Virtues of War (6 page)

S
even

DRAGON
'
S TEETH

M
Y FATHER DOES NOT BELIEVE
in drums or pipers. In his army, sergeants call the cadence. Their cries are coarse but musical and they carry, even in the wind, like the keenest whistle. Each sergeant has his own style. I have seen good men passed over for want of throat, and mediocre rise because they had the knack to bawl the beat.

Philip's infantry steps off first. The king takes the right of the field. I have the left, Parmenio the center. Folds of ground block my sight line: My father's regiments are a mile and a third away; we can't see them and won't be able to until they've nearly reached the foe. They have moved out, though, or Parmenio's brigades in the center (which I can see) would not be dressing the line and elevating their sarissas, in their carrying slings, to march slope.

How brilliant the regiments look! Right and left, horses stamp and nicker. Eleven hundred yards separate us from the foe. I crane to the rear, to Hephaestion at the fore of his squadrons. His helmet is a visored iron
causia
burnished to silver, his mount a seventeen-hand chestnut, Swift, with a white blaze and four white stockings. There is not a handsomer man and horse on the field.

As always before a battle, gangs of local urchins dart in bold spirits across no-man's-land. Their dogs chase; it is great sport to them. Mounted couriers, ours and the foe's, gallop out and back, bearing messages and reports of last-minute shifts in dispositions. No rancor prevails among these fellows; they help one another remount after a spill. For reasons I have never fathomed, birds, too, favor fields of conflict. Swallows swoop now, and clouds of plovers. You will never see a woman and never see a cat.

Parmenio's regiments of the center push off now. Time for my wing to cinch up. I nod to Telamon; he signs to the brigade commanders. Infantry captains step out before their squares; their master sergeants backpedal beside them, sarissas elevated at the horizontal. “Dress the line! Stand ready!”

At the count of five hundred, my regiments step off. The field is almost two miles side to side, far too wide for any unified action. I cannot even see Philip, let alone ride to him. Our army will fight not one battle today but three: right, left, and center.

Philip's scheme divides the field accordingly. Our front advances on the oblique. The king's right will strike the foe first. Philip's infantry phalanx—six brigades, nine thousand men, plus the three regiments of Royal Guardsmen, a thousand apiece—will engage the Athenian heavy infantry at the extreme left of the enemy line (our right). Once in contact, Philip's front will feign retreat. There is a good deal of playacting in war and even such seasoned theatergoers as the Athenians can be hoodwinked in the heat of action. Athens's militiamen possess audacity, my father believes, but not courage. They are amateurs, citizen levy. It is twenty years since they took the field, and then only for a month. Their state of mind, as Philip's phalangites bear down on them, will be constituted of equal parts terror and overexcitement, which they will mistake for valor. In the flush of contact, they will lose their heads. Seeing the infantry of Macedon shrink before them, they will believe the fiction of their own supremacy and, carried away by this, bolt forward, anticipating the rout. Philip's regiments will withdraw before their rush. But Philip will not let go. His front ranks will hold the foe by the hedge of their projected sarissas, as a bullhound fastens on the muzzle of an ox. Philip will draw the Athenian line with him until the slope of the ground changes from downhill to up. There, his phalanx will check its retreat. The king will be upslope of the Athenians now; at the trumpet's call, the Foot Companions of Macedon will plant their soles and surge back upon the foe, the heat of whose blood will by now be plunging, as they enter what the Spartan general Lysander used to call “the hangover” of false courage. We will see the creases of the enemy's buttocks then, and the bowls of their shields as they sling them and bolt in terror to save their lives. That will be the battle's first stage.

Stage two will be Parmenio in the center. His brigades of foot will engage the Corinthians, Achaeans, and the Greek allies and mercenaries. His orders are to come to close quarters and hold. He has cavalry and light infantry on both seams, abutting my father's wing and my own, to keep contact and seal all breaches.

Stage three will be me.

I will charge the Theban heavy regiments and Sacred Band on the right (our left). Philip has not instructed me in how to attack, nor has he inquired of my dispositions—though Antipater, of course, has relayed every detail—other than to ask was I satisfied that I had what I needed. For this alone I account his greatness.

