The Sieges of Alexander the Great Read online

  Saps were dug at various points, the earth being removed unobserved by the enemy, until in many places the wall, having nothing to support it, collapsed and fell.

  The very fact that Gaza’s walls were sapped decries the idea that the city sat upon a mound; it is certainly true that today the city does indeed sit upon such a mound, but this is the collected detritus of millennia and was not present in 332. The sands of the desert upon which Gaza sat were an ideal terrain for Alexander to try this new technique, and he was evidently delighted with the results. Having said this, he still had to wait many years before he could repeat this tactic. He did not conduct another siege operation of any kind until he was in the northeast frontier region, and there every citadel seemed to be sited on a mountain top where sapping was obviously impractical. Once Alexander entered India he was able to conduct such operations at a series of sites including Sangala and Massaga. With hindsight, sapping was not critical in the capture of these cities as they were relatively minor fortifications in comparison with the might of Tyre, Gaza and Halicarnassus. Gaza was the only instance in Alexander’s career, therefore, where sapping was instrumental in capturing the city; in every other case we could quite easily argue that he would have been successful even without sapping. All it could have done, and this is valuable in itself, was perhaps reduce the length of the siege by a few days at best, and thus perhaps save lives.

  Naval Siege Equipment

  One of Alexander’s great skills as a strategist and tactician was his ability to adapt to new circumstances and environments. During the siege of Halicarnassus he used the catapult against walls for the first time in history (or perhaps the second if he had done so at Miletus a few weeks previously); these were an existing weapon of war being used in a new way, to directly assault a fortifications wall. Alexander saw the potential of these weapons and embraced them eagerly in a way earlier generals simply had not. He was never one to sit on his laurels, however; new challenges and situations were always presenting themselves, and exactly that occurred at Tyre in 332.

  As will be noted at various times, one of Alexander’s hallmark strategies was to attack an opponent in multiple directions simultaneously. He achieved this by a series of flanking attacks during his set-piece battles, and by using catapults, towers, rams and scaling ladders to attack various points along the walls of defensive positions (as far as was practicable). At Tyre, however, Alexander encountered an entirely new situation; the fortress was built on an island half a mile out to sea. After the disbanding of the majority of his fleet at Halicarnassus, he possessed no ships with which to harass the walls that faced out to sea. His initial reaction was still to attack (as always), but his inability to prevent Tyrian naval sorties against his working parties, and against his siege towers on the mole, made this tactic extremely difficult, if not close to impossible. The fleet of Tyre was fairly strong, and certainly far greater than the few Athenian transport vessels Alexander still possessed. The Persian fleet was also not yet subdued and theoretically on the side of Tyre – at least by the default of using the principle that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. As long as these two situations prevailed (Alexander’s lack of a fleet and the Tyrian possession of one) then Alexander’s continued assault on Tyre was in jeopardy. We are told that Alexander seriously contemplated abandoning the siege at least once. The real issue for Alexander was being restricted to a single avenue of attack – the mole.

  Alexander’s solution was twofold – firstly he realized that he needed to acquire a fleet. With this intention, he set off north to Byblos and Sidon to essentially take possession of their fleets once their respective kings had returned to those cities, having been at sea at the time they fell into Alexander’s hands. Alexander’s triumphant return to Tyre at the head of this newly-acquired fleet was the turning point in the siege, and allowed the implementation of his second tactical development.

  Even with a new fleet, Alexander realized that he would only be able to suppress Tyrian naval sorties, he would not actually be able to go the extra step of actually attacking the city anywhere around its circuit except for the section directly opposite the mole. Alexander therefore began to experiment with using siege engines at sea by stationing them on board his naval vessels. The first device was simple enough, to position some catapults onboard a number of triremes and to station them close enough to the walls to assault them directly. This would have entailed adding to, or at least solidifying, the deck to give them a solid base from which to fire. These catapults were evidently both arrow-throwing and stone-throwing varieties, the former for suppression of the defenders, the latter for penetration of the walls. We know that this simple innovation was effective, as the defenders had to drop rocks into the sea to try to prevent the ships from drawing too close, and had divers cut the mooring ropes of the vessels that were preparing to fire; they would not have acted to counter this attack if it was not having some effect.

