G'day Marcus.marcus wrote:[Of course, the other thing that Alexander did at Gaugamela, which was a bit of a departure from the normal tactics, was to place an addition phalanx behind the army (of Greek hoplites, in this case). It meant that, when the Persians broke through his phalanx, they couldn't risk turning on the rear of the Macedonian phalanx, because the hoplites would then be able to take them in rear. I wonder whether Alexander, seeing the size of Darius' army (even at less than 0.5 million men! :wink: ), reckoned there was a good chance of his phalanx being breached; and, knowing how unwieldy the sarissa-bearers actually were, realised he had to place a reserve there to protect his Macedonians' backs?
There were, in fact, a couple of tweaks to the line at Gaugamela. The first is as you mention: the Greek allied infantry in the rear. I too have not had a chance to re-read Arrian's description but, if I recall, they had orders to turn about and tackle any who got through the line so as to protect the phalanx's rear. It's an indication of Alexander's thinking, that the line may well be broken by GÇô not necessarily the weight of numbers GÇô the mass of cavalry or the chariots forcing a break at some stage. Indeed, it was the total engagement of and pressure on the left that eventually seems to have forced this aperture. Alexander's line became more angled back than planned as the centre and the right continued forward and right, gradually leaving the left behind. A detaching of the centre-right from left so to speak.
Interesting that he felt he could spare such out of the front line. When you're outnumbered, I suppose another several thousand isn't going to change things too much? Or maybe Arrian's million is a tad over the mark.
The other GÇô and to me more interesting GÇô feature, was the gradual feeding of auxiliary light and heavy infantry and cavalry units into the rightward extending right wing as the engagement developed. It seemed almost an extending shield curving away to and back around the right. The trick was to hold long enough for the ever-extending right to force a crack in the Persian line. As we all know, it did. It's depiction was one of the poorer aspects of Stone's film.
In the end though, the overall strategy was the same: an oblique approach with the centre-left "refused", a massed assault by a wing (the right) and the roll up and onto the centre. In this case it didn't go quite so cleanly. But, then, it never was with the enemy massing some 30,000 cavalry against you.
