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‘Take command of the left of the cavalry and do it,’ Alexander said. Never one to do things by halves.
I saluted, gathered my reins and rode for it.
Erygius was busy packing his men into the prince’s giant wedge when I rode up.
‘Erygius – Alexander says I’m to take all four flank troops and go for the Sacred Band.’
If the old Lesbian was angered to be supplanted, he didn’t make a fuss. His trumpeter called and the men behind him began to move – cursing to have to change and change again, something all soldiers hate – and Erygius turned his horse.
‘We’re going to charge the Sacred Band? Is he insane?’
‘All we have to do is pin them in place,’ I said.
Then Erygius nodded. ‘I see.’ He knelt on his horse’s back and peered under his hand through the thick dust.
‘I’m going to go ahead with . . .’ I looked around, found that Polystratus had followed me. My men, of course, were part of Alexander’s great wedge. ‘Polystratus here. Bring the whole body in a column of troops around the left – see the big fir tree by the river? Make that your left marker. I’ll meet you there – or just keep coming up the stream. See?’
Erygius peered and nodded. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said.
I leaned forward on to Poseidon’s neck, and we were off like a bolt from a stone-thrower.
We went across the back of the army – by coincidence, across the backs of the two taxeis that I had helped to raise and equip. The indecisiveness of the Thebans had probably saved their lives, and they were clamouring to fight. In front of the Thebans, three or four men in brilliant armour were arguing.
The Sacred Band – the finest soldiers in the world – were standing in confident ranks, at the far left of our line. Just three hundred men. Three hundred Olympic athletes, more like. Even a stade away, they looked noble.
More important, they were about to move to my right – opening a gap.
This is war. What is as plain as the nose on your face becomes complex and fraught with peril. Men make decisions in haste, with limited information, surrounded by death. The Thebans decided to move the Sacred Band to the place that was threatened – an absurd decision. Philip decided to take his best troops uphill into the enemy without support – then was too proud to ask for help . . .
Alexander identified the one weakness in the enemy line, worked through a way to exploit it and acted.
Erygius reached the foot of the hill by the tree, two hundred companions in a tight column behind him.
Alexander’s wedge was formed. He raised his sword. I waved to Erygius. He led the cavalry up the hill in a column. And he was smart enough to start echeloning them forward into line even as he came.
I rode over to the left file of the newest taxeis. ‘I’m about to take my cavalry through here,’ I said. ‘Can I have another half a stade?’
The file leaders started to call out.
The taxeis commander ran towards me.
The Sacred Band commander noticed me. He looked right at me. We were three hundred strides apart, but I swear I saw his eyes widen.
Alexander’s charge struck the gap in the centre. I saw it happen – in some ways, I saw more of it than I would have seen if I’d been at his shoulder.
Erygius had the line formed.
The taxiarch came to my right boot. ‘No orders in an hour! What’s happening?’
‘Alexander has just won the battle,’ I said. ‘All we have to do is keep the Thebans from wi
‘They’ll killmy boys.’ He looked at me – curiously; he was speaking as one veteran to another.
‘Only for a minute,’ I said.
Erygius was almost up to me. ‘Stay with the horse!’ I roared to the infantrymen. They all knew me – I’d handed most of them their first helmets. ‘Hold the Sacred Band for a minute, and your names will live for ever!’
One of my best speeches. They roared, and to our front, the Sacred Band commander realised that he’d just given up the safe ground on the flank and now his army had no place to make a stand.
I got my horse into my place on the right of the centre troop. ‘Rhomboid left!’ I roared, and my trumpeters called it.
The infantry started forward – just fast enough that the Sacred Band no longer had time to march back on to their ground.
When you are sparring, there comes a moment when you miss a parry – it can be dreadful, because there can be several heartbeats during which you know how much pain is coming. When two boys who hate each other are fighting with wooden swords, there can actually be time to cringe. I’ve done it.
That’s how the Sacred Band must have felt.
Our phalanx was well ordered; morale was good, the troopers down behind their small shields, their long spears licking away at the enemy, and they marched forward briskly, with flutes playing to mark the time.
My cavalry were slow off the mark – the product of too many formation changes and wheels, so that the slower men were behind the manoeuvre and the best men were a
There’s not enough papyrus growing on the Nile to give me space to write everything I want to say about the drill of cavalry, but all the priests in the world couldn’t describe the depths of my ignorance at seventeen. I didn’t know then that there’s a moment in a real fight where all manoeuvre goes out of the window, and the good men fight and the poor men cower behind them.
So instead of ignoring the debacle, I rode over, halted the column and gave them time to form.
It was the sort of decision young people make, when they are determined to do a thing well – correctly. The way they’ve been trained, and know it should be done.
It was a decision that cost a hundred men their lives. Because when our eager, well-formed, well-drilled farm boys hit the Sacred Band, those killers cut them down as a slave cuts weeds in the garden. I have never, before or since, seen anything like it. Our front ranks rippled and moved – rippled and moved – and it took me a moment to realise that the file leaders were being cut down, replaced by the men behind them, cut down in their turn . . .
I’m sure it didn’t happen this way – but in memory, there’s a fine mist of blood over the whole thing. A man was dying every time my heart beat, and my heart was beating pretty fast.
I can make an argument that my delay with the cavalry gave us the battle – the Sacred Band focused on the Macedonian pikemen in front of them, and ignored the much greater threat of my four troops of companions.
But that’s what Aristotle called a ‘false rationalisation’. After the fact, one can excuse anything – and weak men do. But here, beneath his tomb, in the comfort of the gods, I say that I got a generation of Pellan farm boys killed because I wanted my ranks dressed more neatly, and I knew it. No one ever mentioned it to me. I never even saw an accusation from them, the poor sods. They saw me as a hero.
Well, well. I’m an old man, and look! I’m maudlin. Cheer up. We’re coming to some good parts, and your pater’s in most of ’em.
We went forward at a trot, in a column of half-squadrons. The earlier shift of ground by the Sacred Band left a broad alley on their left, between their end file leader and the marsh that had been covering their flank. We trotted into the open ground, even as the farm boys to our right died like butchered animals. We could hear them die.
But they didn’t give much more ground than the space left when men fell. That’s what I meant before, when I said that sometimes inexperience is everything. They knew the cavalry was coming, they’d been told to hold for a minute, and as far as they knew, this is what happened when hoplites fought.