Empire of Ashes: A Novel of Alexander the Great

XVI

The army pressed on to the Indus. The huge bridge of boats assembled by Hephaestion was sturdy enough for 80,000 Macedonians and 20,000 horses, but still failed to inspire any respect for him.

As usual, the way was smoothed by the surrender of the next kingdom to the east, in this case that of a character named Aambhi (or “Omphis,” as Aeschines called him). A more self-interested climber we had not encountered in eight years of campaigning in Asia. Already under severe pressure from the two Indian kings to his east, Abisares of Kashmir and Porus of the Pauravas, Aambhi made a profound gesture of surrendering what was barely his in the first place. Moreover, Aambhi overdid his show in nearly disastrous fashion: by assembling his entire army before the gates of Taxila, his capital, he so alarmed the Macedonians that they rushed to organize a defense. The confusion was only resolved when Aambhi came out to surrender personally. Alexander met him in the center, both men now models of fraternal goodwill, both smiling, both unable to understand a word the other said.

As expected, the toady was confirmed in his kingship by Alexander, whereupon he changed his name to “Taxiles.” This struck me as odd, something like Alexander styling himself as “King Pella.” In any case, the Macedonians made such an impression that “Taxiles’s” enemy, Abisares, sent tokens of submission. This left only King Porus to oppose their invasion of the Ganges Plain. Beyond that, the Macedonians expected only to find the eastern limit of the continent, washed by the waters of unending Ocean.

Each time the corporation known as “Alexander” called upon the strategic skills of Arridaeus, it took a risk. Accordingly, it made a number of sincere efforts to persuade, overawe, threaten and otherwise motivate Porus to give up his enmity against Taxiles. But this Porus was a stiff-necked fellow, repeatedly sending back the Macedonian envoys. The final time he added a promise: Porus would indeed greet Alexander at the Hydaspes River, but only at the head of his army. “And when Porus takes the field,” the message read, “it is not to stage a pageant like Aambhi, but to make war.”

So war it was. Aambhi warned the King that Porus was a formidable foe, with a well-trained army and a large corps of war elephants. Far from giving Alexander pause, this news delighted him, for he was tired of petty conflicts with brigands and hill tribes, and longed for a good, pitched, set-piece battle.

The Hydaspes is only a tributary of the Indus, but no trickle like the Granicus. It is deep and fast enough to prevent a crossing in all but a few well-known places. Porus blocked them all with an army of 30,000 infantry, 4,000 horse, and 200 elephants. Except for the elephants, the Paurava force was smaller than Alexander’s, but had the advantage of the best ground, and the knowledge that they were fighting for their homes and children; the Macedonians were exhausted, ignorant of the territory, and far from home. For these reasons, it would seem, Porus believed he had a chance to stop the man who had toppled the empire at his doorstep.

Porus was clearly not a man to be panicked by a quick offensive thrust. Instead, Alexander opened the battle with a series of cavalry feints up and down the river. In response, the Pauravas’s elephants and horsemen went out to shadow the Macedonians, massing at the points where Alexander’s cavalry bluffed a crossing. The Macedonians kept this up for several nights, whooping and carousing as they galloped, more or less telling the Indians exactly where they were. With this tactic Alexander so exhausted the enemy that they ceased to respond to these moves in force-for it is not an easy thing to get a corps of elephants on the march! Instead, Porus convinced himself that Alexander would not attack at all that season, but wait for the late summer, when the water level would be more suited to an attack.

Having lulled the Pauravas into complacence, Alexander slipped out of camp and surveyed a crossing Aambhi had pointed out to him, some distance to the north. The river was deep there, but narrower. Judging the ford to be manageable, he ordered his men to construct rafts as they had on the Danube and the Oxus, and also to bring forward one of the large galleys he had disassembled at the Indus and portaged to the Hydaspes. Though no enemy scouts had appeared on the opposite bank that far north, Alexander felt obliged to wait for the most opportune moment to cross, for the Macedonian reputation of invincibility was at stake.

His moment came two nights later, when a great rainstorm broke over the battlefield. With storm clouds blocking the moon, and the rain and thunder muffling their maneuvers, Alexander moved the bulk of his army to the crossing place. Craterus was left opposing Porus with a small force that kept up a large number of campfires, to fool the enemy into believing the Macedonians had not moved. An officer named Attalus, who was about Alexander’s height and coloring, was dressed in his clothes and diadem, so the Indians would not think the king had left the camp. Finally, Craterus was given orders to cross the river when Porus decamped, and to follow the sound of the battle wherever it might be.

The crossing was accomplished before dawn without the loss of a single man. Alexander drew his men into formation, expecting to receive a counter-attack at any moment. His scouts then returned with disturbing news: the Macedonians had not landed on the opposite bank of the Hydaspes, but on an island in the stream! An additional crossing would be needed before he could engage the enemy. His men were now stranded uselessly, while back at the main Macedonian camp the diminished size of Craterus’s holding force would become obvious as the sun rose.

