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Both Companions and Foot Companions were troops for open ground and weather. The Companions' horses, like all ancient cavalry, had no nailed horseshoes, and the leather boots which were slipped over their feet in icy conditions soon wore as thin as the hoof itself. But rough ground abounded in Greece, Thrace and Asia, and Philip was too varied a pla
The Shield Bearers were troops with two functions. Because the Foot Companions wore their small shields on their left shoulders, their right flank would have been exposed if the Shield-bearer had not been stationed on it and ordered to guard it tightly with the broad circular shields from which they took their name. They served, then, as part of the Foot Companion's block, linking them to the wing of horsemen. From carvings, it seems that as front line troops they wore crested helmets, metal greaves and breastplates and fought with swords and, presumably, spears. But they also served as shock troops on night raids, hill climbs and forced marches of more than thirty miles a day, and the clear evidence of the histories confirms that they were lighter and faster than the Foot Companions; they had no sarissas, of course, and they probably left their heavy shields and body armour behind when detailed to do the work of commandos. As dual-purpose troops, their fitness was amazing. When many of them were over sixty years old, they could still cover thirty miles through desert in one summer's day; they were first up the ladders into besieged cities, or mountain forts in the Hindu Kush, first to savage the elephants and ruin the Persians' scythed chariots. After Alexander's death, they returned from the road to retirement and decided his Successors' grandest battles by showing improvised Foot Companions how their lines could be hacked apart by men old enough to be their grandfathers; they were drilled for war and nothing else, and they loved it.
Archers and slingers for long-range provocation; arrow-shooting catapults for cover and the clearing of city walls; Companions for piercing charges; Foot Companions for routing broken infantry; Shield Bearers for tough missions and for locking the sarissas and cavalry into a solid and well-flanked battle front; Philip had trained the first balanced standing army in the Balkans, and he could add to it his foreign subjects, whether the heavy Thessalian cavalry in their diamond-shaped formations, the light-armed horsemen and javelin-throwers of the Thracian tribes, or the hired Greek infantry who served against their fellow-Greeks without any show of reluctance. But balance was pointless without the freedom to campaign on demand, and here was the last, though not the least, of Philip's i
In the Greek states armies were mostly conscripted from citizens as and when they were needed, and because the citizens were also farmers the army could not go to war in the months of the harvest. Only in Sparta, where a thousand aristocrats had ended by tyra
'He does not distinguish,' complained one of Philip's enemies, 'between summer and winter; he sets no time of the year aside for inactivity.' Philip's army was not only balanced, it was also backed by enough slaves to make it mobile. In late autumn, Alexander had hurried it through Greece; the following spring, in the month of the harvest, he would direct it up to the Danube, across to Illyria, south again for vengeance in Greece on a march as brisk and varied as any of his father's. The army had only lacked one element, a leader of natural genius; at the age of twenty-one, Alexander would show that his invincibility might, after all, be a theme of substance.
CHAPTER FIVE
If Greece seemed submissive, there were still old scores to be settled in Philip's legacy among the barbarian kingdoms of the European north. Philip had played one Thracian king against another beyond Macedonia's north-east borders and settled an impressive network of new towns through modem Bulgaria as far north as the river Danube and the Black Sea. He had controlled most of the huge rough hinterland of his road to Asia and enjoyed the rich rewards of its royal tithes. It had been the most brilliant of his conquests, but it was not complete: three autumns before his death, Philip had been returning from a conquest on the banks of the Danube with a rich plunder of cattle, girls, small boys and brood mares when the free-spirited tribe of Triballians in Thrace raided his lines, removed all the spoils and wounded him badly in the thigh. The losses were especially a
For the first time he was very much on his own. Antipater was left in Macedonia and Parmenion was probably in Asia with other proven generals. Alexander had twice had experience of Thracian tribes and landscape; he would now overcome them by an expert use of varied weaponry, the main principle of his military success. All Philip's units were brought into use, except for the Mounted Scouts with their two-handed lances, for they were already in Asia, where the open plains suited them. Only one unit was added as Alexander's own, and though small, it was very significant. During Philip's lifetime, he had privately befriended the King of the Agrianians, a mountain tribe on the upper Strymon river near Macedonia's northern border; a thousand or so of their javelin-throwers now came with their king to join Alexander's skirmishing-troops, and as a foil to Philip's Shield Bearers, they would show most admirable ferocity. The Ghurkhas of Alexander's army, they are the one point at which he already excelled his father's balanced armoury
The march was pla