  Alexander’s second naval siege weapon was far more innovative; he apparently had pairs of triremes lashed together at their prows, again with special decks constructed between them. Upon these decks were stationed a naval version of a siege tower. These ships, lashed as they were, would have formed something of a delta shape with a deck extending between the two ships, and the tower precariously supported on it above the water.37 This arrangement seems remarkably unstable, and surely could not have supported a particularly tall tower, or for that matter many assault troops within it. Having said this, missiles launched from even a two or three story tower were more likely to have an impact upon the defenders than arrows launched from sea level. These naval towers may well have also had a psychological impact on the defenders due to the entire city now coming under attack, rather than just one small, easily-defensible section.

  This ship-borne artillery and the siege towers were intended to act in coordination with marines (who were the ever-versatile hypaspists) on troop transport vessels. These troop ships would have been equipped with scaling ladders that were raised from a turret, not unlike the larger naval siege towers. The general tactic was for the artillery and archers to lay down a suppressing fire against the defenders on the walls and clear an area which would allow the marines to climb the walls unhindered. The fact that the hypaspists were able to climb the walls using ladders, rather than large siege towers, strongly implies that the walls away from the landward side of the fortress were of considerable smaller dimensions. When Tyre was built, nobody would have imagined a concerted attack by sea against anything other than the two harbours; firstly because of its technical difficulty, secondly the ease with which it could be repelled (except for the actions of the artillery of course) and thirdly the strength of the Tyrian and Persian navies.

  It is a sobering thought that all of the effort, man-power and raw materials that went into the construction of the mole and the siege towers upon it, actually did not cause the fall of the city; the breakthrough was made by the hypaspists attacking (from the sea) a collapsed section of wall that had been brought down by naval catapults. This is superficially true, but would be slightly missing the point, however. The mole and its towers kept a very large number of the defenders busy while the hypaspists were affecting their breakthrough of the fallen section of wall. Alexander’s tactic of attacking from multiple directions simultaneously had again proved a success. We should not forget the fact, however, that Alexander’s engineers were just as important, if not more so, in the fall of Tyre than were the rest of the army, as they made every offensive action against the city possible.

  Chapter 2

  Pellium and Thebes: 335

  Introduction

  When Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great, succeeded to the throne of Macedonia in 359, he inherited a kingdom beset by enemies on all sides. Within the first year of his reign, by a combination of guile and military inventiveness, he had defeated the immediate Illyrian threat and secured Macedonia’s borders. For the rest of his life, some twenty-three years, Philip cam
paigned almost constantly to create a Macedonia that was the most powerful nation in the Greek world. This was a campaign, or more accurately a series of them, that culminated in victory at Chaeronea in 338; a battle which effectively ended Greek freedom and independence. At the league of Corinth, an organization set up by Philip shortly afterwards as a means of controlling the Greek states, Philip was elected hegemon, essentially captain-general of Greece. Never before had any Greek, let alone a Macedonian, held so much power, power that Alexander undoubtedly envied during Philip’s lifetime.