It was not in Alexander’s character to rage at Aambhi’s bad advice, but only to apply himself with greater resolution. The island had at least shielded his army from the eyes of Porus’s scouts. His men proceeded across the arm of the Hydaspes without delay, sinking up to their necks in raging snowmelt. Weapons disappeared in the current; horses and men lost their footing and floated away. Nevertheless, the Macedonians completing their second crossing of the morning just as a mounted detachment of Indians finally sighted them. The horsemen attacked, but upon seeing that the phalanx was safely across and deployed, turned and fled. There was a skirmish as the Cavalry Companions intercepted the Indians. One of Porus’s sons was killed after a brave struggle, but the bulk of his force escaped.

From across the river, Craterus witnessed riders arrive in Porus’s camp with news of Alexander’s appearance on the east bank. The Pauravas king ordered his men to march north, leaving only a token force to prevent Craterus from following him. The last of his elephants departed just as the bodies and sarissas of the drowned Macedonians floated past the Indian camp.

The armies met on flat ground. Hoping to nullify Alexander’s skill at wide cavalry sweeps, and knowing that the horses of the Macedonians were terrified of the larger creatures, Porus pushed his elephants far forward. Aambhi, however, had told Alexander that the Indian mahouts had never faced an army of well-drilled pikemen. Alexander sent word to his infantry to be ready as he feinted with his cavalry. The Pauravas took the bait, sending out their horsemen to chase away the Macedonians. Just as the Indian army split in two, Alexander ordered the Foot Companions forward, brandishing their sarissas under the snouts of the elephants.

For a few moments, the battle hung in the balance as Porus’s infantry held firm against the Macedonian attack. His elephants, tusks raised, charged into the Macedonian ranks, snorting and trampling, plucking unlucky phalangites out of the ranks with their trunks. The victims were suspended helplessly by their legs before the Indians dispatched them. Archers stationed on the elephant’s backs fired into the phalanxes from above, doing further damage.

The Macedonians tried to use their pikes against the eyes of the elephants. The elephants were most sensitive about wounds to their trunks, which they held out of reach of the soldiers. The Pauravas’ mahouts were much more skilled than those hired by the Persians at Gaugamela. Porus’ elephant corps did its job very well, keeping the Macedonians away from the Indian center just as it was ordered to do. The heads of the creatures were armored, so it was difficult work to damage them. The Pauravas sallied out against the phalanx several times, their tuskers working terrible carnage against the Foot Companions, who often could not generate enough force behind their sarissas to pierce their thick hides. The Macedonians finally used their war axes against the elephants, chopping at their trunks until they were severed or too mangled for use. In agony, their eyes put out, the giants soon went out of control, thrashing at anything in their reach, including their Indian masters.

The Paurava cavalry, having made no headway against the mounted Companions and Thessalians, added to the chaos by returning to the center. The Indians’ fate was sealed when Craterus appeared in their rear, charging on the double upon them. Porus tried to organize his army into a defensive square, but as Arridaeus had envisioned, his surviving elephants could not turn around quickly enough. With the luxury to charge the Indians at a run, the Macedonians put their lances right through the shields and leather armor of the enemy. This triggered the final panic, and sealed the victory for the Macedonians.

Surrounded, Porus’s army became a bloody, mud-spattered confusion of men, horses, and elephants, all doing as much damage to each other as to the Macedonians. Alexander ordered the phalanx on his left to withdraw, opening a path for the survivors to escape. For it seems that already, before the battle was over, Alexander had plans for Porus and his gallant fighters.

To my mind this victory came as hard as of any fought by the Macedonians in Asia. Alexander’s infantry was the most demoralized after this battle than after any other. The thousand men lost at the Hydaspes, and the way many of them had been crushed to death, made the Macedonians very reluctant to meet any more elephants in the future. And India, as everyone knows, is the wrong place to go if you fear these animals!

Alexander sent Aambhi to solicit Porus’s surrender. But when the latter rode before the Indian king and addressed him in his own tongue, Porus turned his elephant to attack, declaring “A crown yields only to a crown, not a dog!” Aambhi escaped, telling Alexander a story that the Paurava monarch preferred death to capture. But Alexander saw through this, having a better understanding the proud king’s mind. He then obliged Aambhi to return with him as his translator.

Confronting Porus, Alexander dismounted and made such signals as to indicate he wished to parley. Porus, staring down on his adversary from the biggest war elephant on the field, halted. While he was not out of his mind as Aambhi suggested, he must have been troubled by the nine wounds he had received that day, and the ordeal of witnessing all three of his grown sons killed. He might have tried to run his enemy down right then, but with his army destroyed and his kingdom’s fate sealed, such spite would have gained him nothing. Instead, he stepped onto his elephant’s bent front leg. The beast gently lowered its master to the ground before Alexander.

The Paurava king was a giant nearly eight feet tall, with a crest on his helmet that made him seem taller still. His posture there was unbowed and unafraid, though he had no fewer than three arrows still stuck in his body. Alexander seemed little more than a child standing before his father-except that it was the Macedonian who had given the lesson that day.

