Art of War. Sun TzuЧитать онлайн книгу.
pass of the Vale of Tempe, but the army sent thither under Themistocles speedily found that the position would be untenable because of the open sea to the right. With his matchless fleet Xerxes could land thousands in their rear, and Themistocles fell back. Only one point was known to exist where a stand might successfully be made – Thermopylae.
At Thermopylae itself King Leonidas of Sparta, with 300 picked men from his own city and a force of about 6,000 troops from other Grecian states, sprang forward and seized the pass. It was just about the end of June. Then one bright morning, around the 1st July, the assault began. The attempt was simply madness. Fresh and vigorous comrades filled the places of the weary men in the foremost ranks of Sparta, and the sun went down upon a scene of carnage for which Xerxes could find no excuse whatsoever. Yet he [Xerxes] orders the attack to be resumed on the morrow, and the morrow is but a repetition of the first day. Approached from the front, Leonidas was invincible. Was there no other way?
But treachery had been at work. On the third day the bitter tidings reached Leonidas that his heroic defence had been in vain. Treachery had turned the pass. The Persians were to his rear. There was yet time to escape. To Leonidas and his Spartans desertion of the position they had been detailed to defend meant dishonour. The Spartan king with his brave 300, with some 700 Thespians and a handful of Thebans, stood their ground. For a time it seemed as though nothing could stand before them, but with the setting of the sun, in the dust and grime of battle, the heroes of the little band started to fall one after another. Too honourable to surrender, but daring and defiant to the last, they ensured that their story would live on in legend. Only when the last of their life-blood of was drained was Thermopylae won. There was now nothing left to check the onward march of the Asiatic conqueror towards Athens.
Battle of Mantinea
(4 July, 362 BCE)
We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy’s few.
Nine years after Leuctra, Thebes and Sparta again met in battle far more important in point of numbers engaged and in its results. Leuctra is memorable as the first battle fought on the new tactical ideas introduced by Epaminondas; Mantinea as the last he ever fought, and the end of Theban supremacy.
About four miles south of Mantinea the mountains east and west seem to send out a long spur, forming a ridge across the plain, through which, about the middle, was a depression, and through this depression ran the road from Tegea to Mantinea. Along this ridge, facing south, was formed the army of Sparta and her allies, old King Agesilaus of Sparta being himself present. The entire force numbered probably about 22,000 men, of whom 2,000 were cavalry.
And now Epaminondas (who had been resting his men within the walls of Tegea after the rapid march required in the attempted surprise of Sparta and Mantinea) determined upon a pitched battle with his antagonists. Both armies were filled with long tried and hardy soldiers; both were confident of success, and eager for the coming battle.
Epaminondas marched squarely up the road towards the centre of the enemy’s position. He was aiming so as to march between the right flank of the Spartans and the mountains to the west. Here he halted his men, closed their ranks, and then, deliberately facing them to their right, toward the east that is, he commanded “ground arms;” and the wondering army of Lacedaemon came to the conclusion that Thebes did not mean to fight that day. At the same instant the signal “Take arms!” rang along the Theban line, and the ready soldiers seized shield and spear, awaiting the signal to advance.
And now, in haste and confusion, the allies of the Peloponnesus run to their places in ranks. In three minutes the Peloponnesian horsemen are tumbled over the plain or sent scattering off to the rear. Meanwhile the infantry has formed its lines, eight deep, and yet the men have barely got their places before the phalanx is upon them. The shock is irresistible. In vain Spartans and Mantineans throw themselves upon the wall of shields. Then the Theban cavalry falls upon the flank of the Mantineans, and at last, as the head of the phalanx bursts through the opposing masses, the Spartans had to turn, had to run. In consternation at the utter rout of Sparta they too fall back before triumphant foemen, and the whole army of the Peloponnesus is in full retreat.
But at what cost? Pressing forward in the ardor of pursuit, after killing a Spartan officer in hand-to-hand conflict, Epaminondas receives a thrusting spear full in the breast, and is brought to earth.
Epaminondas felt that his wound was mortal. Then he called for the two officers whom he most trusted, and to one of whom he probably intended to delegate the command. Both had been killed in the charge. “Then you must make peace with the enemy,” said he, for there was now no-one left who was competent to command. Then he directed the spear-head to be withdrawn, and with it the life went out of the greatest soldier Greece had yet known. With it the power of Thebes departed. Peace was signed on the basis of an independence of the separate states, and the era of Epaminondas was over.
Eurytos-Krater, c. 600 BCE.
Corinthian black-figure vase, 46 × 28.2 × 46.5 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Alexander at the Battle of Issus, detail from the Alexander Sarcophagus, late 4th century BCE.
Marble, 195 × 318 × 167 cm.
Istanbul Archeology Museum, Istanbul.
The Campaigns of Alexander the Great
(335–323 BCE)
Alexander III of Macedon, son of Philip II of Macedon and Olympia of Epirus, had been groomed since childhood for the political and military duties of a Macedonian prince. Furthermore, his mother had instilled in him the sense of being destined for great deeds – a conviction that would later become a crucial factor in Alexander’s motivation to create the largest empire the world had ever seen. In his youth he accompanied Philip II into battle and later proved himself to be an able leader when he efficiently quelled rebellions in the absence of his father who was away fighting the people of Byzantion. The opportunity to set everything in motion to achieve his destiny arose when Philip was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards, Pausanias, who may have acted because of an old grievance or due to being manipulated by Olympia or even Alexander himself. It comes as little surprise that Alexander, almost immediately following his proclamation as King of Macedon, rallied his troops to conquer the Persian Empire. Before he embarked on his historical conquest however, he set out to pacify greater Greece in order to secure the borders of his kingdom and leave a stable kingdom behind.
The Alexander Mosaic, from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, c. 150–100 BCE.
Mosaic, 582 × 313 cm.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
In 334 BCE, Alexander crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor, which required a large fleet of triremes and several crossings. His initial push into the Persian Empire was met with hardly any opposition as Darius III seemed to have thought of Alexander as little more than a nuisance. The first major engagement between the Greeks and Persians was fought at the banks of the Granicus River and led to a Persian defeat. This victory and Darius’ inaction subsequently led to many of Persia’s satrapies to surrender to the Macedonian king as soon as he was in sight of a city or township. Alexander continued his conquest of the Persian Empire and was, largely due to his own strategic abilities but also because of his enemies’ miscalculations and bad decisions, successful, defeating the Persians under Darius’ direct command in the Battles of Issus and Gaugamela and at the Persian Gates where the army made its last stand. After Darius’ death at the hands of his trusted eunuchs, Alexander declared himself the emperor of Persia and married one of the daughters of the deceased king. Alexander was at that time the monarch of three lands, as