Yes indeed. And Marcus has already appropriated the example of Waterloo – an "arsey" escape if ever there was one.Efstathios wrote: If if if....
And if the ships of the allies had fallen into bad weather while going to Normady...
That, though, belies an underlying gestalt operating here. That being the picture that Persian armies were huge conglomerates of all sorts of nationalities, hugely untrained and unwieldy – an impression cast by Herodotus, poured by Xenophon and polished (to a fine shine) by Macedonians.
One needs not ever to forget that the history we read is written by the victors. Almost all the literary evidence we have is Greek.This is not to say it should be discounted. Far from it. That it should be read with far less "wide eyed innocence" will do. That it seems rarely to suffer such scrutiny is disconcerting.
As far as the "Persian Army" is concerned, there was only that which a Greek City State would be quite familiar with: a 1,000 strong King's bodyguard and another 9,000 (or so) from various Iranian tribes. These made up the supposed 10,000 "Immortals". There too were some 1-1,500 cavalry (more generally 1,000). These were the "Royal Squadron". That was about it. This was the army "that goes about with the King". As for the rest, these were satrapal forces which were used for the policing of the empire's satrapies. Alexander's 1,500 here, 800 there and 2,500 over here will indicate their sizes.They are amply demonstrated at the accession of Darius when those provinces which rebelled provided stiff resistance. A cogent example of satrapal forces is given by Xenophon, describing Tissaphernes' ride to his king (during Cyrus' rebellion) with – instructively – 500 cavalry. Evidently, Cyrus had appropriated the available military rsources on his anabasis from Anatolia.
The disconcerting fact here is that Persia conquered Asia with an army somewhat commensurate with the size of Alexander's force at the Granicus – if anywhere near that. The campaign which took Egypt; the conquest – for as long as they held that sway – of India and the campaign over the Danube bespeaks decent feats of arms. This was no polyglot of pansies. They held that empire for two hundred years (before Alexander) never once having to field an army larger than that in its defence. Yet the empire is defined (by Greeks and backsides like the one above) as "decadent", effeminate and ready to fall at the proverbial "drop of a hat".
Excuse me, but I beg seriously to differ.
The King ran Greek affairs. This began with the utter destruction of the Athenian imperial intervention in the Egyptian rebellion (455/4) and the death of Kimon – the ultimate Panhellenist (450) – resulting in the Athenian "Peace of Kallias". It only became worse from there. Athenian and Spartan grovelling to the court of the King was to become an Olympic sport during the "Ionian War" period of the Peloponnesian War with the Spartans far out doing their adversaries in the race to the gold Daric. It would only get worse over the next twenty-five years. During which time the King's rule of the Greek cities of Asia was absolute.
A last point before bed – the shiraz is running low – it is way past time to put these ridiculous Greek figures for (defeated) Persian armies to rest. It is utterly inconceivable that Xerxes went home with the "biggest part" of his army. Babylonia was not left without defences, nor Persis or any other satrapy. The King, denied victory at Salamis and having been away for near a year, needed to return to the administrative heart of his empire (as Alexander would find out). He returned through well subjugated satrapies: Macedonia and Thrace. He left the bulk of his land forces in Greece with his de facto satrap Mardonius. He did not require the "biggest part" of his army. What that he required returned to fight at Plataea. There were no 1,700,000 Persians in Greece that autumn. Those are numbers that would never be questioned because they could not be comprehended.
An example: Xenephon (without any hint of embellishing his own performance) tells us there were 900,000 in Artaxerxes' army on the field at Cunaxa (and that ignores the supposed 300,000 his bastard brother was late in bringing). Absolute poppycock. He (and Ctesias) tells us that Artaxerxes was in the centre with the bodyguard as is normal. Cyrus, fearing that his 10,000 Greeks on the right wing – upon whom the battle would devolve – would not be in a position to counter the King and his best forces, ordered them to march in an oblique to their left.
Ask the question: if you faced 900,000, would you extend their overlap by charging to your left? The fact is that if the Persian right overlapped Cyrus' (the Greek) right by the sort of numbers that Xenophon gives, it would make a piffle of difference. The truth is rather more sedate. Relatively equal numbers. Same as at Issus and not much more than two to one at Gaugamela (if that).
Hey, Efstathios, how 'bout a beer at the Attalos? I know the roof bar won't be the place to be…..that won't stop me asking for a bottle of Lafkioti Nemea and the keys to the roof!!
