alexander

Leadership Process Two: Building Alliances 71
15: Battle at Gaugamela
How, you might ask, can destroying an army build alliances?
The Greek and Persian cultures could not be merged while a
Persian army could be fielded. Sometimes you have to destroy
to build.
After winning battles at Granicus and Issus, conquering
Tyre, and then wintering in Egypt, Alexander swept east
toward the Persian heartland—modern-day Iran and Iraq.
By the spring of 331 B.C., Darius had assembled a formidable
army, whose size is variously misreported for propaganda
by ancient authors. It is universally acknowledged
that it was much larger than the Greek army because, upon
engagement, the Persian flank extended well beyond Alexander’s.
Upon arriving at the artificially leveled field of battle,
Alexander’s soldiers confronted an army that was fatigued
from having stood to all night. The battle was met with an
oblique line, in order to give the smaller Greek army an
opportunity to create and exploit a breech in the line, which
is exactly what Alexander did. He and his Companions (his
elite cavalrymen) personally chased Darius from the field (a
story made famous by the image on the mosaic tile floor at
Pompeii), causing a general rout even among the much
larger Persian army. The chase after the rout continued well
into the night. (Reports of casualties vary, at one extreme
reporting a loss of 500 soldiers for Alexander but 100,000
for Darius, which further supports the extreme disparity in
size between the two armies.) Darius escaped, but he was