately divulge it to his senior officers, nor did he immediately reply to Darius, perhaps giving the latter false hope that Alexander was intending to accept. Probably several days later, Alexander, at a regular meeting of his senior commanders, read out the contents of the letter, and we can only imagine the furore that must have ensued. As with any cabinet today, some would have favoured war and the annihilation of the Persian Empire, some would have favoured peace and a return home; each side would have made its feelings felt with vigour. This early in the campaign the commanders would almost certainly have felt relatively uninhibited about making their feelings known to the king; that would change over the course of the subsequent few years as Alexander became increasingly paranoid and insular. We do not know how long Alexander would have allowed the discussion and debate to rage, but we know of one significant proponent of peace: Parmenio. Arrian tells us that Parmenio:152

  According to all reports, declared that were he Alexander he would be happy to end the war on such terms and be done with any further adventures.

  In this reply we can almost hear the voice of the ghost of Philip. Whilst we can never know with certainty how Philip would have reacted to this offer, he was always a man who used physical force only when necessary and seldom as a first response. Philip’s stream of peace treaties with former enemies, and the string of wives that resulted, clearly illustrates his willingness to accept diplomatic solutions. It seems likely that Philip would at least have given the offer far more consideration than Alexander evidently did. Perhaps Alexander read the letter to his generals to gauge their enthusiasm for further conquest, or perhaps the story is apocryphal (it almost certainly occurred during Alexander’s second visit to Tyre after the conquest of Egypt rather that at the end of the siege). Either way, his reported response to Parmenio is interesting:

  That is what I would do if I were Parmenio; but since I am Alexander, I shall send Darius a different answer.

  Alexander apparently sent Darius a letter of reply;
Arrian does not report the specific contents, but has the gist as follows:

  He had no need, he wrote, of Darius’ money, nor was there any call upon him to accept a part of the continent in place of the whole. All Asia, including its treasury, was already his property, and if he wished to marry Darius’ daughter he would do so, whether Darius liked it or not. If, moreover, Darius wanted kindliness and consideration at his hands, he must come to ask for it in person. Upon receiving this reply, Darius abandoned all thought of coming to terms and began once more to prepare for war.

  In all likelihood, the peace offer was genuine, even if the timing is disputed. Although the specific words of the letter and Alexander’s reply are probably apocryphal, Arrian likely preserves the gist of what was said in both cases. The words of Alexander’s reply do appear to be in keeping with what we would like to think we know of as his general character, although such arguments are always dangerous. Based upon the actions of the remainder of his career there is nothing to suggest he would have even seriously considered accepting such an offer; he probably saw it as a sign of weakness from Darius.

  Was Alexander right to reject the offer? From the perspective of Darius, the offer was strategically very clever; Alexander did already own (almost) all of the territory that he offered and Darius’ treasury would not miss 10,000 talents. Alexander was correct to say that he also already possessed Darius’ wife and daughter, so the offer of marriage was an empty offer as he could not stop such a union if Alexander desired it. Further to this essentially-empty offer, if Alexander were to have accepted, Darius would have bought himself time to raise a new army to drive the invader from Persian lands; the nobility of Persia would surely have demanded this as long as the empire was even partially intact.

  From Alexander’s perspective, to accept would have been suicide. He could not possibly have defended a border stretching from the Black Sea to Egypt; this is to say nothing of the fact that significant parts of the army would no doubt have been disbanded as the war of revenge for Persian atrocities during the Persian Wars would then have been over. Alexander had no real strategic choice but to reject the offer. But again I would argue that even if it were strategically sound, Alexander would have rejected it anyway on the grounds of his pothos for further conquest, rather than peaceful government of the new territories as Augustus would have advocated.

  After the successful capture of Tyre, Alexander was faced with essentially the same two strategic options he had had after the Battle of Issus: march inland in search of Darius and a final and decisive battle or continue following the coast into Egypt and complete the capture of the Persian naval bases, thus eliminating any possible danger from the Persian fleet. The earlier decision had been relatively straightforward; Alexander could not sensibly have left behind an active and powerful Persian fleet with the inherent danger of their carrying the war into mainland Greece – although this was, with the benefit of hindsight, unlikely after the untimely death of Memnon of Rhodes. For the safety and security of the growing empire, Tyre had to be in Macedonian hands. The fall of Tyre effectively meant that there was no longer a significant threat from the Persian navy; almost every ship in the combined Persian fleet had defected to the conqueror during the siege; what few remained were certainly no match for Alexander’s newly acquired navy. The initial highly controversial strategy was no longer valid, yet Alexander decided to complete the reduction of Persian naval bases anyway by marching into Egypt. The question remains, however, why did Alexander not pursue Darius at this point and leave Egypt to its own devices?

  There are a number of possible explanations; firstly it does not seem to be in Alexander’s character profile to leave a potentially-powerful adversary unchallenged and unconquered. Egypt was a potential enemy, though an unlikely one given its historical resistance to Persian occupation. It is, of course, historically unsound to attempt to make too many judgements about the character of a man so long dead, we can never know what he truly thought and felt.

