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

340 THE LOSSES.fill slaughter ensued.For the Macedonians were enraged atthe obstinacy of the city's defense and the cruelties practicedon Macedonian prisoners captured by the Tyrians, who hadtortured and put them to death on the walls in full sight ofthe army, and thrown the bodies into the sea, thus deprivingthem of the rights of burial. They had even cast Alexander'sheralds into the sea from the top of the walls. Overeight thousand men were slain. Two thousand Tyrians, sayCurtius and Diodorus, were hung or nailed to gibbets on theseashore. Of the population, Alexander pardoned all whohad fled into the temple of Hercules, among whom were theking and many prominent officials ; but sold into slavery therest of the Tyrians and mercenary troops, some thirty thousandmen. The women, children and old men had mostlybeen previously sent to Carthage, their, as it proved, ungratefulcolony. In the assault, but twenty of the shield-bearingguards were killed. During the siege, four hundred Macedonianshad lost their lives. No doubt between three and fourthousand had been wounded,— a somewhat higher rate of lossthan that of Grant at Vicksburg. Grote deems this numbermuch too small. A part of the population is said to haveescaped by connivance with the Phoenicians on the fleet, andto have later returned to Tp-e. Curtius says fifteen thousandwere thus saved.The cruel fate of Tyre was but the usual outcome of thesieges of antiquity. Inexcusable, if you like, but readilymatched by the similar horror at Magdeburg in the ThirtyYears' War. If, after sixteen centuries of Christianity, thirtythousand men, women and children, out of a population ofthirty-six thousand, could be butchered in the name of religion,the less criticism passed on the so-called cruelties ofAlexander the better. Masses have no soul. The armies ofolden times demanded such holocausts.Even such a king as