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

470 CYROPOLIS.on every side, and nearly all perished. Thus five cities weretaken and destroyed in two days. This fatal reverse waschiefly due to the fact that the barbarians had committed theimprudence of discontinuing the desultory warfare in whichalone they were preeminent, and in taking to one in whichthey were no match whatever for the Macedonians.Thence Alexander moved on Cyropolis, which Craterus hadaheady blockaded. The stoutest hearted and most notableofthe barbarians had gathered there, and the place was surroundedby so strong and high a wall, that it coidd not betaken by a coup de main. Some fifteen thousand soldiers,and many of the lesser chiefs, had rendezvoused there.While Alexander was preparing his engines to batter downthe walls, a work of some days, as their heavy timbers wereusually cut on the ground, he noticed that a small confluentof the Jaxartes, on which the city was built and which ranunder the city wall,— or, according to Arrian, a small channelwhich was full only during the freshet season, — was dried upto such a degree as to afford a passage into the town. Hesent the Companions, the shield-bearing guards, the archersand Agrianians to the nearest gates, and he himself headed asmall party ; and, while the attention of the inhabitants wastaken up on the farther side ofthe city by the severity of thefire from the engines and light troops, which he ordered tobe redoubled in vigor, he secretly made his way along thechannel into the town, on the other side, and speedily forcedthe gates at the place where he had stationed his corps (T elite.Through these gates the expectant Macedonians rushed in,and captured the city. But the barbarians would yet notyield.fight for their lives.Though they saw that the city was gone, they mustA fierce struggle ensued, in which Alexanderwas again wounded by a sling-stone on the head andneck, and Craterus by an arrow. The number of wounded