  The second reason may be Alexander’s desire to conquer the whole of the Persian Empire, of which Egypt was certainly part, albeit a reluctant and recalcitrant part. Cambyses first conquered Egypt in 525, and from around the middle of the fifth century (the time Herodotus was writing) successive Persian rulers were extremely unpopular there. In 404, Egypt successfully revolted from Persian rule, until a brutal re-conquest by Artaxerxes III Ochus in 341.

  The lure of one of the great oracles of the ancient world would also have been very strong to Alexander. The oracle at Siwah was thought by Egyptians to be the home of Ammon, the head of the Egyptian pantheon, a figure that Greeks easily associated with Zeus.153 We do not know what Alexander asked the oracle, or the reply, only that Alexander is thought to have said that he received the answer that he most wanted. This is likely to have been an answer to a question regarding his parentage, i.e. that Zeus was in fact his father, and that Alexander was, therefore, the son of a god. We may say, however, with the benefit of twenty-three centuries of distance, and with modern cynicism, that it is unlikely that a man like Alexander, who was in the process of conquering the Persian Empire, would have received any answer that he would have been unhappy hearing.

  A final reason to move south against Egypt, and perhaps the most significant tactical and strategic reason of all, was the constant need for food, both for the army and to ensure Greece was well fed, eliminating a potential reason for revolt. Throughout the ancient world, Egypt was something of a bread basket for most of the Mediterranean region, from fifth-century Athens to the height of the Roman Empire. Alexander had a tremendous flair for logistics, as is evidenced by the lack of difficulties he had throughout his career. He seldom ran low on food or water, and this was partly because he took care of these essentials whenever he had the opportunity, as now.154

  With the decision apparently an easy one, Alexander left some troops behind to act as a garrison in Tyre, as was the usual practice, and in this instance to help rebuild the city after the devastation of the siege, rested the army briefly and then set off south towards the next fortified position, Gaza.

  Gaza was the principal frontier fortress of the Persian Empire in that region, around 240km south of Tyre, and 4km inland from the coast. For years it had stood guarding the Persian heartlands from aggression from an often-recalcitrant Egypt, and now it stood directly in Alexander’s path into Egypt. From the perspective of the Macedonian conqueror, Gaza simply had to be captured; although Alexander probably had contact with what we would now call the Egyptian resistance, he could not be certain of the welcome he would receive. If the Egyptians ultimately proved to be hostile, Darius could easily trap him between Egypt and Palestine using Gaza as a forward base if he tried to march straight past it into Egypt.

  Despite Gaza being strategically crucial to both the Persians and the Macedonians, it was not heavily defended at the time of Alexander’s arrival. The garrison, which had no doubt been large in 333, would probably have been denuded by Darius to provide him with extra troops for the ill-fated Battle of Issus. To add to the defenders’ difficulties, the garrison was commanded by an otherwise-unattested Persian. The precise name and position of the garrison commander is the subject of some dispute;155 the text of Curtius reads Betis, more or less the same as the Batis of Arrian, and either of these seems the most likely. Arrian describes the man as a eunuch, although this could be a later invention to make the Persian appear more effeminate. Curtius describes him in entirely neutral terms, stressing his loyalty to Darius and simply noting that he was the commander of the city. Only Josephus specifically describes him as the garrison commander, but the city was small enough that in all likelihood the city governor was also ultimately in command of the garrison.156 If Batis had indeed been a eunuch then one may imagine Curtius would have mentioned the fact. A eunuch in command of Persian troops would not have been unique; Hermias of Atarneus is also attested to have been a eunuch and ruled in the Troad, whilst Bagoas commanded one third of the entire Pe
rsian army during the invasion of Egypt in 343.157

  Whatever the name and specific designation of the commander, his troops are worthy of note: Arrian describes the defenders as ‘Arab mercenaries’. Arab mercenaries are nowhere else attested, although at the Battle of Raphia, Antiochus III raised a force of 10,000 Arab warriors from the Gaza region. Arrian also tells us that they had been preparing for a lengthy siege by stockpiling supplies; they likely would have been expecting Alexander to march south and would have been preparing for most of the nine months it took for Alexander to capture Tyre. We also know that the defenders were well trained and highly motivated.158

  The city of Gaza was very well located, but its exact situation is the subject of some debate. It would at first appear that the city was built upon an outcrop of rock in the middle of the desert – an island in a sea of sand as it were. The height of the outcrop is the difficulty; the modern mound is some 18–30m above the surrounding desert, but it is likely that at least some of that height would be caused by the accumulated build up of the detritus of civilization over the last twenty-four centuries. We can not know with certainty how high the mound was, but it must have been significant enough to be thought defensible else the city would not have been built there in the first place. The city was also well protected by a crenellated wall that ran the entire length of the circuit of the city. The modern city, which is in the same location, has a circuit of some 3km in total. Batis refused Alexander’s order to submit to his rule, believing that the city was virtually impregnable. Its walls were high and strong, the sand around the city was particularly soft and difficult to conduct military operations upon as we will see (although more compact beneath the surface), and the mound was not insignificant. From the outside, the city rose above the level of the surrounding sand and must have looked something like a medieval motte-and-bailey castle with its large central mound. Gaza was evidently well protected, but after the success at Tyre, Alexander would not be easily put off; an assault on Gaza was never in doubt.159