  When Philip was assassinated in the summer of 336 by a Macedonian soldier called Pausanias, probably motivated by a personal grudge against the king, the Greek world, including Macedonia, was briefly thrown into turmoil.38 The Greek city states had been forced into submission by Philip using a combination of politics, threats and military defeats. Philip’s death, after a hard fought, long and bloody war, was viewed by men like Demosthenes of Athens as an opportunity to make one last grab for freedom. These men longed for a return to the golden age of Greece, where they were free to decide their own fate without having to appease a semi-barbarous (in their view) foreign despot. They no doubt attempted to view Macedonia’s rise to power in its historical context: many of the city states had, for a short time, exercised a measure of control over their neighbours; the most recent example being Thebes soon after the end of the Peloponnesian War. The Greeks would remember that as soon as Epaminondas and Pelopidas, the architects of Thebes’ rise to power, were dead, Thebes quickly fell from dominance. The city states had every reason to expect the same to happen to Macedonia; there could have been no doubt in their minds that its rise was due almost entirely to Philip. Their views would have been further confirmed by his successor, the young Alexander. The city states would have seen him as an unknown and untried beardless youth of barely 20 years, hardly a man to fear. They would, however, very quickly learn their mistake: it had taken Philip over twenty years to subdue the city states; it took Alexander less than two.

  Alexander’s succession to the throne of Macedonia was far from a certainty; Philip had not himself been the rightful heir, but initially took power as regent for Amyntas, the young son of Perdiccas, the former king. Given the state of the kingdom that Philip inherited, the throne must have seemed like something of a poisoned chalice; his success in quickly securing Macedonia’s borders led to him keeping the throne even when Amyntas passed an age where he would have been considered competent to rule. Macedonian kingship was not hereditary, and simply being son of the former king did not automatically confer the throne upon you (as in the case of Amyntas), but it did make you a strong contender (as with Alexander).

  It was the Macedonian army assembly that had the power to decide who was to become the next king. By a skilful use of political assassination, persuasive oratory and behind the scenes deals in which the key power brokers in Macedonian were brought to Alexander’s flag (men like Parmenio, Antipater and Alexander of Lyncestis), Alexander was confirmed king. For Alexander, the timing of the Persian expedition launched by Philip was critical, Amyntas and Parmenio were in Asia Minor at the time of the assassination, and Amyntas was not fully able, therefore, to muster the support that he may have been able to if he had been at court. In this, as so often throughout Alexander’s career, the gods were smiling on the young king.

  Parmenio was probably the single most important political figure in Macedonia, apart from the king, during the reign of Philip; this is also true during the early part of Alexander’s reign. He, as well as various family members, was well entrenched at court and seems to have had political connections with both factions contending for the succession in the final years of Philip’s reign (and immediately after his assassination). Thus when Philip was assassinated, Parmenio was in a prime position to act as king-maker. He was in a position to offer the support of most of the lowland barons; this would leave Amyntas, or any other potential rival, with only the possibility of forming a coalition of fringe areas of Macedonia and of rebellious Greek cities. Parmenio was evidently a skilled political operator and knew well the strength of his position and what his support was worth, as Alexander would soon discover.

  Immediately upon his succession, Alexander began a series of all-too-predictable purges of any possible usurper, a sign of his insecurity. Large numbers died, including potential rivals like Amyntas and two of the sons of Aëropus, known supporters of Amyntas’ claim; the third only being spared because of his immediate support for Alexander. The purges were to secure his throne from potential rivals, and the army had been won over by a combination of the support of senior generals and brilliant oratory, but the Macedonian people also needed to be brought on board. To this end, Alexander announced that he would rule along similar principles to his father; he even abolished taxation in order to win popular support.

  Alexander had secured the throne, but at what cost? Philip had left no money in the Macedonian treasury, and Alexander’s largesse at his succession, along with the remittance of taxation, left a tremendous fiscal problem. A perhaps more important issue was created within the command structure of the army; Parmenio had exacted a steep price for his support which included the assassination of Amyntas, his co-commander of the Persian expeditionary force.

