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

512 STARTING FOR INDIA.Egypt eaeli furnished its contingent ; and Curtius says thathis total effective, a year later, on the Indus, was one hundredand twenty thousand under the colors. In this armywere all manner of soldiers, horse and foot from Arachotia,the Parapamisus, Bactria, Sogdiana, Scytliians and Daans,all showing a marked fealty to the conqueror, if fui-nishingelements perhaps difficult to control.The force was no longer an Hellenic army. It was anarmy of Orientals with but a leaven of the old Macedonianelement, moulded into the Macedonian organization andcurbed by the Macedonian discipline.That Alexander wasable to weld these diverse elements into a shape which gavethe residts he thereafter obtained from it ; that he dared totrust himself and his work to a body so largely alien ;that hewas able to fightsuch a battle as the one against Porus andwin it, speaks more than volumes for this wonderful man'sorganizing ability and self-confidence.But Alexander neverfor a moment doubted his ability todo anything to which heput his hand. If his vanity was overstrained, he possessedthe complementary virtue ofself-reliance as perhaps no otherman has ever had it.The force left with Amyntas in Bactria, was, in the presentcondition of the land, abundantly able to hold the restlesstribes north of the Caucasus in subjection. Alexander himselfset out from Zariaspa at the end of. spring, with perhapssomething over one hundred thousand men. The roads werenow better than when the army toiled over the mountains twoyears back, and provisions had been accumulated in abundance.A ten days' march, it is probable by the shorter passof Kushan, took him across the mountains to Alexandria adCaucasum. Here he found good cause to be disappointed atthe management of affairs, and deemed it essential to makesundry clianges in government. Neiloxinus, the commander