The new army raised by Darius was almost exclusively made up of cavalry drawn from the centre and east of the empire. (What infantry there was, was of poor quality.) Arrian reported an unbelievable total of 400,000 horsemen: a more realistic estimate is 37,000, still probably five times as many as Alexander could muster. Darius took his men north into Assyria, and positioned his army where the cavalry could be used most effectively on the plain of Gaugamela, in the foothills of the Zagros mountains. Here Alexander followed him to arrive in September 331. It was clearly the most frightening situation he had yet faced. After resting his men, he drew up his army as before, the infantry in the centre, the Macedonian cavalry on the right, and the Thessalians on the left.
Battle was joined on 1 October when Alexander began moving his cavalry around the flank of the Persians. They counter-attacked and Alexander had to feed in more and more troops to contain them. As the Persians responded by sending yet more troops, Alexander finally saw what he had been waiting for, a gap opening between the Persian left and its centre. Rushing his Companions forward with infantry supporting them on each side, Alexander forced his way through the gap. Within a few moments the state of the battle was transformed as the Persian army was broken into two. Once again Darius fled with Alexander after him in a hot pursuit that lasted 30 kilometres before he called it off. As the news of Darius’ flight filtered through, his army, still fighting well on the right flank, disintegrated behind him. It was another crushing victory, and Alexander could now rightly claim the title ‘Lord of Asia’.
The Macedonians were now in the rich heartlands of the empire with no effective opposition to them left. The army moved southwards across the Mesopotamian plains to Babylon and here, as in Egypt, Alexander was welcomed as a liberator from Persian rule. The city was wealthy, its treasures were surrendered to him, and the army relaxed in the sybaritic surroundings of the richest and most sophisticated of the cities of the east. Then there was a march of triumph on the great cities of the empire, now undefended against Alexander’s armies. Susa, the second capital of the empire, surrendered without a fight, its satrap coming out to meet Alexander with racing camels and elephants as preliminary gifts. Inside the city awaited gold and silver bullion amounting to 40,000 talents. (These are vast sums; just two or three talents was enough to make a man very wealthy.) Included was loot taken from Greece 150 years before and a hundred tons of purple cloth. This was only the beginning. The army now moved south-east, over snow-capped mountains to Persepolis, the spiritual centre of the Achaemenid empire.
The riches of Persepolis had been accumulated over centuries and were vast. In Darius’ bedchamber in his great palace alone, there were 8,000 talents of gold. Alexander now left his men free to loot, and the city was stripped of its treasures so effectively that its modern excavators have not found a single sizeable piece of gold or silver. A great column of camels and pack animals took off the spoils. Some were sent back to Susa, others stayed with the army. In total perhaps 120,000 talents of treasure was taken, a revenue that it would have taken the Athenian empire at its height 300 years to collect in tribute. Only the great palace of Xerxes was left intact, but in May 330 this too was sacked. One legend says that an Athenian courtesan, by the name of Thais, egged on the Macedonian leaders with whom she had been drinking to fire the palace in revenge for the destruction of Athens. Archaeologists working on the site this century have found the blackened remains of the roof timbers.
Alexander was now obsessed with the capture of Darius. The king had taken refuge in Ecbatana, the capital of the Medes. Alexander followed him there and in a series of forced marches pursued him eastwards. As Darius fled his position weakened. He had never visited the east of his empire before, and the local satraps would give no allegiance to a man so tainted by defeat. One of them, Bessus, satrap of Bactria and a leading cavalry commander at Gaugamela, finally took him captive. As Alexander’s cavalry moved in, Darius was stabbed and left to die. Alexander arrived shortly afterwards to take possession of the last of the Achaemenids. The body was sent back for burial in Persepolis. Alexander had achieved his victory, not least because he could claim a physical transfer of power from a dead and defeated enemy to his own over-sized personality.
World History
