Lecture 12: In late May 334 B.C., Alexander won a decisive victory over the Persian satraps on the banks of River Granicus in northwestern Asia Minor. Arriving on the field late in the afternoon, Alexander drew the Macedonian army, numbering perhaps…
Lecture 12: In late May 334 B.C., Alexander won a decisive victory over the Persian satraps on the banks of River Granicus in northwestern Asia Minor. Arriving on the field late in the afternoon, Alexander drew the Macedonian army, numbering perhaps 50,000 men, out of line of march into line of battle. By successive cavalry attacks, he put to flight the Persian cavalry that held the higher eastern river bank, and surrounded and annihilated the Greek mercenary hoplites who were drawn up behind the main Persian line. The victory delivered Asia Minor to Alexander. The Ionian Greeks welcomed the Macedonian king as their liberator, and Alexander confirmed the autonomy and freedom of Greek cities of Asia. Sardes, the satrapal capital and treasury surrendered.
The Macedonians encountered resistance at Miletus and Halicarnassus, naval bases held by Greek mercenaries under the orders from Memnon of Rhodes but otherwise, Alexander marched virtually unopposed across western Anatolia. In 334-333 B.C., the Macedonian army wintered at Gordion, the former Phrygian capital on the Anatolian plateau. In spring 333 B.C., Alexander invested the senior general Antigonus Monophthalmos (“the One-eyed”) with the pacifying of eastern Asia Minor, while the Macedonian army marched southeast. The victory on the Grancius shocked the Persian court. Great King Darius III dispatched to the Aegean a fleet, commanded by the veteran mercenary officer Memnon of Rhodes, to raise rebellions in Greece. Darius himself summoned a great host, and so, for the first time, the Great King took the field against a Western invader.
Suggested Reading:
Bosworth, Conquest and Empire.
Engels, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army.
Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great.
Harl, “Alexander’s Cavalry Battle on the Granicus.”
Heckel, The Conquests of Alexander the Great.
Lecture 13: https://www.bitchute.com/video/yxGmSovOt88E/
