Alexander the Great

This is a very inteligent thread...

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

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!

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. 

"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?

"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.

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:

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.

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.