Art of War. Sun TzuЧитать онлайн книгу.
It was already known from the so-called “Omens of Sargon and Naram-Sin” that Naram-Sin had made an expedition to Sinai in the course of his reign and had conquered the king of the country. The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this assertion and furnishes us with additional information with regard to the name of the conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.
Relief sculpture from the walls of the Beit-el-Wali temple of Ramesses II, New Kalabsha. Relief, c. 2134–661 BCE.
Ramesses II on his chariot at the Battle of Kadesh, relief sculpture from walls of the Beit-el-Wali temple of Ramesses II, New Kalabsha. Relief, c. 2134–661 BCE.
Battle of Kadesh
(1274 BCE)
He will conquer who has learnt the artifice of deviation. Such is the art of manoeuvring.
The Battle of Kadesh saw the Hittite empire of Muwatalli II face the Egyptian Empire under Ramesses II. After the first attack, Ramesses claims in his first account of the battle, the “Poem”, that he renewed the action the next morning. Describing the battle in brief, vague, and purely conventional terms, he represents Ramesses as victorious, then states that the Hittite king sued for peace in a humble letter to Ramesses. The Hittite king may possibly have proposed a cessation of hostilities, but this is doubtful. To state that in the battle of the second day, he “was on the point of perishing”, or to refer to “the surrender of Qodshu” (Kadesh) is pure romancing. For the first statement there is not a particle of evidence; and not even the Poem has the face to claim that Kadesh was captured. For sixteen years after this battle, Ramesses was obliged to maintain incessant campaigning in Syria, in order to stop the Hittite advance and wring from them a peace on equal terms. Meanwhile he evidently found compensation in the fame which his exploit at Kadesh brought him, for he had it recorded in splendid reliefs on all his greater temples and assumed among his titles in his royal titulary the proud epithet: “Prostrater of the lands and countries, while he was alone, having no other with him.”
These movements show that already in the 14th century BCE, the commanders of the time understood the value of placing troops advantageously before battle; that they further already comprehended the immense superiority to be gained by clever manoeuvers masked from the enemy; and that they had therefore, even at this remote date, made contributions to that supposed science, which was brought to such perfection by Napoleon the science of winning the victory before the battle.
Battle of Marathon
(August/September, 490 BCE)
Now a soldier’s spirit is keenest in the morning; by noonday it has begun to flag; and in the evening, his mind is bent only on returning to camp. A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods.
The Greeks had established colonies all along the coasts of Asia Minor, and through them much of the civilisation and something of the literature of Persia had drifted into the young confederacy. Presently Persia began to demand tribute of these colonies. The colonies resisted, and called for aid from the mother country, and a desultory warfare sprang up along the shores of Asia Minor. As a rule the Greeks were defeated. Persia’s people were numerous, the colonists few, and their troops untrained irregulars, but the ill-feeling between Greece and Persia was rapidly becoming intensified.
And now King Darius rallied all his energies for a final effort. For this purpose the force which was assembled on the great plain of Cilicia and in the adjacent waters was simply overpowering. Six hundred armed triremes or ships of war with three banks of oars, and full as many transports for horse and foot, were moored along the shores, and in the spring of 490 BCE, the greatest flotilla and the most numerous army ever yet massed, even by mighty Persia, set sail for Greece.
Late in August, unopposed, Median Datis disembarked his immense army upon the plain of Marathon, with the capital, Athens, only one day’s march away. Then it was that the great men of Athens sprang to the fore, and foremost among them was Miltiades, the same who had won the enmity of Darius years before. The ordinary formation of the Athenian phalanx of that day was in eight ranks, but in order to cover the Persian front Miltiades was compelled to reduce the depth to four ranks. His plan was daring. Placing Callimachus in command of the right wing with massed phalanxes in heavy charging columns, the Plataeans and two Athenian tribes being similarly disposed on the left, he deployed his remaining troops between them in long, slender line of battle.
It must have been about three o’clock on the afternoon of the 10th (probably) of August. Thousands of the Persian soldiery were dozing. Suddenly there comes a chorus of warning yells from the open plain, suddenly the camp rings from right to left with the wild blare of horns and trumpets sounding the alarm. There, midway to Pentelicus, with burnished helmet, shield, and spear, with ringing war-cry and serried ranks that sweep the full length of those of Asia, with perfect alignment and terrific impetus, for the first time in her history Greece comes, charging at a run. Leaving camp, leaving all behind them, bent only on the annihilation of that daring foe, the Persian army of the centre is artfully enticed out upon the open plain. All too late Datis sees the fatal blunder. North and south the spearmen of Plataea and Athens have closed upon the surging mass of his best and bravest. On three sides the resistless infantry of Greece hems in the hapless Persians, and now the carnage begins.
Marathon checked the hopes and schemes of Darius at once, sent the discomfited fleet and army back to the shores of Asia, and roused the valour and enthusiasm of Greece to the highest pitch. For ten valuable and much-improved years the shores of Greece saw no more of the Persian invaders.
Persian Warriors, from the Archer’s Frieze in Darius’ palace in Susa, c. 510 BCE.
Glazed bricks.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Jacques Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, 1814.
Oil on canvas, 395 × 531 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Battle of Thermopylae
(11 August, 480 BCE)
The different measures suited to the nine varieties of ground: […] When there is no place of refuge at all, it is desperate ground. […] On desperate ground, I would proclaim to my soldiers the hopelessness of saving their lives.
After Marathon, King Darius seems to have been stunned by the force of the blow; the aim of his life became the utter humiliation and conquest of Greece.
Darius had named as his successor his younger son, Xerxes, and confided to him the execution of his plans. Just five years after Marathon, Xerxes took up the sceptre. Then Mardonius became one of his chief counsellors and urged him to set forth on the march to Greece.
Twelve hundred ships of war formed his fleet and over a million men his army. The campaign, thus begun, was made further memorable by two great feats in engineering – the bridging of the Hellespont by means of boats, and the digging of a ship canal through the Isthmus back of Mount Athos.
Just at sunrise one balmy spring morning in the year 480 BCE, the great army of Xerxes began the crossing, the fighting force taking the upper bridge, the trains, cattle, and camp-followers the lower; and for seven days and nights, lashed actually into the utmost rapidity of march, the soldiery poured over in ceaseless stream.
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