Alexander : a history of the origin and growth of the art of war from ...

XVIII.OFF FOR ASIA. B. C. 334.Alexander probably possessed all the existing information with regard tothe topography and resources of Persia ; but this only reached as far as the Euphrates.Beyond this all was guess-work or dream. On what he knew hefounded careful calculations. He was heavily in debt, but he started withthirty thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry and a month's supplies. He hadno fleet worth the mention. Antipater was left at home with twelve thousandfoot and fifteen hundred horse to keep order in Hellas. The Persian kingdomwas enormous in extent, population and wealth ; but it lacked cohesion. Eachsatrap was a sort of independent monarch, and jealous of all his neighbors.This condition greatly facilitated Alexander's plans. Persia was ripe for a fall.The army marched along the coast, in twenty days reached the Hellespont, andcrossed to Asia Minor in safety. Alexander visited Troy and offered due sacrificesto the manes of Homeric heroes.In narrating the life o£ Alexander two extreme theorieshave been enunciated. The expedition against Persia hasbeen treated as the act of a half-mad adventurer, a soldier offortune, whose erratic visions were moulded into action by awild, unreasoning will and absolute power over his small monarchy,and whose success was due to hairbrained courage andproverbial good luck. It has been treated as a deliberate,well-digested scheme, having as a basis a profound knowledgeof all the countries, governments, resources, geographical limitationsand military power he was to encounter ; about suchknowledge, in fact, as Napoleon possessed himself of beforeentering on the Russian campaign. Each of these extremetheories is far from being exact ; but granting the abnormalgood fortune which was pleased to wait on Alexander's intelligence,and on his courage, moral and physical, there is no