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

454 WHAT THE ARMY WAS.Oriental recruits, but that they were such is altogether probable; and a corps of mounted archers was organized. Importantchanges in the foot were made after the arrival of heavyreinforcements to the army in Bactria. Alexander recruitedaltogether a considerable amount of cavalry, — the Orientalsoldier being, as a rule, better suited to this arm of the servicethan to infantry duty. The army was beginning toassmne that new character which Alexander had always designedto aive to his vast kino^dom. It had consisted alone ofMacedonians, Greeks and European barbarians. He now incorporatedin it Orientals to a high percentage, and began tosubject them to Greek training and habits. For war, Macedoniandiscipline was alone available.In Alexander's army stood side by side both the civil andmilitary administrations. We look with astonishment uponwhat this army did, and imagine that it could not have performedits extraordinary work, except by being divested ofevery superfluity, and brought down to the scant proportionsof a mere fighting machine. And yet, with this army marchedthe Court, with all its ceremonial and trappings, the directoryof the home and Persian governments, the treasury officialsand other civil functionaries, as well as the ordnance equipmentswith their special officers, the engineers, the quartermasterand commissary departments and the hospital corps.These latter alone, with the changes of climate as the armypassed over its extraordinary course, from the tropical heat ofthe desert plains to the arctic snows of the highest mountains,must have called for endless labor. Tradesmen and sutlersaccompanied the army, speculators, men of science, litterateurs,philosophers, many guests of the Court, priests and augurs, andsurely a great number of women. It was a moving capital.All the more wonder that the king could control this vast caravan,and from it choose, at a moment's notice, a force which