My father's plan is shrewd. By giving me the left of the field, he cedes me abundant scope for glory. If I succeed, Macedon gains a fighting prince and Philip a true heir and deputy; should I miscarry or be slain, the king knows he can still produce victory out of his own triumph on the right (he has kept six squadrons of Companion Cavalry to finish the job) and Parmenio's in the center.

Nine hundred yards now. Enemy riders transit, just out of bowshot. I have scouts out front too, to identify the colors of the individual Theban regiments and report the position of each in the enemy front. It is the responsibility of each colonel of foot to locate his enemy counterpart, so that his men know whom to hit and where in the enemy line they are stationed. This aligning of units is called “singling up.” It is performed expeditiously but with tremendous care as the front advances across the field. In each company, word is passed man to man, with the veteran sergeants of the front rank picking out the pennants of the enemy units that their units will duel. The closer the armies get, the narrower the aim, until men can almost designate individuals of the foe and say, “That is my man; there is the shield I will strike.”

I have other scouts ahead too, keen-eyed and cool-headed, who can read a field and report without losing their heads. Their job: Find the Sacred Band.

At eight hundred yards the enemy begins to deploy. Companies of his extreme right start forward (we can make out the mass but not the individual units) without haste, holding flush against the river that protects their flank.

“Do you see, Alexander?” Black Cleitus trots at my shoulder. We have rehearsed this move of the Thebans. We think we know what it means.

“Yes. But can it be the Sacred Band?”

Our scouts should have returned by now.

Where are they?

Where is the Sacred Band?

Cleitus: “Want me to go?” He means ride forward.

“No, stay here.”

I am about to send to the rear to Hephaestion, to be sure he has seen and understands what his squadrons must do, when he spurs up on his own. “Have we got their colors?” He means have we found the Sacred Band.

“Not yet.”

“Let me ride out, Alexander.” Cleitus means it will take minutes to cross the field and get back. But I need him with me.

“Wait.” At my shoulder, Telamon points ahead. Our scouts. The youngest, Adrastus, called “Towhead,” gallops up in a lather.

“The Sacred Band!” Towhead reins-in, breathless. “There! At the seam of the center.”

He means the knights of the Band are not on the wing against the river, as they feigned yesterday, but have moved inboard to where the Theban front abuts their Greek allies in the center.

“How are they formed up?”

“As a unit.”

This decides everything.

One report is not enough. Still I sign to Telamon: “Brigade commanders assemble.”

A second scout, Andocides, whips back. His report confirms Towhead's.

In a body we spur forward to a rise. Andocides points. “There, by the tall cypress. See their shields?”

The Sacred Band's
aspides
are gold and scarlet; even at this distance we can make them out.

“What's their alignment?”

“Two, seven, and one. A hundred across.”

He means the Sacred Band's configuration is two knights of the Band in the first and second ranks, seven ranks of militia levy in the middle; then a file-closer of the Band.

“Who's on their right?”

“Eel-eaters.” Meaning the Theban militia regiments from Lake Copais. “Ten deep, like the Sacred Band.”

“Only ten? Are you sure?”

Two more scouts report, confirming this.

“What's behind the Band?”

“Laundry,” says Towhead. He means the hanging lines of their tents and camp.

“Well done, gentlemen.” I send them back to work with a pledge of bonuses when this day is done. Our front continues its advance.

Seven hundred yards.

From the scouts' reports, I apprehend the Theban scheme.

The foe shows us massed troops along his unturnable right flank; then he advances the rightmost of these companies visibly and aggressively. His message: You cannot penetrate me on this wing. He sets his line obliquely to ours, seeking to deflect us inboard. There he shows us the Sacred Band—not stacked in unbreachable numbers, but only ten shields deep. This is the bait. The foe knows that his opponent this day is Philip's eighteen-year-old son, a callow prince on fire for glory. This youth will not be able, the enemy believes, to resist such a target. I will throw everything I've got at the Sacred Band. The foe hopes for this. He will either reinforce this elite company at the fatal instant or he has some other surprise—pitfalls or leg-breakers concealed behind his front. No matter. The foe will permit my infantry to become engaged in a shoving match. At this point I will have taken the lure. I will be in the jaws of the trap.

