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Topic: Alexander the Great Posted: 14-Sep-2004 at 10:47 |
Alexander the Great turned back during his battle?
Was it b/c he had already conquered Darius?
Edited by wesgsbabygurl
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cattus
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Posted: 14-Sep-2004 at 11:01 |
which battle?
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Dari
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Posted: 15-Sep-2004 at 04:59 |
He likes his back turned. I think. I just wish they killed Alexander at Issus.
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Yiannis
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Posted: 15-Sep-2004 at 05:11 |
This is a very inteligent thread...
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BattleGlory
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Posted: 15-Sep-2004 at 20:57 |
I can only guess that you mean why did he turn back after conquering only part of India. For one thing, he didn't turn back in the middle of a battle. His men refused to go any further and none of his exhortions had any effect on them at all. He was thus required to turn back to his empire.
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Maciek
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Posted: 16-Sep-2004 at 06:07 |
HI BG!! It's long time I havn't see You!! I think this whole thread is some kind of mistake... strange questions and no explanations... But if such subject had been raised we can maybe find some better point to discuss?? For example Alexandrian excavations under... water. Has anyone heard about it?? here are very nice links to mure information about it:
http://baheyeldin.com/egypt/alexandria-egypt-archeology.html
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Dari
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Posted: 16-Sep-2004 at 16:53 |
Originally posted by BattleGlory
I can only guess that you mean why did he turn back after conquering only part of India. For one thing, he didn't turn back in the middle of a battle. His men refused to go any further and none of his exhortions had any effect on them at all. He was thus required to turn back to his empire. |
No...
And that's not what I was talking about. Alexander was only a great conqueror, nothing more. He is no great man, in anything else. He slaughtered thousands upon thousands of people. Ransacked many parts of India that he managed to invade and devesated the Iranian peoples with his attacks on their culture and religion.
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BattleGlory
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Posted: 16-Sep-2004 at 19:34 |
Sorry, Dari, I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to the original poster.
Good to see you again, too, Maciek! The ranks of Alexander haters were swelling without anyone to help me hold them back!
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Yiannis
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Posted: 17-Sep-2004 at 03:11 |
Originally posted by Dari
. Alexander was only a great conqueror, nothing more. |
He was a lot more than that. It's hard to understand what he did with our modern-day mindset but I'll list a few in brief (and yes ok, I'll acknowledge that these are important mainly for the "western" world but they ultimately affected the entire globe).
So Alexander:
I'm sure there're many more, but these are the ones I can think of right now...
Edited by Yiannis
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The basis of a democratic state is liberty. Aristotle, Politics
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Dari
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Posted: 17-Sep-2004 at 14:41 |
No. I'm fairly sure that nothing Alexander did to Iranian people is greatly loved, and they made up a great part of that world at the time. So I don't think so. That's pure Western belief.
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Maciek
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Posted: 30-Sep-2004 at 01:23 |
Well Dari - first of all don't You think that modern politic changes a view of history? Just look to the sources - Alex really whether You like it or not - fought with enemies armies not civilians - except few exemples. I'm sure that if he didn't use the moment of weakness in Persia Greece would be invaded next time and finally they could loose their city-states for good.
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Lannes
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Posted: 01-Oct-2004 at 16:37 |
Originally posted by warhead
That was not my point, obviously, it shows that his tactic did not pass on and outlive him, thus it has little affect on military strategy of the future. |
Incorrect, it did outlive Alexander(for instance, Pyrrhus modeled his army after Alexanders'). The latter day Macedonian armies that failed so miserably against Rome failed becuase they had reverted back to the pre-Phillipos tactic of using the phalanx of the main arm, due to a lack of cavalry that was able to be fielded.
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τρέφεται δέ, ὤ Σώκρατης, ψυχὴ τίνι;
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Lannes
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Posted: 01-Oct-2004 at 16:43 |
Originally posted by warhead
That was not my point, obviously, it shows that his tactic did not pass on and outlive him, thus it has little affect on military strategy of the future. |
Incorrect, the tactics Alexander used did outlive him(for example, Pyrrhus modlede his army and tactics after Alexanders'). However, the reverting back to the old usage of the phalanx as the main army occurred due to later day Macedonian armies not being able to field the amount of cavalry Alexander had.