  Alexander was forced to pay a heavy price for Parmenio’s support, but in 336 he was in no position to argue. When the Macedonian army crossed the Hellespont into Asia, almost every key command was held by one of Parmenio’s sons, brothers, or some other kinsmen. Two of Parmenio’s sons were commanders of the hypaspists (Nicanor) and the Companion Cavalry (Philotas); along with Parmenio himself commanding the Thessalian cavalry and essentially being second in command of the entire Macedonian army. Parmenio’s brother, Asander, probably commanded the light cavalry and certainly received the satrapy of Sardis as soon as it was conquered. Parmenio’s supporters were also firmly entrenched in positions of power, men like the four sons of Andromenes and the brothers Coenus and Cleander. Many of the commanders of the army of invasion were little younger than Parmenio himself: when Justin tells us that headquarters looked ‘more like the senate of some old-time republic’ he is probably not exaggerating in his description, although it is a far from flattering one.39

  This was a situation which Alexander could not tolerate indefinitely. He allowed this situation to remain relatively unchanged whilst his success was still in the balance; but after Gaugamela, Alexander began to make serious and sweeping changes to the army, changes which were made considerably easier by the assassinations of both Philotas and Parmenio. It was not until the army was in India that every position was filled with ‘Alexander’s men’ rather than Philip’s (through the figure of Parmenio).

  Greece

  Once the deal-making and political assassinations were complete in Macedonia, or at least were well underway, Alexander’s position as king was established. His difficulties did not end there, however. He could easily be removed from the throne by means of assassination, as with his father, or perhaps through civil war if he was not seen to be a strong expansionist leader the likes of which the Macedonian army had grown accustomed to in Philip; it was long established that Macedonian kings seldom died in their beds. With Macedonia now under control, Alexander needed to assert his authority on the wider Greek world, to send a message that nothing had changed except the name of the king. Alexander also needed to quell the unrest, particularly amongst his Balkan neighbours, before he could contemplate continuing the invasion of Persia that his father had started in a minor way with the expeditionary force of Parmenio and Amyntas.40

  Alexander’s Balkan campaign was punctuated by two sieges, those of Pellium and Thebes. Each of these presented Alexander with unique situations that he had not encountered before and which he had to adapt to in order to overcome the enemy.

  The initial part of Alexander’s first campaign as king shows little of the lightning speed for which he was later to become famous, but this is because of a desire to
link up with elements of his fleet on the Danube River before he turned to the siege of Pellium. Ancient warships did not travel quickly, and so we see Alexander progressing very slowly through enemy territory so as not to be forced to stay on the banks of the Danube for several weeks exhausting the food supply of that region as he did so. Lack of food is seldom a significant problem in Alexander’s career, excluding the exceptional events of the Gedrosian desert, but it was to become an issue at Pellium.

  Pellium

  After the initial part of his Balkan campaign to the north (described in my forthcoming book The Field Campaigns of Alexander the Great), Alexander began to head back towards Macedonia. He marched south from the Danube towards the Trojan pass, but instead of crossing it and heading straight back towards Macedonia, he turned southwest and made for the region of the modern day Sofia to visit with king Langaros of the Agrianians.

  Whilst Alexander was visiting Langaros, he received news that three Illyrian tribes were making plans and mobilizing to attack western Macedonia; these were the Dardanians under Cleitus, the Taulantians under Glaucias, and the Autaratians. Much of the Macedonian field army was with Alexander at this time. This had left Macedonia’s western borders open to ravaging by the Illyrians, which was their traditional tactic.41 This is perhaps a foolish oversight on the part of Alexander, to leave his homeland undefended, but there are several reasons for this. Firstly, this was his opening campaign as king, and he would have wanted a massive show of force to cow Macedonia’s neighbours into submission. Secondly, his position as king was still not as absolute as it was to become; keeping the whole of the army with him meant that he could keep an eye on his soldiers and prevent any potential rivals that were left alive in Macedonia from persuading part of the army that he was not the rightful heir to the throne. Whatever the reasons, the fact was that Macedonia was left almost completely undefended by Alexander’s march north, and he had to act quickly to quell this growing Illyrian threat lest the Greek states to the south, or Thracian tribesmen to the east, attempt to take advantage.