“Tell me why you fought me,” Alexander asked him, “when you see your rival here has profited by forswearing the sword?”

Porus answered, “If you had come to me in friendship, it is you who would have profited.”

“I can ask for no worthier opponent. Therefore tell me how you should be treated, and it shall be so.”

“As a king. No more, no less.”

“It shall be as you wish for your kingdom. And for yourself, whatever you desire is yours. What may I give you?”

“I have given you my answer. Give to a king as a king ought.”

And give Alexander did. Perhaps because he was angry at the poor intelligence on the river crossing, or perhaps because Porus presented the kind of ally he trusted more at his back, he did not give the Pauravas kingdom to Aambhi. Instead, he confirmed Porus as ruler for all lands between the Hydaspes and the Acesines, and went on to enlarge his kingdom with lands around the Hydraotes. In return, he stipulated that Porus would contribute as many garrison troops and all the elephants he could spare to the Macedonian army. Porus, for his part, accepted his responsibility, and discharged it faithfully in the campaigns that followed against the Cathaei tribe, so that Alexander’s realm ran to the west bank of the Hyphasis. Beyond that river beckoned the great Ganges plain.

There is one other detail Aeschines failed to mention in his account of this time: in the chaos of the end of the battle, a crazed, blinded elephant veered into the Macedonian line. Undeterred by lances or arrows, this elephant charged through a phalanx sixteen-shields deep, turned left, and ran right over Arridaeus and his screen of protectors. All the guards on the exposed side were crushed; Arridaeus was thrown when his horse panicked, and kicked by a hoof as his mount escaped.

This was the worst sort of disaster for the Macedonians. Alexander abandoned his chivalrous interview with Porus the second he got the news. The royal doctor was summoned, and a tent thrown up over Arridaeus’ body to conceal the incident. Soon Alexander and his staff learned the diagnosis: his brother had been kicked in the side of his head. The all-enclosing Corinthian helmet had not protected him, but added to the injury by shattering with the impact. Lacerations had caused him to lose much blood. He was alive, but unconscious in a way that did not promise he would ever recover.

And so the campaign was both literally and figuratively at a crossroads. Among the generals who ran the army, there seemed a real possibility that all of Asia would bow to a Macedonian master, and consequently to governors selected from among themselves. Yet without Arridaeus how would they ever defeat the Great King of India? For surely the wealthy lands around the Ganges must support a powerful kingdom. No one knew for sure what lay ahead, but imagination filled in the details: the Indian monarch must have an army of half a million men, with elephants twice as large and ten times more numerous than those of Porus.

Not knowing what to do, the Macedonians did what they’d always done: march east. By then they were suffering from the almost constant rain of that part of the world. The heavens opened every day, letting down a steaming torrent that rusted armor and rotted wounds. Spoiled food and contaminated water fouled the stomachs of the men, and the stench of widespread diarrhea gave away the army’s position to anyone with a nose. To give his men some relief from the heat, Alexander took care to march in the shadow of whatever high ground was available, but this was meager in the region.

These and other miserable conditions conspired to make a crossing of the Acesines River an expensive proposition. The river was almost two miles wide in the spring, and the natives, by now aware that the Macedonians would seize any vessels they found, hid or scuttled all their boats. Alexander therefore had to dig deeply into the huge fortune he had raided from Persia to purchase the transport he needed.

There were two deaths around this time that did not come on the battlefield, but that each affected Alexander in its own way. First, Bucephalus at last passed on from old age. Alexander grieved for him as he would for a close comrade, and erected a shrine for him on the hillside where his ashes were buried. He also founded a city in the place where he had crossed the Hydaspes on that stormy night, and called it Bucephala, so that the animal’s name would forever be on the lips of men. There he settled soldiers who had grown too old to serve him, and those who had married Indian women and wished to settle, with his blessing, on the lands they had conquered.

The other death was of Darius’s mother, Sisygambus. She had been ailing for some time, and had long expressed through intermediaries that she preferred to return to Persia. But Alexander, perhaps out of affection for the kind of mother Olympias never was, kept the old woman close to him. In any case, the heat and constant rain of India in that season wore her down, until at last she stopped eating, and called for Alexander from her deathbed.

The latter, coming into her presence, was shocked and saddened by her wasted appearance. Kneeling at her side, he begged that she might live to see the shore of the great Eastern Ocean with him. At this, she laughed at him.

“You are a fool. Neither of us will live to see the Eastern Ocean!”

“Why not?”

“Because Asia is not little Europe, my dear boy! Its vastness exceeds your imagining, with kingdoms beyond India you cannot conquer in five lifetimes. For your happiness, be content with what you have accomplished. Make an heir with that half-wild woman of yours! That is my testament to you.”

And with that she allowed him to kiss her hand, and ordered him to leave her, for she wished to die with the survivors of her royal household around her, as she was attended in happier times. And when word came that she was gone, Alexander mourned, putting off eating and washing for three days. He sent her body home unburned, so that she might be buried whole, in accord with the Persian custom.