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τρέφεται δέ, ὤ Σώκρατης, ψυχὴ τίνι;
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warhead
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Posted: 03-Oct-2004 at 20:47 |
"Revolutionized the way war was being fought (with the help of his father Philippos). The idea of heavy infantry acting as anvil that holds the enemy front and heavy cavalry acting as hammer giving the decisive strike was unique. Moreover the combination of arms he employed (heavy and psiloi troops plus siege engineers) and raw model logistics (with the exception of the Gedrosia incident) "
This claim has little basis, this warfare only became the dominant fighting in the middle east and greece for a century or so until the Romans defeated them all with its more flexible legion which had a complete different different tactic. And how exactly are modern warfare effected by this?
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Yiannis
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Posted: 04-Oct-2004 at 10:02 |
The Romans have defeated a tottaly different army organization where the phalangites were used as attacking force rather than the "anvil" that I described above. Absolutelly no comparison between Philip's/Alexander's army and the army that was defeated by the Romans.
Napoleon and Frederich mentioned Alexander as the rawmodel they used for their battlefield innovations.
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warhead
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Posted: 05-Oct-2004 at 13:41 |
"The Romans have defeated a tottaly different army organization where the phalangites were used as attacking force rather than the "anvil" that I described above. Absolutelly no comparison between Philip's/Alexander's army and the army that was defeated by the Romans."
That was not my point, obviously, it shows that his tactic did not pass on and outlive him, thus it has little affect on military strategy of the future.
"Napoleon and Frederich mentioned Alexander as the rawmodel they used for their battlefield innovations. "
Napoleon mentioned a lot of commanders he copied, and Alexander was not the most important one, and how exactly did Napoleon adopt Alexander's organization and tactic? Learning some of his maneuvre does not "revolutionize" war.
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Evildoer
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Posted: 06-Oct-2004 at 18:10 |
Alexanders' tactics did outlive him. The extensive use of cavalry and skirmishers were implimented into Greek armies of later stage you see. Before him, the Greek armies were mainly made up of hoplites with skirmishers etc as only secondary troops, with few exceptions... (the island battle where Athenian mercenary Peltasts murdered Spartan hoplites...)
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Lannes
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Posted: 06-Oct-2004 at 20:33 |
My response to warhead's last post appeared a few posts up due to yesterday's glitch. But I'll go ahead and post it again for an easier access:
warhead wrote:
That was not my point, obviously, it shows that his tactic did not pass on and outlive him, thus it has little affect on military strategy of the future. | | |
Incorrect, the tactics Alexander used did outlive him(for example, Pyrrhus modlede his army and tactics after Alexanders'). However, the reverting back to the old usage of the phalanx as the main army occurred due to later day Macedonian armies not being able to field the amount of cavalry Alexander had.
Edited by Lannes
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τρέφεται δέ, ὤ Σώκρατης, ψυχὴ τίνι;
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warhead
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Posted: 06-Oct-2004 at 21:11 |
I don't see whats incorrect. The point is that his "renovation" eventually died in less than a century thus its impact on future is limited.
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Yiannis
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Posted: 07-Oct-2004 at 03:09 |
Warhead, you're playing with words just for the sake of argument.
As Lannes correctly noticed, the later Greek armies were not able (for a number of reasons) to field effective cavalry units (not in quantity nor in quality). They relied once again in infantry, and lost.
However, the lesson is recorded in history and Alexander's tactics and innovations (always being aggressive, seizing the opportunity, mobility vs. numbers, importance of siege train, state of the art logistics service etc) were examined and employed throughout history. Even the defeat of the later armies was an important lesson because it has shown how correct Alexander was when he employed a combination of arms.
Now, we can stay here and discuss untill the cows come home, but that will not change the truth. He was a military genius able to overcome a series of obstacles and win all battles and sieges he undertook and that's why we continue to debate about him even today.
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The basis of a democratic state is liberty. Aristotle, Politics
Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin
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