Alexander’s Final Masterpiece – Savagery on the Hydaspes

 

For three days, the rains fell steadily, but then the downpours ceased. Riding through the mud with his lieutenants, he studies the enemy, formed in the distance along a line almost four miles in length, cavalry covering both flanks, armor glittering in the intermittent rays of the sun. Fronting the cavalry, he notices chariots, perhaps as many as five hundred on each flank, and between the distant flanks, war elephants, unmistakable from almost any distance. They defend the main battle line like a city of towers. How many are there? Two hundred? At least.

The elephants – well-trained and disciplined – are heavily armored, and on their backs carry boat-like structures in which archers and javelin throwers look down upon the earth’s mortals as if from the clouds, waiting now only the order to advance. His officers’ point toward the enemy’s infantry posted behind the elephants, arrayed in splendor, steel helmets shimmering as far as the eye can see, like a distant wave cresting the ocean. They wear uniforms in glorious colors, variously armed with lances and maces and axes for hacking. He smiles; it is an impressive sight.

He is Alexander of Macedon, the great captain, perhaps the greatest military leader known to history. From a distance, he takes in the enemy’s posting with the careful eye of the world’s leading warrior, gauging, searching for a weakness, for imprecision, for that one vulnerable place where he might strike a lethal blow – the blow that has never failed him. If he cannot determine outright that point of weakness, he will maneuver, forcing his enemy to respond, and then strike immediately and violently where weakness suddenly appears. At this, he is a master.