The Theban general is Theagenes, a canny and experienced commander who learned his craft under captains trained by Epaminondas. When I have become engaged futilely with the Sacred Band and the regiments reinforcing it, Theagenes will launch his push from his extreme right along the river. This wing—thirty, forty, even fifty shields deep—will wheel inboard like a great gate, pivoting on the hinge that is the Sacred Band, to take our line in flank and rear.

It is a good plan. It makes the most of the Thebans' strengths and minimizes their limitations. It follows the logic of the ground. And it reckons its antagonist cannily. It is predicated upon facing a young general—rash, impetuous, impatient for glory.

But the plan depends on two things not happening. One, no Macedonian penetration of the Theban line. Two, no troops of Macedon held back across from the extremity of the Thebans' great gate, to take it from flank and rear when it tries to swing shut.

This is what I will do.

The Thebans do not understand modern warfare. They believe Philip's strength resides where theirs does, in the massed formation of heavy infantry. No. The role of the Macedonian phalanx is not to slug it out, power for power, against the foe. Its job is to fix the enemy in place, while our heavy cavalry delivers the decisive shock from the flank or rear. The Theban despises cavalry. His hoplite soul holds horse troops in contempt. He cannot believe that mounted men will willingly fling themselves upon the hedgehog's back of bristling, serried spearpoints.

But we will.

I will.

Today we will make believers of them.

All this goes through my mind in one-fiftieth the time it takes to tell. By the time my brigade commanders have rallied to my colors to receive their orders, their master sergeants, sergeants, and corporals are already reconfiguring the line and rehearsing the ranks and files in the counter we have prepared and practiced, both in Thessaly on the approach march and here, in council, at Chaeronea.

Five hundred yards. Our regiments continue to advance in the oblique. What does the foe see? Only what I want him to.

He sees three brigades of sarissa infantry, forty-five hundred men, sixteen ranks deep, covering three hundred yards of the nine-hundred-yard front. (Allied infantry covers the final six hundred to our left against the river.) The sight of the Macedonian phalanx is unlike anything in warfare, ancient or modern. Instead of the stubby eight-foot spear, which the foe is accustomed to seeing, my corps advances with the eighteen-foot pike. Our front looks like a forest of murder: one serried, immaculately ordered mass, sarissas at the upright, with their honed iron blades twenty feet in the air, shafts swaying and nodding with the cadence of the advance.

The foe sees this also: that we advance upon him in the oblique. Our right leads. In other words, our foremost brigade—Antipater's—is singled up on the Sacred Band. This tells the enemy we will strike there first. I reinforce this notion by sending my missile troops, now, to rain hell upon the Sacred Band, and only the Sacred Band.

I have told you what the foe sees. Now consider what he doesn't. He doesn't see my heavy cavalry. I have four squadrons of Companions, eight hundred eighty-one men, immediately to the rear of the phalanx and concealed by its dust and its hedge of upright sarissas—and two more squadrons, under Hephaestion, held back on the left, to assault the foe's right when it starts to pivot forward. In any event, the enemy discounts cavalry. In any event he holds it in contempt.

Four hundred yards. Our javelineers out front concentrate their fire on the Sacred Band. We can hear the concussion a quarter mile away. I want the enemy to believe this is where our assault will come; I want the Sacred Band to brace, as it has planned, for my all-out attack upon it. Nor is this missile assault a ruse or formality. Our javelineers of Agriania are not boys and old men pitching spikes (like the foe's skirmishers, whom our fellows have chased with ease from the field), but the most skilled and lethal missile troops in the world. They are mountain tribesmen, allies of the north, whose sons may not call themselves men until they have brought down with one cast a boar or a lion. Downwind, their best men can sling a dart two hundred yards; point-blank their casts routinely splinter two-inch planks.