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

V.CYRUS AND DARIUS. B. C. 558-485.The great warriors preceding Cyrus are mere traditions. The first to leavelessons for us was the founder of the Persian Empire.The greatest conquerormay not be a great captain. It is what the former does which makes himgreat ; it is how the latter does it which gives him rank. Cyrus began his campaignsby attacking Croesus, and was the first to employ a strategic surprise.At Thymbra liis battle tactics were novel. Croesus vastly outnumbered andoutflanked him. Cyrus formed his troops in five lines, so marshaled that whenCroesus' wings wheeled in on his flanks he could take these very wings in reverse,and at the same time poured into a gap in Croesus' line and defeated him.He then turned on Babylon and captured it by diverting the water of the Euphrates,a gigantic work, and following its bed under the walls into the city.Cyrus left the local or civil governments of the peoples he conquered unchangedin the hands of the old satraps, merely retaining the military control himself,a plan later followed with great success by Alexander.Cyrus conquered Asiaas far as Seythia beyond the Jaxartes, the natural limit to a kingdom.Afterhim, Darius bridged the Bosphorus and Danube, and moved with seven hundredthousand men against the Scythians of Europe. These, by exceptionally ableand interesting natural strategy, forced him to retire.Prior to the age of Cyrus, in the sixth century beforeChrist, there is to be found nothing in the history of warwhich yields lessons to the soldier of to-day. Althoughinterchange of armed invasion, as famine or the lust ofplunder induced one or other to j^rey upon the territory ofits neighbor, yet in their wars we see no principle whatevergoverning military conduct, except the rule of numbers.among the nations of remote antiquity existence was a constantNeitherthe Egyptians, Jews, Persians, Babylonians, Assyrians,nor Indians show anything like a defined military standardof campaign or battle. The conduct of war lacked every